Chris & Co. were borrowed with Guine’s permission.
Word Count: 2636
How should one say “no” to the woman who gave them everything?
Should he say it harshly, so as to get his point across all the better, force her to listen despite her many plaintive cries and finally put aside her foolish delusions? Or should he be more kind, keep her feelings foremost in his mind and approach her with more understanding, treat her gently and let her down as softly?
When it came to his own mother, it was easy for Paris to deny her things. Forgiveness had come a year ago, but the close bond they’d once shared when he’d been a child had not returned with it. He could fight against her still, refuse to cooperate, show her his annoyance when she earned it without feeling guilty for it later. He could glare and frown and stomp his feet, and do what needed to be done to get her attention and force her to realize that they were not in agreement.
But he could not do the same with Chris’s mother.
So it was that Paris, sulking, pouting petulantly, found himself the unwilling visitor of a bridal salon.
“We should have made an appointment sooner, Precious,” Momma Gallo said in her sweet, sweet voice. “I told you how long it takes to order a gown. Now there’s only so many you can choose from.”
You can choose, she said. Yet here Paris was, feeling as if he didn’t have much of a choice at all. He’d either be stuck in a gown he didn’t like and wanted even less, or else left with the heartbreaking task of disappointing a woman who had shown him nothing but kindness, love, and support since the moment they’d met, when she’d taken him into her arms and treated him as one of her own.
It would have been easy to blame her, to feel offended by her insistence that he should wear a wedding dress, if he could only make himself believe that this ideal of hers was an entirely selfish one.
And of course there were parts of it that were selfish. She had always wanted a daughter; he knew that well enough by now. Naturally she loved her sons, and wouldn’t want them any other way, but Michael, and Chris, and Peter all took after their father, either in looks, behavior, or both, and drifted continually away for her in a way she thought a daughter, who (with some luck) could have taken after her, might not have. In Paris she had found something of a substitute. He often hung around more than her sons did, and he did all the many things with her she would have wanted to do with a daughter, but which her sons often complained about when it was their turn to sacrifice an hour or two for shopping or trips to the salon.
But it would be unfair of Paris to think that was all there was to it. Momma Gallo was not a selfish human being. In fact, she was one of the most unselfish people he’d ever met, despite those moments of weakness she might otherwise cave to. If she wanted to assist Paris in the purchase of a wedding dress, it was not merely to satisfy her own hopes and dreams, but because she likely thought it was what Paris truly wanted.
She, out of all the people in his life who had become important to him, had never questioned him. She had never once looked at him strangely, or tried to place a label on him, or met him with confusion, or encouraged him to be anything but who and what he was. Momma Gallo was intuitive like that, perhaps more than he realized; she seemed to know what he thought and how he felt with only the briefest of explanations. She might not always understand, as he suspected few people really understood, but she accepted him regardless, and she did what she could to make him feel comfortable, to make him feel included, to let him know that always, no matter what the problem, he could turn to her.
To Momma he was just her “Precious” Paris, nothing more and nothing less.
“What about that one?” a different voice asked, and Paris turned to see Peter, wearing a wicked grin, pointing toward a mannequin adorned in what had to be the puffiest gown Paris had ever seen.
From behind Momma’s back, Paris glared a dark, dark glare at his future brother-in-law, who simply grinned all the wider.
“Oh, it’s so lovely!” Momma exclaimed dreamily, prancing over to give it a closer look. “It reminds me of my wedding dress!”
Paris didn’t see how this could be the case when he knew what her wedding dress had looked like, had seen it in a photograph that hung in the Gallos’ informal sitting room, and more in photos stored in albums she often liked to share. Hers had suited her girlish but elegant tastes and her simply sophisticated demeanor, with decorative lace and a reasonable amount of beading. It had been nothing like this monstrosity, with its huge, many layered skirt he feared trying to walk in.
He tried it on anyway, dragging his feet back to the changing room so that the bridal consultant might help him into it, glaring into the mirror in the way he could never glare at Momma Gallo. His face, almost a stranger to an embarrassed flush, burned red as he made his way back out again, with two hands full of white skirt he endeavored to keep out of the way of his feet.
Momma gave another wistful, dreamy sigh upon seeing him, one hand clutching her face in delight, the other placed over her heart as if to still its beating. Peter, on the other hand, nearly rolled over laughing, and made absolutely no effort to hide his amusement. Even Chris, dragged along to stew in boredom, hid a snicker behind one of his hands.
“You’d make a pretty princess,” Chris teased, not heartlessly, but with fondness and warmth. His eyes looked uncharacteristically mischievous; Paris thought Chris was poking more fun at his opinions on royalty than he was about the dress itself.
Peter, perhaps in understanding, proceeded to laugh harder.
“Oh, Precious,” Momma said, misty eyed. “You look so beautiful.”
Paris, indulging her, turned to look at himself in the mirror. “It’s too big,” he complained.
“Well, that’s why you get it altered, Precious.”
“No, I mean it’s too big,” he said again, and tried to be gentle about it. “We’re getting married at the courthouse, Momma. You really think I need a dress like this for the courthouse?”
“What about the reception?” she tried.
“I can’t really dance in this,” he told her, twisting and turning for another view, but it looked no better from any angle.
Momma paused to consider this, her expression turning serious as one of her fingers tapped against her lips. “Hmm,” she said, and stood to her feet to circle around him, nodding to something quiet she mumbled to herself before scampering off to look quickly through another selection of dresses.
Paris stood and waited.
Some people might think it odd that he would make this trip with his soon-to-be mother-in-law rather than with his mother, but Paris could only imagine how awkward it would have been if he and his mother ever tried something like this. His mother was continually insistent that he didn’t need a wedding dress, and while Paris heartily agreed with her, he’d known from the beginning, from the moment Momma had uttered the words “wedding gown,” that he would need to make this trip to satisfy her. They’d asked his mother along and she, looking uncomfortable with her face overcome by a strained smile, had declined, claiming a busy work schedule and giving Momma her blessing to go in her stead.
For a little while Paris actually found himself wishing this wasn’t so hard on his mother. It might have been nice to have her along, not for her opinion but for her practicality, and her determination to keep Momma from going completely overboard.
“This one!” Momma suddenly exclaimed, causing Paris to turn in her direction with mild surprise. “Oh, Precious, you have to try this one! It looks like Kate Middleton’s gown!”
“Of course it does,” Paris grumbled, rolling his eyes when she was too distracted by examining the dress to notice.
In spite of his many reservations, Paris made the trek back into the changing room, accompanied by this new dress of Momma’s choosing, reminding himself all the while that Momma Gallo meant well. Unlike Peter, she was not doing this simply to view his utter humiliation.
The next dress was only slightly better, in that it was more modest and less flamboyant, though it suited him no better. There were parts of it he could admit to liking, namely the lace sleeves the consultant helped him slide on over it, and the manner in which the skirt and bodice met at his waist, which long hours of conditioning (and Ganymede’s damned corset) had slimmed in a flatteringly feminine way he thought actually suited his figure. But beyond that it pleased him not at all. It still seemed far too much; he felt as if he were drowning beneath all the white fabric.
Momma, of course, had a different opinion, and her eyes grew misty again when he stepped out to show his waiting company. He thought he even saw a single tear slide down her cheek, which she was quick to brush away with a flick of her hand.
“Isn’t he just so gorgeous?” she sighed.
Peter was not as amused by this one and laughed only a fraction as loud, and Chris seemed entirely unaffected by it, neither intrigued nor dissatisfied.
“It’s alright, I guess,” Chris said.
“It’s perfect,” Momma claimed.
Again, Paris stared at himself in the mirror, hesitating before he said anything so that he might be able to come up with something he hoped wouldn’t hurt Momma’s feelings. As much as he wanted to satisfy her, he couldn’t let this keep going when he was fairly certain it was going to end in her disappointment either way. He would not be walking out of here with a gown, no matter what she said on the matter.
“It doesn’t really look like me,” he said.
Before he’d let Momma convince him to at least give this a try, Paris had intended to face his wedding day as he would any other day. He didn’t need to go to the salon to have his hair styled, or any make-up applied; he didn’t need to have his nails done or make a big to-do about putting on his dress. He’d meant to wear something much less spectacular—one of his many cocktail dresses, perhaps, something he might have worn on a nice night out with Chris but which wouldn’t be too terribly inappropriate for the courthouse setting they’d chosen.
He didn’t wear long gowns. The only time he’d ever had any need to having been that once in Boston, at that swanky party after Thanksgiving, and that had been such a surreal experience he hadn’t seen any need to repeat it so soon. He felt more himself in clothing he thought less… “sophisticated” was perhaps the word he was looking for, though even that didn’t seem quite right. It wasn’t that he wasn’t modest in the way he dressed; his wardrobe had certainly improved as his rebellious phase crept toward its end. It simply wasn’t his style. He enjoyed being fashionable, but length had never been a statement he toyed with, maybe because through ballet he was used to having his body on display, and it was those styles he inevitably felt most comfortable in.
“I like the sleeves,” he admitted for Momma’s benefit, for he could see her face through the mirror, how hopeful she looked even now. “The lace isn’t so bad, and I like how it shows off my waist, but… it’s just… really long…”
“So try something shorter,” Chris said.
Paris could see that Momma was about to complain, probably to insist that a proper wedding dress should never be short, but the sudden light in Paris’s eyes must have changed her mind, because she stopped and closed her mouth soon after opening it, and nodded to give her reserved assent.
The first short dress Paris tried on he didn’t even walk out in, because it was much too flashy in a very haute couture manner. The second was only slightly better, with a plain bodice and a short skirt covered in rosettes that had looked quite charming on the mannequin but on him somehow looked ridiculous.
The third one, tried on in a moment of frustration, when Paris was close to giving up and nearly ready to shatter all of Momma Gallo’s hope, was, after he’d taken the necessary time to really look at it on him, a vast improvement.
The square cut bodice was flattering on a flat chest other cuts and styles of bodice had not been as forgiving of, with an overlay of lace and a matching bolero jacket over his arms. The hem of the skirt was trimmed in lace as well, and fell just above his knees, the fabric itself not a bright, stark white, but a pale, warm cream. And the dress had a pocket hidden on either side, which Paris slid his hands into on the way out of the changing room, smiling at the novelty of it.
He spun around in front of the mirror, pleased with how easy it was to move, and how much more like himself he felt in it.
“Well?” he said.
At first Momma looked like she wanted to argue again, but something staid her and for the moment she kept quiet, taking her time looking him over.
“You can see my shoes better like this,” Paris said, for he’d meant to wear a pair of sparkling turquoise-blue heels to match the dyed roses Momma had made sure would decorate the reception hall. He approached to retrieve them, and after slipping them on his feet returned to the mirror.
There was no laughter from Peter this time; he sat quiet and reserved next to his mother, shifting in his chair like he wanted to make a joke out of something but couldn’t seem to think of anything good. Chris, lounging beside Peter, sat up a little straighter, and suddenly seemed much more interested than he’d been for much of the visit, likely because a shorter dress meant he had a nice view of Paris’s legs.
“Twelve out of ten, right?” Paris joked, to which Chris responded with a breathless, “Yeah…”
Paris fussed in the mirror while his three companions sat quietly, refusing the veil the consultant offered and instead pulling his hair into a fun but neat ponytail. The creamy sash that should have cinched around his waist was then replaced with one in blue, as close to the color of his heels as they currently had available to them.
Suddenly Momma burst into tears.
“What? What is it?” Paris asked, turning to her, startled.
She shook her head and jumped up to hug him tightly, mumbling a lot of things he didn’t understand in her rush to speak, but he could pick out the words “beautiful” and “perfect” and “love you” mixed in there, and he hugged her back and put his head on her shoulder.
“So I can wear this one?” he said.
“I’ll cry if you don’t!” Momma insisted.
Paris laughed quietly, and, feeling as warm and loved as she’d always made him feel, softly countered, “You’ll cry when I do.”
