“Perfect! Simply elegant!” exclaimed Aunt Eveline. Was she blind? Was I missing something? I looked again, and there, reflected behind me, was Sandra Lee, with an expression on her face that told me everything I feared was true.
“Aunt Eveline,” I said, “thank you so much! It’s just perfect! It’s not every little girl who can wear a Lily Dior to dancing school!”
Sandra Lee’s expression faltered. That girl was dumb! You could make her think anything.
“It looks Grecian, don’t you think?” I said gaily to Aunt Eveline, ignoring Sandra Lee. I swung around, hoping to create a swirling effect, but the stubborn pleats only buckled slightly and then fell into permanent straightness.
“Not Grecian. Venetian,” said Aunt Kate from the hall.
“Venice?” asked Aunt Eveline, puzzled.
“Blind. Venetian blind,” said Aunt Kate, toddling on down the hall to the Glorious Mysteries.
It was too great an effort to pretend anymore. I made up my mind that I would at least do away with the shield that passed for a brooch. As I pulled the Lily Dior over my head, I caught a whiff of the perfume that clings to all of my mother’s things. My mother had worn this dress, but on her it must have revealed, in a modest way, of course, her tiny waist and curves.
“God’s nightgown!” said Tom on Friday night. One of the chaperones had pried him loose from the wall and shoved him in my direction in the middle of the third dance. He pulled me to the dance floor, and holding me as though I were contagious, started shouting to overcome the noise of the piano and the distance separating us. “Your dress looks like a nightgown! It is a dress, isn’t it?” he yelled, swooping me across the floor in a giant box step.
“It’s a Lily Dior,” I whispered.
“A what?”
“A Lily Dior.” If I spoke low enough maybe he’d notice that the whole dancing school could hear him.
“Somebody doesn’t know the difference between night and day! Did you finish Lad?”
“I’m not deaf, Tom,” I said, giving up, and shouting back. “I’ll bring it back tomorrow. Do you mind if I borrow the next one?”
“You can read them all. Doesn’t Pumpkin remind you of Lad? I’m training Pumpkin to be just like him. She’ll . . . ”
But the piano stopped, releasing Tom from dancing and conversation, and he retreated to the wall in mid-sentence. Holding my head like Jane Whitmore, I marched toward the back room, trying not to look abandoned.
“Stuck-up!” Harold hissed at me.
“So what?” I snapped back. Let him be in love with Sandra Lee, I didn’t care. Not one of those boys even vaguely resembled Edmond. Tom least of all, with his freckles and straw hair and long, skinny arms and legs. He only danced with me because his mother was a friend of my family, and she told him he had to. I didn’t care if any of those boys liked me or not. Especially Harold.
“Addie, what are you doing back here?” Miss Rush came in just as Edmond was about to discover me, dressed in my simple white dress.
“Uh, nothing.”
“I saw you dancing with Tom. He’s a nice boy, isn’t he?”
“His mother or somebody probably made him.”
“Told him to dance with you? Nonsense! He chose you.”
I refused to answer such an obvious lie. I guess Miss Rush saw I was close to tears, because she turned sincere.
“Addie, dear, don’t worry if no one asks you for the contest. You’re going to be lovely when you grow up! How well I remember your beautiful mother! And—and, I’m going to speak to Eveline about your clothes—now! Good heavens!” Words failed her as she contemplated the Lily Dior.
“It’s a Lily Dior,” I said timidly.
“It’s terrible. But you! Those eyes and that figure!”
Family Nose, I thought. What figure?
“Eveline told me you like to draw. Are you going to be an artist?”
“Maybe.” I hate conversations with grown people where they pretend to be interested in me. “Miss Rush, I’m going home now.”
“Oh, no, dear! You can’t leave before your Aunt Toosie comes for you!” she said in alarm. “I’ll call you the minute she gets here.”
I don’t like pity, either, so I didn’t say anything, but when Miss Rush gave up and went back to judge the contest, sure to be won by Sandra Lee and dumb Harold, I slipped out the back into the warm, moist air and moon-cloudy night.
When I got home, crawled into bed, and tried to enter into my secret life, Aunt Eveline came in, supposedly to tuck me in, but actually to pry out of me why I’d left dancing school before Aunt Toosie came.
“What’s wrong, dear?” she said a million times in tragic tones. “Is it your mother?”
“No,” I snapped. “It is not my mother or anything else. Everything is fine and I am sleepy. Good night.”
I rolled over, making further conversation impossible, and she finally left.
“Jane! Jane, my darling!” Edmond whispered lovingly to me, but I was too tired to answer, and fell asleep, straight into my giant-wave nightmare. It begins with Fear. Just the feeling. I don’t know why I’m afraid and I try to figure out what is terrifying me. Then I hear it—a great roaring noise coming closer, and I know it is the sound of a tidal wave twenty feet, fifty feet high, rolling in out of the Gulf of Mexico. I try to run but my legs go in movie slow motion. It is too late to get away. I see the wave coming toward me, towering over my head, cresting and breaking with a mighty crash, swallowing me into its green underbelly. I look up through miles of transparent water, unable to move my arms or legs. I know my mother is near, but if I open my mouth to call, I’ll swallow water. I hold my breath until real panic and the need to breathe wake me, gasping for air and sobbing with relief.
Addie! Addie! Is Pumpkin with you?”
“No,” I said, desperately trying to remember exactly what I’d done when I left the shed before school. I was sure I’d closed the gate we keep across the door—wasn’t I? “I’m positive I closed the gate,” I said, not positive.
“No use what you did, child.” Nini had come out on the porch. “Tom, your Uncle Malvern done let Pumpkin out first thing this morning. Came in this yard with a handkerchief tied round his face like a thief mask! ‘Nina!’ he say. Can’t never get my name straight. ‘Gotta borrow this here dog for a few years!’ He laughed like he’s making a big joke. ‘Mr. Malvern,’ I say, ‘I wouldn’t mess with Pumpkin if I was you.’ ‘But you ain’t me,’ he say, ‘and you ain’t allergic to dog hair.’ So he goes in the shed and next thing I know, he’s running out, yelling he been bit and he can’t breathe, and Pumpkin is a-chasing him and I ain’t seen Pumpkin since.”
Tom didn’t say a word. He turned and ran to his house. I ran after him. I caught up outside Uncle Malvern’s door. Uncle Malvern was standing there saying, “Shore sorry, boy. Didn’t mean for her to get away. Thought I’d take her to a place I know in the country for a day or so. Country air, ya know. A dog needs country air.”
Tom’s fist was clenched and I’m not sure what he would have done. We heard a bark. There was no mistake. It was Pumpkin. Tom took the back steps, using the handrail to swing himself down in two leaps, and I found him hugging Pumpkin,