Authors: Erin McKean

The Secret Lives of Dresses (27 page)

Gabby made a halfhearted effort to fit another dish into the refrigerator.

“We should triage,” Dora said. “Tell me who the best cooks are, and we’ll save those. The rest we’ll just throw away, and wait a month before we send home the dishes.”

“Let me do that,” Gabby said. “It’s easier. Marnie Wood, definitely keep; Jill Forrester, no; no name on this dish, no . . .”

Dora leaned back against the doorframe and closed her eyes, half listening to the freezer door open and close while Gabby murmured and fussed. She felt Gabby’s hand on her shoulder.

“Honey, go on up to bed. We can clean up in the morning.”

“I have to drive back to Lymond in the morning—I’m going to leave early to avoid the traffic. I’ll probably be gone before you are awake.”

“Right. Good luck with that interview, honey. Mimi would have been so excited, I just know it.”

Dora just smiled weakly, and hugged Gabby good night.

Chapter Fourteen

S
unday morning, Dora hesitated, looking at the ratty T-shirt and cargo pants she’d worn on that horrible trip down from Lymond. It felt like they belonged to a different person. She chose a dress from the closet instead, a brown floral-print dress with a full skirt. Dora thought it would be comfortable for driving. An Aran sweater, wool socks, and a pair of suede desert boots—Dora felt like she was dressing Nellie, for another window.

Dora checked the pockets twice—no secret life.

Packing for the interview was harder. The closet was full of possible candidates. Dora discarded anything too bright: she wasn’t sure just when she’d feel like wearing pink or grass green again. Next she excluded anything too fussy; she didn’t want to be fiddling with bows or belts during her interview. One dress, an olive crepe, was almost perfect, but when she tried it on it was just slightly too big. In the end she took four possibilities, wrapped up in a garment bag, packing the right underwear and shoes automatically, as if she’d been dressing in vintage for grad-school interviews her whole life.

It felt odd to head out of Forsyth, away from the center of town and Mimi’s store. Dora tried not to think about the store.

At the last minute she’d thrown the bag of secret lives into the trunk, and she could feel them there, like the comforting weight of a heavy blanket. Dora tried to imagine Uncle John demanding their return, as part of the “store and its inventory,” and failed. They were hers, by right if not by law, because there was no one else in the world who needed them more.

Dora’s tiny apartment was just as she left it. The milk had gone off and the bread had gone moldy in the fridge, but other than that nothing was out of order. Dora bought a couple of cans of soup and just enough milk for her morning coffee from the corner store. She didn’t have the energy to restock the larder. At the last minute she added a box of Lorna Doones.

Dora puttered around, hanging up the dresses she’d brought, looking for an overdue library book she needed to return. It wasn’t until nearly five that she made herself soup and curled up on her couch with the bag of stories, the box of cookies, and a box of tissues within easy reach.

She gobbled the first few stories, opening one envelope in such a rush that she tore it. After that she was more careful. She tried to imagine which of the dresses from the store had belonged to each story, and penciled her guesses on the back. The dresses may have been lost to her, but she could keep their stories.

It was midnight before she reached the last story. She was cold, even under the afghan, and her legs were stiff. Her eyes were itchy from crying, and there were Lorna Doone crumbs everywhere. She felt sick, and not just from too many cookies. She opened the last envelope.

When he walked in, I thought it was her. Which was impossible, since she never wore trousers. And of course she was wearing me at the time. But it was uncanny. If anything, he was more beautiful, with that transparent, painful beauty that fair-skinned people sometimes have. You think if they catch the light just right it will burn right through them.
“Diana” was all he said, but he didn’t have to say anything. She knew he was there before she even looked up.
“Go away, David. Back to wherever it is you’ve been.”
“I wanted to be here, Diana,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
“Sorry butters no parsnips,” she said. “It also attends no funerals.”
“I couldn’t.” He didn’t force his case. He just stood there. There was something about the way he stood, and the fit of his suit, that made me think:
prison.
“What do you want now?” She was cold. She still hadn’t looked up.
“I want to help. I want to come home.”
“There isn’t any home. Not anymore. I had to sell the house.”
I heard his intake of breath, and so did she. It infuriated her.
“That’s what you have to do, you know, when someone dies and there are debts and a business to run. You sell what you can sell.”
“Where are you living now?”
Her eyes went involuntarily to the back room. He couldn’t see the cot, and the hot plate, and the cold-water sink, but he knew they were there, I think.
“Diana,” he began again. She was not encouraging. “Jeff?” he asked.
“He married Annabel Hough. It was in all the papers.”
I could see he was angry; his fist clenched for a moment.
“He let me keep the ring. I sold that, too.” She sounded amused, almost. “It wasn’t as expensive as he had let on, of course. Big and flashy, but second-rate quality.”
Suddenly he laughed. She tensed, but then she laughed, too. Before I knew it, they were both laughing so hard they couldn’t stop, bent over opposite sides of the counter, holding their sides. I thought she was going to pop a button right off me, but I didn’t care. I had never heard her laugh, and I was enjoying it.
Eventually she caught her breath, and looked right up at him. “Are you really home?”
“I’m really home.” He looked her straight in the eye. When I saw his face, up close, in the light, I could see that he looked older than she did. “Home to stay. Home for good.”
“I can call Mrs. Moran; she’d find a place for you in her house. Remember when she used to ‘do’ for Mother?”
“Oh, yes—and I could just go over there.”
“You’d better let me call first.” She didn’t press it, but I think that’s when he realized what it would be like, coming back. He must have known it would be hard, but I think he was concentrating on the big hills, and not all the small bumps he’d have to go over, too.
She called, and he idled in the front of the store for a moment, before grabbing a broom and doing a quick sweep around. He handled the broom with grace, much better than she did, and I wondered how he had come by that particular talent. When he went through the shaft of sunlight that pierced the window, I could see how gray and shabby his shirt collar was.
On the telephone to Mrs. Moran, she was all business. She had to be now. No time for social calls or pity. But there was a tiny hint of something in her voice that hadn’t been there before.
After she put down the phone she went into the little lavatory closet, and opened the medicine case. She took out the bottle of brandy inside of it, and looked at it for a minute. I thought she was going to pour it down the sink, but she hid it behind the radiator instead.
“Mrs. Moran will have you,” she said. “It’s the attic room, and it will be terribly stuffy.” She waited for him to protest.
“I don’t mind,” he said. “Thank you.”
“Thank Mrs. Moran. I don’t know how we’ll pay her, but we’ll think of something.”
“I have a little money,” he said. “Enough for a week at a boardinghouse.”
“Her handyman O’Malley went back to the old country—you could offer to help.”
“That I could. Better than O’Malley, I bet. He drank, anyway. . . .” His face colored. “Diana, that’s done with.”
“It better be.” Her face had closed up.
“I can spend mornings here, and then go back to Moran’s in the afternoon, when her boarders are out.”
“What can you do here?” She sounded dismissive, and resigned.
“I can clean the front and repaint it, repair the awning, make deliveries—anything you want.”
“It’s not fun, you know.” She stared at him. “This is not a game, we’re not playing store, like we did when we were children. This is all we have.”
“I owe it to you. And to Father, I think. And a lot more.”
She looked terribly sad when he mentioned Father. “I miss him, you know,” she half whispered. “When I’m not cursing him for being so reckless and irresponsible . . .”
“Like me.”
“Like you.” She paused. “You know, I can tell just by looking that you’ve grown out of it. Father never did. His personality always carried him through, all red blood, backslapping, and beefsteak. We’re too much like Mother for that to work for us.”
“Luckily she didn’t have to see the end.”
“Of any of us.” Diana gestured down at me, which wasn’t quite fair, but I took it calmly. I knew I was only a shop dress, bought at a place that pinned the price tag on the sleeve. I knew what her other dresses had been like before; there were still a few in the closet.
“We’ve got a long way to go until the end, Diana.” It wasn’t until then that they touched. He reached his hand out and she grasped it, and then I was pressed tight against his shabby suit. I thought I felt her sob, but I was probably wrong. She never cried.
“Go see Mrs. Moran.” Her hand in my pocket tightened around her handkerchief.
“Thank you, Diana.” He looked like he wanted to say more, but he didn’t.
“And be back here tomorrow at eight. That awning will take a lot of work.”
It was only after he left that she did cry. She turned the sign on the door to “Closed” and sat right down on her cot and bawled. Then she got up, washed her face in the battered sink, and ran a comb through her hair.
But when she had opened the store door again (to a few waiting children eager for penny candy), her face was all smiles. I even saw her give the littlest one an extra bull’s-eye.

Dora turned out the light and lay staring at the dark for a long time before she fell asleep.

• • •

Dora was wearing a charcoal-gray dress, narrow-skirted, with long sleeves ending in pointed cuffs and a matching sharply pointed collar. Dora was wearing the dress, although it had been a close call—when she first put it on, the dress had been wearing her. It had taken several minutes of walking around her apartment this morning (how small it seemed, and how remote from being hers now!) before the dress had been forced into submission and Dora could practice saying, “Thank you for the opportunity to come in and talk with you, Dr. Santin,” in front of the mirror.

Dr. Santin, of course, hadn’t noticed the dress at all. Dr. Santin had a pencil tucked in her hair, wore “comfort walkers” worn down at the heel, and the kind of denim jumper that might have been worn for gardening the previous Saturday and haphazardly washed.

“Thank you for the opportunity to come in and talk with you, Dr. Santin,” ventured Dora, in as confident a voice as she could manage. Dr. Santin gestured to a chair, and Dora perched at the edge of it. The professor sank back into hers.

“Please, call me Emily,” said Dr. Santin. Dora thought she’d rather cut off her own thumbs, but what she said was “Thank you.”

Dr. Santin—Dora couldn’t even think of her as Emily—opened her application folder. Dora could see the green paper clip she’d used and suddenly regretted it as not sufficiently serious.

“This interview is just a formality, of course. Your transcript is excellent—you’ve managed to get a very broad and well-rounded education here at Lymond.”

“Thank you,” said Dora again.

“You’re graduating early?” Dr. Santin looked over her glasses at Dora.

“I had completed my degree requirements, and by graduating early I could apply for this program,” Dora explained.

“The program. Can you tell me what drew you to further liberal-arts studies?”

Dora felt blank. “I . . . I really felt that my undergraduate work only skimmed the surface of the subject . . . subjects. And it really interests me.” Dora took a breath. “I mean, um, how things are connected. The different disciplines.”

“Hmm” was all she got back from Dr. Santin. “And you’ve held down a campus job as well?”

“Only for the past few months,” said Dora. “In the coffee shop.” Without realizing it, she smiled her first real smile since walking in the door.

“I know the one. Excellent pound cake.” Dr. Santin smiled back. “I’ve never stopped to think about how the coffee shop is run. Tell me a little bit about your work there.”

“It’s really not very difficult—it’s just a coffee shop. You sell coffee and baked goods and candy, and then pizza and sandwiches and sodas at lunchtime, and then clean it all up by five and get it ready to do all over again the next day.”

“But how do you know what will sell?” Dr. Santin looked puzzled. “I don’t think you had that pound cake last year, for instance.”

“It’s not what you would call a science—I just sat in a few other coffee shops around town and watched what people bought, and then figured out if we could offer similar things, or the same thing cheaper—college students never have any money, of course—and I asked our best customers what they would like to see, and once I spent a few hours watching what kinds of candy sold best at the bookstore.” Dora smiled, remembering feeling like a grown-up Harriet the Spy.

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