The Love of a Good Woman (31 page)

“Can I try it?” Karin said.

Ann looked her over. She said, “We have to be very careful.”

Karin stepped out of her shoes and her shorts and pulled off her shirt. Ann lowered the dress over her head, shutting her up for a moment in a white cloud. The lace sleeves had to be worked down delicately, until the points they ended in were lying on the backs of Karin’s hands. They made her hands look brown, though she wasn’t tanned yet. The hooks and eyes had to be done up all down the side of the waist, then there were more hooks and eyes at the back of the neck. They had to hold a band of lace tight around Karin’s throat. Wearing nothing underneath the dress but her
underpants, she felt her skin prickle at the touch of lace. Lace was more deliberate, in its here-and-there contact, than anything she was used to. She shrank from feeling it against her nipples, but fortunately it was looser there, pooked out where Ann’s breasts had been. Karin’s chest was still almost flat, but sometimes her nipples felt swollen, tender, as if they were going to burst.

The taffeta had to be pulled out from between her legs and arranged into a bell-like skirt. Then lace fell in loops over the skirt.

“You’re taller than I thought,” Ann said. “You could walk around in it if you just held it up a bit.”

She took a hairbrush from the dresser and began to brush Karin’s hair down over her lace-covered shoulders.

“Nut-brown hair,” she said. “I remember in books, girls used to be described as having nut-brown hair. And you know they did use nuts to color it. My mother remembered girls boiling walnuts to make a dye and then putting the dye on their hair. Of course if you got the stain on your hands it was a dead giveaway. It was so hard to get out.

“Hold still,” she said, and shook the veil down over the smooth hair, then stood in front of Karin to pin it on. “The headdress to this has disappeared altogether,” she said. “I must have used it for something else or given it away to somebody to wear at their wedding. I can’t remember. Anyway it would look silly nowadays. It was a Mary Queen of Scots.”

She looked around and picked some silk flowers—a branch of apple blossoms—out of a vase on the dresser. This new idea meant she had to take the pins out and start again, bending the apple blossom stem to make a headdress. The stem was stiff, but at last she got it bent and pinned to her satisfaction. She moved out of the way and gently pushed Karin in front of the mirror.

Karin said, “Oh. Can I have it for when I get married?”

She didn’t mean that. She had never thought of getting married.
She said it to please Ann, after all Ann’s effort, and to cover her embarrassment when she looked into the mirror.

“They’ll have something so different in style then,” Ann said. “This isn’t even in style now.”

Karin looked away from the mirror and looked into it again, better prepared. She saw a saint. The shining hair and the pale blossoms, the faint shadows of the falling lace on her cheeks, the storybook dedication, the kind of beauty so in earnest about itself that there is something fated about it, and something foolish. She made a face to crack that face open, but it didn’t work—it seemed as if the bride, the girl born in the mirror, was now the one in control.

“I wonder what Derek would say if he saw you now,” Ann said. “I wonder if he’d even know it was my wedding dress?” Her eyelids were fluttering in their shy troubled way. She stood close to take the blossoms and pins out. Karin smelled soap from under her arms, and garlic on her fingers.

“He’d say, What kind of a stupid outfit is that?” said Karin, doing a superior Derek voice, as Ann lifted the veil away.

They heard the car coming down the valley. “Speak of the devil,” said Ann. Now she was in such a great hurry to undo the hooks and eyes her fingers were clumsy and trembling. When she tried to pull the dress over Karin’s head something got caught.

“Curses,” Ann said.

“You go on,” said Karin, muffled up. “You go on and let me. I’ve got it.”

When she emerged she saw Ann’s face twisted in what looked like grief.

“I was just kidding about Derek,” she said.

But perhaps Ann’s look was just one of alarm and concern about the dress.

“What do you mean?” Ann said. “Oh. Hush. Forget it.”

•    •    •

K
ARIN
stood still on the stairs to hear their voices in the kitchen. Ann had run down ahead of her.

Derek said, “Is that going to be good? Whatever you’re making?”

“I hope so,” said Ann. “It’s osso buco.”

Derek’s voice had changed. He wasn’t mad anymore. He was eager to make friends. Ann’s voice was relieved, out of breath, trying to match up with his new mood.

“Is there going to be enough for company?” he said.

“What company?”

“Just Rosemary. I hope there’s enough, because I asked her.”

“Rosemary and Karin,” Ann said calmly. “There’s enough of this, but there isn’t any wine.”

“There is now,” said Derek. “I got some.”

Then there was some muttering or whispering from Derek to Ann. He must be standing very close to her and talking against her hair or her ear. He seemed to be teasing, pleading, comforting, promising to reward her, all at once. Karin was so afraid that words would surface out of this—words she would understand and never forget—that she went banging down the stairs and into the kitchen, calling, “Who’s this Rosemary? Did I hear ‘Rosemary’?”

“Don’t sneak up on us like that,
enfant,”
said Derek. “Make a little noise so we hear you coming.”

“Did I hear ‘Rosemary’?”

“Your mother’s name,” he said. “I swear to you, your mother’s name.”

All the tight displeasure was gone. He was full of challenges and high spirits, as he’d been sometimes last summer.

Ann looked at the wine and said, “That’s lovely wine, Derek, that’ll go beautifully. Let’s see. Karin, you can help. We’ll set the
long table on the porch. We’ll use the blue dishes and the good silver—isn’t it lucky we just cleaned the silver. We’ll put two sets of candles. The tall yellow ones in the middle, Karin, and a circle of little white ones around them.”

“Like a daisy,” Karin said.

“That’s right,” said Ann. “A celebration dinner. Because you’re back for the summer.”

“What can I do?” said Derek.

“Let me think. Oh—you can go out and get me some things for the salad. Some lettuce and some sorrel, and do you think there’s any cress in the creek?”

“There is,” said Derek. “I saw some.”

“Get some of that too.”

Derek glided a hand round her shoulders. He said, “All will be well.”

W
HEN
they were almost ready Derek put on a record. This was one of the records he had taken to Rosemary’s place and must have brought back here. It was called
Ancient Airs and Dances for Lute
, and it had a cover that showed a group of old-fashioned, exquisitely thin ladies, all wearing high-waisted dresses, with little curls down in front of their ears, and dancing in a circle. The music had often inspired Derek to do a stately and ridiculous dance, in which Karin and Rosemary would join him. Karin could match him in a dance, but Rosemary couldn’t. Rosemary tried too hard, she moved a little late, she tried to imitate what could only be spontaneous.

Karin started dancing now, round the kitchen table where Ann was tearing salad and Derek was opening the wine. “Ancient
airs
and
dances
for the
lute,”
she sang raptly. “My
mom
is coming to supper, my mom is coming to
supper”

“I believe Karin’s mom is coming to supper,” said Derek. He held up his hand. “Quiet, quiet. Is that her car I hear?”

“Oh, dear. I should at least wash my face,” said Ann. She dropped the greens and hurried into the hall and up the stairs.

Derek went to stop the record. He took the needle back to the beginning. When he had it going again he went out to meet Rosemary—a thing he did not usually do. Karin had intended to run out herself. But when Derek did, she decided not to. Instead she followed Ann up the stairs. Not all the way, though. There was a small window on the landing where nobody ever halted or looked out, A net curtain over it, so that you were not likely to be seen.

She was quick enough to see Derek stepping across the lawn, going through the gap in the hedge. Long, eager, stealthy strides. He would be in time to bend and open the car door, to open it with a flourish and help Rosemary out. Karin had never seen him do that, but she knew he meant to do it now.

Ann was still in the bathroom—Karin could hear the shower. There would be a few minutes for her to watch undisturbed.

And now she heard the car door shut. But she did not hear their voices. She couldn’t, with the music pouring through the house. And they hadn’t come into sight in the gap in the hedge. Not yet. And not yet. And not yet.

O
NCE
after Rosemary left Ted she came back. Not to the house—she was not supposed to come to the house. Ted delivered Karin to a restaurant and there Rosemary was. The two of them had lunch in the restaurant. Karin had a Shirley Temple and chips. Rosemary told her that she was going to Toronto, that she had a job there with a publisher. Karin did not know what a publisher was.

•    •    •

H
ERE
they come. Pressing together through the gap in the hedge, where they should have gone single file. Rosemary is wearing her harem pants, made of thin, soft, raspberry-colored cotton. Her shadowy legs show through. Her top is of heavier cotton covered with embroidery and some tiny, sewn-on mirrors. She seems to be concerned about her piled-up hair—her hands fly up, in a gesture of charming nervousness, to loosen some more little wisps and curls that can flutter and dangle around her face. (Something the way those ladies’ curls dangle over their ears, on the cover of
Ancient Airs and Dances.)
Her fingernails are painted to match her pants.

Derek is not putting his hands on Rosemary anywhere but looks as if he is always just about to do so.

“Y
ES
, but will you
live
there?” said Karin in the restaurant.

T
ALL
Derek bends close to Rosemary’s wild pretty hair, as if that is a nest he is all but ready to drop into. He is so intent. Whether he touches her or not, whether he speaks to her or not. He is pulling her to him, studiously attending to the job. But being pulled himself, being tempted to delight. Karin can just recognize that lovely flirting feeling when you’re saying, No, I’m not sleepy, no, I’m still awake—

Rosemary at this moment doesn’t know what to do, but thinks she doesn’t yet have to do anything. Look at her spinning around in her cage of rosy colors. Her cage of spun sugar. Look at Rosemary twittering and beguiling.

Rich as stink
, he said.

Ann comes out of the bathroom, her gray hair dark and damp, pushed flat to her head, her face glowing from the shower. “Karin. What are you doing here?”

“Watching.”

“Watching what?”

“A pair of lover-dovers.”

“Oh now Karin,” says Ann, going on down the stairs.

And soon come happy cries from the front door (special occasion) and from the hallway, “What is that marvellous smell?” (Rosemary). “Just some old bones Ann’s simmering” (Derek).

“And that—it’s beautiful,” says Rosemary as the sociable flurry moves into the living room. Speaking of the bunch of green leaves and June grass and early orange lilies Ann has stuck in the cream jug by the living-room door.

“Just some old weeds Ann hauled in,” says Derek, and Ann says, “Oh well, I thought they looked nice,” and Rosemary says again, “Beautiful.”

R
OSEMARY
said after lunch that she wanted to get Karin a present. Not for a birthday and not for Christmas—just a wonderful present.

They went to a department store. Every time Karin slowed down to look at something, Rosemary showed immediate enthusiasm and willingness to buy it. She would have bought a velvet coat with a fur collar and cuffs, an antique-style painted rocking horse, a pink plush elephant that looked about a quarter life-size. To put an end to this miserable wandering, Karin picked out a cheap ornament—the figure of a ballerina poised on a mirror. The ballerina did not twirl around, there was no music played for her—nothing that could justify the choice. You would think that Rosemary would understand that. She should have understood
what such a choice said—that Karin was not to be made happy, amends were not possible, forgiveness was out of the question. But she didn’t see that. Or she chose not to. She said, “Yes. I like that. She’s so graceful. She’ll look pretty on your dresser. Oh, yes.”

Karin put the ballerina away in a drawer. When Grace found it, she explained that a friend at school had given it to her and that she couldn’t hurt the friend’s feelings by saying it wasn’t the kind of thing she liked.

Grace wasn’t so used to children then, or she might have questioned such a story.

“I can understand that,” she said. “I’ll just give it to the hospital sale—it’s not likely she’ll ever see it there. Anyway they must have made hundreds like it.”

I
CE
cubes cracked downstairs, as Derek dropped them into the drinks. Ann said, “Karin’s around somewhere, I’m sure she’ll pop up in a minute.”

Karin went softly, softly up the remaining stairs and into Ann’s room. There were the tumbled clothes on the bed, and the wedding dress, again wrapped up in its sheet, lying on top of them. She took off her shorts and her shirt and her shoes and began the desperate, difficult process of getting into this dress. Instead of trying to put it on over her head, she wriggled her way up into it, through the crackling skirt and lace bodice. She got her arms into the sleeves, being careful not to snag the lace with a fingernail. Her fingernails were mostly too short to be a problem, but she was careful anyway. She pulled the lace points over her hands. Then she did up all the hooks at the waist. The hardest thing was to do the hooks at the back of the neck. She bent her head and hunched her shoulders, trying to make those hooks easier to get at. Even so, she had a disaster—the lace ripping a little under one arm. That
shocked her and even made her stop for a second. But it seemed she had gone too far to give up now, and she got the rest of the hooks fastened without mishap. She could sew up that tear when she got the dress off. Or she could lie, and claim she had noticed it before she had put the dress on. Ann might not see it anyway.