Rich and Pretty(19)

So, absent a hand-me-down dress, time to go shopping. This is no store; it is an atelier. The entrance unmarked like a therefore more sought-after bar or restaurant, the buzzer admitting her immediately. The far too beautiful Korean girl brandished a clipboard authoritatively, led Sarah to the sunny, well-appointed room, lined with rolling racks. Here, a clutch of overly complicated confections of chiffon and lace, for the bride young enough to still fancy herself a princess. There, a quintet of slinky silks wilting on velvet-lined hangers, too sexy by far, the sort of thing a movie star might navigate the red carpet in, the supplicant television correspondent demanding to know the designer’s name.

The Korean girl bats her lashes—such lashes, they have to be fake—and tells Sarah she has a face from the past. Neither insult nor compliment; oracular pronouncement. She leads Sarah to the rack she feels is right for her: dresses Jackie Bouvier might have worn. They are pretty, have a certain geometric propriety, a festive dignity, these flawless satins or cottons, in shades of cream and cloud so pure it seems they’ve never been touched, but of course, they were, lovingly worked over by the hands of unknown seamstresses somewhere far off. Even on their hangers they have a certain presence, that’s how powerful the very idea of the wedding dress is. Sarah selects two, and the Korean girl ferries them off to the dressing area, one at a time, the hook of the hanger held high in one hand, the excess of the dress draped lovingly over the crook of her other arm.

Putting on a dress this complex is a rite unto itself: unzipping and unhooking, slithering and draping, buttoning and fastening. This is a task for four hands, really, but she’s damned if she’s going to undress in front of that girl. She steps out of her flats, the ones that leave that terrible crimp across the top of her feet, and kicks off her jeans, not bothering to drape them over the back of the chair presumably provided for that purpose. She pulls her shirt off inelegantly—there’s no other way to do this—and catches herself, near naked, in the wood-framed mirror, for only a second. The dress hangs from a hook on the wall. Sarah struggles with preparing it for her body, understanding the architecture of the thing, locating its secret latches and recesses. She lifts it overhead, and lets it fall; it’s heavy with some unnoticed embellishment, with the solidity of its own expensive fabric, and slides down her body with a muffled but very satisfying sound. She considers herself again. The room is softly lit. The dress looks mostly like a white void, like a shroud. Her face looks rather as it always does. She’s disappointed.

It’s not the dress’s fault. The dress is lovely. It’s not right, though. She’s scared to take it off, scared to snag it, stain it, bruise it. Sarah shimmies out of it carefully, is fleetingly grateful that, with the garment over her face, she can’t see her body’s response to this improvised dance. She guides the thing back onto its hanger, tries the other one. This one is plainer, simpler, more straightforward, but the transformation is astonishing. If she looks past the red feet, the stubble on her legs, the interaction between the dress and her breasts (she’ll need a better bra, for sure), it’s actually quite—well, she looks like a bride, anyway. At last, a contender. This is her fourth time trying on dresses.

She tries standing this way and then that, shifting the weight from hip to hip like those kouroi discovered beneath the Aegean. She turns her back to the mirror, looks over her shoulder, not coy but calculating. It’s bare on the back but only a bit—just enough. It’s nice, or maybe she simply wants it to be nice. She has lost perspective. Shopping for a wedding dress is like swimming in that regard: Even if you’re truly expert, it’s something best not done alone. She should have brought Lauren with her. She could overlook the ever-present rejoinder of Lauren’s easy prettiness for her valuable candor. Lauren would know if the dress was nice or not, and Lauren would tell her.

Sarah tells the girl that she’s interested in that second dress, and the girl makes a note for her, in her file—they keep a file here, as in a doctor’s office. The girl gives Sarah a bottle of water and a sincere thank you, and then she’s in a taxi, on her way to the store. This was a lunchtime errand. They’re very particular about lunches at the store. Sarah is not that interested in lunch, or trying not to be, visions of herself in a wedding dress and all, so she fills that mandated hour with errands. It’s a job, not volunteerism, though there are many volunteers associated with the store. She has to follow the rules, so she does, thus she accepts the wage, though it’s a nominal amount, one almost certainly exceeded by the sum she’s spent at the store, over time. She thinks it’s important, like the ceremonial dollar the billionaire CEO might pay himself. It sends a message, even if she and Dan are the only ones getting that message. The message is: This is her work. And it is. She had aspirations, once, of an MBA, maybe law school, the nonprofit world. It’s hard to say now what happened to those. It wasn’t a conscious choice that kept her from filling out the applications, from soliciting the letters of recommendation. It’s like when that restaurant that you always heard about closes—you meant to go there, and never did. How strange. A chance missed. A door closed. On to the next.

Sarah tries to think of herself as a consultant. That is the thing to be, in this modern world, Papa tells her, and she knows he is right. The board that runs the store and the umbrella charitable organization seem surprised when she comes to the meetings, though all are welcome to attend them. She makes suggestions and knows when she’s being humored. The board is a dozen people, the most powerful a hostile interior designer who is a terrible name-dropper. He hates her. She knows that her hopes for her role at the organization have been circumscribed by his dislike for her. She tries to focus on what’s important: serving New Yorkers suffering with AIDS.