Free The Music of Your Life by John Rowell

away. I’ve recruited my older son here to help me.”
    I feel my cheeks flush. I smile weakly and feel myself straighten up and adopt something like a cocky, frat-boy stance to up my masculinity quotient. OK, so it’s a knee-jerk reaction of slight panic, more to reassure myself than anyone else. I’m wearing jeans, a North Carolina Tar Heels sweatshirt under a khaki windbreaker and Sperry deck sneakers, so it’s not as though I look like I’m in the road company of La Cage or something, but, frankly, I’m standing in a women’s formal dress shop in Fuquay Varina on a weekday morning. Also, I’m unemployed and unloved, so I’m not exactly at full mast of the masculine ideal I try to project to the world at large. Fortunately, I’m six one, which, in North Carolina, often prompts people to say, “Hey, I bet you played basketball!”; in New York, they just think, “God, I hope he doesn’t sit in front of me at the theater.”
    â€œNow what did you have in mind, honey?” Mavis Bunce asks Mother.
    â€œWell, to tell you the truth, I just don’t know. I’ve been looking and just can’t seem to find anything …”
    â€œWhat color are the bridesmaids’ dresses?” Mavis asks, clearly in sales mode, a seasoned pro.
    â€œMidnight blue with black piping.”
    â€œOK. And do you know what the mother of the bride is wearing?”
    â€œPurple. Which is good, because purple is not my color.”
    â€œOK. I’ve got something real pretty in a teal green color, just come in yesterday. Be real pretty with your dark hair and your peachy coloring and your blue eyes.”
    â€œWell, I have never worn greens well at all,” Mother says, in the tone of dread normally used for saying something like “I’m so sick, I believe I might die tonight.”
    â€œMother, just look at it,” I say. “You won’t know until you see it.”
    Now Mavis Bunce will see that I am a player in this decision, and from here on out will have to allow for my input and comments. I was not meant to stand on the sidelines where fashion is concerned, particularly as it relates to my mother.
    â€œIt’s real pretty, honey,” Mavis says, her tone encouraging.
    â€œWell, I’ll have a look, but I don’t know about green …”
    Suddenly, I realize what my mother’s internal conflict behind this inability to find a mother-of-the-groom dress actually is: her three favorite colors, the only colors she feels look good on her, are black, white, and red. I feel the proverbial cartoon lightbulb pop on over my sandy-blond head: I get it now. Black is out for a day wedding; white is out also, of course, and, knowing her, she would think red is too flashy. OK, I’m ready to work.
    Mavis produces the teal-colored dress she was championing, draping it flat over her skinny arms. It is very … well, it is just so teal . It would be a good color on me, I think, though not in an evening gown.
    â€œI don’t really think that’s right for me,” Mother says, feeling the fabric.
    â€œLet me go check on some things in the back for you, honey. You just look around and see if anything strikes you.” Mavis scurries like a tough little scrub hen to the back of the store.
    â€œThat dress looked like Grand Ole Opry to me,” Mother whispers. “Your daddy would say it was something Dolly Parton would wear, I can just hear him.”
    â€œI wish you had come up to New York to do this, Mother,” I say. “We could have gone to Bergdorf’s.” I stop short of saying how fabulous I think that would have been.
    â€œWhich would have cost as much as the entire wedding, probably,” Mother says, and I’m not sure if she is talking about a trip to New York or a dress we might have been able to find for her at Bergdorf’s. Suddenly, I think about Fifth Avenue, and get a little pang