The One That Got Away (15 page)

The bridal store I chose for the shopping expedition with Noah's mother, Unbridaled, is where I helped Nicole pick out her own dress a few years ago. I had been a little nervous that Anne-Marie would try to steer me toward a more traditional establishment, but when I sent her the name and address she just texted back
Sounds great
with a bride emoji and a smiley face. Anne-Marie, I have discovered, is an emoji addict.

“This is going to be so fun!” she says as we walk into the store, slipping a companionable arm around my waist.

Shelly, the sales attendant, asks for the date of my wedding. “Oh, um, it's not scheduled yet,” I stammer. “But I think maybe we'll get engaged next year…. I don't know.” The more I try to explain, the stupider I feel.

“I've seen the ring,” says Anne-Marie smoothly. “It's exquisite.”

Holy shit, a ring?
I gape at her, trying to figure out if she is just saving face for me or if, just possibly, there really
is
a ring. Noah would definitely have sought her opinion on it, if there were. And I know he would want to surprise me. But then again, he would've at least asked me to point him in the right direction—wouldn't he?

“Well then, let's get started, shall we?” says Shelly, beckoning us deeper into the space.

Although the place is familiar, being here for myself has a whole different feeling to it. Before, it was somebody else's wedding; now, any one of these creamy heaps of silk and tulle and sparkles could be for me.

“Have you thought about what sort of style you have in mind?” asks Shelly.

Darting an apologetic look at Anne-Marie, I shake my head. “Not really. Just…not puffy.”

“Not puffy. We can do that!” Shelly gives me a professional once-over and then nods crisply. “I think I'm getting some ideas.”

She shows Anne-Marie and me to a waiting area while she pulls a few gowns from the racks, then pops her head out from behind the curtain of the room where she's stashed them. “Showtime, missy. Come on in—you're going to need my help getting these on.”

I barely get a look at the first dress before she hoists it over my head, but I register some creamy tulle and a black velvet sash. An unexpected frisson of excitement ripples through me as I feel the cool silk lining slide into place over my skin. She pinches the spare fabric in the bodice into place with a pair of clamps, ties the sash, then pushes the curtain aside so I can show Anne-Marie.

“Over here,” says Shelly, herding me toward a small raised platform in front of a beveled three-way mirror. I step up, she settles the skirt of the dress around me, and finally I get a good look at myself.

And the first thing I do is laugh. It is just such an indescribably bizarre sensation—me, in a wedding dress. Because this isn't just a dress, this is a dress with a capital
D:
a full, gathered skirt sweeps the floor in a smooth bell, with a longer overlaid train swooping out behind me like a deflated parachute. The heavy boning of the bodice sculpts my torso into a Disney princess
silhouette, and the jaunty velvet sash defines my waist in a way that makes me vow to reconsider my standing policy on girly dresses.

Bemused, I turn to Anne-Marie for feedback. “Well?”

She twists her lips in evaluation. “It's pretty. But I have to say, it does look fairly…puffy.”

Shelly is already reaching for the sash to untie me. “You know, I have to try it,” she explains. “Every time a bride walks in here with a notion of what she doesn't want, I put her in it first, just to be sure. You wouldn't believe how many people wind up falling for exactly what they swore they didn't want.”

Anne-Marie smiles. “Very sensible. But my Sarina's a girl who knows her own mind.”

“So,” says Shelly as she goes to work extricating me from the puffy dress, “your mom seems lovely. Are you her only daughter?”

“Oh, that's not my mother,” I explain. “She's my boyfriend's—my future mother-in-law.”

“How sweet!” says Shelly. “That's great that she's doing this with you. Are you planning to shop with your mom, too? Or is yours as bossy as mine is?” she asks conspiratorially as she lifts another dress off the hanger.

I force myself to laugh. “Too bossy,” I say, and hold my arms up for the straps. I just can't deal with the awkward apology and the pity. Not on this particular occasion.

Anne-Marie declares the second dress too wimpy. The third one looks like it belongs on a flower child at a fancy drum circle; the fourth is meant for Jessica Rabbit. “Maybe I spoke too soon,” whispers Shelly in the dressing room. “Your mother-in-law's not exactly shy with her opinions, either!”

But the funny thing is, Anne-Marie is right on the money. She tips her head to one side as she studies me in the fifth dress, a sophisticated lace sheath. Then she lifts her slim shoulders briefly and makes a noise that sounds unexpectedly similar to “meh.”

“It's very pretty, but it just doesn't look like
you
,” she says. “Do you mind if I take a look around?”

“Go for it,” I tell her. I'm just a wee bit buzzed from the Prosecco Shelly has been feeding me, and Anne-Marie has good taste, and we're here—so why the hell not?

A few minutes later, she returns to the dressing area with an armful of dresses and a determined expression on her face.

“All right, let's see how we did!” says Shelly, graciously burying any trace of irritation at having her territory trampled.

The first of Anne-Marie's dresses is a total surprise: the same princess silhouette as the first dress, the same jaunty sash, but rendered in a heavy handmade lace and a flirty knee-length shape. I never would have dreamed of a cropped dress, but the effect is darling: flirtatious, feminine, but not taking itself overly seriously. I catch myself grinning as Shelly pins a dashing little birdcage veil onto my hair.

“This is adorable,” I say.

Anne-Marie's warm smile reminds me so much of her son that my heart glows.

Her other selections are just as good. All of a sudden I don't feel like a little girl playing dress-up, I feel like myself, trying on dresses that I might possibly get married in. At some point in the not-so-incredibly-distant future. But while they're all lovely, I'm not getting any chest-fluttery “this is The One” type feelings; I'm just having fun trying out all the different possibilities.

And then Shelly puts me into the next-to-last dress, and I flutter.

I know, courtesy of
Project Runway
, that it is an updated Grecian-inspired style, with filmy chiffon layers that drape softly over the curve of my hips and ripple down to the floor. The deep sweetheart neckline flatters my modest bust, and gathered cap sleeves soften the squareness of my shoulders. It is not white or ivory but the palest, palest gray, and it was made for me.

“Wow,” I breathe. For the first time, I feel like a
bride
.

Anne-Marie presses her fingers to her lips, tears shimmering in her eyes. “Wow,” she echoes. “You are a vision.” We smile tremulously at each other in the mirror for a long moment.

“Well, ladies,” says Shelly. “Consensus at last.”

I laugh, relieved to let the intense moment go. “Yeah, I think so!” I smooth the gossamer silk over my waist lovingly. I don't want to take it off. “Anne-Marie, could you take a photo so I can show my stepdad?”

“Of course, sweetheart.” She reaches for her phone and snaps a couple of photos.

When I emerge from the dressing room, Shelly hands me a thick letterpress card featuring the store's cute retro logo, and the style name and price of the dress written in her swirly handwriting underneath. “Wynne,” it's called. The dress I am going to marry Noah in.

Over lunch at Albion an hour later, I almost work up the nerve to ask Anne-Marie if she was bluffing about the engagement ring. Almost. Instead, I keep sneaking glances at my left hand, trying to imagine it with something sparkling back at me. What if I don't like it? What if it's
too
sparkly? I adjust the heart pendant at my collarbone and remind myself that the style of the damn thing doesn't ultimately matter one bit, it's the depth of the feeling that goes with it.

“You know,” says Anne-Marie after a delicate sip from her wineglass—she holds it by the stem, the way you're supposed to but no one else I know actually does—“I had forgotten how lovely this restaurant is. It's been a couple years since I've seen it, but it still looks so elegant.”

“Thank you so much.”

“Really,” she says, studying the custom walnut-and-smoked-mirror installation behind the maître d' station. “You have a special talent, and I admire that.”

“That means a lot to me,” I say sincerely. “And thank you so much for coming down to do this with me. This has been lovely. I'm
so
glad you suggested it.”

“I am too,” she says. “I really am. I've always wanted to know you better, but I wasn't sure
you
did.”

“Oh…I—”

She waves aside my apology. “No, no, no. Don't apologize. I can't imagine what it's like for you, not having your mom around. And I didn't want to push, or have you think I was trying to make myself more important in your life than I ought to be.”

“Thank you for being so considerate,” I say. “But I think it will be nice…to have a mother-in-law.”

Her smile reminds me of Noah, again. “And I want you to know, I'm sorry for the way we leaped on you the last time you visited. I hope you can forgive us. We're just excited for the future, excited to have you in our family. And we are so very gratified to see Noah so happy. You will understand
—one day
,” she emphasizes, with self-deprecating charm that makes me smile, “the pleasure that comes from seeing your child's joy.”

“I bring him joy?” The thought is unexpectedly humbling.

“Of course you do, dear. His first wife…” Her voice trails away on a sigh. “She disappointed him so badly.”

“How so?” The essence of what Noah had told me was that he and his ex, whom he had met in the Peace Corps, had simply married young and then gradually drifted apart. I'd always assumed there was a little more to it than that, but he was too much of a gentleman ever to badmouth her or blame her for their breakup, so I never got another angle on it.

Anne-Marie twitches up one side of her nose noncommittally. “I think she wanted him to stay exactly who he was when he
was twenty-three. Idealistic and hell-bent on saving the world. Not that saving the world isn't a noble goal, but she couldn't accept anything else as worthy. Certainly not earning a decent living. She was the type who preferred to be broke all the time just to prove something to the world.”

“Bit of a martyr complex?”

“And how. The first Christmas he was working at Bowman Gise, he bought her a couple of beautiful cashmere sweaters. He thought they would be nice for her to have, instead of all her thrift-store stuff. And she turned it into a lecture about materialistic culture and the evils of capitalism.”

I lift my napkin in my hands and snap it threateningly.

“My thoughts exactly,” says Anne-Marie. “She wasn't a bad girl, she just didn't appreciate him for who he is. She thought she was marrying someone exactly like herself, and she got disillusioned when he grew up.”

“I am selfishly glad she did,” I say.

“As you should be!” she says, clinking her glass against mine. “I am, too, at the end of the day. I will never forget the first real talk we had, after he had been seeing you for a little while. He said, ‘Mom, she makes me feel like she needs me. And it's
nice
to be needed.' ”

“That sounds like me four years ago, yes,” I admit.

“No, even now,” she says, laying a reassuring hand on my wrist. “Needing someone is part of loving them. And I can see how much you love him. It was all in your face today, when you looked at yourself in that beautiful dress. You were seeing yourself walking down the aisle to him.”

The next day is the annual Round Top Antiques Fair, about an hour's drive south of Austin: a sprawling maze of sales booths set
up by vendors hawking everything from yard-sale junk to valuable antiques, all of it piled up for display under the glaring sun. Texas being Texas and Austin being weird, there's a delicious flavor of nuttiness to many of the offerings, which I'm certain doesn't exist anywhere else in the world. It's the in-between that Eamon and I are hoping to find. When I mentioned that I was heading to Round Top in hopes of scoring some bargain goodies for his house, his face lit up with curiosity.

“This is where you found that cowboy art for Clementine, right? Do you mind if I come?”

Of course I didn't mind. It would make more sense for him to come with me and see things in person than to send me approvals based on camera phone photos. And, of course, the fact that it was his suggestion absolved me of guilt for enjoying his company.

We hit the road early, to beat the heat. As much as anyone ever does beat the heat in Austin in September. While Eamon drives, I run down our shopping list. So far we've established a late-mid-century modern feel for his house, with luxurious, masculine materials like walnut and cowhide, and touches of seventies brass and smoked glass here and there to brighten it up. Round Top is a treasure trove for smaller, inexpensive pieces like lamps, side tables, and artwork, so I'm confident that we'll score some great stuff.

When we arrive, we park in the long grass near the fair entrance and dive in. I haven't seen him so excited since the day we found his house—I feel like I've escorted a six-year-old into F.A.O. Schwarz. My idea was to start with a few vendors I know will be up his alley and then wander at will, but he insists on proceeding methodically through the aisles, stopping at every single booth, so that we leave literally no Lucite-framed Rocky poster or giant painted giraffe statue unturned.