Fitting Room Fireworks

The first bra I ever watched my wife try on was a beige minimizer from a department store in Dayton, Ohio, and I remember thinking that the human race had invented some kind of beautiful lie and then spent the next decade trying to sell it back to itself in a thousand different colors.

That was twelve years ago. Tonight we're in a shop called Verité, which is French for "we're going to charge you four hundred dollars and you're going to say thank you," and my wife has been in the fitting room for eleven minutes.

I check my phone. Nothing. I check the rack of robes by the register. Silk, mostly. A woman with silver hair and a tape measure around her neck is folding tissue paper into a box with the kind of precision you usually only see in bomb disposal videos. She glances at me, then at the curtain at the back of the store, then back at me. I give her a small nod that I hope says *I'm not a creep, I'm just a husband*, and she returns a nod that says *sure you are.*

The curtain twitches.

"Hey." My wife's voice, low and amused, the way she sounds when she's about to ask me for something. "Come here."

I don't move. Twelve years of marriage has taught me that when she uses that voice in public, there's a fifty-fifty chance I'm about to be very happy or very embarrassed, and the odds have never been clear enough to bet on.

"Come *here*." Louder now. The silver-haired woman looks up. I set down the cup of tea they gave me when we walked in, which I have not touched because it tastes like a candle, and I walk toward the curtain.

Her hand darts out, grabs my wrist, and yanks me through.

The fitting room is bigger than our first apartment. A full-length mirror on three walls, a velvet stool, a little brass hook with a robe hanging from it that costs more than my car insurance. And my wife, standing in the middle of it in nothing but a black lace bra and the kind of underwear that makes you forget what you were going to say next.

She's thirty-eight. Two kids. A scar on her belly from the second one that she used to hate and now mostly ignores. Her hair is up in a clip that's coming loose on one side. She's holding a second bra in her hand, this one deep red, and she's looking at me in the mirror like we're co-conspirators.

"Okay," she says. "I need your opinion."

"You have my opinion."

"You haven't looked yet."

"I'm looking."

She laughs, that low laugh that starts in her chest. "I mean a real opinion. Not the *husband* opinion. I need to know which ones to actually buy."

I lean against the wall. The room smells like her perfume and the store's candles and something underneath that's just her skin. "You're going to buy all of them."

"I'm not going to buy all of them."

"You always buy all of them."

"I bought *one* of them last time."

"You bought three. I saw the bag."

She turns to face me, and the black lace does something to the light in the room. "That was a sale. This is not a sale."

I look at the pile on the stool. Five bras, three sets of underwear, a slip, and something that might be a corset or might be a very ambitious scarf. She's been planning this for weeks. I know because she started leaving catalogs on the kitchen table, open to specific pages, and then pretending she hadn't when I asked.

"So try them on," I say. "I'll tell you."

"I *am* trying them on. That's why you're here."

"No, you're modeling them. That's different. You want me to watch."

She doesn't deny it. She just holds up the red bra and raises an eyebrow.

"Fine," I say. "Put on the red one."

She turns her back to me. Not for modesty. She's been naked in front of me more times than I can count, in more positions than I'd admit to my mother. She turns because she wants me to watch her unhook the black one, to see the strap slide off her shoulder, to see the small curve of her back where the clasp sits. She does it slowly. Deliberately.

The black bra lands on the stool. She picks up the red one and holds it against her chest, facing the mirror, not putting it on yet.

"This one's a 34C," she says. "But I think I'm a 34B now. I lost weight."

"You didn't lose weight."

"I lost *some* weight."

"You lost weight in your face. Not there."

She looks at me in the mirror. "You noticed?"

"I notice everything."

"You notice the things you want to notice."

"That's most things."

She hooks the red bra and turns around. It's too big in the cups. I can see it immediately, the small gap at the top where the lace doesn't lie flat, the way the fabric wrinkles instead of stretching. She knows it too. She's watching my face, waiting.

"It's too big," I say.

"I know."

"So why'd you put it on?"

"Because I wanted to see if you'd lie."

I don't answer that. She reaches behind her, unhooks it, and this time she doesn't do it slowly. She does it fast, like she's annoyed, and the red bra joins the black one on the stool. She stands there in just the underwear, hands on her hips, and I realize this isn't about lingerie at all.

"What's going on?" I ask.

"Nothing's going on."

"You dragged me into a fitting room."

"You've been in a fitting room before."

"Not at Verité. Not with the silver-haired woman judging me."

She smiles, but it's not her real smile. It's the one she uses when she's about to say something she's been holding. "I'm turning forty next year."

"I know."

"And I wanted to buy something that made me feel like I wasn't."

I look at her. The scar. The clip in her hair. The underwear that costs more than our electric bill. And I understand, suddenly, that she didn't bring me in here to get my opinion on bras. She brought me in here because she wanted me to see her. Not the wife. Not the mother. Her.

"The black one," I say.

She blinks. "The black one was too small."

"The black one was perfect. You know it was perfect. You were watching me in the mirror when you took it off."

She doesn't say anything. But her shoulders drop, just a little, and the smile turns into something real.

"Try the blue one," I say. "The one on the bottom."

She picks it up. It's navy, almost black, with a small gold clasp in the front. She puts it on without turning around this time, facing me the whole way, and it fits. It fits the way the black one fit. She looks at herself in the mirror, then at me.

"Well?" she says.

"Buy it."

"Just that one?"

"Buy all of them."

She laughs, and this time it's the real laugh, the one that fills the room. "You're a terrible influence."

"I'm your husband. That's the job."

She reaches for the robe on the hook, slips it on, and ties it at the waist. Then she steps close to me, close enough that I can smell the perfume and the candle smoke and the heat of her skin, and she puts her hand flat on my chest.

"Thank you," she says.

"For what?"

"For looking."

She pulls the curtain back and walks out into the store, barefoot, robe swishing, and the silver-haired woman looks up from her tissue paper with an expression I can't read. My wife heads straight for the register, and I stand in the fitting room for a moment longer, surrounded by the bras she didn't choose, the ones that didn't fit, the ones that told her something she didn't want to hear.

Then I follow her out, because that's what I do. That's what I've always done.

And the silver-haired woman watches us both, and I get the feeling she's seen this before. Husbands and wives and the small wars they fight in dressing rooms. The things they buy to feel like themselves again. The things they say to each other when no one else is listening.

My wife is already at the counter, already pulling out her card, already telling the woman we'll take the black one and the navy one and the slip, and I stand behind her and put my hand on the small of her back, and she leans into it, just a little, just enough.