Free Away from Home by Rona Jaffe

wholesome and boring life on Central Park West. But now her wedding was to be held there, and this suite had been reserved for her and her bridesmaids to use as a dressing room. When Margie looked around the luxurious suite it seemed to have a sterile, disappointing look, because no one was going to sleep there that night and there were no personal articles laid out on the dresser, nor books, nor flowers, nor any of the clutter that people leave wherever they live. Her new, monogrammed suitcases were lined up in the corner. Only the overnight case was still open, for last-minute make-up. There was a large straw hat to wear on the beach in St. Thomas. It was too big to fit into any of the suitcases so she would have to carry it in her hand on the plane. Her mother had taken Margie’s new going-away suit out of its tissue-paper nest and box and hung it in the closet. It was the only thing in the closet except for her mother’s mink stole (which her mother would later wear) and a dozen empty hangers that swayed together, emitting a ghostly sound, like little skeletons, when you touched them.
    For bridesmaids Margie had her two closest friends from the Birch Wathen School, who were both pretty and the same height, which had made choosing dresses for them easy, and a rather unattractive young cousin of Neil’s, whom Margie had invited to be polite. Since Neil had no sisters it seemed a nice gesture to ask one of his relatives to be in the wedding procession. Neil’s cousin had red hair and a pinkish complexion, which was even pinker now with excitement. Because of her they couldn’t have pink bridesmaid’s dresses, which Margie would have preferred, so they had pale blue. The matron of honor was Margie’s married friend Sue. The bridesmaids were milling about, trying to tilt their flowered tiaras to the most becoming angle, squealing over Margie’s hand-embroidered French underwear, and her shoes, which were appliquéd with the same lace as the dress, and finally the dress itself. The crinoline for the wedding dress was so stiff and enormous that it had to be stood up in the bathtub until she was ready to put it on. It was the only thing in the bathroom that seemed to have any relationship to her and her life; the rest was immaculate, white, and cold. Here she was, in the place she had always thought about with stars in her eyes, and it was nothing but a hotel room that she would be in and out of in a minute, leaving not a trace of herself behind, nor of this most important day of her life.
    The affectionate noise of the girls disturbed her, and her mother trying to be helpful made her nervous. Her father had been banished to the living room of the suite, where he smoked a cigarette. Margie stood as stiff as a doll with her arms above her head while her heavy wedding dress was slipped carefully over her head, carefully so as not to disarrange her hair or her make-up. Her matron of honor did up the hooks in the back, and her mother delicately smoothed Margie’s hair, which had been coiffeured that morning and had luckily not been disarranged by the dress at all. Margie put on her veil, attached to a Juliet cap of real orange blossoms that gave off a faint sweet smell that belonged to a warm, faraway land. She looked at her reflection in the full-length mirror, and through the veil she seemed to herself to be a beautiful stranger, a bride doll on a wedding cake, a model in a bridal magazine. Margie could not see the expression in her own eyes through the misty white veil, and so she seemed to herself for that instant to be all brides on their wedding day, one of an endless procession, reflected and re-reflected in that mirror on and on until eternity, a life force; girls on the threshold of womanhood going to be united with their loved mates, billions of tremulous important brides, each as tiny and unimportant in the eyes of the universe as the tiny stars that make up the bridal carpet of the Milky Way, and yet at the same