“How is it, Clara Belle?” my mom asked for the tenth time in the past thirty seconds, rapping on the outside of my dressing room door. “How is the fit? Not too big, I hope. When I called in the size your sister had down for you, I figured that had to be a mistake, and you know how frumpy a too-large dress will look on your frame, sweetheart. If it’s too big, I’m sure I’ll be able to talk Pearl into squeezing in a quick tailoring job. The wedding pictures will be forever, and we don’t want to shudder whenever we look back at the past.”
After that, I tuned her out. She’d been going on and on ever since we’d rolled out of the driveway with my sisters and a couple of second cousins stuffed into her new Rolls. My mother had been a head-turner in her youth, according to my dad and her, but now that age had waved its wand of scorn her way, she had to get her head-turning in other ways. Driving a few-hundred-thousand-dollar car down the streets of Charleston included.
The guys had been set for a day of golfing and drinking at the country club while us girls, lucky us, got to endure a final dress fitting. Then we were having lunch at the spa my mom was an emeritus member of and an afternoon of “pampering.” The other girls might have been getting hot stone massages and paraffin dips, but I’d already seen what I was scheduled for, and a full body waxing followed by a couple of seaweed-and-pineapple wraps weren’t my idea of pampering.
“Come on out. Let us see it on you.” My mom went from rapping on the door to twisting the doorknob. Thank God I’d triple-checked to make sure it was locked after I sojourned in here. “I’ve seen your sisters in their dresses already, but I’m dying to see you in yours, sweetheart. Open up already.”
I couldn’t stop staring at the mirror and shaking my head. This had been going on for the past five minutes, ever since I’d wriggled into this sham of a bridesmaid dress and sucked and wrestled more pieces of flesh than I’d known I had to get the zipper mostly up. I’d always known Charlotte had it out for me, but I hadn’t known until right now that she was going in for the kill.
There was one color my mom used to forbid me to wear upon penalty of public humiliation when people saw just how pasty and yellow my skin was contrasted against aforementioned outlawed color: peach. It was sinister. Even I’d come to recognize that fact, despite my desire to never agree with my mother.
Something having to do with having light hair, combined with ivory skin with yellow undertones, just made me look ever so wrong when peach was laid across my frame. It was a masterpiece of epic disaster. The atom bomb of atrocious. The coux de good god.
Banning peach from my wardrobe was one of the few things my mom had gotten right when it came to me.
So why was I stuffed in it now, from head to toe, covered in a sheen-y, sickening shade of peach? Why was my mom acting like she was on pins and needles to see me in it? Why hadn’t she vetoed Charlotte’s color choice when she saw what colors she’d selected for the big day?
Why was I still standing here shaking my head at my reflection and not clawing out of this thing like a feral cat stuffed in a strait jacket?
“Clara Belle. Right this minute. I’m dying out here,” Mom practically squealed, her hands clapping in her excitement.
“It’s to die for. I promise you that,” I said flatly, unable to stop my shaking head.
It wasn’t just the color, though that was unforgivable on its own; it was also the shape. Unlike my sisters, Charlotte, I hadn’t been graced with a tall, lean body but a shorter, softer one. The boxy, sharp cuts the dress was styled around would have looked banging on a runway model whose hipbones would have popped through the chemise, but it made someone with my curvy frame look like someone had just tried squeezing a family of pigs into a cocktail dress.
Unflattering didn’t even begin to sum it up.
Rip the bandage off . . .
“Coming out,” I announced, flipping off my reflection that continued to mock me. “Brace yourselves.”
My mom did the giddy clap again. “I’ve got my camera ready.”
“That really isn’t necessary,” I said as I opened the dressing room door slowly and stepped out . . . even more slowly. If she’d heard my comment about the camera, she hadn’t heeded it. A flash fired off in my face, blinding me. “Mom, put that thing away before you blind someone.”
There was no shortage of lights in the bridal store, so why her trusty old camera deemed the lighting appropriate for flash was an indication of just how archaic that sucker really was. Let’s just say her camera had been old before camera phones were around.
“I’m not sure Aunt Estelle’s going to be the one responsible for blinding anyone today . . .” my cousin Cynthia said. She and Charlotte had been best friends growing up. That was enough to sum her up.
It took me a few moments to blink away my blindness, and when I did, I found every mouth in view dropping open. My mom looked closer to dismay than shock though. Tears could just be made out welling in the corners of her eyes.
“Oh no, Clara Belle, what went wrong?” She looked around the room like she was trying to locate an emergency responder to come save the day.