Until I Say Good-Bye (25 page)

Kleinfeld's

T
he story of our trip to Kleinfeld's cannot be understood without further zooming into focus on this fourteen-year-old who is my daughter.

Key word there:
fourteen
.

On the plane to New York, Marina told me of a middle school band trip she had taken recently where a member of the band chewed up granola bars, spit them into a barf bag, and added orange juice for a true vomit effect. She thought that was hilarious.

As we pulled up to our hotel on Times Square, Marina noticed one of her favorite clothing stores across the street. “Oh my gosh! It's three stories!”

Inside the hotel one eve, we boarded an elevator with pizza boxes. Another couple in the elevator also had pizza, and we chatted pizza with them.

“Man, that was AWK-ward!” Marina said of the pizza chatter as we got off the elevator.

This was the girl I took to the fancy store for wedding dresses.

A child.

An awkward, beautiful child.

I'd arranged the visit with Kleinfeld's months in advance: sweating the details, assuaging the management, convincing the store they should allow us to come in for a special fitting even though we were not buying a dress.

As the trip approached, I would ask Marina if she was excited. “Yeah,” she'd say in her high-pitched squeaky voice, the one she uses when she's really not sure.

“Sure, Mom,” she'd say, shrugging her shoulders.

She still gushed about that tattoo parlor, though.

Yes, Marina was more enthused about (almost) getting a blue cornflower on her ankle to represent her mom's fight with ALS than trying on stinkin' $10,000 wedding gowns.

Awkward, beautiful, dear.

Friday morning was our Kleinfeld's visit. Stephanie and Marina arranged for a car service to take us the twenty-five blocks: an over-the-top handicapped van with a wheelchair lift, though I was able to get out of my wheelchair with assistance and transfer into a normal car.

The electric gates and ramps opened. The driver wheeled me in and strapped me down like Hannibal Lecter, then closed everything up.

“I feel like I'm taking you to the dog pound!” Steph said, cracking up.

I laughed too.

I knew if I started crying, I might never stop.

On the ride, Marina kept turning and looking at me in the back of the van. “You okay, Mom?”

“I am fine,” I said.

At Kleinfeld's, I was unloaded like a piece of cargo. We rolled across the bustling, dirty city sidewalk—with scaffolding overhead and the distinct smell of marijuana—and into a dream.

Flower arrangements ten feet high. White grillwork on a Romeo-and-Juliet balcony. An ivory gown posed with a black tuxedo, a headless bride and groom.

“Wow!” I said.

I was wearing a new black outfit, one of four I had shopped for with Stephanie before the trip. Marina wore jean shorts, a sleeveless shirt, and sneakers. She stood with her hands crossed over her chest, looking like this was the last place on the planet she wanted to be.

Even “Remember that from the show?” drew little more than a nod.

The kind Kleinfeld ladies began walking us around the showroom. Stephanie pushed my chair, Marina beside me. They pointed out rooms like practiced tour guides, naming off the designers on display. Alita Graham. Pnina Tornai. There were rows and rows of dresses. Bedazzled. Be-blinged. Tulle clouds that made Princess Diana's dress look modest.

Marina said not a word.

We turned the corner to the dressing rooms. The white salon. The famous storage room where hundreds of dresses hang in plastic protector sleeves. The one Randy scurries back to on the show to pluck out “the One” for the flummoxed bridezilla fighting with her mother in the fitting room.

On television, the storage room is a smorgasbord of frosted delights. In real life, it's a glorified closet. That morning, Kleinfeld's seemed much smaller.

And the dresses much larger, like they were for eight-foot fairy-tale brides in castle weddings. The Spencer-Wendel women are barely over five feet tall.

Marina and I were overwhelmed.

“Want to try one on?” I slurred, touching Marina's hand. We were in a room full of flying dresses, looking up at their bottoms. Extra storage, we were told. A conveyor belt of dresses that stretched all the way to the next block.

“Okay,” Marina said in her squeaky voice.

“Tell them the style you'd like. Pick a silhouette.”

“Pick a silhouette” means pick the shape of the dress—wide ball gown, straight, A-line.

Marina stood mute.

I felt badly for bringing her. For foisting such an adult experience on a child. And crying, I knew, would only ramp that up a thousand times. So I held back.

As Marina disappeared silently into the dressing room, I tried not to think of my little girl on her wedding day.

I tried not to think of her as a baby in my arms. Nor her with her own baby in her arms one day.

I tried not to think of Marina right now, embarrassed by her mother's plans. By things she could not and should not yet understand.

Rather, I poured out wedding-dress tips to Stephanie.

I am leaving money in my will for Marina's wedding dress. Stephanie has promised to bring her back to Kleinfeld's to purchase it. Which in itself is crazy, amusing, and dear.

You see, Stephanie's all-time favorite clothing store is what we call the “Hoochie Mama” store, where tiny polyester sundresses and plastic stiletto shoes are all $9.99.

When we visited my publisher, I had to tell her, “Cover up. Wear something high on top.” She often pours her ample chest into the polyester in such a way I worry about a wardrobe failure.

And this was the woman I was counting on to help Marina pick the most sophisticated and lavish dress of her life.

Alas. I just hoped the godawful glut of strapless gowns would be outsourced to China by then. In my opinion, they made women look like linebackers.

“No stark white!” I said to Stephanie. “Ivory. Not too much tulle. Think lace.”

Marina had picked an A-line dress, one that flares out at the bottom like the letter. Or more precisely, the ladies of Kleinfeld's had picked it for her. Marina was too stunned to do more than nod.

“Think royalty when picking a dress,” I counseled Steph, as we waited outside the dressing room. “Think Princess Kate. Sophisticated. Elegant. Think long sleeves. They transform dresses to more formal.”

Marina came out.

Strapless. Flared. She looked like a fourteen-year-old girl parked in the middle of a giant cupcake, ready to tackle the quarterback.

“I don't like poofy,” she said.

That's my girl!

“How 'bout trying on one with long sleeves?” I asked her.

I had mentioned to the Kleinfeld's folks that my all-time favorite dress was the one Bella wore in the movie
Breaking Dawn
. A sheath of form-fitting silk with a sheer lace back and long sleeves with lace points extending over the hands.

The ladies brought out a dress similar to Bella's and Princess Kate's. Long lace sleeves and empire neckline, a ruched, fitted waist, long smooth silk skirt with a train.

Marina disappeared into the dressing room. I laid on “when the day comes” advice for Stephanie—“When the day comes, choose
x
.” “When the day comes, do
y
.” Advice I can't remember, for my heart was in that dressing room.

The door opened. Marina appeared, a foot taller and a decade older.

I could clearly see the beautiful woman she will be one day.

I simply stared.

What do you do in bright-line moments, when your loss whomps you on the head? When you glimpse a moment you will not live to see?

I dipped my head. Breathe, I told myself.

I looked up. I smiled, and Marina smiled back. I worked my tongue into position to speak.

“I like it,” I said.

Marina usually stands with a teenage hunch, but in that dress she stood straight, radiant and tall.

“You are beautiful,” I whispered, my tongue barely cooperating. I don't know if she heard me. I was slurring and fighting tears.

We took some photos.

And moved on.

A memory made.

Marina returned the dress and went back to her jeans shorts and sneakers. We rolled on quietly past the measuring room, the tuxedo room, the large underground room where dozens of women sat hunched over sewing machines.

There were too many people around to say what I wanted Marina to hear. How special she is to me.

That I will always be with her in spirit.

Always.

Kleinfeld's was not the place for such a conversation. Not with two saleswomen swirling around us, giving veil advice. Brides wandering red-eyed with team in tow. A stream of people cutting past us, ducking into changing rooms.

Kleinfeld's had been hesitant to let us try on dresses, worried that scads of terminally ill mothers might descend on them. No worries. Kleinfeld's was not the place for saying the words you hope your daughter will remember all her life.

Which probably is for the best.

For Marina is a child.

A child counting on her mother to be with her. To protect her.

They loaded me back into the handicap van, with its wheelchair cage. Steph made the same joke about the dog pound. I laughed to keep from crying. Oh sweet sister, don't break my heart.

“Can we get pizza on the way back?” was all Marina said.

“Of course,” I replied.

That night as I slept, Marina lay down beside me.

“You are so cute, Mom,” Stephanie heard her say.

She kissed me.

When I awoke the next morning, my daughter was sleeping beside me.

For Good

O
ur final night in New York, we made it a night just for the three of us: Marina, Stephanie, and me.

On the trip, there had been no discussions with Marina about illness or death. Not for a child who thinks small talk about pizza is awkward. Not for a child so thrilled by her new clothes bought in New York.

“It was on sale and the only extra small!” she squealed about a black miniskirt from the three-story wonder store by the hotel.

No, no deep discussions for her. What-oh-what would I even say?

So that final eve we did something where you don't have to talk. Something that left us speechless. We went to a Broadway show:
Wicked
.

It's a riff on
The Wizard of Oz
—the backstory of the friendship between Glinda the Good Witch and the green Wicked Witch. It was spectacular, with flying monkeys and gorgeous costumes and a green-skinned star who sang her heart out. I sat beside Marina. I touched her hand with my curled fingers, grateful for the dark silence and extravaganza before us.

In New York, I had cried once, when someone asked me to talk about my children. I didn't cry at Kleinfeld's, seeing Marina in that gown. Nor at the wedding. Nor when I was schlepped in that handicapped van like a piece of cargo.

Not until Marina leaned over to me in the dark theater and began singing along with the show, a song called “For Good.” The witches were singing good-bye to one another, accompanied by harp and horn.

It well may be

That we will never meet again

In this lifetime,

Marina softly sang.

My heart pounded, eyes welled.

So let me say before we part

So much of me

Is made from what I learned from you.

You'll be with me

Like a handprint on my heart.

I looked at my girl. My little girl. Slowly, I raised my hand, and wiped away tears. Beside me, Marina wiped hers away as well.

When the show was over, I asked her why she was crying.

“Because you were, Mom.”

Okay, I thought. No more of that.