“In fact,” she said slowly, her eyes narrowing as she reached down to my waist and pinched a good two inches of white satin between her fingers, “perhaps Olga should leave a little extra room when she does the alterations. Better to have the gown a little too big than too small. Don’t you agree? That would be a disaster.”
Looking at my reflection, Byron’s gaze flickered from Abigail, fussing with the waistline of my dress, to my face and then back to Abigail before circling in front of me to discuss the possible use of a more heavily padded bra as a means of filling the gown’s suddenly-too-big bosom without the use of deeper darts.
I stood still on the platform with my eyes to the front and my arms out, saying nothing, waiting for them to finish, feeling like that little music box ballerina, turning and turning but never going anywhere, molded from plastic, feeling nothing.
Hours later, after Olga, the redoubtable Russian seamstress, had been called over to Byron’s offices to re-measure and re-pin the gown she’d already altered once, we were finally able to move on to the business of choosing accessories.
I’m tall, so it was quickly decided that the white satin slingbacks with a two-inch kitten heel would be the best choice. This meant that the dress had to be shortened another inch and a half.
Grumbling in Russian through a mouthful of straight pins, Olga got on her knees next to the platform and started marking the hem.
In the meantime, Byron brought out a series of black velvet trays loaded with a virtual mine of sparkling diamond and pearl chokers, necklaces, and earrings that had been sent over from jewelers. Byron chose a piece from one tray, a breathtaking necklace of alternating oval-and emerald-cut diamonds, and looped it around my neck, coming around behind me to fasten the platinum clasp and adjusting it so the necklace rested evenly below the jut of my collarbones.
“Liza,” he said with a smile as he stepped back to admire his handiwork, “you have an exquisite neck. And this piece only enhances it. And the dress.” He turned to look at Abigail, who was standing to one side with her hand resting lightly near her own throat, looking very pleased.
“I love the emerald-cut stones,” she said. “So elegant.”
Byron nodded. “Of course, we can try on the others if you’d like but, for my money, this is the way to go.”
“I agree,” said Abigail. “It’s perfect.”
“Good. Now I’m sure you’ve rented jewels for special occasions before, Abigail, but just to remind you, we’ll need to call to make arrangements with the insurance—”
Abigail held up her hand. “No, no. That won’t be necessary. I’m not renting it. I’m buying it. For Liza.”
Abigail’s mouth stretched into a wide, beatific smile. For the first time that day, she looked me in the eye.
“It’s your wedding present.” She paused, waiting for me to gasp, or cry, or launch into some appropriately emotional expression of surprise and gratitude.
“I don’t want it.”
Abigail’s sunny smile shriveled. I was glad.
“What do you mean? If you’re concerned about the cost, don’t be. It’s expensive, yes, but this is your wedding and you are my niece, Susan’s only child, and my only living relative. I want your wedding to be entirely perfect, completely memorable. You mustn’t worry about the expense. I can afford it.”
I shook my head. “You’re not listening. I don’t want it. I don’t want you to buy it for me. I don’t even want you to rent it for me. I don’t like it, and I don’t want to wear it at my wedding.”
Abigail’s brow furrowed. She looked to Byron, searching for an explanation for my inexplicable behavior, but he looked as perplexed as she did.
“Perhaps…perhaps you saw another piece you prefer?” Byron hopped off the platform, walked over to the jewelry trays, and stood in front of them, his finger to his lips, considering the options. “The sunflower vine choker is pretty. A bit ornate, perhaps, but the neckline of the dress is so simple that I think it would—”
“No. I don’t want that. I don’t want any of those.”
Sidestepping Olga, who spat out a pin and cursed me in Russian, I climbed down from the platform, walked to the coatrack, picked up my purse, reached inside, and pulled out a plastic storage bag.
“I’m going to wear this.”
Giving Abigail a quick glance, Byron crossed the room and took the plastic bag from my hand. He pulled out the necklace with its five strands of silver beading twisted together and held it up to the light.
“You know,” he said, his voice a bit surprised, “this is really quite lovely. Where did you get it?”
“I made it. I was wearing it when Garrett proposed.” I didn’t bother to add that I hadn’t accepted that initial proposal. “He wants me to wear it at the wedding. That’s what I want too.”
Byron cast a tentative glance in Abigail’s direction. “It’s really very pretty. Not diamonds, but it does catch the light nicely and is the perfect shape for the neckline. I think it’s sweet, especially because it carries such a romantic history with it.”
Abigail erupted. “No!”
Ah, there it was—the old shower of sparks. I fought to keep myself from smiling.
“Certainly not!” Abigail stormed across the room and snatched the necklace out of Byron’s hand. “It simply won’t do!”
I put my hands on my hips. One of Olga’s straight pins jabbed into my flesh, but I didn’t care. “Well, it’s going to have to do, because this is my wedding and this is what I want to wear to it!”
“Liza! Be reasonable!” She took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. I could practically see her counting to ten in her mind.
“It is a pretty piece,” she admitted grudgingly. “And I’m sure it’s very special to you and to Garrett, but it isn’t appropriate for the wedding. It’s not formal enough, not for the ceremony.
“I’ve got an idea,” she said, brightening. “Why don’t you wear it with your going-away ensemble. Hmm?”
I said nothing.
“Or,” she went on, taking another tack, “perhaps you could even change into it for the reception. Yes! That would be lovely. So much more appropriate, don’t you think?”
She looked to Byron for support. He smiled a diplomatic, peace-keeping sort of smile.
“No, I don’t think!” I shouted and stomped my foot. “You keep telling me that this is my special day, that you want everything to be perfect for me. Well, this is perfect for me! For me!” I grabbed the necklace away from Abigail and held it up high.
“Up till now, I have gone along with everything you wanted, everything. But this is my wedding, and I think I should get to have at least one thing exactly as I want it! More importantly, I should get to have one thing exactly the way Garrett wants it. This is supposed to be about me and Garrett—not you!”
Abigail’s expression was implacable and cold. The louder I shouted, the colder it became until, by the time I finished speaking, her face seemed to have been chiseled from marble, smooth and flat, incapable of feeling. When she spoke, her voice was low.
“Is that what you think? That I’m doing this for myself?”
I nodded.
She closed her eyes, as if the effort to keep them open was suddenly too much to bear. The tendons under the flesh of her neck twitched ever so slightly and she winced as if some secret pain had pierced the marble mask.
Abigail lifted her chin and opened her eyes, revealing a sheen of unshed tears, something I had seen there only once before, on that day when she told me about herself and my mother and the lover’s betrayal that had torn them apart, forever separating sisters who once had been inseparable.
“Is that what you really think?” she repeated and then turned her head away, looking up toward a far corner of the room, her gaze focused on some distant point in the beyond.
“I just want to make it perfect for you, to make it up to you. But if that’s what you think…that I’m doing this for myself…” She lifted her hand, blocki
ng my face from view, weakly warding off the possibility of any backpedaling on my part.
“Then there isn’t much point, is there, Susan? It will never be enough, will it?” She closed her eyes for a moment. “It’s just as well, then. Do as you like. I don’t care anymore.”
Without looking at anyone or stopping to reclaim her coat from the rack in the corner, she walked out, ignoring Byron, who trailed behind her, pleading with her to come back. Olga sat on the edge of the platform, hunched and frowning. I stood dumbstruck in my bare feet, dressed in my too-big wedding gown with the half-pinned hem, my mother’s name a question in my mind.
28
Liza Burgess
I shivered and Garrett put his arm around my shoulders.
As we walked down Fifth Avenue past the store window displays filled with faceless mannequins dressed in spring skirts and short-sleeved cotton cardigans, ignorant of the chilly April wind, I indulged in a little fantasy. What would it be like to live in that window world? Inhabiting a climate-controlled paradise, peopled by cheerily clad dressmaker’s dummies where, accessories excepting, everyone was pretty much alike, had nothing much to think about, and all the time in the world not to think about it?
“A terrarium for human beings,” I said.
“Didn’t somebody already invent that?” Garrett asked. “I think they did. I think it’s called Miami.”
“Ha.” I tipped my head, gently butting his shoulder.
“Do you want to get some dinner?”
I shook my head. “Not hungry.”
I pulled my cell phone out of my coat pocket, checking to see if Abigail had answered one of my calls. The ringer was turned up as high as it would go, but with all the noise from the traffic—the honking horns, and the rush-hour hum of engines—you never knew.
Garrett tightened his grip on my shoulder and stopped on the sidewalk, turning my body toward him. “Liza, she’ll call when she calls. Stop punishing yourself. Let her stew for a while. After all, you didn’t do anything wrong. All you wanted was the right to wear the jewelry you wanted at your wedding. What’s the big deal? It’s about time you stood up to Abigail. I’m proud that you finally did.”
I pressed my lips together. I hadn’t told him what happened next, that after Abigail stormed off I told Byron that I’d changed my mind. I would wear the diamonds after all.
“Abigail is my only family. I don’t want to…”
Garrett frowned. “To what?”
“I don’t want to lose her!” I covered my mouth with my hand, a dam against tears. I didn’t want to cry. Not again.
“Liza,” Garrett whispered. “Liza, baby.” The frown disappeared, the line of misunderstanding between his brows flattened out, smooth again, and it annoyed me. He didn’t understand, he couldn’t. He’d never been alone, not like I was. Not like Abigail had been. We knew what it was like, she and I. And we knew it could happen again.
Garrett took a step toward me, but I pulled back, wrenching my arm from his grasp.
“I know what Abigail is! And how she is. But she’s all I have, my only family. I don’t want her to be mad at me, to cut me out of her life, like she did my mom.”
Garrett’s mouth opened incredulously. “Is that what you think? That she’ll get mad and never speak to you again?”
I curled my hand into a fist, pressed it against my lips. My heart was pounding in my chest and suddenly, instead of the cold April wind, I felt a flush of heat and fear. There was a knife-sharp pain between my eyes. I couldn’t answer him. I couldn’t say anything. I was afraid to speak, to think, knowing some unnamable awful something could happen if I acknowledged, even in thought, the fears that washed over me.
But Abigail’s voice, the way it sounded when she said my mother’s name, breached my refusal to think, filled my brain, crowded out everything else, even Garrett’s face and the last light of the day, until I couldn’t see anything or hear anything but the sound of my mother’s name and far in the distance, Garrett’s voice, calling to me, in words that sounded like fear feels.
29
Evelyn Dixon
When people fantasize about opening their own business, part of the dream is often a vision of being their own boss, which generally translates into some wholly misguided notion of longer vacations, shorter workweeks, and setting their own hours.
As just about any small business owner can tell you, it almost never works out that way. In point of fact, most people who exchange salaried jobs for the joys of being their own boss quickly discover that while business ownership does mean setting your own hours, those hours are basically twenty-four/seven. And vacations? Those are a thing of the past.
When two small business owners fall in love, carving out time for togetherness can be a real challenge. Early on, Charlie and I established a habit of meeting every morning for coffee at the Blue Bean. We don’t manage to keep those appointments every day—business does interfere—but we try. And whenever one of us has a window of opportunity, maybe on a day when business is a little slow, we’ll call to see if the other can sneak away for a quick bite, or a walk, or whatever.
Today “whatever” constituted a late lunch/early dinner, not at the Grill because whenever we eat there Charlie is forever getting up and down to answer the phone, or seat a customer, or settle some dispute in the kitchen. Instead, we snuck away to our favorite pizza joint, Di Luca’s, to split a salad and a large basil and buffalo mozzarella pie.
Understand that splitting a pizza means I eat two slices and Charlie, who at fifty-plus years of age still has the metabolism of a teenager, eats the other six, crusts and all.
“Good?” I asked as I watched Charlie attack slice number five with no less relish than he’d displayed for slice number one.
“I’d give my right arm to know how Tony makes this crust, but he won’t share the recipe with anybody, not even his staff. He told me that when he takes the family on vacation, they have to stay within a couple of hours of the restaurant. That way he can drive back twice a week to mix up the pizza dough.”
Charlie took another bite and then nodded toward the last slice of pizza on the tray. “Sure you don’t want another piece?”
“You go ahead. I’m stuffed.”
I rested my chin on my hand, watching Charlie eat and thinking what a good man he was. Charlie is very serious about food in general and Di Luca’s pizza in particular, but if I’d wanted that last slice of pizza, he’d have happily given it up, pleased to see me enjoy something that he enjoyed so much himself.
It’s a little thing, but in my book it’s the little things, like giving up the last slice of pizza, or offering to return the chairs and tables to the rental company, or showing up unannounced on a Saturday morning with a tire iron in hand to change out my snow tires, that count. My ex-husband, Rob, was all about grand gestures. He liked sending floral tributes that would have done the winning horse at the Kentucky Derby proud, presenting me with beribboned boxes from the jeweler every birthday or anniversary, that kind of thing. But when it came to things like helping with the dishes after we’d had a crowd over for dinner, or dropping off the dry cleaning, or taking a turn at the baby’s midnight feeding, Rob was nowhere to be seen.
Please understand, I’m not bitter about Rob. He was generous and we shared some happy years, but since I’ve met Charlie, I’ve come to realize that small, daily acts of love matter more than all the grand gestures in the world. At least to me.
Charlie stopped chewing. “What are you grinning at? Have I got marinara on my nose or something?”
“No.” I laughed. “I’m just thinking how lucky I am and how much I love you.”
Charlie’s eyes twinkled, the way they do when he’s thinking up a witty retort, but instead of launching into a bit of banter about his irresistible Irish charm, he just smiled and said, “Me too. And twice again as much.”
We were quiet for a moment, just enjoying each other’s company, before returning to an earlier topic of discussion.
“So,” Charlie said after swallowing his last bite of pizza, “it’s on for tomorrow then? The Intervention?”
I rolled my eyes. Every time we talked about this, Charlie insisted on calling our upcoming discussion with Abigail “The Intervention,” highlighting it with hand-signaled air quotes and an ominous tone of voice.
“Stop that.”
“Stop what?” he asked, feigning innocence.
“You know what. Stop calling it ‘The Intervention.’ And quit using that creepy voice. I’m nervous enough about this as it is.”
“Fine. How shall I refer to ‘The Intervention’?”
“I don’t know, but not like that. Why do we have to refer to it as anything? We’re going over to Abigail’s to have a quiet little talk with her, that’s all.”
“Uh-huh,” Charlie said skeptically. “A quiet little talk. A nice in-your-face confrontation would be more like it.”
I shot him a look.
“All right,” he said, raising his hands. “You don’t have to give me the eye. I’m just expressing my opinion. So when does this quiet talk take place?”
“Tomorrow afternoon. After Abigail and Liza wrap up their trip to New York. Franklin thought it would be best to speak to her right away. No point in putting it off.”
“Good idea. Grab the bull by the horns, I always say. And in that spirit…” Charlie shifted in his chair, squared his shoulders, and cleared his throat.
“Evelyn, marry me.”
“Oh, Charlie.” I looked away.
“I’ve asked you to marry me at least a dozen times. When are you finally going to say yes? You say you love me, so why not marry me?”
I took a long drink from my water glass, buying myself time to collect my thoughts, but Charlie was not in a waiting mood.
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