Dedication
To my mother, Anne Diener Pflum.
She gave me everything. And then some more.
Epigraph
White. A blank page or canvas. His favorite. So many possibilities.
—Stephen Sondheim, Sunday in the Park with George
(among Anne Diener Pflum’s favorite quotes)
Contents
Dedication
Epigraph
Introduction
Chapter 1: My Mother’s Baptism
Chapter 2: First Communion at St. Mary’s
Chapter 3: White Dress, White House
Chapter 4: Bride of Christ
Chapter 5: Bride of Dale
Chapter 6: My First White Dress
Chapter 7: A First Communion in Beaver Dam
Chapter 8: Daisy Buchanan Graduates
Chapter 9: LWS (Little White Suit)
Chapter 10: The Bride Wore White
Chapter 11: Vera Wang Nightshirt
Chapter 12: A New Beginning
Afterword
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher
Introduction
They had to be here.
They just had to be here. Somewhere.
But where?
Where?!
I felt the wave of panic wash over me and struggled to breathe. The smell, that horrible smell of the place, made my stomach churn. The air was heavy, steeped in the sickening aroma of a rancid barn that had been deprived of fresh air for the better part of a decade. I felt the vomit burn at the back of my throat.
Not now, I told myself. Not now! I could get sick back at the hotel. Now I had to find them. And I didn’t have much time.
I struggled to move. But my feet were gone. I’d lost them between the front door and the landing of the staircase. They were buried somewhere beneath the mountains of Milwaukee Journals, the unopened mail and once-used cat leashes and the dozens and dozens of disposable cameras, some of them still wrapped in the yellow plastic Kodak packaging. She’d always loved to take the pictures but never wanted to look in the mirror.
How could I have failed to find a way to rescue her from this?
Slowly, I inched my way to the staircase. Up the stairs is where they’d surely be. If, that is, they were still here. If she hadn’t moved them. If they hadn’t been destroyed.
I’d covered the stories of natural disasters many times. Too many to count. I’d spent more than a week in New Orleans after Katrina. I’d gone through Turkey’s earthquake in 1999. It was a 7.8 that lasted forty-five seconds—an eternity in terms of earthquakes—and killed tens of thousands. Then, like now, there was rubble everywhere.
When disaster strikes, no matter where in the world, no matter what the circumstances of the destruction, be it fire or flood or wind, people behave the same. Young or old, rich or poor, people want to save their lives and the lives of loved ones first. And they want to save the little things second. The once seemingly big and important things like furniture and electronics—the shoes and dishes and appliances, even the cars and bikes they once spent months selecting and saving to buy—don’t matter. No, after the lives, it’s the family heirlooms—treasured rugs, handmade quilts, family Bibles, homemade cards and letters—that victims of disaster work desperately to salvage.
And so it was today. I couldn’t have cared less about the furniture. Had no use for a car. I just had to save them.
We had never had any real family heirlooms to speak of. Not from my mother’s side of the family, anyway. No, my mother and I—we had white dresses.
Like rings of an old oak tree, white dresses marked passages of time, our milestones in life. Both the good ones and the bad. The dresses were not just important. To us, they were sacred.
My mother was not a slave to fashion. But she did adhere to certain rules. Skirts were always to be worn with nylons or tights unless a girl was under the age of twelve or playing tennis. Two-piece bathing suits and halter tops were absolutely verboten for women of all ages. (When it came to swimming, my mother always said a one-piece was, without exception, the way to go.) And white was to be worn only between Memorial Day weekend (formerly known as Decoration Day weekend) and Labor Day. Never was it to be worn in fall, winter, or early spring, unless there was a christening, First Communion, graduation, or wedding involved.
I openly called my mother’s first two fashion rules ridiculous and spent the better part of my teenage years railing against them. But the last rule—what I came to refer to as the White Commandment—I not only accepted, but embraced.
My mother taught me to love all that white represents: cleanliness, innocence, simplicity, sophistication, and, above all, possibilities. And not just possibilities. In my mother’s estimation, white represented Infinite Possibilities. For her, white—a blank canvas—was the embodiment of hope and the promise of new beginnings and good things to come.
On the happiest day of my life—my wedding day—my mother’s White Commandment was in full effect. I wed Dean on Memorial Day weekend in a crisp white Vera Wang gown that had to be specially ordered since most modern brides, I was told, prefer ivory to true white. Not me. Not Mom.
Today the Vera Wang gown was safe. It lay in a sealed wooden box beneath the bed I shared with Dean, a thousand miles away in New York.
But the fate of the other white dresses? I didn’t know. I only knew I had to save them.
For her. For me. For us.
My head spun as I struggled to mount the stairs. Still struggling to breathe, I saw spots. First yellow. Then black. They distorted my view of the staircase. Of what used to be a staircase. There were no steps in sight, just an enormous fabric slope. It looked as if a dozen washing machines had thrown up, spewing down the staircase stained blouses and old pants, long-forgotten scarves and mittens and towels and decades-old linens. I had to get out of here or I was going to faint, fall into one of the mountains of random stuff that was mixed in with the garments, with no rhyme or reason: the unopened boxes of baking soda and mangled cardboard eggs containing unworn panty hose; the discarded fast-food bags and dirty Styrofoam cups and Kleenexes.
I had to get to them before it was too late.
Using the banister for leverage, I pulled my way to the top of the staircase, hand over hand, and waded through more discarded clothes to my room. The first door on the right. It had always been my oasis, where I’d done all of my studying and playing and crying and dreaming.
“Oh my God,” I gasped upon entering.
The entire space—once pink and ruffly and girly and light—had gone remarkably dark, covered now in a black sooty dust.
The heavy layer of grime had taken hold of everything, including cherished dolls whose blond hair was now gray and science fair trophies that had turned from golden to a yucky brown. The pink burlap bulletin board that still hung above my twin bed remained littered with faded photos and ribbons from a citywide track meet. Cobwebs hung from all four corners of the room. The lone window was covered in a murky film, allowing only a few rays of winter sunlight to stream in.
I shook my head in disbelief. It was gone. Virtually everything in the room as I had once known it was gone.
I took a deep breath. The second-floor air was a bit less noxious than that on the main floor. It was also considerably colder. That was because of the hole in the roof. The one my uncle discovered last year. That’s how, they think, the bats got in. I cringed at the thought. Bats in the house.
Slowly, I made my way to the closet, covered by a now-
sooty poster of Tom Cruise, copping his best badass look as Top Gun’s Maverick. Then I said a little prayer and slid the right-hand door open.
There, hanging on the long metal rod, I spied a familiar splash of yellow yarn. It was a shawl I’d worn to an Easter Sunday Mass when I was four. The once-bright yellow was now a dull yellow owing to all the dust. I reached to touch it then screamed as a long, leggy spider—what my mother used to call a daddy longlegs—made its way down the length of it.
Beside the shawl hung a fading aqua-blue Forenza camp shirt from The Limited that I’d used my babysitting savings to buy my junior year in high school. It wouldn’t have looked so faded had it not been caked in the thick layer of soot that had swallowed the rest of the room.
My heart beat harder now. I felt the panic rise up again, like an impatient tidal wave. Please. Please! They had to be in here. Everything else could go—everything else could be torched—but I couldn’t leave without them.
I reached past an old sleeveless peach dress—another Easter relic. Then an ivory lace cardigan. It was full of holes, half eaten by moths.
No—no—no—no white dresses.
But wait! There to the far right on the rod, pushed up against the wall of the closet, I saw It: my First Communion dress. It had hung there in a place of honor every day for nearly three decades and remained, somehow, impossibly white. The deep recesses of the closet had served as a sort of protective armor, shielding it from the storm that had engulfed the house. Miraculously, the long, semitransparent sleeves remained pretty, the lace on the bodice delicate and unspoiled. Even the pleats and long satin sash remained intact.
“Oh, thank God,” I cried aloud, pulling the dress, hanger and all, off the rod and hugging it to me. “Oh, thank God!”
I had one white dress, one piece of her. One piece of us. Now if only I could find the rest.
Chapter 1
My Mother’s Baptism
September 1935
On a sunny fall day in 1935, they stood, the three of them: Al, handsome in his dark suit, his curly brown hair blowing in the wind; Aurelia, in the navy-blue drop-waist dress that she’d paired with a matching hat in a bid to mask a mop of disastrous curls; and their infant daughter, Anne. Anne Virginia Diener.
The baby—bald save for a little shock of dark peach fuzz—squirmed in the long white cotton dress enveloping her. The gown, a present from her grandmother Trudy—her father’s mother—was beautiful, something Trudy referred to as “Sumptuous! Absolutely sumptuous!” Trimmed with lace at the bodice and the hem, it featured mother-of-pearl buttons down the back and, when paired with a matching bonnet, made the baby look every bit the vision of the proper little girl Trudy had hoped for when she learned of Anne’s birth.
Yes, it was the Depression, and money was terribly tight. But, Trudy reasoned, this was her first grandchild—her oldest child’s baby girl!—and God knows those kids couldn’t have afforded to buy such a thing. For goodness’ sake, they couldn’t even afford a proper crib. Not even a cradle! Much to Trudy’s horror, the baby was sleeping in an old dresser drawer Aurelia had once used for sweaters, now lined with blankets.
Just four weeks old, Anne alternately cried and slept as her parents took turns holding her in the autumn breeze. An hour before, she had managed to sleep through most of her own christening. It was only when the elderly priest, speaking Latin, doused her with water that she’d stirred, then fluttered open those big brown eyes.
After the ceremony, Al and Aurelia had gathered with their new charge in a park not far from Trudy and August Diener’s North Indianapolis home for an impromptu photo op. The threesome stood first this way, then that way. And while Al managed a few smiles, Aurelia remained largely subdued. She knew she was supposed to be happy, but this baby business was more than she’d bargained for. So far, she wasn’t liking much of it at all. The baby demanded near-constant attention. She didn’t have a moment to herself—and worse, barely a moment alone with Al. Before the baby, there’d been late-night dinners, time to read, time to write, and oh! those near-nightly explosions of passion that had made the baby in the first place.
Aurelia had wanted Al from the moment she saw him, had plotted to catch him when she spied him at that birthday party in high school. The gathering had been organized by a local ice-cream shop owner for his niece and nephew. Aurelia went to school with the niece, Al with the nephew. And when Aurelia saw Al, that was all she wrote. She wanted him. With all her heart. And then some. It hadn’t been easy. Al came from a good family, old money rooted in a monument business that had been the best in all of Indiana and one of the most prominent in the Midwest. Aurelia came from nothing to speak of. She’d grown up the daughter of a brilliant but deaf father, who, unable to find work as an accountant during the Depression, was forced to take on odd jobs. At one point, he worked as a launderer, cleaning women’s soiled undergarments among other things.
But differences aside, there were notable similarities. Al was Catholic and so was Aurelia. He was brilliant—valedictorian of his high school class. And she was brilliant—valedictorian of hers. She would win his heart, she vowed.
For years, they dated. Al tried to tell his parents it was a casual relationship. But it was anything but. In June 1934, the pair secretly wed. Aurelia coaxed Al into the elopement using that deadliest of weapons: Catholic guilt.
“We can’t live in sin forever,” she’d told him one night, her blouse unbuttoned, her skirt hiked up over her knees after yet another session of heavy panting and petting.
Filled with a combination of guilt and lusty ardor, Al agreed and arranged to take Aurelia for a quickie marriage in a neighboring town where he’d called in a favor and gotten a bishop—a bishop!—to agree to marry them. For the better part of a year, they told no one except Aurelia’s baby sister, Mary Jane, of the marriage. Eventually, they let their parents in on the truth. Trudy sobbed at the news, then shouted at the top of her lungs, then begged for an annulment. Didn’t Al see that Aurelia would ruin his life? Didn’t Al see the life in medicine that he’d dreamed of—that Trudy had dreamed of—would be doomed if he was with Aurelia? But it was too late. Anne was already on the way. Al opted to forgo medical school in favor of engineering in a bid to graduate, and score a paying job, more quickly. He did, after all, have a family to support.
Now there were dirty diapers, soiled burp cloths, and, in Aurelia’s case, aching breasts. Aurelia tried for all of two days to nurse Anne before declaring she didn’t have enough milk to give. Secretly, she knew she probably did. But she didn’t need one more reason to be saddled with a screaming, red-faced baby. Bottle feeding gave her a freedom nursing wouldn’t. Now she had the chance to drop the baby off at her parents’, or, if need be, his. They didn’t like her. Hated her for marrying their eldest son. For trapping him, they said. But Lord, how they loved that child.
Al had been smart, Aurelia realized, to insist upon naming her Anne. St. Anne, the mother of the Virgin Mary, was among Trudy’s favorites. Anne was the saint Al had prayed to when Trudy was ill. The fact that Al had chosen to give the cherished name to his firstborn thrilled his mother no end, showing her that despite his taste in brides, the Catholic seeds she had planted within him as a boy had taken hold and blossomed. Anne was a blessing. She was their little Annie.
The entire family was smitten. Even Peg, Al’s gorgeous dark-haired sister, who modeled professionally and was often mistaken for a film actress, fell head over heels for the infant.
All delighted in the squirming baby, save Aurelia. For her, Anne was more of a means to an end. With Anne’s birth came a guarantee that now, at last, Al was hers. Forever. Never would he leave the mother of his child. That Catholic guilt would kill him.
After Al and Aurelia had their turns holding the baby and posing for the photos that autumn afternoon, Trudy and August and Peg took theirs, cradling her in
their arms. Upon looking at Annie, their hearts melted, their eyes grew moist. There she was. A perfect little girl born out of a completely imperfect situation. Amidst the orange and red of the changing leaves that had begun to litter the park, against the vivid blue of that late September sky, the baby was a dream. Their little Annie. Their vision in white.
From the beginning, my mother, Anne Virginia Diener, was known for three things: a round, open face; deep brown eyes; and a boundless sense of curiosity. Within a year of her arrival home from the hospital, it was evident to all who knew her that Anne was anxious, almost desperate, to explore the world. She loved to put on performances on the front lawn of her Dunkirk, Indiana, home. She relished going for walks and greeting the neighbors, calling to those she knew by name. And she enjoyed dancing around the garden surrounding her house, committing to memory the names of the various flowers. There were rhododendron and hollyhock and the fragrant lilacs that sprang from stubby bushes. And in the spring, there were my mother’s favorites: peonies. The big fat blooms that burst from those little buds fascinated her, as did the colony of bumblebees they attracted, each fatter and fuzzier than the last.
But as interested as Anne was in flowers and insects, she was most interested in getting to better know and understand her family. She was especially curious about, and desperate to please, her father. Possessing a deep voice and a brilliant mind, Al Diener was a strikingly handsome man whose eyes were just as dark and beautiful as hers. Standing five foot eight, he was wiry, tanned easily, and looked equally good in the dark suits he wore to Mass and the t-shirts he sported when he did yard work or indulged in a post-work cigarette. Al was something of a mystery to Anne. He left for work soon after she rose in the morning, reporting to Armstrong Glass, a gigantic glass factory, where he’d put his degree in chemical engineering to use as a plant manager. And often, he arrived home after her mother had put her to bed. It was only on weekends that she saw much of him. And a good part of that time was spent going to Mass.
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