The Dress My Neighbor Wore Saturday

Amber called at seven.

“Did it come? Send me a picture of it on the hanger. I want to see it in real light.”

I was standing at the sink. Through the window I could see Vicki’s porch lamp come on across the circle, the way it had come on every evening for twenty-two years.

“It’s on its way,” I said.

“Mom. It’s eighteen days.”

“I know how many days it is, baby.”

“Should I call the shop?”

“I’ll call the shop.”

I did call, the next morning, from the supply closet at school with the door shut. I did not tell Diane what had happened. I only asked whether, if something were to go wrong, she had another in my size.

She was gone a few minutes. I listened to the hold music and looked at a shelf of construction paper.

“I’m so sorry,” she said when she came back. “That one’s been discontinued in the blue. I’ve got it in a champagne, but it would be six weeks.”

“That’s all right,” I said. “I was only asking.”

“Is everything okay with the dress, Lori?”

“It’s lovely,” I said. “Everybody says so.”

Wednesday night Vicki waved at me from her driveway while she was pulling her trash can up. I waved back.

Thursday she texted me. Making my broccoli salad for Saturday, are you doing your potato salad?? And a little heart.

I typed, Yes ma’am. And then I typed, Don’t forget your promise.

She sent back a laughing face and, Gary says I’ll be overdressed for my own cookout.

I looked at that for a long time. So Gary had seen it. Gary, who was supposed to have bought it.

I wondered what she had told him. That she had ordered it herself, most likely. That it was on sale.

Friday I made the potato salad and could not have told you if I put salt in it.

I lay awake that night next to Dennis and went through all the ways it could go wrong. She could change her mind and wear jeans. She could spill barbecue sauce down the front of it. She could wear it all afternoon, and nobody would notice a thing, and I would be standing in her yard holding a paper plate while my dress walked around in front of me, and then what?

I did not have a plan past Saturday. I want to be honest about that too. People have told me since that it was clever, what I did. It was not clever. I only knew two things. I knew that as long as she believed she had gotten away with it, the dress was safe and so was everything in that hallway. And I knew Vicki could not stand in a crowd for three hours without wanting to be admired.

That was all I had. A promise, and what I knew about her.

Saturday came up clear and cool, the first real fall day of the year. You could smell Gary’s smoker from our bedroom by seven in the morning. Hickory, the way he always does it.

By noon there were folding tables going up on Vicki’s patio and down her driveway. Jeff carried over his cornhole boards. Tom strung a line of lights from the patio post to the crepe myrtle. Somebody’s grandbabies were riding scooters around the circle.