The Pearl Inside of Anything

Wednesday, 11:15 a.m., V______ airport parking lot

Dad pulls out my duffle bag from the trunk of The Boat and reaches in for a round red leather suitcase that I don't recognize. For a second I think he's coming with me.

"Dad? What's with the case?"

"Mrs. Daltry thought you might need this. He quickly unzips the case, and we gather around to look inside. A single garment bag fills the space, with a tag perched on top. "Dior. Ballgown. 1952." When I turn the tag over, I see Mrs. Daltry's handwriting:

Wedding gala, Prince and Princess of Monaco, October 1956

La Traviata, The Met, November 1959

Even as we stand there, the bag is starting to expand; I gently push it back inside.

"It wants to get out!" says Patrick, giving it a poke.

He's right. This dress has travelled, it's had a life...

...and it wants more.

11:50 a.m.

"Well, I think this is as far as we go with you," says Mum with a sigh. 

We've made it to Customs and frankly it's been a bit of an ordeal. The airport is unfamiliar territory for everyone in my family and we've bumbled through it asking directions and reading signs out loud at every step. The guard at the gate has his arms crossed and I think my parents are relieved to have found the end of their line.

Mum fishes in her purse and pulls out a brand-new copy of this months' Vogue.

"A little reading material for the plane," Mum shrugs, like it's no big deal. I'm so used to hand-me down magazines with tatty covers. On this one, Brooke Shields' face is all smooth and shiny; nobody dog-eared a single page, or gotten to the perfume samples first.

"And we want you to have these," says Dad, sheepishly holding out a little velvet box. "Good luck for the stage, you know, help catch the judges' eyes and all that..."

"We thought you needed a little sparkle, honey!" Mum finishes. They both nod in agreement, nervously looking at the box while I open it. Two heart-shaped diamond studs resting on a tiny purple pillow. Sweet!

"Wow, you guys!" I say. What has gotten into my parents?

"Don't get too excited honey, they're cubic zirconia," says Mum. "But aren't they nice?"

I choke before I can answer. A haze of "Giorgio: Beverly Hills" has wafted our way. Thick thick. Super thick. Dad starts to cough.

I know that scent. It's the smell of witch. I mean, Whitney. Same difference.

Here? That can't be.

Oh yes it can.

I look past my parents out to the aisle and see a troop of scruffy-looking little kids (okay, they all have on matching Ralph Lauren polo shirts, but they are dirty polo shirts), some of them in slightly beaten-up Mouse ears, scattered behind a darkly tanned woman and a sweaty man about Dad's age who is pulling two enormous suitcases. The woman is dressed in an immaculate white pair of jeans and a frilly peasant blouse, gold sandals and a matching gold tennis visor. She's balancing a tiny handbag balanced on one wrist, and holding a can of Diet Coke. With her free hand, she's flicking instructions from pearl-white polished fingertips stacked with diamond rings to the oldest girl behind her. Who, despite the bowed shoulders and stringy hair, is definitely Whitney Avery.

"Oh, keep UP Whitney!" The woman sighs peevishly. Whitney is holding the grimy hands of a couple of much smaller, much grubbier, Averys and has that crooked Quasimodo look of someone who is trying hopelessly to keep her carry-on bag on her shoulder and herd cats at the same time. There have to be five or six more chaotic little Averys messing around behind her. It's hard to tell, they are all scrapping, smacking each other, pulling hair and yelling. She hit me! He poked! MOM, he poked me! She stole my ears! I want my ears back! Because THEY'RE MINE! THAT'S WHY! Give 'em! Whitney, make her stop! Ow! Whitneeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!