The Dress in the Window

by Sofia Grant

  Home, with the echoes and the ghosts. Where soon enough Thelma would be nothing but a memory too.

  “THELMA? THELMA, GOOD God, are you all right?”

  Thelma roused herself from a hazy dream of Thomas as a child, dressed in a military uniform far too large for him, unable to walk or move because he kept tripping on the too-long trousers. In the dream she had been calling out to him, but he could not hear her.

  Someone was squeezing her shoulder gently. She blinked and saw sunlight streaming into the room. So she’d fallen asleep again in the afternoon . . . but wait, she wasn’t at home, she was at Jeanne’s, in Jeanne’s bed with the white matelassé—

  “Oh!” she said, scrambling to sit up. She was at Jeanne’s and here was Frank, come to take her and Tommie home. She’d promised to be waiting at the curb so he wouldn’t have to find a parking spot, and now she’d gone and fallen asleep. Frank didn’t know about her troubles, and he was looking at her with a quizzical expression.

  “I’m so sorry, I just . . . I’m sorry, Frank.”

  “But where’s Tommie? Did Jeanne come for her?”

  “Jeanne? No, I—” The tantrum from earlier came rushing back to her, and she ducked her chin in embarrassment. How could she explain that an eight-year-old had gotten the best of her? “She’s in her room. Probably fast asleep. She was so cross, earlier.”

  “No, I checked.”

  “Well, then, she’s up to something. She likes to hide, you know.” Thelma sighed. “She’s having a hard time understanding, about the funeral. The . . . body.”

  “But Jeanne, the front door was open. When I came up.”

  It took a moment for Thelma to understand what he was saying—and then she felt sudden fear. It had never occurred to her that Tommie would leave the apartment on her own, that she’d run away. But she’d been so angry. I hate you—she’d said it over and over again.

  Thelma bolted out of the bed and tore through the apartment, ignoring her pain. She checked the closets, under the beds, in the kitchen cupboards—but Tommie had vanished. Thelma went back to Tommie’s room and searched, and sure enough, Mummer was gone . . . Mummer, the doll with the porcelain head and soft body and real human hair that Thelma had given her for her second birthday, handled now until the ivory-colored cotton was grayed and fraying, the hair knotted and pulled from the hard skull. Tommie loved that doll and still slept with her at night.

  “She’s gone,” Thelma gasped. Frank stood uselessly in the doorframe, looking stricken. “We’ve got to find her.”

  Everything was going to pieces.

  Tommie

  Tommie had ridden the train a million times, and she knew where her aunt kept a stack of dollar bills in the hall table to pay the grocery delivery man. Sometimes Aunt Jeanne let her take a few bills from the drawer and hold them all the way to the train station, where she would slide one, hot and moist from her hand, through the curved opening in the glass of the clerk’s window.

  She took the whole stack of dollars today, just in case, and she felt a little bit sorry about it because it was kind of like stealing. But Grandma had been so mean to her that it seemed like it might only be fair after all. Surely, if Aunt Jeanne knew the way that Grandma had spoken to her, she would never have allowed it.

  Tommie was a bit hungry, actually. She walked by the bakery where they sold cookies shaped like little leaves, with chocolate in between. Aunt Jeanne always allowed her to tell the counter girl what they needed, with a “Please, ma’am” and her best thank-you. Today, though, Tommie was going to New York City, where there would be so many wonderful things to eat—her mother would be so surprised and happy to see her that she would say, Never mind how busy I am today, you are more important, my beautiful daughter, so let’s go and get some ice cream.

  Thinking about her mother gave Tommie a nervous sort of feeling, her face getting hot and her tummy going a little bit dizzy. Earlier, when she had found the package in the pretty wrapping paper, she’d known that she should have waited. Only, Grandma and Aunt Jeanne didn’t understand about Mama. She knew Mama sent her nice things sometimes, because she’d heard them talking about it. And she knew that they kept Mama’s packages to themselves because she had been so bad at school, because Sister James caught her running in the halls again and because she clapped the erasers inside the classroom when it wasn’t her turn and got chalk dust everywhere. And because of what she did to Nancy Craig even though it was Nancy’s fault because she cut in line and took the last yellow placemat and all that was left were the brown ones.

  Tommie knew she was a wild girl, and a sinful one, and her greatest fear, the one she had never even told Aunt Jeanne, was that this was why her mother had left in the first place. That was why, when she got to New York, she was going to behave much, much better than she ever had before. She would go to whatever school they had in New York without complaining, she would eat prunes if they were served for lunch, she would keep her bedroom neat and tidy. And she would stop drawing in the classroom when she was supposed to be listening.

  She had arrived at the heavy doors at the station, and she walked inside with the rest of the busy people coming and going. The familiar smells of coffee and tobacco and ladies’ perfume and cooking grease and motor oil teased her nose as she threaded her way through the crowd to the row of ticket windows. A lot of trains were coming and going at this time of day, that was why there were so many people. Tommie stood politely in line with the men in their hats and the ladies in their coats, and noticed with satisfaction that as usual none of them looked as nice as Mama or Aunt Jeanne or even Grandma. It was important to look one’s best, that was something Tommie had known practically since she remembered being alive, and it didn’t take much more effort to look neat than to look all thrown together, and even if a girl didn’t have a lot of money there were ways to make the most of what she had. Mostly, these were things Tommie knew from before Mama left, when the three grown-ups would talk as though she wasn’t there, so far above her, their voices like the leaves on trees overhead, but that was only because she used to be small.

  Not anymore, though. Tommie was eight years old now, and she was almost as tall as the shiny ring on the lamp in Aunt Jeanne’s bedroom, and when her turn came she asked nicely for a ticket to New York City, saying thank you like Aunt Jeanne always told her.

  The ticket clerk pointed to track number three and Tommie followed the signs, down two sets of stairs to the tracks underneath the city. You could catch a train here that would go all the way to Chicago, which was much, much farther than New York. The train was waiting there but the doors were closed and people waited with their suitcases and briefcases and handbags and baskets. She studied the map on the wall like Aunt Jeanne sometimes did, but a man bumped into her and didn’t say he was sorry, and then another man asked her if she was lost and she thought she might cry. Instead she told him “No, sir,” and then the doors opened and the conductor stepped out and Tommie hurried around him and into the car, taking the first seat she saw and sitting up very, very straight.

  When the lady next to her put her ticket in the little metal clip, Tommie did the same. It wasn’t as much fun without Aunt Jeanne there to watch her do it.

  She didn’t stare at the other passengers, because that wasn’t polite. When the train started moving her tummy did a funny little lurch, and then the conductor was coming down the aisle with his hole-poker, clicking it over and over while he said “Tickets, please” in his loud voice. He barely glanced at her when he punched her ticket and Tommie felt very grown up, since he obviously thought she was old enough to be here by herself. A train passed in the other direction, heading into the station as they were pulling out, and you could make yourself dizzy if you tried to see in the windows while it was going past. But then, the train broke into the sunshine and Tommie blinked from the brightness.

  Tommie hugged Mummer a little tighter, under her coat, and peeked at the woman next to her. She was even older than Grandma, and her ey
es were closed and her hands were folded in her lap, on top of a shiny pocketbook with the edge of a handkerchief peeping out from the latch.

  The whistling and rattling and the sound of the engineer’s voice were familiar comforts. Tommie listened carefully to each announcement the engineer made, but she didn’t hear him say New York City. That was okay, because Tommie knew it was far away, farther than Brunskill, farther probably than she’d ever ridden before. Each time the train stopped she looked at the station signs, searching for familiar words, but the names were long hard jumbles of letters and none of them looked like a place her mother would go.

  After a while she got sleepy. Maybe, she thought, it would be all right to just close her eyes. She would keep listening, though, and when she heard the engineer say “New York City,” she would thank him politely as she got off the train, and he would think—My, what nice manners that little girl has.

  Jeanne

  Jeanne turned the page in the sample book, the swatches of fabric spilling onto the table. Jerome Goodwyn was a new prospective account, a tall, somewhat portly man with a voice strongly accented with the South, and red hair going to gray.

  “Dad died before he could see all of this,” Jerome said, puffing around the stem of the pipe he’d just lit, then gesturing with it to indicate the whole of his showroom. It was a smaller space than Charming occupied, a cramped suite only two blocks away. Jeanne had done her research and knew that after their father died, the Goodwyn brothers had moved their dressmaking enterprise north even as the cotton industry had moved south.

  “It’s quite visionary of you, really, to bring your—em—southern sensibilities to this market,” Jeanne said, a delicate acknowledgment that they were swimming against the stream. The same migration that had put her father out of business—more than two-thirds of the silk mills in New Jersey closed in the late 1930s—had closed down many other textile manufacturers, forcing them to the South.

  Goodwyn hadn’t seemed to mind that Jeanne had come by herself. Ordinarily Uncle Frank would be here, but he was with Thelma today. Jeanne would go up tomorrow for the funeral, but they had all agreed she should not cancel today’s meeting. She had spent much of last week preparing for this pitch, and if she could convince Jerome Goodwyn to place an order for their fall line, Charming would be running at full capacity, generating capital they could use to add another loom and hire more workers.

  “You’re known for your classic American styles,” Jeanne said, launching into her prepared pitch. “And America has embraced modern fabrics like no other nation. Your past-season catalogs offer an idea of how well our textiles might complement your contemporary line. But we think you can go even further. We think you can make inroads into the markets that have so far snubbed domestic fashion.”

  She took a breath before her next statement because now she was on her own. Generally when meeting with prospective customers, she deferred to Frank. But Frank disagreed with her on this: Frank believed they needed to continue to pursue moderate sportswear manufacturers and leave high fashion to the established vendors. Because Europe shied away from synthetics, his reasoning went, so too would high-end American manufacturers.

  “We think you can find a foothold in American couture,” she finished.

  “American couture,” Jerome echoed. “There is no such thing. Omar Kiam, Herbert Sondheim, Ceil Chapman—they’re all doing off-the-rack.”

  “You’ve just made my point, Mr. Goodwyn,” Jeanne said. “That is the future of American fashion. Already we are seeing the beginning of a trend away from the ultra exclusive salon. Even women who can afford to shop anywhere are buying ready-to-wear. Fresh, youthful, active”—she ticked off the adjectives on her fingers—“even practical, these define the new American style. And rather than leaving this market for others, we’re suggesting that you embrace it.”

  Jeanne had promised Frank that she would wait until after the funeral to draw up any proposals for the Goodwyn brothers, but there was no harm in laying the groundwork now. Her work was the one thing that could take her mind off the rest of it.

  “We didn’t offer a single dress in last fall’s collection under fifty dollars,” Jerome said. “We have no intention of competing with Sears. Our brand has always been synonymous with quality and attention to detail.”

  “And you’ve never used a synthetic textile,” Jeanne said. “You’ve equated quality with tradition. I’m suggesting you reconsider. Our fabrics are ideal for your market: a woman who values quality and exclusivity, but also practicality and her own time. Who thinks that four afternoons spent in the fitting room for a single dress are four afternoons she could have spent doing something else.”

  Jerome studied her with a bemused smile. “You sound like you’ve been talking to my wife.”

  Jeanne laughed. This was the point at which some of her clients made a comment along the lines of, “And what does Mr. Brink think of all of this?” or “Are you authorized to offer these terms, or do you need to consult with your boss?”

  “I’d be delighted to send your wife our catalog,” she countered.

  She would not allow herself to think about the gathering taking place twenty-five miles away, in the house where she’d once been marooned like a castaway on an island, a time that already had taken on a dreamlike quality in her mind, a place in her history occupied by someone she used to know.

  She had this. This was her due, her solace.

  “How do you achieve this . . . what would you call this finish?” Jerome said, fingering the pinked edges of a six-inch square of a fleeced wool-nylon blend. He’d landed by chance on Jeanne’s favorite color in the line, a grayed aquamarine that evoked stormy seas. “Luster, that’s the word that comes to mind.”

  He’d succeeded in lighting the pipe again after his first attempt failed, and puffed at it carefully, filling the showroom with the sweet smoke.

  “You’re a mind reader, Mr. Goodwyn,” Jeanne said. “We are considering using that very word in the name. Perhaps with an alternate spelling to evoke a continental feeling—l-u-s-t-r-e . . .”

  “Clever,” Jerome chuckled. “I sometimes think you could sell a Virginia lady a brick of cow manure if you gave it a French name.”

  There was an urgent knock on the door. “Excuse me for a moment,” Jerome said, getting up to open it.

  Thelma, flushed and out of breath, leaned heavily on Frank’s arm in the doorway.

  “What are you doing here?” Jeanne gasped. “Is everything all right?”

  “No,” Thelma wheezed, her hand to her throat. “Tommie’s gone. She’s run away.”

  Peggy

  No one would recognize her now, Peggy thought ruefully as the cab dropped her in front of Grenholm Mortuary. She was wearing a plain gray skirt and sensible shoes and an unadorned cardigan. Her hair was tied back with a scarf and she was wearing large sunglasses even though the day was cloudy. Her plan was a simple one—she would ask to sit with her husband’s casket, until the rest of them arrived. Thelma wouldn’t make a scene, not here. And Peggy would make it clear that she wasn’t asking for anything other than a chance to make Tommie understand that if things had only turned out differently, both her parents would have loved her so much.

  The memory of Thelma’s anger, the day she cast Peggy out, was something she would never forget. But there, in the awful chasm hollowed out by Thelma’s fury, was room for a tiny seed of hope. Because her mother-in-law had never told Jeanne the truth about what had happened. Peggy didn’t know why: maybe she wanted to protect Thomas’s memory; maybe she wanted to keep Tommie from ever finding out.

  And in keeping Jeanne ignorant, Thelma had allowed the attachment between Jeanne and Tommie to grow in a way it never could have if Jeanne knew Tommie was Charles’s daughter. Last night in Newark, Jeanne had been almost brutal: Tommie stays with me.

  Peggy had always known that Jeanne loved Tommie. In the first, terrible days following the birth, when Peggy could barely find the energy to get to the
bathroom and could not stand to look upon her own infant, she’d marveled at how quickly and naturally Jeanne had taken to her niece. The guilt of those weeks, when she knew in her heart that Jeanne loved Tommie more than she yet could, now seemed like a blessing. Because Jeanne had cared for Tommie when Peggy could not.

  Strange, now, to think how important the men had once been to them. How they’d stayed up talking and making plans those summer nights when she’d been eighteen and Jeanne had been nineteen, believing that what they felt was love, a love great enough to sustain them. How stupid they’d been, with war lapping at the shores, neighbor boys soon to be coming home in boxes, mothers’ wails echoing in the streets. How arrogant, to believe that they would escape.

  Which had been the greater wrong? The things that Charles had done to her that night . . . or the fact that Peggy hadn’t fought harder to prevent them? She would never allow such a thing to happen now, but she wasn’t a foolish, naïve girl anymore either. It was impossible to make sense of it all, even now that so much time had passed.

  Peggy couldn’t change the past, but she would devote the rest of her life to trying to make a place once more in her daughter’s life—and if someday Jeanne allowed her back, she would consider herself lucky. But she could atone to one person now, even if he was dead.

  She walked with some trepidation to the mortuary door. The day had turned gloomy, a slate sky hanging heavily over the town, stirring up eddies of wind like an irritable child, tossing leaves and litter about.

  Peggy slipped inside, the dolorous bell chiming softly deep in the recesses of the building. She spotted a polished brass ashtray on a low table of the reception area and suddenly longed for a cigarette. She could almost see Thomas in her mind’s eye, over a decade ago when she had first been invited to Thelma’s house as his guest. After dinner he’d invited her to walk, and they’d smoked under the tree where his father had once hung a swing for him, on the street where he’d learned to ride a bike. He’d been so handsome, her Thomas, a boy-man glowing with enthusiasm, his love for her a natural extension of his love for his dog and his car and the track medals hanging on his bedroom wall. He—they—had been so innocent, and the thought brought a new wave of grief, a wistful, forgiving kind of regret.