by Melissa Ford
I punch in the code to the back door and step into the dank basement of the building. The front lobby is gorgeous, entirely redecorated by someone with a fondness for the glassy openness of Apple stores. But the back stairs are dark and crumbling, the forgotten piece of a multimillion dollar renovation to create artist lofts in Manhattan. At least the façade has worked, because every studio is accounted for in the building, and they have a long waiting list for artists looking to set up their dark room or print shop. Lisbeth, always landing on her feet, got lucky when a friend turned over the space to her for minimal pay during the morning hours that she wasn’t using. Which is how Lisbeth has come to rub elbows with the hottest photographers and painters on the New York art scene. Even I can recognize some of the names of the other building residents when Lisbeth tells us stories about people she meets in the corridors.
I, on the other hand, am the opposite of lucky. I bump into no one as I climb the two flights to her studio and knock on the door.
I am greeted by the thick, damp smell of printer’s ink. Her workspace is littered with dirty crinolines and blackened chips of cardboard, which she uses to work the ink into the grooves of her zinc plates. Resting on drying boards are dozens of copies of the same print, each with a light, penciled-in number at the bottom to mark its space in the print run. I slide one out to examine it, an intricately sketched imaginary house with melting walls, drawing in symbols from the Pride movement.
“It’s called Marriage Proposal,” Lisbeth informs me as she stuffs the crinolines into a dirty cardboard box on the floor. “I started it in July before I knew I’d be having my own wedding.”
“It’s gorgeous,” I breathe. The black lines are pressed so deeply into the paper that it has become embossed. In the newspapers, her work has been compared to a cross between M. C. Escher and Salvador Dali, two of my favorite artists, which is perhaps why I enjoy Lisbeth’s work so much. We have a few of her prints hanging in our apartment, and I make a mental note to ask if we can have a copy of Marriage Proposal when she is done, though she usually gifts us one from the print run even without asking.
It is wonderful to be related to someone so talented and creative.
Which is why I can’t understand how Anita has never taken an interest in her daughter’s work, despite the rest of the world falling in love with her whimsical prints that encapsulate enormously complex ideas. People have written dissertations on her prints, traveled halfway around the world to attend her shows, and Anita, who could have a front row seat to her daughter’s life, has chosen to hold her at arm’s length. I’m not sure Anita has ever been in one of her studios much less attended one of her art openings. Which is bizarre since there is little Anita likes more than name dropping and having access to things and people that few others get to reach. Having a famous daughter should be the icing on the cupcake, but Anita rarely brings her up to the outside world; rarely points out her proximity to greatness.
I once wondered aloud to Adam if the tension had anything to do with Lisbeth being a lesbian, but Adam mused that while Anita has many faults, homophobia is not one of them. That the tug and shove of mother and daughter started long before either had an inkling about Lisbeth’s sexuality, and the time period after she came out was perhaps their smoothest period. Maybe it had to do with Anita feeling as if her daughter had finally confided something in her, or perhaps Lisbeth needed to argue less at that point, finally comfortable in her own skin. But since that time, the tension has built up again, so thickly that it is both impossible to ignore and impossible to dissipate.
All I can think about as I watch her throw the last of the cardboard chips in the garbage can and smooth out the felts on the press, is how much they are both missing out on by being incredibly stubborn, passionate women.
Lisbeth washes her hands one last time and grabs her purse, offering me a stick of gum as she locks up her studio and drops the key in the front pocket of her skinny jeans, which are tucked into fantastically hip leather boots. As we walk down the hallway, a woman who closely resembles a very famous actress, ducks out of one of the nearby lofts, buttoning her shirt as she walks by us, smiling shyly at us as a greeting.
“Was that?” I ask Lisbeth when we’re finally alone in the stairwell.
Lisbeth smiles wickedly and nods her head. “She models nude for him.”
“Are you kidding?” I shriek. “How the hell do you know?”
“I’ve been in his studio,” she confides. “I’ve seen the pictures. And yes, the carpet matches the drapes. She’s really that blond.”
“Wow,” I mouth. “I always thought she dyed it. Arianna would kill for her color. She asks for it every time she goes to her colorist, but he hasn’t been able to replicate it.”
We hop in a cab to go to Madison Avenue, justifying the cost with the fact that we’re not planning to spend money today. It’s just an idea excursion, so we can see what sort of dresses flatter our bodies. But I immediately wish I had a larger budget when we pause outside Shoshana Shalom’s store, glancing up at the pale pink lettering spelling out her name over the huge picture window showcasing a breathtakingly beautiful white tulle gown with a striking black sash. There is something iconic about stepping into the Shoshana Shalom boutique, a passage for weddings much like crossing the River Styx is for death.
Except instead of the underworld, you get to look at very pretty, very expensive yards of sewn taffeta.
Shoshana, the dark-haired, dark-eyed Israeli model turned wedding dress designer extraordinaire, turned the front of her Madison Avenue studio into a waiting room and the upstairs level into a showcase and dressing rooms several years ago, and now her name is synonymous with wedding gowns; a name that my Hebrew-school-trained ear wonders if is real or created to evoke peaceful connotations.
She has three lines—a prêt-a-porter line she sells at Bergdorfs and other department stores, her standard atelier line found only in her boutique, and a couture line that is priced so enormously high that only celebrities, socialites, and royalty can get past the six figure starting point. She wasn’t around during my first wedding, so she’s tabula rasa, not connected in any way to planning out that first ceremony when Anita dragged me from dress boutique to dress boutique, shoving my body into dozens of samples.
Despite Shoshana’s success, she is always portrayed in magazine articles as down-to-earth, and I secretly hope that Lisbeth’s good luck will rub off on both of us, and we’ll encounter her in the store today.
The store is fairly empty since it’s a Tuesday afternoon, and we get the waiting room all to ourselves. Lisbeth walks the perimeter of the cerulean blue-walled room, running her eyes over the white dresses hanging from wooden hangers off of open-sided wheeled carts as if they’re works of art. I, on the other hand, plant myself on one of the butter soft couches, resisting the urge to kick my feet up on the low black coffee table in front of me. The staff member left us with two clipboards and a load of paperwork to fill out while she got our consultant.
“Are you going to fill out your forms?” I ask her.
“Shoshana,” Lisbeth quietly chants, almost as if she is drawing a breath with her name. As if she is quieting the air with the release of each “sh.” “Shoshana, Shoshana, Shoshana.”
“My God,” I laugh, filling out my name on the top line. “She’s just a designer.”
“Just a designer,” Lisbeth scoffs. “Seriously, Rach.”
But Lisbeth slides onto the sofa beside me and leans back comfortably, resting the bottom of her boot against the edge of the table. Right on that line between rudeness and coolness. And she doesn’t move her foot down even when Annisa, our very lovely, very orderly, very stylish bridal assistant, sits down in the seat across from ours and introduces herself.
“Hi, Annisa,” Lisbeth says effusively. “We are just so happy to be here. Thank you for meeting with us.”
Annisa gives a nervous giggle, as if she isn’t quite sure what she should do with the fact that we’re happy to be here. “So,” she begins, snapping open a pink, leather-bound notebook and pausing with her matching pink pen millimeters away from the paper. “You are both brides. Have you given any thought to the look of your wedding yet? For instance, do you want matching dresses? Or complementary dresses? Do both of you want to wear a dress, or perhaps, would one of you be more comfortable in a stylish suit?” Her eyes linger on my messy ponytail for a moment.
“We’re not marrying each other,” Lisbeth laughs, finally bringing her foot down so she can set down her paperwork (which is still blank, I note) on the coffee table. “We are both getting married but not to each other.”
“Oh!” says Annisa with her nervous laugh. “I thought that you were marrying each other. You know with that law that passed this summer, we’re getting all sorts of lesbian couples in here, and you just don’t know what the hell to say, you know?”
I can see the corners of Lisbeth’s lips turn up slightly, almost like a leopard who has moved within a few inches of a tasty gazelle. Poor Annisa. “I’m sure you’ll come up with the right thing to say when my wife-to-be comes in for her appointment in a few weeks. She would have come with us today, but we didn’t want to see each other’s gowns ahead of time.”
Poor Annisa starts apologizing profusely, stumbling over the words as if a dozen competing thoughts are all fighting to get out of her mouth at once. Lisbeth takes pity and puts her at ease, resting her hand over her blank paperwork. “Annisa, you’re lovely. Why don’t we reboot and talk about dresses?”
Annisa takes a deep breath and starts verbally building our dream gown, and all social gaffes fall aside as even Lisbeth is sucked past the awkwardness of our first few minutes into a dream world of white tulle. Do we want pure white or off-white? A straight silhouette or layers of fabric rosettes? Do we prefer an open back or a long row of buttons, mermaid tail or full skirt, tulle over taffeta? My answer to most of the questions is “I don’t know,” but Lisbeth describes favorite dresses she dreams about—Grace Kelly’s sash, Jackie Kennedy’s sweetheart neckline—except she also explains that she wants her dress to evoke classic wedding glamour while simultaneously looking like nothing anyone has ever seen.
“I know this, I know this, I know this. Something a little storybook, but with a surprise ending. Like finding out that Little Red Riding Hood paid off the wolf to eat her grandmother,” Annisa breathes, finally on comfortable ground. She may not know how to talk about gay marriage, but she can speak the language of wedding gowns.
She brings us upstairs to look through the showroom samples, promising to pull a series of dresses she thinks will flatter our bodies and fit out descriptions. I’m not sure what she’ll pull to reflect all of my “I don’t knows.”
The upstairs rooms are also painted in the same calming cerulean blue, with clean wooden floors and similarly organized rolling racks with pristine white dresses—and sometimes cream-colored ones or silver or the palest rose—lined up on simple birch hangers. Annisa walks ahead of us, grabbing dresses without looking, as if her hands are magnetic, and carrying them over her arm back into the hallway. She calls out over her shoulder the general layout of the upstairs—the dressing rooms with pedestals in the back, the bridesmaid gowns toward the left. There is a tiny alcove that houses veils, tiaras, and pearl-encrusted hair combs. Another that has samples of Shoshana’s new shoe line. I run my finger over the tiny, delicate feathers decorating the toe of a pair of white mules.
Within a few minutes of being upstairs, I get it. I get the excitement Lisbeth shivered out as she stepped into the stark, blue space, and I start getting caught up in it myself despite my wedding reservations. The cerulean walls that make the dresses visually pop, the crisp wooden floor, the delicate dresses hanging a few inches apart from birch hangers—they all promise a rebirth, a clean slate, something to build a life on. The white dress isn’t a symbol of our purity or the cleanliness of our morality; it’s the physical manifestation of blankness. Of erasing the single past in order to now build the future as a pair.
I had considered wearing something different this time—maybe an impossibly pale pink or cream-colored, something to signify to our guests that I am in on the joke too: I know that I’m no longer young and virginal. But I am so drawn to the idea of starting over, of that clean sheet of paper, that unblemished surface, that I walk toward the white dresses, knowing without a doubt that nothing other than a simple, stark dress will do.
Though as Lisbeth mouths the price of one dress, Shoshana Shalom may not be the provider of the visual life reboot. And regardless, with a looming November date, there isn’t enough time to order from the samples.
Still, for the sake of knowledge, for gathering dress ideas, I move toward the dressing rooms to try on whatever Annisa has found for me. I’m starting to feel slightly sick over the knowledge that I somehow need to get my hands on a dress in the next week or so to give myself enough time for Arianna to do alterations, if she’s still willing to do alterations for me. It’s not something we’ve talked about in a while, though I have no Plan B.
I start to doubt the sanity of this day, of using up even a minute of my meager wedding planning time on something that is essentially pointless. I thought I needed something like this—a concrete starting point to create a point of no return. Something fun that would remind me that a wedding is supposed to be joyous. I was so focused on having that quintessential bridal experience trying on gowns with Lisbeth that I didn’t really process how setting the date so soon removed any room for frivolousness. I may be trying to rip off the Band-Aid, but in the process of getting this wedding over with, I’m taking with it some skin.
My heart is beating inside my ears, drowning out the happy sounds coming from the tiny room next door where Lisbeth is examining her own selection. Annisa has translated my “I don’t knows” into a series of gorgeous dresses, three accentuated with grosgrain sashes. She hung the four dresses from four metal hooks in one of the dressing rooms that empties out into an enormous waiting area resplendent with dozens of mirrors all reflecting the light in multiple directions until it’s almost as blinding as being on stage and trying to look out into the audience.
I close the door to my little dressing room and take a deep breath, twisting my hair into a messy bun in order to approximate an updo. I slip out of my jeans and leave them balled up on the floor, peel off my socks and my top, and stand self-consciously in my cotton underpants and mismatched bra. I look at myself in the mirror, wondering if anyone else can guess how conflicted I am about this wedding. Brides are supposed to glow. I don’t glow.
“Do you need any help getting into the dresses?” Annisa calls through the door. “It’s usually a two-person job.”
“I’ve actually done this before,” I call back, leaving it vague. Is this my second time in the shop, second time in a wedding dress, second time down the aisle? I hear Annisa cross the room to offer similar help to Lisbeth, who has probably come prepared in a killer all-white undergarment ensemble.
I do need help, but I twist and turn my body, recalling the year that Adam and I spent apart when I needed to close all of my back zippers on my own. I get it up to the bottom of my shoulder blades and then step into the main room, holding the top against my breasts. Annisa silently reaches behind to finish the job, tugging at the bodice to bring it into place, and reties my sash so it falls with casual elegance over my hip.
“Don’t look yet,” she warns, leading me away from the mirrors to grab a veil she has slung over a side table. Clearly trying to atone for her earlier sin of cluelessness, she affixes the veil’s comb to my hair, fussing with my bun to pull out a few loose tendrils to frame my face. “Perfect,” she breathes, even though I know that I am far from perfect. I am conflicted and messy and happy and nervous—and that combination doesn’t really translate in
to perfection.
Still, she leads me, eyes shut, to one of the pedestals, and puts me up on the platform, telling me to look at myself in the mirror. The first thing I notice is the smoothness of the skirt, like an unblemished snow-covered ski jump, the delicate beadwork along the trim, the extraordinarily long train stretching behind me. The dress is strapless, revealing the summer’s tan line—one I wasn’t even aware was there until I see my two-toned bare shoulders. The woman in the mirror looks so wholly unlike me.
“Can you believe that we’re here?” Lisbeth whispers to me, her face somewhat hidden by an enormous poof of tulle. She bends at the waist and tries to work her non-existent breasts into a better position in the dress. I catch a swatch of white bra strap, confirming my earlier suspicions that she dressed for the occasion.
I stare at myself in the mirror, pushing the veil farther back from my face. Almost fifteen years ago, when I tried on a wedding dress and veil for the first time, I sobbed looking at myself in the mirror. Even if I’m not the most girlie girl, it was still mind-blowing to see myself in an iconic bridal gown, realizing that I was just months away from partaking in a tradition performed by my parents and grandparents and great-grandparents; stretching back to when the first cave dwellers tied wheel-shaped pieces of reed around each other’s fingers, or something like that. I felt part of something enormous, much larger than Adam and my love.