Jackie O’s Dress

by Katherine Luck

Tessa sent up a hasty prayer for forgiveness as she slipped on the dress Mama had bought her in exchange for a promise not to marry Al.

"Please, please, please, great Lakshmi, goddess of light: Forgive this transgression on the historic preservation of Mrs. Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis' 1962 three-quarter length cocktail dress, but I've just got to make Marilyn jealous. I've never managed to outbid her before."

Tessa cranked her head around and directed a defensive gaze at me.

"I'm a Hindu now. What?! Zip me up."

I sincerely doubted the integrity of the dress's fifty-year-old zipper. If I broke it, Tessa would kill me, stuff me, and sell me on eBay, just like all the other bits of useless Americana and collectibelia she traded in. More merchandise flowed through my big sister's hands each month than through your average pawn broker's.

"I know, I know—I shouldn't have taken it out of its preservation box. Shouldn't have even broken the hermetic seal. It's completely devalued now. But I want Marilyn to see that—do you understand? That I don't care about the resale value at all. That the dress means absolutely nothing to me. It'll kill her. She wanted it so much!"

The zipper glided smoothly upward. Thank Lakshmi.

"Besides. She could never fit into this thing even if she wanted to. Fat smug cow."

Tessa planted her hands on her hips and swiveled side to side, eyeing herself in the mirror. She had Jackie O's figure, that was certain—with an over-teased, fire-engine red Sarah Jessica Parker mop balanced incongruously on top. The slim silver-blue cocktail dress was all minimalist angles and precise folds. Her head was a fluffy cherry blossom.

"I mean, the fact that a ... certain someone is going to be there has nothing to do with the dress. Nothing! Seriously! What exactly did Mama tell you, Janie?"

I shrugged and traced drugstore lipstick over my lips.

"Nothing. Just that Daddy's making a speech, and she doesn't like the jokes he wrote."

Tessa adjusted the slim straps on her shoulders and tweaked the hem straight.

"Huh. It was designed by Oleg Cassini, you know. Technically, it's haute couture. Marilyn will never find anything even remotely resembling it. It's one of a kind."

"Just how much did Mama give you for that dress, Tessa?"

Tessa suddenly realized the perilous road she was heading down and jerked her eyes to meet mine in the mirror. I was deep in hock to my college. They were hunting me down, stalking me. Mama and Daddy had never given me a cent, claiming aging-parent poverty.

"Didn't your boyfriend break up with you on the radio? Mama said it was horrible!"

"Did you hear that someone broke into the police station and stole their toilet? So far, the cops have nothing to go on!"

Oh, hell yeah, Daddy's cronies appreciated that one! Mama, seated next to Tessa at our round table draped with generically-classy hotel linen, pursed her cotton candy-colored lips. Thank goodness Daddy was finally ending his career as a plumber. His retirement banquet was her last trial in a lifetime of unfunny septic tank jokes and Holiday Inn merlot.

"I got a private offer from a gentleman who's dying to get his hands on my pink Teenie Beanies," Tessa informed Mama in a non-whisper. "A very private offer, understand?"

Anyone else hearing this might have suspected hanky-panky; however, after years of Tessa's eBay-fueled collection and liquidation habits, I knew she had gotten herself a live human customer on the phone, for once.

"How much, honey?" Mama seemed relieved to turn away from the podium as Daddy was waving a monkey wrench of some sort and cracking up the roomful of Local 552 Union Plumbers. Tessa was scanning the faces at tables identical to ours, her gaze distracted.

"Let's just say, I won't be hurting for carnival glass this summer. Three or four candy dishes, can you believe it?"

Mama gave an appreciative, "Good job!" as Tessa craned her neck to scour the rear of the banquet-hall-by-night, Conference-Room-B-by-day. Her Jackie O dress caught the light from the brassy-classy chandeliers above, sending off ice-blue shimmers. I was growing impressed by that dress after all.

"I've got my eye on a set of 1934 water goblets. Complete set, near-mint condition. Some old gal in Alabama kicked off, and I've got a pipeline into her pre-estate-sale sale."

Something caught Tessa's eye, and her body suddenly stiffened, as if her blue dress contained insulating coils that had begun to short out. As I watched, the sinews in her neck and arms went taut, her jaw and eyebrows fixed into hard lines, her hair stood at attention, losing a bit of its bouncy curl. I'd seen this kind of electricity zing through her before. In the days before the Jackie O dress had become an issue.

By the time Tessa was eleven years old, she had:

•   138 Barbie dolls
•   253 Barbie doll outfits
•   A complete set of the Nancy Drew book series
•   A complete set of the Sweet Valley High book series
•   A complete set from 1958 to 1983 of National Geographic, purloined from our grandfather
•   32 different varieties of seashell, unpainted
•   87 different varieties of seashell, painted with touristy images from souvenir shacks up and down the West Coast
•   93 unmailed picture postcards from cities and towns across the United States
•   12 picture postcards from foreign lands, mostly Canada and Mexico
•   73 Bible school trading cards (saints, prophets, and the like)
•   66 porcelain cat figurines
•   54 porcelain dog figurines
•   18 goldfish
•   23 pen pals, most defunct
•   1 sister (me)
•   2 ex-boyfriends

"Shut up, shut up—here she comes!" Tessa hissed around the rim of her plastic champagne flute as we stood drinking watery, but free, booze at the open bar. Tessa painted a dazzlingly fake smile over her lips and called out, "Marilyn! Hi there—come try this champagne. It's absolutely awful! It tastes exactly like that box of Moet de Whatever you bought off that woman in Missouri last October!"

Ah ... it suddenly all made sense to me!

Marilyn wove through the half-inebriated gaggle of middle-aged plumbers with a triumphant smile on her face ... and Al hanging on her arm.

So that was what had made Tessa turn against her high school Best Friend 4 Ever and fellow eBay aficionado!

"Tessa," Marilyn nodded with a tight smile, then spied me and forced her lips into a full-blown smirk. "Janie! Janie, Janie, Janie—what happened, you poor thing?"

Such pursed-lipped sympathy; such head-shaking regret! Al, big blond Nordic dufus, retained his cellophane grin of incomprehension.

"Hi, Marilyn." I am a gracious; I am a gracious, unflappable young woman, I chanted silently.

Marilyn kept one hand on Al's thick, plaid sports-jacketed arm while snagging a glass of champagne with the other.

"I could not believe, absolutely could not believe, what that boyfriend of yours did to you. And on the radio, no less!"

"National radio," Tessa interjected, shifting about so that her dress would catch the light and attract attention. She looked like a little kid who needed to pee, and neither Marilyn nor Al spared her a glance. I was too intriguing, apparently.

"Well, at least you got your fifteen minutes of fame out of it—more like fifteen minutes of drive-time shame, though, wasn't it!" Marilyn had a practiced, musical laugh, like a calliope. Al laughed too, obviously not getting it but pretending to, induced to laugh by his companion, like a drunk guy at a comedy club.

"Janie's boyfriend—ex-boyfriend, I guess I should say—is a radio personality. Of sorts. He broke up with her on his radio show last week," Marilyn explained.

"Ah! Wow-za!" Al guffawed. Tessa squirmed, smoothing a non-existent wrinkle in the skirt, brushing invisible lint from her glossy neckline.

"It really was quite funny, though. You have to admit. Better than getting dumped the old-fashioned way. Or having him send you, oh, I don't know ... a voicemail."

Tessa's wriggling abruptly ceased. That was how she had nixed the deal with Al, according to Mama.

Her mouth turned down slightly at the corners. Then it fell open, wide.

Something on Marilyn's hand was glinting more aggressively than Tessa's ill-gotten gown.

"Oh—you noticed!" Marilyn lifted her left hand from Al's arm and brandished a ring. Then she slid her hand into his. "We were planning to keep it on the quiet for a few more weeks, but it's just too exciting!"

Mama was never a collector, but she wanted desperately to be.

Mama was a settler. She settled for the economical college, the first respectable guy willing to marry her, the simple wedding, the small house, the two kids instead of six, the cesarean sections, the modest layettes, the hand-me-down baby clothes from her sisters. Then it all went sideways.

She kept right on settling for herself, but she began encouraging Tessa to collect things. She became Tessa's funding source; her backer. If Tessa had lived in Holland in the 1600's, she would have been the biggest maniac of the tulip mania, scouring the green earth for the rarest bloom, the most delicate shading of sunset and dawn captured in fragile petals. It would have been Mama, however, who liquidated her family fortune, sold everything including herself, to fund her daughter's collection.

Mama wanted both of us girls to collect relationships; never to settle. Tessa always made Mama proud, until Al. Al was not a guy who would increase in value over time. Al was not rare or unique; not worth settling for. Mama explained this to Tessa at great length, and Tessa seemed to agree. She had no regrets, as far as I could tell, when she sent Al a voicemail and traded up for a used dress.

That night, however, she looked at him as if she'd been duped. If Marilyn had settled for Al, there must have been something rare and unique under that blond cheesehead of his. He must have been one-of-a-kind. He must have been, secretly, priceless.

"So, Marilyn, did you know that I'm a Hindu now? I'm selling off all my Buddhist paraphernalia and whatnot next week; completely redecorating my meditation room with authentic Hindu religious artifacts. There are hundreds of gods and goddesses, you know. I'm getting miniature paintings of each and every one. I have a fabulous source in New Delhi."

"I'm not big on religion, I'm afraid. Modern Bride is my Bible these days! You know, they have the most exquisite wedding dresses available online through this resale website I just discovered ... $10,000, $20,000 gowns for half-price! I would prefer to try them on first, of course, but you can't argue with—"

Marilyn stopped hard on a consonant and her eyes bugged at Tessa, as though she was seeing her for the first time.

"Wait. Wait—is that the Jackie O? You're wearing the Jackie O?!"

She dropped Al's hand.

"What kind of sick freak are you? It was priceless!"

Katherine Luck is a novelist and playwright living in Washington. She's never traded a man for a dress... yet.