The faded resort had been reborn as a place that blazed with neon and shimmered with crystal chandeliers, its shoreline remade as the last crumbling Victorian hotels were replaced by glass and concrete monoliths. These fantasies coincided with a singular time for Atlantic City, which was enjoying a fit of prosperity and expansion after the referendum legalizing casino gambling was passed in the late 70s. Sometimes she gave me small things of hers to take home: clip-on earrings, petite fur stoles with pink silk linings, which I took to wearing over my nightgowns as I fantasized about the time when my life would become so significant and full as to necessitate such a varied and well-appointed wardrobe of my own. The piece de resistance of it all was the floor-length mink coat that was a gift from a client who worked as a furrier in Manhattan. Racks of dangle earrings, stacks of bangles, and piles of candy-colored necklaces crowded the tops of her bureau. I spent these visits studying her suit jackets with their stiff shoulder pads and matching skirts, gently fingering the sequined and beaded dresses that shined even in the dim light. As an executive in the credit department at the newly-opened Resort’s Casino Atlantic City, my grandmother’s wardrobe was the stuff of fantasy, the perfect storm of 1980s high maximalism and gambling-mecca glitz. When I was a little girl my favorite place in my grandparent’s house was my grandmother’s closet.

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