I close my eyes and remember an evening when I wore a dress nearly identical to this one.
Richard comes home with a big white box tied with a red bow. "Wear it tonight," he'd said as I modeled it. "You look gorgeous." We'd sipped champagne at the Alvin Ailey gala and laughed with his colleagues.
His hand had rested on my lower back. "Forget dinner," he'd whispered in my ear. "Let's head home."
"Are you okay?" Nancy asks.
"Fine," I reply, but my throat threatens to close up around the words.
"That dress isn't right for you."
Nancy looks surprised, and I realize my words came out too harshly. "This one." I reach for a classic tomato-red sheath.
I walk toward the fitting room, the garments weighing heavily in my arms.
"I think we have enough to begin with."
I hang the clothes on the rod lining one wall, trying to focus on the order in which I feel she should try them, beginning with a lilac jacket that will complement her olive skin.
Jackets are the best place to start, I've learned, because a customer doesn't need to get undressed to evaluate them.
I locate a pair of stockings and heels so she can better assess the skirts and dresses, then swap out a few 0s for 2s. In the end, Nancy chooses the jacket, two dresses—including the red one—and a navy suit. I call a fitter to hem the suit skirt and excuse myself, telling Nancy I'll ring up her purchases.
Instead I'm drawn back to the black-and-white dress. Three are on the rack. I scoop them into my arms and take them to the stockroom, hiding them behind a row of damaged clothes.
I return with Nancy's credit card and receipt by the time she is slipping into her work clothes.
"Thank you," Nancy says. "I never would have picked these, but I'm actually excited to wear them."
This is the part of my job I actually enjoy—making my customers feel good.
Trying on clothes and spending money causes most women to question themselves: Do I look heavy?
Do I deserve this?
Is it me?
I know those doubts well because I have been on the inside of the dressing room many times, trying to figure out who I should be.
I slip a hanging bag over Nancy's new clothes and hand her the garments, and for a moment I wonder if Aunt Charlotte is right. If I keep moving forward, maybe my mind will eventually follow my body's propulsion.
After Nancy leaves, I help a few more customers, then head back to the dressing rooms to restock unwanted items. As I smooth clothing on hangers, I overhear two women chatting in adjoining booths.
"Ugh, this Alaïa looks awful. I'm so bloated. I knew that waitress was lying when she said the soy sauce was low sodium."
I recognize the Southern lilt immediately: Hillary Searles, the wife of George Searles, one of Richard's colleagues. Hillary and I attended numerous dinner parties and business events over the years together. I have listened to her opine on public versus private schools, Atkins versus the Zone, and St. Barts versus the Amalfi Coast. I can't bear to listen to her today.
"Yoo-hoo! Is there a sales girl out there? We need some other sizes," a voice call.
A fitting-room door flies open and a woman emerges. She looks so much like Hillary, down to the matching ginger locks, that she can only be her sister.
"Miss. Can you help us? Our other sales girl seems to have completely vanished."
Before I can answer, I see a flash of orange and the offending Alaïa is flung over the top of the fitting-room door.
"Do you have this in forty-two?"
If Hillary spends $3,100 on a dress, the commission is worth enduring the questions she'll throw at me.
"Let me check," I replied. "But Alaïa isn't the most forgiving brand, no matter
what you've eaten for lunch.… I can bring you a forty-four in case it runs small."
"Your voice sounds so familiar." Hillary peeks out, hiding her sodium- bloated body behind the door. She shrieks and it's an effort to keep standing there as she gapes at me.
"What are you doing here?"
Her sister chimes in, "Hill, who are you talking to?"
"Vanessa is an old friend. She's married—uh, she used to be married—to one of George's partners. Hang on a sec, girl! Let me just throw on some clothes."
When she reappears, she smothers me in a hug, simultaneously engulfing me in her floral perfume.
"You look different! What's changed?"
She puts her hands on her hips and I force myself to endure her scrutiny. "For starters, you little wench, you've gotten so thin. You would have no trouble wearing the Alaïa. So, you're working here now?"
"I am. It's good to see you—"
I've never been so thankful to be interrupted by the ring of a cell phone. "Hello," Hillary trills.
What?
A fever?
Are you sure?
Remember the last time when she tricked you by— Okay, okay. I'll be there right away. She turns to her sister.
"That was the school nurse. She thinks Madison is sick. Honestly, they send a kid home if they sniffle so much as sniffle."
She leans in to give me another hug and her diamond earring scrapes across my cheek.
"Let's make a lunch date and properly catch up. Call me!"
As Hillary and her sister click-clack off toward the elevator, I spot a platinum bangle on the chair in the dressing room.
I scoop it up and hurry to catch Hillary. I'm about to call her name when I hear her voice wafting back toward me.
"Poor thing," she says to her sister, and I detect real pity in her tone. "He got the house, the cars, everything…"
"Really? She didn't lawyer up?"
"She turned into a disaster." Hillary shrugs. It's as if I've slammed into an invisible wall.
I watch as she resides in the distance. When she presses the button to summon the elevator, I head back to clean her discarded silks and linens off the dressing-room floor. But first, I slip the platinum bracelet onto my wrist.
***
Shortly before our marriage ended, Richard and I hosted a cocktail party at our home.
That was the last time I saw Hillary.
The evening began on a stressful note when the caterers and their staff failed to show up on time. Richard was irritated—with them, with me for not booking them an hour earlier, with the situation—but he gamely stepped behind a makeshift bar in our living room, mixing martinis and gin and tonics, throwing back his head and laughing as one of his partners tipped him a twenty.
I circulated among the guests, murmuring apologies for the inadequate wheel of Brie and triangle of sharp cheddar I'd set out, promising the real food would soon arrive.
"Honey? Can you grab a few bottles of the '09 Raveneau from the cellar?"
Richard had called to me from across the room.
"I ordered a case last week. They're on the middle shelf of the wine fridge."
I'd frozen, feeling as if everyone's eyes were on me. Hillary had been at the bar. It was probably she who'd requested that vintage; it was her favorite.
I remember moving in what felt like slow motion toward the basement, delaying the moment when I'd have to tell Richard, in front of all of his friends and business associates, what I already knew: There was no Raveneau in our cellar.
***
I spend the next hour or so waiting for a grandmother who requires a new outfit for the christening of her namesake and putting together a wardrobe for a woman who is taking a cruise to Alaska.
My body feels like wet sand; the flicker of hope I'd experienced after helping Nancy has been extinguished.
This time, I see Hillary before I hear her voice. She approaches as I'm hanging a skirt on a rack.
"Vanessa!" she calls. "I'm so glad you're still here. Please tell me you found —"
Her sentence is severed as her eyes land on my wrist.
I quickly slip off the bangle. "I didn't … I—I was worried about leaving it in the lost and found.… I figured you'd return it, or I was going to call you."
The shadow clears from Hillary's eyes. She believes me. Or at least she wants to.
"Is your daughter all right?" Hillary nods.
"I think the little faker just wanted to skip math class." She
giggles and twists the heavy band of platinum onto her wrist.
"You saved my life. George only gave it to me a week ago for my birthday. Can you imagine if I had to tell him I lost it? He'd —"
A flush blooms on her cheeks as she averts her eyes. Hillary was never unkind, I remember. Early on, she even used to make me laugh sometimes.
"How is George?"
"Busy, busy! You know how it is." Another tiny pause.
"Have you seen Richard lately?"
I aim for a lighthearted tone, but I fail. My hunger for information about him is transparent.
"Oh, now and then."
I wait, but it's clear she doesn't want to reveal more. "Well! Did you want to try that Alaïa?"
"I should get going. I'll come back another time, darling."
But I sense Hillary won't. What she sees before her—the dented button on the Chanel that is two years old, the hairstyle that could benefit from a professional blowout—is a vision Hillary desperately hopes isn't contagious.
She gives me the briefest of hugs, then begins to leave. But she turns back.
"If it were me…" Her brow furrows; she is working through something.
Making a decision. "Well, I guess I'd want to know."
What is coming has the feel of an onrushing train.
"Richard is engaged."
Her voice seems to float toward me from a great distance away.
"I'm sorry.… I just thought you might not have heard, and it seemed like…"
The roaring in my head suffocates the rest of her words. I nod and back away.
Richard is engaged. My husband is actually going to marry her.
I made it to the dressing room. I lean against a wall and slide down onto the floor, the carpet burning my thighs as my dress rides up. Then I drop my head into my hands and sob.
On one side of the old steepled church that housed the Learning Ladder stood three turn-of-the-century grave markers, worn by age and hidden amid a canopy of trees.
The other side contained a small playground with a sandbox and a blue- and-yellow climbing structure.
Symbols of life and death bookending the church, which had witnessed countless ceremonies honoring both occasions.
One of the headstones was inscribed with the name Elizabeth Knapp.
She'd died in her twenties and her grave was set a bit apart from the others. Nellie took the long way around the block, as she always did, to avoid passing the tiny cemetery. Still, she wondered about the young woman.
Her life could have been cut short by disease, or childbirth.
Or an accident.
Has she been married?
Did she have children?