Susie Yang - White ivy

22

THE WOMEN’S DRESSING ROOM AT St. Stephen’s was a converted music room. The instruments had been taken away and replaced with a love seat and armchairs; an enormous antique mirror was propped up next to an open window, displaying on a beveled edge Ivy’s wedding gown in all its iridescent, billowing glory. At half past eleven, the Lins crowded inside. The mirror gave the impression there were a dozen Chinese people in the room, all clamoring for the bride’s attention.

Nan insisted Ivy try on the dress one more time. “Your tailor’s no good,” she said about the expert seamstress from New York who’d done the alterations. “In the picture you sent me, the dress looked like it was falling off your chest.” She scrutinized Ivy’s breasts, then shook her head. “You’ll have a hard time breastfeeding, like me.”

Ivy changed into her wedding dress, mostly to stop Nan from nagging. There was so much fabric: layers upon layers of tulle and silk and lace embroidery. Having failed to regain most of the weight she’d lost, her shoulder blades poked out of her back, like stunted wings. Her arms were white bones, her face a sharp triangle. She’d dyed her hair back to black, for the photographs, and the heavy strands weighing her head back were the only voluptuous part about her, and even that was fake, buoyed up by forty hair extensions.

She stepped out from behind the dressing curtain.

“Put on the shoes, too,” said Meifeng.

After much prodding and pinching, both Nan and Meifeng agreed that the waist needed to be taken in another centimeter.

“Does a centimeter really matter?” Ivy asked.

“Don’t sulk,” said Meifeng.

“I will do it,” Nan decided.

“ Laura will do it,” said Ivy. “She’s brought her sewing machine today, don’t worry.”

Nan wiped the edge of Ivy’s lip with a handkerchief she conjured from nowhere. She asked Ivy if she wanted water, then immediately forgot her offer while fixing a loose thread on the hem of the dress.

Shen and Austin returned to the room. “Wow. So beautiful,” said Shen. Austin said, “You look nice,” and handed her a daisy he’d probably plucked from the bushes outside the church. Ivy impulsively stuck it behind her ear. Nan plucked it back out and tossed it on the table. “Did you take your medicine yet?” she said sternly. Austin said, “No, I forgot,” and went to find a bottle of water to wash down his “happy pills,” as Shen took to calling the Cymbalta.

“Try on the other dress,” Meifeng told Ivy. She was talking about the gown Ivy would change into for the reception, a high-collared red-and-gold silk qipao Meifeng had custom-made for Ivy in China. The box it arrived in was as large as a funeral casket. It was actually Poppy’s suggestion that Ivy wear a Chinese-style dress for the reception. It was a compromise they’d reached because Ivy had decided there would be no show or Chinese ceremony. Nan had only looked at her blankly when Ivy asked what rituals their ancestors had performed when they got married. “They signed papers and went out to a restaurant,” said Nan. “So no dragon dances or tea ceremonies?” asked Ivy. Nan hooted with laughter.

When Meifeng saw Ivy step out in the qipao , she suddenly had to sit down. “Look at me getting all excited, too,” she said ruefully, “like a fool. It makes me remember when your grandpa and I got married. We could only afford to take our families out to eat noodles. But it felt just like this.”

Outside, Ivy heard the voice of her wedding planner directing the vendors this way and that.

“We have to go,” said Shen, checking his watch. The Lins were having lunch with Ted and Poppy at the famous restaurant inside the Millennium Hotel. Ivy had heard her parents plotting earlier on how best to snatch the check, as if they expected resistance from the Speyers, who Ivy knew wouldn’t lift a finger of protest. She’d learned long ago from Sunrin that not all forms of wealth were equal, and the form of wealth Ted and Poppy manifested was much like their breeding—omnipresent yet invisible. No one could touch it or see it or prove its existence, yet who was to say that they weren’t wealthy, as Meifeng often grumbled, just because they didn’t own their town house and couldn’t afford repairs for an old summer cottage?

“Tell her now,” Nan said to Shen.

“Later,” said Shen.

“There won’t be time later,” Nan said impatiently. “Just tell her. It’ll make her happy.”

“Tell me what?” said Ivy.

“Your mama and I want to help you and Gideon buy your first house,” said Shen. “It’s our wedding present to you.”

“You already paid for the wedding,” Ivy said quickly. “It’s enough.”

“Not enough. When you’re ready, just come to us.” Shen patted her on the shoulder, then hurried out the door, the back of his neck a ruddy pink over the crisp white collar of his dress shirt.

Nan checked her reflection in the mirror one last time. “How do I look?” she asked shyly.

“Very well,” said Ivy. “You look very pretty.”

“Who looks younger, me or Gideon’s mother?”

“ You do.”

Nan chuckled and called after Shen, “You hear our daughter? She says—”

Austin gave Ivy a long, clenching embrace on his way out. “I used to hate Gideon,” he said. “I thought he was so stuck-up.”

“And now?” said Ivy.

“He’s not so bad.”

Meifeng was last. She took Ivy’s hand between her own.

“Remember you can always come home.”

Home… home… home! Ivy’s mouth trembled into a confused smile.

“You’re a good girl,” said Meifeng. “Grandma can die happy now, seeing you like this.”

Finally, the exhausting procession was over and Ivy was blessedly alone again. She sat back down in her chair and waited for the next thing. She didn’t know what it was but she was sure someone would materialize and direct her toward it. This was how her life would be now. The thought gave her great relief. When no one came for ten minutes, however, the lull suddenly became unbearable and she decided to slip outside for her last cigarette. She’d only had a handful since leaving the hospital. The idea of quitting now seemed no more difficult than abstaining from some poorly cooked dish she didn’t much care for. Just like that—the last cigarette.

She idled over to the little garden some yards away from the chapel, wearing only her robe and hotel slippers, thinking she wouldn’t run into anyone, when she heard familiar voices coming from underneath the weeping willow. Gideon and his groomsmen were supposed to be playing a round of golf before getting ready at the church by three o’clock. Instead, she saw Gideon and Tom deep in conversation, heads nearly touching.

“Hello,” she called out.

They looked up in unison, blinking at her emerging figure silhouetted against the noonday sun. As she walked across the lawn, the stench of alcohol oxidizing on sun-baked skin grew presently stronger. She soon confirmed the source of the smell to be Tom, blotchy and pale, clutching a wineglass in one hand with a sheen of sweat covering his upper lip. Gideon wasn’t holding a glass but he, too, was pale; he stood leaning against the tree with an alert stillness that struck Ivy as somehow unnatural.

She pretended to check her watch. “Christ, Tom, it’s not even lunch yet.”

Tom blinked woodenly.

“Where’s Roland?” she asked.

“He’s fetching the golf cart,” said Gideon. “Someone took it out this morning without knowing we had a reservation.”

“You’re not supposed to see me yet,” Ivy said suddenly, taking a step back as if to curb the damage. “It’s bad luck.”