Cement

A woman in a leather crop top and leopard print pants apologizes to me, sincerely, after spilling a bit of champagne on my shoes as she makes her way to the mirror. The woman she came with is dialing her Mother, who is somewhere in Lisbon, maybe, or perhaps she’s just speaking Portuguese and perhaps that’s just where she was born. I know this because the hotel room isn’t quite large enough to have private conversations.

The designer says something in Hebrew to one of the assistants, who quickly brings a matching veil.

“That is your dress. It’s found you.”

There’s a swift trade of paperwork for adjustments to be made in six months time, and a downpayment of ten grand.

I unwrap a piece of complimentary chocolate and notice the oil stain on my jeans, from last Friday, when I got my key stuck in the backdoor and ran out of peanut butter.

Damn. I really thought two Tide pods would do it.

“Oh my god,” says my Mother, already up on her feet and now miles away from the army of texts, voicemails, and comments about her leaving a small business in exchange for a realtor license.

My Sister walks in wearing a sand coloured gown with a beaded bodice and loose sleeves. She looks beautiful and happy, but we all come to the conclusion that it’s not quite ‘her.’ Nothing to feel at home in. I feel weird, confused, and excited about sharing these thoughts until I remember to just have fun.

So the next few don’t feel right either, until one of them does. The last one.

I hear my phone buzz and quietly step outside. It’s a text from a friend asking if I could use a toaster.

Something smells like it’s burning when I notice the ash tray with a cigarette still struggling to fade — miraculously — in light rain that will soon pick up speed. I look at my Sister, FaceTiming her Mother, with my Mother, and think back to the day we met.

Earlier that week, I’d scraped my knee by somersaulting down five cement steps at our neighbor’s house. My Father was furious but managed to crack a joke about how I’d just, “scraped by” and bandaged it up with gauze from an EMT kit he got from a course he never finished.

On a train to New York, my soon-to-be Sister asks why my right pant leg is larger than the left. Later that night we dance, together, on a floor board piano at FAO Schwarz. On the escalator down, we pass a giraffe over eight feet tall — on sale for six hundred dollars. I try to imagine a door big enough for it to pass through.

My Sister now looks focused. Still clutching a glass of champagne, I can tell it’s her Father she’s speaking to over the phone as she circles the room, veil following. An assistant picks it up and my Sister thanks them with a smile and apologizes for being a bit clumsy.

I write back. “Yes. Would love a toaster. Thank you.”

I think about how impossible it is that a piece of clothing could actually match her beauty. I think about the cheap plane tickets we get to see one another and how we don’t have health insurance.

I think about my Father using gauze from the 80s — not because it’s better or an expense to side step — but because of the memory.

I think about how I felt in that toy store.