The Magic Room: A Story About the Love We Wish for Our Daughters

by Jeffrey Zaslow

  I’ve heard from men who seem to know what love is all about, and they go beyond the clichés. When all of us think about the mates we want for our daughters, these are the sorts of men we envision.

  I once asked readers to send me their definitions of love. One man replied with a story about a cruise he had taken years before. He was out on the ship’s deck, looking out at the ocean, when he spotted a school of dolphins.

  “They were racing alongside the ship,” he told me, “against the backdrop of the most beautiful rainbow I had ever seen.”

  So why did this scene define what love meant to him?

  It’s because, even years later, when he thinks back to that breathtaking moment, he feels more sadness than happiness. “I’m sad,” he told me, “because my wife was not there to see it with me.”

  That’s the sort of love we wish for our daughters. Men who will feel that way when our daughters are not with them.

  My wife, Sherry, knew I had been searching for a way to write a book about how all of us can best show love to our daughters today. I wanted to look at cultural touchstones, and to offer a well-reported sense of what the words “I love you” feel like in our changing times. Sherry and I talked about where such a book might be set. Maybe I could visit maternity wards, dance studios, daddy-daughter date nights or spas where mothers and daughters go to bond. There were plenty of possibilities.

  But then Sherry thought back to her happiest memory of spending time with her own father.

  Before we got married in 1987, Sherry was living in Detroit and I lived in Chicago. Our wedding would be held in Buffalo, New York, Sherry’s hometown. She planned to fly into Buffalo a couple days before the wedding, but by the time her wedding gown alterations were finished, it was too late to ship the dress. She didn’t want the gown getting wrinkled in the plane’s baggage compartment, and it seemed silly to ask about buying a seat for it in the cabin.

  And so her father offered to drive 320 miles from Buffalo to Detroit to pick up Sherry and her wedding dress, and to turn around and drive 320 miles back. Sherry was touched by his willingness to do that, and she calls the six hours she spent in the car that day—with her dad and her dress—one of the happiest memories of her life. It was a selfless, loving act by her dad, and it turned into a special chance for him to talk to her about his love for her, and about his hopes for her marriage to me.

  “There’s something about a wedding dress . . . ,” Sherry said to me.

  And that’s when I first considered the idea of setting this book at a bridal shop, of giving voice to a handful of memorable women on the brink of commitment.

  I was willing to go anywhere in the country to find the right store and the right stories, and I began exploring potential options. As things turned out, I didn’t have to search too far or too long.

  When I first drove up to Becker’s Bridal, I was aware only that the store was a popular stop for brides-to-be from central Michigan. I didn’t know its history. I knew nothing about the family that ran it. I certainly didn’t know about the Magic Room.

  But on the very first day I visited Becker’s, I truly sensed that this was a place that could illuminate the most poignant aspects of a woman’s journey to the altar. I just knew that the story I wanted to tell about all of our daughters was here—in the walls, in the mirrors, on the racks, and especially, in that small, simple room at the top of the stairs.

  The Magic Room

  Shelley in front of the store with a dress over her shoulder

  Chapter One

  The Mirror

  It’s 9:20 a.m. on a Tuesday in July, and Shelley Becker Mueller, owner of Becker’s Bridal, stands at the store’s back door, jiggling her key in the lock. It’s the same routine her mother followed for decades, and her grandmother before that.

  Shelley steps through the “employees only” entrance, a cup of coffee in her hand, flips on the light switch, and heads into the back office to plug in the commercial vapor iron. That’s always the opening ritual, since the iron takes a half hour to warm up and will be needed right away.

  The phone is already ringing—no doubt it’s a bride or her mother with an alteration issue—but Shelley’s not ready to answer it just yet. Whoever it is can call back after the store opens at ten. No one’s walking down any aisles before then anyway.

  Shelley stops at her desk, puts down her coffee, and looks at her appointment book. Twenty-one brides will pick up their dresses today, and she quickly makes sure their gowns are on the final pressing rack in order of their appointment times. She then heads out onto the sales floor and stops in the seventeen fitting rooms, one by one, to see whether any gowns or crinolines, tried on the evening before, need to be returned to their racks. Today all she finds is a stray bra.

  No new brides-to-be have arrived yet. But the old brides, they’re all still here; 100,000 of them.

  Shelley can feel the presence of all those brides partly because, to the right of the front counter, there’s a large, ninety-year-old mirror in a weathered wooden frame. Guarded on either side by two mannequins in wedding gowns, the mirror has been in the store since the very first dress was sold in 1934. Most every Becker’s bride has stood in front of it, usually with her mother looking over her shoulder.

  Some cultures think that a mirror captures your soul, and Shelley believes it too. She considers mirrors a reflection of the past; after we look in them, our spirits remain there with everyone else. When tourists walk through Monticello, Thomas Jefferson’s home in Virginia, they stand in front of a mirror used by Jefferson himself; their souls mix with his. In the same way, every Becker’s bride who looks in the store’s old mirror is connected to every bride who came before her. Every mother-of-the-bride communes with all the mothers before her. Every father with all the fathers. That’s how Shelley sees it, and it gives her comfort.

  Now forty-five years old, Shelley has been looking in this mirror since she was a little girl. Over the decades, she’s seen ten thousand versions of herself in it—as a toddler just learning to walk, as a fourteen-year-old girl working here on the floor, as a nineteen-year-old bride wearing the store’s priciest wedding dress, and as a middle-age woman now in charge of everything. Lately, for all sorts of reasons, she’s been getting more sentimental about the mirror. When she stands in front of it and she’s not crazy-busy catering to a customer, she sometimes takes a moment and wonders about the lives reflected in it: What became of all those brides who smiled at themselves, or wiped away happy tears, in front of this mirror? How many children and grandchildren did they go on to have? Whose marriage made it and whose did not? How many of those brides are alive today?

  Shelley knows how life goes. An unknown number of the brides who looked in this mirror ended up estranged from their parents, or they died young, or they were inexplicably loyal to scoundrels who abused them. Others lived to be old women, their marriages growing richer each year. A few lived long enough to see great-granddaughters buy their dresses at Becker’s.

  The mirror also reminds Shelley of the store’s founder, her grandmother Eva Becker, the no-nonsense businesswoman who oversaw employees and customers with a firm hand. What would Grandma Eva, who stood in front of this mirror with thousands of brides, think of the way Shelley is running the place?

  Shelley truly feels that Eva is somehow here in the store, watching. Some of her saleswomen suspect the place is haunted. They often hear odd creaking noises, or boxes in the upstairs storage area will topple for unexplained reasons, as if someone were up there pushing them over. Items such as car keys and bridal accessories will disappear, only to mysteriously reappear on the front counter the next day. When the saleswomen tell brides about “The Ghost of Eva,” they’re mostly kidding. Still, Grandma Eva, whose unsmiling 1922 wedding photo hangs near that old mirror, remains a formidable force here, thirty-four years after her death.

  The old mirror used to be on a freestanding base in a corner, but after Shelley took over the store from her mother, sh
e moved it near the counter, so that every visitor couldn’t help but pass it. She likes the idea of connecting today’s brides with those who came before. Most of the women who bought dresses at Becker’s in its first half century stayed married—just look at the low divorce statistics then—so Shelley figures it’s good karma to have today’s customers see themselves in this mirror. Maybe some old-fashioned values will rub off on them. Shelley recently had the names of her great-grandparents, grandparents, and parents stenciled at the top of it, with the years they took over ownership of Becker’s—1899, 1928, 1974. When she leaves the business, maybe her name will be stenciled there too, with the year she bought the business from her parents, 2005.

  On this morning, Shelley takes just a few seconds to look at herself in the mirror. She gives herself a half-smile. She’s five-foot-ten and strikingly attractive, but more than that, she dresses as if she means it. She’s in a sleek black dress with the highest of high heels, and wears three strands of baubles around her neck (large pearls and rhinestones) and five bracelets (layers of crystals and more rhinestones). She looks unlike any other woman in Fowler, Michigan—a simple, mostly blue-collar town where no one dresses too fancy, especially this early in the morning. Her grandmother had been something of a fashion diva when she ran the store, always wearing a hat with feathers in it. Shelley reasons that it’s a new, showier age, and she wants to make a statement, too. Others have certainly noticed that she’s single-handedly trying to deliver a stepped-up style here on Fowler’s drab Main Street. A few roll their eyes a bit. Most like it. Everyone notices. Several people in town describe her the same way: “She’s like Sandra Bullock, all dressed up in that movie The Blind Side.”

  Shelley is also able to pull off a haircut that reminds others in Fowler of Fleetwood Mac singer Stevie Nicks, circa 1982. It’s a twenty-first-century streaked blonde shag, and it works for her.

  Just as Shelley moves on from the old mirror, the back door opens. It’s her twenty-four-year-old daughter, Alyssa, the fourth-generation Becker to work at the store. Alyssa, who isn’t as determinedly stylish as Shelley, likes to kid her mother about her outfits, her heels, her near-perfect figure. “Hi, Barbie,” she says to Shelley as she puts on her name tag.

  Shelley doesn’t mind her daughter’s playful digs. She’s thrilled that Alyssa, a recent graduate of nearby Central Michigan University, is with her every day. After spending time in both Paris and New York, Alyssa has decided that, at least for now, she wants to work here, in tiny Fowler, in the family business. Given that Shelley spends her days watching mothers and daughters laugh, cry, and annoy each other, it’s nice to have her own daughter close by. They commiserate about the mother/daughter relationships all around them; it gives them a sense of how they’re doing.

  A large part of Shelley hopes that Alyssa will stay at Becker’s Bridal forever, and that she’ll take over the store one day. And yet Shelley also knows how confining this small town can be, and how much of the world you miss if you spend all your time here. Alyssa is a gifted writer with a sense of humor and a lot going for her. Shelley’s dreams for Alyssa vary by the day, even by the hour. Sometimes she wants to hold her tight, sharing life here at Becker’s. Sometimes she wants to set her free.

  Today, Alyssa is especially chirpy. The phone has been ringing, and Alyssa tells her mother, “Don’t worry, Barbie, I’ll get it” while Shelley finishes her final morning rounds. Shelley heads up the six stairs just around the corner from the old mirror and walks into that special room on the left, the Magic Room. One of her saleswomen straightened it out and vacuumed the night before. The soft lights in the room are set perfectly. The emerald-green carpet looks clean and fresh. The pedestal shines.

  “OK, the place looks presentable,” Shelley thinks. She returns to the back office to turn on the store’s music system. Sinatra is up first. Michael Bublé and Harry Connick Jr. will follow. It’s music to buy wedding dresses by.

  A couple of Shelley’s employees arrive at the back door. Mona, a fifty-five-year-old veteran saleswoman, is all smiles, as usual. She’s one of the secret weapons at Becker’s, a good-humored dynamo who allegedly has the uncanny ability to look into a bride’s eyes and know exactly which of the 2,500 dresses is right for her. (She also looks at the bride’s figure, of course. But the eyes tell her more.)

  Bill arrives right behind Mona, adding another upbeat presence to the morning. He used to manage Main Street Pizza across the street, until Shelley convinced him to work for her. Bill is the back-office organizer, but he also greets customers with great energy. Because brides these days watch bridal reality TV shows, they expect men working at a bridal shop to be gay, like the men on TV. Bill, a married father of two, has come to realize that women are more comfortable with him if he sounds like “Franck,” the flamboyant Martin Short character in 1991’s Father of the Bride. No one is in the store yet, but Bill warms up for the day by getting into character for Alyssa and Mona: “Oh my gosh, darlings, let me see you both. Turn around, gorgeous, just gorgeous!”

  At this moment, about a dozen brides-to-be and their mothers are already on their way to Becker’s. For those from out of town, the drive here can be a time for bonding and reminiscing. Those traveling from the west pass through miles of cow pastures and cornfields. Those coming from the east see hundreds of acres of mint fields. There are long empty stretches on the way to Fowler—not a gas station, not a house—so almost all of the out-of-town brides and mothers will have the same request when they arrive at Becker’s: “Where’s the bathroom?”

  Shelley’s ready for them. She looks at the clock. It’s exactly 10:00 a.m., and two brides-to-be and their mothers are waiting on the sidewalk outside the front door. She unlocks the door and smiles. “Good morning! Welcome to Becker’s. Nice to see you.”

  “Do you mind if we use the restroom?” one of the mothers asks.

  “I’ll go with you,” says her daughter. The other bride and mother join them.

  After the restroom visits, Shelley directs the two brides and their moms to the front counter to fill out the sign-in sheet. That’s when the brides-to-be, wearing their street clothes, pass the old mirror for the first time, oblivious to it. Soon enough, they’ll add their reflections to the white and ivory procession that has been captured in that mirror six days a week for seventy-six years now. If they try on a dress and fall in love with it later this morning, an invitation will be issued.

  “Come on up the stairs,” Shelley will say. “Let’s see what you look like in the Magic Room.”

  You can see why they call it the Magic Room.

  Chapter Two

  Danielle

  Women are surprised by the thoughts that come into their heads as they approach the Magic Room. Some brides say they flash back to the days they played dress-up as little girls; they instantly regress to age eight or nine. Others say they don’t even recognize themselves. It’s almost like an out-of-body experience: Who exactly is that woman in the mirror? And then there are the brides whose minds go totally blank. All they see is the dress. It’s hard to even speak.

  The brides’ mothers have flashbacks too. Usually, of course, they think of the day they first saw themselves in their own wedding dresses. But they also have more wistful thoughts. They remember the words their late parents said to them when they tried on their dresses. Or they think of fiancés who loved them once, but turned into husbands who no longer wanted to be married to them.

  Danielle DeVoe, a twenty-five-year-old social worker, is excited but not overtly emotional as she walks up the stairs at Becker’s in a sparkling, off-white wedding dress from Casablanca Bridal. “I think this is the one,” she says, almost to herself, smiling. All around her are mothers and daughters fussing over dresses, with Shelley directing them into fitting rooms, but Danielle is focused, head forward, on a mission.

  Unlike the other bride-mother pairings here today, she has come with her grandmother, Cynda, who holds back tears as Danielle steps into the Magic Room.


  In this moment, Cynda finds herself thinking of Danielle’s birth in 1985, and the beautiful white dress with pink rosebuds that she wore home from the hospital. It looked almost like a miniature wedding dress.

  Cynda had bought that dress within hours of Danielle’s birth. Her daughter, Kris, didn’t know if she was having a boy or a girl, and when Danielle arrived, Cynda decided that a new little girl needs to step into the world in a special dress. She had asked Kris, “Would you mind if I bought her the outfit she’ll wear home?”

  “Sure, Mom,” Kris had answered.

  Cynda always considered that purchase to be her first loving act as a grandmother. Now, twenty-five years later, she had asked Danielle if she could buy another landmark dress for her—her wedding gown.

  “Sure, Grandma, I’d be honored,” Danielle had said. And so they made their way to Becker’s, where it appears they’ve found the winner.

  “It’s the most gorgeous dress in the entire store,” Cynda says as Danielle turns around and around, studying herself in all the Magic Room mirrors. The ivory dress is the perfect color, given Danielle’s dark brown hair and big brown eyes.

  Cynda leans against the mirrored east wall of the Magic Room, and in her mind, clear as can be, she sees that little homecoming outfit she’d bought in 1985, a dress barely bigger than the palm of her hand. She smiles at the memory, blinks, and then she’s lost in a rush of thoughts, contemplating the twenty-five years that led to this wedding dress, and the beautiful grown woman modeling it. “Danielle, you look stunning, honey,” Cynda says, trying to keep her mind from wandering back through a lot of heartache.

  Cynda’s daughter, Kris, had been just nineteen years old when she gave birth to Danielle, who would be her only child. Kris had gotten married right out of high school to a man who seemed incapable of being responsible. He was constantly disappointing her—he even went AWOL the night Danielle was born—and the marriage ended badly after just two years. Cynda has heard Danielle speak of both her mother and her father with a clear-eyed directness. “My mom raised me as a single parent,” Danielle tells people, “after I saw my biological father abuse alcohol, drugs, and my mother.”