White Dresses

by Mary Pflum Peterson

  Two months later, much to her surprise—­and mine—­she did. It was a rocky trip from the very beginning. When my mother tried to switch planes in Chicago to board the aircraft that was to take her on to Europe, she inadvertently got in the wrong line—­and on the wrong plane. Instead of a Berlin-­bound flight, she had stepped onto a Cairo-­bound flight and found herself surrounded by excited women in long dresses and headscarves who didn’t speak any English. Thankfully, a flight attendant discovered the error in the moments before takeoff, but the experience rattled her.

  By the time she arrived in Berlin, she was fatigued and frightened and refused to allow me to take her to Paris for the weekend of shopping and museum hopping I had originally planned. Instead, she begged me to let her hunker down in my Berlin apartment for the week. I had no choice but to acquiesce. I kept telling her about all the wonderful things we could see and do if she would please just allow me to lead the way. But her idea of fun was taking in American movies at Potsdamer Platz or watching reruns of ER and The Mary Tyler Moore Show on German television networks. My one victory came in the form of a day trip to Dresden. She adored the old East German city—­primarily because of its wicked good bratwurst, which she bought on the street for a ­couple of euros—­and because of its stunning artwork.

  A second small but significant victory came later that weekend when we were back in Berlin and she allowed me to take her out for a dinner of paella at a Portuguese restaurant. She had never had the rice-and-seafood dish and was delighted by its contents as well as by the pitcher of sangria that accompanied it. She loved most of all the attention of the restaurant’s owner, a graying man from Portugal who found my mother delightful. My mother had always liked to laugh. And that night, she laughed a lot. I’m sure much of that laughter stemmed from the sangria. But I think it was something more—­a willingness to let go, if only for a ­couple of hours.

  But beyond the trips to Dresden and the Portuguese restaurant, there were problems with our visit. More specifically, there were fights. When I went to live in Germany, I had made the decision to forward all of my U.S. mail to my mother’s address in Beaver Dam. I was especially concerned about staying on top of my bills. Among the bills that were being forwarded to my mother’s house: my Atlanta phone bills, a monthly storage-­unit bill, and a pair of credit card bills. This was in the late 1990s, before bills could easily be paid electronically.

  Each month, I dutifully sent from Germany a check with which my mother could cover my bills. And each month, I would ask my mother, during some of our many phone calls, if the money I was sending was sufficient to cover the bills. She always assured me that it was and, since I knew checks were being cashed, I didn’t bother to question her further. But on the second night of her visit to Germany, she stunned me with the presentation of a manila envelope full of my mail.

  There was a smattering of magazines, a pair of letters from my university alumni office, a heavy cream envelope that appeared to be a wedding invitation of some sort. And there were many, many unopened bills.

  “What’s this?” I cried as I scanned the collection of envelopes with little cellophane windows.

  “It’s your mail,” my mother said nonchalantly from her post in front of the television in my West Berlin living room. She’d found an old episode of Magnum PI dubbed into German and was transfixed. “I thought you’d like the old issues of the New Yorker that you missed.”

  “Not the magazines,” I said, scanning the first of the bills that I came to in the pile. It was the last of my Atlanta phone bills—­which had been due seven months ago. “The bills. You told me you were paying them.”

  “I did pay them,” said my mother, pointing to an open envelope on which she’d scrawled, “Paid—­November 1998.”

  “But that’s just one of the bills,” I cried. “What about all of these?”

  I held up a handful of unopened bills, many marked “Second” or “Final” Notice.

  “I’ve been sending you money every month,” I cried.

  “And I’ve been using it to pay for the phone bills to talk to you over here,” she retorted.

  I sank down in the folds of the couch and buried my head in my hands. All these months I had thought my bills were being paid on time. But they weren’t. I had assumed that if there were problems, she would have told me, at least warned me.

  I cringed as I dissected the pile. Each envelope revealed contents that seemed worse than the last. One letter informed me that the lock on my storage unit had been cut since my account was more than ninety days past due. My Macy’s credit card, which I’d had no opportunity to use in months, had been cut off.

  “Mom,” I said, crying now, “I counted on you. You told me you would make the payments.”

  “I’m sorry, Mary,” she told me. “I did the best I could.”

  That I believed. She was forever doing her best. The problem was that her best wasn’t good enough when it was pitted against the beast known as chronic depression.

  My mother’s failure to pay my bills during my time in Germany would come back to haunt me when I bought my first home two years later. Numerous letters and phone calls and a renewed commitment to pay my bills in full every month eventually salvaged my credit. But I would never regain trust in my mother, who, I had at last come to realize at the age of twenty-­six, was stuck in her well-­meaning yet terribly disorganized ways.

  I didn’t see my mother again after her visit to Berlin until the eve of her mother’s memorial ser­vice in June. Some three months had passed. The time had allowed me to take a deep breath.

  The afternoon before the memorial, I flew from Berlin to Indiana to surprise my mother. Her brothers and sisters knew I was coming. My mother did not. When I walked into the restaurant in which she and all of her siblings were gathered, she sat stunned, looking past her salad plate to me as if I were a ghost.

  “What are you doing here?” she cried.

  “I came to see you,” I told her.

  “But you were in Berlin,” she said, still not believing I was there.

  “I know, Mom. But there are airplanes.”

  I threw my arms around her neck. Moments later, I was relieved to feel the familiar warmth of her arms tightening around me.

  “Airline tickets cost money,” she said into my hair.

  “And you’re worth more,” I whispered.

  My mother, and my grandmother, needed me. And I was there. In that white suit I had bought for my CNN shoot in Cali­fornia.

  The eulogy I delivered for my grandmother the morning of the memorial was made up of the top ten things my grandmother had taught me during her life. It paid homage to her love of literature, to her appreciation for great hotel bathrooms, and, above all, to her encouraging me to pursue my dreams. “My grandmother taught me, above all,” I told the attendees at the memorial ser­vice, “to reach, reach, and reach some more.”

  It was an apt message. Two days prior to the memorial ser­vice, when I was preparing to travel from Berlin to Indiana, I had received a call from Steve Cassidy, the head of CNN’s international desk, asking me about relocating to Turkey.

  I had been to Turkey in April of that year to file a pair of reports about the Turkish federal election. Now they needed an Istanbul-­based staff to help launch a new network, CNN Türk.

  “It’ll be fun, kid,” Steve told me. “And you told me you want adventure. Am I right?”

  “You’re right,” I said.

  “Then give it some thought and give me a call on Monday.”

  I was stunned. Even though I’d been to Turkey, I knew almost nothing of the country aside from the fact that it had amazing views and equally amazing food.

  Germany was situated in Western Europe. Lots of ­people spoke English. But Turkey? I wasn’t sure whether this Catholic girl was ready to move full-­time to a distant land of mosques, minarets, and praye
r calls. I had to make my decision soon.

  And so, in the moments following Aurelia Diener’s memorial ser­vice, as I climbed into the passenger seat of my mother’s car, Turkey was very much on my mind.

  My mother wanted to drive down the street from the church where the memorial ser­vice had been held—­the same church where she’d made her First Communion all those years ago—­to take one last look at the Pine Patch. A new family owned the property now, but they had agreed that my mother and her siblings could come back for a visit.

  “You can leave your rental car here in the church parking lot, sweetheart,” my mother told me. “Why don’t you come and ride with me to the Pine Patch?”

  I agreed. I knew she liked having me home. I was glad that she wanted the company.

  Pulling open the passenger door to her car, I gasped.

  “Oh my God!”

  The seats and floors were piled high with school supplies and newspapers and bills and maps; with Jolly Rancher candies and key chains and a pair of empty McDonald’s coffee cups. And the whole car smelled of something I couldn’t quite put my finger on—­a combination of dust and must, like the bottom of an old purse that’s been caked with years’ worth of crumbs and dirt and debris and then baked in the sun.

  “Mom, what the hell is this?”

  I regretted my words as soon as I uttered them. My mother shot me a panicked look.

  “It’s okay, honey,” she said, trying to keep her tone even as she climbed into the driver’s seat. “Just throw the things from the front seat into the back.”

  At my mother’s urging, I began the process of moving one armful of things from the passenger seat to the backseat, then another, and then another, so that I could eventually sit my white-­suit-­clad fanny down in the car. The car was in worse shape than I’d ever seen it. I’d seen piles in my childhood. But not like this. Never had I seen mountains this deep.

  “Are you okay?” I asked, looking at my mother as she maneuvered the car. She pushed a pile of coupon flyers from last Sunday’s edition of the Milwaukee Journal off the stick shift so that she could put the car into reverse.

  “I’m okay, honey,” she said, oblivious to the mess. “I miss your grandmother. But she’s with Dad now.”

  She paused and reached over to move some mail—­all unopened—­off the top of a tape recorder that she’d wedged between the stick shift console and the left side of my bucket seat. My mother had always insisted that FM radio and air-­conditioning were luxuries we couldn’t afford in a car. But an old-­school tape recorder? That would make up for the dearth of music choices on long drives. She pressed play so that we could enjoy one of her favorite albums, John Denver’s Greatest Hits, together.

  I listened as he belted out, “Country roads, take me home.”

  After a moment, she turned to me. “What are you going to do now? Are you going to come home for a while?”

  I detected in her voice a hint of hopefulness. We had been so busy spending the past twelve hours talking about the memorial ser­vice that I hadn’t gotten a chance to tell her about Turkey. The truth of the matter was that I hadn’t known what to tell her.

  For more than a year, I’d been a woman without a country, living out of a suitcase in Europe, avoiding questions from family and Atlanta-­based friends about when I was coming back.

  But at last, at that moment, looking at the dirty cup holders in the car coated in a thick, sticky mess of coffee and Diet Coke stains, then at the floorboards stacked so high with magazines and old Styrofoam cups and cookie wrappers from McDonald’s that they hid my white high heels, I knew.

  “CNN called,” I told her, looking ahead now at the road that stretched in front of us. “They asked me to move to Turkey.”

  My mother looked from the road to me, stunned. “Turkey? What did you tell them?”

  “I’m going to do it,” I said. “What do I have to lose?”

  I didn’t know a soul, didn’t speak the language, wasn’t sure what I was getting myself into. But sitting in that white suit in that filthy car, all I could think about was all that I had to gain.

  Chapter 10

  The Bride Wore White

  May 28, 2005

  “Well, my dear, I think it’s time.”

  The petite brunette stood behind me, gently using her French-­manicured nails to poof the white silk veil she’d planted on my head moments before and then nodding approvingly.

  “You look exquisite,” Marie said in her beautiful Ecuadorean accent. “Absolutely exquisite.”

  “Promise?” I asked.

  “Would I lie?”

  “I don’t know. Would you?”

  At this, we both laughed. I’d flown Marie in from New York to Wisconsin the day before. She was the older sister of Nelson D’Leon, a makeup artist who was a leading bridal stylist on both coasts. Like Nelson, Marie had an ability to make a woman look like the most beautiful version of herself on her wedding day. And the fifty-­something-­year-­old immigrant possessed something more: a maternal touch. Today of all days I needed that mother’s touch.

  For months, I’d painstakingly planned every moment of this day. I’d picked the date—­May 28—­specifically because of the flowers I knew that would be in bloom at the time: lilies of the valley and peonies. My favorites. And my mother’s favorites. And Trudy’s favorites before her. Some of the blooms were plucked from the yard in Beaver Dam. I’d carefully selected the priest, Father Ed, the same wonderful man who had overseen my First Communion all those years ago. I’d found the perfect venues: a cathedral for the ceremony and the Milwaukee Art Museum—­the new place in Wisconsin for all things glam—­for the reception. And after months of deliberation, I’d picked the gown—­the Vera Wang silk sheath I was now about to step into.

  I’d wanted everything to be perfect. Absolutely perfect.

  Looking at my reflection in the mirror, I gently placed a hand to my head, stroking first the veil, then the blond locks Marie had lovingly curled. I’d told Marie I wanted to channel Veronica Lake. And she’d listened. Today I was the embodiment of 1930s glam. My hair, held half up and half down with a replica of a 1930s hairpin, had a dramatic cowlick in the front, then fell down past my shoulders in screen-­siren waves. My lips shone in a sexy dark pout that stopped shy of being red. And the false lashes that Marie had added to the corners of my eyes were just right. They made my already long lashes appear fuller, sexier. Seductive without being too over-­the-­top.

  Inhaling deeply, Marie patted both of my shoulders and repeated her earlier compliment: “Absolutely exquisite.”

  Then, nodding, she walked to the bed and picked up the gown that had been lying in wait. Shaking, I stood and removed the white bathrobe that bore the Pfister Hotel’s insignia in one corner and stepped into the dress that Marie held gingerly in her hands. One zip later, the dress was on. Marie clapped her hands.

  “It’s gorgeous, Mary. Really.”

  “Really?” I asked. I knew from the fittings at the Vera Wang bridal headquarters that the gown fit me like a glove. That the dress, which I’d specially ordered as “long” for my five-­foot-­eleven frame, and which I’d asked them to custom-­make in a bright white—­not ivory!—­and with an extra-­long train, was just right. But of course I still worried. Of course I longed for the reassurance.

  “Really,” Marie said with certainty.

  Then she spun me around so that we faced each other.

  “Really,” she repeated once more for good measure.

  I loved Marie. She was worth every penny her ser­vices had cost me. And more.

  I’d always thought it would be my mother dressing me in these final moments. Helping me into my gown. I’d wanted so very much for her to be the one with me now. But after those visits to New York this past year, after what had happened at that last fitting I’d taken her to, I’d followed th
e advice of my girlfriends: I decided to dress without her and share my joy with her when the dress was on. Now, for a split second, I wondered if I’d made a mistake.

  As if on cue, I heard the knock on the door.

  “Mary? Mary, are you ready?” called my mother’s voice from the hotel hallway. I wasn’t sure, but I thought I sensed impatience.

  “It’s okay?” Marie asked. “Are you ready?”

  Biting my lower lip, I nodded and made my way over to the door.

  Taking a deep breath, I turned the handle and pulled back the heavy door to reveal my mother.

  “Mom, you look beautiful!” I cried.

  And she did. Her silver hair had been professionally blown out at the hotel’s salon. It looked lovely. It was soft and feminine—­more so than I’d seen it in years—­and set off the blue floor-­length dress she wore.

  “Thank you,” she said appreciatively, entering the room.

  “And you, dear daughter,” she said, stopping short. She took a step back to look me up and down, then down and up.

  I held my breath, waiting for her to finish her thoughts.

  “You look like you’re still wearing your nightgown.”

  The white dress I wore on my wedding day on May 28, 2005, made me feel like any great wedding dress is supposed to make a bride feel: glamorous, gorgeous, beautiful. And not just beautiful—­but Deliciously Beautiful. The best part? I got to wear it on the happiest day of my life. The worst part? The dress that I adored—­and that my bridesmaids swooned over—­was the same dress my mother had loathed from the moment I tried it on.

  The snow-­white dress in question was a sleeveless Vera Wang silk charmeuse slip of a gown. A bias cut, the V-­necked gown hugged my every curve before falling down into a train that extended a few feet behind me as I walked. Swarovski crystal-­beaded brooches placed on both shoulder straps and a pair of snow-­white opera gloves that reached to my elbows heightened the glam look. Pulling it all together: the cathedral-­length veil, which gave the entire ensemble a fairy-­tale feel.