My mother’s attempts to stay fashionable were, I think, her one concession to life as other people know it. She worked hard not to feel out of place. We would diligently scrutinize the fashion magazines, Italian Vogue and Women’s Wear Daily, make obligatory trips to Saks and Henri Bendel, watch emaciated models walk down numerous runways. “Who writes this?” she would whisper to me exasperated, as some man with a microphone told us to “imagine you are in Bali and the sun is about to set.”
Fashion was frivolous in a way my mother never really could be. Despite her supreme effort, my mother was not good at dressing. Her heart was simply not in it, and yet, stubbornly, her whole life she insisted on keeping up with the fashions of the day and wearing them.
“Do you like these?” she’d ask tentatively, taking lizard shoes out of a striped shoebox. “Oh, they’re really quite ridiculous, aren’t they?” she laughed.
There was an urgency about her dressing. I think she believed that if she stayed current she would not get lost. If she kept one high-heeled foot in the material world, all would be fine.
I can remember thinking, after one of our many shopping sprees, as we walked down a busy street in New York, impeccably dressed, that we were misfits, and that no matter what we put on, we would never fit in. My mother must have felt that, too, but tried to douse that feeling with French cologne, to disguise it with a Christian Dior coat or a suit from the House of Chanel.
She always hated surprises, and it was some comfort to her, walking down the street, that nothing in the wide world of fashion could surprise us. When paper dresses came, we were well prepared. Fish swimming in earrings were nothing to us. And when a certain faction began dying its hair pink and green we were not fazed. My mother just smiled, pleased to be on top of the situation.
But her multitude of clothes posed a tremendous problem when it came time to pack. She became distraught, unable to put things together. I could not help. To me, in my sorrow, each item looked like every other. I handed my mother the white dress, the white shoes, the white sweater, the white scarf, the white gloves. Did you know, she said to me, that in China white is the color of mourning? She must have seen white, too. I looked at the mountains of pale clothes on the bed. The Chinese are right, I thought, to make white the mourning color.
All those times sitting on her bed, buried under clothes, the suitcase overflowing, I found it easy to imagine that she would never come back again.
The last time I saw my mother she was waiting for me under the enormous clock in Grand Central Station where we met briefly, she on her way back from Maine and I on my way to college for the second semester. She did not see me as I approached her. She wore a large hat. Bewildered, she watched people pass her and stare. My mother could have worn anything and gotten away with it paper dresses and fish earrings, snakeskin gloves, lizard shoes, parachutes, parasols. What other people saw when they passed was a large, beautiful, overdressed woman. What I saw, getting closer to her, was my mother, so ill at ease with her surroundings that she had to arm herself with layers of clothes and jewelry and makeup for protection. Her bulging suitcases flanked her.
“Hi, Mom,” I said quietly, so as not to frighten her. “I’m sorry I’m late.” She smiled broadly.
She was not really seeing me. “You’re very nice,” she said.
“Mom. Oh, Mom.”
“Hmmm? What is it, honey? Vanessa?”
“Mom,” I said gently. “You don’t need all of this,” I said, as I slipped rings from her fingers, slowly undressing her. She looked at me as though she were a child, this big woman. She was completely absorbed in me and what I was saying. “You don’t need all this.” Her eyes did not leave my mouth as she waited for meaning to come. I put jewelry into her large pocketbook. I removed the glasses she was wearing; there was nothing wrong with her eyes.
“How’s my makeup?” she asked.
I wiped layers of color from her face. I felt the giant clock’s sharp arm cutting into my back like a blade.
“I’ll call you on Sunday,” I said. There was so much snow — it pressed down on us. I turned to leave.
“I have loved you my whole life,” she said. “Even when I was a little girl even then.”
When I turned back to look at her, she had already taken the big silver bracelet from her purse. She picked up one suitcase. It was so heavy she tipped over to one side, her leg in the air. She waved good-bye.
All those times, sitting on her bed, buried under clothes, the suitcases overflowing, I found it easy to imagine that she would not come back again, but I did not think of it that day when we parted in Grand Central Station, she on her way home to Connecticut and I back to Poughkeepsie.
Those days of packing always ended with Father coming in to close the suitcases that neither she nor I could manage, they were so full. He would then lower them to the floor. To me at this point she seemed already to be gone, though she’d be chatting away, knowing little work could be accomplished on a traveling day. If I could have changed shape, left my human life for the life of clothing, been fabric against fabric in my mother’s suitcase, I would have — even to have been something frivolous, bought on a whim and never once worn.
My mother, now in a fitted dress, now in a billowy one, now in a hat, now in a veil, a scarf, a bit of plaid, my mother now in felt, now in lace, now in cashmere, smiles. My mother’s shoe, one year a pump, one year flat, one year alligator, one year suede, pivots. She takes my hand in hers, one year polished, one year not, one year gloved, and we go down the stairs, she first, me following. This is how I remember her best: an extravagant, exotic figure, descending stairs or getting into the car, but always saying good-bye.
I borrowed from this scene, not on purpose, for what was the recurrent dream of my childhood. For years, nearly once a week I saw this in sleep: The room is white. My mother walks to the closet and drags the suitcase out — I recognize its smell immediately; it is like the smell of the interior of a new car. I feel as if it might suffocate me. “Mother,” I say, but before completing the sentence she tells me to just relax. Breathe deeply. It’s OK. She is so comforting at this moment, so maternal, that I can’t believe this isn’t her daily role. She looks at me, her head resting on her hand. “Shh, shh. Breathe deeply. Everything will be all right.” I nod. All afternoon as she’s been packing she’s been uncertain, hesitant, sorrowful, but now, patting my head, comforting me, she is stronger than anyone I have ever seen. She moves with new confidence to one corner of the room. Her face has an exquisite pallor. Her chin is raised, her eyes are focused. From the corner of the room she takes a large heavy piece of white cloth and like an expert folds it into a triangle and, smiling, she gives it to me. It calms me down and I can breathe again. From the top of the stairs she passes the suitcase to my father. This is how I know the dream is nearly over. At the end of the staircase there is always fog. I hug the triangle to me. Through the fog I wait for the sound of the door closing. I can see the back of her head perfectly, even through thick fog. I listen for the engine. The lights go on. She turns to wave.