A Dress Addressed

From Alice Munro’s short story "Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage":

“She had to go into the dress shop called Milady’s and buy herself an outfit... Right ahead of her, a full-length mirror... They did that on purpose, of course. They set the mirror there so you could get a proper notion of your deficiencies, right away, and then - they hoped - you would jump to the conclusion that you had to buy something to alter the picture.”

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Dear Alex,

A dress or two. The longing of every woman in her closet for special occasions, a wedding or funeral. Every dress speaks.

Years ago as an undergrad I worked part-time selling prime tea. The ritual of sales began with flushing an empty ceramic teapot with boiled water. Then I added tiny fists of tea leaves to be steeped. Leaves would unfurl into a dress. The golden elixir flowed into cups, down the throats of fine ladies inflamed in gossip and mirages of love and children, soup and skin. Their hems of skirts and dresses swathed legs roaming in boutiques and parties, through opened doors and gates, an endless orbit of places I could not call home.

One summer afternoon she came in, her pink flamingo dress swaying alongside a friend, legs long and sorrowful in re-telling their travels. Her gaze tumbled, lingered on my teapot. I arose to her yearning for Oolong tea. No words, just legs and eyes speaking. Beauty. Broken. Breathless. Her hair hid parts of jaw and neck before they spilled as fishnets over her shoulders. In somber silence her friend in grey suit glanced at her repeatedly, eyes racing along top shelves of tea tins.

Where did she get the dress? I planned to entice her with the finest tea leaves to pair with her ensemble.

She sipped her tea and asked: Is the owner looking to hire?

By next morning she was working alongside me without her friend. We stood in solidarity over long hours for minimum wage, our hearts strained and dresses stained. She often looked at a pocket mirror, searching for flaws to be fixed right away. My calves were too stout for show in dress, she rasped. I should exercise more, she warned me, her head wavering. During breaks, I often rushed to a full-length mirror in the restroom. Cursed these legs in shoddy heels & spider veins.

But nothing mattered more than what I had been waiting for that year: Boxing Day 8:30 am. Every dollar had been earned and savored for months. I went to my favorite boutique, Benetton, in Oakridge Center & came out within an hour. Six dresses gained, a full-length mirror viewed, a heap of cash in smoke. And those cursed calves? The dresses would set them right.

Many months over, I returned to labor with my new coworker, stooping among dresses, dreamers and dream-makers craving for high tea.

Decades later, I returned to Oakridge Center and all the local malls in search for Benetton. It had been shut permanently. My 6 dresses were long gone and with them, my youth lost in the forsaken view of a full-length mirror.

Yours, Kate

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Dear Kate,

We all have our own "magnificent obsession," don't we, things that we can't live without, things we must set right to live...properly?

Many times I prayed to God If you would only set this one thing right for me before I close my eyes tonight I will wake up a happy man tomorrow praising you and shall ask for no more. 

I've been made happy many times, but there's always one more wrong however small that I must address no sooner than the last.  The smaller it is the more reason for me to think it's no big deal to insist on its vanishing, for God to move his finger just a little, for the world to stop turning for a second to pay attention to my trouble.

We say it, our obsession, our fuss, is really about us being properly us.  We aren't being unreasonable when our begging and pleading has nothing to do with reason.  What urges us on, the vision in our mirror, needs no justification.

Last two night I worked with my son for hours on his new guitar, a "fret buzz" it was.  He wanted it both ways, low "action" and taintless sound down to the picking of a single note, all positions.  After the twentieth adjustment I said it sounds fine to me.  He said no way on earth or beneath.

Of course he was doing the work of an angel, caring so much about creation and creating--and it was a truly beautiful sight to behold, an agonizing artist.  Angelic work just happens to often call out also the demons in us.

Angels and demons, saints and sinners, layers of contradicting perception and meaning simultaneously true, Alice Munro knows and writes them well.  To say human nature is finally elusive doesn't mean truth is "relative," as some might say her stories suggest.

If Munro did make a grand (under)statement it would be that truth is generous, that someone who knows and speaks truth cares enough to know and speak about you and me, that no tyrant, not even that of our own heart, has the final word on us.  As readers we are being addressed personally, like we are a true human being, a proper person.

It is another way to say there's grace after all, at last.

For that I feel fine closing my eyes tonight.  Truth is everywhere but the book is never closed.

Yours, Alex