White Dresses

by Mary Pflum Peterson

  “Do we ever!” They laughed and pointed him in the direction of Minneapolis’s most famous bathhouse, located just down the alley, behind the Gay 90’s bar Dale had been drawn to.

  “It was like fate,” Dale says.

  He had a wife and one baby at home. He had another on the way. He was a born-­and-­bred Catholic who had long been lectured on the sins of a man thinking lustfully about another—­particularly another man—­when one was already very married to a very devoted wife. But none of that stopped Dale Pflum that night from marching confidently and knowingly down the alleyway to the bathhouse.

  Dale spent more than an hour in that bathhouse. In the end, he says, he emerged a changed man. For decades, he had been struggling with who he was. Since college, he’d wondered if those brief liaisons with young men in university libraries and dorm rooms meant anything, if his interest in men was a passing phase or illness that, as that priest had suggested, could eventually be quashed. After that night in the Minneapolis bathhouse, there was no longer a question. His interest in men was there to stay. His interest in my mother, on the other hand, was what he realized had been temporary, passing, and ultimately a mistake.

  My father returned from his business trip as he returned from most business trips: exhausted. Quiet. Preoccupied. My mother had grown used to the mood swings, had learned not to ask him too much about what was wrong or what he was thinking about.

  Too much probing would draw him into a rage, which increasingly included the hurling of spoons and coffee cups and lit cigarettes, which he now consumed two packs at a time. No, especially at this late stage of pregnancy, Anne knew to tread lightly. There was a baby on the way. A kicking little creature that she hoped and prayed would unite them and make him want to stay home more often, not less.

  Dale kept what happened in Minneapolis entirely to himself, concentrating instead on putting the final touches on the little nursery he and Anne were creating on the second floor of their new home. But as he wallpapered what would become my room, set up the crib, adjusted drapes at the bedroom window, his mind wandered back time and again to Minneapolis and to when he might be able to schedule another business trip there.

  A few weeks after Dale’s visit to the bathhouse—­at 2:08 in the very early hours of October 25—­I was born at St. Mary’s Hospital in Madison, Wisconsin. It was a Catholic hospital, and it was a Catholic nun, Sister Mary Cloud, who served as the delivery room nurse that night, taking turns holding hands with my frantic mother and my nervous father.

  My father was the first to hold me, wrapping me in his arms moments after my mother pushed me out. As he looked at me, he says, he breathed a tremendous sigh of relief.

  “We had a boy. And with you,” he told me, “we had a girl. We were done.”

  On paper, at least, they had the perfect family. There was no need for any more sex. And when the doctor announced that my delivery had wrecked my mother’s already-­fragile uterus and recommended a hysterectomy, my father breathed an even larger sigh of relief.

  “I’d done my husbandly duty,” he explained to me matter-­of-­factly. “I was finally off the hook.”

  Now all he had to do was raise that family. Put on a smiling face.

  And a few weeks later, he did just that at St. Peter’s for my very public baptism. There he was, in a nice suit, a new tie, standing proudly holding my brother as I squawked and squirmed in my baptismal gown for all the world to see.

  “She’s so gorgeous,” the parishioners cooed to my mother as they gathered around to congratulate her after Mass.

  “She’s so long,” they enthused to my father’s parents, commenting upon my remarkable height for a newborn, a full two feet.

  “Welcome to the community,” the presiding priest, a stern man, said to my father, shaking his hand. He had been reluctant to do this whole public baptism thing, but had grudgingly warmed to the idea as he observed the positive reactions of the parish.

  “Tell us,” said members of the parish council to my parents, eager to welcome a new family to the parish fold, “is your move to Wisconsin all that you hoped it would be?”

  My father was the first to answer this question. Looking at Anne and his new baby daughter, then thinking of his recent life-­altering visit to Minneapolis, he took a breath.

  “I’d say that the move has been all that I’d hoped for. And more.”

  Chapter 7

  A First Communion in Beaver Dam

  May 4, 1980

  “Meow. Meeeeeowww.”

  I awoke on the morning of May 4, 1980, to the sound of my cat, Blackie, meowing outside my bedroom door. Straining to push the dirty-­blond hair out of my face, I saw first the familiar pink of the ruffled bedspread that took up most of my twin bed. Then I spied the rocking chair situated beneath the room’s sole window, piled high with my favorite dolls and stuffed animals. Finally, out of the corner of my eye, I saw It. My heart skipped a beat. It was even more beautiful than I’d remembered. This was no ordinary day. This was The Day. After waiting for a full year, at last the time had come to put on the white dress of my dreams—­my First Communion dress.

  Ever since Anthony’s First Communion the May before, I had dreamed of this moment. All through that Mass, I’d studied not the priest, nor my own brother up there at the altar, but instead the dresses the girls in Anthony’s First Communion class wore. I loved every single one of them. The ones with lace and the ones with silk. The ones with short sleeves and the ones with long sleeves. The dresses with long sashes and those with no sashes at all. The collection of those twenty-­five white dresses was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen and I vowed that if I was fortunate enough to get my mother to buy me a white dress like the ones I saw on that altar, I’d never, ever take it off. Not even for a bath.

  “Meow,” Blackie persisted, pawing again at the door. “Meeeeee-­owwwww.”

  Crawling down to the foot of the bed, where the twin bed met the door, I reached to turn the doorknob, enabling the cat to enter. Blackie meowed appreciatively before jumping up on the bed to join me. I hugged Blackie to me, pulling him onto my lap so that we could stare at It together. I blinked once, hard. Then a second time, harder. I wanted to make sure I wasn’t dreaming. But when I blinked hard for the third time and still saw It when I opened my eyes, I knew the morning had really come.

  Hanging from the dresser that stood between the bedroom door and my closet, the long-­sleeved polyester-and-lace dress with its high square neckline and semitransparent sleeves was just as beautiful as I remembered. The sales tags still hung from the sleeves. Atop the dresser, in a small white plastic bag, was the simple lace veil, anchored by a hair comb covered in a trio of faux roses, that my mother had selected. And at the foot of the dresser rested the lily-­white Mary Janes my mother had bought for me at Beaver Bootery, the best shoe store in town. Mom had repeatedly begged me to keep them clean prior to today. Twice I’d been busted trying to wear the shoes to attempt a Shirley Temple–inspired tap dance in the driveway with Kim, my best friend from next door.

  “Mary Elizabeth, get those shoes back in the house right now or I’ll ground you for a week!” Mom had screamed.

  I had done as she asked, putting the shoes back in their box. But today the shoes were mine to wear as I pleased. And so was the veil. And best of all—­so was that dress.

  Everyone would see me wearing it. Pop and Grandma Pflum. And Great-­Aunt Sis. And Dad’s sisters, Mary Jo and Sue Ann. And lots of cousins. And Dad, of course. He was back. For now, at least.

  He’d even slept at the house last night—­the first time he had done so since Anthony’s First Communion last year. It was strange to have him home. Nice in some ways, but hard in others. Never mind his mood swings. I’d grown pretty used to those. What I couldn’t get accustomed to was Mom and her tears. He made her happy one moment and sad—­really sad—­the next. One minute she’d be laugh
ing, and the next she’d be standing over the kitchen sink, looking out the window and staring at something way off in the distance that always seemed to make her cry. She’d cried a lot this past year. Besides the kitchen sink, her favorite places to cry were downstairs in the basement, huddled over the ironing board, usually with a can of spray starch in one hand and a wrinkled shirt in the other, and on the phone when Aunt Kathy called to ask how she was feeling.

  But she cried in other places, too. Sometimes she even cried when she drove. Whenever that happened, she always made up an excuse, like that the sun was hurting her eyes, which worked. Except for when the sun was behind a cloud, which it often was in Wisconsin, especially in the wintertime. Still, Mom’s tears aside, I was glad to have Dad home. His visit and the visit of all the other relatives made the house feel happy again. And clean. Cleaner than it had been in months. Mom had picked lots of things up. Thrown away the newspapers that were usually stacked up around the living room. Pulled the vacuum cleaner and Windex out for the first time in months. She’d even mopped! I’d forgotten what the mop looked like.

  Even if Mom did cry today, even if Dad yelled or threw something, which he liked to do when he was mad, I knew the day couldn’t possibly be ruined. There was just no way. Even if everyone cried and yelled, I’d still be wearing The Dress. That really incredible white dress. And today that’s all that mattered.

  My childhood was not what I would call particularly happy. It was largely confusing and lonely, and, as a rule, filled with significantly more tears than laughter. But a day that was an exception to that rule was the one on which I made my First Communion.

  Unlike my mother—­who, owing to her days of climbing trees and swimming in muddy ponds at the Pine Patch, considered herself a bit of a tomboy—­I was a girly girl. I had never met a dress I didn’t love. From the time I was old enough to walk, I delighted in the swish of a dress’s skirt, the tie of its sash. I spent hours wishing I had been born in another era, perhaps in the Deep South in the late 1800s or in Revolutionary America, when skirts and dresses were long and full and crinolines were a daily wardrobe requirement.

  And I loved almost as much as my dresses the accessories that went with them: the patent leather shoes, the underwear with the frilly bottoms, the tights that I would carefully pull on.

  My mother was at once impressed and confounded by my ultra-­feminine tastes, which, she convinced herself for years, must be some sort of passing phase. She loved dressing me up on Sundays for our weekly trip to Mass. She helped me transform into fairy princesses and brides for episodes of Make Believe in my bedroom. But wearing Polly Flanders dresses in the sandbox, or up in the treehouse, or while engaging in a game of tug-­of-­war with the neighborhood boys, she would tell me, didn’t make sense.

  “Mary Elizabeth, you’ll ruin your dress if you keep playing like that,” she used to say. “Come and put on a t-­shirt and shorts. You’ll be more comfortable.”

  But I refused. Even then, I was a girl willing to sacrifice comfort for the sake of fashion.

  For these girly-girl reasons, it came as a surprise to no one that I spent the first half of 1980 counting down the days to my First Communion, a day I could wear not just a dress, but a Really Great Dress. And not just for an hour or two, but for an entire day. For months, I had scoped out would-­be dresses in Lads and Lassies, the finest children’s clothing store in Beaver Dam. My mother took me once a week to the store so that she could peruse the sale racks that featured Garanimal sets and out-­of-­season dresses that might fit me the next year. I spent my time during those visits in the back of the store at the two racks laden with First Communion dresses.

  Unlike the other clothing in Lads and Lassies, the First Communion dresses were covered with clear plastic garment bags, undoubtedly to ward off little girls like me, desperate to fondle the taffeta and lace. I must have spent hours looking at the dresses, studying their differences. There were long-­sleeved dresses and short-­sleeved dresses. Some had great big bows at the back. Some had lacy ribbons that tied at the collarbone. All were lovely.

  Atop the racks of First Communion dresses was a series of boxes filled with First Communion crowns and veils. The boxes were sealed but had cellophane tops that allowed me to get an idea of the magic that lay within. At age seven I didn’t know much about happiness, but I knew enough to know that its key must somehow lie within those boxes. How could anyone who wore a plastic crown upon her head, rimmed with artificial flowers, be anything other than euphoric?

  My mother, serious Catholic though she remained, seemed oddly unenthusiastic about the notion of purchasing for me—­her only daughter—­a First Communion dress. Not once, not twice, but at least three times that I recall, a store clerk at Lads and Lassies approached my mother.

  “Would your daughter like to try on some dresses today?” she’d ask my mother brightly, preparing to take me by the hand and show me to a dressing room.

  But each time, my mother refused. “No, thank you.”

  Then she pried my little hands from the rack and announced it was time to go.

  At the time, I thought her behavior mean. But now, of course, I know she wasn’t being mean at all. She was trying to survive. Looking back, I realize if it had been up to her, she would have bought me the whole rack of dresses. If, that is, we could have afforded them.

  While Aurelia Diener was often overwhelmed as a mother and emotionally unavailable, my mother was unfailingly warm and generous. It’s as if, when Anne Diener became a mother, she took all the love and attention she had dreamed of receiving as a child—­but never managed to get—­and thrust it upon her own children. For as long as I can remember, she began and ended each day with hugs, kisses, and declarations of “I love you.” She religiously took us on adventures: to the library, to the Dairy Queen, to community theaters, to the local parks. Her favorite was the city’s oldest park, Swan Park. After taking me for a swim in the park’s public pool, she’d walk me to the big band shell, where I would mount the stairs to perform a song or dance for her while she sat in the front row and clapped.

  “Encore!” she’d cry as she rose to her feet, still clapping. “Encore!”

  The magic would continue in the fall, her favorite season. After taking us to a local orchard for a round of caramel apples, she’d drive us to Swan Park in search of autumn leaves. When she found an open area sufficiently covered with red and yellow and brown leaves, she’d clap in delight. “It’s time to kick some leaves!” she’d declare, then take us by the hands. Together, we’d kick the piles of leaves high into the air and watch them fall down again.

  Anne Diener Pflum wanted desperately to be just as generous with money as she was with her spirit. Little things—­like matinees at the local movie theater and Golden Books from the local bookstore—­she could afford. But the bigger-­ticket items—­like dance classes or vacations or new furniture or those fancy First Communion dresses I dreamed about—­were out of the question. The fact of the matter was that we were on an extremely tight budget and had been ever since my father left.

  Dale Pflum had moved most of his things out of the house in Beaver Dam by the fall of 1979. He’d been steadily moving toward that point for some time. Even when my parents were still together, it seemed he was on the road more than he was home. Always, he would tell us, it was because of a sales meeting or a convention. Or because of a luncheon or a dinner speech he had to give. Sometimes it was because he had to entertain a group of farmers—­would-­be customers—­at a Brewers or Packers game.

  We saw him in between his sales trips, often in the home office he kept in the basement, just off the area where my brother and I used to play school, using a large chalkboard mounted to the wall and a pair of old desks my mother had procured at a rummage sale. Between our rounds of reading and writing, we would stop in to see him and watch him at work, huddled over his typewriter or green-­and-­yellow adding machine. Often,
he smoked in his home office. Sometimes he ate. He had gained a considerable amount of weight at this point in the marriage. His once-­wiry frame had expanded so that he sported a potbelly. He’d also grown a mustache. We didn’t care what he looked like. We were glad to have him home.

  “Daddy, how long will you be here this time?” we used to ask as we begged him to come outside with us.

  “For a while,” he’d say.

  And he would be. He’d stay long enough to toss a baseball around with my brother, put training wheels on my bike, build a campfire so that we could roast marshmallows in the backyard beside the swing set he’d erected.

  We’d almost gotten accustomed to the pattern of business trips and homecomings when the hospitalizations started.

  My father’s hospitalizations began in the late 1970s, in the wake of a pair of suicide attempts. The first time my father tried to kill himself, he chose the winding roads that surrounded Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, home to one of the nation’s longest-­running Playboy Clubs, as a backdrop. He’d gotten to know the area during the business meetings he’d hosted at the club, meetings in which he’d had to pretend to be interested in the buxom waitresses his colleagues ogled.

  On the day of his would-­be suicide, my father told me, he filled a number of jugs and glass jars with gasoline and placed them in the front and backseats of the car. Then he went for what he hoped would be his final drive, hitting the gas pedal hard through some of the area’s sharpest turns.

  “It was the perfect plan,” he told me years later. “I thought I was sure to crash on one of the turns. The force of the impact would cause a spark and ignite the jugs of fuel and cause the car to burst into flames. I would die in an instant.”

  But in the end, the plan failed. My father accelerated into a number of sharp turns, in and around the dramatic hills. But the car didn’t spin out of control as he’d hoped, and ultimately never crashed. Sometimes, he explained, it was because the car handled better than he’d thought it would. Other times, it was because another car was coming and he didn’t want to take out an additional life in his bid to end his own.