Two
EMMY
London, England
1940
THE wedding dress in the display window frothed like uncorked champagne, bubbling toward Emmy Downtree as she stood on the other side of the broken glass. Glittering shards lay sprinkled about the gown’s ample skirt, sparkling as if they belonged there. Yellow ribbons streamed from behind the pouty-lipped mannequin, simulating a golden, unaware sun. At Emmy’s feet, jagged splinters were strewn on the sidewalk at menacing angles. A hand-lettered Help Wanted sign, still partially taped to a fractured edge, pitched forward onto the frame, and fifteen-year-old Emmy knelt to pull it gingerly from the glassy ruin. She could hear the owner inside Primrose Bridal talking on the telephone to the police, demanding attention be paid her. Someone had crashed into her storefront during the night.
Julia, Emmy’s seven-year-old sister, looked up at her. “Why don’t the Germans like wedding dresses?”
Emmy didn’t laugh at her sister’s assumption that the Luftwaffe had blown the window to bits. For the past year they had lived with wailing air raid alarms, drills at school, and mandatory blackout curtains. Several uncomfortable nights had been spent with Mum huddled in the shelter nearest their flat with a dozen of their neighbors when a raid had seemed imminent. Both girls had carried a gas mask to school the past term. It was not so far off the mark that Julia saw the destroyed window and concluded that what they’d been told for a year could happen at any moment had at last happened.
Emmy rose to her feet with the little sign in her hands. “The Germans didn’t do this, Jewels. None of the other windows on the street are broken. See? A car probably hopped the sidewalk. Hit the gas instead of the brake. Something like that.”
Julia’s gaze hung on the wreck of the window. “You sure?”
“Positive. We would have heard the sirens, right? It was quiet last night.”
In fact, the sirens had not whined for more than a week, and the buzzing hum of the Luftwaffe over their heads hadn’t been heard in twice that long. It was as quiet as it had been almost a year ago when the war was new and undefined.
“No one will want that dress now,” Julia said, apparently satisfied that the Nazis didn’t hate wedding dresses after all. “It’s got glass in it.”
“It can be shaken out. I bet the bride who buys it will never even know.” Emmy flicked away a sliver of window glass from the Help Wanted sign and read the smaller words beneath it. Hand-sewing and alterations. Eight to ten hours a week. Inquire within. She hadn’t seen the placard before and wondered how long it had been taped to the window. Surely it had only been within the last few days. Emmy was familiar enough with the window at Primrose to know the sign was new.
“I wouldn’t wear that dress. I like your brides better anyway. Yours are prettier.”
Emmy laughed easily. “Think so?” She looked past the ruined display to the woman inside who was becoming more adamant that a policeman come that very moment.
“No, I haven’t been burglarized.” The woman’s voice easily reached the two girls on the sidewalk. “That’s not the point! Someone has run into my window and smashed it.”
“This one’s too poufy,” Julia continued. “Yours are much nicer.”
“Mine are just drawings, Jewels. Hard to know what they’d look like if they were real.” Emmy looked to the chemist’s across the narrow street and saw Mum through the window at the register. She’d be coming out soon. Emmy replaced the placard, but lowered it to the display window’s floor facedown. She would come back later—when the owner wasn’t so distracted—and with her best bridal gown sketches in hand, just in case she needed extra proof that she was worth considering.
“Yours are still prettier,” Julia said.
Their mother stepped out onto the sidewalk across from them. Annie Downtree walked between slow-moving cars toward her daughters. A man in a shiny blue Citro?n tipped his hat as he stopped for her. Emmy watched as the driver’s eyes traveled past Mum’s honey brown curls, her slim waist, to her long legs and slender ankles. With only sixteen years separating her mother and Emmy, they had lately been taken for sisters. Emmy had been annoyed at first, but realized quickly that such a mistake meant she came across as the adult she was so ready to be. The sooner she was independent of Mum, the sooner Emmy could chase her own dreams. Mum behaved as a sister toward Emmy most of the time anyway, confiding secrets one moment and withholding them the next, reading magazines and smoking cigarettes while Emmy made dinner, coming home late at night when the mood struck her, asking Emmy for advice when it came to dealing with Neville, Annie’s on-and-off-again lover and Julia’s father. Mum’s intermittent displays of maternal competence were largely spent on Julia, who had never been mistaken for Mum’s sister.
“Let’s go, then,” Mum said when she reached them. She slipped a little white parcel that she had picked up for her employer into her handbag.
“Look what happened to the bridal shop, Mum,” Julia said urgently.
Their mother cast a disinterested gaze toward the ruined window. “Well, that’s too bad. But no one’s getting married these days, anyway. Come on. I still need to go to the butcher before work. Mrs. Billingsley demands a ham.”
“That’s not true,” Emmy said.
Mum, already several steps ahead, turned halfway around. “Yes, it is true. I told you yesterday that I had to work today.”
“I mean it’s not true that no one’s getting married. If that were true, this shop wouldn’t still be open.” And the owner wouldn’t be hiring.
“For the love of God, Em. There’s a bloody war on, in case you’ve forgotten.” She swung back around to resume her hurried pace.
“But the Germans didn’t break this window!” Julia chirped.
Mum turned in midstride, her frown deepening. “What are you filling her head with, Emmy?”
“I’m not filling her head with anything. She asked if the Germans bombed this place and I told her they hadn’t.”
Mum sighed but kept walking.