White Dresses

by Mary Pflum Peterson

  “I didn’t like that your father was gay,” she told me years later. “But I knew it wasn’t his fault. How could I hate him for something he was born with?”

  “Besides,” she added, “how could I hate him when he already hated himself so much?”

  My mother’s compassion surprised Dale’s lead psychiatrist in Madison, who was accustomed to wives reacting with a mixture of anger and bitterness when their husbands came out. My mother didn’t have it in her to be bitter. If anything, she blamed herself.

  My mother’s compassion undid my father, who had expected—­perhaps even secretly hoped for—­a demand for a divorce. But no such demand came. At least not from Anne.

  “Dale, what are you going to do?” the psychiatrist asked at one joint meeting not long after my father had come out. “Seems to me Anne is putting the ball in your court.”

  “I can’t—­I can’t accept who I am,” Dale said, beginning to cry.

  At this, my mother shook her head and looked my father squarely in the eyes.

  “If I can accept it, why can’t you?”

  My father, surprised, looked from the psychiatrist to my mother, then back again.

  “Anne,” said the psychiatrist, “why don’t you repeat that in case Dale didn’t hear it the first time?”

  She licked her lips, then took a breath. “If I can accept who you are, then why can’t you?”

  “I’ll never forget those words as long as I live,” my father told me more than thirty years after the session.

  Crying, he said, “It’s the kindest thing anyone has ever said to me, the nicest thing anyone will ever say to me.”

  Several months after the breakthrough session, after my father had been discharged from St. Mary’s for a second time, he made the decision to move out of the house.

  I remember the truck pulling up in the driveway and several men, all of whom introduced themselves to my brother and me as “friends” of my father, getting out and proceeding to remove my father’s belongings from the house. My brother and I gathered in the front yard with our best childhood friends, Kim and Kevin Swanberg, who lived next door. We crouched behind my mother’s VW in the driveway and watched the strange men with their strange tank tops and mustaches load up the truck. The men, including my father, seemed happy and convivial, as if a party, or at least a round of beers, awaited.

  My mother made herself scarce, still torn between being the supportive, Christlike creature she felt like she was morally obligated to be and playing the part of a normal woman, angry at the mess her husband had made of all of our lives. When she was around, she looked terribly sad, her face a sickly white.

  Watching two of the men struggle to put my father’s desk into the truck, Kim turned to me and asked, “Isn’t your father going to live with you anymore?”

  I shrugged my shoulders. The truth of the matter was, after all of those hospitalizations and business trips, I didn’t know if my father was coming or going. I only knew that I didn’t like the strange men or how they made my mother feel. When they eventually pulled out of the driveway, smiling, laughing, and waving, I was filled with the strange mixture of sadness and relief that I would feel for years at the close of visits with my father.

  When my father left, he took his closet full of clothes, the old adding machine, and a smattering of records and pictures and rocking chairs and books. He also took with him a source of steady income for the family. He sent money each month, but much of his paycheck was now eaten up by his new expenses: his new apartment, new furniture, new bedding, and his growing interest in antiques. My mother, who had stopped working after my brother was born nearly a decade before, tried to make ends meet by reentering the workforce as a teacher’s aide at a local public elementary school.

  Her meager paychecks helped, but our bills were significant. She couldn’t afford, for example, a babysitter. My brother and I would get off the school bus, armed with a house key with which to unlock the door to our empty house. Usually, we were left to fend for ourselves for only two hours. But on nights when she went to night school, we were alone until as late as ten o’clock and were charged with making our own meals and putting ourselves to bed.

  Childcare was just one expense we couldn’t afford. Our new family unit of three started cutting back on all kinds of things: birthday parties, swim lessons, even the heat.

  “Do you see this circle on the wall, Mary?” my mother asked me one day after she got home from work. She was pointing at the house thermostat, which was located in our dining room.

  “Yes,” I said, nodding.

  “This is never to be touched. This little pointer is never to be turned to anything higher than fifty-­eight.”

  I was in the second grade. I had no concept of how heat bills worked. I barely understood the concept of degrees.

  “Fifty-­eight,” she repeated. “Understand?”

  I nodded. I knew she meant business. And our heat remained fixed at an often uncomfortably cold fifty-­eight for years.

  For me, the lack of heat was nothing compared to my mother’s unwillingness to invest in items I deemed second-­grade luxuries: tickets to Holiday on Ice, boxes of Frosted Flakes instead of the generic flakes that came housed in those awful black-­and-­white packages, and, of course, coveted First Communion dresses.

  “Don’t worry,” my mother told me reassuringly in mid-­April 1980, “we’ll get you a dress.”

  “When?” I demanded.

  “Soon.”

  “How soon?”

  In the end, it was my father who bought me my First Communion dress.

  He came into the house one day without calling my mother in advance—­which he often did in that period of time after he had moved out, but before my parents were formally divorced—­with a bag containing three different First Communion dresses: two short-­sleeved and one long-­sleeved.

  It was ten days before the big event. I don’t know where the dresses had been purchased, but I do know that they didn’t come from Lads and Lassies. They were housed in a bag that bore an unfamiliar logo, likely from a store in Appleton, where my father had moved to begin his life in earnest with his growing circle of new friends.

  “Here. Go try these on,” he said.

  Eyeing the contents of the bag, I was too stunned to speak. I opened my mouth to cry out, but no sound emerged.

  Every little girl has her day. And at last mine had come. My mother hadn’t been able to afford to take me to the store. Instead, she’d called my father. And he and his credit cards had brought the store to me.

  Wordlessly, I ran upstairs with the dresses. I tried on the two short-­sleeved dresses first, little frothy confections that poofed at the sleeve and flounced in the skirts. As soon as each dress was on, I flew back down to the kitchen, where my parents waited.

  My father sat at the table. My mother alternated between standing in the kitchen doorway and over by the stove, uncomfortable in her own home, as she often was in my father’s presence after his departure. My father smiled as I spun around for him on the linoleum floor, pleased to be Daddy Warbucks for the day. My mother was far more somber. She eyed each dress carefully, looking me up, then down, then up again, before instructing me to turn around so that she could repeat the process. She felt the fabric of each dress, examined the hems.

  With shakes of the head, my mother ruled out the first two dresses.

  “No, not these.”

  “But why?” I asked, in search of an explanation after she’d vetoed the second dress. The truth of the matter was I didn’t like the first two dresses that much either. But there was only one dress left to try on, and I was starting to panic that my mother was going to say no to all the dresses.

  “Mary, you have to understand,” my mother said, moving from her position near the stove and sitting down at last at the table. She pulled me to her.


  “This is not going to be just any dress. This is going to be your First Communion dress. It needs to be . . .”

  “Perfect?” I asked.

  “No,” said my mother. “Special. It’s a very special occasion so it’s got to be a very special dress. White dresses are always special.”

  I turned my head sideways, the way I did when I was pleasantly confused.

  “White dresses are often what we wear for special ceremonies,” my mother explained.

  “Or to look pretty,” I added.

  “Yes, to look pretty,” my mother agreed, and laughed. “Or to start over. For the church, white is great for beginnings. The beginning of your life as a Chris­tian.”

  “Or as a wife,” I said.

  “Yes,” my mother said. She looked both sad and surprised, as if someone had pelted her in the face with an icy snowball she hadn’t seen coming. She exchanged a quick glance with my father before continuing.

  “Sometimes,” my mother went on, “I think of white dresses as a way of starting over. They’re sort of a way of wiping the whole slate clean. Just like what happens in the wintertime when the snow comes. It wipes away everything in preparation for a new year, a new spring.

  “So for your First Communion, we want the right dress as a way of helping you make the right start. It should be simple. It should be elegant. It should be a dress that you wear—­not a dress that wears you.”

  She looked at me. I looked at her. When I really looked at her, I was often torn between looking into her deep brown eyes, or at her teeth, which I’d always found fascinating. My mother had a slight underbite, which her orthodontist in Dunkirk had never managed to fix, so her bottom teeth, packed tightly together in a haphazard fashion, jutted out slightly past her upper teeth.

  “Okay?” my mother asked.

  “Okay,” I said, still staring at her crooked teeth. I ran back upstairs to try on Dress Number Three.

  After sliding the dress over my head and reaching behind me to zip up the back, I studied myself in the mirror. I liked what I saw. It featured long semitransparent sleeves that puffed only slightly before narrowing with a trio of buttons at each wrist. The neckline was high. The bodice was all lace. At the waist, there was a long satin sash that tied in the back. It was more conservative than I would have liked—­certainly more conservative than most of the dresses that I’d been eyeing in Lads and Lassies. But it was a fairy princess dress all right. And when I saw my mother give me a small smile and a nod of approval from her post back at the stove, I knew it was something even better: it was mine.

  “Oh, thank you, Mom. Thank you!”

  My father had made the purchase, but it was my mother I hugged.

  I hugged her because I wanted her to smile. I squeezed her tight because I wanted her to share in the moment.

  “Oh, Mom,” I said, stepping back from her and spinning around in my dress on one tiptoe, “it’s going to be the best day ever!”

  And it was. The weekend of my First Communion was breathtakingly beautiful. After a long Wisconsin winter, replete with ten-­foot snowdrifts and subzero conditions, spring had finally come. So warm was the weekend that the red and yellow tulips my mother had carefully planted the previous fall in front of the house had burst into bloom for the first time. More than the weather, however, what I remember most about that First Communion weekend was the joy of having a relatively clean house full of ­people and full of laughter. After my father’s departure, the four-­bedroom home had felt big and empty and increasingly messy. My mother had done what she could to hold things together. But her work schedule, combined with her growing depression, prevented her from being able to expend much energy on making our house a home. The vacuum was put away and stayed away. The bottles of Windex, the cans of Pledge, all of those cleaning supplies that she’d used when my father was home on a weekly basis disappeared. In their place came piles of clutter, dust, hair balls from Blackie, the stray cat we’d adopted when my father left. And the clutter wasn’t temporary. It sat untouched for days, often weeks.

  But now, just in time for my First Communion weekend, the clutter was gone. In honor of the houseful of visiting relatives—­and my father’s homecoming—­my mother had cleaned. The house shone as it hadn’t in months, smelling of Windex and Fantastik and Pledge once more. My father’s parents had made the drive up from Indiana, as had both of his sisters; my mother’s baby brother, Mike; and a pack of cousins. Also present was my beloved Great-­Aunt Sis, my father’s aunt. She wore nice lipstick and sweet-­smelling perfume and she always came armed with that most magical of instruments: a Polaroid camera. When my cousins and I were good, she used to allow us to help aim the camera at one another and then sit for what felt like hours, watching the magic unfold as the piece of film that was spit from the camera turned from cloudy to a clear picture of delight.

  Sis spent the weekend allowing me to help her make a photo essay of my moment in the First Communion sun. There was a photo of me in my white dress standing in front of the tulips. There was a pair of photos of me attempting to vamp for the camera, my hair tossed behind my shoulder, my eyes trying to channel the dramatic looks I’d seen the Charlie’s Angels actresses sport on ­People magazine covers. And there was a photo of me with my hair neatly pulled back into a pair of pigtails, made possible by my mother’s limited but sufficient hairstyling skills.

  There were nearly fifty of us making our First Communion that day. We were to be presented to the parish as a group. And as the tallest girl in the class, I was given the honor of being the last to enter St. Peter’s. Some seven-­year-­olds would have viewed this as unfair. I had a flair for drama even then and reasoned that walking in last would enable me to make the grandest entrance of all. Perhaps, I thought, they were saving the best First Communion dress for last.

  I don’t remember much about receiving that First Communion wafer that day. What I remember most is how proud I was to have two and a half entire pews of family there to see me accept that wafer.

  At home after Mass, I kept my First Communion dress on as we tucked into a family luncheon in the formal dining room that hadn’t been used since my brother’s First Communion the year before.

  I sat proudly at the head of the dining room table, chatting with relatives, admiring the big sheet cake that featured a cross and the lettering HAPPY FIRST COMMUNION MARY! and eyeing the small mountain of First Communion presents that my mother had spread out on the buffet.

  I received several stuffed animals, including a koala; a little set of Hello Kitty colored pencils that had a snap clasp and a carry strap; and some new stationery.

  “Open this one next,” said Great-­Grandma Daniels, my father’s grandmother. She pushed in my direction a large lavender envelope.

  Inside was a yellowing lace-­trimmed handkerchief that bore an intricate embroidered pattern. I fingered it gently.

  “This handkerchief was made and carried by my mother, your great-­great-­grandmother,” my great-­grandmother explained, referring to the Irish woman I’d only seen photos of, a sweet-­faced, white-­haired creature with an apron forever tied around her waist. “It’s one of only a few things that we have of hers. I want you to have it.”

  The sight of the handkerchief prompted an audible gasp from my father.

  “That’s very special, Mary. Someday you can pass it on to your own daughter.”

  He reached to gently stroke the handkerchief.

  “You know, Mary, it’s so special that if you’d like I can look after it for you—­maybe take it with me—­”

  “That won’t be necessary,” interrupted my mother.

  She’d been watching the scene unfold from the door of the dining room and narrowed her eyes as she flashed an indignant look at my father.

  My mother had a cordial relationship with my father’s family, but since news of my father’s sexuality had spread, seve
ral relatives, notably members of the older generation, had come to believe Dale wouldn’t be gay, or at least as gay, if it weren’t for Anne. If Anne had been different, they theorized, my father would be happy, my father wouldn’t be trying to kill himself at every turn. If Anne were different, they speculated, my father would almost certainly be straight. Several stopped speaking to my mother. All but two stopped giving her Christmas presents. It was made clear to her that, in the eyes of many, she was no longer an accepted member of the family.

  The idea now that my father was suggesting to his relatives that she couldn’t so much as keep track of a handkerchief rankled my mother.

  “The handkerchief was given to Mary and it will stay here in the house with Mary,” my mother said, locking eyes with my father.

  I shifted uncomfortably in my chair, then nodded awkwardly. I would keep it safe.

  As it turned out, the handkerchief did not remain safe. Those moments of gift opening were the last time any of us ever saw it. My mother would later explain to my irate father that the handkerchief must have inadvertently gotten caught up in the debris of ripped gift wrap and dirty paper napkins that littered the table and mistakenly made its way into a Hefty trash bag.

  He didn’t buy it.

  “Did you throw the thing out on purpose?” my father screamed when he found out, his face turning red as it did when he was at his most infuriated. “Or did you lose it under one of your piles, one of your mountains, of shit, Anne?!

  “You can’t keep track of anything in this mess of a house!” he yelled. “This wouldn’t happen if you knew how to clean!”

  The explosive fight—­my mother’s pleading and crying—­would come later. But on that First Communion Sunday, my mind was not on my parents or even on that handkerchief. It was on my dress. My perfect white dress. I wore that dress from dawn to dusk, even went for a bike ride in it in the late afternoon to show it to Kim, who was Lutheran and intrigued by the pomp and circumstance of the Catholic tradition. It must have been a vision, that white, white dress and that white, white veil, making their way down the street atop a banana-­yellow Huffy bicycle my father had bought at the local Shopko and assembled for me two summers before.