Slim Chance

by Jackie Rose

  Then the sea of dresses parted and Morgan appeared from between the rows, my knight in shining armour. In her arms, she bore a single, precious gown.

  When she saw me, she ran over. “Evie? Are you okay? What are you doing?”

  I stood up and wiped my eyes. “Having a panic attack, I think.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “I…I don’t know,” I answered. “If you’re aware that you’re losing your mind, does that mean you’re not really losing it?”

  “Okay, now you’re scaring me.”

  “I’m scaring myself. But I’m okay. I think I just had too much coffee.”

  “You sure? Maybe we should call Bruce.”

  “No, I’m fine. I just need to eat something I think.” I already felt a little better.

  “Okay,” she said. “Let’s get out of here. But is this one of the ones from your pictures?” she asked innocently, holding the dress up for me to see.

  “It is,” I said calmly, because I could see that it was. If there was one Vera Wang dress that I could have chosen, this would be it. It was a simple, strapless A-line gown in glowing ivory duchesse satin, with delicate beading at the top and at the hem. It was so elegant, so understated, so breathtakingly perfect that it took my breath away. Grace Kelly would rise up from the dead and remarry if she knew this gown existed.

  I pulled aside the plastic and touched it carefully. It was real, all right.

  “Happy?” Morgan asked.

  “Yes,” I said, and hugged her.

  “Good. So stop crying. Now are you ready for the bad news?”

  “No.”

  “It’s a size eight.”

  “Eight?” I gulped.

  “Eight.”

  “All the dresses here size eight, ladies,” interrupted the security guard. “Some even size six. This a sample sale. All the dresses the same size.”

  “Thank you very much,” Morgan snapped, “but you should really mind your own business.”

  In light of this new information, I examined the dress again. For all its glory, it appeared to have been designed for half a Barbie doll.

  “Maybe they’re made big,” Morgan offered. She had no way of knowing what Greta from Sternfeld’s said about all wedding dresses being made small. “At least it’s an eight—it could have been a six.”

  A feeling of calm and certainty washed over me. It didn’t matter. Better than that, this was exactly what I needed.

  “It’s okay,” I told Morgan. “I’m going to take it. This is it. This is The Dress.”

  “These dresses all non-refundable,” the guard offered, looking me up and down skeptically.

  “For your information,” Morgan shrieked at him, “this is a Vera Wang gown that retails for $8000 on sale for $1800! This is my best friend Evelyn Mays, and this—this is the dress she’ll be wearing on her wedding day! She’ll go on a liquid diet if she has to, goddammit!”

  Could you ask for a better friend than that?

  I immediately brought the gown to Mom’s place so that Bruce wouldn’t see it. As soon I took it out of the bag, she had to give me credit.

  “I didn’t know they made wedding dresses like this,” she said, examining it carefully. “It’s very pretty.”

  “The only thing is, it’s a little small.” Best to state the obvious before she started in on me.

  “Yes, I can see that.”

  “But I’m not worried. I can do it.”

  “Well if you say so, Evelyn. How much was it?”

  “The real question is, how much did I save.”

  “No, the real question is, how much was it?”

  “Eighteen hundred dollars.”

  “Well, that’s not so bad.” Well what do you know.

  “How much did your wedding dress cost, Mom?”

  “The crystal beading is absolutely lovely. It’s almost like little drops of water…”

  “Mom?” She could be such a scatterbrain.

  “Yes?”

  “Your dress. How much was your dress?”

  “What? Oh. I don’t remember.”

  “What did it look like?” There were no pictures of my parents’ wedding. I assume it’s because they eloped, and probably didn’t have time to find a decent photographer.

  “Don’t worry about your dress, Evelyn, I’ll pay for it.”

  “Oh, Mom, you don’t have to—”

  But she cut me off. “I want to. A girl shouldn’t have to pay for her own wedding gown.”

  I could tell that this was important to her. “Thank you, Mom. This really means a lot to me.”

  She thought quietly for a second, then reached out and took my hand. “If your father were alive, it wouldn’t even be a question. He was an exceedingly generous man. You know he’d have given you the world, Evelyn. If he could have.”

  “I know, Mom,” I said, and hugged her.

  She doesn’t much talk about my father anymore. I suppose she never did, really. Apart from a few well-worn stories and a handful of old pictures, the impressions and images I have of my father came mostly from Claire. I didn’t even know how he died until I was ten years old. Mom just never talked about it. When Claire found out I had no idea how it happened, she brought me to a tall building downtown and pointed. “He was working construction over the Christmas holidays, to earn a little extra cash. It was snowing, slippery. And he fell, but just like an angel, he flew up to heaven.” Years later, it occurred to me that he must never have known Mom was pregnant. She didn’t even know until after he was gone.

  Later I went home and told Bruce what happened. He was really happy for me, glad I found my dress, and glad that my mother and I were getting along. Some days he’s not so bad, really. Maybe he was even a little bit right about a few things. And maybe it would be nice to have Christmas together, just the Mays women, one last time. Pretty soon, I was going to be a Fulbright. There were worse things to be, I suppose. But for all their blondness and thin ankles and perfect posture, they can’t hold a candle to us.

  The Kendra White Christmas Party is mandatory. Some years, I guess when business is good, they do it at a nice big hotel. But this year, the third floor was being transformed into a nondenominational “Winter Holiday Wonderland” by Santa’s little do-gooders from Health and Fitness. What fun.

  Bruce was looking forward to it more than I was, probably because he was excited to see his little fan club. After he proposed, word of his romanticism spread through the offices like the plague. Now, even girls I don’t know from the second and fourth floors ask me if it’s true. The lame story in the monthly Kendra White Chronicle didn’t help (“Third-Floor Marketing Assistant Evelyn Mays Says ‘I WILL,’” which ran right next to a bit about the offices’ thumbs-up from the asbestos inspector). So now I’m known as the Girl Whose Boyfriend Proposed. Needless to say, many people were quite pleased to hear that the famous Bruce would indeed be attending the party.

  Although I haven’t got around to filling out the forms yet, I’ve always been of the opinion that going on welfare might be an acceptable alternative to having to attend those work-related social functions. Potlucks for baby showers, potlucks for retirements, potlucks for breast reductions, for God’s sake. The only thing lucky about any one of them is if you manage to get through it without dying of food poisoning first. I mean, really—the thought of eating a mystery casserole prepared by someone who you know doesn’t wash her hands after she pees (or worse) is beyond frightening.

  Although at first glance, the Christmas Party may seem preferable to the dreaded potluck (i.e. it’s catered), it’s not. Because the only thing worse than Vivian from Cosmetics’ Turkey Tetrazzini with last year’s mayo is watching your elderly co-workers get blitzed. When you throw alcohol into the mix, people you didn’t respect to begin with somehow manage to go down a notch. The first year, it was entertaining, the second year it was embarrassing, and now it’s just excruciating.

  “They shouldn’t make these things on Friday nights,” I h
uffed as we climbed the stairs to the third floor (Self, January: “10 Little Things You Can Do To Burn Big Calories”). “It interferes with the employees’ personal lives.”

  “Oh come on, it’s just once a year,” said Bruce.

  “They should do it during the day, on company time. Is there lipstick on my teeth?”

  “Yes.”

  “How do I look?”

  “Great. How do I look?”

  “Good.” He was wearing a tie with bumblebees on it, but my mother gave it to him, so it was okay. Bruce always looks the same—skinny, cute, freckly.

  “Do you like the new glasses?”

  “I picked them, didn’t I?”

  “You sure did, honey,” he smiled, and kissed me on the forehead. “I like you in high heels.”

  Bruce is six-one, and I’m only five-four. He must get sick of looking at the top of my head. “You wouldn’t like them if you knew how much they hurt me,” I pouted.

  “Then why did you buy them?”

  “They’re Manolo Blahniks,” I explained. I got them three years ago at Neiman Marcus Last Call in Las Vegas. They’re half a size too small, and they’re a dreadful shade of puce, but they were only $199. I even bought a dress to go with them. But I wasn’t wearing it tonight, since everyone already saw it at last year’s party. You can do the same shoes two years in a row—who would possibly remember?—but not a dress, and especially not a sleeveless puce gown. Tonight I was wearing a basic black DKNY shirtdress. Casual chic, but the shoes dress it up.

  Not that you can be underdressed for a party which involves moving collapsible cubicles out of the way to make a dance floor. There was the requisite DJ dressed like Santa Claus, and mistletoe hanging from the fluorescent lights. Everything was covered in silver tinsel. Here and there, a Hanukkah menorah floated overhead.

  “They better put my cubby back exactly where they found it,” I grumbled under my breath.

  “Don’t worry,” said a girl I’d never seen before. “We copied down the floor plan before we moved everything. You’re Evie Mays, aren’t you? I’m Jessica, from Health and Fitness downstairs. Nice to meet you. Is this the famous Bruce? I told all my friends about what you did! It’s just like in Pretty Woman! You singlehandedly resurrected our faith in romance.”

  Bruce grinned like an idiot. The Jessica person grinned like a slut.

  “Well, not exactly like that,” he said. “There was no limo involved, and Evie works in marketing, not…well…you know.”

  “And he’s even seen Pretty Woman,” she sighed, placing her hand over her heart, or whatever dark void lay underneath.

  “I’d like a drink now,” I interrupted.

  “Me, too. I’ll have an eggnog,” Bruce said.

  “You’re going to have to try a lot harder than that if you want to be funny,” I said.

  He shrugged his shoulders and gave Jessica a dramatic “What’s with her?” look, and said, “Come on, Evie, I was just teasing. Let me get you ladies a drink. Jessica, what’s your poison?”

  “Never mind,” I said, and went off to find the bar. If Bruce wants to make me jealous, he’d have to find someone a lot better-looking than that. Her teeth stuck out from her gums at right angles.

  As I picked tinsel out of the bowl of eggnog with a plastic fork, Andrea sidled up beside me, clutching a gray-skinned man with no hair.

  “Hi, Evie, this is Phil. Where’s Bruce?”

  “He’s here somewhere,” I said.

  “How are things with you guys? How are the plans coming?” she asked. It was obvious that she’d heard we were having an engagement party in January, and expected to be invited. Since it was also obvious that she was dying to tell me something about her own life, and didn’t really care about mine, I decided not to let her in on any of our plans.

  “Couldn’t be better,” I said, trying to appear distracted by my own important personal thoughts.

  “Guess what?” she asked, barely able to contain herself. She was hiding her left hand behind her back.

  “Phil asked you to marry him?”

  Her face contorted from an impossibly wide grin into a painful grimace. Phil closed his eyes and breathed out softly.

  “No,” she said, and shot Phil a dark look. “I was going to tell you that Pruscilla had her stomach stapled.”

  “I know!” I laughed. “Isn’t that crazy?”

  “Well if anyone could use it, it’s her.” She was still hiding her hand behind her back.

  My curiosity got the better of me. “What’s in your hand?”

  “What?”

  “Your left hand.”

  “It’s a tampon, if you must know.”

  “Oh. Sorry.” Not exactly an engagement ring. I guess I just had weddings on the brain. I’d have to stop assuming everyone else was getting married, too.

  “Yes, well, whatever.” She turned to go, then stopped and said loudly, “Nice shoes. I like them better with this dress than that gown from last year.” Everyone within earshot looked at my feet. What a hag.

  By the time I found Bruce, he was deeply immersed in conversation with Pruscilla. She looked pretty good. There was no denying it—she was a lot slimmer. You could see the bones in her face now, and her breasts stuck out farther than her stomach. If that’s not inspiration, I don’t know what is. The day Pruscilla Cockburn looks better than I do…I can’t bear to think about it.

  Bruce already had a drink in his hand, courtesy of Miss Health and Fitness, no doubt, so I finished mine quickly and started in on the one I’d brought for him.

  “You look great, Pruscilla,” I said. “Doesn’t she, Bruce?”

  Pruscilla flushed bright red.

  “She sure does,” Bruce agreed. “I told her I barely recognized her.”

  “I’ve lost almost fifty-five pounds!” she gushed.

  “It really shows,” I said. She seemed very susceptible to flattery these days, at least about this one thing. It certainly hadn’t done me any good when I told her I thought her people skills made her the perfect candidate for the President of Marketing and Sales (West Coast) position I’d seen posted in the Newsletter.

  “Everyone’s been so supportive,” she said. “Especially people who understand. Evie, you know how hard it is to struggle with your weight. But I finally feel like I’ve got it under control.” Great, now we were sharing the most intimate secrets of our personal lives.

  Bruce nodded, and said, “Evie joined a gym.”

  The rest of the soiree was equally bad, except for when a drunken Doris from Skin Care made a very public pass at Gregory from Fragrances, who is much, much younger than her, and was there with his boyfriend, besides. You can hardly blame her, though. The pickings are pretty slim at Kendra White.

  While Bruce chatted with Pruscilla and made the rounds, I lurked in the corner and got tipsy with two girls from Skin Care. Ashley, one of the few people who I feel truly gets it at KW, called a play-by-play on Doris’s clumsy attempts at seduction.

  “Do you think it’s possible she doesn’t know?” Wendy asked incredulously as Gregory’s boyfriend fondled his ear. But Doris just kept trying to pull him onto the dance floor.

  “Oh, I know that she knows,” Ashley assured her. “She just thinks she can turn him.”

  “If I were gay, it would take a lot more than the likes of Doris to convince me to switch sides,” I said.

  Wendy shook her head. “That’s for sure. She looks like a thirteen-year-old Russian gymnast with all those barrettes in her hair.”

  “What is she, fifty?” I asked. There was a definite dichotomy at KW between the older women and the younger ones. We each tended to keep to ourselves.

  “Oh, at least,” said Ashley. “But I don’t think she’s ever even had a boyfriend.”

  “No wonder she’s so desperate,” I said. “But isn’t she his boss?” We stared as Gregory reluctantly tangoed Doris across the floor.

  Ashley nodded. “You’re thinking sexual harassment? It’s possible. I wou
ldn’t put it past her. When I was her assistant, she once tried to get me to pick up her dry cleaning.”

  Wendy laughed. “Oh, yeah, that was something. She told Doris she’d be happy to—as soon as Human Resources added the term ‘Spineless Lackey’ to her job description.”

  “You did not,” I said.

  “I sure as hell did,” she said as she tugged at her waist, then mumbled, “Fucking control-tops. Why do I even bother? It’s not like there’s anyone here to impress.”

  “And you got away with it?”

  “Damn strait I did. All she did was laugh, like she’d been kidding about it or something. Some cover-up. But I wasn’t about to pick up her god damn dry cleaning.”

  If only I had the guts, I thought wistfully. Somehow, though, what comes across as self-assuredness and confidence in Ashley would seem contrary and difficult in me if I tried to pull the same thing. “I wish I could tell Pruscilla off like that the next time she orders me to work through my lunch, but as you know I’m—”

  “ON PROBATION!” They both yelled at the same time and gulped back their eggnogs.

  At least that was the only Christmas party I’d have to deal with this year. The shindig at Bruce’s school is an employees-only thing, thank God, which means I would be spared small talk about this little prodigy’s knack for recombining DNA and that little virtuoso’s stellar turn at Carnegie Hall.

  When he came home from that, the following evening, he told me they were promoting him to a scout, or Parker School Representative, as they call it. Yes, they have talent scouts at these schools. Essentially, Bruce explained, he’ll still be teaching, but starting in January, he’ll also be traveling around the country once in a while to convince the parents of gifted kids to send their precious little bundles to his school. I think they should give him a commission for each one he brings in, but he balked at the idea of suggesting it. With tuition alone at over ten thousand dollars a year, I think it was the least they could do to thank him.

  If anyone deserves a raise at that school, Bruce does. He loves those kids, even though they’re irritating to most everyone but their parents. Plus, he has a Master’s degree. If I had a Master’s degree, I probably would have been promoted by now, too. Morgan has an MBA and she’s been promoted countless times. Maybe if Bruce makes enough money, I could quit Kendra White and go back to school full-time in the fall. It was definitely something to think about. A Master’s degree would make a marvelous Christmas present. If Bruce can’t think of anything to get me this year, I just might suggest it.