The Dressing Room

I have flown four thousand miles to spend a long weekend with H. in the city and to celebrate her engagement to O. First thing Friday morning finds us in a wedding dress shop off lower Fifth Avenue. The reality of the situation doesn’t hit either one of us until we are standing in the hushed room with attendants gliding past in stocking feet courtesy of the No Shoe policy. (The irony is not lost on me; living in Maui, local culture dictates that I most often have to leave my shoes at the door, no matter how perfect or necessary they are to my ensemble. Now, in Manhattan for a weekend, I have on my November in the City Outfit: dress, tights…and the perfect boots that I am required to remove at this very moment. The attendant offers me white, cloth slippers; I decline.) We are surrounded by dresses in white and champagne and ivory. Faux white roses spill out of bowls on coffee tables. Brides-to-be rustle about in their confections. H. breaks into a panicked sweat about how Traditional Wedding it all feels. I dutifully have a sympathetic anxiety attack and swear that an itchy hive is appearing on my neck. But we have an appointment and before H. can change her mind, Marni sits us down to find out what H is looking for. She isn’t really sure, but somehow Marni extracts the necessary Can’ts and Won’ts and Could’s and then H. is whisked away. I sit on the cream-colored couch and wait.

As sisters, H and I have done a fair amount of shopping together, and quite frankly, the experience has often been a daunting one. For many years, H., of 1940s movie star beauty, has been her body’s worst critic, and The Dressing Room has brought out the worst of it…not to mention her running commentary on the abuse of sizing guidelines in This Country. But of all the bad shopping trips, the worst bar none was the one at Banana Republic in March of 2002. Nothing adds more sting to a skirt not fitting quite right than the fact that the skirt in question is be worn to your own mother’s funeral; a funeral that two weeks earlier you did not see coming. Oh, poor Kimberly, lovely sales girl, so pretty and upbeat - how could she have known? As I handed yet another dark skirt to H. to try on, Kimberley bounced in suggesting a bright, pink blouse to compliment the skirt. H. declined. Kimberley persisted, and before I could run interference, H. fell apart, utterly and completely, on the stool in the dressing room corner. My sister was racked with grief in a retail shop. I could not make her pain go away, so I did the only thing I could; I stayed beside her. Kimberley backed out slowly through the curtained doorway.

Over eight years have passed since that day, and now I am sitting outside a dressing room with a stomach full of happy, fluttering butterflies. I want H. to love this moment and to feel absolutely fabulous. And then, there she is, standing in front of me in a dress so perfect for her that I think my mother must have swooped in from heaven and placed it in H’s dressing room, kind of as a do-over for that last fiasco, but more so, I believe, because she wants to be here for this, too. H. is beaming and beautiful and literally lit-up from the inside out. And me, I’m a lucky sister. Two dressing rooms. Two significant moments. Both of them immense, indelible, Life. So what do I do? I cry. But I cry happy tears, tears made so much sweeter for having lived all this together.