by Tara Brown
Through my partially open window, I can see the arrogance and snobbery flowing from the bridal shop. I am nearly crawling backward to escape it when Angie sighs and makes an “och” sound as she grabs my hand and drags me from the car.
Now I’m leaning against the car, wondering what my chances are like if I run and wishing I had a paper bag to blow in.
But I change my mind the moment I see it.
It isn’t a white dress and it isn’t the frilly shit in the window.
Instead my gaze snags on a suit with a top hat on the mannequin in the window. I pause when I see him. The doll has a slighter build than Dash, but the general idea is pretty clear.
I want to see that on him. I lift a finger and point at it. “Jane likey. Jane want.” I offer my best grunt as Angie laughs and drags me to the shop.
“Dash will be dressed to the nines. It’s your tomboy ass we have to worry about. He probably already owns a top hat.” Angie misses seeing an evil sneer when we walk in.
But I don’t.
Dash’s mom, Lady Townshend, laughs. “Of course Benjamin has top hats. He has plenty of them. How lovely to see you both are on time.”
Angie stops and smiles. “Lady Townshend, how are you?”
“Very well, thank you. Lovely to see you, Angela.” Dash’s mom steps to Angie, fake-hugging and fake-kissing, but her eyes stay on me the entire time. “Have you gained some weight since I saw you last, Jane?”
I hate that her greeting is what I expected. I wish I could find a greeting card that says, “Sorry I’m the white trash marrying your rich son. Oh, and double sorry I locked your other son up.”
But I can’t.
And as punishment for never finding that greeting card, I see Dash’s ex, Melody, standing in the corner of the room. The unknown I hadn’t planned for. I shake my head as if to clear it and his mother takes that for an answer.
“Well, perhaps ease up on the salt for the next eight months so the dress remains perfect.” His mother fake-hugs me, oozing fake love all over me. “No one wants to spend thirty thousand dollars on a dress and come out with a bride looking like a stuffed sausage.”
I would strangle her, but the way she says sausage tickles me. I love her British accent and wish Dash would actually use his for more than angry and drunken moments.
Angie knows them well enough. She cocks an eyebrow, offering me some silent support. To add insult to injury, I feel like I’m in a forest surrounded by tall trees. They’re all in huge heels, but even in flats they would be towering over me.
“How are you?” I ask with an extremely polite smile for Melody Astor, the mother-ex of all exes.
“I am doing well. How are you and Dash?” She beams with rosy cheeks complemented by her pin-straight blonde hair and bright-blue eyes. Her little accent is perfect, just like the rest of her.
Lady Townshend wrinkles her nose. “I do wish you would all call him Benjamin. This Dash business is a remnant of his childhood and I dislike it.”
Melody gives me a sparkly-eyed smile. She doesn’t seem fazed by the comment.
We don’t have a chance to correct ourselves, because a woman enters in a very intense dress for a Saturday afternoon—she’s too shiny, too polished, and too made up. Her forceful smile precedes her through the arched doorway into the main room.
Still, even Angie has lipstick on and some blush and her unruly red hair is locked up tight in a beautiful bun.
I look homeless compared with them all.
“You must be the bride.” The intense lady strides toward Melody, arms outstretched. Melody smiles and lets the woman take her hands before she corrects her with a nod in my direction. “No. Jane is the lucky girl,” she says with a hint of bitterness.
To quash my urge to flee, I conjure the look on Dash’s face when I forgot about the stupid dress altogether.
The shop lady looks at me and musters as much courage as she can before coming over, her smile at half wattage. “How lovely.” She turns and points at the doorway she has just walked through and the hallway behind it. “We are ready for you now.”
Where are we going? The room we are in is filled with beautiful dresses in glass cases. If this is simply the foyer, then it’s impressive.
“Just follow me,” she says and turns, clicking with hip-swaying strides back down the long hallway.
I swallow and Angie clears her throat as she takes my hand, squeezing.
But as we turn the corner and clear the doorway to the right, the room before us explodes in lace, silk, and taffeta. Mannequin princesses extend as far as the eye can see in gowns of a thousand colors.
“Now Lady Townshend has told me the theme is actually lavender and lace, which I feel is just divine for a proper English wedding.”
I don’t know what “theme” means in this case, but I’m not completely clueless. “I am leaving all the details up to her. She’s just telling me what to wear and when to be there.” I laugh, alone.
The shop lady looks affronted, but Lady Townshend steps forward with her best unintentional Julie Andrews impression. “We are very pleased with the dresses Georges has found for her.”
The dress bitch with the obvious hate-on for me gives Lady Townshend a slight bow. “And he is over the moon about being the designer chosen for this. It will be the event of the season.”
My stomach turns.
“Quite.” Dash’s mom nods and turns, giving me a look that tells me throwing up on the Tiffany-blue rug would be a very poor choice.
“Would the lady follow me, please? We will put you in with the dressers and start the show!” She nearly sings the last couple of words. Angie’s grip tightens as she subtly forces me forward.
Three girls stand in a giant dressing room that’s the size of my first apartment. They are all brunette and all tall, slim, and pretty, but unlike the women I’m with or the shop owner, these girls look polite. Or at least they can fake it better.
In my mind I am repeating the ways I could incapacitate all three of them as the doors close, the ways in which I am trained to escape a moment like this one. I could knock them all out, and everyone in that room, and be down the block before I even got winded.
“I’m Jenny, this is Sasha, and that is Margolis,” the brightest of the three beauties offers.
“Jane.” A whisper creeps up my skin, not liking that her name is Jenny. I don’t like that name anymore.
“So lovely to meet you, Miss Jane.” They curtsy, of course, making me glower.
“Shall we prepare, then?” Margolis asks with a slight hint of an accent—Romanian, if I’m not mistaken.
I nod, removing my coat, but they grab for hangers with lingerie. Straightaway, I start to sweat. “Is there a bathroom? Is that stuff used?”
“Of course not. It is the lingerie you will wear under your dress. After you’ve tried it all on, we will have it dry-cleaned and put with your gown.” Jenny points to the door behind her. “This is a bathroom here.”
I rush past them, closing the door the moment I am in the small space. Flashes of being in the bathroom on my hands and knees, fishing the box out from under the vanity, haunt me. The smell of the dank cell lingers, even in here. It fights the lavender scent pervading the room.
I can’t escape the feel of the concrete and the swaying light. I drop to my knees on the marble, breathing hard and deep.
It passes.
But only because I hold my arms close to me and take deep breaths with the image of Binxy in my grip. He isn’t struggling or scratching or meowing. He just lies and lets me love him. The images of him bring Dash’s face. His smile, his perfect features, his laugh—they encircle me, comfortingly. I pull my phone from my pocket and press his name.
“Hello?”
I sigh, breathing into the phone. “Your mom brought Melody as her special guest.”
“Fuck.” He sighs. “I’m so sorry, Jane. I will speak—”
“No! Don’t! I’m stronger than that. I have to stop being such a pussy about your mom hating me. I don’t know why I care so much.” I’m still out of breath.
He chuckles with a sound that feels like delicately placed kisses on the back of my neck. “I love that you do, though. You never show your vulnerabilities about things, and it’s so sexy.”
“Meet me.” The words come out before I even think them through.
“Two hours and I will be at the door to that shop.” He hangs up before I can change my mind.
I don’t want to, but I think I might change it. I don’t want to be intimate and I can tell from Dash’s tone he does.
I’m still trapped in that concrete room in a lot of ways. And the caves with the girls in the cells.
Rory’s got a hold over me that is unlike anything I have ever experienced.
I force myself up to stare at my reflection. The difference in my eyes stands out today. The light one sparkles like it has a funny story to tell. The dark eye is the exact opposite. It appears to have secrets and deceptions, things it hides from me.
I splash cold water on my face and dry it with what I will forever recall as the softest towel I have ever used.
I push Dash to the forefront of my brain and turn to the door. I lived in an alley once, eating stolen food and pretending to be an urchin, all for the right moment to assassinate three men walking from a restaurant in Belize.
If I can do that, I can be dressed and fluffed and made to feel pretty. It’s a different role to play for a different mark. I just happen to love this one.
The moment I leave the bathroom, it starts.
“Please, remove your shirt so we can get the appropriate items for underneath.”
All the strength I have just mustered vanishes. I relent, taking the weird corset thingy they’re holding and drag it back into the bathroom. I rip my shirt off, catching a glimpse of my scars, and pull on the corset, wincing when I drag it across my nipples. With my hair down and the corset on, most of the bad stuff is covered.
I go back out and let them take off my pants and hand me things I don’t recognize as clothing—stripper apparel at best. For each item my only response is a wrinkled nose. They laugh and attempt to put me at ease, but I have seen it before, when people catch a glimpse of the horrors under my clothes. It’s always the same, pity and worry. They never think military. They never think I am stronger because of every scar.
So I avoid instances like this—being naked in front of people who could never imagine the places I have been.
To their credit, the three girls do try to hide it.
The underwear they force on me is more comfortable than it looks, but it’s overly puffy to be under a dress.
“Is she ready?” the mean shop owner snaps from outside the doors. A robe is wrapped around my shoulders as Jenny squeaks, “Ready!”
The doors are thrown open and the dresses parade in.
I don’t realize I’m holding my breath until I blink and start to sweat again. Angie rolls her eyes at me and storms the changing room. She smiles as patronizingly as I have ever seen and says, “We ’ave this, ’er an I. Why dinna ya girls go and rest yur wee feet fer a half an hour.” She really lays on the Scottish accent.
They part their lips but change their minds on whatever they’re about to say when they see the gleam in her eyes—it’s the crazy gleam that only Scots are able to use against the rest of us. To a Scot, it’s a look of power and pride, but something the rest of us fear—mostly because it resembles instability.
The three girls scuttle out and Angie closes the doors, sighing and slumping into the overstuffed armchair. “This is some misery, this is.” She sounds about half Scot with it just being the two of us. “She has ya changing into ten dresses of differing styles and fluffiness and she’s got all sorts of plans. And we don’t eat for another three hours.”
“What do we do?” I ask, not certain of the plan, but liking where she might be going with it all. She sounds like she wants to escape.
She raises her eyebrows and nods at the dresses. “We’re gonna try them on and see which one the old battle-ax likes, then we’re getting pissed. And Dash is fucking well buying enough booze to float me back home on.” She pulls her feet out of her shoes and gets up, grabbing the first frock.
I back away slowly, as if she were wielding a knife. “That’s a lot of lace. Maybe we can start with the others. They look less lacy. The back is see-through on that.” I cock an eyebrow and point.
She winces. “Right, which would be why they put the corset on ya. The scars are going to be covered, Janey.”
I wrinkle my nose and she puts the dress back, chuckling and calling me something like “little bitch” in Gaelic.
She grabs a princess gown with a tight corset bodice and a huge skirt made of the stuff that sounds like where the Russian president has his offices and all the tourists go—Kremlin—but not.
I think of ways to wiggle out or protest but remember she’s here for me, to help me. So I nod and sigh and think bad thoughts, but keep them to myself.
She holds it open for me to step into. Honestly, it looks like I might fall into a magical hole and end up in Neverland or Wonderland, if I step into it. But not wanting to be a little bitch, I lift a heeled foot, not even recalling when they got the stockings or heels on me, and step in. She lifts with an ooooomph and barks, “Hold it up, ya ninny! It weighs a goddamned ton, Janey. Lift her up and hold her tight so I can get the clasps and hooks at the top, then we worry about the eight billion snaps.”
I do as she has ordered. She steps back after a second and says, “Nope! The scars are fully visible. This fucking corset doesn’t hide a damned thing.” She looks at me in the mirror, cocking a dark eyebrow. “I think they’re fucking with ya out there. I think she wants everyone to see them scars.”
I sigh and tap my fingers against my thighs. “Is there one that perhaps has some sort of mesh on the top? One that might cover the worst of it? I don’t want the entire world to look at my back and think Dash rescued me from some kind of sex slavery.”
“Not if Georges says it’s not in style. He’s all about the haute couture.”
I don’t even know if Angie knows what she’s talking about, but I am getting annoyed. “He’s going to be all about digging out whatever I shove up his ass if he doesn’t make me a fucking dress that fits and covers my shit and makes that wing nut happy.” I point at the doors, possibly speaking too loud. “I was in a terrible accident, where my whole family fucking died and then I went to war. I fought for my country. I am covered in the proof and I don’t need everyone thinking I am some sad little orphan. It’s bad enough my side will consist only of you, Mrs. Starling, and my partner in crime, Antoine, but to be blasting my scars everywhere is just too much. Maybe he can make me a midriff I Dream of Genie dress and we can talk about how I can’t have kids—cause my family died!” The words leave in a panicked rant, and I’m pretty sure I have spit on both of us during it.
Angie laughs, accustomed to the way I get when we do things like shop or involve Dash’s family. “Well, why in the hell are ya so beaten up all over, ya wee brat? Who even has this many scars from war?” She winks and chuckles before nodding. “All right then. Ya better be ready to play some Little Orphan Annie for this.” She shakes her head and steps out, closing the French doors. I can’t make out what she’s saying, which gives me hope they haven’t heard us this entire time.
The shop owner follows Angie in, cocking an eyebrow at me in the monstrosity of a dress. “She’s actually an orphan,” says Angie. “Her entire family was killed in a terrible accident and she’s the sole survivor. But her body is battered. Scarred, if ya will. She canna wear a dress showing all her injuries to tha world.” Her accent is so thick I barely make it all out.
I lay my own act on thick, lowering my brow in shame, with my voice breaking a tiny bit as I speak. “Perhaps more coverage won’t humiliate Lady Townshend.”
The shop lady, whom I had believed to be the owner, swallows, clearly uncomfortable, but I bet not nearly as uncomfortable as I am. “I will speak with Georges and see if we have something. Give me a moment.” She turns and leaves.
“I love when we get to do the Cagney and Lacey thing.”
Angie snorts. “The fact that we know who Cagney and Lacey are proves we both need to worry more about getting married and less about how.”
“Classy.” I laugh and lean against the wall, sweating in the dress made of pain and hate.
The door opens, but a snooty shop owner doesn’t come in; instead it is a very old man. He’s got white hair and thick glasses. His fingers look like they are all callused on the ends and his skin is nearly see-through, it’s so thin. “You vant a special dress?” he asks with a thick accent, French and German, if I’m not mistaken. Alsace perhaps. “I do not make zee special dress for just anyvone. My line is my line. Vere are zeese scars?”
He comes around the back of me, and as he lifts his hands, I lose all the fight in me. I let him see them. The serial numbers on his wrist tell me that there is not a scar on my body that he has not seen on another and the ones inside him are ten times worse.
Angie sees it too. I can tell by the way she flinches and swallows like there’s a whole potato in her throat.
“Yes, zeese are wery bad. You have been vipped, no? And zis one here, it is a mess. Zee person zat stitched you vas an amateur. You are a soldier? Zis one vas done in a hurry.”
I nod slowly.
“Vat is your rank?”
“Master sergeant,” I mutter and turn, looking into his eyes, his old blue eyes. “So you understand the delicate nature of this?”
He nods once. “You vill have zee greatest dress. I need eight months.” He turns and leaves, shouting in French that he wants everyone out of the shop and that he must have silence. The woman I mistook as the shop owner gives me a look. “What did you do?”
