Queen of Babble (27 page)

I give him a blank look. I have no idea what he’s talking about. Am I drooling now, on top of everything else?

“To pull the cork,” Chaz says impatiently.

Oh! Looking down, I wrap the napkin around the cork and pull—and it comes out easily, with a gentle pop, and no bodily harm to anyone.

Sweet. Okay. So there’s one thing I can do right, anyway.

I am totally getting the hang of this. Chaz and I have a nice little rhythm going…that is, until Shari suddenly appears.

“Where have you been?” Chaz wants to know.

Shari ignores him. It’s only then that I notice her eyes are blazing. And that she’s staring straight at me.

“So just when,” Shari demands, “were you going to tell me you didn’t actually graduate yet, huh, Lizzie?”

The dawning of World War I found women’s fashion going through a change almost as hot as the political climate. Corsets were abandoned as waistlines dropped and hemlines rose, sometimes to ankle length. For the first time in modern history, it became stylish not to have a bustline. Small-breasted women everywhere rejoiced as their more endowed sisters were forced to purchase chest “flatteners” in order to fit into the most popular fashions.

History of Fashion

SENIOR THESIS BY ELIZABETH NICHOLS

20

If you can’t say something good about someone,

sit right here by me.

—Alice Roosevelt Longworth (1884–1980), U.S. author and wit Ican’t believe he told. I trusted him and he completely betrayed me!

“I…I was going to tell you,” I say to Shari.

“Kir royale, please,” says a woman who looks as if she might be regretting her decision to wear long sleeves in such warm weather.

“When?” Shari demands.

“You know,” I say, pouring a glass of champagne for the woman, then adding a splash of cassis. “Soon.

I mean, I only just found out myself! How was I supposed to know I had to write a thesis?”

“If you paid a little more attention,” Shari says, “to your studies, and a little less to clothes and a certain Englishman, you might have realized it.”

“That’s not fair,” I say, passing the woman her kir royale and only splashing a little of it down on her hand. “My field of studyis clothes.”

“You’re impossible,” Shari spits. “How are you going to move to New York City with Chaz and me if you don’t even have a degree?”

“I never said I was going to move to New York with you and Chaz!”

“Well, you’re definitely notnow, ” Shari declares.

“Hey,” Chaz says, looking annoyed, “would you two cool it? We have a lot of Texans here who want their liquor and you’re holding up the line.”

Shari steps in front of me and says, “May I help you?” to the large woman I’d just been about to wait on.

“Hey,” I say, hurt. “That’s where I was standing.”

“Why don’t you go do something useful,” Shari says, “and go finish your thesis.”

“Shari, that’s not fair. Iam finishing it. I’ve been working on it all—”

It’s right then that a shriek rends the stillness of the evening. It seems to be coming from the second floor of the house. It is followed by the words “No, no, no,” uttered at the unmistakably high decibel achieved by one person, and only one person, staying at Mirac: Vicky Thibodaux.

Craig, who is standing in front of the table where we’re serving, glances at the house. Blaine, behind him in line, says, “Don’t do it, man. Don’t go. Whatever it is, you do not want to know.”

But Craig looks resigned.

“I’ll be right back,” he says, and starts toward the house.

“You’ll regret it,” Blaine calls after him. Then, to me, he says, “There’s a sucker born every minute.”

“Did it ever occur to you that there might be something seriously wrong?” Shari, who is clearly in no joking mood, asks him. It’s clear she’s not sharing Blaine’s unconcern—though she’s one of the few.

Everyone else on the lawn, seemingly used to Vicky’s outbursts, is steadfastly ignoring what they’ve just heard.

“With my sister?” Blaine nods. “There’s been something seriously wrong with her since the day she was born. It’s called being a spoiled brat.”

It’s right then that Agnès comes running up to me, out of breath and panting, and says, “Mademoiselle.

Mademoiselle. They want you to come. You must come now.”

“Who wants me to come?” I ask in wonder.

“Madame Thibodaux,” Agnès replies. “And her daughter. In the house. They say it is an emergency…”

“All right,” I say, putting down my napkin. “I’ll come. But—” Then, stunned, I gasp. “Wait. Agnès, you spoke English!”

Agnès blanches, then realizes she’s been caught.

“Don’t tell Mademoiselle Desautels,” Agnès begs.

Chaz, amused, grins at her. “But if you speak English, why did you pretend you didn’t?”

Now Agnès, instead of being pale, is blushing.

“Because I do not like her,” she says with a shrug. “And my not understanding English annoys her very much. And I like to annoy her.”

Whoa.

“Um,” I say, “okay.” To Chaz and Shari, I say, “I’ll be back in a minute. Is that okay?”

Shari, her lips pressed into a thin line, refuses to comment. But Chaz, rapidly filling glasses, looks at me and says, “Go on. Agnès can take over for you. Can’t you, Agnès?”

“Oh yes,” Agnès says, and begins opening champagne bottles with the ease of someone who happens to be an old hand at it.

I don’t hesitate a moment longer. I race around the table and head for the house, relieved to be out from under Shari’s glare…but also furious that Luke told her. Why? Why did he say anything when only just this morning he promised he wouldn’t?

And okay, I may not exactly have kepthis secret…

But his secret isn’t guaranteed to make anyone mad at him, the way mine was.

I should have known, of course. Men can’t be trusted to keep a secret. Well, okay, I can’t be trusted to keep one, either. But I thought Luke was different from other guys. I thought I could tell him anything…

Oh my God! Whatelse did he tell Shari? Did he tell her about the you-know-what? No, surely not. If he had, she’d have said something. She wouldn’t have cared about shocking all those Daughters of the American Revolution. She’d have been like, “YOU GAVE ANDY A PITY BLOW JOB? ARE YOU

INSANE?”

At least, I think she would have…

This is what I’m thinking to myself as I race into the house and up the stairs. I don’t see anyone on my way to the second floor, where I find Craig, tapping on the door to Vicky’s room and saying, “Vic. Let me in. Now.”

“NO!” Vicky cries in an anguished voice from behind the door. “You can’t see me! Go away!”

I approach, a little out of breath.

“What’s wrong?” I ask Craig.

“I don’t know,” the groom-to-be says with a shrug. “Something to do with her dress. I’m not allowed to see it, or it’s bad luck. She won’t let me in.”

Something to do with her dress?

I tap on the door.

“Vicky?” I say. “It’s Lizzie. Can I come in?”

“No!” Vicky cries.

But the next thing I know, the door has been flung open.

Only not by Vicky. By her mother. Who snakes out an arm, grabs me by the shoulder, and pulls me into the room with a terse “Please go away, Craig” to her future son-in-law before slamming the door shut behind us.

As I stand in the large corner room, with its pink-papered walls and enormous canopy bed, my gaze is instantly drawn to the girl sobbing on a pink stuffed chair in the corner. Mrs. de Villiers is stroking her niece’s hair in an attempt to calm her down. Dominique, looking darkly malevolent for some reason, glares daggers at me.

“Dominique says you know how to sew,” Mrs. Thibodaux says, still not having let go of my shoulders.

“Is that true?”

“Um,” I say, completely confused, “yes. I mean, Ican sew—”

“Can you do anything about this?” Mrs. Thibodaux demands, and spins me around so that I can get a look at her daughter, who has climbed to her feet and is now standing…

…in the most hideous wedding dress I have ever seen in my life.

It looks as if a lace factory threw up on her. There is lace everywhere…the poufed sleeves…the insert above the neckline…dripping from the bodice and skirt, then looped up in bunches all around the hem.

It’s the kind of wedding dress some girls dream of…

When they’re nine.

“Whathappened ?” I ask.

This just makes Vicky cry harder.

“You see?” she wails to her mother. “I knew it!”

Mrs. Thibodaux is chewing her lower lip. “I told her it wasn’t that bad. She’s so upset…”

I walk around the stricken bride to get a look at the back of the dress. Just as I suspected. There is an enormous lace butt bow in the back.

A butt bow.

Things could not be worse.

I exchange glances with Luke’s mother. She looks, very briefly, to the ceiling.

I have no choice but to admit the truth.

“It’s bad,” I say.

Vicky lets out a hiccupy sob. “How c-could you let this happen, Mother?”

“What?” Mrs. Thibodaux looks indignant. “I’m the one who warned you! I’m the one who kept saying not to overdo it! She designed it herself,” Mrs. Thibodaux explains to me, “and had a Parisian dressmaker hand-sew it, based on Vicky’s sketch.”

Oh. Well, that explains everything. Amateurs should never design their own dresses. And certainly not their ownwedding dress .

“But I didn’t mean it to look likethis, ” Vicky wails. “It didn’t even look like this at the last fitting!”

“I told you,” Mrs. Thibodaux says to her daughter. “I told you not to wait until twelve hours before your wedding to try your dress on! And I told you not to add all that lace! But you wouldn’t listen. You kept saying it would be fine. You kept saying you wanted more.”

“I wanted somethingoriginal, ” Vicky cries.

“Well, it’s original all right,” Mrs. de Villiers says wryly.

“The question is,” Dominique says, speaking for the first time since I’ve entered the room, “can you fix it?”

“Me?” I fling a panicky glance at the gown. “Fix it? How?”

“Get rid of all this,” Vicky says with a sniffle, lifting up a limp layer of lace that hangs, inexplicably, from the gown’s bodice.

I stoop to examine the gown. It is, just as she asserted, hand sewn. The stitching is superb.

And is going to be nearly impossible to rip out without damaging the material underneath.

“I don’t know,” I say. “I mean, it’s sewn on there really well. Removing it might leave holes. It could end up looking really weird.”

“Weirder than this?” Vicky demands, lifting her arms and revealing what appear to be wings of lace coming down from the sleeves.

“Good God in heaven!” Luke’s mother exclaims, seeing the wings.

The wings seem to have clinched the matter for Mrs. Thibodaux.

“Can’t you sew up the holes?” she asks me.

“In time for her to wear it tomorrow afternoon?” Luke’s mother’s tone is still wry. “Ginny, be reasonable. Even a professional seamstress—if we could find someone this late in the day—couldn’t do it.”

“Oh, Lizzie is quite accomplished,” Dominique chimes in. “Jean-Luc can’t stop raving about her many talents.”

Luke can’t stop raving about me? Many talents? What talents? What is Dominique talking about?

“Really?” Mrs. de Villiers is looking at me with pointed interest. I can’t tell if it’s because of what Dominique just said, or if it’s residual curiosity concerning what I told her earlier in the evening, about her son’s medical aspirations.

“Jean-Luc says she makes all her own clothes,” Dominique says. “She even made that dress she’s got on right now.”

“What?” I’m so startled I jump. “No I didn’t. This is by Anne Fogarty from, like, the 1960s. I didn’t make it.”

“Oh, don’t be modest, Lizzie,” Dominique says with a laugh. “Jean-Luc told me everything.”

What is shetalking about? What is going on? What did Luke say to her about me? What did Luke say to Shari about me? What is Luke doing, going around talking about me all over the place?

“It won’t take Lizzie any time at all,” Dominique is saying, “to whip Victoria’s dress into shape.”

“Oh!” Mrs. Thibodaux claps her hands together, tears—actual tears—glistening at the corners of her eyes. “Is that really true, Lizzie? Can you really do it?”

I look from Mrs. Thibodaux to Mrs. de Villiers to Dominique, then back again. Something is going on here. Something that, I’m starting to suspect, has more to do with Dominique than it does anything else.

“Do you think you can salvage it, Lizzie?” Mrs. de Villiers asks me, looking worried.

Did Luke really say I have many talents? That I’m accomplished?

I can’t let him down. Even if he did rat me out to Shari.

“I’ll see what I can do,” I say hesitantly. “I mean, I can’t promise anything—”

“I don’t care,” Vicky says. “I just don’t want to look like Stevie Nicks on my wedding day.”

I can see her point. Still—

“Take off your dress and give it to Lizzie,” Mrs. Thibodaux tells her daughter. “And change into your rehearsal-dinner dress. There are a lot of people waiting to see us down there. God knows what they think is happening up here.”

I didn’t point out that it seemed as if most people hadn’t been too alarmed by Vicky’s screams, since she seems to let them out so often.

A minute later I find myself standing there clutching an armful of satin and lace.

“Do what you can,” Mrs. Thibodaux says to me as Vicky, having changed into a demure pink sundress and repaired her tear-stained makeup, opens the door and goes out to greet Craig, who has been calmly waiting for her all this time.

“You can’t possibly make it look any worse,” is what Luke’s mother says as she sails past me.

It’s Dominique who adds, as she follows the sisters, “Good luck,” with such malicious glee in her eye that I realize—belatedly—that I’ve just dug myself a grave I’ll never be able to climb out of.

And that Dominique is the one who handed me the shovel.

World War I was responsible for millions of deaths, but perhaps none more noticeable than the death of prewar conventions. A generation of women who had been doing “war work” in the absence of men, who were away fighting, realized that with the world about to end, they might as well start smoking, drinking, and in general doing everything else they had been forbidden from doing for so many years.