Father of the Bride

Surrogate

Dr. Gold was as good as his name. Within four weeks the bandages were off and the bruises and swelling a thing of the past.

Daryn was of two minds. He was passed pleased. He did look quite a bit younger. And most definitely no one would mistake him for a schoolboy.

But at the same time, he was not pleased. He reminded himself of someone he'd known only he couldn't exactly put his finger on who the chap was.

"It's only fair." Amanda said.

"Fair? How can my modeling my daughter's wedding gown in her stead be construed as fair?" Daryn was miffed. He even stamped his well heeled foot for effect.

"You're the one that filled her head up with that romance nonsense. Lighten up. It'll be our little secret. You should already know you're the right size. You've been wearing her things for almost three months now."

She had a point there. Her things fit him to the T if a might disconcertingly snug about the chest.

"You're mad, Mother. Do you know that?"

"You think so? Well, why don't you just prove it then? I'm sure you'd love to see me eat humble pie."

"Why, yes. Yes, I would."

One hour later Daryn arrived at the Madison Avenue dress shop for his daughter Amelia's fitting.

"I'm Max,' smiled what could only be the proprietor of the bridle shore. "And you must be Amelia."

"Why, yes. I guess I am. At least for today. Amanda told you about me?"

"She lied."

Daryn was glad. This mad charade was falling apart at the seams already. There was simply no way he could pass himself off as his younger daughter.

"You are even pretty than she said."

"Ah...thanks." Daryn blushed appropriately but not for the appropriate reason.

"The changing room is in the back. I've laid everything out for you."

"Right then." Daryn wandered into the backroom where the man had pointed and shut the door.

Daryn must have seen his wife dress and undress maybe ten thousand times– yet he could barely remember anything.

Right, he thought. Panties first, then corset, than stockings and lastly petticoat.

The corset slid on easily enough but seemed a bit confining. He certainly didn't care for the way it squashed him up front, accentuating his disgraceful and unmanly tonnage, lifting, and supporting the pair of man boobs, showing a deep V between them. It also gave him a funny feeling in his derrière, lifting and separating them as well.

The stockings were a bother, but he ultimately got them on.

"Are you ready?" Max piped, rapping on Daryn's door.

"Don't you have a bathrobe out there or something?"

"Don't be coy, Love." Max yanked and opened the door and dragged Daryn out by the arm. "It's okay. Girls don't do a thing for me. As long as you don't have a dick I'm not interested."

That did not make Daryn feel any safer.

"Good," Max nodded. "You're not wearing any makeup. I don't know why girls don't understand that make up is for spinsters. Youth needs no cosmetics. You're prefect. Now stand here like a good goddess, won't you?"

Daryn ascended into a spotlight atop a raised dais, surrounded on three sides by full-length mirrors. Max blockaded his egress on the fourth. In the clinging garments he felt much more than naked.

He turned to face Max, afraid to face the comely maiden he'd glimpsed in the mirrors.

"Other way, Honey" Max said sweetly, giving Daryn a pat on his rump.

Daryn stared at himself in front view and profile, embarrassed as all get out, most particularly at the stiffing of his manhood.

Meanwhile Max whipped his tape measurer about Daryn like a tamer does a lioness.

"This will never do. They're wrong–all wrong. But I can fix it," Max quipped, talking to Daryn's doppelganger in the mirror. "I am a genius."

As Max seamed, he hummed a tuneless hum in a eunuch key. He sat on a stool, looking every bit the toad upon a toadstool nestled in a nest of pearl satin and silk.

"You've modeled before," Max lisped out of the blue, thread tangled in his teeth, scaring Daryn out of his wits.

"I–"

"Hips? Boyish. Waist? Waspish. Breasts? Vampish. Do you know you're a full D cup, Sugar?"

"Is that good?" Daryn worried.

"Good. Any woman would kill for your svelte figure and those Grand Tetons?"

"Well, Mother makes sure I do take vitamins and watch my diet."

"Okay," Max said. "Now this is only a trial run. Just to get a look-see. For God's sake don't peak in the mirror."

Max threw the mounds of satin and silk over Daryn's head, raining down upon him like Zeus in the Golden Cloud enveloping what's-her-face.

Daryn couldn't breathe. The mountains of fabric hung and clung about him. Their weight dragged him under like those garments, heavy with their drink pulled Ophelia to her untimely death in Shakespeare.

Just as suddenly his head was in the clear.

Max fussed–tucking here–fluffing there.

"Okay your Highness. Behold."

In the mirrors Daryn saw his daughter captured in a prison of beauty, like a maiden enshrouded in snow, within an icy globe of crystal. In his face, he saw her face and the hope and majesty of an everywoman: The hope for true love–the love for and by a handsome husband–the love for and by one's children–God's greatest gift.

There was a radiance in her face–no–a rapture. The culmination, wish-come-true of every princess that someday her prince would indeed come. And she would step out into the world as woman.

This gown was the stage upon which this morality play would be played.

Armored within her satins and silks a woman stood, proof against disappointment, age, and loss. It was a shield against the perfidy of this life. It was promise and truth and everything else all rolled into one–something outside of time and of itself–a certain star.

Daryn knew his daughter and what she was, and her every hope caught up in that gown. His joy of her joys filled his eyes over brimming with warm and gentle tears, as the warm drops of a spring shower might be-dew the pedal of the sweetest rose.

"Hair," Daryn intoned, breaking the spell. He had to do something about his hair–grow it out. "A gown this lush and opulent deserves tousled lustrous locks to match."

"Exactly," Max smiled, snapping his fingers.

"It's beautiful," Daryn murmured.

"We try." Max bowed graciously, caught up with the wonder of Daryn's wonder. "Now then, there's much to do. I'll have to let it out here and cinch it there. Now for your part, don't get fat! Watch yourself. So may girls loose it so close to the prize."

"Oh, I will." Daryn nodded, agreeable as any schoolgirl.

Daryn was not a man of desire nor ambition. His only wish had been to be a good husband and loving father. The only two things he'd ever done well.

But in the glow of that afterglow, he vowed himself one further quest. He would wear that gown again.