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

by Jeffrey Zaslow

  “When he said that, it was a huge epiphany for me,” Lynn says. She and Vic began to rebuild their relationship, to see each other as teammates.

  Lynn’s upbringing shaped her as a mother, too, of course. When she had her own children, Lynn found herself angrier at her mother than she was at her father. How could her mother leave her girls so unprotected?

  Lynn vowed to fiercely protect her daughters. When they were young, she wouldn’t leave them alone with her parents, or let them sit on their grandfather’s lap. Sometimes, Lynn would be running errands, she’d call home to check in, and one of the girls would say that Lynn’s parents had stopped by unannounced. She’d speed home, in a panic, as if she was rushing to rescue her girls from a fire. “Stay on the phone with me,” she’d tell Erika, hoping to monitor the goings-on in the house until she made it back.

  Lynn’s urge to protect the girls extended to every area of their lives. She was nervous if they went to play at a friend’s house. She encouraged her girls to hang out with each other at home, rather than risking the evils that might be lurking in some other family’s home. The Hansen sisters got very close, but their friendships with classmates and other girls were limited. “I was so afraid of the outside world,” Lynn says, “but I could control what went on in my home.”

  Once, she wouldn’t let her daughter Leanne join other girls at a sleepover party. “We’re not a normal family!” Leanne blurted out to Lynn.

  Lynn had an answer: “Because we’re Christians, God called us to live abnormally, to live in the world and not of the world.” It was an answer, yes, but not fully satisfying to a girl who wanted to be with her friends for a sleepover.

  Eventually, when the Hansen girls reached their teens, Lynn told them about the abuses in her childhood. Though she didn’t go into the awful details, they listened intently, trying to read between the lines. All of them cried. At one point, Erika got angry at Lynn and said, “It can’t be true!” But in time, the girls accepted their mother’s journey, and responded compassionately.

  They maintained a relationship with their grandparents, though cautiously. “Your past can make you bitter or better,” Lynn told them. “I’m trying to use my past to make my life, and your lives, better.” (When Lynn’s father was in his seventies, after learning he had cancer, he tried, in his own limited way, to apologize to her. By then, because of her faith, she had already forgiven him. Both of her parents have since died.)

  Looking back, Erika marvels at the power of forgiveness. Did she love her grandparents? “Very much so,” she now says. Despite everything. She recognizes how their own troubled childhoods led to the great deficiencies in their parenting decisions. And she is grateful for her good memories with them, and for the ways in which they were able to be loving as grandparents.

  For her part, Lynn knows that her childhood experiences have played a role in her daughters’ lives and decisions—including their choices regarding purity. She grew up in a house of chaos; she ended up raising her girls in a house with many rules, with reminders that every action has consequences, good or bad.

  She knows that because the girls lived sheltered lives, they might encounter situations where they’re not prepared, or they’ll feel overwhelmed. That worries Lynn.

  Her daughters tell her not to worry.

  Now that they’ve become adults, they’ve started to sift through the ways in which their mother’s life affected their lives. Lynn makes good points about the influences from the secular world, they say. Erika used to like the popular Maroon 5 song “This Love.” Then she looked closely at the lyrics. “I was ashamed,” she says, and it saddens her that the song is played all over the radio. While the song’s chorus speaks of a love that takes control of the singer, other verses focus blatantly on sexual pleasure, and how a man’s fingers can enter a woman’s body.

  Such lyrics make Erika think of how she’ll raise her own daughters someday, and the parts of the culture she’ll try to protect them from. “My mother gave me a beautiful childhood,” she says. “I believe the lessons of her own childhood helped her do that.”

  Erika was admittedly nervous about getting married. When she was younger, her family called her “the runaway girlfriend” because she had a fear of commitment. “She’s OK this time,” Victor told people after she got engaged. “I know she’s nervous and scared, but she won’t be the runaway bride. That’s because Reuben is the real deal.”

  As Erika put it, “I can get over my fears because Reuben is the man I’ve been waiting for.”

  Reuben—who is twenty-three years old, twelve days older than Erika—met her at a Halloween party in 2005. He was back in Michigan for a visit after Marine boot camp. “A friend asked me to go to a party at this girl’s house,” he says simply, “and the girl turned out to be Erika.” It was a low-key evening. They watched The Princess Bride and played a card game.

  Reuben had a girlfriend at the time, but he and Erika became friends, and kept in touch while he was overseas. Given his Christian upbringing, he also had vowed to wait for marriage before sex. “In the Marines, everyone talked about sex all the time,” he says. “I said ‘I’m practicing abstinence. I’m waiting until I marry.’ Most guys around me wanted to see me give that up. When we were in the States for training, they’d try to get me drunk and introduce me to girls. They saw it as a challenge to get me to have sex.”

  Some of his fellow Marines admired him, but still gave him a hard time. A few said they wished they had waited to have sex too. They talked of breaking girls’ hearts, or their own regrets about promiscuity.

  Reuben’s girlfriend broke up with him while he was in Iraq, and he found himself corresponding with Erika. The bond between them grew through e-mail and Facebook.

  Reuben didn’t want Erika to know the degree of danger he was facing during his deployments in both Iraq and Afghanistan, but the truth was, his unit of “scout snipers” had too many frightening experiences. His best friend in his unit lost a leg to a bomb while on patrol. Several other friends lost both legs. Another man in his unit lost a foot.

  At the time that Erika was getting serious with Reuben, her sister, Kayla, was already planning her wedding. And Kayla’s fiancé, Gavin, was also stationed in Iraq. On June 19, 2007, Kayla was in a meeting for her job as a customer-service rep at her dad’s company, and she couldn’t concentrate. She just had a feeling Gavin was in danger. And so she began praying, whispering to herself the names of each man in Gavin’s unit.

  Two hours later, she got the news. A suicide bomber had driven a garbage truck full of explosives to the barricades outside where Gavin’s unit was sleeping. The driver blew up himself and his truck, leaving a crater thirty feet wide and shattering windows in homes a mile away. The blast broke Gavin’s jaw, and left him with a brain injury, permanent muscle damage to his leg, and shrapnel wounds all over his body. He’d end up hospitalized for three months, but still made it down the aisle in October, wearing his dress blues, to give Kayla a long-awaited kiss at the altar. Because of the broken jaw, his bite would remain off center, which means he may contend with headaches for the rest of his life. And yet Gavin says he feels blessed. “I have buddies who are a lot worse off than me. At the hospital, I was just glad to have all my fingers and toes. Most of the other guys were missing at least a limb. So it’s hard to feel sorry for yourself.”

  Just days after Gavin was injured, Erika had her own premonition that Reuben was in danger. It was just this wave of worry, and so she prayed for his safety. That was the day that another suicide bomber driving a dump truck full of explosives sped toward the house where Reuben and his unit were staying. A Marine posted on the roof saw the truck approaching and shot the driver. Luckily, the truck blew up thirty feet outside the house, sparing the lives of those inside. Reuben was uninjured, but twenty-one men in his unit received Purple Hearts for collapsed lungs, shrapnel wounds, and concussions.

  Erika and Reuben later figured out the time differences, and realized that, at just
about the time she said her prayers, that suicide bomber was driving toward Reuben’s unit. “God was watching out for us,” Reuben says, “and Erika’s prayers helped.”

  Now that his tour of duty is up and he’s been honorably discharged from the Marines as a sergeant, Reuben is in college, studying for degrees in mechanical and biomedical engineering. Having seen so many fellow Marines lose their legs, his career aspirations are personal and ambitious. “I’d like to design a better prosthesis,” he says. He’s already at work, collaborating on a design that could lead to a new artificial leg for a friend.

  Given all he’s been through, it wasn’t hard to wait until he got engaged to get his first kiss from Erika. “It hasn’t been bad at all,” he’d tell people. “In fact, it’s been a good opportunity to get to know each other. Instead of making out for an hour on the couch, we’ve been talking and learning things on a personal level.”

  Sure, he admits his mind wanders. “If you’re a guy attracted to a woman, there’s going to be sexual tension,” he’d say. “But I try to keep my focus on what’s right, and my faith helps me reduce the tension. Knowing Erika has similar values helps too.”

  Reuben expected his wedding night to be more special as a result. “The Bible says that when a man leaves his parents and is joined by his wife, they become one flesh. Having not done that with any other woman, it will make my bonds with Erika that much stronger. I really believe that.”

  Reuben will be Vic’s second son-in-law who is a former Marine. “I’ve seen a change in both of these young men,” Vic says. “Something changes a guy when he has been in battle. He comes home and his friends want to play video games or have fun. But my daughters picked men who came back and said, ‘I need to man up. I need to be mature.’ They became a lot more serious about family, marriage, commitment.”

  Just as Erika and her sisters are unlike most young brides who come to Becker’s, Vic believes that the men they’ve chosen are out of the ordinary too. A part of him is proselytizing, but he feels this deeply. For those who enter marriage embracing faith, patience, and respect, he says, the odds of a happy ending just have to be higher.

  Erika and Reuben

  During her second fitting at Becker’s, while gushing over her dress, Erika doesn’t mention any of the deeper issues that have carried her to this point. But later, on reflection, she’s able to articulate her feelings.

  She realizes that many of the people she has loved in her life have been wounded in certain ways. Her mother was wounded by an abusive childhood. Her grandparents were wounded by their own upbringings. Her fiancé and brother-in-law were wounded by all they saw and endured in Iraq.

  “We all have wounds,” she says. “And I know that some people’s wounds can cause them to spiral downward, and they never come back. And yet, it’s amazing to see all of those who do come back. I believe our wounds can draw us nearer to God.”

  She believes that her mother, especially, is now stronger, and a more giving parent, because of the pain in her childhood. “Knowing she went through so much and can handle so much, I feel like she’s better able to walk me through my own problems,” Erika says. “Her struggles have made her wiser. My sisters even call her Lady Wisdom. I see her laughing and enjoying life. I think about the beautiful childhood she gave me and my sisters. And if she can be the woman she is, despite everything, then I know I can make something special of my life too.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  When Shelley Stepped Away

  The town of Fowler never did decide to hang bridal-gown banners from its lampposts. Still, when brides-to-be drive into this tiny community, looking around, they’re sometimes reminded of their weddings—and their futures as married women.

  Over at Fowler High School, the mascot is an eagle, not a bride. But there’s a large sign by the football field: YOU HAVE ONE CHANCE! It’s meant to inspire athletes and students, but brides can’t help but apply the words to their own decisions about the men they’re marrying. Do they really have just one chance to get it right? Or, as their divorced parents might tell them, is life about second chances?

  Much of Fowler is drab and tired, but it also has special spots. There’s a playground with tiny play horses pulling a kid-size carriage. It looks like something a pint-size Cinderella would ride to the ball, or that a little girl might fantasize about stepping into on her wedding day. The playground makes brides smile when they pass it.

  In the pre-Internet 1980s, about 10,000 Becker’s customers would drive through Fowler each year. In-store visits are down from those highs, to about 7,000 annually, but local businesses remain appreciative of the traffic. The brides order sandwiches at the local Subway. They fill up at the corner gas station. And Shelley sometimes sends them over to the auto body shop around the block. Why? Because brides and mothers can get so focused on the dress search that they lock their keys in their cars. “If you can get ’em back into their cars,” Shelley tells the body-shop manager, “I’ll get ’em down the aisle.”

  Besides the former bank building that houses Becker’s, the town’s most imposing structure is the Most Holy Trinity Catholic Church, dating to 1881. When Becker’s customers drive by the large stone church on a Saturday, they often see bridal parties milling outside. It’s nice to come upon that scene on the way into the store.

  The Becker’s building, meanwhile, is crammed not just with dresses, but with history. The basement, where brides never go, is dominated by those concrete slabs designed to hold up the bank vault that is now the Magic Room. Scattered in the basement are naked mannequins from the old days. They’re lying there, looking dead, eyes open. Nearby are curious items left behind by Grandma Eva, including her large needle-and-bobbins kit, a complicated tin contraption dating to 1929.

  Several shelves contain meticulous records dating back decades, including stacks of calendars on which each day’s sales were recorded with slash marks. If you leaf through these calendars, counting slash marks, you’ll find obvious trends. Valentine’s Day is always slow because brides are focused on romantic dinners with fiancés, not buying dresses. The Martin Luther King holiday, on the other hand, is busy, and not just because customers have the day off. Women get engaged at Christmas, and have done a lot of looking around by the third week of January. On MLK Day, they’re ready to buy.

  Pull out the calendar for 2001, flip to September 11, and the slash marks tell a story. Shelley recalls she was signing a slip for the UPS man, who was delivering boxes of dresses when the World Trade Center’s second tower collapsed. It was a somber day to sell bridal gowns. And yet, as the slash marks indicate, four brides actually bought their dresses at Becker’s that day. Shelley had to enthusiastically congratulate each of them. Only three dresses were sold on September 12. That was the day desperate people were tacking posters of their missing loved ones around Manhattan, and the images were all over television. On one poster, LOOKING FOR BEST FRIEND was scrawled below a photo of a lovely young woman wearing her wedding dress. It was hard for Becker’s brides to shake off the sadness of such images. And yet by Saturday, September 15, life went on and sales were picking up: sixteen dresses were sold that day.

  Some Becker’s saleswomen say that at night the store is guarded by the ghost of Grandma Eva.

  Shelley’s gown from her 1985 wedding is in the basement too, on a hanger; she doesn’t know what to do with it. On another rack are twenty dresses that were never picked up because of broken engagements. Shelley won’t ever take them upstairs to sell. “It would be bad karma for the new brides who’d buy them,” she says. “I think it’s unfair to sell someone a dress with a sad backstory. It’s better to let them rot down here.”

  Some Becker’s saleswomen say the ghost of Grandma Eva is down here in the basement (when she’s not upstairs, haunting the attic). And they suspect there may be other ghosts, too: long-ago brides or former saleswomen or maybe that farmer who hanged himself during the Depression after losing all his money when this building was a bank. Sometimes
, saleswomen say, given all the banging and creaking at Becker’s, it feels like a ghost convention.

  Shelley doesn’t think of ghosts when she’s down here. To her, given the stacks of old receipts and slash-marked calendars, the abandoned dresses from yesteryear, the silent mannequins—it’s a place of memory. When she’s in the basement, she remembers what the store was like before she owned it. She contemplates the reticent, compliant girl she was when she started, and the assertive woman she slowly became. She thinks of being a granddaughter and then a daughter to the women who ran this store, and what it took to step out of their shadows.

  By June 1999, Shelley had already told Gary that she wanted a divorce. His alcoholism had injured the marriage beyond repair, and because he had trouble holding jobs, the burden of supporting the family had fallen on Shelley. None of it was easy.

  Shelley would go to work, smiling at brides as always, but inside of her, things were churning. She had arrived at the store at age fourteen, earning five dollars an hour. Now here she was, a thirty-four-year-old woman running much of the business—the bookkeeping, overseeing the sales force, handling alterations, buying from wholesalers. And yet she was still her parents’ hourly employee, making eight dollars an hour. She had no health insurance for herself or her kids.

  She had been asking her mother about her compensation for a long time, without much luck. If her parents, Sharon and Clark, had a good year at the store, they’d give her a bonus of between $1,000 and $4,000 at Christmastime. But some years there were no bonuses at all. Shelley struggled to stay ahead of her debts.

  When Alyssa was born via a C-section, there was no insurance to cover the $11,000 in medical bills. Shelley’s parents helped by paying the anesthesiologist’s fee, and the rest fell to Shelley and Gary. It took them five years to pay off that bill alone.