They Called My Dress Shameful at the Wedding, but When a Guest Asked One Question, My Mother-in-Law’s Smile Changed

Music could still be heard in the wedding hall when Raisa Timofeyevna told everyone within hearing that my dress overshadowed her daughter.

This happened before they brought in the cake. I was standing by the window and turning in my hands the little copper scissors that I had carried in my bag for four years. The first letters of my name were engraved on the handle of the scissors. I always carried them with me, as if I could not separate myself from work.

“Marina, don’t play the queen,” Raisa told me, looking over my dress from top to bottom. “Today everyone should look at Alina.”

“I am not competing with anyone.”

“Coming to a wedding in green silk is already a competition.”

“This is my dress. I sewed it.”

Raisa pursed her lips. The teaspoon in her hand trembled so much that it struck the porcelain cup.

“Then take it off.”

Conversation in the hall stopped. Alina, who had been laughing a few minutes earlier, slowly turned her head. Silver beads shimmered on her white dress.

“Mother, please,” she said quietly.

“I am only telling her to know moderation.”

“Raisa Timofeyevna,” I said, and I heard such calmness in my own voice that I became frightened myself, “if you want, I will take it off right now. But then I will remain in front of the guests in the clothes I am wearing. Will that be more convenient for you?”

Igor put his glass on the table.

“Marin, now is not the time for this.”

“For four years, it has never been the time.”

I sewed my dress at night for two months, while the streetlight flickered on the windows of the workshop. I had kept the dark emerald-green silk crepe for a year and a half. Every time I unfolded the fabric, I told myself that someday I, too, would have one evening that belonged only to me.

But on the day of the wedding, Raisa once again decided that my place was backstage.

At five in the evening, in the side room of the Verona Hotel, Zhanna Volskaya checked the seam of my dress with her fingers. She was the groom’s aunt and the owner of four salons.

“You sewed this yourself?”

“I did.”

“Then you must come to my salons tomorrow.”

“Why?”

Zhanna lowered her silver glasses to the tip of her nose.

“Because I have not seen such a closed model for a long time. And because someone needs to talk to your workshop.”

Raisa stood at the door and watched us. Her face was slowly changing.

“Marina has a small basement workshop,” she intervened. “She only shortens clothes there.”

Zhanna looked toward her.

“Are you saying this, or Marina herself?”

No one gave an answer.

At that very moment the hall administrator entered, holding a dark-blue folder in his hand.

“Mrs. Marina, this was left for you. They asked me to hand it over personally.”

Under my name on the folder was an unfamiliar stamp. Raisa immediately took a step forward…

Raisa seized the folder, but Zhanna grabbed her by the wrist.

“Other people’s mail is not taken like that,” she said sternly.

“I am her mother-in-law.”

“That does not give you the right.”

Zhanna handed the folder to me. My fingers went cold. I could feel several sheets inside, but I did not dare open it.

“Not now,” I whispered.

“Precisely now,” Zhanna replied. “Before someone else tries to convince you that you are a little person.”

Raisa turned to Alina.

“See? She has to take everything personally.”

“Mother, stop,” Alina said.

“Are you on her side too?”

Alina’s eyes filled with tears. For the first time I saw how afraid she was of her own mother.

I put the folder into my bag. At that moment Igor put a hand on my shoulder.

“Let’s go home and open it there.”

“Do you know what it is?”

He looked away from me.

“No.”

But his voice changed much too quickly. I knew he was hiding something from me.

At ten at night, Zhanna called me out alone into the hotel’s back corridor.

“Today the thing about your workshop told me more than just about the dress,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

Zhanna turned on her phone. A corridor appeared on the screen, and Raisa was talking to someone. There was no sound yet.

“I found this recording by accident. We must go to you tomorrow morning.”

“Why?”

Zhanna looked at the screen and her face hardened.

“Because there may be something there for which they signed in your name…”

Zhanna paused the video. On the screen, Raisa’s hand could be seen holding a black folder.

“Turn on the sound,” I asked.

Raisa’s hoarse voice sounded in the corridor.

“Marina will sign anyway. She will say it is a family expense. If she does not sign, Igor will force her.”

The second voice belonged to Alina.

“Mother, you said this was only the photographer’s money.”

“The family pays for everything the wedding needs. Don’t interfere.”

In the video, Raisa took a sheet of paper out of the folder.

“Her signature is here,” she said. “No one at the bank will ask who paid the first installment for the apartment.”

My breath caught.

“What signature?” I asked.

Zhanna turned off the recording and opened the folder.

Inside was a loan agreement drawn up in my name. The amount was twenty-eight thousand lari. In the purpose section it said: wedding expenses. Beside it lay a copy on which my signature looked astonishingly like the real one, but I immediately noticed one thing: I always began the letter “მ” with the left stroke, while in this signature it had begun from the right side.

“I did not sign this,” I said.

Zhanna nodded.

“I knew. That is why I took copies of the documents.”

At that moment the room door opened and Igor entered. Raisa stood behind him. Her mother-in-law’s face had turned pale.

“Marin, listen to me,” Igor said.

“How long have you known?”

He could not say a word.

“Four days,” Raisa said in his place. “The money was for the family anyway.”

“In my name?”

“You are our daughter-in-law.”

Zhanna placed a second sheet of paper on the table.

“This is still not the main thing,” she said. “The lease agreement for your workshop has also been altered. And the change was entered precisely on the day Raisa submitted the application to the bank.”

Such silence fell in the room that the ticking of the wall clock sounded like a blow.

“Mother, what have you done?” Alina whispered at the door.

Raisa sank into a chair.

And Zhanna looked at her phone. She had a new message.

“Marina, the police are calling me. They say that this morning another document was submitted in your name. And this time it has the address of your apartment…”