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Guest Dress
A visitor in white
by Stephanie Piper
There is a visitor in our guest room, reclining on the four-poster bed and showing no signs of stirring anytime soon. The room is off-limits to everyone but me. I slip in occasionally, feeling a little like Mrs. Danvers, the spooky housekeeper in Rebecca.
The guest is a wedding dress, its shimmering folds spread out like a giant fan over the white coverlet. The bride-to-be is my future daughter-in-law, now living in Virginia in a small apartment with no guest room and no bed for the dress. Since her own mother and her own guest rooms are back home in Texas, I’ve been granted temporary custody.
The dress cannot be hung on a padded hanger in a moth-proof closet; the bodice will stretch. It cannot be swathed in plastic; the fabric will fade. The instructions from the gown experts are crystal clear. It must be laid out on a bed and left strictly alone until the day before the wedding, when it will be steamed by some yet-to-be-identified master dry cleaner and then whisked off to Abingdon for its debut.
In the meantime, it’s all up to me. This is as close to mother of the bride as I’m ever going to get, and I figure I ought to enjoy each shining moment.
Instead, I spend my time imagining leaks in the ceiling or plagues of satin-destroying dust mites. I adjust the shades and monitor the room’s temperature as though an invalid were in residence. From now until December, I’m chief curator of this bit of family-history-in-the-making. I intend to get it right.
Then I open a hall closet door and realize that I flunked the curator test a long time ago. There is another wedding dress in the house, languishing on a hanger without so much as a linen garment bag to protect it. It’s 62 years old and has been worn twice. Made for my mother, a willowy size 10, it was shortened for me 25 years later. I had fallen in love with its antique Brussels lace trim and silk taffeta train as a child, and planned the day when I would walk down a church aisle clothed in vintage splendor. I even imagined a future daughter of mine wearing the same dress, and a row of silver-framed photos showing the succession of brides.
After my own wedding, the dress was entrusted to my permanent care. I wrapped it in tissue and packed it away. It moved with us from suburban New York to Virginia to Connecticut to Manhattan to Chicago to Knoxville, and to my unpracticed eye, seemed none the worse for wear.
Now I shake out its rustling skirts and examine the parchment-colored lace, the sheer organza sleeves. No doubt this dress could have used its own guest room all these years. The creamy taffeta is paler than I remember, the train creased. Against all odds, the moths have left it alone.
I am the mother of sons. No daughter of mine will clamor to wear this 1940s relic, but I plan to be around for at least one more generation. I like to think there’s still hope for the row of silver-framed photos.
I carry the dress to another bedroom and place it on the bed, fanning out the rumpled folds. It needs some work, but I have time.
“Whose dress is that?” a small granddaughter may ask me one rainy day, opening a door, running a hand over the silky fabric, imagining a long church aisle and the whisper of a taffeta train.
Ours, I will say. Yours.
August 5, 2004 • Vol. 14, No. 32
© 2004 Metro Pulse
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