The Secret Lives of Dresses (18 page)

“You’re quiet today,” he said, when they stopped to get drinks out of the one cooler they’d left plugged in.

“I guess I just didn’t get enough sleep last night.”

He yawned. “Yeah, me, too. Maybe we should break off early? We’ve painted nearly everything we can reach to paint. We should really let some of this dry before we move the furniture around to get at the other wall.”

“Sure.” It was a sensible suggestion.

“And I could really use a nap before I go out tonight.” Gary turned to rub the last of the paint on his roller off onto the wall.

Dora shrugged. It looked like a shrug from the outside, but inside it felt like a shiver. “Whatever you say, boss.” She took the rollers and trays back to the sink to wash them out.

“All right, then,” she said. “Tomorrow? Regular time?”

“Regular time,” Gary said. He opened the door with a flourish. “You taking the library route?”

“I actually rode my bike today,” Dora said. She turned towards the bike rack.

“Okay, see you tomorrow. . . .”

“See you tomorrow—have fun!” Dora answered. She immediately wished she hadn’t, but Gary answered her only with a vague wave. He already had his cell phone out of his pocket, and was looking at the screen disconsolately. She felt a little stab of glee that at least Allison had been too bored to even text him.

Dora made it all of two blocks away before starting to cry.

The next day was pure horror. Dora started by hitting the “snooze” button a few more times than usual; after dragging herself out of bed, she found no milk for her Grape-Nuts or bread for toast. She looked at her store of renovation-appropriate clothes before pulling out a banana-yellow T-shirt that did her no favors, and, what was worse, Dora knew it.

And yet she was still at the coffee shop before Gary. By twenty minutes. She’d almost made up her mind to call in sick, call in scorned, set something on fire, quit, or all of the above, when Gary strolled up. Allison wasn’t with him—not physically, that is—but Dora could tell that their date last night had been a successful one. Gary looked smugly confident. Dora wanted to hit him.

“Hey,” he said. “Look, I know I’m late, so I brought us some breakfast—those almond croissants from the new bakery, for us to try out. Want one? I know you like them. . . .”

Dora’s heart rose unaccountably, even as she tried to push it down. Gary had remembered she liked almond croissants. She forced herself to shrug. “Sure, I’ll have one. Thanks.”

They sat, in what Gary probably took for companionable silence, outside the shop, on a bench. Dora’s croissant was gummy, or maybe her mouth was dry. Gary hadn’t thought of coffee.

The rest of the day would have been normal if Dora hadn’t felt like someone had removed all her skin, carefully, invisibly, and then dumped her into a swimming pool full of sand and rubbing alcohol. Everything was painful. Hearing about Allison. Not hearing about Allison. Gary’s jokes, Gary’s silence. Gary’s grunting as they moved the furniture from one end of the shop to the other. Gary commenting on how she’d put on muscle, what with all the furniture-moving, and mock testing her biceps. Gary’s blithe “Good night!” as they closed up, and his whistling as he walked away.

Dora rode her bike home, ate ice cream for dinner, and tried to top off her self-pity party with
The Princess Bride
, but had to turn it off when Buttercup realized the Dread Pirate Roberts was really Westley. Dora stared at the blank screen, and then called Gabby. “I need your advice,” she said.

“You got it, honey.” Dora heard Gabby sit down with a sigh. Dora pictured Gabby on the overstuffed chair in what she liked to call her “booo-dwar.” “What’s his name?”

“Who said it was a him?” Dora asked.

“Dorabelle, I am an expert on two things, and two things only: interior design and M-E-N. And your little apartment up there is as cute as can be. So if you want my advice it must be about a boy.”

“His name is Gary.”

“I don’t like that name,” Gabby said. She sounded serious.

“Really?” Dora tried not to sound surprised.

“He sounds older than you. I don’t think any boys in your classes at school were named Gary. It’s an older man’s name.”

“Gabby, sometimes you’re scary. He’s thirty.”

“Thirty? And still in college?”

“Grad school.”

“And you know him how?” Gabby didn’t wait for Dora to answer. “Oh, no. He’s that boy at the coffee shop, isn’t he? Your boss?”

“I think I know what you’re going to say,” Dora said. “I’ve said it all to myself already, I think I just need to hear it from you.”

“Oh, honey, it’s that bad, is it?” Gabby’s sympathy put a lump in Dora’s throat. “I knew when you finally got hit you’d get hit hard.”

“Well . . .” Dora pulled the afghan off the back of the couch and curled up under it.

“Tell me about him. What’s he like?”

“He’s funny. And he’s a bit clueless. I know more about running a coffee shop than he does.”

“Well, that’s not a surprise. You know more than a lot of people.” Gabby paused. “How does he speak to you?”

“He tells me all the time how great I am and how he’d be lost without me, and flirts constantly.” Dora twisted the afghan around her feet. “And nothing else. I don’t know what to think.”

“Have you asked him to go do anything? Movies, or whatever you kids do? You can always do the ‘I have an extra ticket’ thing, although I know girls today ask boys out without a qualm, right?”

Dora snorted. “I can’t. He says he can’t date undergraduates.”

“Well, honey, then you should look elsewhere. No sense knocking on a locked door. There are plenty of boys at Lymond, I understand it’s a coed institution. . . .”

“Here’s the thing. I could be a graduate student in January.”

Gabby sounded confused. “How’s that work? Don’t you graduate in the spring?”

“Well, I have enough credits to graduate at the end of the fall semester, and if I do that, then I just squeak in under the wire for the deadline to apply for this Master’s in Liberal Arts Program here. It starts in January, so you have to have your bachelor’s degree by the end of the previous calendar year to qualify. So I lose one semester of undergraduate work, but I can start grad school earlier.”

“Have you mentioned this to Mimi?”

“Not yet.”

“Well, you had been talking about going to grad school. I think Mimi had hoped you’d work for a while before you did, though.”

“Doing what, is the problem.” Dora sighed.

“Okay, let’s get back to this boy problem. If you’re a grad student, you think he’d be interested?”

“I don’t know. . . .”

“Have you mentioned this plan to him?”

“I don’t want him to think that I’m, well, hinting. So no.”

“Well, it sounds like a complicated plan, but I’ll cross my fingers for you, Dora.”

“Could you cross your fingers on something else for me, too?”

“Sure, I got plenty of fingers. What is it?”

Dora took a deep breath. “When I go home for Christmas I’m going to ask Mimi to tell me about my folks. My dad and my mom.”

“I don’t think that’s stupid. I think that’s brave, and long overdue.”

“I know they had a fight because my dad didn’t want to work in the department store, but I don’t know what it was that my dad wanted to do more.”

“I don’t know, either, honey. It was before my time.” Gabby sounded sad.

“I wish he wanted to be a CIA agent, or swallow swords, or something, but he probably just wanted to do something normal and boring.”

“Nobody Mimi raised could be boring.”

“I’m taking a stab at it.” Dora could hear the doorbell ringing on Gabby’s end. “Do you need to get that?”

“Oh, honey, yes—Mimi’s out.” Gabby giggled. “I’ll see you home for Thanksgiving, we can plot out how to approach Mimi then. Love you. And . . . good for you!”

“Love you, too. . . .”

Dora had settled back and let herself daydream about Gary. Once she’d graduated, she told herself, of course they’d be together.

Home in Mimi’s store, though, it was harder to picture Gary in a boyfriend role. Mimi wouldn’t have had any patience for Gary. Mimi found incompetence annoying, not endearing. Con, with his clipboard and truck—he was much more Mimi’s style. Dora thought if Mimi could stock her closet with men as well as dresses, there would be a rack of Cons: Con in a hard hat, Con in a business suit, Con in a tuxedo. Dora lingered on the mental image of Con in a tuxedo. Just then the doorbell jangled again, and Dora jumped guiltily. No tuxedo, but it was Con.

C
on had seen her jump, but he couldn’t possibly know what she had been thinking of, Dora reassured herself. She blushed anyway.

He laughed. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you! Quiet day, huh?”

Dora grimaced. “
Parts
of it were quiet.”

“Parts? What happened in the other parts?”

“My aunt Camille happened.”

“Ah. I see.”

“You know Camille?”

“Only from what Mimi’s told me. And from reading between the lines of what Mimi
didn’t
tell me. As in, she never told me anything nice about Camille.”

“Well, there isn’t anything nice about Camille. And, for extra bonus not-nice, she hauled in Tyffanee, too.”

“Tyffanee?”

“Her daughter. Who got a
B-minus
in Fashion Merchandising last semester, so Camille thinks she might be able to help make this place ‘sparkle.’”

“Why do I think that when someone like Camille says the word ‘sparkle’ she means it literally?”

“Because you’re obviously a very perceptive guy.” Dora blushed again. Did she really just compliment Con? She pretended to be looking for a paper clip for the day’s credit-card receipts. All two of them.

“Bingo. I
am
a very perceptive guy. I am
so
perceptive, in fact, that I realized you were probably alone in the store today, and ergo you might be hungry. So, seeing as how it’s nearly Southern Standard Suppertime, I thought I’d come by and see if you wanted to grab something to eat.”

“I told Camille we would meet up at dinner tonight, after I go see Mimi. . . .”

“Dinner? With the woman who, according to Mimi, won’t eat any food that doesn’t come in a shallow plastic tub?”

“I could call her. . . .” Dora almost smiled.

“You could. It is entirely within the realm of possibility that you could call her.”

“Actually, it’s even better than that—I could call her
now
, when I know she’s just had a manicure, and that way I won’t even have to talk with her. I can just leave a voicemail.”

“Voicemail. The last refuge of the scoundrel. But justified, in this case.”

Dora already had her hand on the phone when it rang.

It was Gabby.

“Is . . . is everything all right?” Dora held her breath.

“Oh, baby. Yes, yes, everything’s okay. I was just over at Baptist, and I thought I’d call you. The doctors said it would be better if you waited until tomorrow to visit. Mimi had a lot of tests today and she needs to rest.”

Dora felt a curious mixture of relief and disappointment. She hadn’t realized that she’d been dreading the trip back to the hospital all day, dreading seeing Mimi so reduced and drained.

“Oh, okay. Thanks, Gabby.” Her voice was flat. “Oh—I told Camille I’d meet her for dinner back at the house, but she was just awful today, even worse than usual, and I think I’m going to cry off. I just want to warn you, in case you want to avoid seeing her, too.”

“That woman!” Gabby was indignant. “Thanks for letting me know, honey. I’ll find somewhere else to be, don’t you worry. Don’t stay out too late, though.”

Con had drifted off politely to another corner of the store while Dora was on the phone.

“It sounds like today is not getting better. Everything okay?” His eyes were kind, and the tilt of his head as he looked down at her was somehow reassuring.

“That was Gabby—everything’s okay. I mean, not much worse than yesterday, but Mimi’s doctor wants her to get some rest tonight, so I’m not going over there.”

“I hardly think you’re unrestful, but listening to the doctors is usually a good idea.” Con’s forehead crinkled with concern. “Do you still feel up for getting something to eat?”

“Well, I feel even less up to dealing with Camille, so yes, please.” Dora looked at the clock. Just past five. “Let me call Camille and close up.”

Dora left a quick voicemail for Camille, explaining that she wouldn’t be home for dinner.

Grabbing her bag from the back room, she caught sight of herself in the broken cheval mirror, the one Mimi had been meaning to get fixed since Dora was about twelve. The jagged reflection showed a pale and tired Dora in each shard.
If Mimi were here, she would nag me to put on lipstick.
A quick rummage in the little medicine cabinet in the bathroom turned up an old tube of Elizabeth Arden; Dora put it on carefully. She wasn’t good with real, grown-up makeup like eyeliner and lipstick. She had always been more of a tinted-moisturizer and lip-balm kind of person, but tinted moisturizer and lip balm didn’t really seem to go with her new-old wardrobe. The lipstick, according to a faded sticker on the end of the tube, was a color called Charming. It must have looked great on Mimi, Dora decided. It didn’t feel as odd as lipstick normally felt, which Dora attributed to the aura of her dress. She smoothed the skirt and picked a stray thread off her hem.

Out on the sidewalk the night was warm and almost muggy. Dora was dusty and stiff from being in the shop. Suddenly she felt awkward. “Thanks for being—for being so kind to me,” she said.

“I’m glad you’re letting me help,” Con said. Dora looked up at him. He looked serious. “Lots of folks did nice things for me when my dad was sick, and I was beginning to worry about all the karmic debt.”