Interior
Her mind lives in a quiet room,
A narrow room, and tall,
With pretty lamps to quench the gloom
And mottoes on the wall.
There all the things are waxen neat
And set in decorous lines;
And there are posies, round and sweet,
And little, straightened vines.
Her mind lives tidily, apart
From cold and noise and pain,
And bolts the door against her heart,
Out wailing in the rain.
-- Dorothy Parker
Her reflections frown back at her as she models the dress in the angled mirrors. She can barely hear the salesgirl coo over how the dress looks on her or her mother's soft claps of agreement. She smoothes her hands over the fabric; it's sleek under her fingertips and she feels delicate, like she's wrapped in a cloud that's had the fluff beaten out of it. She tries to focus on the beading as the salesgirl twitters on about it, but all she can do is stare at her own mouth as it twists into that awful frown. She thinks a smile may be buried in her stomach and she thinks about reaching down her throat to pull it out, but she can't bear the thought and she wonders when things got so grim.
"...but we can hem it, of course, unless you'll be wearing high shoes."
She looks down into the salesgirl's chestnut eyes; they are round and slightly watery like a child that's about to cry. Maybe wedding dresses make her emotional, Pam wonders. But if they do, why would she work in a wedding dress shop?
As the salesgirl holds up matching jewelry, Pam can see that the girl isn't wearing a ring. A single girl working in a wedding dress shop might be one of the saddest things she's ever seen. And maybe the salesgirl feels that, too, and maybe that's why she always looks like she might cry. Maybe she's waiting for a throw-away groom to sweep her off her feet, like a comfortable sweater you might find at a second-hand store on a rainy day.
Pam looks at herself in the mirrors again, examines every angle of herself and wonders why it still doesn't feel right. She's supposed to marry Roy. Everyone's expecting her to now - they've set a date. You can't just back a way from a thing like that... can you?
She steps down from the pedestal and puts her back to the mirrors. Before she can utter a syllable, the salesgirl is attacking the zipper of the dress and her mother is at her side, reciting the to-do list like it's God's prayer.
"...and I was thinking some yellow posies in the bouquet, for a bit of - Pam, are you listening?"
She blinks and looks at her mother. She feels cold air on her back and reaches around to close the back of the gown around herself. The bunched fabric feels different in her fist, like a slippery stone that she's eager to throw.
She sees the way her mother looks at her and there's nothing she can do to stop the tears. They fall like lonely, fat soldiers and surrender without regard onto the front of the wedding dress. She buries her face in her mother's shoulder as the burden falls away from her own.
Her mother wraps her arms around her tightly and kisses the top of her head. She asks gently, "What's wrong?"
"I can't marry him," Pam chokes out between sobs. "He isn't... I don't... I can't! I can't."
Her mother just hugs her tighter and whispers in her ear, tells her that it will all be okay.
For the first time all day, the salesgirl's eyes are completely dry. She gathers up the wedding dresses that Pam hasn't tried on yet and begins putting them back on the racks. They'll belong to someone else, someday.
