Arts & Sciences

In the end, it was the perfect wedding, though there were problems at the start-and a near-disaster at the end, but I'll get to that. The main problem was, where to have the ceremony? My parents are in the foreign service, and they were posted to India at the time, and Mark's were in California. So we decided to get married at Corinth University, where he was teaching in the law school. Then it turned out that Mark had a conference in Canada two weeks before the date we'd chosen, and I was involved in a tax case my firm was handling. Who was going to arrange everything?

But then Cleo Wolf, who ran the Dean's office, volunteered to help. It would be a piece of cake for her, she said, because she'd planned so many law school events. She got reservations for the chapel, and for the sit-down brunch at the College Inn afterwards, and she knew the best caterers and photographers and musicians, what to ask for and how much they should charge.

I was really grateful, because Cleo was not only a super administrator, she had style. Even when she was dressed for the office, in a quiet beige Armani--type suit and cream silk shirt, she looked amazingly elegant, and madly sexy. She reminded me of those models who wear designer clothes in magazines, only she was older of course; maybe ten years older than me. Mom said after they met that Cleo looked as if she'd been round the garden a few times, but back then that didn't bother me; it gave me confidence.

Cleo thought of everything. When my wedding dress was delivered she reminded me that I needed something old, something borrowed and something blue to wear with it. I had Grandmom's pearl necklace and drop earrings, but nothing borrowed or blue. So Cleo lent me this really spectacular slip: heavy flame-blue satin, smooth as ice, edged with a wide band of blue lace, If you had the right accesso-ries, it could have gone to a fancy restaurant or disco. I was almost afraid to wear Cleo's slip; but she insisted I must, for luck. I didn't notice then that she never said whose luck or what kind.

When I got home that evening I tried the slip on. I was taller than she, but it fitted perfectly. Then I looked in the mirror. I'd wondered sometimes what it would be like to be Cleo, somebody that wherever you went, men turned around to stare. Now I could sort of see how it would be. The built-in push-up bra gave me cleavage for the first time in my life, and my skin had a kind of tea-rose glow. I bent over and shook my hair out the way I'd seen Cleo do once in the law school washroom, and widened my eyes and mouth the way she did when she listened to men, and all of a sudden I looked different: confident and sophisticated and sexy.

But what was strange was that I didn't only look different, I felt different. I'd lived all over the world with Mom and Dad, but I wasn't actually very experienced. I used to worry that I might be undersexed compared to Mark, and when he really got to know me he would be disappointed, though he'd be too polite ever to say so. Now I felt that I was a beautiful, passionate woman, and that the world and everything in it was there for my pleasure. I wondered if that was how Cleo felt all the time. Then I hung the slip in the closet and kind of forgot about it for the next few weeks, because I had so much to do.

At the wedding rehearsal I was pretty nervous, worrying about where people would sit and whether I would trip coming up the aisle, and a whole slew of other dumb things. Even though Mark was right there, I didn't think of sex once, not seriously anyhow.

But on the wedding day it was all I could think of. As soon as I put on Cleo's slip it was just like before: I felt beautiful and erotically charged. As I got into my dress and veil the slither of the different silks and satins and laces on my skin was like the caresses of invisible lovers. When I brushed my hair sparks seemed to fly from it, and the lipstick on my mouth felt like a slow kiss. And everything in the room suddenly looked sexy. I ran my hand over the polished blonde oak of my chest of drawers, and it was like touching a man's body. It was the same in the limo when Mom handed me my bouquet, all delicate lace and sprays of lily of the valley and miniature roses the color of double cream, like the softest flesh; I had this crazy impulse to rub it over my face and breasts.

Everybody said how beautiful I looked, which of course they always say to brides, but I knew they were telling the truth. And what was weird, they all looked beautiful to me too, sexually beautiful. I realized that not only was I excited about getting married, I was on some kind of sensual high. And it didn't stop when we got to the chapel. Coming up the aisle I wanted to touch and embrace people. Then I glanced at the minister and even though I'd thought him very ordinary-looking the day before, he seemed awfully attractive, and I wondered what he would be like in bed. Then I thought, How can I be wondering this now, in the middle of my wedding, am I crazy or wicked?

But then I saw Mark standing there, and he was the most desirable man in the whole world. I wanted to kiss him passionately right then, before the minister said we could.

At the reception afterwards it was the same, only more so. It was as if I were in love not only with Mark, but with everyone and everything-the food, the flowers, the curtains and table-cloths. I kept kissing and embracing people in this very warm, well, hot way. You can see it in the wedding photos: I look kind of over the top with sexual charge. There's one where I'm licking icing off Mark's fingers that's practically pornographic, and in a couple of the others I'm all over him. I told myself it was the champagne; I'd never had so much champagne, anyhow not so early in the day Cleo was at the party, of course, and I thanked her for everything and said how great her slip was and how sexy it made me feel. I thought it must have some secret power, I told her. Her face got a kind of tight expression, and she gave me a funny little smile and said, "Oh yes, I'm sure it does."

Then I went up to change in my parents' room at the College Inn. My bridesmaid Marylou, and Mark's sister Viola, who was the matron of honor, came along to help me. I was still on this crazy high, and I had the impulse to wrap myself around them and rub up against them: my best and oldest friend Marylou whom I loved so much, and Viola who looked so much like Mark, both of them so tall and fair and curly-haired.

As she lifted off my wedding-dress Viola saw the borrowed blue slip for the first time, and she said, "Wow! Where did you get that?"

So I told her Cleo Wolf had lent it to me, wasn't it wonderful, wasn't that sweet of her. Viola must have had a lot of champagne too, probably, because she said, "Well, I guess she figured her slip could get married to Mark, even if she couldn't."

I stared at Viola and asked what she meant by that. She looked embarrassed and tried to take it back, but Marylou and I wouldn't let her, and finally she admitted that Mark had had what she called a "brief relationship" with Cleo before I knew him.

I just stood there, with one white satin pump off and one on. I thought that probably Mark had seen Cleo's slip before. And then I realized that if I hadn't found out about their Brief Relationship, that evening in our hotel when I let him slowly take off my traveling clothes, he would see it again. He would remember it, and he would remember Cleo wearing it; but naturally he wouldn't say anything, and that silent lie would be the beginning of our marriage.

I dragged the thing off as if it were poisoned; and all of a sudden I felt as if I'd come up from underwater in an overheated pool. Marylou and Viola and everything else in the room looked normal again: attractive, but not like characters and props in a soft-porn flick. I had the impulse to destroy Cleos slip, or maybe cut it into little pieces and mail it back. I wanted her to know that even if she'd given me some bad memories, she hadn't got away with the surprise she'd planned for Mark.

But then I thought no, I wouldn't say anything. I would keep Cleo guessing. And I would keep her slip for a while, because you never know when something with powers like that might come in handy for someone.

From Women and Ghosts, by Alison Lurie (New York: Nan A. Talese, Doubleday 1994). © Alison Lone. Reprinted by permission.