“See this one,” she said, spreading a cream silk charmeuse gown with immense mutton-leg sleeves, exquisite lace in an exaggerated V, gold braid trim that circled the skirt, except for about ten inches where it was torn loose from one side of the pleated train. “My late husband had imbibed a bit too much before the Grand March, bumbled himself over my train, and tore the trim off with the heel of his shoe while I tried to help him regain his balance.” She laughed as she gestured with her hands. “So, I simply reached down, scooped up the trim, and slipped it over my wrist, as if that were a loop planned to hold up my train. He heard lots of train jokes after that, you can be sure.”
The very word train pierced Constance to the core. Nothing would ever again be ordinary. Not even a simple word.
CHAPTER 24
“Now, these are to be treated as raw material, dress fabric and trim straight from the supplier—no timidity or hesitation to cut them up as you see fit.” Dorothea regarded both women, as if to assess their willingness to destroy such exquisitely made gowns.
Constance knew well that Dorothea could see her reluctance. She glanced at Alice, who was unreadable.
“These are to be nothing but fabric and trim now. They are yours to use in any way your imaginations can dream up. These have been living in a storage chest for several years, doing not one soul any good. Nothing about them will be recognized. Especially in an unexpected new design.” Dorothea clapped her hands together and turned to go. “And whatever you don’t use for the gown, use to teach the girls at the orphanage. It will give them practice for higher employment. They could use some beauty themselves. I can hardly wait to see what the two of you dream up. I hope you have sharp scissors.”
Dorothea smiled as Analee opened the door for her. She turned back with a slight chuckle. “If she doesn’t have sharp scissors, would you be certain she gets some?”
Constance felt an unfamiliar lightness at the two women’s laughter and watched Dorothea depart. She turned her attention to Alice and ushered her up the stairs, every step both of anticipation and a mild anxiety at what she was doing. Was any of this wise, given her circumstances?
The previously dust-covered third-floor room was now gleaming, the furniture polished, the glass knobs on the drawers sparkling, the mirror over the chest clean and spotless. The white wrought-iron bedstead rose against the wall opposite the windows, which welcomed the sun through their squeaky-clean panes. A slight breeze ruffled the white dotted Swiss curtains. On the polished floor, the crocheted rag rug, well beaten outside on the clothesline, now actually showed its bright colors. In one corner sat a small slipper chair and footstool. A blue corded coverlet lay over the bed.
Alice set down her luggage and stared around her, almost in disbelief. Never in her life had she lived in a room so light and fresh. The rooms of her flat with Howard had been furnished for a man: dark, with a heaviness characteristic of the period. Even this house, on its lower floors, echoed the darker wood, heavy patterned wallpaper, excessive ornamentation, and the rich, vivid hues of the Victorian era, though perhaps with a somewhat lighter touch than most.
But here—here was a space to lift her spirit, to give freedom to her hope for a new life. Alice walked to the window and pulled back the curtain. She felt as if she were in a tree house. Below her were branches, both bare and leaved, through which she could see down to the well-kept yard, where Analee was hanging wash as the girls ran beneath the dripping clothes. From her windows in Howard’s Chicago flat, there had been only brick and stone around her. Here she felt she belonged to the world.
“Thank you,” she said to Constance, who smiled. “Thank you.”
*
As the days passed, Constance became more at ease with a stranger in the house—a stranger who came and went quietly, whom the children took to as their initial shyness evaporated into teases for attention. Constance found her first consults with Alice informative and creatively open over possible transformations of the gowns Dorothea had so generously donated. Here was a young woman who knew her trade. These elegant gowns in no way intimidated her. Alice spoke in knowing terms of the qualities of the different fabrics: how this satin might lie if cut on the bias; how the silk might be folded for cording and applied in designs with the grace of well-wrought script or pulled into narrow ruffles that widened for floral petals from center to edge; how the beading might be removed from this train, combined with ruching from that sleeve, and applied in an unrelated composition across a bodice. Constance marveled at Alice’s quiet confidence in her suggestions, the surety with which she proposed a seemingly endless list of design ideas. Nothing about these exquisite garments, which so intimidated Constance, seemed to bring Alice the least hesitation. While Constance saw them as finished jewels of design work, Alice seemed to view them as only so much raw material.
“How have you come by this extraordinary talent for seeing things as something different altogether?” Constance asked one afternoon, as they laid out Dorothea’s garments for scrutiny.
“Oh, experience at Carson Pirie Scott. But primarily, perhaps, a gift from my mother.” Alice lifted the beaded sleeve of one gown and examined it inside and out, in much the way Constance might have examined the girls’ ears for cleanliness.
“She was a seamstress herself?” Constance tried to see the sleeve as Alice did.
“No. Oh, no. She was simply a wife and mother of the Midwest plains.” Alice took the new scissors and began to clip at some stitches on the back side of the silk. “We hadn’t much out there, and most of what there was focused on the farm and on my father and brothers, who ran it. She and I kept the garden, long rows of vegetables, flowers where we could fit them in. Milked the cows and slopped the hogs. Fed the chickens and chased them down for Sunday dinners. But she always made time for me. And for herself, I know, in making time for me. Her grandmother had come from France and had taught her the finest stitches as a girl. And Mama taught them to me.”
Constance was struck by the intimacy she discerned between a mother and child, something she had yearned for all her life, something she wanted to give to her own girls. She could never offer them the rich gift of skill with a needle or with anything, for that matter. Her mother had given her nothing but things, fine things to be sure, and rigid instructions on how to keep them as fine as they were on the day they were given. They were all over this house: pieces of Haviland Limoges, a tiny gold Swiss clock under a glass dome, a sterling vanity set, a beautiful china doll, which was only to be admired and never to be taken from its stand and played with.
“Did you make all your own clothes?”
“Well, yes, of course. There was no other way to have them. Not for the women. We ordered the men’s heavy overalls from the mercantile in town, but Mama made their shirts. Then so did I. But for us, all we had was what we made. Simple shapes to wear for work. But then Mama would show me how to do the bias for a sash or make a little rosebud for the neck of my dress from the scraps. And a rose for her own, if there was enough left over. On those long evenings after supper, when my pa and the boys were in bed, so tired, we would sit in front of the quilting frame, by the hearth for light, and stitch up scraps to cover the beds in winter. Oh, I can’t begin to tell you how cold those prairie winters were. Chicago too. Ah, but now I’m here, about as far south as I can get, and I’m hoping it won’t be cold like that.”
“No, not very. True cold is quite rare here.”
“Anyway, Mama taught me how to see the colors—we didn’t have all that much choice, but enough that if you didn’t see it right, you’d wind up with an ugly quilt on your bed come winter.” Alice had been pulling steadily at the thread she had snipped. Each stitch had been pulled out separately and whipped around her finger until now she had a neat little ball of continuous silk thread. She pulled it from the tip of her finger and handed it to Constance. “There, now, that will serve us well for beading. Or for some satin stitch embroidery. Mama taught me a right good number of fancy stitches. Made those leftover fabrics beautiful, in spite of themselves.” She stood and stretched her back.
“Just you and your mother, Alice? No sisters?”