And I found myself thinking, with a strange detached clarity, that this was the tragedy of a person like Laura: that she had traded the reality of a family for the appearance of one, and having made that trade, she could no longer even be present at a real family moment without immediately converting it into a performance.

She had not come to see her daughter married.

She had come to be seen seeing her daughter married.

She had lost, somewhere along the way, the ability to simply be at an event without being an act, and I do not think she even knew it was gone.

And there is a real poverty in that, underneath all the diamonds, a poverty I would not trade my hardest year for.

Laura had the car and the trips and the wealthy husband and the glittering gown.