The White Gown

She had not meant to lose him. 

The rain had drawn her out of the apartment, and, not having friends, Aubrey had indulged her new-found passion. She had kept it from him, not because it was wrong (it wasn’t) but because she didn’t know how she would explain it. Sometimes, even as she stood in front of the mirrors, perhaps elevated by a pedestal or a pair of satin heels, she tried to frame sentences he would understand. “I feel pretty when I wear them,” she whispered to her reflection. “I feel . . . magical.”

The employee at Latimer’s Bridal, the doe-eyed girl with the red spiral curls, asked her on the first day of rain, “When’s the big day?”

She was used to the question. She always answered the same way. “I’d hate to say. We’ve already moved it twice.”

So they left off the questions and let her try on three or four gowns, enough to get her fix.

The woman at Howard’s on the second day of rain had followed her around with a measuring tape. “Usually the bride has her maid of honor or her mother with her when she looks at gowns. Someone who knows her style?”

Aubrey was used to this question, too. “Just me today.”

It was all about the gowns—how she looked and, by extension, how she felt when she wore them. Her husband could not be expected to comprehend this sensation of magic. 

She tried to picture Daniel in a tuxedo, preening before a tri-fold mirror. It was impossible. He would never have worn a tux, even if she had asked him.

On the third wet day, she went to Latimer’s again because the rain was heavy and the shop was only a short walk from the apartment.

“You’re back!” exclaimed the spiral-haired girl. “Have you decided on a gown?”

Aubrey hesitated, the rain dripping off her collapsed umbrella and onto the slate tile floor. There was a gown. She had not tried it on, but it had waited patiently on its padded hanger in her mental fitting room since the first day of rain. “I’d like to look around,” she said at last.

For once, the girl left her alone.

Aubrey touched them all—tulle-skirted ball gowns, fitted lace sheaths, sequined, strapless numbers, and mod mini-dresses. The rain pattered on the roof of the shop while she moved between the racks of white and off-white gowns. 

A mother and daughter came in, griping about the weather, demanding service. They didn’t stay long. “The gowns here run large,” the mother muttered. The daughter held the door for her on the way out.

Aubrey’s dress hung on a sale rack near the back of the store, elbow-sleeved and boat-necked, but sheer enough beneath its lace cut-outs to suggest . . . well, one did not know until one tried it on.

She summoned the girl and let her slip the dress over her head and zip the hidden zipper under her arm. She allowed herself to be led to the front of the store and paraded before the mirrors and praised.

“It’s classic,” the girl said, her first genuine smile revealing surprised admiration. “So elegant.”

Aubrey’s wedding to Daniel had been rushed. They had met in Paris, gone out a few times, and simply leaped. She had bought an off-the-rack suit that was not as chic in real life as it had looked on the hanger in the shop. She had not tried it on.

“Would you like me to price it?” the girl was saying. “This is forty-percent off, so you might want to snatch it up.”

Usually, this was where she bailed. “I need to think about it,” she would say. “Would you take my picture so I can show my friends?”

But today. . . .

She turned, flirting with herself subtly in the mirror over her shoulder as the gossamer volume of skirt billowed around her legs. The sheer fabric of the bodice overlaid with lace suggested the curves of her breasts. This daring, combined with the demurely high neckline, long sleeves, and full, floor-length skirt, washed over her like a hurricane tide of majestic sexiness—the magical modesty and swirling, graceful, immortal royalty that was the whole reason for her obsession. 

“Okay,” she said. “Ring it up.”

When Daniel came home from work, he saw her playing on her phone. “Have you started supper?” he asked.

“It’s only four,” Aubrey said. “You’re home early.”

“What are you doing?”

“Downloading an app so I can do my banking on my phone.”

Daniel shook the water from his folded umbrella over the sink, then hung the umbrella by the door. “Why do you need an app? You’re closing your account. Remember?”

She put her phone away and ran water for pasta, savoring a secret thought of the new gown, hidden away in its box under the bed. The water filled the pot and she put it on the stove.

Daniel turned on the TV and put his feet up on the coffee table. Instead of joining him as she might have on any other day, perhaps a day when it was not raining, Aubrey went to the bedroom and closed the door.

Ten minutes later, Daniel opened the door. She was wearing the perfect white gown.

She tried all the lines she had memorized: “It’s not what you think, there’s no one else, I didn’t get a gown in Paris, I had the money, I wanted to feel pretty, I wanted to feel—”

He did not understand. When he raised his voice, she suddenly knew it would be the last time.

She took only the gown. Since it was still raining, she held the enormous garment box tightly to her as she dashed to the cab. The box went in first. She tilted one end onto the seat back before sliding in herself. Her hair was beaded with rain, but her eyes were dry as she leaned out of the window and looked up at the apartment. She couldn’t see Daniel, but she imagined him glowering.

She had not explained it well. Or maybe there were no words he would understand. In her carelessness, she had lost him. But he had lost her, too.