About a month ago, my wife and I were in a hotel room in Baltimore trying on our wedding attire. It was the night before her twin brother Thor was to be married. Sunshine, my wife, finally agreed to be one of Cindy's bride's maids after making many trips to Baltimore where they live to visit and get to know her. She and Cindy had actually developed a sense of mutual respect for one another, despite the fact that they were polar opposites in just about every conceivable category.
Birkenstocks, baggie jeans, khakis, sweat pants, flannel shirts, bulky cable-knit sweaters, baseball caps, and page-boy haircuts are the only things that have been associated with my wife for the three years that I've known her, two of them married. I met her senior year in college. She was a geology and environmental engineering major, and her twin was in the education program. During their senior year in high school their parents had been taken from them tragically on New Years' Day by a drunk driver. Sunshine and Thor inherited the family business, a garden center, and decided to continue running the business while they went to college locally. They didn't have to worry about room and board, and the money they made in the garden business paid for their tuition. Their parents would have been proud of them.
Thor and Sunshine were born to a couple of hippies in the early 70's. You couldn't find two more ecologically friendly people if you tried. Thor was forty-seven minutes older than his twin sister, and the two are amazingly identical. Both have this strong-jawed square face with high cheek bones and a dimple in the middle of the chin. I can't tell if Thor is a beautiful man or if Sunshine is a handsome woman.
Having no other family, no uncles, cousins, or grandparents, Thor and Sunshine had to literally fend for themselves. I was evaluated with a great deal of scrutiny by Thor when I met, fell in love with, and asked to marry Sunshine. Eventually, Thor and I became good friends.
So anyway, Sunshine was looking in her closet at her dress draped in wispy clear plastic and thinking about her big brother finally getting hitched. I said, "You seem worried that Thor may be making a mistake."
"It's not that, it's...well..." She never finished her sentence. I continued tying my bowtie while looking at her reflection through the mirror. Finally, she shifted all her weight to her other foot, propped her hand on her hip, cocked her head to the side and looked back at me through the mirror.
"Do you know where we went today, I mean 'we', as in the bridesmaids?" she said.
I had no idea. The "groomsmen," "ushers," whatever you call them, had played golf all morning and had spent the afternoon at the 19th hole until it was time to go back to the hotel for a quick nap before the rehearsal dinner.
"We went to a spa!"
"A spa," I said with the same astonishment in my voice, though I was mocking her.
"No really, a spa!" she said again as if it were the strangest thing.
Well, in reality, it was strange for her. For all intents and purposes, Sunshine had become a hippie herself. When we were married, it was a civil service. Sunshine wore this white peasant smock, and she had a crown of daises and baby's breath in her hair, Birkenstocks on her feet. We took the subway downtown to the court house and had the justice of the peace marry us. Twenty-five bucks. Thor and Cindy's wedding, however was going to be a posh, upper-crust affair.
"Hey, they did your nails!" I said, finally noticing the subtle changes that marked the beginning of her transformation. "And they did your toenails too!"
I had to turn around and take a better look at my wife. She stood there with just a towel wrapped around her. Her page boy haircut had been shortened, and the ends were trimmed evenly in an arching line just below the base of her skull. Her eyebrows had even been shaped. She was beautiful, alluring. She turned back to the closet to pull out the bridesmaid dress they'd given her, and her hair danced magically back into place.
Though already married, it seemed only proper to include us in the wedding party, as we were the only family that Thor really had. Both sides of the aisle could therefore be filled with a variety of relatives from Cindy's huge and very rich clan.
"Wait 'til you see the dress they want me to wear," she said, ripping away the plastic and letting it float to the floor.
The dress was a short cocktail dress with spaghetti straps. It was made out of this beautiful sea-foam green material that had a slight shimmer to it. It looked more like a really long camisole. A pair of pumps of the same color was in another plastic bag that hung from the same hanger. Stapled to the white paper that enveloped the hanger was yet another plastic bag. It looked like a dress repair kit, complete with some additional spaghetti strap and a small piece of the green material for repairs.
"Look how short it is!" she exclaimed, holding it up in front of her.
"Wow! Now that's a pretty awesome color green," I said. "I've seen this new Volkswagen around town in that same color!"
"Jay!" Her tone drew me back on point. "I'm wearing more with this towel than I will be when I put this dress on."
I looked at the towel. She had a point there. I smiled. She fought to maintain a look of worry and concern, but as she turned away I thought I saw the hint of a smile on her face as well.