hero has acquired this knowledge, he can live happily in the world. Well, Maggie wasn't a hero, and she wasn't sure she quite understood all the stuff about self-knowledge and symbolism, but she was a fabulous shopper. She knew style, and, more, she knew her sister, and she could find Rose a dress. She flipped open her appointment book. She was pretty busy, what with the Liebermans' fiftieth anniversary party to shop for, and Mrs. Gantz going on her cruise, but she could rearrange her schedule. Where would she start? The bridal department at Saks first, for inspiration. They wouldn't have anything in Rose's size, probably, but at least she could see what they were showing. Then, once she had some idea of what she was looking for, she'd hit her three favorite consignment shops. She'd seen wedding dresses at all of them, had flipped past them casually, hunting for other items, but she knew they were there, and . . . "Hey," called Maggie, trying to sound casual. "Hey, Rose, how long do you think you'll be staying?" "Until Monday," said Rose. She got up from the chair, walked slowly to the swimming pool, and dove in. That was four days. Could Maggie find a wedding dress—the right wedding dress—in four days? She wasn't sure. She'd have to start immediately. "What was your favorite thing?" Maggie asked her sister. "Your favorite thing to wear." Rose swam to the edge of the pool and hooked her arms over the ledge. "I liked my blue sweatshirt with the hood. Remember that?" Maggie nodded, her heart sinking. She remembered the blue sweatshirt with the hood very well, because Rose had worn it practically nonstop throughout sixth grade. "I like it," she said stubbornly, when their father tried to get her to take it off so he could wash it. "You wore that until it fell apart," said Maggie. Rose nodded. "Old blue," she said affectionately, as if she were talking about a dog or a person instead of a sweatshirt. Maggie felt
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her heart sinking even further. How on earth was she supposed to figure out a wedding dress from a ratty blue sweatshirt with a zipper running up the front? She'd have to start from scratch. And, if she only had four days, she'd have to get help. While Rose swam laps Maggie beckoned to Dora and Ella and Lewis. "I need you guys to help me with a project," she whispered. Dora inched her chair closer, her eyes shining. "Well, that's wonderful news!" she said. "Don't you even want to know what it is?" Maggie asked. Dora looked at Lewis. Lewis looked at Ella. The three of them looked at Maggie, and solemnly shook their heads. "We're bored," said Dora. "Give us something to do." "Let us help," said Ella, "Okay, then," said Maggie, flipping to a fresh page in her notebook and mentally mapping out her course of action, "here's how this is going to work."
FIFTY#SIX
"Are you ready?" asked Ella, fussing with her folder full of typed pages. "You might want to sit down." "I'm old," said Lewis. "I always want to sit down." He pulled up a chair behind his desk in the Golden Acres Gazette's office and stared at Ella expectantly. Ella cleared her throat and glanced at Maggie. Maggie gave her an encouraging smile, and Ella started to read the poem that she and Maggie had written together and called "The Senior Howl."
"I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by senior moments, dyspeptic, forgetful, polyester'd dragging themselves toward the handicapped-parking spaces at four, looking for an early-bird special."
"Oh, my," said Lewis, trying not to laugh. "I see you two have discovered Allen Ginsberg." "We have," said Maggie proudly. "Now, I'm going to want a byline, of course." "Co-byline," said Ella. "Fine, fine, whatever," Maggie replied. "How's the top-secret mission coming?" Lewis asked.
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Maggie's face fell. "It's harder than I thought," she said. "But I think I'll be okay. You're still going to help, right?" "Of course," said Lewis. Maggie nodded, hopped off the edge of the desk, and picked up her purse. "Gotta go," she said. "Mrs. Gantz is waiting for her bathing suits. I'll see you back at the apartment at four." Ella watched her go, smiling. "So, my dear," said Lewis. "How goes the grandmothering?" "Fine," said Ella. "Well, better, anyhow. Maggie's doing terrific. Business is really taking off. She's busy all the time now." "And Rose?" asked Lewis. "Well, I think her wedding's making her a little crazy. And I think that Maggie makes her crazy, too. They care about each other, so much. I know that, at least." Ella remembered the way, in the months before Rose's arrival, that Rose would pop up in odd moments of Maggie's conversation—never by name, Ella had noticed, but just as "my sister." As in, "My sister and I used to go to football games with my father." Or, "My sister and I used to share a bedroom, because Sydelle the Terrible made me move out of my bedroom and move in with Rose when she redecorated." Ella treasured every brief mention, every scrap of conversation, every glimpse she got of the two of them as little girls, especially in the early days of Maggie's time in Florida, when Maggie was saying hardly anything at all. Ella could almost see them sometimes, in the room with two twin beds, Rose lying on 4ier belly on the floor, poring over—what? A Nancy Drew book, Ella decided. That seemed about right. And Maggie, a tiny little thing in—what? Red overalls, thought Ella. Maggie would be bouncing back and forth, back and forth, until her red legs and brown hair turned into a blur, shouting, "The quick! Brown! Fox! Jumped over! The lazy dog!" "I wish," said Ella, then closed her mouth. What did she wish for? What did she want? "I wish I could make everything right between them. I wish I could give Maggie the life she wanted, and tell Rose how to handle her stepmother, and just ..." She lifted her
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left hand, waved it as if it were holding a magic wand. "Fix things. Fix everything for them." "Well, but that's not what grandparents do," said Lewis. "They don't?" Ella asked morosely. Lewis shook his head. "What do grandparents do?" Ella asked plaintively, feeling sorrow for all the years when she was supposed to have learned the answer. Lewis gazed thoughtfully at the ceiling. "I think you give them unconditional love, and support, and the occasional cash infusion. You give them a place to come, when they need somewhere to go, and you try not to tell them what to do, because they get plenty of that from their parents. And then you let them figure it out for themselves." Ella closed her eyes. "I wonder if Rose hates me," she said so softly that Lewis almost didn't hear her. She hadn't told him, or Maggie, or anyone, but she'd been both joyful and terrified the first time she'd seen Rose; and how part of her was still waiting for Rose to ask her the questions she couldn't answer. "How could anyone hate you?" Lewis asked kindly. "You're worrying too much. They're smart girls. They won't blame you for not being there when it wasn't your fault, and they can't expect you to fix everything for them. Nobody could do that." "Does it make me wrong that I still want to try?" Ella asked. Lewis smiled at her and took her hand. "No," he said, "it just makes me love you more."
FIFTY'SEVEN
The first problem with trying to find an off-the-rack wedding dress, Maggie learned the next morning, was that they only came in two sizes, neither one of which was the size she thought her sister wore. "Sample sizes," the bored clerk had explained, when Maggie asked to see something that wasn't an eight or a ten. "You'll try 'em on, find what you like, and we'll order it in your size." "But what if you don't wear an eight or a ten?" she asked. "We pin 'em if they're too big," said the clerk. "But what if they're too small?" asked Maggie, fingering the gowns and knowing there was no way they'd fit her sister. The clerk had shrugged and scribbled a name and address on a piece of paper. "They've got larger sizes," she said. And the next store—a branch of a gigantic bridal-gown chain—did indeed have larger sizes, hanging in its coyly named Diva section. "Do they come with their own entourage?" Ella had asked. Maggie wasn't sure about entourages. But she did know that the dresses were awful. "I don't know about this," said Ella, showing Maggie the umpteenth empire-waisted A-line dress they'd seen. This one had bunchy silk flowers on the bosom. "It's okay," said Maggie. "It's adequate, you know? But I want
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to find something that's perfect, and I'm not sure this is the place." She sighed, leaning against a glass case of discounted garters. "I'm not even sure what the right thing is. I feel like I'll know it when I see it, but I'm not sure I'm going to see it!" "Well, what does Rose like?" asked Ella. "She doesn't know what she likes," said Maggie. "Her favorite piece of clothing was a blue hooded sweatshirt with a zipper up the front." She sighed again. "I guess I'd better start talking to dressmakers." She shook her head. "Maybe we'll get lucky." She gazed around the store. "Not here, though. Where's Lewis?" Lewis, as it turned out, was back in the dressing room, offering helpful critiques to brides-to-be. "I don't know," said a tiny redhead in a puffy meringue of a dress, "do you think it's overwhelming me?" Lewis looked at her carefully. "Put the third one on again, the one with the low back," he said. "That's still my favorite." A black girl with shells and beads laced through her braids tapped his shoulder and twirled around. "Definitely you," said Lewis, nodding his approval. "Lewis!" called Maggie. "We're going now!" A chorus of complaints came from a half-dozen dressing room stalls. "No! Not yet! Just one more dress!" Lewis smiled. "It seems like I've got a talent for this. Maggie, maybe you should put me on retainer." "Done," said Maggie. "But we've got two days until Rose leaves, and no dress yet, so we've got to keep shopping. Let's go."
Later that night, Maggie and Ella drove back to Golden Acres through the night air that was thick with moisture, and the whirring of cicadas, and disappointment. The dress they'd driven to see had been a disaster —the polyester-satin blend too shiny, the sweetheart neckline too plunging, the beads around the hem sewn so loosely that a few fell off to rattle against the fake linoleum of the would-be seller's kitchen floor. When Maggie said that it wasn't quite right, the woman had told
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them they'd be doing her a favor if they just took it with them. "Was it yours?" asked Maggie. "It was supposed to be," she said. So now they were driving back home with the dress swaying from its hook over the backseat like a ghost, and Maggie was feeling pissed-off and panicked. "What am I going to do?" she asked. And she was surprised when Ella answered. "You know what I think? I think that this really is a case where it's the thought that counts." "How's she supposed to wear a thought down the aisle?" Maggie asked. "Well, she can't, but just that you're doing this, and trying so hard, it shows how much you love her." "Except she doesn't know that I'm doing this," Maggie said. "And I really want to find her something. It's important. It's really important." "Well, you don't have to find a dress before Rose leaves. You've got five months. You could always find something you like and order it. Or you could sew her something." "I can't sew," Maggie said morosely. "No," said Ella. "But I can. That is, I could. It's been so long, but I used to make all sorts of things. Tablecloths, curtains, dresses for your mother when she was little ..." "But a wedding dress . . . well, wouldn't that be hard?" "Very hard," Ella confirmed. "But we could do it together, once you've figured out what you want." "I think I know what I want," said Maggie. In fact, after looking at more than a hundred different dresses, and pictures of perhaps five hundred more, she was starting to get a sense of what was going to look perfect on Rose. She just hadn't seen the actual dress outside of her imagination. A ballgown, she was thinking, because Rose had a nice enough shape, and enough of a waist to make it work. A ballgown with maybe a scooped neckline, low but not
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indecent, maybe with a row of beads or seed pearls along the edge, nothing too flashy, and certainly nothing too itchy. And three-quarter-length sleeves would be the most flattering length, certainly better than the short sleeves, which were somehow matronly, and the sleeveless dresses, which she knew Rose would never wear. And a full skirt, a fairy-tale kind of skirt, a skirt that would sort of remind Rose of Glinda the Good Witch in The Wizard of Oz, except not quite that costumey, and definitely a train, although not too much of a train. "And I think Rose would trust me." Which wasn't quite true, Maggie admitted to herself. She hoped Rose would trust her. She hoped. She drove, and thought, picturing the dress in her mind. "When you're sewing," she asked, "do you have to find a pattern of exactly what you want to make?" "Well, that's the way it's normally done." "What if you want to sew something different than any patterns you can find?" "Hmm," said Ella, tapping one fingertip against her lower lip. "Well, I guess what I'd try to do is find parts of patterns and put them all together. It would be tricky. Expensive, too, once you've added up all those yards of fabric." "Like a few hundred dollars?" Maggie asked in a small voice. "More than that, I think," said Ella. "But I've got some money." "No," said Maggie. "No, I want to pay for it. I want it to be from me." She drove through the thick darkness, hearing the far-off rumble of thunder as the skies prepared to deliver Florida's nightly shower. Every old insecurity, every high-school taunt, every boss who'd fired her and landlord who'd evicted her and guy who'd called her stupid rose up in a wave within her. You can't, they said. You're dumb. You'll never figure it out. Her hands tightened on the wheel. But I can! she thought. She remembered the afternoons she'd spent putting her flyers up all over Golden Acres, a drawing of a dress on a hanger and the words YOUR FAVORITE THINGS, and MAGGIE FELLER, PERSONAL
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SHOPPER written on them, and how the phone had rung so constantly for the next two weeks that she'd finally installed her own line. She thought about going over her budget with Jack, how he'd explained it to her over and over again, never once losing his patience, telling her that to save for her own shop she should pretend that her money was a pie, and that she'd need to eat most of the pie to survive—and that was her money for rent and groceries and gas and such—but if she could put away a little piece, even a little tiny sliver every month, that eventually ("Not soon," he'd cautioned, "but eventually") she'd have enough for the big things she wanted. She'd look at the figures again, and carve out a slice for Rose's dress. And she thought of the little empty store she'd seen, around the corner from the bagel shop, empty for three months, with a sweet green-and-white-striped awning and a storefront of flyspecked glass. She thought of how she'd walk by it on her break and imagine polishing the glass, imagine painting the walls creamy white and dividing the back room into cubicles by hanging lengths of white cotton and gauze. She'd put padded benches in each changing room so the customers could sit, and shelves for them to stick their purses, and she'd find old mirrors at tag sales, and every price would be a round number, tax included. It wouldn't be Hollywood, but it would be what she was good at. What she was best at. Her favorite thing. And she was succeeding at it, which meant there was no reason that she couldn't succeed at this, too. She wouldn't fall down on her face and need to be rescued. She'd be the one who did the rescuing instead. "Can we try?" she finally asked. The dress in the backseat swayed gently, back and forth, like it was dancing. "Yes," said Ella. "Yes, dear, of course we can."
