A Long

The dress was ice blue. The minute I saw it I remembered reading about the the famed “Alice Blue Gown,” a pale tint of azure once worn by Alice Roosevelt Longworth, President Theodore Roosevelt’s eldest child.

Earlier in the day, I purchased the dress, paying with wages earned from addressing envelopes after school at D. Kopper, Bonboneire on West Eightieth Street in NYC.

I was hoping to see someone later that evening.

He was a recently returned young Army Veteran. Earlier in the month, on a rainy spring night he held my hand as we walked home from the crowded coffee shop on 60th Street.

In the short time it took for us to cross Ninth Avenue and walk westward down 58th street to my tenement home, I wondered if I had possibly met the famed Prince Charming's counterpart.

It had been the very first time in my fifteen years of life, I had entrusted my hand or heart to another. I was anxiously hoping our paths might cross again later in St. Paul’s vast auditorium at the Hecker Club spring dance.

In my youthful view it seemed unimportant that he had not requested my phone number.

In the weeks since that memorable April evening, I had been unable to think of little else but him, my very first love. I even dared to wonder if the young man with the dark eyes and crisp crewcut might feel the same way about me.

Purchasing the new dress had reduced my savings. They were now close to zero.

Because I knew it was also money well spent, I didn’t find that a problem. The soft rayon sheath glided effortlessly over my body and ice blue had always been my absolute favorite color.

When I slipped it over my head in the crowded dressing room of Klein's on the Square, even my pale eyes seemed to darken and my wispy long brown pony tail took on navy blue glints.

My Mother had once told me ice blue was my "color."

I hadn't asked the young man where his family lived in our tightly knit Hells Kitchen neighborhood However, because his sister, Peggy, was also a member of our parish’s Young Social group, I learned her older brother had been “back home” only recently.

While dressing for the dance, I thought how lucky I was to find such a lovely garment, I discovered it tightly tucked into one of the many crowded iron racks on the second floor of the famed 14th Street store.

I had borrowed my older cousin’s single strand of pearls earlier that week . Now they seemed to enhance the serenity of my new dress.

The small charismatic group of returning young warriors had only recently begun to congregate outside our local coffee shop. They appeared to be always laughing, perhaps hoping to erase memories best forgotten. Several of the group had already rekindled earlier romances with patient neighborhood girls once left behind.

Even though that April spring lives now only in memory, I remember it was only several weeks later when I graduated from high school and stopped addressing envelopes.

Also, for some vague reason I have never understood, it was shortly after that night when I began to prefer bright colors. Never again have I worn or purchased an ice blue dress.

Still it will ever remain the color of a dress I once wore on a memorable April evening,

And when I silently watched the dark eyed young man claim other partners as soft music filled the air and when I had to admit he didn’t remember me or our brief encounter,

Later that evening after the intermission began, I overheard Peggy whisper: “My brother is always a gentleman, He never allows a young woman to walk home alone on a dark street even in our neighborhood.”

It was April and springtime when I grew up and began to wait patiently for the real Prince Charming who arrived four years later long after I had forgotten the young man with the dark eyes and crisp crewcut.