Now I took note of where it hung and lifted it out. It was satin, a lovely weight on my arm, light bluish-green in color, almost silvery. It had a fitted, pointed waist and a full skirt and an off-the-shoulder fold hiding the little sleeves (para 29).
Edie does not stop with trying on the dress. She continues to beautify herself. She pinned up her hair and applied some make-up. She was dressing as if she was of a wealthy family, something that was not true at all. She was trying to imagine what it would be like.
While she is dressed up in Mrs. Peebles’ clothes, she is confronted by a man named Chris Watters. Chris is unaware that Edie is pretending to be someone she is not. After they begin to converse, Chris finds out that Edie is really just the hired girl. He proceeds to call her beautiful though, even after he has found out the truth. Her infatuation for Chris begins to grow during this time and the dream of an unattainable love begins to develop.
When Edie is around Chris, she shows classic signs of “being in love.” “My heart was knocking away, my tongue was dried up. I had to sway something. But I couldn’t. My throat closed and I was like a deaf-and-dumb” (para 54). This quote shows that being around Chris made Edie very nervous. She could not act like her self. Chris proceeds to ask Edie a series of questions, but Edie is unable to respond.
Later in the story, Edie goes to visit Chris while the Peebles’ are gone. Between this visit and their first encounter, Edie discovers that Chris has a fiancée. When she asks Chris if he is going to get married, he almost avoids the question. “‘Ha ha. What time did you say they would be back?” “Five o’clock.” “Well, by that time, this place will have seen the last of me. A plane can get further than a car’” (para 136 - 138). He is refusing to acknowledge the reality of the situation about the fact that he is to be married. He instead wishes to continue to live in a dream world with no worries. He then proceeds to tell Edie that he needs a long time to say good bye to her, not thinking of his fiancée at all.
Chris’s fiancée wants to get married and does not know how Chris feels. She chases him around as he goes from town to town giving rides in his plane. His comment to Alice, his fiancée, when he sees her at the Peebles’ home is “You’re going to spend a lot on gas that way (para 114.)” Never once does the text suggest that Chris has missed her, yet Alice must miss him if she will chase after him. Despite the fact that Alice is living in a dream world in which she believes Chris wants to be with her, he leaves, running away from his reality and her dream.
The scene in the text where Chris says good bye to Edie suggests that he ahs some feelings for her, but it never actually says this.
He put the cake away carefully and sat beside me and started those little kisses, so soft, I can’t ever let myself think about them, such kind little kisses, all over m eyelids and neck and ears, all over, then me kissing back as well as I could… and we lay on the cot pressed together, just gently, and he did some other things, not bad things or not in a bad way (para 143).
Usually, one does not do these things unless they have feelings for the other person. But since we only know what Edie is thinking, we do not know whether or not Chris has any kind of feelings for her. They are both acting as if they were adults in an actual relationship, when in fact, they are not. Edie is a young teenager, while Chris is a war veteran. With the previous scene described by Edie she suggests that she has true feelings for Chris. She thinks it is real.
Before Chris left on his plane, he told Edie that he was going to write to her, letting her know where he was. Edie, because she wanted it to be true, believed him. She really thought that he would be in contact with her again.
It’s while she waits for Chris’s letters that Edie meets the man she marries. She always greeted the mailman with a smile, hoping that that day would be the day her letter arrives. “‘You’ve got the smile I’ve been waiting for all day!’ he used to holler out the car window” (para 196). Edie would wait by the mailbox every day for the letter that she finally realized would never come. It is at this point in the story that Edie “wakes up” and sees reality as it is. Eventually, the mailman and Edie get married. He always thought that she was waiting for him by the mailbox, not a letter, and that the smile was for him.
In reality, the mailman is someone that a girl of Edie’s status is more likely to be with. Her infatuation of Chris was like a dream. Though the text never says that Edie loves the mailman, I think she does. She lets him believe that her smile was for him; she lets him believe in his dream. If she didn’t care for him, I think she would have told him the truth.
This story revolves around dreams. Edie has many dreams throughout the text before she realizes the reality of life. The dreams are important to her because they help her get through life. Dreams are important in everyone’s lives because they help people realize what they want out of life. Edie dreams of love because it is something she wants. Without that dream, she would not have met her husband. Without her dreams, she would not have seen life for what it is.
