MindSpinner

My big news of the day is that I had to go shopping. I needed outfits I could wear to prom and graduation. I’d managed to get by without buying a dress for so long (years) that my responsibilities as senior sponsor at various occasions require an infusion of dress clothes. My daughter helped. We tried Macy’s first. Their petite department seemed to focus on buyers who are merely short but not small. We found only three dresses in my size. My daughter had me try on a muted green one, a long formal thing - “Come on, Mom, I want to see you in this.” I looked like an over-aged intergalactic goddess left over from the first Star Trek series.

There was a bit of a fright when the zipper stuck.

In the juniors’ department, matters became clear: I could be an over-aged intergalactic goddess, or I could be a slinky seductress in a halter dress who made me think of Leonard Cohen’s line, “She’s a hundred, but she’s wearing somethin’ tight.” At Ann Taylor, I settled for a skirt and top that had the disadvantage of not looking dressy enough for prom (tough) and the advantage of being something I’d actually like to wear on other occasions - a dressy cream-colored sweater over a flared, tiered skirt in a chocolate linen. Dress shoes were yet another hurdle, since size 5’s are seldom to be found. After an hour’s search, I ended up with a pair a little too big - size 6 - but no more loose and difficult to walk in than the two, less suitable size 5’s the shoe salesman managed to muster on his third trip into the store room. Inserts under the balls of my feet made them snug enough so that I think I can walk around as much as I’ll have to. When walking is a no go, I’ll sit, and I’ll bring spare shoes. I’ll never be a clothes fiend. It’s just too hard.

On our way out of the mall, we passed a Macy’s makeover department. Over the buzz of beautification going on below, atop a divider that amounted to a sort of pillar, there presided a mannequin who wasn’t a mannequin at all. She was shaped exactly like one, but she was alive, apparently paid to sit up there in a svelte brown bathing suit and look the part. Her short platinum blond hair was spiked and her virtually expressionless face stylized with make-up, but still she moved her head from time to time to peer around slowly, like some sort of living Barbie doll. One could not guess her thoughts. I wanted to rescue her, to yell at her to jump down and run and to be real, but instead I met her eyes for an instant and tried to say with mine, “I know you’re alive up there.” She probably didn’t want rescuing, wanted the money for the job instead. I don’t think either she or Macy’s intended for her to be embody a modern feminine nightmare, perched above to haunt us while we spend money to look like mannequins do until, perhaps, we become mannequins at last.