Love, Loss, and What I Wore: Jane Smiley

I made the date, I made the dress; I was getting hitched. Was the cat trying to stop me?

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The story I usually tell about my one and only wedding gown is the one about the cat, but first, there was the proposal. I was sitting around with the other Vassar girls, discussing where I should live once my boyfriend graduated from Yale (I still had a year to go). One of the girls said, "Get married; they're bound to give you a car," and so that very night, I proposed. It took him 24 hours to consent, and two more weeks for my parents to...offer us a car.

The gown itself I found in a fashion magazine. It was a faux Victorian/peasant/ fairy-tale thing with a high neckline, pleats, ruffles, and floating satin ribbons, in the purest white. I adored it. It somehow represented everything that we were not (we were: tall, gawky, Marxist, bespectacled, middle-class, suburban). I was, of course, going to make it myself. French couture— what could be hard?

I sewed. My sewing machine was set up on the desk in my dorm room. My main responsibility was to clothe my fiancé, who was 6'10" and limited in his fashion choices to catalogs for big and tall men, which meant no striped bell-bottom pants or loud hippie shirts. I filled in the gap. For myself, I experimented, usually without success. I loved the strapless nightgown I had designed, but if I took a deep breath, the snap would pop and the whole thing would fall to the floor. I also liked the red polyester double-knit jumpsuit, but it was too hot to actually wear—and I mean caliente, not picante. Undaunted, however, I went to the nicest fabric store in St. Louis (no mill ends for me) and ordered 18 yards of real peau de soie. I showed the salesclerk the picture in the magazine. She told me I could order the fabric already pleated, a godsend because pleats were the essence of this gown—pleats from neckline almost to hem, pleats from shoulder almost to hand, all bound together at strategic points (waist, elbow) with those satin ribbons.

I set up my sewing machine in our furnitureless one-bedroom summer apartment in Cambridge. In July, I designed and sewed the underbodice and the lace cap (Marxist compromise with veil). In August, I commenced upon the ruffle. Here's where the cat came in.

It was almost five, rush hour in our neighborhood, and I was putting a narrow hem in what would be the bottom of the ruffle. The cat, a nine-month-old Siamese named Timaeus, had been sitting in the window and then strolling around the room. Now he coughed a couple of times. I looked up and saw that he was stroking the side of his face with his paw. He coughed again. I picked him up. He had a needle, a long one, stuck in his mouth, behind his teeth.

The closest vet was one stop away on the streetcar. I carried the cat down the stairs and onto the crowded carriage. When we got to the stop, I went to the front to pay the fare. The cat was now struggling in my arms. I reached into my back pocket for two dimes and two nickels. My jeans were so tight that when I pulled my hand out of my pocket, the money exploded into the air. The driver growled, "You getting off or not?" and sped away from the stop. The money was gone, and I burst into tears. Some kind woman paid my fare. I got off at the next stop and walked back to the vet.

When I could not hold the cat down in the vet's office, the vet's son, in elbow-length sheepskin mitts, replaced me, while I sat in the corridor listening to the yowling. Finally, the vet emerged with the cat in his arms. The needle had either popped out or "gone down." Since there was no telling which, he wouldn't charge me. I carried the cat home. He seemed fine.

That weekend, we went to Martha's Vineyard, leaving a friend with the cat and the wedding gown. When we returned, there was a present for us, left by the cat next to his cat box. It was the needle. I still don't understand how he survived.

In the wedding portrait, we look good, the dress and I, pleats fanned out, ruffles springing, satin ribbons drifting about, glasses hidden away, marriage as a strange performance put on by and for the parents. There was no honeymoon—the happy couple went back to arguing about the withering away of the state almost immediately. By now, the peau de soie and the pleats have outlived not only the cat and the marriage, but also the Soviet Union and my career as a needlewoman. I never did it again, but I did do it that once.

This Is A Developing Story

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