The Red Dress at the VFW Hall

What She Said

Then she said, “Harold’s pension got cut in May.”

I did not say anything. I let her talk.

“The fund he paid into for thirty-one years,” she said. “They sent a letter. A third of it, gone. Just like that. And I’d already sent out the cards in April. I’d already told everybody. My sisters. Church. The whole town knew we were having the band and the VFW and the roast beef.”

She was turning her wedding ring around and around on her finger.

“I didn’t know how to tell people we’d have cake in the church basement instead,” she said.

“I didn’t know how to say we couldn’t afford it. Fifty years, Laura. I wanted one nice thing that everybody could see.”

“I understand that,” I said, and I did.

“And there was the can,” she said, very quietly. “Sitting right there on my counter. And I told myself you could wear a scarf. I told myself it was the same thing. I told myself a lot of things.”

She stopped and pressed her lips together. Her chin was shaking.

“That word I used,” she said. “Vanity. I’ve been hearing myself say it for ten days. I’d give anything to take it back.”

The Catalog

She opened the catalog on her lap. Her hands were not steady. She had put little pieces of paper in it to mark pages, the way she marks her Bible.

“I don’t know anything about these,” she said. “I went down to the shop before I came up. The lady said you’d already picked one. She showed me. But I thought maybe you’d want to look again. Pick a better one. Not the cheap one.”

“It’s not the cheap one,” I said. “It’s a good one. It’s close to what my hair was.”

“Then pick two,” she said. “One for every day and one for church. I’ll pay for the second one. Harold and I talked. We’ve got it.”

I started to say she didn’t have to. Then I remembered Harold on the dance floor saying, yes, I do.

And I understood that this was the same thing. This was her way back, and if I refused it, I would be shutting the door.

“All right,” I said. “Two.”

She let out a breath like she had been holding it since Sunday dinner ten days before.

The Afternoon

We looked at that catalog for an hour and a half, while the medicine dripped into my arm.

She held it so I didn’t have to. She turned the pages for me when my hand got tired.

She had opinions. She did not like the blond ones. She thought one red one made the model look like a country singer.

She found one, a soft brown with a little wave, and said, “That one is you. That’s you before,” and she was right.

Kim came back with two coffees and stopped dead in the doorway when she saw who was sitting there.

Marlene looked up at her and said, “I hope one of those is for me,” and Kim laughed, and handed it over, and went to find a third chair.

At some point I fell asleep. Chemo does that too. When I woke up, the blanket had been tucked around my feet, and Marlene was still sitting there with the catalog closed on her lap and her hand resting on the arm of my recliner, right next to mine.

She was not touching me. Just near. Her hand was spotted and soft and her wedding ring was loose on her finger.

I moved my hand over a little, and put it on hers, and she turned hers over and held on.

We sat like that until Amy came to unhook my line. Neither of us said anything. There wasn’t anything that needed saying.