She tries standing this way and then that, shifting the weight from hip to hip like those kouroi discovered beneath the Aegean. She turns her back to the mirror, looks over her shoulder, not coy but calculating. It’s bare on the back but only a bit—just enough. It’s nice, or maybe she simply wants it to be nice. She has lost perspective. Shopping for a wedding dress is like swimming in that regard: Even if you’re truly expert, it’s something best not done alone. She should have brought Lauren with her. She could overlook the ever-present rejoinder of Lauren’s easy prettiness for her valuable candor. Lauren would know if the dress was nice or not, and Lauren would tell her.
Sarah tells the girl that she’s interested in that second dress, and the girl makes a note for her, in her file—they keep a file here, as in a doctor’s office. The girl gives Sarah a bottle of water and a sincere thank you, and then she’s in a taxi, on her way to the store. This was a lunchtime errand. They’re very particular about lunches at the store. Sarah is not that interested in lunch, or trying not to be, visions of herself in a wedding dress and all, so she fills that mandated hour with errands. It’s a job, not volunteerism, though there are many volunteers associated with the store. She has to follow the rules, so she does, thus she accepts the wage, though it’s a nominal amount, one almost certainly exceeded by the sum she’s spent at the store, over time. She thinks it’s important, like the ceremonial dollar the billionaire CEO might pay himself. It sends a message, even if she and Dan are the only ones getting that message. The message is: This is her work. And it is. She had aspirations, once, of an MBA, maybe law school, the nonprofit world. It’s hard to say now what happened to those. It wasn’t a conscious choice that kept her from filling out the applications, from soliciting the letters of recommendation. It’s like when that restaurant that you always heard about closes—you meant to go there, and never did. How strange. A chance missed. A door closed. On to the next.
Sarah tries to think of herself as a consultant. That is the thing to be, in this modern world, Papa tells her, and she knows he is right. The board that runs the store and the umbrella charitable organization seem surprised when she comes to the meetings, though all are welcome to attend them. She makes suggestions and knows when she’s being humored. The board is a dozen people, the most powerful a hostile interior designer who is a terrible name-dropper. He hates her. She knows that her hopes for her role at the organization have been circumscribed by his dislike for her. She tries to focus on what’s important: serving New Yorkers suffering with AIDS.
What Sarah says, when asked, at parties, in passing, by Dan’s or Papa’s colleagues: There have been so many advances in how we think about AIDS, and how we treat it. Our understanding of the disease shifts almost annually; shouldn’t our organizational infrastructure similarly shift to accommodate new ways of combating the disease? It sounds impressive, or at least, it sounds right. She shows up, she puts on the name tag and sits behind the desk, she wanders the floor, trying to put that once-loved vase into a setting that shows its loveliness to greater advantage. She is not going to let a power struggle undermine her commitment. There are board members who are noticeably nicer to her now than when she first showed up. It’s been two years. This is vindicating.
The taxi is taking too long. The driver is hesitant. He seems irritatingly uncertain. Though she’s lived here all her life, except the sojourn of college, she can’t direct him. She’s never paid attention, not to the way the roads unfold. She can drive from the garage where her parents keep their beat-up old car to their house in Connecticut without thinking, but she can’t remember which avenues run uptown and which down. She says nothing. She looks at her phone. She looks out the window. There’s been a study, recently, about how often parents look at their phones, about the phones representing some kind of competition to the children, about how addicted we all are to being connected to each other, to being able to access the sum of human knowledge whenever we need it. She’s trying to look at her phone less, since reading that, but it’s true that the things are addictive.