“Oh, I think I do actually.”
` She pulls her shirt over her head and shoves her bra straps down in the cups because, unlike everyone else I've seen a lot of this morning, she isn't wearing a strapless bra. I don't even think she has one. We possibly should have hired a wedding planner. Or maybe we should all elope to an island. That sounds nice.
“Lace me up, sweetie.”
I look at her reflection. “Uh, no.”
“What?”
“Mom, look at this thing. There's no point in lacing it up.”
She turns a little, looking at herself from the side. “Hmm. It does look a little like a cheap nightgown, huh?”
“Yes. Take it off.”
She pulls at the dress around her stomach. “I think your abuela had this nightgown.”
“Seriously, Mom, one hour.”
“Right, right.”
I speed her through three more dresses, none of which have anything in common with any of the others, and there's screeching all around me and our time is over halfway done and I'm clearly not doing a good job of hiding my frustration, because my mother says, “Taylor, what is the matter with you? We were just doing this for fun, remember?”
“I know.” She's right; we were. The plan was we'd come down and see if we could find a dress, and mostly we'd laugh at the women who were panicking about never finding their dream gown.
Women like me, it turns out.
“It's just...we're not learning anything,” I say. “I thought we'd at least be able to narrow down what shape you want, but you're fine and not in love with any of these.”
“Hmm.”
I slump back against the wall and curse the ancient relative of the other bride who got the only sitting-spot in the whole room. “I just want to leave with at least some idea, you know?”
“I know. I just...” She turns her back to the mirror and cranes over her shoulder, trying to see the back where I've closed her up with what look like giant versions of the clips you put on top of chip bags after you've opened them and given up without finishing all of them. “I feel like I have to try on the dress before I know, you know? That I don't want to rule anything out because what if the right dress turns out to be something I never thought I'd want?”
“I know,” I say, because I do. If it were my wedding, I'd be worried about the same thing. Hell, I'm worried about it for the damn bridesmaid dress.
We don't like the idea of missing out, my mother and I.
This is possibly why I have only a vague idea of what chip clips look like, because I am not one to leave chips uneaten. It's a metaphor.
She smiles at me and nudges me towards our heap of dresses. “You pick the next one,” she says. “I bet you can find it.”
I pick one that's cream-colored and fluffy and light and before I even have it fully laced she's doing the teary face-fanning thing we always used to make fun of when we watched bridal shows. And it's still a totally silly thing to do, but on my mother it's even more beautiful than this dress is.
Which is very, very beautiful.
“What's the price,” she says, hands over her eyes. “I don't want to look.”
“Mom.”
“Oh, God, what.”
“Eight ninety-nine.”
And she screams, and I scream, and I have my arms full of satin and my mother and we dance around and I don't care that the other brides here are ten years younger than she, because all of them together couldn't hold a candle to the big impromptu bonfire that is my mother.
“See?” she says, her arms around me as we walk out of the store and through the rabid waiting crowd. “I told you it would be fun.”
Except the thing is, it wasn't fun. That celebration at the end didn't retroactively make it all fun. I'm glad we did it because we found the dress and had our great moment and I'm incredibly happy that she had a good time, but I didn't. I thought it was stressful and overwhelming and frustrating. We went in there without a plan, just like we would have if it were me looking for a dress, because my mother and I don't plan. We don't get stressed or overwhelmed or frustrated. We laugh and throw up our hands and have babies in college and date boys with girlfriends.
And it's strange, because what I'm doing with Theo and Josey does sound like one of our reckless things. It sounds like something I would do—maybe something my mother would do, if not for her Catholic guilt that's stronger than mine—for the experience, for the story, for the why not.
But I'm helping my mother stuff a sample-sale wedding dress into our trunk and realizing that I wish we had gone in there with magazine clippings, or a store map, or that we'd cleared this damn trunk out ahead of time.
I wish I'd had a plan. And I wish I knew what I want to be when I grow up. And I wish I'd known what school I want to go to since I was eight.
And I've never been in a relationship before that made me look at myself.
Being in one now doesn't sound like a very reckless thing.
“Let's get home,” my mother says, and I just nod, so that all the things I'm not telling her can't spill out of my mouth.
That night, I go to Josey's Facebook page. I look at the picture of her that I stared at months ago, when I couldn't handle the perfect composition and the perfect lighting and the perfect her, and I couldn't stop thinking about who took it. If it was Theo.
And now I'm
