The Dress in the Window

by Sofia Grant

  Jeanne examined the coarse, inexpensive fabric, the thin elastic, the topstitched appliquéd pockets, and decided that Mrs. Harris wasn’t exaggerating: Letty must truly despise her.

  “I think I can help,” she said.

  Mrs. Harris lifted her coffee cup to her lips with a wink. “Wonderful. And I insist that you and Gladys attend as my guests.”

  An improbable bargain had been struck.

  BEFORE THEY PARTED ways at the trolley stop, Jeanne made one more attempt to steer the conversation back to the Harris’s handyman. “Those cookies were so tasty,” she said. “Does . . . the restaurant prepare the lamb too?”

  “Oh, yes, you’ll have to come to Sunday supper sometime! Mr. Salvatici makes everything so Cook can just heat it up when she gets back on Sunday night. The lamb is so scrumptious, and there’s always noodles and sometimes fancy desserts. It’s why I’ve gotten so fat! But Jeanne, do you honestly think you can do something with that awful outfit?”

  Jeanne looked down at the garment bag slung over her arm. “I’ll do my best,” she promised.

  She’d once made a collar for a coat from the fabric that covered a chair that was partially burned in a fire. She’d sewn Tommie’s rompers from the sacks that rice and grain came in. She’d been making do from the time she first picked up the needle—and she wasn’t about to back down from this challenge.

  It would make an excellent distraction from the other matter, the one that lurked at the edges of her mind like a cloud growing more ominous with every passing day.

  June 1949

  Thelma

  “She had knees like a goat,” Peggy said, while she attempted to pry something from Tommie’s clenched hand. “Miss Perkins tried everything to get her to agree to a longer skirt, but she wouldn’t listen to reason. What on earth have you got?”

  “I gave her a cinnamon stick,” Thelma said, stirring the spaghetti sauce that she’d started when Peggy came home. It would be ready when Jeanne walked through the door. “Let her keep it.”

  “Cinnamon? That’s not a toy,” Peggy rebuked, but she released Tommie’s wrist.

  “I didn’t say it was a toy,” Tommie sulked, holding the gummed and moist end she’d been chewing out to her mother. Peggy batted her hand away.

  “Anyway, we were all trying to pretend that the dress flattered her. It was a Molyneux, from the spring collection. The most beautiful pale yellow silk moiré—and it cost one hundred and sixty-nine dollars. The sale would have made our week. She said she wanted to talk to her husband about it.”

  We this, we that, Thelma thought darkly; you’d think the girl had been invited to view the collections in Paris. “Mmm,” she said, sprinkling in half a teaspoon of tiny celery seeds.

  “And Miss Perkins told me to fetch a Lanvin fox-trimmed stole to go with it. It didn’t suit the dress at all but Mrs. Booth kept complaining about the bodice gapping at the shoulder. It wasn’t the dress’s fault, it was her shoulders—seriously, Thelma, they stick out like giant lumps—but Miss Perkins was trying to distract her. But when I was back in the storeroom I saw this citron Jean Dessès that had come in. Really, it’s too European for our market, Americans aren’t ready for it. But I had an inspiration. The bateau neckline was much better for her figure and there’s no easy way to hem the Lyons lace, so she couldn’t possibly insist we shorten it. So, I brought it out.”

  Thelma glanced at Peggy, who’d plopped herself in a kitchen chair and crossed her legs, grinning smugly. Like she’d signed the constitution itself.

  “Well, I thought Miss Perkins would just about die, staring at me with her eyes bugging out—her eyes really are unnaturally large, you simply have to see for yourself—but before she could say anything I said, quick as you please, ‘Mrs. Booth, I do believe this dress was destined for you,’ and for a moment it could have gone either way—she looked at me like I’d brought her a bug on a platter—but then she saw the clever little rhinestone trim at the waist, and she just had to have a look. Like a magpie, that woman, anything that sparkles . . . anyway, it turned out I was right. The lace overlay bells out, you know how lace can have a stiff hand to it, and it just covered up all the protruding parts, and made her look—well, I was about to say it made her look a dozen years younger, but that would still make her at least fifty.”

  Thelma, stirring the pot, felt her face warm in the steam. Her own fiftieth birthday was less than three years away. Under her dress, an old brown shirtwaist she’d owned forever, the marks she’d received that afternoon were still fresh. Jack had held her down with his fist in her hair, and when he entered her with a single savage thrust, her cry of pleasure was muffled by his hand over her mouth. The memory dulled her irritation with Peggy.

  “She bought it, of course, plus a pair of net gloves that Miss Perkins convinced her she needed. Another twenty-two dollars, on top of the dress! And as I was getting ready to leave tonight, Miss Perkins said, ‘Well done, Peggy.’ Which, from anyone else, would be heaps of praise.”

  “Well, that’s good,” Thelma said. “Now would you mind setting the table?”

  Peggy got up and shooed Tommie from the room, sighing heavily to communicate how disappointed she was in her audience as she got the dishes from the cupboards.

  Thelma turned down the flame and set the lid back on the pot. Another half hour of simmering would tenderize the ground beef and mellow the flavor of the herbs. When Jeanne got home, Thelma would slice the bread she’d picked up from the bakery.

  She went to her room and took off her apron. In front of the mirror Henry had bought her when their marriage was only weeks old and he still came to life when she walked into the room, she tugged open her collar and examined the skin above her breast. There . . . the faint outline of teeth marks. A shiver went through Thelma at the memory. Jack could still surprise her, even after their many stolen afternoons, the long stretches apart punctuated with their fevered reunions.

  She opened the narrow drawer at the top of the dresser. Once, it had held her husband’s cuff links and handkerchiefs. Now, banded by a ribbon, there was a stack of bills, mostly singles with an occasional five, insurance against a reversal of their fortunes. With both girls working, Thelma tried to set a little aside whenever she could.

  The money was not the only thing in the drawer. She took the other two objects out and unwrapped their tissue carefully before laying them on the lace runner on top of the dresser.

  Two price tags, bearing the Gimbels logo, from their Better Sportswear shop. She’d found them on the floor of the attic when she’d gone up with a stack of folded laundry.

  One was for $5.84, the other for $4.98. Both were marked size 8. There was no way on earth Jeanne was more than a 4. Peggy might be a 6 . . . and Thelma herself hovered between an 8 and a 10.

  Thelma had stood in the drafty attic with the tags in her hand, trying to figure out the mystery for quite some time before she resorted to snooping. It hadn’t taken long to find the garments, hanging behind all the other clothes on her makeshift rack: a homely, prim little blouse and a stiff, plain skirt in a dull marine blue.

  This puzzling find did little to answer Thelma’s questions. She was the only person in the house who could possibly wear the outfit—but Jeanne had made every one of her birthday and Christmas gifts since moving into the home. There were dresses, a burnt-orange swing coat of which Thelma was particularly fond; there were cloches and fur-trimmed gloves and a quilted robe. There was a tea cozy with a matching set of pot holders. A clever cloth bag to hold her spectacles and magazines, that could be hung over the arm of her reading chair. A braided rug made from scraps and selvages for the back door.

  They’d never given each other anything store-bought—and if for some unfathomable reason Jeanne were to do so now, Thelma was quite sure it would never be as frankly ugly as the outfit hidden in her room.

  She smoothed the clothes on the rack, making sure to hide the outfit as she’d found it before she went back downstairs. She would bide her ti
me. Eventually, all mysteries were revealed . . . especially to one as well-versed in secrets as Thelma.

  THURSDAY EVENING, THE sun broke through the clouds just in time to sink below the horizon after a few days of drizzling rain. Peggy seemed distracted at dinner, and soon it became clear why. She had been invited by Miss Perkins to have coffee the next morning before her workday officially started. To get there in time, she needed to leave an hour earlier, which meant that someone else would have to help Tommie dress and make sure she ate her breakfast.

  “Please, please,” she’d begged. “I promise I won’t ask again. But this could be important!”

  Jeanne stirred her lentil soup across the dinner table and stayed silent.

  “Is that so.” Thelma sighed. “Tell us exactly why your boss wants to have coffee with you.”

  “Well—I don’t know,” Peggy admitted. “But I do know that she hasn’t asked any of the other runners.”

  In the two and a half months that Peggy had been employed, she’d earned an hourly wage even lower than Jeanne’s, and since she was not paid for her lunch, it was only fifteen hours a week, barely worth the effort she put into getting dressed and made up each day, or the two-hour round-trip on the bus. But the hours she spent at Fyfe’s had brought her sparkle back in a way motherhood had never done.

  To be fair, Thelma herself had gone through a period of profound melancholy when Thomas was small. It had passed, of course—but there had been one endless winter when each morning seemed to bring an echo of the dreary day before, spooning cereal into the child’s mouth only to have him smear most of it on his high chair, ironing her husband’s shirts and preparing his lunch. Putting the folded paper sack into Henry’s hands at the door, tilting her face for a perfunctory kiss as the vicious winds stirred a burst of icy snow crystals up into the folds of her skirt, then closing that door and turning to face the long, empty hours until he returned again.

  Made guilty by the memory, Thelma tried again. “Of course, I would be glad to take care of Tommie tomorrow morning, but you’ll have to pick her up yourself after school, because I’ve got an errand I need to run. You go ahead—enjoy yourself.”

  “This isn’t about enjoyment, Thelma, it’s work,” Peggy scolded, already rising from the table, probably to spend an hour pinning up her hair in paper strips and putting cream on her face and neck while Tommie helped dry the supper dishes and put them away.

  But Thelma didn’t much mind, as caring for Tommie would distract her from worry over the errand she had planned.

  In the morning, she made a special effort for Tommie. She gave her an extra slice of bacon and trimmed the crusts off her toast before spreading it with butter and jam, and then poured herself a second cup of coffee and sat down to keep Tommie company while she ate.

  “Why don’t Mom and Auntie Jeanne ever eat breakfast?” Tommie asked, making short work of the bacon.

  “That’s a good question,” Thelma said. What was she supposed to say—that Peggy was worried about her figure? Tommie’s baby fat still hadn’t melted away, and Thelma supposed she was going to have to do something about the matter of her weight one of these days, but she didn’t want the child to turn vain or, worse, crippled with insecurity.

  Thelma had taken extra care with Tommie’s hair this morning, plaiting it into two braids that met at her nape and became one. She’d attached a wide navy grosgrain ribbon that went with her dress. She’d had only seven years to prepare for her audacious plan: to send Tommie up the road to Miss Kittering’s, where Thelma meant for her granddaughter to receive an education that would prepare her for anything. In Thelma’s childhood, no Catholics were allowed at Miss Kittering’s, and even now there was rumored to be a quota. So that was the third problem with Thelma’s plan, along with the challenges of getting Tommie accepted and paying the tuition. And, of course, convincing Peggy to allow it, but Thelma didn’t anticipate that would be a problem.

  Still, no need to stir up a commotion in advance. For now, she would simply do what she could to help Tommie be a little less . . . odd; there simply wasn’t another word for it. “All right, let’s wash hands,” she said, taking Tommie’s plate, “and then you can go and play with your friends in the playground until school starts.”

  Tommie’s face fell, but she did as she was told. Thelma knew that friendships were scarce for Tommie. There were few young children in the neighborhood anymore, and Peggy hadn’t exactly sought out the company of other mothers, so Tommie had grown up without the constant stream of playmates that had filled the house when her father was a little boy.

  These thoughts were still in Thelma’s mind as they walked the quarter mile to school. “How would you like to take a dance class?” she asked, thinking Tommie might make a friend there.

  Tommie shrugged. “I could take a painting class,” she suggested.

  Thelma winced inwardly. The last thing Tommie needed was to have her artistic temperament encouraged, even if that was what had attracted Thomas to her mother. He’d loved Peggy’s outrageous zeal, her colorful ensembles, her unabashed way of speaking her mind. “Isn’t she something?” Thomas had asked the first time he brought her home.

  “You know,” Thelma said carefully, “I knew your mother when she was a little girl.”

  “I know,” Tommie said patiently. “Grandpa Henry and Grandpa Leo and Uncle Frank were friends. Mama and Daddy used to play together at company picnics. And you used to be friends with Grandma Emma.”

  Thelma winced at her recitation, but she herself was responsible for this narrative, which she’d been fine-tuning practically since Tommie was born. Never mind that all of the child’s grandparents but her were dead—if Thelma was to keep Thomas’s memory alive, Tommie must be made to learn his history.

  Even if she’d taken a few liberties. Henry and the Brink brothers had never exactly been friends. Henry would grumble, when he was drinking, that they were going to put him out of business by refusing to give him an exclusive contract. But Henry could never have kept up with the work alone during the mill’s busiest years. As for Emma Brink—she had been all right, Thelma supposed, though her memories of the picnics under the great waterfall were of the mothers dividing their attention between serving the food and trying to keep the little ones out of the water. Little Peggy Brink could always be counted on to have a tantrum at some point, while pretty Jeanne had been uppity, pretending not to notice the younger girls following her around like ducklings.

  Oh, if only all those people could look down from the afterlife—a concept in which Thelma put very little stock—and see what had become of them. Emma Brink was already ill when Thomas and Peggy began their whirlwind courtship, and if she’d disapproved, she’d never let on during the one lunch to which she invited Thelma. Henry would have probably been pleased that his son had married the boss’s daughter. Leo—Leo had been an inscrutable man, but by all accounts a good one.

  And then there was Frank, of course. Frank was still alive, though Tommie had never met him.

  They arrived at the school, joining a stream of children with their mothers. Tommie’s hand tightened around Thelma’s. “You could stay with me,” she said fiercely. “Until the bell rings.”

  Her reluctance to part broke Thelma’s heart. She knelt down so she could look Tommie in the eyes. “You don’t need to be afraid of them, Thomasina,” she said. “You’re every bit as pretty and smart as any girl at Saint Katherine’s.”

  Tommie blinked, frowning at the lie, but she was too polite to correct her grandmother. “They don’t like me, though.”

  “Only because you haven’t given them a chance. Tell you what. I want you to talk to two girls today, and tell me all about it tonight.”

  “Talk to them about what?” Tommie asked despairingly, as though Thelma had suggested she turn straw into gold. “I don’t know what they like.”

  “Tell them you like their dresses,” Thelma suggested. “Or ask them—I don’t know, if they have any pets.” It was terri
ble advice, but Thelma had nothing else to offer. Just try to be a little less unusual, she pleaded silently.

  Tommie accepted a kiss and trudged off as though she was headed for the gallows. Thelma watched her go, thinking that her love for this child was the most painful thing she’d ever endured.

  THELMA HAD RIDDEN the trolley into Philadelphia many times as a child, then less often when Thomas was growing up, and hardly ever since then. She didn’t care for the city, with its noise and smells and traffic, the way strangers would step right in front of you if they didn’t think you were walking fast enough. Waiting for the trolley, she looked around the platform and thought about how change had finally gotten the best of her, how the years that remained for her would be eclipsed by the advances of the second half of the century. The government had developed a machine that could solve problems faster than the world’s leading mathematicians, and there was talk of sending rockets into outer space. During the war, women were allowed to do all kinds of jobs that would have been unthinkable even ten years earlier. Young women in Brunskill had worked in converted factories to support the war effort.

  Should Thelma have joined them? It hadn’t occurred to her then, so mired in grief was she after Thomas’s death. Still, she’d had other skills. She’d run every bit of Henry’s company except to drive the truck herself. Maybe she should have tried harder to provide for herself, for Peggy and Jeanne and Tommie.

  But that’s what she was doing now, in a way. The trolley arrived, and Thelma found a seat next to the window so she could watch the scenery go by. The trolleys were closing down now; in another year or two, they would nearly all be replaced by autobuses. The end of another era.

  When Thelma got off on South Broad, it took her a moment to orient herself. The buildings seemed taller than ever, the crowds denser, the smells and sounds sharper. Or maybe that was all in her mind. Thelma let the sidewalk traffic carry her the few blocks to an address she hadn’t visited in years—almost a decade, in fact, and yet there it was, looking almost exactly as it had back then. The letters on the windows spelling POLKS to the left, BAR to the right, heavy black curtains behind the glass. The heavy wooden door that allowed no light through.