Looking for Jane (80)
“Mike, I’m sorry. I’m fine, but I have to go. I can’t talk right now. I’m sorry. I love you.”
Nancy hangs up on her fiancé before she reveals something she can’t take back.
She hurries down the hallway to the single-stall bathroom, pulls the light chain overhead, and slams the door shut behind her. She sinks down onto the linoleum with her back against the door. With her knees to her chest, she buries her head and releases the renewed grief that’s holding her lungs hostage.
After a minute or two, she hears the front door of the office open, feels it rattle the bathroom doorframe as it shuts.
“Morning!” It’s her coworker Lisa.
Nancy struggles upright, smooths the skirt of her dress, and fixes her mascara in the mirror over the sink. She runs the cold water, cups it in her hands, and gulps it, feeling the chill trickle down through her body. She squares her shoulders in the mirror.
“Let it go,” she tells herself. Her voice echoes off the bare walls as her reflection nods its agreement.
She clears her throat, fluffs her bangs, and pulls open the bathroom door.
* * *
Three days later, Nancy is standing up on a carpeted dais inside a bridal store in the West End, wearing a gown she wouldn’t be caught dead in. Predictably, her mother is already in love with it.
“It’s just like what Princess Diana had!” Frances coos from the cushy pink chair she’s perched on the edge of.
The ivory satin dress has billowing, puffy sleeves that make Nancy feel like a football player, and a train that she knows for a fact is going to trip her on her way up the aisle.
“I don’t know, Mum,” Nancy says, surveying herself again in the mirror and doing her best not to wince. “It doesn’t really feel very me.”
“Oh, pish,” Frances says, waving her hands. “It’s just such high fashion, dear. Of course you feel strange in it. It’s the most formal thing you’ve ever put on in your entire life. Especially since you refuse to wear anything but those tatty jeans of yours. You’re supposed to feel a bit odd in your wedding dress.”
“Am I, though?” Nancy says weakly.
Her mother ignores her, as does the saleswoman, a stout fifty-something with crunchy blond curls and heavily lined eyes under a thick layer of makeup that highlights rather than masks her age.
“It’s very on trend, as you say, ma’am, because of the princess’s exquisite taste,” she says, honing in on the potential sale like a taffeta-clad sniper. “Your daughter would be showcasing the most modern style wearing this dress. She’s a beautiful girl already,” she adds, turning back to Nancy and batting her false lashes, “and the dress highlights her thin waist and brings out the very best in her fine features.”
Nancy passes off her grimace for a modest smile as the woman addresses her mother once again.
“You look so alike, you two,” she says, looking past their mismatched hair and eye colour, Nancy’s thin chin and Frances’s square jaw, the several inches’ difference in their height. Nancy’s stomach flips underneath the layers of satin and lace.
“Oh my, well, yes,” Frances says, blushing like any proud mother would.
Nancy watches her mother’s features for a crack in the facade. She isn’t sure whether to feel relieved or disappointed when she sees none.
“We should get you into a mother-of-the-bride ensemble that will set your daughter’s dress off perfectly,” the saleswoman plows on, pushing another sale. “We have an extensive mother-of-the-bride section at the back of the shop. Right this way, ma’am.”
She’s walking toward the back of the store before Frances has even had a chance to respond to the summons.
“Oh yes, of course,” Frances says, rising from the chair and patting the curls on her wig. “Nancy, dear, you just spend a few more minutes in that dress and see if you can get it to grow on you. I really do think it’s the one!”
“Do you need a hand, Mum?” Nancy asks.
“Goodness, no, I’m fine, I’m fine.”
Part of the tumour is still in her brain; they weren’t ever able to remove it all without further damage. It’s weakened her. She walks slower than she ever used to. Her gait could be supported by a cane, but her stubborn dignity prohibits its employment.
She pads down the hallway to the back of the store on unsteady feet, leaving Nancy to stare at her reflection in the oversized gilded mirrors.
After the engagement last summer, Frances was beside herself with excitement over the prospect of wedding preparations. Seeing how eager she was, Nancy let her mother indulge herself in all the trappings of the process. Michael insisted they hold their ground on the dinner menu and guest list, but they’ve agreed on a traditional ceremony at their parish church, and Frances has gone completely overboard with every other aspect of the production. Nancy doesn’t mind too much, though. The wedding is just a day. Most of all, she’s looking forward to being married to Michael and starting their life together.
“And apparently we’ll be starting our life together with me dressed like a cupcake,” she says to the woman in the mirror dressed like a cupcake. She turns from side to side, swishes the layers of crinoline and skirt, and catches a glimpse of the hundred buttons dotting their way up the back of the dress. She can already tell Michael’s going to hate it. And hate trying to get me out of it at the end of the night, she thinks with a grin.