Middle Aged Prom Dress #4
Lael Littke's Prom Dress: Chapter Four
Hi, friends,
Welcome back to my deep dive into YA horror of the ‘80s and ‘90s!
If you’d like to start from the beginning of my Prom Dress coverage, the first three installments are here, here, and here.
My recapping of Christopher Pike’s Slumber Party starts here.
The late shift at Forest Dale Hospital had been routine, for which Felicia Martin was grateful. She was tired but not totally exhausted, the way she was on nights when the hospital had more emergencies than usual. She had a breakfast date with Mark for the next morning. If she got to bed by midnight, she’d be clear-eyed and sparkling by 8:00 a.m., the way Mark liked her.
—Prom Dress, by Lael Littke
Scene One: In the emergency room
Good grief, I guess it’s not just Robin who feels the need to mold herself into The Perfect Woman, as defined by the man she’s currently involved with:
Mark was a morning person. Very likely he’d suggest a brisk walk after their breakfast. He wouldn’t complain if Felicia was too tired, but she liked to please him, because he was always so caring and considerate.
Uhhhh… if she works nights and he’s always suggesting breakfast dates and brisk morning walks, he doesn’t sound AT ALL considerate?
Oh my god the humanity there are so many things I hate about the attitudes expressed in this paragraph:
Felicia was used to being teased by her male patients. She was young and she knew she was pretty, and she had a perfect figure. Even her nurse’s uniform couldn’t hide that. Not that she wanted to hide it. Or at least she never had until she’d started going out with Mark Hansen.
YOU DON’T HAVE TO MAKE YOURSELF INTO A NEW PERSON TO PLEASE YOUR BOYFRIEND, FELICIA:
Actually she wouldn’t mind going dancing at the lakeshore ballroom. But Mark would never take her there. It wasn’t the kind of place divinity students went to.
Also, it’s maybe not a great idea to hitch your wagon to a star—I think I’m seriously mixing metaphors here, LOL, but I like it?—that wants an entirely different life than you do?
Okay, finally: Felicia gets called to the emergency room, where Robin and Tyler are being treated. Robin is unconscious, Tyler is struggling with the folks who are trying to treat him bc he says he’s fine and that they should be helping Robin:
“Be careful of her legs,” the boy on the other gurney yelled. “Her feet are smashed.”
Welp, we all saw that coming.
Robin wakes up enough to let us all know what she’s most concerned about… and it’s not her legs:
“My dress!” Robin whispered urgently. “My dress!”
*whispers* i know this is a probably a bad time to bring this up, but it’s still not your dress, robin
The Curse of the Dress clearly doesn’t work on the doctor, who has the right idea:
“Get it off her,” the doctor instructed. “Cut it if necessary.”
Robin’s eyes opened. “No! No, don’t cut it. I can get it off. You can’t cut it.” She struggled to sit up but fell back, pale and sweating, her blonde hair covering her face.
“Cut it,” the doctor barked. “Get a BP reading.”
“NO!” Robin yelled.
OH, NO:
As Felicia looked at the dress carefully she was no longer surprised that Robin had been concerned about it. It was a beauty, a once-in-a-lifetime kind of dress, elegant and expensive-looking, but old-fashioned and demure with its cream-colored lace. It was the kind of dress a girl kept all her life, just to remind her of a special night.
Maybe this dress is cursed specifically to appeal to young women who have trash boyfriends.
More on Felicia’s background:
She’d been seventeen when she graduated, and a dress like that would have made her prom perfect. But her father liked to make money, not spend it. Maybe that was one reason she’d gotten her own apartment as soon as she graduated from nursing school.
Are all of the victims of The Dress going to have money problems? I get that plotting-wise, it makes it easier to ramp up Temptation and Motive that way, but it seems RATHER unfair, and ALSO doesn’t really track with the Original Sin of The Dress, because Catherine and Rowena grew up rich? (I REALIZE I AM OVERTHINKING THIS.)
I would like for the moral of this book to be MONEY IS DUMB, but somehow I don’t think that’s where we’re going:
Expensive clothes were something Felicia would never have if she married Mark. If he ever asked her. Her father was already worried about her going out with a poor divinity student.
“Since when are you into scrimping?” he’d asked when she told him she really liked Mark. “Forget it, Felicia. You can do better than a minister.”
Felicia’s Dad, STFU. You can’t have it both ways. If you’re so miserly that you won’t even help your daughter out with a prom dress that you can clearly afford, I feel like you shouldn’t pretend that you’re “worried” about the finances of her boyfriend. Also, she’d clearly rather scrimp than live with your cheap ass. (I AM NOT DEFENDING MARK; I KNOW WE HAVEN’T MET HIM YET BUT BASED ON THE OTHER MALE CHARACTERS WE’VE MET SO FAR I THINK WE’RE SAFE IN ASSUMING THAT HE’S A TOOL.)
The scene ends with Felicia getting a look at Robin’s injuries:
Poor little dancer, she thought then. You’ll be lucky even to walk again.
Mark was always sensitive to her feelings. “Rough night at the hospital?” he asked when he came to her little apartment to pick her up for breakfast.
—Prom Dress, by Lael Littke
Scene Two: Enter Mark the Exposition Device
The next morning, Mark comes by to pick up Felicia for their breakfast date:
Felicia leaned her head against his chest. Mark was perfect minister material, warm and compassionate. The things that really mattered. His broad shoulders looked as if they could carry countless burdens.
As long as those burdens don’t involve taking into account that your girlfriend works nights and might not want to get up at the crack of dawn, amirite?
Felicia tells Mark about the Prom Tragedy, and coincidentally, not only does he know Robin slightly, but Gabby takes piano lessons from his aunt. (How small is this town? It’s giving me Days of Our Lives vibes, where it’s simultaneously a small town with like 6 families who live there, but also an international jetport and, I don’t know, probably a world-class teaching hospital.)
Mark tells Felicia—who’d assumed that Robin was rich due to the Elegance of The Dress—that Robin is a poor:
She couldn’t help thinking that it was no wonder Robin had been so concerned about her dress. She’d probably sunk every penny she had into it. Felicia was glad she’d taken the time to hang it carefully in the closet of Robin’s room. It had seemed to light up the narrow closet. In her mind she saw it again, soft-looking and lacy and oh, so desirable. If I could have a dress like that . . . she thought.
Yeah, all signs point to OUTLOOK NOT SO GOOD for Felicia.
She did feel more cheerful after they’d eaten. Mark told funny stories about the things that went on at the divinity school from which he was about to graduate.
—Prom Dress, by Lael Littke
Scene Three: TEMPTATION
As mentioned in the opening paragraph above, Mark is about to graduate from divinity school and has to go to a formal dinner at his Dean’s house—and apparently it’s very stressful because his whole future career depends on the impression that FELICIA makes????:
Felicia was worried about the dinner. The graduates were urged to bring their girlfriends. Rumor had it that this was so Dean Goudy could look the girls over to make sure they’d make good ministerial wives before he gave out his recommendations.
Well, then. Throw THAT entire man into the trash.
I really take issue with the MAJOR SLUT-SHAMINESS of the idea that any dress that doesn’t cover you from your nose to your toes can’t be “sweet” or “demure”:
What she was worried about was what to wear. It was to be a dress-up affair, and the only fancy dresses she had were bare backed or off the shoulder or spaghetti-strapped. What she needed was something sweet and demure.
Something like Robin Whitford’s dress.
I rewatched Carrie not so long ago, and Sissy Spacek’s prom dress is basically a SLIP and it comes off as BOTH sweet and demure, and I don’t think she even wears a BRA. Bah.
I don’t know how much of this is Dean Goudy and how much of this is Felicia’s assumptions, and honestly I don’t know if the book knows that either, but REGARDLESS, it’s NONSENSE.
but also: since she’s going all-in on changing everything about herself to fit into this relationship and culture in order to be able to marry this extremely (i assume) mediocre man, maybe she should ask old jerk Goudy if he knows any Bible verses about resisting temptation. or, you know, thievery? pretty sure there are a bunch of them in both testaments.
When Felicia went to work on Sunday she found she’d been assigned to care for Robin. The girl was very groggy from the drugs she’d been given for the pain. The operation that had been performed had corrected some of the most urgent problems with her mangled feet, but there would have to be more. The prognosis was guarded as to whether she’d be able to walk again.
—Prom Dress, by Lael Littke
Scene Four: Back at the hospital
Felicia continues to be Enthralled by The Dress:
Its demure beauty glowed in the dim closet. It rustled softly as Felicia touched it. It seemed to welcome her touch, clinging to her fingers, inviting her to look at it, to examine it.
I do like that the dress rustles at its Chosen Victims—it makes it seem alive—and the imagery of the fabric clinging to her fingers is good.
That said, we’re really dragging this out now:
The dress was there. Waiting, shimmering, shining. Almost asking to be worn.
But of course it was out of the question to borrow it, even for one night.
WHY DO THESE DORKS KEEP EQUATING STEALING WITH BORROWING HORROR STORIES HAVE RULES OMG
More next week,
Leila
I'm DYING. Oh, my goodness.
I haven't even let the whole OH, NEW CHAPTER, WHOLE NEW CAST OF CHARACTERS thing sink in yet; (if you did something like that NOW in a YA novel, the editor would gently laugh you out of the room. Writers aren't supposed to use quite as transparent literary devices nowadays, yet how can we not love the wholly manipulative feel????) because I have had to take the time to marvel, yes, MARVEL at The Power of the Dress (cue "By The Power of Greyskull!" He-Man voice).
I mean - this nurse is supposed to be a whole grown adult, and she STILL a.) worries about the selfsame stupidity a teen would, (which as a teen would have given me hives: Oh, NO, adulthood ISN'T ANY BETTER!?!?!? That's not information you're supposed to get until you're through the magic doorway and can't back out), and second, that her first concern about backless/strapless/spaghetti dresses isn't that those might be a little OTT for dinner at ANYONE'S HOUSE unless they live on the set of Dynasty or something.
I am always a little weirded out that religion does not equal anything actually about, you know, BELIEF? Your point about, "Hey, maybe not stealing is an idea?" is kind of, I don't know A THING, in faith circles, no? In the 80's were we even to the whole Religion Is A Political Maneuver, Apply Here For Inclusion Into Our Right Ideas Denomination yet?
The idea of a man "looking over" girlfriends has me mentally projectile-ing all of that paragraph. That's so truly gross that I'm too exhausted to do more than heave that NO ONE - not even the woman in question... questioned. Anything. Yes, I, too am overthinking this; we're not here to interrogate broadly accepted religious social mores of the 80's, but literally, DEAR GOD. Also, let's go ahead and say it now, because she's obv going soon:
Bye, Felicia.
Ooo, this is a new twist I was not expecting! The Dress is going to ruin another life. The Dress is going to have a CAREER! Go Cursed Dress go!
And, probably the nurse should take a page from Daphne's playbook and show up in a Shirley Temple dress with a blacked-out front tooth or something. I'm pretty sure Daphne is the role model we all need when the word 'demure' shows up.