Whites of Passage

Wednesday night, in a fit of temporary insanity, I agreed to fly 4,000 miles next weekend to help my sister choose a wedding gown.

I hate shopping with my sister. Our tastes are different – she likes all things lacy, embellished and fussy and knows I don’t, yet persists on asking questions like, “But would you wear it?” She is a single-digit size, yet will buy something that is, in my opinion, unflatteringly tight rather than take a size up.

And that’s not the worst part. If I could lose an ounce for every time she asked the question “Are you sure it doesn’t make me look fat?” I’d be looking heroin chic in an hour, tops. She needs endless reassurance (that it’s not ugly, that she’s not ugly, that…). And she can have buyer’s remorse at Old Navy, so I can only imagine how she’ll be with what likely will be the most photographed, most expensive dress she will ever own.

Have I mentioned I hate shopping with my sister?

But she’s my twin (and only) sister, I’m the maid of honor, and, as she keeps saying mournfully, “We don’t have a mother.” I am pained by the smallest things – like my friend’s mother arriving in town last weekend and taking charge of the chaos in my friend’s life in that briskly efficient way only mothers can – so I hardly can mock my sister’s melodrama on this one. But last night, as she started to proffer yet another invitation to the pity party, I considered reminding her that Mom had bad-bordering-on-awful taste in clothes and could be very cheap. If you asked her how something looked, she immediately would ask: “How much does it cost?” My mother would never ever sanction the purchase of the sort of designer wedding gown my sister is considering, and I bet it would have been a source of tension for months. My sister always has been a label snob, so much so that in middle school my mother used to tease my sister that she was going to punish her by only taking her shopping at Kmart. (Obviously this was before all those stores became purveyors of cheap, trendy clothes – though my sister still will not buy clothes at any of them.)

I think that – besides guilt – the other reason I was so easily convinced to undertake this lunatic trip is because the wedding has this feel of unreality about it. I live 4,000 miles away and I have met my brother-in-law-to-be exactly once, when I was jetlagged and when he and my sister had been dating for about six weeks. I don’t know things like where he went to school and how old he is and whether he has a sense of humor and whether he knows we have to have mashed potatoes as well as sweet potatoes at Thanksgiving because my sister used to hate sweet potatoes.

I have not seen my sister’s engagement ring, and nor have I seen his stuff commingled with my sister’s in her apartment, which is now their apartment. Her conversation is full of references to family members of his I don’t know, but who, she keeps reminding me, will be family members of hers. She also talks only in “we’s” – meaning she and the fiancé. I find each “we” as jarring as the one before it – after all, for 30 years when she said “we” the other half was me.