Shopping with Mom during Christmas season. “Joy to the World” doesn’t begin to cover it. My plan, basically, is to make sure she’s dressed completely wrong for the opera, that is to say, let her buy the type of thing she usually wants—the three Bs: Bare midriff, Bustier, and Butt cleavage. It’s the least I can do for Arnold’s soon-to-be-ex-wife and soon-to-be-ex-dog.
Arnold actually gave Mom a thousand dollars to buy a dress, and the whole way to the Falls, Mom sits in the driver’s seat of ye olde purple convertible, talking about Arnold in fishing terms—hook, line, and sinker; reel him in; cast the net. But when we pull into our parking space, Mom clutches my arm.
“I am soooo glad you came with me.”
“What?”
“It’s just … I wouldn’t know how to dress around opera people!”
I stare at her. And then I feel the steel bars of my resolve melting. Melting, I tell you. I can’t send her out there looking stupid, if she knows she looks stupid. I can’t.
“It’s fine,” I say. “Come on. Let’s get down to some serious shopping.”
Play the shopping montage scene here (like the one in Pretty Woman, where Richard Gere took the hooker to Rodeo Drive). Mom and me at Macy’s, trying on satin, taffeta, and velvet; in Bloomingdales, putting makeup samples on each other; and at Mayors, trying on real jewelry we definitely aren’t buying. Since it’s nearly Christmas, I choose a black velvet dress with a dark green satin sash and a bare back—but no butt cleavage. Then we go downstairs to choose shoes.
“How about these?” Mom holds up a pair of silver high-heeled sandals.
“Too sexy,” I tell her. It’s fun playing What Not to Wear, saying what I actually think for once.
We finally get her into some black satin slingbacks with an open side and what Mom calls “toe cleavage” (the only cleavage I’d let her show) and some real-looking fake diamond and emerald earrings. We’re almost finished with our shopping trip and, so far, we’ve done a decent job of avoiding taboo topics, such as her dating a married man.
On the way out, we pass Jessica McClintock. Mom looks in the window.
“Uh-uh, Mom. Waaaay too young. That’s where my friends shop for prom dresses. You want to look sophisticated.” This is fun.
She puts her hand on my elbow. “I know, I know. I didn’t mean for me.”
She guides me into the shop and points to the most beautiful teal blue satin, full-skirted dress. “Do you have a dance or something coming up?”
The dress would be perfect for my opera scene. I was going to wear my last year’s Homecoming dress, but this is even better. “We can’t afford it.”
“I didn’t spend all the money Arnold gave me,” she says, showing me three hundred-dollar bills.
That’s just about what a plane ticket to New York would cost. I could ask her about the summer program. But she says, “Just try it on.” And I do. It won’t fit me anyway—it’s a size three. So I let her lead me into the fitting room.
“Remember that time when I was thirteen and I got stuck inside the dress I was wearing to Derek Wayne’s bar mitzvah?” I ask her.
Mom giggles. “That was pretty funny.”
“It was not. I had to be cut out of it. It was totally humiliating.” I can still picture it: me, lying on my bed, squealing like a pig, while Mom took her pruning shears to the pink satin.
“Here, let me get that.” Mom turns me around so my back is toward her, then zips the dress in one move. “No problems now. You look perfect.”
I stare at my reflection. The dress fits great, and I look like a professional opera singer in it. I could be playing Juliet, singing her waltz song, or Marguerite in Faust, before she gets pregnant and arrested and dies, or Violetta, or … “Can I have it?”
Mom nods.
At the cash register, she’s still bubbling. “You look great. We’ll look like sisters.”
I roll my eyes, but turn away so she can’t see me doing it. When I don’t answer, she says, “You know what I wish?”
“What?”
“I wish you would like me, Caitlin. You used to.”
I’d been thinking the same thing, but I say, “Of course I like you.”
She gives me this look like, Yeah, right, and says, “Well, I guess we should pay for the dress before we find something else.”
Opera_Grrrl’s Online Journal
Subject: Shopping (Guilt) Trip
Date: December 2
Time: 4:35 p.m.
Listening 2: “Martern Aller Arten” (“Tortures Unabating”) from The Abduction from the Seraglio
Feeling: Tired
Weight: 116 lbs.
Shopping w/Mom 2day. It reminded me of when I was little and yet, fat, and Mom was this life-sized Barbie doll. We’d go shopping & I could live vicariously thru her—trying short skirts on her skinny body and satin bustiers on her perfect breasts. Back then, I was sooo proud that my mom was prettier than every1 else’s. She’d tell me that once I lost that “baby fat” I’d be beautiful—and then we’d go buy Häagen-Dazs at the food court. Once upon a time, I wanted 2 be just like her.
2day, I pretended I still do ............. When I used 2 like Mom, it was comfortable, like nothing could ever hurt me. I wish I could tell her everything, about Sean and how stupid I was not 2 figure out about him and Rudy sooner, about how right she was about Dad, and about how scared I am of not being good enough, or maybe being good enough ...... I haven’t talked 2 her in so long, since I grew up and learned what was what. I wonder if I could again.
But I remember Mrs. Arnold and ........ I can’t.