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Dress-up

Bill Stenson

    Rose blurted out advice aimed at her daughter from time to time, and Marsha Hamilton never knew when to expect such rhetoric or what to think of it when it arrived. Only later in life could she look back and understand that at least half of what her mother had to say spelled the truth. One such day she went on about vanity. Vanity, she explained, is a veritable commodity only if earned or is something you were born with. The vain who don’t think this through deserve what they get.
    Marsha Hamilton loved dolls, though not any more than she loved a bow and arrow, marbles and a day in the woods, but her friend Britta had every doll sold to little girls at the time, and Marsha Hamilton spent hours in Britta’s bedroom dressing them up and stripping them down and sending them off to parties at the bequest of their fruitful imaginations. All of Britta’s dolls were girl dolls. She had one boy doll, Marsha Hamilton remembered, called Butch, but he didn’t last long, and when she asked what happened to him, Britta said he broke his leg and had to go to the infirmary. The story sounded credible to Marsha Hamilton, even if she didn’t know the word infirmary, but Butch never surfaced again. Just girl dolls, hundreds of them, that adorned Britta’s bedroom, enough to cover her canopy bed.
    This business with the dolls lasted from the time the girls were six to nine years of age and would have gone on longer had Britta not moved across town. For the first few years they dressed up Britta’s entourage for a trip to a party of sorts, a ball by invitation only. Marsha Hamilton didn’t own the dolls they played with, so she followed Britta’s lead in what the girls got up to. After a few years, the dolls got dressed up in dazzling attire to attend a high society ball—Britta had a doll mansion where the scenes most often took place—and when they got there, the girls, all of them named, wanted to take their clothes off again. Britta found this the most exciting part. She rubbed her hands over the dolls and so Marsha Hamilton did too. She told Marsha Hamilton that it made the dolls feel good to be rubbed like that.
    Britta lived a block away from Marsha Hamilton, and if several days of the summer passed without their getting together, Britta sauntered over to Marsha Hamilton’s house looking for company.
    Wanna come over and play dress up? Britta asked. I got two new dolls for my birthday.
    Can’t. I promised to play checkers with J.J.
    J.J.? Who’s J.J.?
    He lives in the dwarf house next door. You can come if you like. He has cookies, but he chews tobacco.
    Never had Britta seen such a diminutive house. She lived in the largest house in the neighbourhood and this one had to be the smallest. White with blue trim, inside and out. It seemed unreasonable that such a tall man would live in such a short house. Marsha Hamilton asked if she could show Britta around the place, and J.J. said, Fill your boots.
    The small stove that sat in the kitchen had room for two pots to cook with, Marsha Hamilton explained. In the winter it heats the house and it’s always hot in the kitchen. The living room had two small couches that faced one another, and a small TV with rabbit ears that sat against one wall. From the view out the front window, the people walking by were so close it felt like watching a larger, second TV of real life. A round, birdless bird cage sat in one corner. J.J. had four snow globes on a shelf above one couch, and Marsha Hamilton shook two of them and let Britta shake the other two. The bathroom they took turns examining because they had designed the room for one person at a time. Britta noticed the rust stains in the clawfoot bathtub, and it made her shiver. Her mother would never leave rust stains on anything.
    Britta had never played the game of checkers, so she watched Marsha Hamilton and J.J. play and helped herself to the cookies and the pot of tea on the table. Britta played next, and Marsha Hamilton coached her. J.J. tried to make the game last as long as he could.
    So, what are you two girls get up to these days?
    We play dress up with dolls, Britta said. I own one hundred and seventy-nine dolls.
    Must be fun, J.J. said. You two could play dress up here if you like to dress up.
    I don’t have my dolls with me, Britta said.
    Bertha’s clothes are still in the closet. Help yourself if you want.
    The bedroom looked smaller than the kitchen. Marsha Hamilton had only looked at this room through the doorway. One small closet held J.J.’s clothes, at least the ones not scattered on the bed or the floor, and beside it sat a huge closet filled with Bertha’s clothes and beneath two racks of shoes covered the floor. Marsha Hamilton lowered her voice and explained that Bertha had died a few years ago and that meant that these clothes belonged to a dead woman.
    Marsha Hamilton pulled some dresses and skirts out of the closet and laid them on the bed. Any clothes she could remember Bertha wearing, she set off to the side. J.J. heard them squealing and giggling and poked his head in.
    You girls having fun?
    Can we try these?
    Absolutely. Try anything you fancy. I’ll be in the living room. You can model for me if you want. I haven’t seen any of those outfits for years.
    This is going to be so much fun, Britta said. I love this dress, don’t you?
    Britta stripped to her underwear and tried on a small woman’s dress that gathered like a puddle at her feet. The dress formed a deep V on her chest, which she filled in with a large string of pearls pinned to a cork board inside the closet. Marsha Hamilton followed her lead. She found a small, blue skirt she liked and a pink top with puffy sleeves. The skirt came down to her feet, but at least she could walk around.
    Pick some shoes, Britta said. You pick first.
    The sandals Marsha Hamilton tried on almost fit. Bertha must have had small feet. Her toenails peeked out and since her mother had just painted them, she considered the look stunning. Half the shoes in the closet were high heel shoes, and Britta said high-heeled shoes were more grown up. She tried on a red pair while sitting on the bed and almost fell over when she stood up.
    Let’s go show him, Britta said.
    I don’t know if we should.
    He said to model. Come on, this is better than playing with dolls.
    Marsha Hamilton had never heard J.J. whistle before, but he cat-whistled when they plodded their way into the living room. Britta had to hang on to Marsha Hamilton’s arm to mitigate her wobbly gait.
    If we had music we could all dance, Britta said.
    J.J. didn’t say anything, but he walked over to the corner of the room and opened a small record player that sat under the birdcage. He put on a scratched up copy of a Glenn Miller Orchestra big band ensemble. We used to love listening to Glenn Miller, J.J. said.
    Let’s dance, Britta said, and since Marsha Hamilton already had a hold of her for support, they danced. J.J. sat back down on the couch and kept time with his hand on his thigh.
    Next came a change of clothes and then another change of clothes. The third time out, the girls had accessed Bertha’s somewhat dried-up makeup supply. The burgundy lipstick still looked fluorescently moist.
    You should ask him to dance, Britta said. He thinks we’re like his wife or something.
    You can, Marsha Hamilton said. He’s my neighbour, afterall.
    Their third time down J.J.’s runway between the two couches, Marsha Hamilton also had on high-heeled shoes. J.J. put different music on. He played ̶-;Whatever Lola Wants (Lola Gets)” by Sarah Vaughan and both girls giggled. The jazzy beat made Britta want to sway her hips side to side, and when she did Marsha Hamilton lost her balance and grabbed at her friend’s shoulder, causing Britta to bump the coffee table and then fall awkwardly to the floor. Everyone noticed the loud ripping sound which turned out to be the dress Britta had on, and by the time Marsha Hamilton crouched to her aid, the dress that once rested on Britta’s shoulders like a cape, now sat in a crumpled heap covering only her knees and ankles.
    The silence that followed didn’t last long. The sounds J.J. emitted neither of the girls had heard before, a yelling and wailing that may have included swear words but, if so, Marsha Hamilton didn’t recognize them. J.J. got up from the couch and flexed his arms in a calisthenic fit before bending down and retrieving the dress, almost sliced in half. This left Britta exposed. She huddled arms and legs around her sinewy body and her pink panties with the blue bunny on the front. Her right ankle ached and, because she didn’t know if she could stand, she crawled her way to the bedroom.
    I can get my mom to sew it up, Marsha Hamilton said. We’re sorry.
    J.J. sat on the couch with the dress clustered around his chest like a giant bib. That was the last dress she ever wore, he said. The last one.
    By the time Marsha Hamilton got to the bedroom, Britta had her own clothes on. She put her runners on gingerly but didn’t tie the laces. Her one ankle had swollen considerably.
    We better put these clothes back in the closet, Marsha Hamilton said, but Britta didn’t appear to hear her. She limped toward the front door and passed J.J. who sat on the couch, blubbering.
    Your breath stinks, Britta told him. That’s why I never asked you to dance.
    Marsha Hamilton didn’t tell her mother what had happened when she got home. The next day she did because she couldn’t take it any longer. When she explained what had happened to the important dress that needed fixing, she thought her mother would be mad at them both for what they’d gotten up to. Her mother laughed.
    It’s been over two years since Bertha died, Rose said. He’s still not over it, obviously. He will, given enough time.
    Marsha Hamilton felt relieved when her mother suggested there was nothing they had to do to fix things, but her mother’s words hovered for several days. She wondered if she ought to go back and say sorry again and help J.J. get over his wife’s death. She thought about it a lot for a few days as the summer melted away and then hardly at all after that. Soon school started up again, and Marsha Hamilton came home one day and her mother said that Jimmy Jameson had died. The ambulance came and took him away, she said, and they covered the body. They don’t cover a body unless the person is dead.
    Marsha Hamilton stood still and said nothing. She could feel tears welling up in her eyes.
    It’s sad, and it’s not sad, Rose said. It happens to couples all the time. One dies and the other doesn’t know who they are anymore. It’s loneliness that kills old people. When people die they always move on to a better place. He’ll be happy now. Best to think of it that way.

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