The Snow Angel (3 page)

Max and Elena Wever saved me. I know that sounds sentimental, but I believe that it’s true. My mother, the infamous Beverly Anne, died when I was fourteen years old, and in the swirling aftermath of anger and confusion, Max and Elena stepped in and pulled me from the wreckage.

Bev was killed when the family station wagon got up close and personal with an oak tree on a lazy summer Tuesday. The official police report stated that she lost control of her vehicle and careened off the road causing an untimely and fatal accident, but most of Everton knew the truth: Bev was drunk as a skunk at two o’clock in the afternoon, and was too busy reaching for a bottle of gin that had rolled under the seat to pay much attention to the hairpin curve that marked the very edge of town.

Years later, when one of Cyrus’s chic friends mixed me a martini from the liquor cabinet in her posh kitchen, just the scent of vermouth and my mother’s signature gin was enough to make me queasy. I swore off alcohol altogether.
To me it smelled of bitter words and anger and death. It smelled like my mother.

But before I knew what a martini was, before I could articulate the hurt and frustration that I felt at the mere mention of Bev’s name, I was just a kid without a mom, and Max and Elena Wever saw the depth of my need and reached out.

Back then, Eden Custom Tailoring didn’t even exist. Max and Elena were simply “the tailors” to the community of Everton, and they mended slacks and sewed custom suit jackets in their garage turned sewing shop. They lived next door to the split-level where I grew up, and though I knew who they were and what they did, I had never set foot in their workspace or even said hello to them until the day that Max stopped me on the sidewalk.

It was a hot, hazy afternoon in July, and my neighbor was dressed in black pants and a crisp, long-sleeved dress shirt with the cuffs rolled up to his elbows. I was sweating in a tank top and cut-off jean shorts, and too miserable from the heat and the fever of my own bewilderment at life to pay him any attention.

“Do you have good eyes?” Max asked me out of the blue as I walked past his driveway.

I turned and considered the man who was my neighbor. He was bent and grizzled, a stooping giant with hands like bear paws and tufts of wiry hair poking from his ears like
forgotten bits of cotton. I wasn’t afraid of him, but we had never talked before, and as soon as he inquired after my optical health I was convinced that there was good reason we avoided each other: He obviously had dementia. Most people regarded me with thinly veiled pity and apologized immediately about the loss of my mother. Max skipped right over these trivialities.

“My eyes are fine,” I told him. Then I spun on my heel and kept walking—I decided it was best not to encourage him. But his next question stopped me in my tracks.

“Would you like a job?”

A job? In the month after my mother’s death my life had consisted of little more than parrying people’s unwelcome condolences and trying to weed out the sincere offers of help from the ones that were born of avarice and gossip. It seemed everyone wanted to know what had gone on in the Clark house, and there was no lack of scandalmongers willing and eager to rifle through our home in an effort to ascertain the truth. But Mr. Wever’s question was singular, unexpected. I couldn’t have ignored him if I wanted to.

“What kind of a job?” I asked warily.

“My wife and I are tailors,” he told me in his thick Dutch accent. “We mend clothes. Make new ones.”

As if I didn’t know.

“We could use someone to sew buttonholes, press fabrics, run errands …”

“I’d be a gofer?”

Mr. Wever looked confused.

“An errand girl,” I clarified, not entirely put off by the thought. Anything sounded better than wandering the streets of Everton with nothing to do and nowhere to go, the tragedy of my mother’s demise following me like the proverbial ball and chain.

“Yes,” Mr. Wever said slowly. “An errand girl, I suppose. But maybe more than that. If you have good eyes.” He took a shuffling step toward me, and I lifted my chin as if offering up my eyes for inspection. They were blue and bottomless, too big if I chose to believe my late mother’s persistent criticism. And maybe my baby blues were a smidgen buggy, but I never understood why Bev felt the need to critique. They were her eyes, after all. I was the spitting image of my mother from the tips of my delicate fingers to the roots of my unruly ginger hair.

“How much?” I asked.

Mr. Wever hooked a finger around the wire frame of the glasses that were perched on his nose and tugged them down so he could regard me through the lower lens of his bifocals. His gaze was direct, and maybe just a little amused. “Three dollars an hour,” he said. “The hours will change. Sometimes we will have a lot of work for you. Sometimes not.”

Three dollars was less than minimum wage, but the
hours sounded suitably vague and variable. “Okay,” I said, shrugging. “I’ll be your errand girl.”

Mr. Wever nodded once and gave me an earnest, tight-lipped smile. When he took a step toward me, I thought that he was going to rattle off a collection of do’s and don’ts, an indomitable checklist for working in his hallowed shop. But instead, he extended his hand and waited patiently for me to reciprocate. Our handshake was solemn, and as my fingers disappeared into his giant palm, I realized that we were sealing a covenant.

“Elena and I look forward to seeing you tomorrow morning at eight,” he said.

Since Bev’s death I had gotten used to loafing, but Mr. Wever didn’t really leave room for discussion on the matter of my starting time. I lifted a shoulder and he must have taken the gesture as assent because he nodded again and turned to go. “Thank you,” I called after him.

He was shuffling up the driveway, and he only acknowledged my gratitude by waving his hand in the air as if he was swatting at a cloud of gnats.

“I’ll see you tomorrow, Mr. Wever,” I added.

“Max.”

“What?”

“Call me Max!” he shouted. And then he disappeared into the side door of his attached garage.

I worked for Max and Elena for just over five years. At
first, I swept the floor, wound spools of thread, and answered the telephone when they had straight pins sticking from between their lips. When Max discovered that I was a hard worker and a quick study, he taught me to starch and press the trousers so that the thick pleat would stand like a narrow ridge. It was fine work, but I didn’t truly fall in love with it until Elena made her first wedding dress, a hand-spun creation for a young woman in her church who couldn’t afford a store-bought gown.

The tailor shop was forever transformed for me when Elena purchased an extravagant bolt of Italian Silk Mikado. It was insanely expensive, but the dress was going to be a gift, and Elena took gift-giving very seriously. The day that the fabric arrived from Milan, I stayed late after Max retired from the workroom. Elena and I carefully pushed aside the heavy wools, herringbones, and tweeds that would soon clothe the men of Everton and lifted the surprisingly heavy box onto the table. Then Elena brought out the silk, and we unrolled it across the surface of the wide worktable, stunned by the way that it gleamed and danced in the light.

“I may never sew a pair of pants again.” Elena laughed.

But of course she did.

However, at least once or twice a year, Elena would leave the tailoring to her husband and indulge in her favorite hobby: dressmaking. As for me, I looked forward to those forays into the world of satin and lace with an
almost frantic excitement. And yet, I couldn’t complain about sewing men’s suits. There was something uniquely warm and comforting about helping Max get the symmetry and alignment of the pinstripes on a custom suit jacket just perfect. It was fun and foreign. Decidedly masculine.

My dad rarely wore a suit. And the one he hauled out for special occassions was a relic. His closet was filled with Wrangler jeans and whatever shirt he could buy for ten dollars or less at Bomgaars. I never really thought of my dad’s clothes until I started making suits with Max. All at once my dad’s workingman’s wardrobe seemed cheap and tasteless, the uniform of a man who always had dirt under his fingernails and a sunburn peeling the skin of his nose. I didn’t mean to be shallow, but I found myself wishing that my dad would take himself a bit more seriously.

“‘Clothes make the man,’” Max would quote, eyeing me sidelong before he finished: “‘Naked people have little or no influence on society.’”

“Mark Twain.” I’d laugh. “But it’s a silly quote.”

“No, it’s a true quote.” He’d crinkle up his eyes, thinking. “How about: ‘If honor be your clothing, the suit will last a lifetime; but if clothing be your honor, it will soon be worn threadbare.’”

“I’ve never heard that one before.”

“William Arnot. He was a preacher. Knew what he was talking about.”

I pursed my lips. “It’s a nice saying, Max. But I think it undermines what we’re doing here. Aren’t we making clothing?”

“It’s a balance, honey. That’s what I want you to understand. As much as people would like to believe otherwise, how we present ourselves on the outside reveals something about who we are on the inside. I don’t have to wear a three-piece suit to be a good person, but I would like everything about me—even my clothes—to reflect a certain uncompromising integrity.”

“Is that why you make suits?”

Max laughed. “I make suits because my father made suits. And his father before him. What do you think Wever means in Dutch? It’s all I know how to do. However, since I make suits, they’re going to be excellent in every way. The best possible quality.”

“Because you are a man of uncompromising integrity.”

“I hope so,” Max murmured with a wry smile. “I sure do try.”

They both tried, Max and Elena, and I adored them. Though we never talked about it, for all intents and purposes, I was the daughter they never had. I always wondered if Max and Elena left a child in Dutch soil, or if they were simply never able to conceive. But I didn’t question their love for me, and for a few years at least I grew up grateful that my surrogate family accepted me, flaws, baggage,
and all—especially when my real family didn’t. Especially because I didn’t really have a family. Before I was old enough to drive a car, I was more or less an orphan: Bev was dead and my father pretended I was. Or, at least, I felt like he did.

“We are not ‘the tailor shop’ anymore,” Max said the day that Elena and I finished our tenth wedding dress. He surveyed the soft, lovely fabrics that seemed to bloom in unexpected bursts from every corner of his formerly masculine garage. Poplin and seersucker and linen existed side by side with gauzy material that pooled and flowed like melted ice.

“Come now,” Elena protested. “We’ll always be ‘the tailor shop.’” She leaned against him and kissed his wrinkled cheek placatingly.

“But we’re more. We’re …” Max’s forehead wrinkled as if he was confused by what his store had become. “We’re a dress shop, too.”

Elena shook her head. “Not just any dress shop. A wedding dress shop.”

“A bridal shop,” I offered.

Max pretended to shiver and threw up his hands in defeat. “Women! I am surrounded!” He shook his head as he left the garage, but I caught the hint of a smile tugging at the corners of his lips.

“He’ll be just fine,” Elena assured me with a wink.
“Wounded pride is rarely fatal. As for us, I think it’s time we gave this suit shop/tailor shop/bridal shop a name. A way for people to find us.”

“Eden,” I said without pause.

“Eden?”

“You know,” I fumbled, “because it’s perfect. Happy and new. Filled with possibility …” I trailed off.

Elena nodded slowly and I could practically see the wheels spinning behind her deep brown eyes. “Eden Custom Tailoring—so that there’s room for the odd dress or two amid the army of suits. I think it’ll work.”

Of course it would work. Everyone needed a little reminder of something whole and full of promise. Everyone needed a bit of paradise.

Especially people who sometimes felt like their lives were anything but.

Eden Custom Tailoring became a cult phenomenon when the youth of Everton graduated from high school and fled their tiny hometown. As Everton natives populated LA, Chicago, New York, and beyond, sooner or later they found that special someone and remembered the old couple that sewed exclusive suits and wedding dresses back in their all-but-forgotten
hometown. Calls started coming in for gowns of Duchess silk and Italian satin, and accompanying those extravagant orders came the imperious directive: “It must be perfect.” Which translated into: “We have no budget.”

Max bought an old photography studio on Main Street, which he transformed into a charming shop with a custom fitting room and a five-sided mirror with a two-foot pedestal. It worked well when Max had to carefully measure the distinguished gentlemen of Everton, but the brides were the customers who appreciated the pedestal the most. The young women loved to preen and admire themselves from every possible angle. The lighting was dim and flattering since there were no windows in the shop, and though that fact had seemed like a liability when Max first purchased the building, it turned out to be a boon: Most brides were thrilled that their unique creation would remain a mystery until their stirring walk down the aisle.