The sounds of feet and chattering stopped the women’s voices. Simultaneously they turned toward the door. As Analee entered with Maggie again on her hip, the little girl pulled at Analee’s lower lip, and both dissolved into a hoot of laughter.
“Do it again, Analee,” Maggie begged.
Analee pursed her lips and blew a noisy breath onto the child’s cheeks, evoking another howl of laughter. Analee pulled the thick Sears Roebuck catalog from the cabinet and set it in the chair with one hand, then settled Maggie on it with the other. Delia climbed into her own chair and surveyed the meticulous organization of her paint supplies.
“Who fixed my stuff so good? You do that, Mama?”
“No.” Constance nodded at Alice.
Delia jumped back down from her chair and threw her arms around Alice. “Aren’t they so pretty?” she asked. “I’m going to paint one for your room tomorrow.”
Constance studied Alice’s face, searching for some indication to reassure her that Alice would even be here tomorrow. What she saw was a smile of acceptance at her older daughter.
“You can help me paint it, if you want to.”
*
Though the tension never left her now, the following days of sketching ideas, rearranging pieces of cut fabric and trim, pinning and basting, and scrutinizing in the standing mirror at least diverted Constance’s attention from her anxieties. Together, she and Analee kept a close eye on the children, the guardian role passing wordlessly between them in a carefully choreographed dance, where a mere glance, hand motion, or lift of the chin elicited a response. Alice watched and in subtle, unobtrusive ways joined in the guardianship. The girls took to her, especially Delia, who was entranced at having an admirer and assistant for her artistic endeavors. She stood beside Alice for hours, watching her sketch or match the subtle shades of one fabric to another, this thread to that fabric. Here was a curious and interested child to whom Alice could show her own talents and in whom she could nurture inherent young talents.
*
The gown became a collaborative work, involving both women and, unexpectedly, Analee, whose innate artistic bent emerged from some hiding place she had maintained for years. Analee’s secreted talents enhanced a design that would be meaningful to Constance, realized through Alice’s knowledge of what might and might not be done with the materials they had and the limits of her skills.
Constance set up repeated trips to the library for the two of them, and took the girls along, in search of information regarding the symbolism of the queen she would attend, symbols that could inspire her own ideas for the nascent design. With stacks of books in hand, Constance and Alice would settle in the children’s area, with much shushing. The assortment of picture books would entertain the girls while they conducted their research.
Constance was interested only in the actual history of the real woman Semiramis. The wild mythologies and legends that had grown up around her over the centuries bit too deeply into Constance’s own uncertainty and guilty fear. She could not bear the legendary, magical figure featured in multiple, sometimes conflicting embellishments, certainly not the damned creature of Dante—consigned to Hell in the Circle of Lust—or the tragic figure of Voltaire or Rossini’s opera. But the real woman Semiramis, who had taken the throne at her husband’s death and remained there until her son came of age, who had ruled, expanded, and stabilized the Assyrian Empire, here was a woman who could lend her hope. Aside from history, the only myth of Semiramis that touched her was that of an abandoned girl raised by doves.
Whatever ideas she and Alice came up with must be toned down, simplified. Though there were four queens, rather than one, the gown of an attendant should be modest in design. Any number of ideas excited Constance, and her excitement passed to Alice, and vice versa, but only by working backward from that excitement to something simpler could they find an appropriate balance. Underneath it all, there was for Constance the consideration that she was a recent widow and that she must be unrecognizable.
In truth, Constance felt unrecognizable, even to herself. Who was she now? Who had she ever been? Someone who was no one, other than to her children. And Analee. Her father had been essentially absent, much like Benton, except that his absence had not been physical. Her father’s absence had been of the heart and mind. He’d been present only as a keen observer of her manners or lack thereof, of her social graces or lack thereof. He had been repetitiously fond of the old English saw that children, specifically girls, should be seen and not heard. Apparently, that had applied also to girls who had grown into women, like her mother. As a child, Constance had simply observed, with unnamable feelings, absorbing lessons as children did, how he silenced her mother with a look or a dismissive, derogatory umph. One barely audible.
As Constance had grown older—old enough to visit other homes in the neighborhood with her mother—the differences she experienced in those homes had brought into question the set dynamic of her own. Children were both heard and seen in those houses in a manner denied to her at home. They sometimes ran right through the house, to her alarm. When nothing bad happened, when no one called them down, she joined the play, at first hesitantly, as they called to her to come on. Their raucous running and jumping on their galloping stick horses frightened her as she stood at the side of the room, watching. It was a sweet girl named Suzanne who pulled her from the sidelines and handed her a little whisk broom from the fireplace to join the stampede. And she did. Her anxiety made her clumsy, and she tripped. Suzanne’s mother picked her up, laughing. “You just need a better horse,” she said, brushing the ashes from Constance’s skirt and fetching her an unused broom with wide bristles from a kitchen closet. Yes, it was so much more stable, and fun. But a fun tinged by anxiety about her father’s response to the dark smudge of ashes that clung to her gingham skirt.
Her mother was a different person during those outings. She came alive, laughed, and chattered away with her friends. Constance listened in rapt attention when conversations settled on serious business. She was amazed at her mother’s emphatic opinions about riding horses, women’s subjugation, the vote, even politics, all punctuated by the dance of her lively hands and the engaged responses of the women, rapt in deep conversation while the children scampered about. Who was this inspired woman who, once they crossed their own threshold, became so grimly silent; who rushed her to her nanny for a bath and clean clothes before her father returned from his office; who sat with her hands in her lap and murmured amen to her father’s tedious blessings; who never lifted her own fork until he did; and who scolded Constance in a quiet voice if her eager hand touched her own fork before her father lifted his to the plate?