“Please,” Breagha pleads. “There are half a dozen dresses on the rack outside. They’re all my favorites from my dream book.” My sister has been planning her wedding since the day she turned three. “It’s a miracle the store could get them in so quickly. Will you just try them on? You can choose the one you like best and we’ll be done.”
“Fine,” I say, because it would be like pulling the wings off a butterfly to disappoint my sister. “Let’s see what you’ve got.”
Breagha claps her hands like she’s about to blow out the candles on a birthday cake. “Thank you!” she says. “Thank you, thank you, thank you!”
The first dress has skirts so full there isn’t room for both Breagha and me in the fitting room. The train is long enough to stretch from here to Baltimore; it’s so heavy the sides are reinforced with some sort of wire.
“Oh Kate,” Breagha breathes, and I wonder what mirror she’s looking at, because the one I see shows what happens when a balloon fucks a coconut cream pie.
“No,” I say.
“Katie,a stór,” Mam calls from outside the dressing room. “Let me see.”
“No fucking way,” I say, raising my voice.
I don’t care if the woman who owns the store hears me. What was her name? Martha Gallagher. Maybe Martha Gallagher will be scandalized enough to throw us out of the shop, and I can be done with all this.
“Don’t worry, Mommy,” Breagha calls. “We have five more to try.”
The second one looks like someone turned theTitanicinto a dress. A huge shield juts out over my tits, and stiff sheets of fabric fall like steel plates from my hips to the floor. I don’t know what the dress is made of, but it weighs about a thousandpounds. I’m pretty sure I could slit my wrists against the edge of the breastplate.
“No.”
“Katie,a stór?—”
I raise my voice so Mam can’t claim we’ve had any misunderstanding. “If you make me buy this one, I’ll burn it before Sunday.”
Breagha’s smile falters, but she helps me out of the suit of armor.
The third dress looks like something a mermaid would wear, if she was trapped on land and still had her feet bound into a tail. It’s strapless, with a thousand feet of snow-white feather boas wrapped around the chest. The waist cinches in like the body of a wasp, and the hem is so snug around my ankles I have trouble turning to look at my arse in the mirror.
“Kate,” Breagha sighs. “It’s beautiful.”
“You’re out of your tree if you think I’ll wear this in public.”
“Katie,a stór?—”
“I willtellyou when I’m ready to show you a fucking dress, Mam!”
She gasps like somebody’s shivved her. There’s a lot of hustling outside the fitting room and even more bustling, and I hear the subtlepopof a champagne bottle opened by an expert. Liquid fills a glass and ice shifts in a bucket, and Mam mews a pitiful little, “Thank you.”
I wonder if I can get a glass for myself. Or maybe a whole bottle. Come to think of it, a fifth of Grey Goose would be pure heaven right now—I don’t even need ice or tonic.
The fourth dress cuts off at the knees, making me look six months up the duff.
The fifth dress has a slit all the way up to my gowl that almost meets the neckline, and I don’t have the hips or tits to begin to carry it off.
The sixth dress has so much lace it looks like someone ran amarathon through cobwebs. My arms start to itch just looking at it.
Breagha’s smile is as tattered as that final reject. “I j— just wanted to find you th— the perfect dress,” she says, her lower lip quivering. “I w— w— was certain one of these would be it!”
I hate it when Breagha cries. She doesn’t do it often, only when she’s absolutely, completely at the end of her tether. But when she does, it’s almost always because of something I’ve done.
And let’s face it, there’s a lot I’ve done over the years.
“Excuse me, girls.” It’s Mrs. Gallagher. I wonder if she’s going to offer Breagha a glass of the champagne that stopped Mam’s mouth. “I know Miss Lynch has done her best, and on very short notice. But it was a rush for us to bring in some of these dresses, and the sizes aren’t doing anyone any favors.”
Breagha sniffs valiantly.