A Dress to Die For

by Christine Demaio-Rice

  “May the high prince reign,” he said in the middle of an unmotivated grin.

  “From a high place,” Laura said before Mom could. “Nice hat.”

  Mom sat back and pursed her lips in what for all the world looked like an attempt not to give her face away. Laura kicked her, but Fur Collar had already seen it.

  “It’s made by hand. The artisans of Brunico are world famous, of course.”

  “Of course,” Mom said.

  Fur Collar tilted his head, pushing his jaw forward and narrowing his eyes. Mom met his gaze, and they sat like that for a minute. Jimmy swirled his wine as if he hadn’t noticed anything at all, but when Laura gave him a quick glance, she saw a man paying great attention.

  “Jocelyn,” Fur Collar said.

  “Hello, Soso. Been a long time.”

  They sat diagonal from each other, but the whole table was now owned by them.

  “You look radiant as a sunset.”

  “A tip to my age, Soso? Or it would be sunrise.”

  “Noon couldn’t compete. My God, twenty years.”

  As their conversation progressed, Laura scanned Mom’s photographs in her mind. She’d been so focused on Mom and Dad, and so drawn by the gravitational pull of the princess, that she hadn’t given much thought to the other members of the entourage. She definitely remembered a very tall man wearing leather pants and a vest. She could remember little else besides that and pickle-shaped eyebrows, which he raised when he turned to Laura.

  “No,” Soso said. He looked back at Mom. “Can’t be.”

  “It is.”

  “Lala?”

  “She prefers Laura.”

  “Laura,” he said, “I am Soso Oseigh. I knew you when you were six years old. You told me my pants were too tight in the thigh.”

  “They still are.”

  “Laura!” Mom scolded.

  But Soso laughed loudly enough to give her a start.

  “Sorry,” Laura said. “It was too easy. It’s nice to meet you again. This is Jimmy. He’s a friend of ours.”

  Jimmy nodded and tipped his glass.

  Soso leaned toward Mom as if sharing gossip. “You’ve heard about the dress? Her dress? They put it up in a museum with the story right under it on a plaque. It’s disgusting.”

  “Yes,” Mom said, raising her glass to her lips.

  “We all thought it perished with her. I want to know who did this.”

  Trying to keep Mom’s nose clean, Laura interjected, “I heard she took home an American man? And she continued to live with him? Maybe he had the dress?”

  Soso tsked. “No. There was no American. Barnabas came back a month later. The only American to come back with us was...” He drifted off.

  “Joseph,” Mom finished.

  “A shame. A woman like you,” Soso said to Mom, and Laura caught Jimmy rolling his eyes. “We all felt sorry about what happened.”

  Mom shrugged. “It was for the best.”

  “So,” Laura said, “after you all got back, a couple of weeks later was the inauguration and this, like, bloodless coup attempt or whatever. I mean, no one really knows what happened.”

  “Nothing more than a ruined party. Everyone got a little rowdy. Knives were drawn, naturally, on the second day, but we all laughed on the third. And our prince maybe overreacted for a while.”

  Mom interjected. “Soso, really. The island’s been closed for twenty years already.”

  “Officially, yes. Unofficially, Brunico is always in business.”

  “That was twenty years ago,” Laura said. “And the princess has been dead, what? Six, seven months? I don’t understand why the truth can’t come out after all that time. It’s not like anyone can do anything to her now.”

  Soso looked her up and down, as if sizing her up for a fistfight, and she felt a moment of fear before she remembered Jimmy sat across from her.

  Then a smile spread across Soso’s face, and he slapped his hand on the table. “Lala! You are the same! A very serious girl. Of course the secrets Brunico has held to her breast for twenty years can be discussed over wine in a café. Right?”

  “You can’t blame a girl for trying,” Laura said. “So did the princess fall in love while she was here or not?”

  “She did.”

  “But not with an American,” Laura said.

  “No, with an American.”

  “But you said yourself the only American to go back with you was Joseph Carnegie.”

  Soso looked at Laura, then back to Mom. Jimmy made a noise deep in his throat that preceded him saying, “Oh, you are kidding.” Mom gathered her things and ran out, with Jimmy right behind, and Laura, who always felt ten steps behind and who had lived with the mythology of her father as far back as she could remember, stared at Soso until it dawned on her.

  “But it was Barnabas...” she whispered.

  Soso swallowed his wine and slowly shook his head, lips pursed as if he was the sorriest man on earth.

  “Princess Philomena and my father were in love?”

  “Yes.”

  She found a bunch of crunched-up bills in her bag and dropped them on the table before running out after her mother.

  **

  There were no cabs. Mom was obviously making Herculean efforts to keep herself from some sort of ugly emotional outburst. Laura assumed her mother was keeping it together for Jimmy’s sake. Or her sake. Or just because it was unbecoming to freak out on a Friday night in the Meatpacking District.

  Though Laura could say with some certitude that if she married Jeremy and had two children with him only to find out he really was gay, then found out twenty years later that no, he wasn’t gay, he’d just run off with a princess, well, that might put her over the edge. Because then it wouldn’t have been about the cruel things she said or about the fact that she had the wrong parts. It would have been about her and her failure to please him, her failure to keep him, a failure so deep he had to lie about it.

  She assumed Mom was thinking all that, but it didn’t add up to Laura. “Mom, there’s something missing here. Some political reason. Some other motivation. How was the high prince involved? I mean—”

  “You need to shut up,” Jimmy said.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “You need to just go back to your boyfriend’s apartment tonight and leave her alone.”

  Laura planted her fists on her hips. “What?”

  “You heard me.”

  “You two!” Mom shouted, then softened. “Laura, are you okay? I know this is hard for you.”

  “I’m fine, Mom. I’m just mad for you.”

  Mom put her hands on Laura’s shoulders. “You’re a good girl. Don’t be mad on my account. Honestly, I’m surprised at how little I really care.”

  “Really, Mom?”

  She shrugged. “Really. It’s twenty years already. I’m tired, and I want to go home. That’s all. Are you coming with us or staying in the city?”

  “I’ll just walk.” It was a bit far, but a brisk December walk in the middle of the night wasn’t unheard of.

  Mom held out her hand for Jimmy. “Come on. There’s not going to be a cab anywhere. Let’s walk to the train and see if we get a lucky break on the way.”

  Mom and Jimmy went down Gansevoort, holding hands. Laura enjoyed seeing that. Jimmy turned and waved once, then again half a block later, as if he didn’t believe she was actually going to just walk up to 24th Street, and he was right on the money. When they turned a corner, Laura spun on her heel and went back to the café.

  Her intention was to get more information from Soso about her father. He loved the princess? Were they married? Did they have children? Did she have more beautiful sisters running around somewhere? Where was he?

  Laura considered the front door, then went to the back of the restaurant. She was going to sneak up on those rat bastards and get herself arrested—or worse—and she wasn’t going to care. As a matter of fact, she was going to take the trouble she was about to get into and
eat it for dinner.

  Like any old building in the city, the café was heated with vapor radiators, and on a relatively warm December night, it was pretty likely that an open window was the only defense against the people inside getting steamed like a basket of broccoli. So she snuck up to the back door, one of those security ghetto jobs—a bullet-busting steel mesh—despite the value of the real estate. When she got close, she decided to take a second to peek inside before going in and hurting any fleshy thing that got in her way.

  Soso paced what looked to be a back office, his long legs getting him from wall to wall in three strides. It was difficult to see through the mesh, but she caught a desk and a lamp with a red shade—cliché, along with the painting of the lady on the black background with the cleaved bust and hoop earrings.

  “I don’t know what she knows,” Soso said. “If she wanted to talk to me, she could have done it twenty years ago.” He paused, then said, “I’d arrange it if I could find him. He’s like a puff of smoke, and you have no idea how big this city is.” He sat down, kicked off his shoes, and rubbed his toes through his socks. “Yes, Your Highness. I’ll take care of it.” He hung up as Poly Print came in with a glass of milky wine.

  “What did he say?” Poly Print asked.

  Soso just shook his head and put his feet up on the desk. Laura lingered for what seemed like an eternity, but Soso never answered, and once Poly Print gave up and left, she slipped away. It didn’t seem like a good time to ask a bunch of questions about her father.

  CHAPTER 10

  Friday night, Laura tried to sleep but couldn’t. Jeremy’s place seemed bigger than it had the previous nights. Emptier. Less friendly. At midnight, she moved to the couch and tried calling him but got his voice mail. She opened her work email and found a shitstorm. An email from Wendy revealed that Tiffany, their assistant who had moved from design to tech, was supposed to instruct the factory to lengthen a T-shirt sleeve three quarters of an inch, but had told them to shorten it instead. The fabric was cut and bundled for sewing. The long-sleeved top had become a three-quarter sleeve, and Wendy warned in no uncertain terms that the stores would likely take a twenty percent discount on all sizes.

  Laura told Wendy to have the factory take out the seam allowance—an inch on the sleeve hem—and put a baby hem on it. Thus, the sleeve would be five-eighths short instead of an inch and a half, but that also meant it wouldn’t have the nice, flat coverstitch. The change would cost in time and effort, another hit to Jeremy’s books.

  She closed her laptop and thought about the snippets of Soso’s conversation. He knew Mom, but his affection was feigned, or at least trumped by his need to service the high prince, who seemed to have some sort of interest in the dress and finding her father. He didn’t seem to have any interest in hurting her mother, but Laura had an icky feeling in her gut about the guy. She figured that he was looking for Dad, and when he found him, things were not going to go so well for the gay/straight man who had left his family.

  Could that have been the reason for the notes? Some sort of cry for help? Help he knew he had no business asking for, everything considered? Then why no contact information? Why just the ridiculous little declarations of affection? And why so many more for little freaking Lala? A little snot who had told a man his pants were too tight? God, she must have been intolerable once she got past the cute phase. Something came back to her in the fugue state between wakefulness and sleep, and she hugged a pillow on the couch.

  She felt a little tick in her throat and thought, A pin. A pin. I swallowed a pin! She had kept them pressed between her lips whenever Mom did her little lessons. Everyone thought it was cute that she put them there like a real seamstress. Then one day, she had breathed too hard, and a pin lodged in her throat. She faced the ceiling, and people stood over her and shouted. The feeling of panic was overwhelming and threatened to wake her from the memory. Both her now-self and her past-self inhaled gentle breaths. In the corner of her vision, she saw a cutting table, tall windows, and four dress forms in different sizes. She saw Ruby, all of six and a half, on the periphery, a Vogue dangling from her fingertips. Mom took the rest of the pins from between Laura’s lips, saying something that was lost in the panic of the moment.

  A man leaned over her, his face huge. “Relax,” Dad said. “I have you.”

  And she did relax. She opened her mouth, and he pressed her tongue down with one finger. She didn’t gag or cough or stick herself by moving, because she was in his competent hands, safe and protected. He kneeled beside her, his brown eyes the picture of concentration and concern, while he reached in and, on the third try, plucked out the pin.

  **

  She woke up on the living room floor with the sun blasting her face and the phone ringing half an arm’s length away. Her head pounded. Her shoulders ached. The taste of Brunican wine coated her mouth.

  “Jeremy?” she gurgled when she picked up the phone, eyes too bleary to look at the incoming number.

  “Jimmy.”

  “What?”

  “Your mother had a heart attack.”

  She jumped to her feet. The room spun a little, but she managed to keep herself upright by holding the back of a chair. “Where is she?”

  “They just admitted her into the ER at Beth Israel.”

  Laura was on her way to the bathroom with no idea what she even wanted to do there. “Is she going to die?” Then she almost ran to the kitchen, but when she got to the counter with Jeremy’s chrome box of meds, she again forgot what she wanted to do.

  “I don’t know.”

  “I’m coming. Right now.” She hung up. She dressed and showered so fast she had to make sure she had her pants on frontward. Once she got outside, she called Ruby.

  “Hello?” Ruby yelled over loud music in the background.

  “Go somewhere quiet!” Laura shouted.

  The lady walking in front of her spun to give her a dirty look, and Laura extended her middle finger. The woman turned back around and walked faster. Over the phone, she heard flushing toilets, giggling girls, and Ruby saying, “For Chrissakes, it’s my one day off—”

  “Mom had a heart attack.”

  “Is she going to die?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know when, and I don’t know how, and I know exactly nothing. But please keep your phone on and don’t be in a freaking club when I call.” She stepped in front of a cab, forcing it to stop, and got in the back.

  “I’m coming home right now.”

  “Call me before you get on a plane.”

  She was about to hang up when she heard Ruby’s voice. “Laura!”

  “What?”

  “I love you.”

  “I love you, too. Get home.”

  **

  The hospital had a gift shop on the bottom floor, and Laura bought a cross-stitch kit of a yellow bird on a branch. It might have been two dollars or two hundred. She had no idea. Somehow, she found Mom in the huge building by saying her name to as many people with laminated IDs around their necks as she could find. Jimmy stood in the cold hallway, flipping through a magazine. The light was unforgiving. He looked as though he’d been up all night, his moustache askew at the sides and melting in with the hair growing on his cheeks.

  “How is she?” Laura asked.

  He folded his magazine. “She keeps trying to walk out.”

  “The food’s probably too tasty.”

  “Her cooking didn’t do you no harm.” He was actually getting defensive about Mom. Half a date, and he can get between them on a joke about tasteless food?

  “Thanks for staying. I guess if you wanted to go home, I’ll tell her you waited.”

  He leaned against the wall and glanced up at her. “Who do you like for killing the princess?”

  Oh, so he intended to stay and insinuate himself. Well, all right. Mom stood to benefit from having him around, and if he liked her that much, all the better.

  “Well, she was killed in a fire. So there’s no proof it was a murder
at all.”

  “Pretend it was. We can’t go in there until they’re done poking at her anyway.”

  Laura leaned against the wall, deciding to play. Pacing around with worry wasn’t going to help at all. “When she came back from her month in New York, with my father, thank you, she had the inaugural ball. And you know it was three days of fabulous with the orange gown on the last night.”

  “Who made the other two?”

  Laura hadn’t thought of that. “I have no idea. We can ask Mom. But whatever happened in that dress started the Fortnight Coup. So you’d think if the high prince wanted her dead, she’d have been dead twenty years ago.”

  “If it was the high prince. What about your dad?”

  “Maybe. But he’s in New York now because those notes were hand delivered. I happen to know that Soso doesn’t know where he is, but once I find him, I’m going to clock him for giving Mom a heart attack.”

  “Your mother didn’t have a heart attack over your father.”

  “Well, her cooking didn’t do her no harm.”

  He smirked and opened his magazine again. “Twenty years is a nice, round number.”

  A nurse exited Mom’s room, carrying a clipboard in one hand and rolling out an instrument-filled cart with the other. “One at a time,” she said.

  “You go,” Jimmy said.

  **

  Mom looked like hell in a hospital gown and IV, but when she saw Laura come in, she smiled and waved.

  Laura took her hand. “Mom, I’m so—”

  “What’s in your bag?”

  “What?”

  “Do you have a hairbrush? I look like someone wrung me out.”

  “You just had a heart attack.” But Laura opened her bag and sorted through her things. She had a little comb, a few bobby pins, and a tube of lipstick she’d stashed in case she and Jeremy turned a corner and found a camera waiting.