Nine Women, One Dress (14 page)

I shut that down right away. I couldn't tell him what I did for a living, and I couldn't bear lying to him, so I proposed a pact: we'd just talk like we were old friends, no backstory necessary. He agreed, and we settled into a lively conversation about our favorite haunts in New York, politics, and a shared love for sitting alone in the balcony of the Paris movie theater until it was time to meet the tour.

The tour was great fun. It was filled with both little-known and fascinating tidbits that neither of us had been aware of. The guide showed us pictures of all the stars who rode the famed 20th Century back in the day. I think that was John's favorite part. Mine was the Campbell Apartment, the beautiful residence of a tycoon from the 1920s turned into a cocktail bar. It was like an interior version of a secret garden.

After the tour was over, an awkwardness that we had somehow previously avoided crept in. It was clearly time for us to go our separate ways.

“Thanks for making me come with you. I loved it. I'm going to bring my kids next time,” I said, forgetting my no-backstory rule. He jumped on it.

“Oh, so you have a family?” He smiled coyly.

I gave him a little. “Twin girls, divorced.”

“I pity the fool who let you get away.” I smiled back. What a kind thing to say. What a nice guy. “You know, there's a secret tennis court in this building that they didn't show us. I can get court time.” Married man asking me on a date—okay, maybe not such a nice guy. I paused, trying to figure out how to respond.

“You know, my best friend just got separated. How about in two Saturdays I bring him and my wife and we double…literally!”

Not a date. At least, not with him. I didn't know whether I was happy or disappointed with his honorable follow-up.
Oh my god
, I thought,
what am I doing? End this now!

“I'm sorry, I, um, I don't date separated men. They're never really ready to date, and I don't like being in that position.”

He responded faster than Roger Federer at the net. “Then just you and I can play. My wife won't mind at all.”

I'm sure she wouldn't
, I thought, feeling sad and awful for not being able to tell John the truth.

“Okay, let's do it,” I said.
It's just a tennis game
, I thought.
It's not like it ends in love
.

We arrived at Charles De Gaulle a bit later than expected. We dropped our bags at our flat and dispersed to go about our days. My father and brother went to work, my mother to shop for groceries. She instructed me and Shireen to go and collect our grandmother and bring her back home. She had been staying with our cousins on the outskirts of Paris while we were away. They live in the same neighborhood that my sister will be moving to in two weeks, after she is married. She says she might as well move back to Saudi Arabia. I know this is not true. I remind her that her fiancé is modern and even promised to teach her to drive. My sister says I am naive.

As we exit the Métro station into Paris's eighteenth arrondissement it's as if we have entered a different world. Though it's well before the start of Friday's
jumu'ah
(noon prayer), the police stand guard on closed-off streets, which will soon be filled with hundreds of faithful Muslims kneeling on their mats. There is no longer enough room inside the mosque to accommodate the worshippers. Shireen's shoulders tense at the sight of it. I don't fully understand her. If she hates being stared at as much as she always says, then I would think she would be happy to be among her own. Plus, let me explain a bit about this marriage: even though my parents arranged it, Shireen had the right to reject it. In Islam, a marriage must have consent from both the bride and the groom. The real truth is, while Shireen shares all her wild ideas and dreams with me, she would never be bold enough to go against our father. Most wouldn't. I definitely wouldn't. When my time comes, it will be easier. Shireen concerns herself with love, while I am more pragmatic about marriage. She is obsessed with never having kissed a man. Obsessed. I could care less. I never think about such things.

She turned to me and barked, “Let's get Jeddah and go straight home.” She meant that she didn't want to linger in the area and risk running into anyone from her fiancé Fareed's family. However, it was impossible they wouldn't be there to see us, as my
jeddah
has quite a big mouth and all of Goutte d'Or probably knew that we had been on holiday in New York and that we were coming to pick her up today.

As we entered our cousin's flat I could hear from the chatter that I was right. Fareed's whole family was there. Meaning just the women, of course. After what seemed like a hundred questions about New York they turned the inquisition to Shireen and the wedding plans. As Shireen's shoulders tensed again I cut them off with the excuse of having to get home to help our mother with the laundry and tonight's meal. Shireen was very happy with me. She squeezed my hand under the table. I felt for her—I did. I had thought she would come home from this trip settled in her head about what her life would be, but she is no different from before. Maybe worse. It was close to the start of noon prayers now, and if Shireen had not wanted to run into Fareed's family, I knew she definitely did not want to run into Fareed himself on his way to the mosque. I helped my grandmother with her things and we quickly left.

When we arrived home, the house was empty and our suitcase was leaning against the door of the room we shared. I helped Jeddah, and Shireen said she would begin unpacking. After I told Jeddah nearly every detail about New York, she admitted to being tired and I suggested she nap. I looked at my watch; it had been nearly an hour since we had arrived home. I was happy to be with Jeddah, though. Last year she was never tired or out of breath. Now it seemed that she was quite often. I hated to think of the day when she would not be with us.

When I got to our bedroom door, it was locked. I banged on it, shouting through the door for Shireen to open it. She was probably annoyed that I wasn't helping her unpack and was probably eating all the chocolates we had brought back as my punishment. Finally she opened the door just a crack and peered out. Then she pulled me in quickly, slammed the door, and locked it behind me. She was dressed in what I recognized as a Chanel suit. It was ivory wool, and the skirt fell just above her knee. It had four black-and-gold buttons on the jacket with the iconic trademark
C
's. It was stunning. She was stunning. I had no idea what was going on. I tried to ask her, but no words came out of my mouth. She pulled out one of her fashion magazines and shoved the picture in my face. With a glee I had never seen in her, she shouted, “Look—it's this season! This season's Chanel!” I still had no idea what was going on. She flipped open the black suitcase to reveal a treasure trove of couture. Someone else's treasure trove, for sure. She'd gone mad. I searched the outside of the suitcase, which did look a lot like ours and was shockingly shoddy compared to its couture contents, looking for a luggage tag. I opened it up. It had just a phone number on a tag that read
Pro-Travel, Beverly Hills, CA.

“This is not ours. We have to tell someone!” I protested.

Shireen protested right back. “No way. You will not ruin this for me,” she said. “It's a sign.”

I was about to list every single reason that she should do what I said—and believe me, the list was long—when she pulled out of the suitcase the most perfect little black dress I had ever seen.

“Try it on!” She threw it at me.

One touch and I was gone. As I whipped off my burqa and slipped into this exquisite dress, I ran through all the things that were wrong about this scenario. Shireen turned and opened the bathroom door so the mirror faced me. I looked up self-consciously. When I saw myself, something shifted inside me. I looked beautiful. I did. It was hard to even look at myself. I tried to take control of the situation, tried to be the rational sister, as I always had been, but all that came out of my mouth were four words that I had never uttered before, words that were entirely foreign to me: “Are there matching shoes?”

“Of course there are shoes!” she answered, digging through the suitcase to find a good pair. “And bags too!”

She tossed me a pair of black heels and a matching bag. I slipped them on and we smiled and giggled and took turns looking in the mirror. She spoke nonsense about us sneaking out to a club on the Champs-Élysées and her getting her first kiss, but I was barely listening. I was too busy looking at the girl in the mirror. I felt giddy, I felt so glamorous and attractive. And then, as if a tidal wave had hit me, I felt horrible. I sat down on the bed and began to cry. Shireen held me.

“Don't worry,” she said. “We won't get in trouble. It happens all the time with luggage.”

I shook my head, unable to speak what I was feeling. Barely audibly, I muttered, “That's not it.” She looked in my eyes and she knew. She knew that I knew what she had known all along. I could tell she felt bad about it, about her part in changing my perception of our world. But really, she was not to blame. She had been filling my head with faithlessness and skepticism for as long as I can remember; it had never touched me. I knew that both Shireen and I would grow old in the tradition of our mother and grandmother. But suddenly it didn't feel like it would be enough for me. As I stood in front of the mirror in the beautiful little black dress, I knew that I was looking at a woman whom I would never see again. I wished I had never seen her in the first place, but the truth is she had always been there. I was being dishonest to myself by pretending that she hadn't.

Shireen's eyes teared up as well. “I'm sorry,” she said quietly.

I quickly took off the shoes and the little black dress and put my burqa back on. I helped her pack up the bag. The phone rang, and somehow we knew it was the airline. We heard my mother coming up the stairs. Shireen was still wearing the Chanel suit. I quickly took her burqa off the bed and pulled it on over her head, over the suit. She laughed through watery tears. We zipped up the suitcase just as my mother came to the door to ask us about it.

“Have you unpacked your suitcase, girls? The airline is looking for a lost bag!”

“We have not,” I answered as she entered the room.

That day marked the first time I had lied to my mother, and the last time I lied to myself.

It had been raining out when I'd walked into Sherri's building an hour before, and now as I left the sun was peeking through the clouds. I saw it as some kind of sign from Marilyn that I was moving in the right direction. It only helped my case that I looked particularly ridiculous today. I was wearing a slim-cut sports jacket with paisley lining and skinny jeans that Sherri had convinced me to buy a few weeks back. She said I was very close to looking hip. I said I was very close to needing a hip replacement. We laughed together for probably the last time that I can remember. We rarely got each other's jokes.

My intention when I entered her apartment was to break up with her right away, but I soon came up with a bunch of excuses to delay it. She was a girl whose father had walked out on her, and she was making up for that loss with me. It wasn't my money, although I'm sure that helped; it was my age—I was simply a stand-in father figure. This had a lot to do with the reason I hadn't broken up with her sooner. I didn't want to be another older man who left her. Plus I'd always hoped she would tire of me before this conversation would have to take place. I looked into her eyes and tried to gather my nerve.

Her eyes were so young-looking; they were often the thing that embarrassed me most about our age difference. Not her girlish figure, her luminous smile, or her soft skin, which had seen nearly half the sunny days that mine had, with twice the sunblock. It was her eyes. She had yet to develop the tiny lines that eventually spring out from the corners of people's eyes like sunbeams signaling age, but also life. Whoever named those lines crow's feet did them a huge etymological disservice. If they called them eagle's feet, maybe they'd be worn like a badge of honor. I've come to see that recently. I never thought about it with Marilyn—we grew older together. But I see more beauty in eyes that have seen things. When I looked into Sherri's youthful eyes, I saw an old man with a girl half his age. I saw the truth. I liked Felicia's eyes. I realized that was the gist of what I had to explain to her.

She beat me to the punch. “Is something going on?” she asked, adding that she'd noticed that I had been distant lately. She'd have to be dense not to have noticed. I jumped on it, explaining to her, kindly, that I was worried I was wasting her time and that while I want to marry again, I want it to be to an equal, a teammate, not a trophy wife. Someone who's at my stage in life, who's had some of the same experiences, maybe. And then her young eyes started to cry and I felt bad. But she cried just a little bit, and really, just like that it was over. It was nothing compared to the histrionics that had surrounded that little black dress.

I handed her my handkerchief and she wiped her eyes with it. Afterward she straightened it out and ran her fingers over my initials sewn into the corner.

“Can I keep it?” she asked.

“Of course,” I responded.

I was surprised and touched by her sentiment, but as I left her building, the only real emotion I felt was relief.

New York City had quickly grown on me, and as the rules of southern hospitality demanded, I returned the favor and grew on it right back. It wasn't at all subtle, like the way you fall in love with the South, real slow on a hot August day, sipping sweet tea from a Mason jar. It was quick. Two shots of Patrón with a Red Bull chaser at the rooftop bar of the Standard Hotel and I was gone. And believe you me, this wasn't just some one-night stand. It was reaffirmed at the corner bagel shop the next morning. True love schmeared between two halves of my first warm-from-the-oven everything bagel. So long, grits!

From then on I fell in love on a near-daily basis. And lucky me, the feeling was mutual! I think New York City first started falling in love with me on account of my accent; the very accent that I had spent my first weeks swallowing with my morning coffee was just the thing that ended up making people fuss over me. Turns out that people weren't as judgmental as I first thought. By and by, most folks that I came across found me entertaining.
Delightful
was actually the word they used most. “Your accent is
delightful
.” Sometimes it was
refreshing
, often
charming
, and once even
enchanting
.

And just like that, New York was crushing on Sally Ann Fennely. Not on account of my long legs and perfect smile and wavy blond hair, though I'm sure all that opened doors. But it was what I said and how I said it that got me invited in. It meant so much to me to know that it wasn't just on account of my looks. As soon as I realized it, I began to lay it on heavier than a cow in a cotton field. Sounds pretty charming, right? A cow in a cotton field? Well, guess what, that's not even a thing. I just made it up right on the spot. That cow in that cotton field was just the kind of thing that had people going on about how refreshing and real I was.

I first noticed the reaction at dinner in the women's boardinghouse where I live. Yes, there are still women's boardinghouses in New York City. When word first came in that I'd been accepted at the modeling agency, my mama, who had been pushing me all along, began to backpedal. Suddenly spooked at the reality of me living in the big city, she started Googling statistics on crime rates and the air-quality index—this from a woman who spent half her life with a cigarette dangling from her lips. But my grandma had a plan. She was a big Sylvia Plath fan and told us all about how when Sylvia Plath moved to New York she lived in a women's boardinghouse, a safe place called the Barbizon. She even wrote about it in
The Bell Jar
. Somehow this risky analogy worked, as if suicidal Sylvia Plath had the makings of a role model.

The Barbizon was long closed, but there were about ten others to choose from; I ended up renting a room at a boardinghouse on the Upper West Side that supplied two meals a day and had a house mother and a twenty-four-hour doorman. Plus there was a strict no-boys policy. Mama was thrilled, and to be honest, I was happy about it too. I didn't feel any more grown up or capable of living alone than I had the day before finding out I would be a runway model. The whole setup sounded more like a college sorority than life in the big city—though when I got here, no one seemed very sisterly to me. Well, at least not straightaway.

The first week at dinner I sat with the wrong girls—two other models, who barely introduced themselves and spent the entire meal discussing whether you can really wear black and navy together. (You can.) As the next week began I was late for dinner on account of my neighbor being busted for sneaking a boy up to her room. The matron was in the hallway pitching a conniption fit, and I was too frightened to try and slip by. When I finally made it down, I sat at the only seat available, between two smart-looking girls.

I must have looked a fright, 'cause they came right out and asked me what was the matter. Forgetting my efforts to subdue my southern accent, I blurted out, “That matron is madder than a wet hen!” They started to laugh. At first I thought they were making fun of me. My blushing cheeks must have given it away, 'cause the dark-haired girl, Margot, jumped right in and turned it around.

“What a great expression, ‘madder than a wet hen.' I have to write that down!”

Turns out that she and the other girl, Halle, worked at
New York
magazine as interns. They didn't get paid much, but they were invited to everything. One was from no farther away than Brooklyn, but her parents had wanted her to move out, and the other was from Boston.

I don't know if they were honing their journalistic skills or if they were just nosy, but they sure did ask a lot of questions. “Where are you from?” “Why is a wet hen so mad?” “What are southern boys like?” “What do you do for kicks in Alabama?” I tried to sound interesting, but it was real hard. I didn't imagine that tales of cotton farming and Friday night football would interest them. Luckily they
loved
my accent. It seemed that listening to me talk and hearing about a place they'd never been interested them plenty. That was the first time that I thought maybe I would stay in this big noisy city with a zillion people in it. Friends can really make any place seem livable, I think. The trick is to find a few of your own, and by the end of that dinner I felt like I had.

One night Margot got three seats to a Broadway musical through work and took Halle and me along. The first thing my grandma had said when we got word about me coming to New York was that I should go see a big musical on Broadway. She said it was something she had always wanted to do but she had never had the chance. I felt so grateful and excited to be going and a little bad that my grandma never had. I vowed to remember every last detail and relay them all to her on our Sunday call. My excitement was slightly squashed once we got to our seats. Turns out my friends' editor's son and a friend of his were in the seats next to us, and they were kind of cocky. Before the show even started they asked us to join them for dinner after at a famous old theater-district restaurant called Sardi's. Thanks to Wikipedia and the crazy long line for the ladies' room at intermission, I found out that Sardi's is famous for having hundreds of stars' caricatures on its walls. That sounded fine and all, but I really didn't care for these two boys. The more they spoke, the stupider they seemed, like they didn't even have the sense they were born with. Margot insisted we had to go on account of wanting to make a good impression on her boss, and Halle said we should go 'cause it would be fun. So we did. But it wasn't.

Halfway between the appetizers and the main course, and well on my way to the realization that I was the fifth wheel, I excused myself to “go tee-tee,” a line that usually had Margot and Halle in stitches, but this time they were so busy trying to impress these nincompoops that I got nothing. As I passed the bar, I decided to prolong my absence by sitting down and ordering a cosmopolitan. I didn't even know what was in one, just that it was pink. Like most girls my age, the sum total of my knowledge of what to do in a Manhattan bar came from watching reruns of
Sex and the City
. The older man sitting next to me was dressed like he was someone important, but he was a bit liquored up. He was drawing a pitchfork and devil horns on a photo in
New York
.

“My girlfriends work for
New York
,” I said, channeling my inner Carrie Bradshaw.

“I have nothing against the magazine,” he said, slurring a little, “just this nightmare of a woman!” He shoved the picture toward me.

Under his devil scrawls was, according to the caption, an actress from
That Southern Play
. But it was the strangest of coincidences. I looked closer. There was no question: the actress was wearing
my
dress! Well, not my dress, really, but the one that got my picture on the front of
Women's Wear Daily
and a host of modeling jobs to boot.

“That's my dress!” I exclaimed proudly.

He plopped down his glass for a refill, and the bartender reluctantly poured him another while explaining to me, “Don't mind him—he produced what was to be the hottest play of the season and his actress flew the coop.”

“That's awful,” I said, 'cause it was.

“
She
was awful,” he answered. “She did a horrible southern accent, and her reviews were dreadful. I hired her only because the investors pushed me to. I'll never do that again.”

“Like my grandma always says, you lie down with dogs, you wake up with fleas.” I looked at the desecrated picture again and added, in full southern drawl, “Bless her heart.”

Hearing my accent, he didn't seem to know if I was for real or was just mocking him, so he asked me, “What are you doing at this bar? Did someone send you over here to audition?”

“Audition? Why, no, sir. I'm just getting away from two boys who think the sun comes up just to hear 'em crow.”

The producer's eyes popped out. “Who sent you? Stephen Schwartz? Nathan Lane? That is quite a heavy accent you got there!”

“Heavier than a cow in a cotton field!” I told him.

And so it was that right there at Sardi's I auditioned for my first part on the Broadway stage for the producer of
That Southern Play.
Soon I'll make my Broadway debut! Not too shabby for an Alabama girl.

I don't mean to sound like a T-shirt, but really, I love New York!