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Show The White Suit 60 The s k i r t is s l i t and opens up to, oh, about middle thigh, semi-noticeable when walking, very noticeable when s i t t i n g. Sara's friend Madeline said, "Buy it." "But the skirt has a s l i t , Madeline. Daring, wouldn't you say?" " I t ' s for you." "But what w i l l Don think? He's tired of white." "You won't be sorry." Sara checked in the three-way mirror three times. The off-white creamed her skin. But the margins of the mirror, the beveled edges that bent and distorted the reflection, framed some hesitation. She closed her eyes. "A lady is as a lady does." On weekdays Sara had worn white pinafores over white blouses to school. On Sundays, she had wiggled her stocking feet in the toes of white patent leather and laced her white blonde hair with white velvet ribbon. In the evenings she sat before starched white linen place mats and ate the white meat of turkeys and chickens and drank white milk. As she grew into a young woman, she rubbed lemon halves on her knees, elbows and cheeks to coax the whiteness in her skin, but despite a l l , she could not bleach herself as stark as her linens, voiles, and swiss-dotted cottons. She quietly observed the varieties and gradations of ladies from behind the whites of her eyes, imagining where she f i t on the spectrum, and she s t i l l bought white, white as high noon on the desert, as grass underneath an abandoned board, as a spider's thread reflecting sunlight. She opened her eyes. "I should, Madeline. You're right." |
