With his un-hemmed tuxedo pants dragging along the carpet, Giovanni emerges from the saloon door of his dressing room at Tux Deluxe and says, “I’m not doing this.” He pulls one arm out of a black sleeve, then the other, and tosses the coat over the door. My mother and I look up from the designated waiting chairs and simultaneously ask, “Huh?”
“I’m not doing this shi--, man,” Giovanni censors himself and glances at my mother. Apparently, the moratorium on swearing had some effect. Maybe there should be more peace talks at MacDonald’s. Giovanni starts unbuttoning the tailored shirt.
“But you look so nice,” I tell him. “Come on. Stop doing that. Look at yourself in the mirror.”
“I did in there,” he says, hitching a thumb toward the dressing room, where his oversized Levis and Tupac shirt hang on a peg. Below, on the thread-strewn carpet, his reeking Adidas shoes emit sweaty sock odor that wafts in our direction. The owner of Tux Deluxe, a Nat King Cole look-alike, scurries back to the tuxedo gallery and says he’ll return in a few minutes. Now it’s just the Amato men and the Hazlinkski women in a confined area.
Frustrated with the lacquered buttons on the shirt, Giovanni drops his head and reaches for the zipper on his pants, “This is stupid.”
Paul emerges from his dressing room. The sheen of his coat combined with the whiteness of the shirt contrast perfectly with his olive skin and black hair flecked with silver, reminding me that Italian men were born to wear black tuxedos. I’ve seen Paul several times in his performance tuxedo, but this garment is far superior, more like an Academy Awards tux designed for Marcello Mastrioanni. “What’s stupid?” he asks.
“This. This suit. This whole thing,” Giovanni says as he re-arranges the dreads near the crown of his head.
“Look, G. You agreed to this.”
“I agreed when I didn’t know what I was agreeing to.”
“But you did agree.”
“With pressure on me.”
Paul drops his hands to his sides. I see his left hand swing back and forth past the raised seam running the length of his pants. I fixate on this image as if it’s a pendulum winding down to the doomed hour of our wedding.
Paul steps toward his son. “When you wanted to live with us, you said you’d—“
“I know what I fucking said.” Giovanni covers his mouth with his wrist and blinks at Kate. “Sorry, Step-Granny.” So much for the détente at MacDonald’s.
My mother turns her head and approaches Giovanni’s dressing room. She picks up the coat flung over the saloon door and smoothes the fabric. Today, she’s wearing another one of her appliqué creations, four cats dressed as cowboys at the O.K. Corral. Studying her pinched face, the ring of her hive still visible on her cheek, I feel a surge of heat radiate through my own cheeks and push away from the chair.
“I don’t even believe in marriage,” Giovanni says.
“Look. We’re not asking you to be the priest,” Paul says.
“I know.”
“An usher, that’s all. And maybe it might be too much to ask, but in some small way, you could act a little happier.”
“Happy?”
“Yes.”
“For what?”
“For us.”
“It’s all a joke, dude. It’ll be another divorce.”
“What did you say?”
“You heard me. In a few years, we’ll be back here with some other chick, trying on the same monkey suits.”
Paul reaches for Giovanni’s collar and misses. He’s thrown off balance. His tailored figure flails into Giovanni’s dressing room. Giovanni steps back and beckons Paul. “Come on.”
In a crisis, we all hope that we can assess the situation calmly and weigh the options carefully, considering the good of all. None of this comes to mind as I find myself flying in the air toward Giovanni. A guttural sound escapes from my throat as I throw my body toward him. Outweighing him by twenty—probably thirty—pounds, I easily push the ectomorph against the bow tie display. Giovanni is stunned, his face twisted in surprise and terror. I raise my arm, as if ready to strike, and catch sight of Nat the tailor leaping into the action. “People!” He grabs one of my arms.
Then I feel another hand on me. It’s Kate pulling back the other arm. “Martha, for God sakes!”
Paul staggers toward the melee. “What the hell, Martha?” he says. I try to free my arms but can only manage to lean in closer to Giovanni’s face and say, “We are getting married, with or without you. I can’t guarantee it, but it’s very unlikely that we’ll get a divorce. We’ve made it this far. Do you have any idea how hard it’s been? That’s what people do. They work things out. They suck it up, even when they don’t like something. Even when they’re ready to scream. Now are you going to be in this wedding or not?”
Kate and Nat the tailor apply pressure to my twisted arms while Paul grabs Giovanni’s shoulder. Giovanni’s eyes tilt upward toward his father then refocus on me. He forces a nod.
“I can’t hear you,” I say, my nose inches from Giovanni’s.
“All right.”
“Good. Now put on that tux and model it for us.”
Ah, the convenience of weddings these days. Just about everything the betrothed will need can be found in one mini-mall near a freeway exit. Adjoining Tux Deluxe is Brides Unlimited, where my dress is ready for the first fitting. I decide to cool off there while my mother checks out a nearby craft store. Nothing will compare to her own shop, of course, but she does need more supplies to replace the white chocolate roses that melted in her suitcase. One of her greatest fears did come true. Luckily, about three-quarters of the wedding favors survived the flight from Pittsburgh. Her other greatest fear is clearly palpable, with a crash landing still a possibility.
When I left Tux Deluxe, Nat was shoehorning Giovanni’s sweat-socked feet into dress oxfords. Both he and Paul still wore their tuxedos, and through the storefront window, the image could have been featured in a greeting card commercial. Who would have thought that moments ago Giovanni’s step-mother-to-be apprehended him like he was a thug with a switchblade? Some actions are so shocking that they stun all the participants--perpetrator, victim, and witnesses alike. We eventually stood up from the crime scene and continued the fitting as if a cosmic glitch had simply fast-forwarded us past the ugliness. Nat shook his head and returned to his other customers. I could have sworn I heard him whistling the prologue from “Carmina Burana” as he retreated. Giovanni did model his tuxedo and stood alongside his ruffled father so that Kate and I could debate who was more handsome. Did I realize at that moment what had happened? Did I grasp what Giovanni said about his fear of divorce? For some reason, these questions ricocheted off my psyche and kept me sane for a short period of time.
At Brides Unlimited on this Wednesday morning, there appear to be no other customers, which is a relief. The door closes behind me, setting off a chime with the first four notes of the wedding march. I can try on my dress quickly, get some feedback from Kate, and then move on to another wedding task. Lucia, who sold me the dress, is not here today, so another lady retrieves my plastic bag from the alteration rack and hangs it on a thick peg next to the first dressing room. She opens the door, follows me in, and says with a detectable Swedish accent, “Get undressed, please.”
“Lucia would just zip me up.”
“I’m Birgitta. I need to see your undergarments. They must be right for the dress,” she says, tapping the metal end of her measuring tape against her bleached teeth. She tosses a clump of thick gold-silver hair over her shoulder and picks lint off the front of her low-cut sweater. Her ample chest is tan and leathery.
Luckily, I am wearing my one-piece strapless smoothie—at least that’s what I call it—and feel properly vacuum packed. This means, though, that my boobs are a bit pancaked underneath the spandex bra. I kick off my shoes and slip out of my sweater and jeans.
“Good, good,” Birgitta says as she nods a few times and then stops. She reaches for my breasts and cups them. “No, these will not do.”
I pull back from her grasp. “Meager, I know.”
“My grandfather had more of a bosom than you. Here, feel.” Then she takes my hands and places them squarely on her own breasts. “Realistic, huh? Convincing?”
“Uh, yeah,” I say wondering if there is a hidden camera recording this neo-Bergman film.
“But not all real!” Birgitta says and releases my hands. She reaches through her sweater into her bra and removes two flesh-colored pouches. She places the warm prosthetics in my hands. “Go on. Play with them.”
I squish them between my fingers. They remind me of melting Silly Putty encased in smooth rubber. Birgitta picks up on my fascination with the fake boobs and decides to stuff them into my strapless bra. She digs under my real breasts and places the falsies below the curve, just inches from my armpits. I can feel her sculpted nails grazing my nipples and hear her bracelets clinking as she finishes her work. “There. Look,” she says.
In the mirror, I see what I have never seen: actual cleavage. Even at my heaviest, I never had much to work with, but now my bosom has arrived, C-cup mounds pressing against the rim of the bra.
“Now jump. Up and down. Make them bounce.”
I stare at Birgitta as if to say this has gone too far, but she is so insistent that she takes my hands and starts jumping, forcing me to join her. “That’s it. See, no one will ever know.”
“But what about my husband?” I ask, watching my serving-wench melons heave toward my chin in slow motion.
“You take them out at the proper moment.”
“Martha.” Kate pokes her head in the dressing room as Birgitta and I come down for a landing. We must have missed the wedding march chime upon Kate’s entry.
“Mom, you need a pair of these.”
“Pair of what?”
“Fake boobs. Gay deceivers.”
“Yeah? Some good they’d do me now,” she says and drops her shopping bag on the floor.
“Okay, Birgitta, bring on the dress. This is Birgitta, mom. Birgitta, Kate.”
Birgitta smiles at my mom then pulls the plastic wrapping off the gown. She unzips the back panel and lays the white pouf on the floor. “Step in.”
“Oh, this is easier than over the head,” I say, hoisting the sleeves up and sliding my arms through the stretchy lace. When both sleeves are in place at my shoulders, Birgitta tugs the dress together and begins to zip. She keeps the dress taut, forcing air out of my lungs, making me suck in organs. “Just a bit more,” she says. I’m no Scarlett O’Hara in the corset scene. I need ropes and pulleys to tighten my waist. Years of playing French horn, I think, have puffed out my diaphragm. Then I remember my spongy midriff that gallons of alcoholic drinks and boxes of pastries have created. My sit-up regime has made some difference but not enough. The effect is more like two inches of jiggly flesh attached to an underlying sheath of muscles. Now the zipper is past the lumbar spine and headed for the finish. With the fake boobs, the last push is tough, but Birgitta succeeds. “Ah, there.” She checks her nails to make sure that she has not lost one in the ordeal. “Well, mother Kate, what do you think?” Kate puts a hand to her mouth. Birgitta leads me from the dressing room to the tall three-way mirror and spins me around. On the floor next to the mirror sits a stack of shoeboxes. She asks for my size and finds a pair of plain satin pumps. She removes the tissue paper and slides the shoes on my feet. Then she spins me again in the three-way. My mother, now seated on a chintz wingback by the mirror, is speechless. I know she thought this day would never arrive.
BIO: Christina Guillen has taught composition, literature, and creative writing at Long Beach City College since 1991. A graduate of USC's Master of Professional Writing Program, Ms. Guillen has published short stories in Pearl and Ellipsis magazines. Her novel In Loco Parentis is a work in progress.
