Target Underwear and a Vera Wang Gown

by Adena Halpern

“I was feeling better so I decided to head out,” I said as I quickly threw my packages under my dining-room table.

  “Where’d you go?” he asked.

  “Just to finish some work. I had some more work to do in the Valley, so I figured I’d get it done.”

  “And you bought some more clothes?” he asked, walking over to the table.

  “It was on-sale on-sale,” I lied as I wondered where I’d left the receipts. “Plus, they gave me even more off since I’d given them so much business.”

  “Why are you orange?” he asked, looking at me askew.

  “They were having a promotion at the store: buy a bathing suit, get a fake tan.” Lie upon lie upon lie.

  “Well, I thought I’d surprise you, but I guess you’re feeling better,” he said, walking past me.

  “Hey, what’s the matter?” I asked him.

  “I don’t understand why you lied. You weren’t sick at all.”

  “Hey, we didn’t have plans today, ” I reminded him.

  “Because you were sick,” he said. “But you’ve never looked healthier, albeit like a carrot.”

  “Well I’m sorry, I wanted to be alone!” I said, raising my voice at him.

  “So be alone with all your clothes!” he shouted back as he stormed out of my apartment.

  Why did I feel the need to buy all these clothes? Why was I trying to be someone that I wasn’t? I felt like I had become a witch—the wicked bitch of the West. Why couldn’t I just be myself, whoever she was at that point? I took out my new gold-and-black coverup and opened my closet, searching for a free hanger. There wasn’t one, so I folded it up and left it on my dining-room table, where it sat for the next four weeks.

  Evan called that night and canceled going to his boss’s the next day. He needed some alone time too.

  Babe and Hun

  t was four in the afternoon on a Thursday, and I was in Bloom ingdale’s at the Beverly Center mall, trying on some Theory stretch jeans and wondering if it was worth buying them since I owned a pair just like them. The difference between my Theory jeans and these Theory jeans was that there were no pockets in the back. I kept turning to look at my butt in the mirror, wondering if Evan would notice. I had worn my Theory jeans with the pockets in the back twice already with Evan and he commented on it. When I lied and told him I owned more than one pair, he appreciated the fact and said, “That’s a really smart thing to do.” Therefore, I had to spend $150 on another pair just so he wouldn’t catch me in yet another fib.

  I kind of liked the fact that there were no pockets in the back of these Theory jeans and wondered if I might want to crop them. I went back and forth with this idea and even contemplated getting two pairs—one identical to the pair I already owned with pockets in the back, and then a pair with no pockets that I would crop.

  Whenever I go to Bloomingdale’s at the Beverly Center mall in Los Angeles, no matter where I am in the second-floor ladies’ section, I always head to the dressing rooms in the middle of the floor, right off the escalator. I like those dressing rooms because they have the best light. I hate the dressing rooms on the other side of the store to the far left. There’s no light there, and I always end up buying whatever it is because I don’t notice that the sleeves are too bunchy or the pants are too tight in a bad way, given the low light factor.

  I decided that I would go out and grab another pair with pockets and try them on to buy just in case. This is the only problem about my favorite dressing room. Whatever I grab is usually on the side where the low-light dressing rooms are and I have to either put on my clothes again or trudge over there in whatever I’ve tried on. Forget asking a saleswoman; they’re never around.

  “Babe?” a male voice called through the slotted door.

  “Yeah, Hun?” a female voice replied.

  “They had it in a four.”

  “Oh, that’s great,” Babe said as I heard the dressing room door next to me open.

  “I think the two looks fine, though,” Hun said.

  “I feel uncomfortable in it,” Babe said.

  “It looks all right to me,” Hun said.

  “I’ll just try on the four and see how it looks,” Babe said as I heard her dressing-room door close.

  This conversation depressed me beyond belief. Why wasn’t Evan here getting me the size four instead of two?

  I got dressed, picked up my no-pocket Theory jeans, and walked out of the dressing room, where I found Hun standing. He was holding three other shopping bags from other stores in the mall. Tall and built like a football player, he had a really nice head of brown curly hair that needed to be shaped and cut. He looked like this was the last place he’d be in the world, like he should be at some bar drinking beer and watching a football game, but instead he was standing in the good-light dressing rooms at Bloomingdale’s. Anything for the woman he loved. I called Evan.

  “Hey, Hun,” I said when he picked up the phone.

  “Hi, Babe,” he said.

  “So, I was just at Bloomingdale‘s, and there was this really adorable couple next to me in the dressing rooms and I just suddenly missed you.”

  “Shopping again?” he said with a sigh.

  “Well, it is my job,” I copped as he sighed again. “What are you doing now?” I asked, quickly changing the subject.

  “I’m actually getting some work done so I can get out of the office early,” he said. “Let me call you later.”

  “We’re having dinner tomorrow night, right?” I asked him.

  He paused, and my heart stopped. “Yeah, sure, uh ... I’m just in the middle of something though. Let me call you later.”

  “When is later?” I asked him.

  “I don’t know,” he grumbled. “Later.”

  “Are you still mad at me?”

  “I can’t have this discussion now. Let me call you later.”

  And with that, he hung up the phone.

  I rushed over to Susan and Rachel’s office. A year before, Susan hired Rachel as her second in command, so it was much easier to huddle some girls when I needed them. They would know how to handle this. They knew how to take the mature feminine approach.

  “He’s just busy,” Susan said. “People get busy. You’ve been busy, haven’t you?”

  “Not busy enough to let him know if I was angry with him.”

  “Maybe he’s confused about things,” Rachel piped in. “I mean, after all, you have been dating for a year, and neither of you are getting any younger. If I were either of you, I’d really take the time to see where this was going. That’s probably what he’s doing. Or maybe not.”

  “Well, we’re having dinner tomorrow night and I have to look special. Does anyone want to come shopping?” I asked, looking straight at Susan.

  “I actually need a new sweater,” Rachel said.

  “Susan?” I asked, ignoring Rachel.

  “Why do you need to look so special all the time anyway?” Susan asked. “Lately, all you ever talk about is new clothes and what you’re going to wear when you see him. To tell you the truth, I don’t think this relationship is very good for you.”

  “He likes that about me!” I told her.

  “Are you sure?”

  “He thinks I’m perfect!”

  “This isn’t you, though. You’re not this person who buys all these clothes and breaks plans because you need to have the right bathing suit.”

  “Look,” I said staring at them, “you don’t know what it’s like anymore. Both of you are married with children. You don’t know what it’s like out here.”

  “Out where?” Rachel scoffed.

  “In the single world!”

  “Is that like the land of the living versus the land of the dead?” Susan laughed.

  “And which land are we in?” Rachel joked, and they slapped each other a high five. I was in no mood for jokes.

  “You don’t know what it’s like anymore to have to prove to some guy that you’re the one for him because at any second, some girl w
ho looks better in a pair of jeans, or worse, some girl with a hetter personality who looks better in those jeans is going to come along and steal your guy.”

  “But you’re missing the point,” Rachel said, taking my hand. “The guy who truly loves you is the one who makes you feel that any jeans are fine.”

  “That’s great advice from the person who is worst at decision-making.”

  “In shopping, yes, but in life,” she said, flashing her wedding ring, “obviously not.”

  I hated her very much at that moment.

  “Take Robert, for example,” Susan started.

  “I’ve heard this. ‘I was the fattest I ever was,’ ” I said, repeating the beginning of the story I always loved to hear except now.

  “Well, I was. I was the fattest I ever was, and Robert came to pick me up for a blind date and I was wearing this pink muumuu, and I looked like a pink powder puff and he didn’t care.”

  “Well, you got the last one who didn’t care.”

  “Honestly, I don’t think that Evan cares either, but I think you’re stuck in this idea that you have to be someone you’re not.”

  “You know what?” I said, grabbing my bag and heading toward the door, “I don’t need this. I don’t need your advice when you have no idea what you’re talking about anymore. I need some single friends.” I grunted and stormed out.

  What did they know? I decided I would not be talking to them for a while. Evan and I were hitting a glitch. “It happens in all relationships,” I said to myself as I left my friends’ office. Relationships can’t always be all Babe and Hun. There’s gotta be a Jerk and Witch in there too sometimes to make everything more even, and that’s where we were.

  Final Sale

  ou know when someone wants to break up with you. Even when friends tell you it’s not going to happen, you know. It’s that psychic seventh sense knowledge that you try to shove underneath the blankets, saying “It’s all in your head,” or “It’s just a rough patch.” None of it matters. You know very well that you’re about to get dumped, and no matter what you do, what you say, or what you try to feel, it’s all padding for the blow.

  Having said that, I had decided to wear my new cropped no-pocket Theory jeans with a robin’s egg blue-colored cardigan sweater and white T-shirt underneath for my dinner date with Evan. At five o‘clock he called and told me that he’d rather stay in so we could “talk” rather than go to a restaurant. I told him it was fine and ordered Chinese, but truthfully it wasn’t. That brief conversation earlier freaked me out to no end, and I had to make one last-ditch effort to try to get everything right. Each uncomplicated question was beyond my administrative ability with the Chinese place—“Dumplings fried or steamed? Shrimp or chicken with broccoli or both? White rice or brown?”—too many decisions, and why did my hair look so flat?

  “I just feel like everything is life or death in this relationship,” Heidi said when I called her in a panic. “Just throw your hair over and spray some hairspray in it. Brown rice is better for you. You’ve always liked shrimp better than chicken, so get that.”

  Evan arrived at my house in an Armani gray suit and white shirt at 7:30 on the dot, and the meal was waiting for him. As he finished his first spoonful of shrimp and broccoli, he sighed and turned to me.

  “I just don’t think I can do this anymore,” he said.

  “I was going to get chicken, but you know how I don’t always trust chicken under brown sauce; you don’t know what you’re getting,” I answered, praying for a glimmer beyond hope that this was exactly what he meant and we’d throw out the Chinese and order a pizza.

  “No,” he interrupted, “I mean, I just don’t think we should see each other anymore.”

  I looked down at my sweater. There was a stray piece of rice on it, which I quickly picked off and got up to throw it in the trash.

  “Did I do something to upset you?” .I asked, looking for more stray rice on my sweater.

  “No, it’s not that, I just feel like”—he paused—“I just feel like we’re not compatible. I know that’s a clichéd thing to say, but I think it’s true. The strange thing is that every now and then I see this part of you that I really like, but as the months go on, I feel like you’re too much of a perfectionist. We’ve been together for a year, and I really don’t know anything about you except where you bought tonight’s outfit. I try and get to know you, but the more I do, I feel like this wall around you gets thicker and thicker. I’m just getting sick of it.”

  I couldn’t say anything. I wanted to, but how do you tell a person that you’ve been dating for a year that you are truly a clumsy, bedraggled neurotic who never said or did one thing that wasn’t well planned because you didn’t want him to find out the truth?

  “Do you remember the first time we went out?” he asked, not waiting for an answer. “I just remember you opening the door to your apartment and seeing this really beautiful woman who wasn’t done up or trying to be something that she wasn’t. You didn’t seem like every other girl out there. I had seen you for all of two seconds and I truly thought to myself, ‘This is someone I could see myself being with. This is someone just like me.’ So then we went to that sushi place and I could tell you felt uncomfortable there and you looked it and, I don’t know, I just loved that about you. I just thought it made you even truer. You were just being yourself. Most women would have tried to put up a front and get nasty, but you just said to me, ‘There are a lot of pretty girls here,’ and I just thought, ‘You’re the prettiest girl here.’ You were the prettiest girl there because you were the truth. I’ll be honest with you. It scared me that night. I really thought that you were the one for me. It scared me so much. That’s the reason I didn’t call you for six months. I tried to date other girls, but every time I went out with someone else, I came back home thinking of you.”

  His words stung like acid reflux from spaghetti sauce. His words broke me. From the very first second I saw him, all because of my own hangup, I saw what living a lie had done to us.

  “I’ve been living a lie with you this whole year!” I shouted. “I thought you liked those girls. I thought I should be one of those girls!”

  “Why, though?” he asked, “Why? I even told you one night that I thought you were perfect. Why did you feel like you had to change?”

  I had no answer. Tears started streaming down my face. The mascara was also streaming down my face and onto my robin’s egg-colored cardigan, and for once I wasn’t about to get some club soda to try to take out the stain before it settled.

  “You’re just not who I thought you were,” he said, taking my hand.

  “But I am, I swear,” I told him.

  “Every time I see that closet of yours,” he said, “that’s all I know about you. I have no idea who you are underneath. Look, you’re a wonderful person, but I just need to be with someone who I feel more comfortable with. I’m sick of trying to feel so perfect around you. I don’t like the feeling that if I drop some ketchup on my jacket and I don’t change, or if I wear the same thing on a weekend vacation, you’re going to think less of me. I don’t want to have to constantly keep watching what I say or do or wear. When you wouldn’t come to my boss’s house and lied to me about being sick, that was the end for me. I’m sorry for sounding cruel, but I want to be with someone who has more depth than that.”

  “I swear,” I told him, “I’m all depth, I’m a pit of depth. Ask me. Ask me anything,” I cried.

  “It’s just too late,” he said, putting his arms around me as he gave me a good-bye hug. “I’m sorry. This just isn’t working for me anymore. I’m going to go.”

  And with that, he put on his gray suit jacket and left my apartment for the last time.

  I stood staring at the unfinished Chinese dinner. He had me all wrong. All I wanted to do was run out to him and dramatically bang on his beat-up Saab’s driver’s side window and cry out in a desperate attempt at reconciliation, “I KNOW PAIN! I SPLIT MY SHORTS IN THE SEVENTH GRADE! I
HAVE FLAT FEET!” I didn‘t, though. It was too late for any of that.

  He would never know the real reason behind the six-inch heels or the glorious comfort I felt from wearing a pair of Gilligan O‘Malley underwear from Target. He would never know that I idolized Madonna or how many times my breasts had been accidentally exposed in public. He would never know that I had any quirks or funny thoughts or even a smart one now and then, because I never allowed him to. I was too afraid that once he found out what was underneath all the style and pizzazz, he might not have liked what he saw and in return, I ended up making him feel the same way. It’s really a shame, too. We would have gotten along really well.

  I picked up the phone and called Rachel and Susan, who came right over.

  “So, you panicked,” Susan said. “Big deal. Next time we’ll warn you sooner. We’ll shoot you up with some Ativan.”

  “Happens to all of us,” Rachel said, putting her arm around me.

  They stayed with me for the rest of night.

  Two days later, I got a pink slip e-mail from Shopright.com. They were bankrupt and going out of business.

  Juicy Couture Black Linen Drawstring Pants (2001-2002)

  pair of Juicy Couture black linen drawstring pants was laid to rest today after being battered and worn to their slow and painful demise.

  With their early 2001 birth unknown (though tag records indicate MADE IN THE USA), the pants spent their early days in the spring of 2001 at the Barneys New York store in Manhattan.

  “Yes, we have it in a small,” a Barneys saleswoman said over the phone to a saleswoman at Barneys in Beverly Hills, followed by, “You’re kidding ... No, she did not.... She said what? ... That is hysterical ... Sure, I’ll FedEx them today.” The New York saleswoman then folded the black linen drawstring pants and put them in a FedEx envelope as she told a fellow Barneys saleswoman the story of the black linen drawstring pants’ new owner in Los Angeles, California.

  The new owner, described by the saleswoman in the Barneys Beverly Hills store was said to be a “miserable blond-haired woman in her early thirties” who tried on a pair in a size medium in the Beverly Hills store. Before buying the medium-size pants, she informed the saleswoman that she was an expert on shopping and demanded to know if she should buy said pants in a small or medium, given the shrinkage-in-wash factor.