The Secret Lives of Dresses (6 page)

When Gabby came back, two paper cups in her hand, Mimi was sleeping again. Dora took the cup gratefully, then held it without drinking it. Gabby stood next to Dora, drinking hers in silence. Gabby’s bright lipstick left a mouthprint around the cup’s rim. She unconsciously rotated her cup with each sip, leaving a fresh print and transferring all her lipstick from her mouth to the cup. Dora didn’t even taste hers. When Gabby’s cup was empty, and Dora’s stopped leaking heat into her hand,
MARIA RN
came back in the room.

“You should let her rest now,” she said, in that surprisingly loud voice. Mimi didn’t stir.

Gabby put her hand on Dora’s shoulder. Dora covered it with her own.
MARIA RN
started straightening Mimi’s already straight sheets, fussing them out of the room. They walked back to the parking lot in silence. When they got to the car, Dora realized that she was still carrying the cold coffee; she carefully poured it out onto the garage floor, where it slicked like some machine effluent, which, she supposed, it was. There wasn’t a garbage can, so she held the empty cup all the way home.

When they walked in the door of the miserably dark and empty house, Gabby made a halfhearted offer of dinner, but neither of them was hungry.

Gabby fussed with her earrings before managing to take them off and dump them in the little dish on the hall table, where they promptly tangled with three other dangly pairs.

“I called Maux today and let her know the store will be closed for a while,” she said.

“Closed?” Dora was confused for a minute. It was as if Gabby had suggested that they burn the place down, then jump up and down on the ashes. “Close the
store
?” Her throat closed. She swallowed, hard, and refused to acknowledge the tears building up again.

“Yeah—it’s a shame, but with Mimi . . . Maux’s only part-time, and she has her classes to consider, I couldn’t ask her to take over.” Gabby looked guilty. “I’d do it, of course, but I’ve got three clients scheduled this week. And I never did get the hang of the store.” That was true. Gabby was much in demand as an interior designer, but had never, as she put it, had the “wardrobe knack.” Mimi had started turning down Gabby’s “help” in the store after she had dressed a mannequin in a leather-fringed denim jacket over a bouclé suit, combined with a headscarf and 1980s visor sunglasses. “Lord help us if people start wandering the streets of Forsyth dressed that way, with me to blame,” Mimi said.

Dora tried to remember if Mimi had ever closed the store before. She certainly hadn’t ever done so deliberately. A few years back, the whole block had been closed for two days because of a broken water main, and the police hadn’t let anyone through. Dora had never seen Mimi so angry. She’d come back from an unsuccessful attempt at passing the barricades, untouched plate of cop-bribing brownies thrown down on the counter in disgust. “They can’t keep me out of my own store! And it’s not like I can’t swim,” she had complained. Gabby had murmured something about possible downed power lines and water to a grim-faced Mimi, then retreated in cowardice to her own room. Mimi had spent hours redialing Duke Power’s automated service-information line until Lou from the Hallmark store had finally called and said they’d given everyone the all-clear.

“I’ll do it. I’ll run the store.” Dora sounded more confident than she felt. “Just until Mimi’s better.”

Gabby let that pass. “Honey, what about school?”

“Gabby, I’m all done except for one independent study—I was planning to graduate early, anyway, so even if I have to take an incomplete it won’t really matter.” Dora dismissed all of Lymond with a wave of her hand.

“I don’t know, sweetie. Mimi would hate for you to miss school. . . .”

“It’s not high school, Gabby. There’s no truant officer.”

Dora managed what she hoped Gabby would think was a brave smile, and not a grimace of fear. “Listen, I can handle this. I run that coffee shop at school, right? I can at least make change and keep the doors open. I think knowing the store is still going would help Mimi—and what am I going to do all day, otherwise?”

“Study,” said Gabby firmly. Dora laughed. “You sounded just like Mimi when you said that.”

“But what about that grad-school fellowship thingy you told Mimi about? Don’t you have to study for that?”

“No, not really—and it’s a long shot, anyway. Staying down here and keeping the store open won’t affect that either way.”

“If you say so.” Gabby looked doubtful. “Mimi’s spare store keys are still on the hook in the pantry.”

“I remember. And I’ll call Maux tomorrow, and let her know.” Dora glanced at the hall clock. “It’s too late now, even for Maux.”

“Okay, honey . . . if you’re sure.”

“I’m sure.”

Gabby gave her a quick, tight hug. “Good night, sweetie. I’ll wake you when I get up.” She looked as if she wanted to say something more, but Dora turned quickly and headed up the stairs.

The fabulous closet held several peignoir sets and a couple pairs of really over-the-top, ludicrous baby-doll PJs, but nothing comfortable enough to actually sleep in. Luckily there were still a few of Dora’s old Forsyth High T-shirts around. She picked the biggest of them as a nightgown, tossing the blue dress to the floor. She lay down on the bed and stared at the ceiling. She should really hang up the dress, she knew, but, then again, she should also brush her teeth, plug in her laptop and check her email, call some people back at school, let them know she wouldn’t be back for a few days more. She should go online and read up on stroke rehabilitation. She should check her cell phone and see if Gary had called. But she couldn’t bring herself to do any of those things.

Dora left the blue dress crumpled on the floor and fell asleep.

G
abby didn’t need to wake her up, after all; Dora woke with a start out of an unpleasant dream that involved missing safety pins and frozen yogurt. She almost put on yesterday’s dress, still lying on the floor, but stopped herself. Mimi wouldn’t approve. Instead, she grabbed another cotton shirtdress from the closet, red with skinny white stripes. It was a little tight in the waist. She wore it anyway.

Gabby was up and dressed by the time she got downstairs, and remarkably chipper, despite the late night. She wore a pale-blue dress—Dora thought it was silk—with pantyhose and heels.

“Dora, I’ve got to rush off, but I can give you a ride to the store if you don’t mind leaving now. I’ll pick you up, too, and we can go to the hospital together tonight. You don’t have a parking sticker for downtown anymore, do you? It’ll cost you twenty bucks a day to park without it.”

“Thanks, Gabby.” Dora glanced hopefully at the coffeepot, but it was empty. She grabbed her bag and followed Gabby out the front door.

The slow-driving Gabby of yesterday had disappeared. This Gabby was in a rush. “What’s the hurry?” Dora asked, as she grabbed the Jesus handle above the door.

“Oh, I just have a meeting with an old . . . client today,” Gabby said. “I’d really like to have their business again. Their place is a bit out of date, but it’s got good bones. It’d be a lot of fun to redecorate.” She sounded oddly cheerful. Dora thought she even heard a giggle, which Gabby never did before noon. She was not a morning person. Maybe the coffeepot had been empty because she had drunk the whole thing. . . .

Gabby dropped her off with a wave and a squeal of tires. Dora shook her head as she unlocked the store.

Opening Mimi’s store wasn’t as hard as Dora thought it would be. As long as she didn’t stop to think, the muscle memory of walking a step behind her grandmother as Mimi went about her morning simply took over. Dora knew where the light switches were, and that the alarm code spelled out
ALARMED
. The register was so simple Dora thought that perhaps it had been purchased from a Montessori-school catalogue. The credit-card machine was perfectly centered above a five-step instruction sheet taped to the counter.

Opening the store was easy, even with the pounding crying-hangover headache Dora had woken up with. Being in the store without Mimi was hard. How many hours had Dora spent on the stool behind the counter, talking with Mimi or, better yet, listening to Mimi talk? Dora had grown up in the store, listening to Mimi. Mimi had a soft voice and used soft words even when—or especially when—she was angry. She had hardly ever yelled at Dora. “If you want someone to stop listening to you,” she told Dora, “go ahead and yell. If you want them to listen to every word, whisper.”

Dora loved listening to Mimi, and would have hung on every word even if they’d been raspy and harsh. Dora loved the long weekday afternoons after school, or in summer vacations, when the store was slow and Mimi would narrate her work, like Mr. Rogers or some PBS documentary. When she got to junior high, Dora would have a book open, but mostly just for show. Mimi was better than any book, because Mimi was real, and she knew how the world worked.

When Dora was little, she thought Mimi could explain just about anything. How electricity was made and how it made things go. Where babies came from. What the word Melissa said on the playground meant. Mimi would sit down seriously, giving Dora her full attention. “Well,” she’d start, “it’s a little like this. . . .” Mimi never over- or under-explained: she always told you everything you wanted to know and not a word more. And if Mimi didn’t know something, like why mufflers made a car engine not as noisy, they would stop at the library on the way home and find out, even if it meant they would be late for dinner and have to push back bedtime. “Never put off until tomorrow what you can learn today,” Mimi would say.

As Dora got older, Mimi’s explanations—and Dora’s questions—became less Mr. Science and more psychological. Why was Adam such a jerk? Why didn’t Mr. Schneider ever call on her in class? And Mimi talked more about the customers, too. Mimi never thought of her customers as strangers. “You have to know people to know what they want,” she’d say. “If you don’t know what people want you can’t sell it to them. And not what they say they want, what they really want.”

Mimi’s soft words and explanations were given to her customers, too. “This isn’t a thrift store,” she told Dora. “We’re not selling them something less expensive, we’re selling them something more special. We have to tell them the story of what we’re showing them. And then we have to show them how they can be the new heroine in the story.”

Dora would sit quietly behind the counter, a good little girl, her schoolbook open, and watch Mimi at work. “This dress is a Paris original,” she’d say to the woman who’d never left the state. “It was part of a special order that Humphrey’s in Richmond put together, way back when. It was a little too forward-thinking for Richmond—such a timeless design, though, don’t you think?—but that just means it’s here now, for you. Why don’t you try it on?” And the customer would try it on and think longingly of Paris, and pityingly of those rubes who hadn’t appreciated the dress all those years ago, and—boom!—she was truly sophisticated, a woman of the world, whose clothes came from Paris.

But for another customer, Mimi would talk only about the quality of the fabric. “Good British tweed—those looms aren’t even in production anymore. And just look at the handwork on the button holes. . . .” And, standing before the mirror in a good tweed suit, the woman would see someone who knew quality, who bought from Mimi not because she wanted less expensive used clothes, but because she was a person who sought out Old World craftsmanship.

Dora loved to play customer with Mimi. “Sell me something,” she’d say. Mimi would pretend to size her up. “Well, you’re wearing too much makeup,” she’d say, to the delight of twelve-year-old Dora, who wasn’t allowed to wear makeup (and was secretly thankful she wasn’t allowed to wear makeup, since she wasn’t sure how to, anyway). “So you care a lot about your appearance. But your lipstick is too bright, so you’re trying too hard. Also, your engagement ring is awful big—I bet your husband is a good deal older. You want something flashy to keep his attention.” Then Mimi would “sell” her a sequined wiggle dress, or a lipstick-red suit with a fur collar, or a fuzzy angora sweater with mother-of-pearl buttons. Dora would take whatever it was solemnly up to the counter, and Mimi would pretend to ring her up, all the while putting Dora into the narrative of the garment. “This sweater would be just perfect for a quiet movie-date night at home—thank goodness for videos, aren’t they great? And I think angora is so cuddly—don’t you?—with maybe narrow black knit pants, and ballet flats, and just a drop of Chanel No. 5.” And Dora would laugh because she knew Mimi hated Chanel No. 5—but her made-up customer would adore it.

Mimi could learn from the smallest of cues. A woman came in wearing a black suit, a white blouse, sensible pumps, and no jewelry. No perfume. Twenty minutes later, Mimi sold her an electric-blue bugle-beaded flapper dress. Dora was amazed.

“Oh, honey, it wasn’t hard. I saw her look at it the minute she came into the store, she just needed permission to imagine herself in it.”

“But do you think she’ll ever wear it?”

“It doesn’t really matter, as long as she loves it. She’ll wear it a hundred times in her imagination before she even tries it on again. As long as she has the option of wearing it, she’ll be happy. Though the best thing would be if it got her to come up with some excuse to wear it.”

Later that year, Mimi had shown her the paper’s society page. It was the black-suit lady, wearing the blue dress. “Roberta Armfield, senior partner at Gordon, Gordon, and Hicks, at their annual themed holiday dinner-dance.”

“What do you want to bet she suggested this year’s theme? I’ve sold a lot of twenties gowns over the last month. I would send her a thank-you note if I didn’t think she’d be embarrassed!”

Everything was in order, almost. Three dresses, tagged and priced, waiting to be hung up, were draped over the display case, underneath a huge cartwheel hat dotted with extravagant silk roses. On impulse, and to get it out of the way, Dora jammed it on her own head and went to hang the dresses on the rack. It probably wouldn’t help her headache, but she didn’t care.