I’m sitting on the couch. I’m not dressed. The day isn’t important, but my daughter is standing on the little landing about to go back up the stairs. She’s in her wedding dress; it’s billowing out into the small space, and we’re bickering back and forth: “Let it drape, Maria, let it fall naturally, stop holding it!” She tells me, “I know what to do!” She has no makeup on and her hair is piled up softly, haphazardly on her head, as she smoothes out the gown. She’s about to put her foot up to go up the stairs and I see the white satin pointy-toed pump with the touch of shimmery silver sheen to it, and I’m thinking that I told her to get the pumps in the matte white, but as usual, she got the ones she wanted. I’m not dressed. I’m tired. I’m in a melon terry cloth zip-up robe, short sleeves. She’s still on the landing and I hear the swishing…the most wonderful swishing of the gown every time she moves.

“Watch out for the vase!” I tell her. “Then move the vase!” she says. I am thinking that there is no other sound like this in the world: the swishing of your daughter’s wedding gown. What can possibly top this? No stupid waves sweeping against any tropical shore…don’t let anyone kid you about the sound of the first birds in the spring; elevating their twill to some undeserving celestial height…no children’s laughter…or the sound of little feet. No, this is it. You can’t top this: the symphony in the fabric of your daughter in her wedding gown…the swishing…the satin, the silk, the chiffon…the bustling of slips and poufs and the ballet of twirls, immeasurable joy in your daughter in her wedding gown.

You look at her, and she’s sequined in stardust, as if she’s been powdered with some magic mist that can only happen because she’s in the wedding gown. It’s not her wedding day. You don’t even hear the word bride; it doesn’t exist; only this: the gown, the face without makeup, the hair pushed up into a sweepy half-coil-half dream in this snapshot that goes on forever, taking on a life all its own.

Where did she get the shoes? I wasn’t with her. She was shopping with a friend. Now I’m thinking, if she can’t even get the dress to fall naturally, and turn without knocking the vase over, how will she get down the stairs once the banister is done with the magnolia leaves and the tulle and the white satin bows on the day of the wedding?

That day doesn’t matter now. She’s on the landing. I get up to make a pot of coffee and tell her not to move. I want to really feast on her like this. What did Gwendolyn Brooks say in her poem, The Mother? It was about abortion, wasn’t it? “The children you got that you did not get,” (and how) “you’ll never be able to return for a snack of them with gobbling mother eye.” That’s what I’m doing: my mother eyes are snacking on this scene. She’s still swishing. The dress is swishing against her left foot in the silvery white satin pump, and I’m swishing into a rhythm of swish, and the room begins to swish, and I think of Gwendolyn Brooks’ poem about the mother and abortions, and I did not abort her. She’s here, on the little landing, in the dress she wanted…and this is the only wedding dress that ever was and ever will be: the one she’s standing in…and we talked about this so many times, and I’m so grateful so much has happened, and she’s not as pure as she was in her Communion dress, or her Confirmation gown for that matter. I’m glad for all the things that happened, even the bad things that led up to this very moment because she’s here on the landing in her wedding gown.

I can no longer see the vase. Her gown is covering it. One more move…and there it goes! She knocked the vase over; it thumps on the rug… the eucalyptus falls out of the vase. I tell her to get out of the way…quick…before the eucalyptus gets on the dress and stains it…spoils the dream. She tells me to pick it up, and of course, I do, clean up the mess, that is.

I’m always cleaning up the mess: her mess. I read a letter she wrote me yesterday…just yesterday, thanking me once again for cleaning up the mess. How many times did I clean up her room only to have the mess return? The older she got, the bigger the mess, the more complicated the mess…the sadder the mess.

The saddest mess was right after she came down these stairs, onto this little landing…for the last time…on a stretcher…with paramedics and detectives by her side…already with the tube down her throat…unresponsive. At the top of the stairs I had shouted to her for the last time: “Maria! Can you hear Mommy?” But they just took her…they took her down the stairs…wrapped so tight.

When I finally returned to her room I couldn’t clean the mess: the blood on the wall, the saturated mattress, because things like this just don’t happen in rooms like these…they happen in alleys with garbage cans and stray cats screeching, and vulgar graffiti beneath windows with rusty fans that you have to turn on with a can opener because the button is gone, and they have to notify your family because they’re on another coast (they went on with their lives).

They just don’t happen in rooms with pink lace curtains drawn back to let the sun in…the sun…the sun…so that you can see the landscape of the gardens below…in rooms with closets filled with party dresses…and pictures…so many pictures of dignified times and formal affairs, and programs from shows you’ve done, and a big Care Bear on a white wicker chair, and a vanity complete with all the trappings of a debutante…and jewelry boxes everywhere spilling trinkets you didn’t bother to put away…and books, and half-opened Christmas presents…and the scent of the perfume you wore when your prince tucked you in and kissed you goodnight the night before. You just aren’t taken from a bed with a white wrought iron princess frame above sheets with drowsy pastels, and lush cranberry velveteen blankets to keep you warm and safe in winter. This just does not happen.

I remember her in her crib as a baby. She was on her tummy and I played the tune on her rainbow mobile: When You Wish Upon a Star…and she turned over and looked right up at me with those bright green eyes. When she was two we were at the beach. She was jumping in the water and I was on the blanket. All of a sudden she was face down floating in the water. I knew I lost her…screaming…running down to the water…I picked her up and those bright green eyes opened and looked right up at me.

But the Sunday I found her in her bed…with the beige foam coming out of her mouth, and the eyes nearly closed like slits…but still breathing…I couldn’t get those green eyes to open ever again…no matter how many times I called her name…those green eyes would never open again.

So there never was a wedding gown, or a silvery satin white pump, or any swishing, or any argument over a toppled vase or an uneven magnolia leaf, or a white satin bow, or any tulle, or any invitations to go out. But the uninvited came anyway…to the house…to the wake…to the church…to the cemetery.