Title: Something Borrowed
Fandom: General Hospital
Characters: Tracy Quartermaine
Prompt: #13 Borrow
Word Count: 1,149 words
Rating: PG
Summary: Tracy looks for something borrowed…
Author's Notes: Set during the Vow Renewal storyline. May 2006. As my girlfriend, Fey, says, I just can't let the swan dress go already.
It only seems right, Tracy Quartermaine thinks to herself as she sits on the bed, wrapped in a towel, her skin still damp from the shower. A sham wedding, a sham marriage. Why not a sham vow renewal? She grabs the folded towel she's tossed on the bed and begins to dry her legs. Not as slim as they once were, she notes with a scrutinizing eye, but still shapely. She moves up to her arms and shoulders, her upper back and neck, enjoying the feel of the thick material against her skin.
She is trying not to feel what she is feeling, one of those uncomfortable tricks she's taught herself over the years. She is focusing on the list of things in her head, the systematic schedule of events she's quickly thrown together in response to this, the latest crisis in a series of numbskull crises presented to her by her n'er-do-well husband.
She's trying not to feel what she is feeling.
She doesn't want to feel the quiver of enthusiasm in her belly, that wholly inappropriate excitement of planning an event. This isn't an event. It's a farce, and everyone—including the blushing bride and groom—are painfully aware of it.
Still, she lingers over her preparations, this spray and that gel, powdering and primping. There are two outfits draped over her bed, vying for her attention--the Chanel suit, which is appropriately off-white and devastatingly chic, and the Vera Wang, which is sleek and sexy and makes her feel twenty years younger.
She is searching through her dresser, nude stockings or darker, when she sees the packet. She tries not to smile, because she knows that she has no business wearing these. Still she pulls the package from the dresser, opens it slowly, and drapes the hose over her outstretched fingers. Silk hose, the old fashioned kind, the kind one only wears for a specific, erotic reason anymore.
She laughs to herself, thinking how amusing it would be to wear these under her Vera Wang or Coco Chanel, how only she'd know it, definitely not her clueless husband who kisses her only when there's an audience to be made jealous.
She laughs to herself, because she knows she is being ridiculous even considering the possibility of wearing them.
And then she stops laughing, because she wants for it not to be so damned funny. Tracy puts the hose back in the drawer. They're brand new, so she takes a moment to carefully place them back in the package.
Something old. Something new. Something borrowed. Something blue.
She's looking at the bracelet she's chosen, a sapphire-studded tennis bracelet Ned gave to her on her 50th birthday.
Something blue.
She looks at the package of hosiery, sexy and silent as it mocks her for even thinking it.
Something new.
Lila used to say that. Tracy remembers her first wedding, back when she was nervous about such things, back when she still pretended to be shy. She remembers Lila speaking of such things, and her derisive mockery of the superstition.
Tracy has had five weddings, and never once has she done the ritual.
She stares at the bracelet and the hosiery, thinking of her mother, thinking of how—oddly enough—this sham of a marriage has been happier than the other four combined.
Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue.
She is wrapped in her robe before she knows it. She doesn't know what she wants or what she's looking for as she heads up the narrow stairway to the attic where Lila's things are stored. She is on her knees next to the boxes, sifting through old knick-knacks, dried bouquets, old letters with foreign stamps from Lila's family back in England.
She is searching for something, maybe legitimacy, in her dead mother's memories, aware of and unconcerned by the passing time.
She's the damned bride, and they can wait for her.
She's about to give it up, admit the futility of her ambiguous searching, when she sees it. There's a long metal rack on wheels, taking up the majority of the floor space. It's been here as long as Tracy can remember, this rack full of memories. When she was very little, she used to love to play here in the dresses that hung from the rack. Beautiful dresses from the 40s and 50s, old Halloween costumes lovingly preserved from hers and Alan's childhoods. She gets to her feet, drawn to it, as if she could find pure bliss if only she could bury herself in that forest of fabric.
She sees her debutante dress, perfectly beautiful and white, and remembers how much she wasnot the picture of virtue that night. She sees the suit Alan wore for his first wedding, and remembers how much she hated him back then, how awful they were to each other.
She sees her father's old tuxedo, and touches it tentatively, as if her mere presence is a destructive force that will turn it to dust on contact.
And when she sees Lila's dress, she knows what she's come for. It's not anything she would ever have worn. In fact, she finds it rather dowdy. It's white, in that old fashion of late 60s glamour that went overboard with the ruffles and the frills. She reaches out a single hand, trying to remember when her mother wore this dress, finding she can't place it. But it's very much Lila.
It's soft and delicate, not a hint of tailored anything to it. It's flowing and frilly, not to mention white.
It seems too large to have belonged to Lila, though Tracy knows this is because her mind is remembering her stooped and shrunken with age, the wisp of a creature her mother became, not the vital, energetic woman her mother had been.
The truth be told, at her peak, Lila had been roughly the same size as Tracy was now, a fact she quickly verified by checking the label in the back.
She is sure the dress will look ridiculous on her, that she will seem awkward and foolish in it.
But the dress is old.
And the dress is Lila's—she will return it once she's done.
The dress is borrowed.
Something old. Something new. Something borrowed. Something blue.
And when she has put away the Chanel and put away the Vera Wang, when she has dug into the jewelry box for the enormous white bead necklace of her mother's she never thought she'd find a use for, when she's put up her hair like Lila used to do, that glamorous up-do she'd never quite managed to pull off, she knows she can face what is about to happen.
It was a sham wedding.
It was a sham marriage.
But, now, as she heads downstairs to face her family and her husband, at least Tracy feels like a real bride.
The End
Written for the 100situations Challenge.