“That’s what he does,” Norma said. “Every few years, he’s running a new scheme under a new name. You remember Beulah Binford and the murder scandal down in Virginia? He tried to put her on the stage after the trial. Can you imagine making a show of that mess?”
Norma started shuffling through a stack of clippings. Constance slapped her hand down on top of them. “Norma. I can see what you’ve done. You’ve put together an entire file of grievances against Freeman Bernstein, and you’ve enlisted the help of a reporter who surely has more important work to do. It’s bad enough that you’d pull Belle Headison into this. I can’t believe you’re bothering Carrie with it, too. I can’t take a step in this town without finding someone else you’ve enlisted into this nonsensical scheme of yours.”
Norma didn’t bother to answer and went back to studying her newspapers. Carrie smiled brightly and said, “Oh, this is a far more interesting story than anything you’ve given me. Courthouse duty is dull, but this—this is perfect! ‘Woman Deputy Rescues Sister.’”
“We don’t know that she needs rescuing.”
“Of course she does,” Norma said.
Carrie sat back in her chair and watched the two of them, clearly amused.
Norma shuffled her papers around. “You admit it looks suspicious.”
“I don’t like Fleurette being gone any more than you do, but we mustn’t turn it into a criminal case.”
“Well, I won’t be satisfied until someone has laid eyes on her and can report back that she’s being looked after. We really don’t have any idea.”
“Fleurette is not being forced at knife-point to send home cheerful postcards, if that’s what you think.”
“I know exactly what I think. You’re the one who refuses to see the facts.”
Norma was staring at Constance rather ferociously, waiting for some sort of answer, which never came, as there was no way to respond to a statement like that. Finally Norma hoisted an eyebrow and said, “I’ve waited long enough. Carrie and I are getting on a train and you can’t stop us.”
Norma on a train? Norma, for whom a trip to Hackensack was once exotic?
Constance blamed Carrie for this. She’d fanned all of Norma’s wild notions about kidnappings and secret plots, and failed to see that her mistrust of Freeman Bernstein was founded on nothing more than a generalized contempt of any outsider who tried to interfere with her family.
But now there was this grain of doubt, this disquieting possibility that something really had gone wrong with Fleurette. What if she really had disappeared, or fallen in with bad company? What if she really was stranded somewhere, and very much in need of rescuing?
Constance wasn’t about to admit that Norma might be right. She said, “I can’t seem to stop anyone in this family from getting on a train. But if you’re going, I’m coming with you, if only to intervene before you make fools of yourselves.”
“You don’t have to. Stay home if you don’t like it.”
“I don’t like it, and I’m not staying home,” Constance said.
That’s what passed for a compromise with Norma.
45
“YOU’RE UP EARLY,” Fleurette said from behind a mouthful of pins.
“I haven’t been to bed.” May Ward tried to sound gay about it, but her voice cracked. It was six in the morning, and they had a train at noon. Her room smelled of spoiled wine and stale cigarettes. Dresses and stockings were flung over every chair and heaped on the floor around her bed. It was no wonder her wardrobe was in such poor repair: she was always stumbling over skirts, crushing beadwork, and snagging hooks and buttons. Never had Fleurette seen such fine dresses so thoroughly abused.
“I can’t match this metal thread, of course,” Fleurette said. “I’m just going to put a few stitches in the shoulders and a few under the arms. That should hold until New York, if you’re careful. I’ll look for the right thread when we get there.”
“Do whatever you have to do. I don’t care about metal thread.”
“Oh, but a dress like this? We must. It really should go back to Paris to be fitted. I want to do the very least that’s required to hold it together until . . .” Fleurette’s voice trailed off as she drew close to the gold filet lace that attached at the shoulder and draped so languidly down the back. She remembered looking, as a child, at butterfly wings up close and realizing that those brilliant patterns were made up of tiny scales, like miniature feathers, each attached by some filament too fine to see. That was how this dress was made. To go at it with a No. 12 needle—her smallest—was like attacking it with a sledgehammer.
“Are you sure this sort of slouchy thing is the style? I don’t feel quite upright in it. And where’s the waist? It just sort of—falls down.”
“If it comes from Callot Soeurs, it’s the style,” Fleurette mumbled. She never expected to touch a dress like this. It seemed to be made of spun gold, and it did drape in the most bewitching manner. There was almost nothing to it: just a loose chemise with a belt slung around the hips, tied with two gold tassels at the end, which Fleurette guessed (correctly) were meant to hang carelessly down behind one hip or the other, like an afterthought.
The arms were bare. A corset was superfluous—although Fleurette couldn’t convince Mrs. Ward of that. “I’ve worn every kind of beautiful dress on every kind of stage, dear,” she’d said, “and let me tell you, things don’t always stay where they’re supposed to. I’m going to require some kind of boning if I’m to go flitting about in this little thing. It looks like I’m wearing nothing at all.”
Fleurette made the last of her temporary stitches and stood back to check her work. The dress was all wrong for May Ward. The colors—gold lace and pearly silk—matched her complexion and her hair too closely. In this case, the dress was the picture and the woman merely the frame. It begged for dark hair and olive skin. And it had been cut for a taller, lankier woman, which was why Fleurette had been obliged to take in the shoulders, and why Mrs. Ward insisted on her corset.
“Are we finished?” May Ward asked. “I’m about to drop.”
“Let me take this off you before you do.” Fleurette went to work on the eyelets in the back. “I didn’t know one could buy a dress like this outside of New York.”
Mrs. Ward laughed wearily. “It was a gift. I believe the previous occupant ran out West with a cattleman.”
“I don’t think I’d leave this dress for a cattleman,” Fleurette said.
“Nor should you.” She stepped out of the dress and turned around to face Fleurette. In her ordinary muslin underthings, she could’ve been anyone. “Tell me something, Flora.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Fleurette had given up trying to teach Mrs. Ward her name. She stood with that dream of a dress in her arms, looking at the pale and freckled body that had somehow earned the right to wear it.
“What kind of girl begs for a job as an unpaid seamstress? You aren’t running away from someone, are you?”
“No! Of course not.”
Mrs. Ward put a hand on her hip and cocked her chin. “There’s not a horrible father back in Paterson, or a shrewish mother?”