by John Rowell
The thin saleswoman’s nametag reads: BRIDAL BARN: Mavis Bunce.
“Hi, how are you?” says Mother.
“Oh, well, I’m doing pretty good I guess, considering,” says Mavis. “My bursitis has been acting up a little bit lately, you know, and I had a bout with that Chinese flu that was going around a while back, which like to have killed me, but other than that, I’m doing about as good as I can do.” She makes a little clucking sound out of one side of her mouth, a gesture, I guess, to indicate that she’s finished. And Mother is nodding her head in sympathetic understanding, listening attentively to Mavis’s litany of illnesses, while I, on the other hand, am standing there thinking: Do we know this woman? Are we related to her? Should we have brought her a casserole?
“Oh, I’m sorry to hear about all that,” says Mother, still looking genuinely concerned. “I’m glad you’re better.”
“Well, thank you, honey, I ’preciate that. Now what can we do you for today?”
“I’m looking for a mother-of-the-groom dress.”
“Gotcha. And you’re the groom,” Mavis says, not even bothering to phrase it as a question and pointing a long bony finger at me, which, I can’t help but say, makes me think of the witch beckoning Hansel into the gingerbread house.
“No, it’s his younger brother’s wedding,” Mother says.
“Oh, all righty. Now is this a fall wedding?”
“Yes,” says Mother. “Can you believe it? I haven’t been able to find a thing, and it’s only two weeks away. I’ve recruited my older son here to help me.”
I feel my cheeks flush. I smile weakly and feel myself straighten up and adopt something like a cocky, frat-boy stance to up my masculinity quotient. OK, so it’s a knee-jerk reaction of slight panic, more to reassure myself than anyone else. I’m wearing jeans, a North Carolina Tar Heels sweatshirt under a khaki windbreaker and Sperry deck sneakers, so it’s not as though I look like I’m in the road company of La Cage or something, but, frankly, I’m standing in a women’s formal dress shop in Fuquay Varina on a weekday morning. Also, I’m unemployed and unloved, so I’m not exactly at full mast of the masculine ideal I try to project to the world at large. Fortunately, I’m six one, which, in North Carolina, often prompts people to say, “Hey, I bet you played basketball!”; in New York, they just think, “God, I hope he doesn’t sit in front of me at the theater.”
“Now what did you have in mind, honey?” Mavis Bunce asks Mother.
“Well, to tell you the truth, I just don’t know. I’ve been looking and just can’t seem to find anything …”
“What color are the bridesmaids’ dresses?” Mavis asks, clearly in sales mode, a seasoned pro.
“Midnight blue with black piping.”
“OK. And do you know what the mother of the bride is wearing?”
“Purple. Which is good, because purple is not my color.”
“OK. I’ve got something real pretty in a teal green color, just come in yesterday. Be real pretty with your dark hair and your peachy coloring and your blue eyes.”
“Well, I have never worn greens well at all,” Mother says, in the tone of dread normally used for saying something like “I’m so sick, I believe I might die tonight.”
“Mother, just look at it,” I say. “You won’t know until you see it.”
Now Mavis Bunce will see that I am a player in this decision, and from here on out will have to allow for my input and comments. I was not meant to stand on the sidelines where fashion is concerned, particularly as it relates to my mother.
“It’s real pretty, honey,” Mavis says, her tone encouraging.
“Well, I’ll have a look, but I don’t know about green …”
Suddenly, I realize what my mother’s internal conflict behind this inability to find a mother-of-the-groom dress actually is: her three favorite colors, the only colors she feels look good on her, are black, white, and red. I feel the proverbial cartoon lightbulb pop on over my sandy-blond head: I get it now. Black is out for a day wedding; white is out also, of course, and, knowing her, she would think red is too flashy. OK, I’m ready to work.
Mavis produces the teal-colored dress she was championing, draping it flat over her skinny arms. It is very … well, it is just so teal. It would be a good color on me, I think, though not in an evening gown.
“I don’t really think that’s right for me,” Mother says, feeling the fabric.
“Let me go check on some things in the back for you, honey. You just look around and see if anything strikes you.” Mavis scurries like a tough little scrub hen to the back of the store.
“That dress looked like Grand Ole Opry to me,” Mother whispers. “Your daddy would say it was something Dolly Parton would wear, I can just hear him.”
“I wish you had come up to New York to do this, Mother,” I say. “We could have gone to Bergdorf’s.” I stop short of saying how fabulous I think that would have been.
“Which would have cost as much as the entire wedding, probably,” Mother says, and I’m not sure if she is talking about a trip to New York or a dress we might have been able to find for her at Bergdorf’s. Suddenly, I think about Fifth Avenue, and get a little pang of homesickness for the big city. Of course, sometimes when I’m on Fifth Avenue, I get a little pang of homesickness for North Carolina, too, especially when I’m walking along, minding my own business, window-shopping at Brooks Brothers or the Gap, and some harried businessfreak bumps into me and continues walking, without even acknowledging the collision, maybe even shooting me a surly, irritated look. That would never happen here. If someone bumps into you at the mall at home, they say, “Oh, I’m so sorry, excuse me, I didn’t see you!” and then they might open up their purse to fish you out a dollar or a peppermint because they feel so ashamed and contrite.
“Y’all finding everything OK?” asks Evelyn, brushing by.
“Yes, just fine,” Mother says.
“Now when’s that weddin’?” she asks, her eyes narrowing in thoughtful concern.
“I’m ashamed to tell you it’s in two weeks!” Mother says, full of apology, mournful even, as though she had broken some kind of female point of honor to wait this late to buy her mother-of-the-groom dress. So much shame! You’d think she was Hester Prynne sporting the Big A.
“Oh, goodness,” says Evelyn. “I hope you find something. I know a darlin’ purple dress that would be good on you.”
“Can’t wear purple,” says Mavis, coming up with a slew of formals draped over her scrawny arm. “Bride’s mother is in purple.”
“Then you sure can’t,” says Evelyn, as she goes into the back.
“Now these just come in this morning,” exhales Mavis. “I hadn’t even looked ’em over good, but there might be something. What size are you, honey?”
“A twelve.”
“OK. Now here’s something I think is real pretty …”
Mavis lifts out a long beige gown that would be all right except it has multiple little yarn balls hanging off at the waist, kind of like what’s on the end of an elf ’s cap, but about a hundred of them.
“These are a little odd,” says Mother, fingering the yarn balls.
Mavis continues to sift through formals, and Mother and I mostly veto them. Some of this stuff, I swear to God. Not since the Captain and Tennille had a TV variety show, or perhaps not since the heyday of the Gabor sisters, has this much fringe and this many sequins shared the same surface.
Mother and I finally agree on something, a rather tasteful, ankle-length pearl gray muted satin. It’s actually in her size and everything. She goes to try it on, leaving me alone with Mavis Bunce.
“Well, I don’t know about deep gray for her. With her dark hair, she might need something a little brighter,” Mavis says, sotto voce, almost as if it were private information between us. Mavis Bunce, the Deep Throat of Fuquay Varina.
“Actually, I think she looks good in gray. Good with her blue eyes.” Mavis and I are going point to counterpoint.
“Well,” she volleys back, “I’m not too sure that particular shade doesn’t look a mite too funeralish for a wedding. But we’ll see, won’t we?”
Mother returns in the dress, having traded her Laura Ashley floral print skirt and mid-sleeved white cotton sweater for this formal. I can tell by the expression on her face that it won’t do.
“It doesn’t really do,” says Mother.
Mavis studies her, touching fabric here and there. She absently makes the clucking sound again. “I think it’s a mite dark, honey. You need a pretty red, or a pink, or something brighter.”
And what I think is that Mavis has done this Bridal Barn thing a mite too long. Besides, she looks like she’s just dying to get back out to that tobacco field and suck on another cigarette, illnesses be damned. But of course, there’s no reason to be impolite. In her way, she has been helpful. I almost feel bad we haven’t found something here at the Bridal Barn. But now I’m moving into Aggressive Shopping Mode: we have got to find Mother the right wedding frock! She is going to look good if I have to turn an entire mall upside down to make it happen.
While I wait for Mother to change out of the gray dress, the mailman comes in to deliver the mail to Evelyn. He trades pleasantries with her, leaning on the counter, chitchatting. Then he looks over at me: the lone man in this women’s dress shop. He stares at me for several seconds. I figure he’s probably not used to seeing any males in here on any day. He nods, and I nod back, John Wayne—style. He’s probably thinking, What the hell is that boy doing in the Bridal Barn. Oh, for God’s sake, why am I worried? It’s Fuquay Varina. Fuquay Fucking Varina. What do I care what Joe the Mailman thinks of me? He’s not even cute.
“I’m sorry we didn’t find you anything,” says Mavis, ushering us to the door.
“Well, so am I,” says Mother, with a good-natured laugh. “I hope I don’t have to wear a potato sack to my child’s wedding.”
“Where are you all from?” asks Evelyn, back on the swivel stool.
“We’re from over in Mullens. Well, I am. This is my older son, Hampton, and he lives in New York.”
“Well, aren’t you nice to come all the way down here to help your mama pick out a dress?” she says, in a tone completely free of sarcasm.
“Thank you,” I say, weakly.
“Is the reception in Mullens, too?” Mavis asks.
“Yes,” says Mother. “At the CPCC.”
“Oooh,” says Mavis, adding her signature cluck at the end.
“Y’all come back to see us now,” says Evelyn, as the jingle bell announces our departure.
I convince Mother to drive straight on to Raleigh, and to ignore Sybil Scruggs’s advice to seek out something called Betty’s Wedding Emporium in nearby Garner. Garner is simply not on the way to Crabtree Valley Mall.
“Mother,” I say, as I eject her Ferrante and Teicher Play Songs of Love tape out of the tape deck and try to locate my favorite old high school Top 40 radio station on the dial, “there are so many stores at Crabtree. Belk’s, Montaldo’s. Dominique’s of Raleigh. We’ll find something.”
She picks up the cell phone.
“Dial Daddy at the office for me, Hampton,” she says. “I just want to check in.”
Since my father’s heart attack three years ago, my mother checks in on him a lot more than she might have otherwise. She is rarely far away from him; today is an exception.
“Brown Landscaping,” says my father’s voice on the other end.
“Hey, Daddy, it’s Hampton.”
“Hey, son. Having any luck?”
“Not yet.”
He laughs. “Well. Better you than me, that’s all I’ve got to say. I would be of no use whatsoever.”
I hand the phone to Mother, and lean back in my seat. Looking out the window behind my Ray-Bans, I watch the signs to Greater Raleigh come into view. It is a shining, technicolor fall day; blue-bright and fresh-aired, and as we go farther north the trees become gradually deeper with color: reds, golds, and oranges. I can’t help but think that had I not been replaced as the resident Prince Charming with New York’s famed Ragamuffin Theater Company I would probably also be traveling today, somewhere in Pennsylvania, maybe, or Connecticut, on the way to some elementary school to put on tights and apply Leading Man #2 pancake while standing in front of a dimly fluorescentlit mirror in—God help me—a teachers’ lounge men’s room.
Which makes me think of Robbie … Robbie was a part-time member of the company who played the Scarecrow to my Tin Man in Ragamuffin’s production of The Wizard of Oz. I happen to know that he has now taken over my prince roles in all the other shows, which really irks me. But, hey, I can acknowledge that boyish little Robbie is younger, cuter, and, yes, more princelike than I. I can also acknowledge that I developed a mad crush on him while we were traveling around performing together. I failed, however, to attract his mutual romantic attentions, a sad fact that was brought home to me one day when, while waiting to make an entrance, I inadvertently came upon Robbie with Chad, the diminutive, talent-challenged actor who played Toto, making out near the backstage area of the high school in which we were performing. At that moment, I felt a horrible chill, I felt an ill wind blowing right up through the bottom of my tin suit, up through my heartless chest and all the way out the hole at the top of my upside-down funnel hat. It was devastating. And I must say, you haven’t lived until you’ve witnessed firsthand a scarecrow trying to hump a Scottie dog in a scene shop.
Damn Robbie! Why do I keep thinking about him? It’s true about idle hands and idle brains, because the less I have to do, the more he keeps coming up in my mind. I even trained him for most of his roles! Talk about Eve Harrington. But we did have fun during those rehearsals … we made each other laugh, we were always sharing jokes, always talking about movies and New York. I thought we had so much in common. But … if only this particular Scarecrow had actually had a brain, he would have seen that I, and not that effeminate little canine, was the perfect guy for him. But he didn’t. Or hasn’t. So, I guess, the old ending remains the same, in life as upon the stage: the Tin Man’s heart gets broken after all, and in a world where scarecrows and dogs run off together, the only available candidates left waiting to grant your wishes are fussy, twittering old men wearing bow ties and peeking out from behind draperies.
Crabtree Valley Mall—“The Center of It All”—is busy for a Tuesday. I notice lots of young Raleigh mothers out shopping, their preschool-aged children sweetly in tow, which comforts me somehow, and I think that’s not so unlike Mother and me today really, except Mother is in her late fifties and I’m more the age of someone who by now should have had time to accumulate several advanced degrees, perhaps even complete a doctoral dissertation, but I realize other people don’t think about things like that as much as I do; at least not in North Raleigh.
At Montaldo’s, the salesclerks are mostly college girls from the area. The carpeted, softly lit shop is more elegant than the Bridal Barn, obviously, and I can see Mother looks more encouraged already.
“Hi, how are y’all doing today?” asks a tall blond girl dressed in a wraparound plaid skirt, light blue Oxford button-down shirt, and add-a-bead gold necklace. I instantly recognize her as the kind of girl I always felt like I should try to date when I was in college; she’s pretty, she’s preppy, she screams Tri Delt. Since the Montaldo’s clerks don’t wear nametags, she tells us her name is Kimber.
“Mother of the bride?” Kimber asks.
“The groom,” I volunteer, cutting to the chase. “My brother.”
Kimber steps back to survey Mother. “I’d say you were a winter, is that right, ma’am?”
“Yes, I believe that’s right,” Mother answers, but sounding none too certain. She quickly looks at me for help.
“Yes, Mother, you’re a winter,” I say, trying to keep it under my breath.
Kimber smiles. “Great. I’m thinking some kind of a nice, deep blue, or a light gray,” she says.
“Well, OK, that sounds fine
,” says Mother. “But if I don’t find something soon, I believe I’ll just have to wear a potato sack.”
Kimber laughs politely; I’m thinking she’s probably heard that one before. She leads Mother over to a rack of formals in the back part of the shop. I would follow, of course, but outside the store, in the mall, I have noticed a very attractive guy, about my age, sitting by himself on a bench. I don’t think it was my imagination that I saw him smile at me as Mother and I walked in, and I have kept a watch out of the corner of my eye ever since.
He’s still there as I drift, ever so subtly, back over to the front of the shop. Of course, for the sake of appearances, I have to pretend to be doing something, and, unfortunately, the only thing I can do is to look interested in a display of large, crushy velveteen belts. I keep my attention divided between Mother and the salesclerk, the cute boy, and the crushy belts. I can’t help but notice that the mall’s Muzak machine is currently playing “How Deep Is Your Love.”
I pick up a gold belt. The guy uncrosses his legs and leans over on the bench, forward, hunched, looking at me looking at the belts. Oh, this is great, he’ll probably think I want one of them for myself, a big, crushy velveteen belt. Jesus. In the back, I can see Mother holding up a sparkly peach-colored gown. I pick up an orange belt and pretend to have an internal opinion about it. The guy gets up from the bench. Is he coming over? Oh God. Mother holds the dress up in front of her, modeling in the three-way mirror while I divert my attention from the orange belt to a skinny leather turquoise belt; maybe he’ll think I’m a boyfriend of some girl and I’m out shopping for her birthday; boyfriends do that, I believe. But then I think: No, wait, if he thinks I’m the boyfriend of some girl, he’ll be less likely to make a move on me. But then: What would I do with Mother if he does make a move on me?
The guy is now walking over to me, glancing sideways out into the mall the whole time, in the shifty way someone looks around before committing a crime. But he’s smiling, looking expectant, like he’s about to speak; oh, but then I think: What if he has me confused with somebody else, that he simply thinks he knows me and here I have been cruising him all this time like a fool, like the Gay Village Idiot who didn’t know when to cruise and when not to, and he’s probably about to scream out, “Please stop cruising me, you Gay Village Idiot!” But—oh dear Jesus, what is this?—he’s almost at the edge of the tasteful Montaldo’s carpeting. Oh God—