The Dress
“This is the one. I knew it when I first saw it.”
The Bride’s fingers caress the silk folds of the wedding Dress. The bodice rises and falls with each breath, molding around her delicate ribcage like skin. The skirt rustles with a whisper when she walks, but she can’t quite hear what it says. It shines with a light of its own, almost a living thing. All brides must feel this way about their dresses, she reasons.
Behind the Bride’s back, the Dressmaker takes the last pin from a seam. The Bride does not see that the white pins are hewn of bone.
“It’s as if it was made for you.” The Dressmaker’s gaze skims covetously over the young Bride’s dewy skin, the florid blush in her cheeks. “You’re absolutely beautiful.”
The Bride nods, believing, staring at her reflection. She feels dizzy; it must be her nerves. The color is draining from her face. “You don’t remember where the Dress came from?”
The Dressmaker shakes her head, dislodging a piece of gray hair from her chignon. “This Dress is a very old dress–one of a kind. You’re very lucky to have it.”
The Bride stumbles. The Bride’s mother hands the Bride a cup of water, and a bridesmaid steps in with make-up to mask her sudden pallor. The Dressmaker fades into the background of the wedding preparations.
Her work is done–she has sold her moment of beauty.
The Dress has been folded into a box. The Dressmaker assures her that the Dress will be carefully preserved for the Bride’s daughters.
“Once it’s done, you can’t open the box,” the Dressmaker explains. “It will yellow right away.” She pats the Bride’s hand reassuringly as she leads her out the door. “I’ve done this thousands of times.”
The Dressmaker carries the box to the fitting room, crowded with pale, ghostlike dresses in plastic bags. She pulls the Dress from the box, shakes it out. It’s blindingly white, engorged in all the youth and vigor of the once-Bride.
Thin white filaments bristle up from the interior of the dress. Fine as hairs, they inquisitively taste the familiar air of the shop, moving as asynchronously as grass in a breeze.
The Dressmaker shrugs out of her suit, unfastens the back of the Dress and steps into it. The tendrils burrow into her skin, as they did the Bride’s. The dress molds around the Dressmaker’s body, as if it were made for her.
Of course it was. It’s her dress.
She breathes deep, as the Dress infuses her with that scalding whiteness of youth. The shadows under her eyes soften. Her gray hair darkens to chestnut. She can feel her skin growing taut.
The Dress drains out. The brilliance of the silk fades to a more ordinary white, and she can feel the tiny threads retracting into the fabric.
She steps out of the Dress and into her clothes. She glimpses her smooth reflection in the mirror. She is easily ten years younger, thanks to the Bride. She hangs the Dress beside the full-length mirror.
The Dressmaker tapes the empty preservation box shut. No one will look in the box for at least twenty years; the former Bride would be cold in the ground by within a month.
A jingle at the front of the shop alerts her to her next appointment. The Dressmaker leads a new Bride to the fitting area. Among the sea of pearly dresses, one stands out–the one hung beside the mirror. The Dress.
The Bride reaches out to touch it. It pulls her, like a star with its own gravity.
“This is the one,” she sighs. “The Dress.”