My mother replied that she understood and that she would not come.
I took the Thursday morning off work. I told my manager I had a personal appointment, which was true. I drove to Rosa’s studio, which is in a commercial space on the second floor of a building about fifteen minutes from my apartment. There’s a narrow staircase with a wooden banister and a landing with her name on a small sign. I’ve been there twice before, for other things — she did some alterations for me years ago, completely ordinary.
Ben drove. He didn’t come in with me immediately; he waited in the car for the first few minutes, because I had asked him to, because I wanted to see the dress without any buffer. He came up afterward, when I texted him.
Rosa opened the door before I could knock. She had clearly been watching for me. She said, ‘It’s on the form,’ and stepped back, and there it was.
I want to be honest about what that moment was like. It was not a dramatic collapse. It was not a flood of tears. It was quieter than that: a kind of inventory, professional and personal at once. I looked at the bodice, which was intact. I looked at the overskirt, which was intact. I looked at the left sleeve cuff, which was intact. And then I looked at the right sleeve cuff.
The disruption was smaller than I had feared and larger than I had hoped, which is usually how these things go. About two inches of the fern motif, as Rosa had said. The cut was clean. The stabilization threads were neat. It was not catastrophic. It was also permanent.