“You look like a school librarian,” my husband said with disgust, steering me to a table by the sound technician so I wouldn’t embarrass him in front of his so-called elite. I endured it for two hours. But when he finally shouted to security, “Get this broke nobody out of here—she doesn’t belong,” a man rose from his seat, the sort of man the entire city was afraid to cross. He didn’t walk toward the birthday woman. He came straight to me and, in a voice everyone could hear, said the words that made my mother-in-law slide down under the table…
“You are not leaving the house in that. Take it off. You look like a widow arriving to bury her favorite cat.”
Jason pinched the strap of my dress between two fingers as if it might contaminate him. The velvet, for the record, was vintage, remade from one of my mother’s old theater gowns.
“Jason, it’s Chanel from ’85. Well… almost,” I said, trying to smile, though everything inside me had tightened into a hard knot. “It’s timeless.”
“It’s junk, Emily. Old junk.” His voice climbed, and the vein in his neck swelled. The same one that throbbed whenever he talked about money or my “hopeless” relatives. “It’s Mom’s anniversary party tonight. People from City Hall will be there. Mark himself is coming! And you look like… like some librarian who got locked in the archives.”
I turned toward the mirror. A thin woman stared back at me, all frightened eyes and an absurd single strand of pearls. Maybe he was right. Maybe I really did ruin the image he was trying so hard to sell.
“So what am I supposed to wear? That pink lurex thing you adore?” I couldn’t stop the jab. That was my habit—when tears were close, sarcasm got there first.
Jason flung a shopping bag with the logo of an expensive boutique onto the bed.
“Put this on. Mom bought it. And for God’s sake, take off those… family heirlooms of yours.”
Inside lay a dress. Poison-green, short, with a neckline so deep you could hide a slim Joseph collection in it.
“I’m not wearing that,” I said quietly. “I’m not a circus act.”
Jason stepped so close I could smell the costly brandy on him, and something else too—borrowed panic. He was more terrified of that evening than I was.
“You’ll wear what I told you to wear. Or you’ll stay home. No—scratch that. You won’t stay home. You’ll go, you’ll smile, and you’ll sit exactly where I put you.”
He left, slamming the door hard enough to knock our wedding photo off the shelf. I picked up the frame. The glass had cracked straight down the middle, splitting us in two. Fitting.
I put on my black dress. Then I fastened my grandmother’s brooch to it—a silver twig set with dull garnets. Fine. Let me be the widow. Tonight, I would be burying my marriage.
The Versailles restaurant lived up to its name with shameless enthusiasm. Gold molding ran even along the baseboards, and the crystal chandeliers hung so low they looked ready to dip themselves into the potato salad.
The guests blazed with diamonds, sequins, watches, and self-importance.