Page 5 of A Dress for the Wicked
“I’ll make money at the Fashion House and send it back,” I said. “Marriage isn’t the only way to save the pub.”
“How do you—?”
“I’ve seen the letters from the bank. I know we’re behind on the mortgage.”
A new anger flashed in my mother’s eyes. She hated appearing weak, even to me, her only living relative.
“It isn’t just the money, Emmy. It’s a secure life with a good man who will take care of you. Do you think you can find that in the city?”
“That’s not why I’m going to the city. I’m going to design. I’m going to do everything I can to be one of the apprentices.”
I walked over to the far side of my bed. An old carpetbag was tucked against it. I crouched down and unlatched its mouth. The motion sent delicate dust particles spinning up into the air. I had never used the bag before. In fact, it had not been used since my mother had returned to Shy, pregnant with me.
When she’d been about my age, she’d gone to the city to work in a textile factory. Whatever had happened between her and my father remained a mystery to me. The only time I’d heard anything about him was when I was seven, when I’d walked into the kitchen to find my mother, a woman who was always in perpetual motion, sitting still at the table. She held a letter and said to me, “Your father died.”
And that was it. She didn’t cry, and she told me not to cry either. I obeyed. It wasn’t difficult. I’d never known the man. It would’ve been hard to cry for someone I’d never met. I soon forgot about him, aside from occasionally wondering what parts of me belonged to him—my eyes? Or maybe my nose? My appreciation for whimsy and beauty, two things that I definitely had not inherited from my mother?
Others had not forgetten him. People in Shy had memories that stretched long into the past. Even while they gave us bags of hand-me-down clothing or did simple repairs to the pub, they always whispered about the single mother and her daughter.
“How did she look?” my mother asked after a long while.
“Who? Madame Jolène?”
“Yes.”
“She looked...” I stopped. I wanted to tell her Madame Jolène was haughty, and that my stomach had been in knots ever since we met. I said, “She looked beautiful.”
My mother winced, and I sat back on my heels. A shaft of fading daylight caught her face, illuminating the lines around her mouth and across her forehead. I suddenly wanted to hug her and tell her to trust me and everything would be all right. But then she spoke.
“I’ve worked hard so you don’t make the same mistakes I did. I know it doesn’t seem like it, but I understand why you want to go to the city. When I was your age, it seemed like such a beautiful, mysterious place. Anything could happen there. But it isn’t like that. The city will chew you up and spit you out.”
“This is my only chance.” I stood up and walked over to where she still sat on my patchwork quilt. “I can’t just stay here making drawings in the kitchen and tailoring people’s church clothing. I have to try to do it for real.”
I rarely spoke to her so freely, and I searched her face for a hint of understanding, anything that showed she knew I wasn’t trying to hurt her.
“I’ve spent my whole life trying to show you what isimportant,” she said. Her eyes darted around the room, and when she spoke it sounded like she wasn’t even sure what she was saying. “And you haven’t learned.”
“You sound like Grandfather.”
At the mention of my grandfather, her eyelids fluttered, her head bending forward at the neck. Her hair was pinned up into its normal workday bun, and the pearl-like outline of her spine jutted out against her skin just above her collar. I thought she might cry, but even in her darkest moments—like when the men had come to take her beloved piano away to sell at public auction over in Evert—she never did.
During his life, my grandfather was a deacon here in Shy. We lived with him until he died, and my mother bought the pub with her inheritance. He and my mother had always had the same conversation—or at least that’s how it seemed to me.
She would say,Emmy is your granddaughter. Why won’t you even look at her?
And he would reply,She has the face of her father.
“I am nothing like your grandfather,” my mother said harshly. Her eyes darkened, and I held my breath, knowing I’d pushed too far, that I’d never reach her now. We both sat in silence. Then, slowly, she softened and held out a hand. I thought she was going to stroke my hair like she did every night, but she stopped, uncertain. “You don’t have to do this.” There was a hint of pleading in her voice and suddenly, I thoughtImight cry. “You can stay, and we can forget this happened. We can go downstairs and have some tea and scones like we always do. We can use the blue china.” Her voice became a whisper, and shefinished the gesture she’d begun, gently brushing my hair back from my face.
I wanted to stay still. I wanted to let her run her callused fingers through my hair and sink into her arms. But I couldn’t, and anger rose from the pit of my stomach. It wasn’t my fault. It was hers, forcing this choice on me, forcing me to hurt her.
“You know I need to go.” I struggled to hold back tears and somehow managed to succeed.
My mother pulled back her hand and stared at me for a long moment. Then she said, “Very well.”
She left me standing in my bedroom in my purple dress, the yellow feather falling halfway out of my hair. As I packed, I kept listening for her footsteps on the stairs, kept looking up to see if she would open my door, kept waiting for her to come and say she understood. It wasn’t like us to shut each other out. Then again, it wasn’t like us to be apart.
I thought for sure we would say goodbye to each other, but she went to bed early. The next morning when I went to her room, her door was ajar, and she’d left a note saying she’d gone out. I looked for her, but she wasn’t in the vegetable garden or at the bluffs overlooking the pond. I waited until I would nearly miss my train and then, glancing over my shoulder every few moments in case she was there, left for the station outside Evert.
