The Gown Read online

  “Catherine told me yesterday that you are emigrating to England, and she asked me if I would compose a letter of reference for you. Naturally I was delighted to do so, for I believe your work graces some of my newest creations. At least that is what Monsieur Rébé tells me.”

  “It does, Monsieur Dior, but I would never presume—”

  “I have also written out a list of names where you might apply for work. There are but a few embroidery ateliers in London, so I suggest you look to the designers themselves. Of these I especially recommend Monsieur Norman Hartnell. To my mind, his embroiderers produce particularly exquisite work. Please accept this, together with my sincere good wishes.” With that he handed her an envelope, shook her hand once more, and retreated back through the still-open door.

  As soon as he had gone Miriam turned to her friend. “You did not have to do this for me. I would never have asked it of you.”

  “I know that. I do. But I want to help you, and we both know that Tian’s name can open a great many doors. Promise me that if you do encounter any difficulties you will let me know.”

  “I promise.”

  Miriam had not noticed, then, that the envelope was heavier than two sheets of paper would normally warrant. Only later, after they had embraced and said their good-byes, and she had returned to her lodgings to pack the last of her things, had she discovered the English money, five twenty-pound notes, which Monsieur Dior had tucked inside the envelope. They were with her now, sewn inside the lining of her coat, an insurance policy against darker days.

  She opened her eyes and looked around her hotel room, though she remained where she stood. It was cleaner than she’d expected, though it was hard to see very much in the dim light of the single bulb hanging from the ceiling. There was one window, rather small, with a view of next door’s fire escape. A narrow bed was set against the right-facing wall, its counterpane darned in several places, its pillow worn thin. Beside the bed was a wardrobe with a mirror on its door. In the far corner was a sink, a single towel folded over its edge. To her left, a small desk and chair. A lamp sat on the desk, and she stepped forward and switched it on. Nothing. The bulb was burned out.

  A knock sounded behind her. “Hello? Miss Dass’n?”

  “Yes. Please do come in.”

  Having set the iron on the desk, the clerk attempted to unfold the board, but its mechanism was evidently a mystery to him.

  “Please do not trouble yourself,” she said. “I can manage it.”

  “Sorry ’bout that. There’s only the one power point in the room, here by the desk. You’ll need to unplug the lamp first.”

  She nodded. She would wait until tomorrow to ask about the burned-out bulb. It would be foolish to make any more demands of him tonight. “Thank you very much. Shall I bring the board and iron back to you when I am finished?”

  “No need. I’ll tell the maid when she makes up your room in a day or two. If the laundry needs them back any sooner they’ll come by earlier.”

  “You are very kind,” she said, wishing she could spare the money for a tip. Instead she shook his hand and smiled into his eyes, hoping that he understood.

  “It’s no trouble at all,” he said, his tone genial, and she guessed that he did understand. Or perhaps it was the case that tips were not generally expected here in England. She would have to consult her guide to make sure. “Good night, then.”

  The door clicked shut behind him. She locked it, paused until his footsteps faded away, and then took her first easy breath of the day. Alone. Free of strangers hemming her in, free of half-remembered words and phrases that tugged at her brain like fishhooks. Free of the ingrained need to smooth her every expression into a neutral and unthreatening blank.

  First things first. She unfolded the board, setting it close to the desk, and plugged in the iron. While she waited for it to heat, she set the larger of her two cases on the bed and extracted her best suit and blouse. Though she’d packed them meticulously, with tissue guarding every fold, they had still become creased. The iron was a rather ancient and unreliable-looking device, but a few hesitant passes on the inside hem of her skirt revealed no scorch marks, so she set about erasing the worst of the wrinkles from her garments.

  She was too tired and cold to bother with any sort of nighttime toilette. After changing into her nightgown and hanging up the clothes she’d been wearing, she switched off the light and got into bed. Though the sheets were faintly damp, it wasn’t long before she stopped shivering and began to relax into the comforting embrace of the bed.

  It was there, waiting for her, as soon as she closed her eyes: a panel of ivory silk, luminous in the late afternoon sun, stretched tight over a frame. Her embroidery frame, right by the window in the atelier at Maison Rébé, just where she had left it.

  She considered her progress. The design, a wreath of flowers, was nearly done; it had occupied her mind’s eye for many nights now. Already she’d finished the bourbon roses, their blossoms pale and tender, and the nodding tendrils of honeysuckle winding between their stems. Tonight she would begin the first of the peonies.

  There had been an old peony in her parents’ garden, planted long before they had moved into the house, and every May it had produced armfuls of blooms, some of them as wide as a dinner plate, their petals deepening from palest pink to the cerise of the ripest cherries. It had been Maman’s favorite, and hers, too.

  Last year she had forced herself to go. To discover if any trace of her family, of their lives, still remained. The people who had taken over her parents’ house had said they knew nothing. They would not let her enter, so she had begged to see the garden. Five minutes in the garden, and then she would leave.

  They had killed the peony. They had dug up her mother’s flowers and put in a vegetable garden. They had destroyed every beautiful living thing her mother had planted. They had—

  The peony lived on in her memory. She could see it so clearly, its petals glowing and bright and perfect. Unchanged. Whole and alive.

  She blinked back her tears. She threaded her needle. She touched her fingertips to the ghostly fabric. And she began again.

  Chapter Three

  Heather

  Toronto, Ontario

  Canada

  March 5, 2016

  Heather? It’s Mom. I’ve been calling and calling.”

  “Sorry. Didn’t hear it ringing. What’s up?”

  “Where are you?”

  “I’m just finishing up with my groceries. It’s a zoo. Typical Saturday morning in Toronto. Why?”

  “It’s Nan.”

  The clamor of the busy store, the chatter and complaints of those hemmed in around her, the clang of carts being marshaled outside, the too-loud din of oldies played on crackling speakers—all withered away. In their place rose a drumbeat, dull and steady, pounding insistently against her breastbone. The sound of her own heart.

  “Heather?”

  “What about Nan?” she asked, though she already knew the answer.

  “Oh, honey. I’m so sorry to tell you like this. She died this morning.”

  The line was moving forward, so Heather pushed her cart ahead, obedient to the dictates of the queue. It was hard to steer with only one hand. She wrenched the cart in the right direction, her fingers throbbing where they clutched at the handle.

  “But . . .” she started. Her mouth had gone dry. She swallowed, licked her lips, tried again. “But Nan was fine the last time I talked to her.”

  How long had it been? She usually called on Sundays, but things had been busy at work. Not good busy, just mindless-crap sort of busy, and by the end of the week she was always so tired, and—

  “Heather? Are you still there?”

  She pushed the cart forward again. “I don’t understand. You didn’t tell me she was sick.”

  “I saw her on Wednesday, and she seemed fine enough then. But you know how she hated to admit she was under the weather.”

  “I guess,” Heather whispered.
r />   Something was tickling her cheek. She brushed at her face, her fingertips coming away damp with silent, stealthy tears. She rubbed at them with the woolly cuff of her coat, the same stupid coat that didn’t have any pockets. Maybe she had a tissue in her bag.

  “What happened?”

  “When she didn’t show up for dinner, one of her friends at the Manor checked on her. She was asleep in her chair—the one by the window in her room—and her friend had a hard time waking her up. So they called 911, and then they called us. The doctor said it was pneumonia, the kind that starts as a cold and sneaks up on you. At her age, you know, there isn’t a lot they can do. And we’d talked about it before with her, you know, so we knew she didn’t want it. Any fuss, I mean. So Dad and I stayed with her until . . .”

  All last night Nan had been dying, and she hadn’t even known. “Why didn’t you call me?”

  “Heather. Honey. You know she wouldn’t have wanted you to see her like that. You know that. She was asleep when we got there, so—”

  A sob erupted from Heather’s throat, noisy and mortifying. The placid shoppers around her looked alarmed for a moment, then studiously turned their heads or bent over their phones. Was it kindness or indifference that made them look away?

  Another sob, even louder, as if a dam were bursting.

  “Heather? Listen to me. Forget the groceries. I want you to take your cart over to the help desk, or whatever they call it, and tell them you need to go. Tell them you have an emergency. Are you listening?”

  “Yeah, Mom. I’m listening.” She pulled her cart to the side, steering it carefully so she didn’t bump into anyone. The help desk wasn’t all that far.

  “Can Sunita or Michelle come back and get the groceries?”

  “I guess.”

  “Okay. Then tell whoever’s there that you need to go but your friend will come back for the groceries. Give them your name and number.”

  The woman behind the help desk was busy inserting lottery tickets into a countertop display. She glanced up, her smile thinning as she took in Heather’s tearstained face.

  “Can I help you?”

  “I, uh—”

  “Heather. Pass the phone over. I’ll talk to them.”

  The woman took the phone when Heather offered it, her questioning frown melting into an expression of sympathy as she listened.

  “Hello? Yes? Oh, no. I’m so sorry. Yeah, sure—I can do that. No problem. Okay. No, I won’t hang up.” She handed the phone back. “You’re all set. Your mom explained everything. I’m so sorry about your grandma.”

  Heather tried to smile, but even without a mirror she could tell the result was unconvincing. “Thanks. My friend will be along soon.”

  She turned herself in the direction of the doors, her phone still tucked against her ear. A minute or two later and she was at her little car. Nan’s old car.

  It was an ancient Nissan hatchback, already used when her grandmother had bought it a decade earlier, and entirely lacking in “mod cons,” as Nan liked to say. No air conditioning, no stereo beyond an AM/FM radio, no power steering, and a crank instead of a button to roll down the windows. But it still felt like Nan’s car, and for that reason she would keep it until the wheels fell off.

  Collapsing into the driver’s seat, Heather switched her phone to speaker, dumped it onto the dash, and rested her head on the steering wheel.

  “Are you still there?”

  “Yeah, Mom. Still here.”

  “I don’t want you to drive anywhere just yet. You’re too upset.”

  Deep breath in. Steady breath out. She’d give it another minute, and maybe her hands would stop shaking, and she’d be able to breathe without that awful choking kind of feeling that clawed at her throat.

  “I’ll be okay,” she said after a while. “I just need to get home.”

  “Sure. Take a couple of deep breaths. And roll down the window for some air. Can you see okay? Wipe your eyes. Love you, sweetie.”

  “Love you, too.”

  “Call me when you get home?”

  “Promise.”

  A fizzing instant of static replaced her mother’s voice, then silence. She swiped at her eyes again, then put the car in gear and pointed it in the direction of home.

  Nan was gone.

  Nan was dead.

  How could it be?

  Nan had never seemed that old. She hadn’t even retired until she was eighty. She’d sold the little shop on Lakeshore Avenue that she’d opened fifty years before, and then, five years later, she’d sold her bungalow and moved into Elm Tree Manor, one of those apartment buildings for seniors that had a nurse on call and a dining room for people who didn’t feel like cooking, and so many activities and clubs and outings that she was busier than Heather most weekends.

  Heather could admit that Nan had been slowing down a bit. She had stopped driving and cut back on her volunteer work, and when she picked up a cold she hadn’t been able to shake it off in a day or two like she always used to do. Until now, though, she’d always got better. Always.

  A staccato beep startled her into awareness. The light had changed without her noticing. She waved in apology to the driver behind, her eyes on the road ahead, her thoughts tangled up in memories of Nan.

  She turned left and parked in front of the house, but rather than go straight inside she stayed put, her hands resting on the wheel, and let her gaze drift to the gardens across the street, the sunny side where the ground was warmer and the bulbs had begun to bloom. There were snowdrops and crocuses and even some early daffodils, and she couldn’t be sure if the sight of them made her happy or sad.

  Nan had been looking forward to spring. As president of the gardening committee for the Manor, she’d been in charge of the planters on the patio outside the dining room. The last time Heather had visited, Nan had shown her the annuals she’d been growing from seed. Marigolds, sweet alyssum, cosmos, and petunias, arranged in neat banks of rinsed-out yogurt pots on her living room windowsill.

  What would happen to Nan’s plants? She had to make sure that someone remembered to water them.

  Heather switched off the ignition, took a few deep breaths to steady herself, then braved the short walk to her front door. She only just made it to the bench in the hall before her knees gave out, her purse slipping down her arm to land on the tiled floor.

  The hall was a small space, hemmed in by two doors: one to her little apartment upstairs, and the other to the main-floor apartment where Sunita and Michelle lived. The house had been divided up when her friends had first bought it, and one day they would likely want the top floor back, but for now they were happy to rent it to her for almost nothing.

  “Sunita?” she called out. “Michelle?”

  “Suni’s out,” came a voice from the back. “You’re stuck with me. What’s up?”

  “I got a call from my mom when I was at the store.”

  “And what’s up with Liz and Jim this week? Are they going on another trip?”

  “No. It’s Nan. She called about Nan.”

  “Is she all right? Did she have another fall?”

  One deep breath. Another. “No,” Heather heard herself say. “No. She died. She’s dead.”

  There was a metallic clatter, as if something had been dumped in the sink, then footsteps hastening to the front. An instant later, she was enveloped in a warm, vanilla-scented embrace. Of course. It was Saturday morning, so Michelle was baking.

  “Oh, sweetie, no. Oh, that’s just awful news. Come into the kitchen. You need a cup of tea.”

  “Y-you sound like Nan,” was all Heather could manage, and then she was blinded by another rush of tears.

  She sat there and let Michelle peel off her coat and unlace her boots, and then, with only a little urging, lead her to the kitchen.

  “Sit down. I’ll get the kettle going. Do you want a muffin?”

  “No, thanks. I don’t think I can eat anything just yet.” She rested her head on the kitchen table, its vintage
Formica wonderfully cool against her brow. “Where’s Sunita?” she asked without looking up.

  “She went for a run in High Park. Should be back any minute.”

  “I left all my groceries at the store. I couldn’t think straight, so Mom talked me through it. I said I’d send someone back for them.”

  “I’ll go. Or Suni when she gets home.”

  Heather closed her eyes and tried not to think, not about anything at all. The kettle began to whistle, and Michelle busied herself with fixing up the teapot just so. She was always so particular about tea.

  “Sit up, now. Here it is. I made it with lemon and honey. Just how Nan used to fix it for you.”

  Heather straightened herself. Let the homely pottery mug warm her hands. “I can’t believe it. I can’t.”

  “Did your mom say what happened?”

  “It wasn’t anything dramatic. Just a cold that turned into something worse. And I know she was almost ninety-four, and people don’t live forever. Except she was the sort of person who seemed like she might live forever.”

  “I know what you mean. All those people who lived through the war. You’d think they were made out of cast iron.”

  The oven timer sounded. Michelle switched it off, pulled out a tray of muffins, and set them on a nearby cooling rack. “Okay. That’s the last batch. I’ll head to the store now. The Loblaw’s on Dundas?”

  “Yeah. Thanks so much. Oh—do you want my debit card?”

  “I’m good. We can sort it out later. You just stay here and drink your tea. And I’ll call Suni and tell her. That way you won’t have to explain all over again.”

  The front door shut behind her friend, and Heather was alone in the house. She should go upstairs to her own apartment, call her mother, lie down for a while. Let Seymour curl up beside her and soothe her to sleep with his purr. But inertia bound her to the kitchen, to the hard wooden chair, to the scents of citrus and spice that perfumed the air.

  It had been two weeks since she’d last gone to visit Nan. She’d meant to go the other weekend, but she’d been getting over a cold herself and hadn’t wanted to pass on her germs, and she’d been so tired, besides, that she’d barely made it out of bed all day Sunday.