Chapter 5 - The Dress with Pockets
The kitchen was cold when we got home. I didn't turn on the television. I didn't turn on the radio. I built a fire in the small woodstove in the corner of the dining room using birch logs that had dried through two summers, until the iron began to tick and the room filled with the dry, clean heat of burning bark.
Ren did not speak for forty minutes.
She sat on the edge of the braided wool rug in her socks, her back pressed against the baseboards, holding her paper basket in her lap like an open book. Every few minutes, her small index finger would trace the line of Scotch tape where she had repaired the handle that afternoon.
"Was I bad at the dress shop?" she asked finally, her voice dropping into the quiet space between the ticking of the stove.
I sat on the floor beside her, pulling my knees up to my chin. "No, Renny. You were wonderful at the dress shop."
"Grandma said not in front of company," she whispered, her thumb picking at a speck of dried PVA glue on the cardstock. "Was I in front of company?"
"You were in front of Aunt Kelsey and Grandma," I said. "They’re family. That’s supposed to be different."
Ren was quiet for a long time. Her gray-green eyes were fixed on the woodstove's glass door, watching the blue flames lick the bottom of the birch logs. "Supposed to be," she said softly, testing the syllables with her tongue as though she were tasting a medicine that had turned sour in the bottle. "That means it isn't, right?"
"Sometimes," I said.
My phone, resting on the kitchen counter twenty feet away, began to vibrate against the butcher block. The screen lit up in the dim room, dark text banners scrolling across the glass in rapid succession.
Kelsey (6:14 PM): Are you really doing this to me? On my rehearsal night?
Mom (6:18 PM): Your father is beside himself. Maryanne had to take Kelsey into the powder room with a cold washcloth. You have humiliated this family in front of the people who matter most. Call your sister right now.
Dad (6:24 PM): Get back to the club. Say you had a migraine with the kid. We can still fix this before the dinner starts.
Kelsey (6:31 PM): You are the most selfish person I have ever known. You always have to be the center of attention. Just because you don't have a husband doesn't mean you get to ruin my life.
I didn't pick up the phone. I didn't swipe the screen. I walked to the counter, turned the device face down on the wood, and went upstairs to help Ren with her bath.
When she came out of the bathroom, her skin smelling of chamomile soap and her hair combed out into wet, dark ribbons over her shoulders, she walked straight to her bedroom closet. The sage-green dress was hanging from the white wooden hanger on the back of the door, protected by a clear plastic dry-cleaning bag that Oksana had sealed with a gold sticker.
Ren stood in front of the door for two minutes, her head tilted, looking at the square neckline and the wide, sturdy straps.
"Can I wear it?" she asked.
"To bed?"
"No," she said. "Just to wear."
"It's a sixty-dollar alteration, Renny," I said gently. "It's supposed to be for a party."
"It has pockets," she told me, her voice perfectly level, entirely free of tears. "A dress with pockets shouldn't just hang on a door like an old coat."
She pulled the plastic off. She stepped into the sage-green cotton, pulled her arms through the armholes, and stood still while I zipped the concealed zipper up to her shoulder blades. She didn't look in the mirror. She plunged both of her hands deep into the side pockets, pushed her elbows out into those two small, resolute wings, and walked down the stairs to the kitchen.
She wore that dress over her flannel pajama pants all Saturday morning while the rain beat against the kitchen windows.
At ten-thirty, my phone rang from the counter. The display read: KELSEY.
I picked it up on the third ring. "Hello, Kelsey."
The background was full of the sound of industrial hair dryers, women’s laughter, and the sharp, rhythmic spritz of aerosol hairspray. Kelsey’s voice came through the receiver, high, breathless, and sharp with panic.
"Darcy? Are you on your way? The makeup artist is already on the second bridesmaid. She said if you aren't in the chair by eleven-fifteen, she can only do your lip liner and mascara."
"I told you yesterday, Kelsey," I said, leaning against the kitchen sink with a mug of black coffee. "I’m not coming without Ren."
"Darcy, stop this!" she shrieked, the laughter in the background dropping into an awkward, sudden silence. "It’s my wedding day! Do you hear me? You can't do this to me on the morning of my wedding! It’s bad luck! People are asking where my maid of honor is!"
"You made your choice yesterday at five o'clock, Kelsey," I said. "I'm just not pretending you didn't."
"You're a monster," she sobbed, the sound breaking into ragged, ugly gasps. "You’ve always been jealous of me. Because Mom loves me more. Because I'm getting married and you're alone with that weird kid in that stupid house—"
I tapped the red icon on the glass and set the phone back down on the butcher block.
Ren came down the hall, her sneakers clicking on the maple, her hands buried deep in the green pockets. She stopped by the refrigerator, looked at the small calendar pinned beside the Hanalei brochure, and tilted her head.
"Can we make pancakes?" she asked. "The ones with the blueberries that turn the batter purple?"
"We can make whatever you want, Renny," I said.
We made twenty-four pancakes. We ate eight of them at the small table by the woodstove, watching the rain wash the last of the red maple leaves from the deck railing outside. At two o’clock, while the bells of the cathedral five miles away were presumably chiming for Preston and Kelsey’s high mass, Ren took her colored pencils and drew an elaborate, multi-room mansion for her plastic horses on the back of an old legal pad.
At four-fifteen, a voicemail notification popped up on my phone.
It was Mom. Her voice was light, airy, and drenched in the brittle, triumphant cheerfulness of someone who had survived a battle and was already writing the official history for the parish newsletter.
May you like
"Well, Darcy, the ceremony was absolutely breathtaking. Father Thomas gave a sermon about family loyalty that had half the pews in tears. Maryanne asked where you were, of course, and I had to tell her you had contracted a sudden, violent stomach flu. She was very sympathetic; she sent her love and said we should be grateful it didn't happen during the photographs. The reception is starting now at the club. The beef tenderloin looks divine. We'll see you at Thanksgiving, of course. And we still have Kauai."
I deleted the message without saving the audio.
