Love, Loss, and What I Wore (6 page)

Light-blue ensemble—coat, cashmere sweater, and matching skirt I wore to the Harvard/Dartmouth football game.

George and I had broken up and I was going to the game with a blind date. I borrowed this outfit from a friend in my dorm.

I selected the outfit very carefully because I thought wearing all light blue would make me stand out (most of the girls wore very bright colors, especially red) and George would see me.

Light-blue bridesmaid dress I wore to Gay’s wedding to Steve Chinlund. Steve was very handsome. He looked like a combination of Mayor Lindsay and Charlton Heston.

Dora was also a bridesmaid.

We felt daring because we weren’t wearing our bras under the dresses (the square neckline was too low) and no one ever went without a bra back then.

The wedding was gorgeous but not as gorgeous as Gay and Steve.

Pink satin princess-style dress I bought in Filene’s Basement in Boston for my marriage to Harry M. Johnson in 1955. I was twenty and Harry was thirty-seven.

Harry was my sociology professor at Simmons and had a Ph.D. from Harvard. He also taught at the Massachusetts School of Art. His income from both positions was $5,000 a year.

Harry’s mother’s name was Helen. Harry was 6’4” and his mother was almost as tall. She had been widowed when she was young and worked in security at Harvard, and, when she got older as an attendant in a ladies’ room at Harvard. I liked her very much.

Harry and I were married at his best friend’s house in Dobbs Ferry. His friend’s name was Bernard Barber. He taught sociology at Barnard and had married a very rich girl. Robert Merton, the Columbia sociologist, was best man. There was no food, only champagne and wedding cake.

My grandmother and Babbie came to the wedding. My grandfather wouldn’t come because he thought Harry was too old for me and because he was Catholic.

I wore this yellow dress after the wedding ceremony on our drive back to Cambridge. The dress was one I had bought at MacWise. I later dyed it red. We drove up Route 1 to Boston in Harry’s light-blue Dodge. We had our wedding dinner in a truckstop.

Our first apartment was at 888 Massachusetts Avenue in Cambridge. Later we moved to 27 Lanark Road in Brookline.

Black dress with cut-out neckline and matching bolero jacket.

Harry always liked me to wear my hair off my face.

I could wear very high heels with Harry because he was so tall.

I never called Harry by his name. I called him “Man.”

Iridescent-brocade Chinese-style dinner dress I bought in Cambridge for a New Year’s Eve party that Harry and I went to on the eve of 1957.

Harry went with me to buy a dress. He convinced me to buy this one even though it was expensive. He said it showed off my arms, which he thought were pretty. I loved the dress.

The party was at the home of Harry’s friends Penny and Ecky, in Wayland, Massachusetts. I got very upset because I couldn’t find Harry at midnight. Then I saw him kissing Penny.

After my divorce, I went back to New York and lived with Dora, who was studying to be an actress.

This yellow-ochre wool empire dress was Dora’s but I wore it a lot. I particularly remember wearing it on a date with Al Beckerman.

Floral-print cotton pique dress I purchased in a small, snooty store in New Canaan, Connecticut, for my marriage to Al.

The ceremony took place in the rabbi’s chambers in Rego Park, Queens.

The reception was held in Al’s parents’ house in Forest Hills.

I used to call Al “Becky.”

My grandmother and Babbie came to the wedding. My grandfather wouldn’t come. He was still mad at me for marrying Harry.

Al’s father, Jack Beckerman, gave me this two-piece gray organza Anne Fogarty dress. It had a beautiful accordian-pleated skirt. Anne Fogarty was a very popular, expensive designer but since Jack was a patternmaker in the garment industry, he was able to get it wholesale.

I accidentally burnt a cigarette hole in it.

I think one of my daughters has the dress now.

Black-and-red-print taffeta maternity dress worn to holiday parties.

First worn Christmas, 1960, in Stamford, Connecticut, when I was pregnant with Isabelle, and then in 1962 when I was pregnant with David. (David died when he was eighteen months old from a forty-eight-hour intestinal virus.)

Also worn after we moved to Livingston, New Jersey, when I was pregnant with Lillie in 1963, Michael in 1964, Joe in 1965, and, for the last time, when I was pregnant with Julie in 1967.