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One more thing Joha
In Milady’s window there were two ma
She opened the door and went inside.
Right ahead of her, a full-length mirror showed her in Mrs. Willets’s high-quality but shapeless long coat, with a few inches of lumpy bare legs above the ankle socks.
They did that on purpose, of course. They set the mirror there so you could get a proper notion of your deficiencies, right away, and then-they hoped-you would jump to the conclusion that you had to buy something to alter the picture. Such a transparent trick that it would have made her walk out, if she had not come in determined, knowing what she had to get.
Along one wall was a rack of evening dresses, all fit for belles of the ball with their net and taffeta, their dreamy colors. And beyond them, in a glass case so no profane fingers could get at them, half a dozen wedding gowns, pure white froth or vanilla satin or ivory lace, embroidered in silver beads or seed pearls. Tiny bodices, scalloped necklines, lavish skirts. Even when she was younger she could never have contemplated such extravagance, not just in the matter of money but in expectations, in the preposterous hope of transformation, and bliss.
It was two or three minutes before anybody came. Maybe they had a peephole and were eyeing her, thinking she wasn’t their kind of customer and hoping she would go away.
She would not. She moved beyond the mirror’s reflection-stepping from the linoleum by the door to a plushy rug-and at long last the curtain at the back of the store opened and out stepped Milady herself, dressed in a black suit with glittery buttons. High heels, thin ankles, girdle so tight her nylons rasped, gold hair ski
“I thought I could try on the suit in the window,” Joha
“Oh, that’s a lovely suit,” the woman said. “The one in the window happens to be a size ten. Now you look to be-maybe a fourteen?”
She rasped ahead of Joha
“You’re in luck. Fourteen coming up.”
The first thing Joha
“It’s expensive enough.”
“It’s very fine wool.” The woman monkeyed around till she found the label, then read off a description of the material that Joha
“It feels as light as silk, but it wears like iron. You can see it’s lined throughout, lovely silk-and-rayon lining. You won’t find it bagging in the seat and going out of shape the way the cheap suits do. Look at the velvet cuffs and collar and the little velvet buttons on the sleeve.”
“I see them.”
“That’s the kind of detail you pay for, you just do not get it otherwise. I love the velvet touch. It’s only on the green one, you know-the apricot one doesn’t have it, even though they’re exactly the same price.”
Indeed it was the velvet collar and cuffs that gave the suit, in Joha
“I might as well go ahead and try it on.”
This was what she’d come prepared for, after all. Clean underwear and fresh talcum powder under her arms.
The woman had enough sense to leave her alone in the bright cubicle. Joha
At first she just looked at the suit. It was all right. The fit was all right-the skirt shorter than what she was used to, but then what she was used to was not the style. There was no problem with the suit. The problem was with what stuck out of it. Her neck and her face and her hair and her big hands and thick legs.
“How are you getting on? Mind if I take a peek?”
Peek all you want to, Joha
The woman tried looking from one side, then the other.
“Of course, you’ll need your nylons on and your heels. How does it feel? Comfortable?”
“The suit feels fine,” Joha
The woman’s face changed in the mirror. She stopped smiling. She looked disappointed and tired, but kinder.
“Sometimes that’s just the way it is. You never really know until you try something on. The thing is,” she said, with a new, more moderate conviction growing in her voice, “the thing is you have a fine figure, but it’s a strong figure. You have large bones and what’s the matter with that? Dinky little velvet-covered buttons are not for you. Don’t bother with it anymore. Just take it off.”
Then when Joha
“Just slip this on, for the heck of it.”
A brown wool dress, lined, with a full skirt gracefully gathered, three-quarter sleeves and a plain round neckline. About as plain as you could get, except for a narrow gold belt. Not as expensive as the suit, but still the price seemed like a lot, when you considered all there was to it.
At least the skirt was a more decent length and the fabric made a noble swirl around her legs. She steeled herself and looked in the glass.
This time she didn’t look as if she’d been stuck into the garment for a joke.
The woman came and stood beside her, and laughed, but with relief.
“It’s the color of your eyes. You don’t need to wear velvet. You’ve got velvet eyes.”
That was the kind of soft-soaping Joha
It wasn’t that she had suddenly started thinking she was pretty or anything. Just that her eyes were a nice color, if they had been a piece of cloth.
“Now, I bet you don’t wear dress shoes very often,” the woman said. “But if you had nylons on and just a minimum kind of pump-And I bet you don’t wear jewelry, and you’re quite right, you don’t need to, with that belt.”
To cut off the sales spiel Joha
“I just hope it’s for a special occasion,” the woman called out as Joha
“It’ll likely be what I get married in,” said Joha
She was surprised at that coming out of her mouth. It wasn’t a major error-the woman didn’t know who she was and would probably not be talking to anybody who did know. Still, she had meant to keep absolutely quiet. She must have felt she owed this person something-that they’d been through the disaster of the green suit and the discovery of the brown dress together and that was a bond. Which was nonsense. The woman was in the business of selling clothes, and she’d just succeeded in doing that.