A Dress to Die For

by Christine Demaio-Rice

  He took a whiff. “Mothballs.”

  “What do you think of that?” Laura asked.

  Ruby gave it a sniff and shrugged.

  Laura tested Mom’s letter. It had the same smell. “The pad was kept with wool things?” Laura suggested, but that didn’t make any sense. “You only use mothballs if you’re storing something, and you only store stuff in an apartment you’ve been in a while, so the whole twenty years in prison idea is shot.”

  “Said the New Yorker who grew up in a rent-controlled apartment,” Jimmy said. “Lotta people keep stuff in storage when they’re going away. When they get back, they go get it.”

  “So my theory’s holding up?” she asked hopefully.

  “Good God, Laura. You want a cookie?” Ruby sniped.

  “Did you fly coach or something?”

  “Yes, actually, and thanks for asking.”

  Laura took a look at her sister, whose only stitch of makeup was a black smudge under her left eye, and her hair looked smushed on one side. She put her arm around Ruby’s shoulders. “You look like a rag doll, but I love you.”

  Ruby pushed her away.

  “So,” Jimmy interjected. “Storage space.”

  “What? Oh, storage space. We find wherever he’s storing his things and look in it.” She looked to him for a hint of what he was thinking, but his face revealed nothing.

  The doctor walked over, her ponytail scraggly under her chalk-blue cap. “She’s in Post-Op. Looking good. We had a moment there, but she’s going to be fine. Give us half an hour to get her in a room.”

  The three of them were so relieved, they didn’t talk about anything for the next thirty minutes but the location of the bathroom, the color of the upholstery, and the position of the setting sun.

  **

  Uncle Graham and his daughters, Donna and Diane, showed up with flowers and balloons. He looked sharp, as usual, and the girls were dressed in combinations of Target and Proenza Schouler. Laura introduced Jimmy as Mom’s friend, and they all tried to get into her room when the nurse came out to find them. The nurse called an attending doctor who couldn’t have been older than Laura.

  The doctor kiboshed half the crowd. “Four at a time, please,” she said, all smiles and comforting, authoritative bedside manner.

  “Me and Ruby and Jimmy will run in and say hello, then she’s all yours,” Laura said.

  When they got there, Mom was lying down, her head turned away from them. Laura wondered if it would have killed her and Ruby to keep Jimmy outside for fifteen minutes while they cleaned her up. Not for Jimmy’s sake—he seemed like a nice enough guy—but for Mom, who would want to be seen at her best.

  Jimmy stayed by the door while Laura and Ruby presented themselves with hugs and kisses. Mom, who was groggy and cranky, shooed them off, complaining of exhaustion and pain.

  As they slunk away, Mom whispered, “Did Jimmy come?”

  “He’s right behind you,” Ruby said. “And Uncle Graham and the girls are in the hall.”

  Mom turned onto her back. “Can he come alone first?”

  Laura pulled Jimmy in, and Ruby got up to leave.

  “One thing,” Laura said. “Did Dad have a storage space?”

  “Why are you asking?”

  “Because.” She acted as though that was an actual answer, rich with content and meaning, a beginning, middle, and end that transmitted the fact that she expected a response without explanation.

  “In that case, he kept stuff in his grandfather’s garage. It got moved to storage.” She shrugged and winced from the effort.

  Laura looped her hand into the crook of Ruby’s arm. “We’ll be back after dinner.” With that, she pulled her sister out into the hallway.

  “How was that helpful?” Ruby asked.

  “Dad’s grandfather was Dale Carnegie. He died in Forest Hills, Queens. We find the nearest storage facility, and we just have to get in.”

  “It’s not the same as getting into a restaurant.”

  Laura pulled her into the elevator.

  **

  They took the train to Forest Hills, which was easy, and caught a cab at the station, which was also easy. They located Dale Carnegie’s residence with a simple Internet search and triangulated the nearest storage facility. Then things got harder.

  The closest place looked like a dump. There was no way the Carnegie family would have anything to do with a place like that. Besides, the office was closed. The cab took them to two other places that looked rat-infested and filthy. Ruby complained the whole way of aches, pains, and overall exhaustion.

  “We can get you coffee,” Laura said.

  “I came back to see Mom.”

  “She wants to be with Jimmy for a bit, which you never told me they were together, but okay. We’ll go back after and watch a little TV, then we go home and start again in the morning.” She’d barely finished her sentence before the fourth facility in their range appeared like a fortress. Spotlit to accentuate the stone carvings, the former warehouse looked like a castle on a hill, except that it was a block from the BQE.

  “Stop!” Laura shouted, and the cab came to a screeching halt.

  “Can you wait?” Laura asked.

  “Meter’s running.” The cabbie pulled a fat book out of the glove compartment. It was well loved and had a musket on the cover. Laura thought it must be nice to have a few minutes to read a book.

  She turned to her sister. “Come on. It’ll keep you awake. We might find something cool.”

  Ruby looked back with eyes baggy and bloodshot. For once, she didn’t look like a centerfold. “I’m not curious like you are.”

  “But Mom is. She’ll pretend she doesn’t want to know, but it’ll be like a Christmas present if we come back with anything at all.”

  Ruby sighed and got out of the car. They laid out their story on the way to the door.

  **

  The office was well lit with warm lamps and burgundy carpeting. Laura dropped her keys on the glossy wood of the counter, and the woman behind it looked up from her solitaire game with a smile. She had stiff black hair and wore too much blush.

  “Hi,” Laura said. “We’re looking for Joseph Carnegie’s space? He’s our father.”

  “Do you have the combination?” Solitaire tapped keys as if she were playing piano.

  “Yes, but Ruby here lost the compartment number.”

  “I did not. You borrowed my bag and lost it because of… what’s his name again?”

  “Shut up.”

  Ruby turned her exhausted face to Solitaire. “Dad gave her the compartment number and me the code, so we’d have to come together because he has this thing that we have to be buddies, and this way, she couldn’t ditch me for... what was his name again? Right. Nobody cares. And then she loses the number, and I still have to show up because she’s the one that needs Mom’s wedding gown because she’s marrying this—”

  “That’ll be enough of that.” Solitaire stopped liking Ruby right on time, looking at her as if she needed a spanking or a good talking to or both. “I do not care about your personal problems, Miss. Now, can I see some ID?”

  Laura didn’t have a driver’s license or passport, which never affected her until she needed to prove something. Ruby slapped her passport onto the desk, and Laura rubbed her cheek.

  “And you, Miss?” Solitaire asked Laura.

  “My ID was in the bag with the compartment number.” She tried to look appropriately mortified.

  Solitaire looked at Ruby’s passport, then her face. “Our policy allows access to the code panel for relatives. Same name. So I’ll let it go, but I do hope you remembered to bring the code.”

  Ruby smiled stiffly, as if there were a wedding gown in there she wanted to retrieve as much as she wanted to retrieve a wet rag from behind the toilet.

  Solitaire made a copy of Ruby’s passport, wrote a number on a yellow square of paper, and sent them to the elevator.

  When the doors closed, Ruby said, “Why do I alw
ays have to be the bitch?”

  “The shoe fits, and I don’t wear an eight and a half.”

  “I’ve seen you at work with your bitch boots on.”

  “I have big shoes to fill there.”

  The elevator doors opened on four. For a second, only darkness greeted them, then the light above the doors went on with a click.

  Ruby looked at her yellow square and then at the brass engraved signs on the wall’s corner. “This way,” she said.

  The hallway was dark. When she took a step forward, another light went on with a click. “Motion sensitive lights,” Laura said. “Creepy.”

  “Come on.” Ruby linked her arm in Laura’s. “I want to get back and see Mom.” She pulled her forward, and Laura followed, lights above them clicking and clacking, leaving them visual reference ten feet in front of them, doors on each side and a window at the end of the hall. They could already see it had a terrific view of the BQE.

  “This is it,” Laura said. The keypad had little red and green lights, both of which were flashing.

  “Do you even know how many digits it is?”

  “Nope. He wasn’t around to ask. Same as always.”

  Ruby crossed her arms and leaned on the doorjamb. Laura started with Mom’s birthday. Then her own. Then Dad’s. Nothing, nothing, nothing. Ruby’s birthday. Nothing. She did the date of the Fortnight Coup, even though it likely happened after the code was set. Nothing. She put in Mom and Dad’s anniversary. Nothing.

  “What about the address in Hell’s Kitchen?” Ruby asked.

  Laura tried it. Nothing. They were getting nowhere, and answers were right there, right behind that door. Just a solid core of metal stood between her and some warmer, more personal knowledge of her father.

  “God, the princess’s birthday was right in that folder, and I didn’t even look at it.” How could she have missed it? How could she have not scanned the whole thing and memorized it? Why didn’t she pay attention? That was exactly what Jimmy had meant—all guesswork going nowhere because she couldn’t open her eyes.

  “What?” Ruby asked.

  “Forget it. Let’s go. I can’t figure it out.”

  “I don’t think we’ll be able to get in here again.”

  Laura stalked back to the elevators, lights clicking above her. She felt sour and heavy, with a heart weighted by her failures. She hit the elevator button as if it had hit her first, her eyes filling with tears of frustration.

  Ruby caught up and put an arm around her shoulders. “Tough couple of days, Lala.”

  “Shut up,” Laura whispered. She went into her bag for a tissue. The smell of mothballs hit her full in the face, and instead of rooting around for the tissue wadded in the bottom, she reached for her letter and ripped it out of the envelope.

  The date was at the top, and she’d noticed an odd notation the other night but had dismissed it in favor of all the other junk in her heart. “He puts the year first, four digits, then the month, then the day. It’s the way you do it in spreadsheets.”

  She ran back to the compartment so fast the lights couldn’t keep up with her. She punched the keys. Dad’s birthday. No. Ruby’s. No. Then she tried the one she knew was right. Lala’s birthday, November first, twenty-six years ago.

  The green light went solid, and the door clicked.

  “Wow,” Ruby said. “I’m impressed.”

  Laura put her fingers on the handle and drew it down but couldn’t find the strength to push open the door.

  “What?” Ruby asked.

  “I’m scared.”

  “Get over it.” Ruby shouldered the door, and it swung open. The motion-sensitive light inside flickered on.

  The room was empty.

  Corner to corner, wall to wall. Nothing.

  Laura grabbed Ruby’s forearm to keep her from walking deeper into the ten-by-ten foot square. “Look.” She pointed at the floor. The dust had brush marks. “It was swept recently. And I can smell mothballs.” She examined the walls. A brown sheen fell across the top part of the wall in some places, and once she saw them, she saw the shapes they made against the bottom, cleaner part of the wall. “Boxes went high. Lotta stuff, and there were garment racks here and here. High bar racks for pants and suits.”

  “I think you’re glad it’s empty.” Ruby’s arms were crossed over her chest.

  Laura felt bad for dragging her out. Her sister was tired and anxious and being a very good sport. “We should go.”

  Ruby headed down the hall, and Laura had started to follow when her eye caught a glint of something orange. She dug it out of the corner—a teardrop-shaped cabochon bead. She held it up.

  “Oh, my God,” Ruby said.

  “It’s real,” Laura said. “The fake dress had acrylic beads. This is crystal. Feel it, the weight.” She dropped it in Ruby’s palm.

  “It was here,” Ruby said.

  “In Dad’s storage space. How Jobeth Chard-Fialla got it is another thing entirely.”

  CHAPTER 13

  They brought Mom some broth from Taormina’s to replace the gross dishwater the hospital gave her and cut it with hot water to reduce the sodium. Jimmy had gone back to Bay Ridge to shower and check the mail.

  “Stop looking at me,” Mom said.

  “I just don’t want you to spill,” Ruby replied, putting a napkin under Mom’s chin.

  “Is this where it starts? First, you think I’m going to spill, then you’re hiring someone to wipe my bottom?”

  Ruby took the napkin away and laid her head on Mom’s chest.

  Laura stared at the muted TV and stewed. She’d wanted to go up to the Iroquois, bang on Jobeth’s door, and demand to know under what circumstances the woman had gotten the dress from Dad. She wanted to challenge Jobeth to prove she was Barnabas Chard’s sister, since her name wasn’t in his file, and also how it was possible that the princess had seemed to juggle three men on a tiny island: one monarch, one financier, and one homosexual. She felt herself getting wound up, with names and stories and new memories spinning as if they were in the last wash cycle. Something needed to break. Some piece of news had to make it all make sense.

  She breathed, trying to wish herself calm. Much as she felt her presence in that hospital room was vestigial, when Mom put her hand on top of hers, she knew she’d made the right choice in coming.

  “What was going on with Bernard and Henrietta Oseigh?” Laura asked. “Did you talk to them much? What was their deal? Did Bernard mention his sister’s name? Jobeth maybe?”

  “Laura!” Ruby cried.

  “My God, Laura. You want to give me another heart attack?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Mom squeezed her hand. “I’m joking. Let me think. Barney and Retta. Nice people. He was from somewhere in the Midwest. Retta attended the princess hand and foot. Barney was more, I don’t know, intelligence muscle? If that makes sense. Spent a lot of time downtown in the financial district. Rarely went out with us. But it was clear from the beginning they worked for the high prince, so everything the princess did, they reported back. It got tense. And I didn’t know why. I guess I do now.”

  “Honestly, Mom, at this point, I don’t know if Dad was having an affair with the princess, or if it was Barney, and something else was going on with Dad, like some sort of business arrangement.”

  “Your father. A business arrangement. Right.”

  Dad, the engineer, hadn’t been able to get them out of their rent-controlled apartment in Hell’s Kitchen and couldn’t have sent his kids to private school without Mom’s financial aid applications. He must have had the head of a scientist and the heart of an artist.

  “Why would the princess be such a whore?”

  “Laura!” Mom snapped.

  “Well, come on! What kind of person was she?”

  “A person who had to produce a male heir and whose husband wasn’t dishing it out, that’s who.”

  Laura softened. She didn’t want Mom to have another heart attack because she’d called an old f
riend filthy names. “Why male?” she asked.

  Mom sat up, wincing. “Can you get me some water?”

  Ruby poured, and Mom drank.

  “You don’t have to talk now, Mom,” Laura said. “You can tell me tomorrow.”

  “I’m fine.”

  Laura took her at her word. “So the high prince must have known they were planning some sort of coup or overthrow or whatever, so he had Barney and Retta watch them.”

  “What would be the point?” Mom asked. “She couldn’t be high princess. They don’t have those.”

  “Well, if there’s no man around, who else would it be? What’s the big deal? I mean, what if I assassinated Salvadore tomorrow? What would happen?”

  “The princess would marry someone who would rule.” Mom gave the cup back to Ruby. “These people were raised in a bubble, and the things they were told from birth, they believed. Everything they thought about themselves and their possibilities in life were shaped by being in the Brunican court. You couldn’t get them out of it. They couldn’t imagine a life away from it, even after being here for a month. I remember talking to Samuel for hours about having a life outside the island. He kept using this excuse that the Brunican dollar didn’t trade internationally, and he’d lose all his money. He’d be exiled. I sat with him all night once while you girls were in bed. I pleaded with him. ‘Be poor for a while. Don’t keep your talent in a box.’ But he simply couldn’t hear me. The way they thought, it was incredible.”

  Laura remembered the album, the lyrics, and the sorrow and pain in every chord. “He was in love with you, Mom.”

  “You know, I thought so, too. And the feeling was mutual. Then your dad said they were a couple, and I believed him. Stupid. He was covering for the princess. Samuel let it be said to protect her, too. Brunican to the core.” She sighed. “Doesn’t matter anymore.” Her head dropped back onto her pillows.

  “That’s too much talking already,” Ruby said, tucking Mom in. “We’re leaving. Come on, Lala. Let’s go.”