Page 2 of Best Woman

There are no malls in New York City. As a recovering mall goth, I find this sad. Malls are my favorite kind of liminal space, a portal to a bygone era that smells like Auntie Anne’s cinnamon pretzels and credit card debt.

On occasion, a woman finds herself in need of a garment so special in its mundanity, so particular in its ubiquitousness, that it can only be obtained in a large, air-conditioned building where one can also buy ill-fitting cargo pants made of microplastics, expensive body lotion that smells like rotten bananas, thigh-high boots that were trendy four years ago, a sleek new laptop, lipstick in one hundred nearly identical shades of mauve, vinyl records that will end up in a landfill when their owner has moved on to a new hobby, and designer perfume.

I am a woman who has found herself with this particular need, meaning that after three subway transfers and one sojourn on the Long Island Rail Road, I am at a mall.

The skylights, soft pop music, and power walking senior citizens remind me of home.

I spent enough of my adolescence in malls to know that they are all fundamentally one shared space stretching across the fabric of reality.

This mall is my childhood mall, the mall of my ancestors, my children’s mall, etc.

I pass a department store full of middle-aged women returning jeans they’ve already worn twice, a fast fashion chain selling fetish wear to teenagers, and, of course, a Starbucks.

“New phone case?” The pimply teenage salesman stares at my chest, not that he’ll find much there.

“Try our new falafel recipe!” I spit out the overcooked ball of fried chickpeas as soon as the kind-eyed woman who forced them on me is in the distance.

“You’d look gorgeous with some extensions.

” The pretty girl running the kiosk probably means that I’d look better with extensions, as the rain and humidity have both flattened my hair and electrified it with frizz, but alas.

I check my boring brown bangs in my phone camera, but they’re beyond repair.

After walking what feels like miles, I finally reach my destination.

Born to Bride is tucked away in an older corner of the mall that clearly hasn’t been renovated to keep up with the newer additions.

While there are, according to the Born to Bride website, thirty-five locations across the country, this was the only one in New York State.

Headless brides clutch plastic flowers in the windows, which seems like a bad marketing strategy—how are they supposed to sell veils that way?

Do brides still wear veils, or is that outdated?

I text Aiden. Is Rachel wearing a veil?

nah he replies right away. fuck that purity culture bullshit. she might be doing a flower crown though. very early lana.

I can’t deal with my twenty-seven-year-old heterosexual brother knowing who Lana Del Rey is, so I drop my phone back in my bag and head inside the store, passing through the archway molded to look like a chuppah—Born to Bride being a chain primarily marketed toward Jewish women—and into a scene straight out of Say Yes to the Dress, but with uglier dresses.

In one corner of the store, a girl with frizzy hair—I raise a mental fist in solidarity—is hissing at a woman who can only be her mother, who is in tears.

At the other end, a sales associate bearing a shocking amount of cleavage for a Thursday morning seems to be talking down a woman who can’t zip up the back of her dress.

“I’m so fat, ” she wails. “My wedding is in six weeks .” So is mine, incidentally. I thought everyone got married in the spring, but autumn weddings are seemingly de rigueur for East Coast Jews.

“We can try the next size up!” The sales associate’s face is braced for impact. The gaggle of friends circling the bride-to-be starts shaking in fear.

“I will not wear a size fourteen on the most important day of my life .” The bride is not quite blushing, more tomato red with rage.

She whips out her phone, presses a button, and raises it to her ear.

“Hello, I need to make an appointment with Dr. Roth for CoolSculpting next week.” A momentary pause, her face cracking with rage.

“I don’t care if he’s boogie boarding in Corsica, I am getting married next month . ”

As fun as it would be to watch her meltdown progress, I am on a mission.

I shoot a sympathetic glance toward the sales associate and refocus my attention to the register, where a woman around my mother’s age is perched, assessing the space like a large bird.

The kind of bird that reminds you birds are descended from dinosaurs.

There are dark, puffy circles under her eyes barely hidden with concealer that’s far too light and far too yellow for her.

She has clearly been on her feet far too long today, or this week, or this life.

But she plasters on a smile as I approach.

According to her name tag, she is Lorraine.

“How can I help you today?”

“I’m attending a wedding next month.” I’m a bit sweaty from my trek through the mall, and it’s warm under the bright lights.

Every pearl and scrap of lace glimmers in this overstuffed store.

“It’s in Florida, but I called customer service and they said I could come to any location and pick up a dress with the model number. ”

Lorraine nods, eyeing my sweaty upper lip. I give her the number and she checks their system. “Yes, we should have it in stock. What size do you need?”

“Well, here’s the thing,” I say. “I need that dress in a fourteen, but I actually need it in a different color.”

She sneers. “The order has no additional color options attached.” Her face smooths into something resembling customer service.

“Listen, honey, I know you might not think”—her eyes flick to the screen—“ burnt sienna daydream is your color, but…I’m sure you’ll look lovely.

” She’s not really selling the compliment.

“And after all,” she says, clacking away at the keyboard, “it’s not about you, darling. You’re a bridesmaid.”

Big smile. “A groomsperson, actually.”

She nods, eyebrows raised. “I’ll see what I’ve got.”

A few minutes later, Lorraine leads me into a sumptuously appointed dressing room.

“Thank you.” I toss my bag on the ground and look around, realizing something is missing. It takes me a minute because I’ve only had one cup of coffee today and there’s currently an Adderall shortage in New York City. “Where’s the mirror?”

She crosses her arms. “All the mirrors are out here,” she says, pointing toward the pink hallways branching out into dressing rooms. “People usually come here with friends and family and want to share the experience.”

“How fun for them,” I manage through clenched teeth.

There is nothing I hate more than trying on clothes in front of a communal mirror and fielding commentary from salespeople, other shoppers, and the odd security guard trying to get my number.

The last one is mostly wishful thinking; nothing is more gender-affirming than being desired by people you don’t want to have sex with.

“I’ll be back in just a moment.” Lorraine marches off to a hidden back room, stiletto heels sinking into the blush carpet with every step.

“You’re being such a BITCH.” The frizzy-haired bride stands in the doorway of the dressing room across from mine, the skirt of her dress as wide as the doorframe.

Her mother cowers before her. “I can’t deal with this.

I can’t deal with you! Go get me a cinnamon pretzel with the cinnamon scraped off and an iced almond latte and don’t you dare come back until you’re ready to lift your fat ass off Daddy’s life insurance money and buy me the dress I deserve. ”

The mother stalks past me, something shattered behind her eyes.

I can’t look away from her daughter, which proves to be a mistake.

She catches my eyes and mistakes loathing for sympathy, giving me a look I recognize from my face, reflected in the windows of every restaurant my mother has ever embarrassed me in.

It’s a look we Jewish girls grow up with, permanently beneath the surface, never far from emerging. It says Can you believe her?

“Sorry you had to hear that.” She is anything but contrite, walking over to the mirror between our two fitting rooms. “Weddings, you know?”

Shrug.

“My mother keeps going on and on about keeping the cost down, but I told her if we swing this thing for under 150 she’s getting a deal. And how could anyone say no to this dress ?” Her eyes glaze as she runs her hands down the mass of white chiffon.

I would, in fact, say no to the dress. It has lace in places lace simply should not be, and is at once baggy and too skintight. It’s a mess.

“You look beautiful.” That’s safe enough, right?

“I know,” she tells her reflection. Unfortunately, she’s not quite Narcissus, because she catches my eye in the mirror. “Mine’s in December, a Hanukkah wedding. When’s yours? And where are your bridesmaids? Or your mother?”

“Uh, I’m not getting married. I’m here to pick up a bridesmaid dress.” Kind of.

“My bridesmaids hate their dresses.” An ugly smile splits her face wide open. I feel another swell of sympathy for her mother, who is hopefully getting a drink at the last TGI Fridays in America or drowning herself in the food court toilets.

“I haven’t seen mine yet.”

“I’m sure you’ll look…great. You have nice”—the strain on her face is Herculean—“hair.”

“Yeah, I’m sure my hair will look great in whatever nightmare my future sister-in-law picked out.”

“Hmm.”

That’s Lorraine, standing behind me, holding the nightmare in question.

“Good luck,” says the bride, nasty grin fixed firmly in place. Perhaps her mother has walked into oncoming traffic.

I’m hustled back into the dressing room, a space draped so aggressively in pink it feels almost vaginal, which is probably the point.

Lorraine hangs up the dress and leaves me to it.

Resting on a hanger, it’s benign, harmless.

The dress is strappy, and slinky, and has a slit up one leg that promises to show off some of my best assets.

But I understand clothes and the ways they lie, and also the truths they uncover, ones we are desperate to hide.

The low, curving neckline would look fabulous on someone who could fill it out.

I can’t, and my breasts are likely to look small and pointy and very, very sad sitting in it.

The tiny straps might make me look delicate if it weren’t for the span of my shoulders.

At least mine will be black. Burnt-sienna-whateverthefuck is not gonna work with my complexion.

I strip off my clothes—also black, my urban armor—and prop my phone up on the small stool nudged against the wall, opening the camera app to use as a mirror. I’m not going outside until I’m sure it won’t be humiliating.

There, on my tiny screen is my body. And it’s just that: a body.

Despite all the time I spend thinking about it, all the tears I’ve cried over it for the past twenty-nine years, and all the opinions people seem to have about it, it is still just a body.

It is pale and freckled and imperfect. My hips are too square, my thighs too dimpled, my stomach too curved, my ass too flat.

But as I normally do, I try to find the parts of it I like, the parts I see as mine: My collarbones jut in a way that is almost delicate, the freckles on my shoulders left over from summer are sweet and girlish.

Eyes wide, neck long, lips full—thank you, Juvéderm.

And Bridezilla was right—I have great hair.

Even when I had nothing else, I had great hair.

I slip into the dress, which looks…all right on the tiny screen, so I cautiously drag open the dressing room curtain, flinching at the screech of curtain rings. I step barefoot into the padded hallway and turn to face the large gilt mirror at the end of the pink-tunneled dressing area.

It’s not great, but it’s not terrible. The color washes me out, but I won’t be wearing this color, so that’s fine.

The draping does nothing for the places I’m curved correctly and emphasizes the places I’m decidedly not, but in the grand scheme of bridesmaid monstrosities, I’ve gotten off with relative ease.

“And how are we doing here?”

Lorraine is behind me in the mirror, and I catch an unguarded glimpse of her face, and a look of naked curiosity on it as she takes in my broad shoulders, my knobby knees, my face under the harsh overhead lighting.

I meet her eyes in the mirror.

“I’ll take it.”

I have to split the dress on two different credit cards at checkout, and Lorraine sighs audibly. Bridezilla’s mother and I lock eyes from across the room. I almost ask for a bite of her pretzel.