The Diamond Lane

by Karen Karbo

  “Just because you’re getting married does not mean the whole world wants to get married. I know how that is, though. When Ivan and I were engaged. You’re into the wedding plans and it’s all so exciting and you think naturally everyone wants to do this fun thing.”

  The teapot rattled with an angry, pre-boiling hiss. Mimi turned it off before it whistled and dumped the water over the grounds.

  Mouse sat down at the kitchen table, lit a cigarette she didn’t want. It tasted stale and metallic. She had expected a Scene, replete with wild sobbing and cruel recriminations. The kind of scene at which Mimi excelled. She felt cheated. If Mimi had found this out herself, she would have thrown a tantrum; if Shirl had told her she would have keened and wailed into Shirl’s comfy lap.

  “I guess since we’re telling secrets …” said Mimi, settling across from Mouse with her coffee. “Where’s Tony?” She scrunched her curls as if he might wander in at any minute, as though he hadn’t been witness to her sleep-flattened hair for months.

  “He’s decided to move in with Sather and Darryl. Since Ralph is moving back with Elaine, there’s more room up there. It was getting a little rough, all of us living here. He took his things up there this morning.” Mouse was not about to tell Mimi that the wedding was off. She would sooner suffer some gruesome African disease than Mimi’s gleeful and condescending empathy.

  “He knows about the movie,” said Mimi softly, compassionate as a newly minted social worker on the first day of the job.

  “About Wedding March? Oh, I know.”

  “Oh, good. So you’ve talked about it.”

  “Oh, sure. Tony and I have no secrets.”

  “And he’s talked to you about it? I’m so glad.”

  “I said he did. Didn’t I just say he did?”

  “He was so furious. We had lunch at Thai Melody and he called you, or tried to call you, and got the answering machine. He heard some message from Ivan and put two and two together. I thought he was going to have a heart attack. He’s got that vein in his forehead that sticks out, you know, when he’s pissed. It throbs. He thought you and Ivan were sleeping together. I told him no, Ivan wasn’t attracted to you in that way. He kept saying, ‘They’re fucking’ – wait, let me get the accent –”

  Mouse looked at Mimi. She stared at her. At the wide, thin-lipped mouth open and closing open and closing, at the big, obviously straightened teeth, at the busy plump red tongue. Mimi took dainty sips from her coffee, licking drops from the rim, cocking her head this way and that, snuggling deeper into her chenille robe. She was enjoying this. Mouse suddenly imagined Mimi’s headstone, there, next to Fitzy’s in the cemetery overlooking the San Diego Freeway. His said, brother, husband, father, friend. He liked to talk. Hers would say, sister, daughter, windup teeth. We thought she’d never shut up.

  “I didn’t tell you earlier because I didn’t want to get involved in something that was none of my business. You know. But since we’re having a heart-to-heart. I’ve missed you so much, Mousie Mouse. It’s so nice to have someone to really like talk to.”

  “When did you two have lunch?”

  “Last week.”

  “Really,” said Mouse. To camouflage her revelation she flipped aimlessly through the top script on Carole’s weekend reading pile. It was a prince and the pauper yarn about a bus driver who was really a sultan, entitled Days and Days of L.A. Malaise.

  A slot machine spun in Mouse’s mind. So Tony had known about the movie. He had known but kept quiet. One bunch of cherries clicked into place.

  He had known but kept quiet. He chose not to confront her. Instead he broke off the wedding. Another bunch clicked into place.

  He broke off the wedding, which would mean the end of the movie. Or so he presumed. So he did really love her. It was Wedding March he was bent on destroying. Unless, the fact she’d gone against his wishes and done the movie anyway was the last bloody straw. So he was telling the truth, he didn’t love her. A lemon clicked into place.

  “– trying to talk and you’re reading,” said Mimi. “You never read.”

  “I read.”

  “Not as much as I do. What is that, anyway?”

  “Days and Days of L.A. Malaise. It’s not bad.”

  “That’s in production now. It’s supposed to be awful.”

  “How can it be in production if Carole’s got it? She’s a reader. She recommends scripts to her boss.”

  “How do I know? All I know is that it’s in production.”

  “I don’t think it is. It’s says First Draft on the first page here.”

  “Mouse, it’s in production. I’m the one in the stupid film business. You can never just say, ‘Right, Mimi.’”

  “I don’t think it’s in production, is all. It’s not a matter of who’s right.”

  “It’s in production! All right? It’s in production and it’s a piece of shit!” Mimi threw her chair back and stalked into the bathroom. When she slammed the door the windows shook.

  LUDVICA, THE DRESSMAKER, lived in a stucco bungalow with barred windows on a narrow street in Silver Lake. Nita had recommended her. Nita sent all her brides to Ludvica, but Ludvica accepted only a few.

  No one knew Ludvica’s criteria. Perfectly nice Beverly Hills socialites nudged their Jaguars through crosstown traffic just to see her, risking neighborhoods where a car parked for any length of time became a bare wall of sheet metal crying out for graffiti. Ludvica couldn’t care less. It mattered not, to Ludvica, who you were or what you drove or how much you could pay. She took one look at you and either waved you away or asked you inside. If she asked you inside, it was understood that if you frowned on her chain-smoking, her habit of talking with pins clamped between her teeth, the scratchy Chopin she played day and night, her Siamese cats, the rank odor of overripe cheese that pervaded every gloomy room, she would ask you to leave. She had been known to scrap a ten-thousand-dollar gown if she took a sudden dislike to someone. She would send the client packing in the middle of a fitting, then make doll clothes out of the gown, then give them away to a children’s hospital. As a result, she was one of the most exclusive dressmakers in town.

  Ludvica was four-foot-ten and stocky, ageless, with a tight black bun of irregularly wavy hair. She had large breasts transformed, with the aid of a hefty old-world undergarment, into a shelf for resting her folded hands when she was deep in thought.

  Her reputation had been made sewing for stars in the forties. Vivian, Lana, Bette, Joan. In the 1960s, when the world went in for jeans and work shirts, she made doll clothes and worked as a cashier at a porno theater. Now, just like America, she was back. It was morning again for Ludvica, though kinder and gentler she was not. If anything, she was crabbier and more selective than ever.

  Ludvica had called Mouse “Frances.” “Frances, beautiful, regal name. Mouse, silly, primitive,” she said. Ludvica didn’t care what you wanted. She never asked anyone what she had in mind. At their first meeting she had asked Mouse only about the wedding. Mouse, blushing, described in detail the candlelit ceremony, the imported champagne, the sitdown dinner at the Bel-Air Hotel. Ludvica had stood in front of Mouse, rested her nicotine-stained fingers on her shoulders. She had stepped back, folded her hands on her breasts, squinting through her cigarette smoke. Ludvica smoked without removing the pins from her mouth. “Princess, alluring yet shy,” she had proclaimed. “I do for you.”

  Today was Mouse’s final fitting. She would see the dress for the first time. Until today, Ludvica had sewn on a muslin shell, which had served as the pattern. It had taken four fittings to get the muslin perfect. It had taken dozens of phone calls to find the right silk taffeta for the dress, which was eventually located in Boston. It had taken seven harrowing shopping expeditions to find the fabric for the underlining, the lining, and the slip. Ludvica insisted on driving herself. It was the only time she ever got out. She drove an old gold Cadillac. She could hardly see over the steering wheel. Three flattened orange trees struggling for life on one sid
e of her driveway attested to the fact she had no use for rearview mirrors.

  Filming with Ludvica was both more and less tricky than anticipated. At first there had been some concern that she would take one beady-eyed look at the camera and send them all on their way. On the first day, when Mouse began to explain about Wedding March, Ludvica waved her away impatiently saying, “I work fifty-two years in Los Angeles.”

  She never asked who Ivan and Eliot were or what they were doing there. She signed a release in her elaborate European hand without a glance.

  She would not, however, tolerate cordless mikes, special lighting or rearranging a stick of furniture. They could be there, but they could not disrupt her work.

  Because Ludvica might ask all of them to leave at any time, and because following Mouse into Ludvica’s bedroom to film her easing into the dress for the first time might be construed by Ludvica as disrupting her work, Ivan and Eliot, Mimi, Shirl and Nita, waited in the living room for Mouse to make her appearance. While waiting they talked in hushed, library whispers, the better to hear the silky rustle of the dress emanating from Ludvica’s bedroom.

  Shirl sat on an overstuffed upholstered ottoman, her hands tucked between her knees, an Instamatic hanging from a frayed strap around her wrist. With the aid of a map, over Auntie Barb’s protestations, she had driven herself to Ludvica’s. It was the first time she had been alone in a car since the accident. All the way from the Valley she had driven to see her youngest in her wedding gown. She was beaming.

  Mimi stood behind Eliot, the camera resting on his shoulder. She kept asking him to let her look through the viewfinder, teased him into explaining his theories of cinematography. She wore her favorite turquoise knit mini, which she happily noticed Eliot noticing. She was not so old! It was amazing how a man’s appreciation of your knees could make the difference between joy and despair. Eliot, when he was groomed, was not half bad, she thought. He had a soft, patient voice and nice fingernails. He was probably honest.

  Nita leaned against the blond worktable in the middle of the dining room where Ludvica labored to produce her miracles, checking her lists of things still to be done, her red corkscrew curls caught up in a ponytail atop her head. The dining room, with industrial sewing machine, professional iron and ironing board, hundreds of spools of thread arranged by color, each thrust on its own small hook on the wall, was immaculate. The rest of the house looked as though it hadn’t been touched since V-J Day. The furniture was embedded with dust, forming a uniform gritty gray veneer.

  Ivan stood by the hallway, a sleek jungle cat ready to pounce. Nagra slung over his shoulder, hands on the boom, headphones clamped to his ears. He was poised and ready, waiting for sounds of approach. He heard a pinched bowled-over sigh from the bedroom. “It’s, it’s, it’s …” sighed Mouse.

  “They’re coming,” he said. “Let’s roll. Speed. Sound.”

  “We are coming,” sang Ludvica. “Genius and beauty both.”

  Shirl leaped to her feet, kicked off her orthopedic sandals and struggled up on the ottoman, beckoning Mimi over to lend a shoulder. In her excitement she took a picture of the empty hallway, blinding everyone momentarily with the flash. Eliot steadied his expressionless black glass eye on the door. Nita turned, tearing expectantly, datebook clasped to her chest. They held their breaths, waiting for the onslaught of beauty and opulence. Ludvica did not disappoint.

  Ivan asked Ludvica to describe the dress.

  “On a girl with such nice dark hair, I use bright white. Not so many girls can wear the bright white. This one can. This is very classic gown. Finest bright white silk taffeta in the world, Ludvica uses. Fitted bodice, princess line. She has gentrified deep v-line in front and back. Exposed shoulders. Very nice. You have a nice shoulder you should show it, my motto.

  “Bodice and sleeves overlaid with handmade French Alençon lace, which Ludvica gets straight from shop in Paris. Sleeves are puffed, off-the-shoulder, ending with a ruffle over the elbow. Over the lace Ludvica embroiders mother-of-pearl seed beads and sequins. Notice. Sequins not shiny, used only to give lace nice deep sheen. It takes Ludvica two weeks, working every day ten hours, to embroider.

  “See the skirt. Fifteen yards of bright white silk taffeta it takes. There are two linings. One, an underlining of silk organza, then a lining of pure china silk. Underneath all is crinoline petticoat that Ludvica also makes, requiring twenty yards crinoline. See the hem. Dainty, scalloped border. More Alençon lace. One hundred seventy dollars a yard, this is lace.

  “If you can sew, you can build a skyscraper, my motto. Proof is this. See? Detachable train. Twenty feet long, this train. Notice embroidered appliqués of Alençon float up center back. Very nice. Is built to be removed at the reception, so Frances can dance. Ludvica makes also a taffeta bow to put there after train has remove, to make a little bustle. With little white gloves, mother’s pearls, Frances is lovely.”

  “How much do you think it weighs?” asked Ivan.

  “Twenty-two pounds,” said Ludvica proudly, her hands laced over her breasts. “I weigh this morning.”

  Mouse was stupefied, encased as she was in the eighth wonder of the world. She never wanted to take this dress off. She loved herself in this dress. This made the royal blue silk organza of the night before look like something she’d wear to clean the pool. The bridal gown so heavy, so spectacular, so unlike anything she has ever seen or felt, all thoughts of how many Third World families could live for how many years on the amount she will pay for this dress were banished from her mind.

  How could a dress have such power? How could a dress render Mimi mute? How could a dress seduce the ancient gaze of love from Ivan’s normally veiled eyes? How could a dress cause a drought in the tear ducts of her normally weepy mother? Shirl just held her head. “Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh.”

  With Ludvica tending the train, Mouse walked the length of the room. The dress murmured rich, contented sounds.

  Mouse could hardly believe she wasn’t getting married. Maybe she had overlooked something. Had Tony really called the wedding off? Maybe he had been joking. Maybe the sea breeze or the groan of an elephant had blotted out the end of the sentence. Maybe he had said, “I don’t love you any LESS THAN THE DAY WE MET” or some other convoluted Oxbridge utterance. She would call him tonight just to make sure.

  “It looks just like my dress, doesn’t it, Iv?” Mimi mewed.

  “Who is this girl?” Ludvica demanded. “I make only originals.” Ludvica pulled at Mouse’s waist, selected a pin from between her teeth, made a tiny adjustment.

  “Frances’s sister, Mim – er, Margaret,” said Shirl.

  “I had a bright-white silk taffeta dress, too,” said Mimi.

  “Mistake for you,” said Ludvica. “Ivory for a girl so yellow.”

  “Tony will not believe you in that,” said Nita. “And him in a black cutaway. Ooh ooh ooh. What a couple.”

  “Just like the plastic bride and groom on top of the cake,” said Mimi.

  “Thanks a lot,” said Mouse.

  “She was giving you a compliment, dear.”

  “We look like plastic dolls, that’s a compliment?”

  “Mom,” said Mimi, in a back-me-up-on-this-one tone of voice.

  “She’s just being sensitive,” said Shirl to Mimi.

  “I am not sensitive. Mimi has a way, she gets in these little digs and then when I point it out I’m being sensitive.”

  “Sensitive is not a bad thing. You say it like it’s bad. I’m sensitive.”

  Ivan surprised them by sniggering.

  “Fuck you,” said Mimi. “You want to get married, Mouse. Get married. This is what happens.”

  “Margaret FitzHenry!”

  “Keep rolling,” said Ivan, grinning, concentrating on keeping the boom both out of the frame and over the active part of the conversation.

  “I’m sorry. It’s just, I’m under stress, too. No, I’m not the one getting married, but I am the Maid of Honor. That’s a thing, too.”<
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  “Of course it is, dear.” Shirl stroked Mimi’s snarly, sand-colored hair from her perch on the ottoman.

  “Mom, stop.” She batted Shirl away. “It’s practically like being the bride. Only you get lots of responsibility but none of the attention.”

  “I’m sure Mouse appreciates all you’re doing for her. Don’t you, honey?”

  “Of course,” said Mouse.

  “You’re just so sensitive,” said Mimi.

  “It’s NBD,” said Nita. “Nervous Bride Disorder. They’ve actually been able to document it. At a wedding consultant seminar I went to several weeks ago they had a panel on it. It’s like if you can imagine a Vietnam vet with PMS. It’s real common. Especially among educated women.”

  “Women who should know better than to get married,” said Mimi, “is that who you mean?”

  “I’m not getting married!” wailed Mouse, suddenly. Tears sprung from her eyes. What was she doing, standing here in a wedding dress? Tony was probably out making time with the minimall magnate at this very moment.

  “She is just a nervous little bride,” said Shirl. “I went through it, Mimi went through it. We all go through it.”

  “Tone-Tony doesn’t lo-uh-uh-uh-uh …” Mouse hiccuped, screwing her fists into her eyes.

  “Mouse, honey, don’t do that. It’s not good for your eyes,” scolded Shirl.

  “I was a total basket case, except at the shower. I did have a good time at my shower,” said Mimi.

  “… he doesn’t, he doesn’t …”

  “Shower! Glad you mentioned it.” Nita slapped open her date book, fished a pencil from among her red curls. “I’m having the tables delivered that day. Will someone be at the house? Mr. Futake will also need to get in a little early. He does, I’m sure I told you this, it was a real coup to get him, he’s never available.

  “… lov-uh-uh-uh-uh me-e-e-e-e …”

  “Shirl, listen to this!” yelped Mimi. “This is incredible. Mr. Futake sculpts candy out of hot corn syrup. It’s an art form in Japan. They look like figurines, like jade or something, only it’s candy. He’s going to do a sculpture of Mouse and Tony for the centerpiece. Then he’ll go around the party doing requests. You say, ‘Do a cat,’ he’ll do a cat. You say, ‘Do an angel,’ he’ll do an angel. He can do Mickey Mouse, Batman …”