Target Underwear and a Vera Wang Gown Page 9

  “REMEMBER THAT TIME? EVERYONE WORE LONG DRESSES!” she’ll say. “I FELT COMPLETELY UNDERDRESSED!”

  “YES, I REMEMBER THAT TIME!” I’d yell back at her, “BUT I’M TELLING YOU NOW, THE OUTFIT YOU CURRENTLY HAVE ON IS BUSINESS CASUAL! NOW BUY THE STINKING OUTFIT AND LET’S BE DONE WITH IT!”

  She’d buy the dress and, once again, peace would be restored in Los Angeles. I’d go back to my life; Serena would go back to hers.

  And then, as it usually happens, twenty minutes before the wedding, Serena will call and say in her standard composed voice, “You know, I think I’m just going to wear that ruby dress I got last year. You know, the one with the frilly cap sleeves?”

  A week later, I’d go to my mailbox and see an eggshell-colored envelope with calligraphic print on it.

  The alarm sounds once again and Serena kisses her husband and children good-bye.

  “What kind of attire did she say the invitation gave?” her husband would ask as she threw together an overnight bag of possible outfits for me from her own closet.

  “Casual black tie,” she’d say, then drive off to my apartment.

  Rachel, the last of my five, entered, typically, last. I actually knew of Rachel, since we were both from Philadelphia, but we had gone to different schools, so while we knew of each other, we were never friends. It wasn’t until 1992 that I got acquainted with her. She was the roommate of Susan’s boyfriend at the time. Rachel became our sixth in the clique due to the fact that she was always able to report the whereabouts of Susan’s boyfriend. The boyfriend is long gone, but we kept Rachel. Sometimes I joke that I met Rachel last because she was stuck in some store trying to figure out if she should buy the same T-shirt in white or white. Before anyone starts to think that Rachel’s problem is the same problem that Serena and I have, you must understand it is enormously different. With Serena and I, the problem is only reserved for special occasions. With Rachel, however, I don’t know how she fit the time in to have a powerful job, get married, and have a baby. I always say she’s lucky she’s got gorgeous natural ruby-colored hair. Otherwise, she’d never get out of a hair salon because she’d never be able to decide on a new color.

  “Sorry I’m late,” she said, handing me a gift. “I just couldn’t decide what to get you.”

  We all knew. If Rachel was going to buy a simple birthday gift, knowing our reservation was at eight, she must have left her house to start shopping for the gift at about 3:30 that afternoon. This is the one thing about Rachel that bugs everyone to no end. Everything else about her is the greatest. She always has the best gossip, she’s the first one to pick you up from the service station when your car breaks down, and once she made me laugh so hard I got kicked out of a restaurant for making too much of a ruckus.

  But all of that aside, Rachel is the worst person to shop with. Rachel is a looker, a feeler, a browser. With the exception of an important occasion, I am a buyer: I see something, it fits, I buy it. Rachel has to look at every item in the store and check out its merits one by one.

  One Saturday, for example, Rachel called and asked if I’d come with her to buy a pair of black rayon pants. Instinctively, I gave her a flat “absolutely not.”

  “I swear,” she said, “ I know exactly what I want; it’s going to take two seconds. I promise you we’ll be in and out.”

  I looked at my watch. We entered the Beverly Center mall at exactly 1:42 and by 2:01, Rachel had found the pants she wanted in her size.

  “I’m just going to try them on for you,” she said. “Just two seconds, I promise.”

  Three hours and six stores later ... Rachel hadn’t realized that the first pair had a button; she preferred a snap. She felt the second pair made her butt look huge. The third pair had a static-cling problem. The eighth pair just didn’t feel right. The ninth pair had a cuff and, two hours after that, just as the stores were closing, Rachel finally found the pair she was looking for.

  I grabbed the pants and went to stand in line, but Rachel tugged back. I could see her mind in deep thought over the pants, feeling the texture of the fabric and squinting for any irregularities in the stitching. Was the fabric up to her standards? How would these pants benefit her life? Would they be useful? Would they pack easily? What was the update on the situation in the Middle East and, if she went to help, could she wear these pants?

  I was becoming exasperated. I knew that this could be the end of our friendship. After ten years of being friends, someone would ask me why we weren’t friends anymore and I’d have to tell them, “We went shopping.”

  At 5:57, Rachel and I finally left the Beverly Center. Rachel did not buy a pair of pants. I, on the other hand, did pay for the parking. Rachel forgot her wallet at home.

  As we approached my house, she turned to me and said, “Look, I’m really sorry. I want you to know how much I really appreciate your coming with me.”

  “Whatever,” I said as I opened the door to get out.

  “I’ll make it up to you,” she told me. “I swear. We’ll go to the Barneys sale tomorrow; it’s the last day.”

  I thought about it for a second.

  “OK,” I said.

  The next day, Rachel and I took separate cars and met at the Barneys sale. I was there for one hour and I bought two pairs of pants and a sweater. That was at one in the afternoon. At seven that night, Rachel called me on the phone and said, “Listen, I’m still here, I need you to do me a big favor and go over to my house and feed my cats. They haven’t eaten all day, and I don’t know when I’m going to get back there.”

  As the waiter came to take our order, he approached Rachel first.

  “I’m not sure yet,” she said, looking over the menu. “Start on that side,” she said, pointing at Susan.

  “Steak, medium-well—just a little pink in the middle—and a chopped vegetable salad.”

  “Would you like the salad dressing on the side?” he asked her.

  “And why would you ask me that?” she questioned.

  He didn’t answer, not wanting to insult her by saying lie assumed she was the stereotypical woman on a diet

  The waiter turned to Felicia, who turned to me. “Adena, would you like to split a pizza to start?” Then she turned to Heidi and said, “Heidi, I know you love the Dover sole, but I just noticed that it has cilantro on it, and I know you hate cilantro, so I thought I’d warn you before.”

  “Thanks for the warning,” Heidi deadpanned as she turned to the waiter. “I will have the Dover sole, no cilantro, and a side of spinach.”

  “I don’t really care what I have,” Serena said to the waiter “Make it your choice,” she said, turning back to me.

  By the time the waiter got to Rachel again, she still couldn’t decide, and other tables were starting to pester the waiter.

  “She’ll have the special pasta,” Heidi said.

  “Let her do what she wants; she’s a grown woman,” Susan said.

  “Split the pizza with Heidi and me,” Felicia said.

  “She’ll decide when she decides,” Serena calmly said.

  Pretty soon, the waiter had served our drinks and we toasted to friendship. There were two working mothers, two stay-at-home moms, one woman with a serious boyfriend, and one single woman. Years before, for whatever the reason, we’d all arrived separately and alone in a new town. We threw on cheap Lycra flowered cotton dresses and we found our kindred spirits. Our new lives had affected our fashions and we had affected one another. For better or for worse, they were my second family, biggest influences, and soul mates for life.

  A Change in Style

  ’ve never been one for loving change.

  When Estée Lauder changed the formula on my favorite self-tanner, I called the company and demanded to speak to whoever was in charge. I’m still on hold. When Lancôme discontinued my favorite Matte Royale lipstick, I was ready to stage a sit-in. When Calvin Klein stopped making my favorite white cotton ribbed tank tops (aka “wife beaters”), in a pathetic attempt at salv
aging, I braved the bemused look on my dry cleaner’s face as I began getting my remaining stash dry-cleaned.

  So in the mid- to late nineties at age twenty-seven, sans college sweetheart, I was beyond depressed, prophesying a morbid future. Alanis Morissette’s Jagged Little Pill album had become my anthem. I had Counting Crows’ “Anna Begins” playing on a loop. I felt like a sentence had been handed down to me.

  “Miss Halpern,” the judge of relationship court said as he threw down his gavel, “you have been found guilty of finding the wrong man. You will be sentenced to a new life of pitiful blind dates, trivial conversation, boring parties, going dutch, one-night stands, notoriously awful dating tips, going to movies alone, sleeping alone, eating alone, simply being alone, and no one will bring you soup when you are sick. May God have mercy on your soul.”

  To add to the angst, the five women you meet in Los Angeles were all either in serious relationships or married with kids. I had to get cracking if I was going to catch up with them so we could all buy houses on the same cul-de-sac and walk our kids to school together, and they were more than keyed up for the task of helping.

  “I think I’ve got the guy,” Rachel announced, calling me from the supermarket. “I was standing here trying to decide if I should get Coke, Pepsi, Diet Sprite, Diet Dr Pepper, or Mr. Pibb and this guy turned to me, looking as perplexed as I was, and said, ”There’s so much to consider. I wish I could find a woman with a strong decision-making sense.”

  “I met him,” Heidi said as I sat down with her and her daughter Sienna for lunch one day. “The only problem is that he likes tall brunettes,” she said, staring at my blond hair, then tying Sienna’s shoes and grabbing a toy for her to play with. “I figure he’ll love your personality so much, he won’t notice the blond or the height.”

  “OK,” Serena said as we compared nail polish colors for an upcoming cousin’s bar mitzvah, “the search is over. I found him.”

  His name was Billy Lange and he was, as Serena described, “a screenwriter on the verge of superstardom.”

  “Yeah, Billy Lange,” he said as he picked up the phone, noticeably leaving out the “it‘s” in “It’s Billy Lange,” or “Hi, Adena. I’m Serena’s friend Billy Lange.” No, it was “Let’s meet for a drink, say, Friday, Four Seasons Hotel. Seven o’clock. I’ve got brown hair. See you there.”

  Serena said that Billy Lange had really bad phone manners, but was actually a really good guy. “He must have been nervous,” she said.

  Serena arrived at my house on Tuesday at five o‘clock. We had three days and two hours to get ready.

  Serena flipped through my closet. The promise in potential guys was certainly there, but there was a much more delicate matter to attend to: My depression had affected my wardrobe.

  “Where’s the sexy stuff?” she asked, flipping through each hanging object as her eyes went wide. “Come to think of it, I can’t remember the last time I saw you wear anything sexy.”

  As common as the notion for a twentysomething woman might be when searching for new clothes, the notion of “sexy” did not make it into the final analysis for me when buying something new. While quick tallies of fashionable, classy, fun, or cool did factor in, sexy wasn’t even an afterthought. I had been in a relationship for so long, and then had been mourning the loss of the relationship for so long, I had lost the ability to think of sexy anymore in terms of clothing. For me, the mid-nineties were all about long, baggy, depressing dresses and skirts. I had resigned myself to the flowered dress, the frilly skirt, and the pencil-straight ankle-length skirt. Frankly, I looked like a “Before” picture.

  “What about that black dress?” I asked, pointing to a sleeveless black jersey ankle-length dress with a scoop neck.

  “Jeez, Dean,” Serena said. pulling out the black jersey dress. “No offense. It’s sexy if you’re going to a funeral, but not for a date.”

  “Now I have to get a new wardrobe?” I cried like the eggshell I’d become.

  “No, no. no,” she said, taking a closer look at the dress. “We just need to sex up what you already have. This is a good thing.” She handed me a tissue. “You’re young; you need to have some fun. A change will do you good.”

  Off to the tailor we went. With my six-inch heels in hand, Serena and the tailor shortened the dress a little bit, then a little bit more, and then a little more than that, until I was left with a tiny black minidress. Cost for my new look: $8.

  I felt incredibly uncomfortable heading on my first date out of the single file gate. I was sure that the tailor had made my dress too short. Did my minidress with the addition of my six-inch heels make me look like a hooker?

  “I swear,” Serena said, “you do not look like a hooker. You don’t have enough makeup on to look like a hooker,” she said as she dabbed a little rouge on my cheeks.

  I didn’t feel sexy at all. I felt awkward and agitated. I didn’t want to date. I didn’t want to see the world. Even though I was incredibly unhappy, I had gotten used to being unhappy. That was better than anything new.

  “You’re gorgeous,” Serena said, trying to psych me up. “You’ve got great legs and a great figure. It’s about time that you showed it off.”

  I entered the Four Seasons Hotel at exactly 7:17 p.m. I wanted to be a little late, and the two sevens I saw on my car’s digital clock seemed like a lucky time to start my single life.

  I stood in the entryway of the bar, trying to size up any man with brown hair who looked like he was a screenwriter on the verge of superstardom. There weren’t any, so I got a glass of Merlot (the mid-nineties drink of choice) and took a seat at the bar. Sitting on such a high seat caused me to think that maybe my cellulite would be showing, so I took a seat on one of the couches—also a bad idea. Had Billy Lange sat down next to me on the sofa, I would have had to speak to him facing sideways. Keeping a short skirt from showing cellulite while sitting sideways felt like a disaster in the making, so I got up and switched to a regular chair.

  “Hey, Goldilocks. Is that chair just right?” said a brown-haired guy who looked like he was a screenwriter on the verge of superstardom sitting four feet away. I went red in the face.

  “I hope you’re Adena,” he said, taking a seat on the sofa next to me. “Even if you’re not, those are some great gams.”

  The limbs that held up my body were great? Those toned, lean things?

  “Oh, goodness, thank you,” I exhaled, crossing one great gam over the other and taking a sip of Merlot. “Genetics,” I joked.

  Four hours, three Merlots for me, and three vodkas on the rocks for him later, we were both drunk and if my cellulite was showing, I had no tact left to know or care.

  The following morning, he left my apartment at about seven. Serena had to pick me up to take me back to the Four Seasons to get my car, but I told her we were going shopping first. If it was sexy, I was going to buy it. I came home that day with three pairs of skintight jeans, two miniskirts, four halter tops, a slinky slip dress, another pair of six-inch heels, and a hot pair of dangly earrings. The long skirts were put in the back of the closet for posterity.

  “Are you going to see him again?” Serena asked me when I left her.

  “There’s a whole world of guys out there that I’ve never met,” I said smugly. “Why would I want to just stop with the first one?”

  The Knockoff

  n my mother’s first weekend as a freshman at the University of Pennsylvania in 1955, fourteen boys called to ask her out. Not five or six or seven or eight, hut fourteen! Can you imagine?

  “It was different in those days,” Arlene would say with a shrug. “You went on a date without the notion that it might lead to marriage. You went to a dance hall together or you had a burger.” Regardless of how she tried to downplay it, the volume was mesmerizing any way you looked at it.

  “Get to the part when all the boys called,” I’d say.

  “Well”—she’d smile devilishly as her eyes sparkled—“the phone would ring and your grand
mother would shout out, ‘Here’s another one!’ ”

  I always loved the image of my mother jumping down the stairs in their Wynnefield home and grabbing the phone in the kitchen, acting so casual, as if each boy was the first to call.

  “Friday night?” she’d repeat as my grandmother, Esther, stood listening in incredulity. “I’ll have to check my calendar and get back to you.”

  I imagined my mother getting tired of taking the calls and Esther taking them for her, like her manager who would start to get picky with the boys, asking them something like, “You want to take Arlene out on a date Friday night? What did you say your major was? English literature? No, I don’t think so. We already have a pre-law set up for that night. Change your major and get back to us.”

  “Did you sleep with any of them?” I’d ask.

  “Of course not,” she’d answer as if I’d offended her. “It was the fifties!”

  “Did you wear something sexy that day?”

  “For Christ’s sake, Adena, it was the fifties,” she’d say, getting pissed off. “The sexiest I ever got was keeping the top button open on my cashmere sweaters.”

  As the story went, it took her half the semester to go on a date with all of them, but she didn’t end up marrying any of them and she never mentioned that she even seriously dated any of them.

  This story has had a profound affect on my life. Never have fourteen boys at a time, much less five, asked me out in a single day. I know this is an impossible notion for anyone, but when you know the ability is in your blood, you might like to think you could come close.

  After my one-night stand with Billy Lange, I realized that there was a whole world of dating out there that I had never even attempted to conquer in short black dresses and six-inch heels. The five women you meet in Los Angeles had that time while I was still with my college sweetheart five years out of college. This was my time, my first weekend at Penn, and whether Billy Lange had written my number on a bathroom wall followed by the words “for a good time call ...” or it started to get around that there was a new single girl on the scene, I’ll never know. What I do know is that they started calling, which in turn, for the first time in my life, gave me the confidence to be as picky as I wanted to be. Men could come and go for the slightest reason. Who cared? Another one was bound to pop up at any moment.