Wish (3 page)

T
he rain just wouldn’t let up.

It was a familiar refrain, and everyone from the punky receptionist at school to the perky weather blonde on the six o’clock news seemed to have an opinion about when the rainy season would finally end.

Before the move, Olivia’s mother had enthusiastically reminded her daughter that they couldn’t be arriving at a better time of year. “You won’t see a drop of rain from March to October,” she’d said.

So far, it had rained at least once a day. And not always just sprinkles. Heavy, sky-splitting downpours, the kind that made wearing jeans or getting out of the car a gamble.

Olivia had left her stoop and started down Dolores just as Friday evening’s downpour was getting under way, a single, fat drop splattering on the sidewalk beside her boot. Almost an hour of sloshing through puddles of murky curb water later, she’d decided that searching for a seamstress in the rain wasn’t one of her most brilliant ideas. After trudging from one
soaked corner to another, scanning the hodgepodge of window displays—a cute little antique furniture shop, a watch repair store, and about ten yoga studios in a six-block radius—she was fairly certain that she wasn’t going to find a tailor in her neighborhood.

She was pulling the collar of her black Windbreaker tighter around her neck when a dim light in a dark corner storefront caught her eye. It was in a building on the corner across from the manicured median of palm trees, a building she walked past every day on her way to the bus stop. A burgundy awning jutted out from the dirty concrete wall, and Olivia had always assumed the space was empty. There was even a laminated sign in the window, one that she could have sworn used to say for rent. But as Olivia walked closer, ducking under the awning, which flapped wildly in the wind, she saw that the sign was actually a handwritten note:

Mariposa of the Mission.

Olivia cupped her hands to the glass and peered inside. The glare from a yellow streetlight floating overhead made it hard to see anything, and she could just barely make out the hulking shadows of garment bags and sewing machines. It looked like an abandoned dry cleaner’s, minus the mechanically rotating shirts.

Olivia blinked, her eyes traveling across the room. In the far corner, lounging on a threadbare divan, was a small, dark-haired girl. She glanced up from the paperback book open in her lap, and looked pointedly through the window at Olivia, almost as if she’d been waiting for her.

Olivia quickly dropped her hands to her side and hopped back, startled. Was it possible that all this time, the very thing
she was looking for had been around the corner from where she’d started, just a few hundred feet from her own front door? Why hadn’t she seen it before?

Olivia took a deep breath, remembering the dress she’d stuffed inside her purse, and pushed carefully through the heavy glass door.

Tinny chimes rang out as soon as she stepped onto a straw welcome mat, and Olivia let the door shut quietly behind her. The girl in the corner had gone back to her book, and Olivia stood awkwardly at the entrance. Half-dressed mannequins haunted every corner of the small space, staring down from high perches with blank faces. Folds of fabric were layered on low wooden tables, and hidden in each nook and darkened corner were miniature glass butterfly figurines of varying shapes and colors. A soft yellow light fell in shafts from two tasseled lamps, cutting rays of swimming dust across the floor.

Olivia cleared her throat, but the girl continued reading, her thick, dark brows furrowed to a bushy point. “Excuse me,” Olivia gingerly began. “Do you—?”

“We’re closed,” the girl said, noisily flipping a page. She was remarkably tiny, with sticklike limbs that were swallowed by the round crimson cushions of a vintage love seat. The love seat itself was missing two legs, and had been propped up on one end against a broken, boxy record player.

“Closed?” Olivia quietly repeated, her shoulders sinking. She glanced back through the darkening window, already imagining a night of mauve taffeta travesties, the itchy lining, the horrific swishing sound it made around her knees when she walked. She was reaching one hand to the door when a sharp voice called out from behind her.

“Wait!”

Olivia looked back to see that the girl had abandoned her book, which now lay open facedown in her lap. It was one of those steamy romance novels usually buried deep in the dollar bin outside used bookstores, with a half-naked couple swooning across the cover.

“I’ve seen you before,” the girl said, staring at Olivia with tight, beady eyes. “You live nearby?”

Olivia nodded and swallowed. “Yeah,” she answered, her mouth dry and her tongue slow. “We just moved in down the street. I was just, um, on my way home and I thought…I mean, I was just looking—”

“Looking is allowed.” The girl smiled, revealing a crowded row of what looked like baby teeth and pulling herself up to her feet. She spoke with a slight and indistinguishable accent, cleanly articulating each syllable and sound. Olivia wondered if she was foreign, or just one of those people who talk funny to be different.

“I know that,” Olivia said, suddenly defensive.

The girl reached behind a patchwork quilt that was hanging from a clothesline strung across one corner of the room, and pulled an old broom from where it had been leaning against a wobbly chest of drawers. Much like the girl, all of the furniture in the shop appeared arthritic, like it might buckle or fall if you sneezed in its general direction.

“I’m Posey,” she said, lazily swatting the broom across a patch of dusty red tiles.

Olivia took a step closer. “Olivia,” she said, her hand hanging awkwardly between them. Posey hesitated before extending her own hand, which was so small and spindly Olivia worried
it might shatter into pieces. From close up, Posey’s brown eyes were flecked with bits of yellow-orange, and blinked curiously through dark, crooked bangs. There was something about the way she stared that made Olivia uncomfortable, like she suddenly wanted to put on another layer of clothes.

“Nice to meet you, Olivia,” Posey said, spotting a toppled pile of fabric swatches at her feet and bending over to straighten it. As she stood, the corner of her shoulder bumped up against a table leg, and one of the small butterfly figurines tottered from side to side. Posey hurried to keep it from falling, delicately steadying its trembling wings to stillness.

“I like your butterflies,” Olivia said, realizing immediately how lame it sounded. “I mean, they’re nice. I like butterflies, you know; they’re—”

Posey smiled. “Thanks,” she said. “They were my grandmother’s.”

As Posey carefully lifted her hand from the ornament and went back to sweeping the floor, Olivia recognized a familiar flash across her eyes.
They
were
my grandmother’s.
It was the look of someone who had lost something she’d never get back.

“Was this her shop?” Olivia inquired.

Posey nodded. “She started doing alterations for people in the basement,” she explained. “Pretty soon, she had a following. There were articles in magazines, the Style section of the paper…”

“She must have been talented,” Olivia ventured.

“She was,” Posey said, the lost look in her eyes lingering as she continued sweeping the same superclean spot on the floor. “I’ve tried to keep it going without her, but…” Her voice trailed
off as she gestured with her eyes at the empty, run-down shop, before vigorously tossing her head from side to side, as if to shake out something that hurt too much to remember.

“So what can I do for you?” Posey asked abruptly, tilting the broom back against the corner and settling her petite frame onto a wooden rocking chair.

“Oh,” Olivia said, dropping one hand into her bag and searching for the soft folds of fabric inside. “I have this dress, and it has a really big rip up one side…”

Posey gestured for Olivia to spread the dress out over her knees. She searched the material lovingly with her hands, her small, agile fingers quickly landing on the torn zipper. “It’s a beauty,” she said. “Vintage?”

Olivia smiled uncertainly. “I really have no idea; it’s—it was—my sister’s.”

Posey nodded, staring past Olivia, or through her.

“Great style,” she remarked approvingly, hoisting herself up and laying the dress over the back of an empty chair. “Definitely a dress for someone who knows how to have a good time.”

“Yeah,” Olivia said. “That was Violet.”

She hadn’t meant to sound so sad, but she could tell as soon as the words escaped that they had landed hard.

Posey smiled, her eyes now light and twinkling. “Come back next week,” she said, folding the dress back up and placing it on top of her book. “Is Thursday good for you?”

Olivia anxiously chewed at the inside of her cheek and crossed her arms. “That’s the thing,” she said. “I kind of need it by tomorrow.”

Posey froze, one hand still resting on the couch, the other curling into a tight little ball in her lap.

“I know it’s short notice,” Olivia apologized. “My mom is making us go to this reception thing, and I don’t really have a choice. It’s not really a big deal. I mean, I’ll just be standing in a corner all night, probably, so it doesn’t matter what I wear. I just thought, I don’t know, if there was any way…”

Posey looked up with her head tilted to one side. Her eyes held Olivia’s for a long moment before shifting across the room. In between two bare windows was a child-size wooden desk, scratched and complete with a built-in seat. The surface was bare except for a single spiral-bound notebook, lying open with a pencil beside it. “Leave your address,” she said softly. “I can drop it off tomorrow.”

It wasn’t until Olivia exhaled a heavy sigh of relief that she realized she hadn’t been breathing. She hadn’t thought the dress was so important, but something about the look in Posey’s eyes sent a flood of raw emotion washing over her body, like standing under a bitter-cold waterfall, with the sun at your back.

Olivia nodded once and walked to the desk, writing her address in careful print at the top corner of the open page.

She turned to the door. The sky was streaked with a cloudy pink trail, the sun disappearing behind a row of pastel houses at the top of the hill.

Olivia turned back to wave good-bye, but Posey was already lost again in her book. She wanted to say thank-you, or something like it, but feared the words would be too plain, too loud to mean what she wanted them to.

Olivia smiled and stepped out onto the sidewalk, where the air was moist and thick enough to bottle.

At last, the rain had stopped.

“O
livia, are you in there?”

Olivia sat wrapped in a fluffy white bath towel at the foot of her bed, staring dumbly at the garment bag lying open beside her.

“Your father went to get the car,” her mom continued from the hall. “Meet us out front in a minute?”

“Sure,” Olivia said flatly. “I’ll be right there.”

Just as Posey had promised, a floppy garment bag with Olivia’s name safety-pinned to one side had arrived on her stoop that afternoon. Olivia reached for the zipper and pulled it down slowly, careful not to catch any loose fabric in its wake. She tugged the front flap open, angling the hanger to free the material, and gasped. Sinking backward onto the bed, Olivia dropped her eyes to the floor, then brought them back up for a second look, which only confirmed what she had known from the moment the dark, heavy fabric had peeked through the side of the bag.

This was not Violet’s dress.

First of all, this dress was black. All black. No spiral satin prints, no contrasting colored circles. The empire waist had become a drop, and the narrow, delicate straps had been replaced with a thick halter, plunging into a deep V at the neck. It wasn’t that the dress was ugly—it was simply, in fact, not hers.

Olivia sprang to her feet. “It must be a mistake,” she concluded out loud, opening the bag wide and angling the gown back in place. She was tugging the stubborn zipper back across the front, when a crumpled piece of paper fluttered onto the floor.

She bent down to pick it up, unfolding what looked like a business card. The words
Mariposa of the Mission
were typed on the front, above a stark, rudimentary graphic of a small golden butterfly. Olivia flipped the card over and saw that a note had been scrawled on the back. She stared at the sloppy, childlike handwriting, her eyes blurring the six little words and setting them swirling. Part of her hoped that if she stared long enough, they might morph into something not so devastatingly useless, like a shopping list or a recipe for lasagna.

OLIVIA
:
TRY IT ON FIRST. POSEY
.

She balled the card up in her palm and tossed it at the wall.

“Do you need any help?”

Olivia jumped in place. Her mother was still standing on the other side of the door. “No,” she called out. “I’m fine.”

Silence, then the staccato clatter of high heels disappearing down the hall.

Olivia sat down on her bed and put her head in her hands. She could say she didn’t feel well, which was certainly the truth. But even before she’d fully played out the scenario in
her mind, she knew it wasn’t an option. Her parents wouldn’t buy it. They’d see it only as a sign that something was
wrong
, which would initiate a chain of events involving probing but meaningless questions from her mom, and sidelong, uncomfortable glances from her dad.

“Fine,” she grunted. She hauled herself up from the bed and in one swift motion unhooked the dress, lifted it over her head, and slipped it down over her bare shoulders.

A full-body shiver started up from the base of her spine, and tiny blond hairs stood up all over her arms and at the back of her neck. Olivia arched one foot and nudged the closet door all the way open, turning to face the full-length mirror that had been left hanging inside by whoever had lived there before. She watched her reflection, her mouth moving slowly into the shape of a perfectly rounded O.

If she hadn’t been the one to take the dress out of the bag, she never would’ve believed it was the same gown. Where on the hanger it fell shapeless and heavy, on her body it seemed suspended in air. Where it had looked boring and simple in the bag, it now exuded sophistication and elegance. It was as if Posey had molded the fabric with her inside of it.

A long, blaring honk rose up from the street outside her window. Her parents were waiting.

Olivia took a deep breath and stuck her feet in a pair of old patent-leather high heels. As she bent down to guide one heel with her fingers, a flash of color caught her eye. Tucked near the inseam, at the very bottom of the dress, was a tiny, embroidered butterfly. Olivia pressed her finger against it, as if maybe she could flick it off.

But it was there to stay.

Olivia leaned against one of the high, round tables that had been arranged in an open semicircle around the lobby of Bridget’s office building downtown. The building itself wasn’t very big, dwarfed by the skyscrapers huddled together a few blocks in from the water. But the lobby had an elegant, old-world feel, complete with low-hanging chandeliers and pivoting brass arrows over mirrored elevator doors.

When they’d first arrived, Bridget had paraded Mac and Olivia around the room’s perimeter, making introductions and prompting Olivia to deliver sound bites about her new school and the transition from East to West Coast. But Mac had quickly found the bar, and Bridget had been swallowed into a crowd of coworkers. Olivia had had no choice but to stake out a table in the corner, already piled high with discarded cocktail napkins littered with shrimp tails and tooth-picks.

Before, when Bridget had dragged the girls to functions or events, Olivia and Violet would find ways to entertain themselves, stealing sips of their dad’s Stella Artois and making fun of the stuffy suits trying to impress each other. As long as they were in it together, even a boring cocktail reception could be almost fun.

Now, with nobody to laugh with, Olivia felt more alone than ever.

“Killer dress.” A raspy voice spoke suddenly from over her shoulder. “Is it Prada?”

Olivia turned to find a girl at her elbow blinking behind tortoiseshell glasses. She looked a couple of years younger
than Olivia, and a couple of heads shorter, too. Her hair was fine and white blond, arrayed around her head in tiny little buns that stuck out in frantic points.

Olivia smiled politely, glancing carefully from side to side, hoping to see her father flagging her down from somewhere across the room.

“Seriously.” The girl was nodding vigorously and maintaining eye contact for just a bit longer than Olivia was comfortable returning. Her bright blue eyes were heavily lined in wet-looking charcoal, with shimmery gray shadow stuck to the corners of the lids. “Like,
really
hot,” she added, for effect.

Despite the girl’s elastic gold miniskirt, black fishnets, and a fuzzy mohair sweater, there was something soft about her, the way her pint-size feet seemed to swim in her metallic ankle boots, or the dimples in her pink, chubby cheeks.

“Thank you,” Olivia said softly to the plastic cup of raspberry seltzer squeezed between her palms.

“I’m Bowie,” the girl said, nudging Olivia’s torso with her shoulder, as if this was an alternative to hand-shaking Olivia was not aware of. “Bowen, technically, but it sounds too much like an airplane, I think. And besides, my dad was a Ziggy Stardust fanatic.”

Olivia nodded, still secretly scouting the lobby for an excuse to duck away.

“Or so I’ve heard,” Bowie added with a knowing laugh. “Man, what is taking Miles so long?”

Olivia looked up sharply as Bowie waved one hand wildly in the air above them.

“Miles!” she called, pointing with exaggerated movements at the top of Olivia’s head. “Look what I found!”

Miles emerged, walking toward them from the crowded makeshift bar set up at the lobby’s front desk. He was easy to spot among the sea of suits, in wrinkled linen pants and the same threadbare, tangerine and blue checkered button-down he’d worn to school the day before. And, of course, the mushroom loafers.

“I could hear you screeching from across the room,” Miles hissed, awkwardly clutching two glasses slosh-full of red wine and lowering them to the table. “
Please
don’t get us thrown out again.”

Olivia looked quickly back and forth from Miles to Bowie, confused.

“Hi there,” Miles said, holding up a glass for Olivia to take. “Sorry about her. She’s under the impression that her life is being filmed for the outtakes.”

Olivia took the glass and managed a smile.

“Oh, Miles, lighten up,” Bowie sang, throwing down a hefty sip of the purplish wine before gagging half of it back up. “Is this merlot?”

Miles rolled his eyes. “Yes, and it’s not for you,” he barked, wrenching the glass free from the viselike clutches of her fist.

Olivia smiled and took a measured sip from her glass. She hadn’t had a drop to drink since last summer, and the fruity sweetness pooled at the back of her throat, swimming around her insides and quickly fogging up her head.

“I hear we’re neighbors,” Bowie said, dropping her hand to the crook of Olivia’s arm. Her nails were stubby and painted black.

“Really?” Olivia managed.
It’s called conversation,
she reminded herself, like a visitor from a foreign planet.
Answer one question, ask another.
“Where do you live?”

“We’re on the other side of Dolores Park,” Miles interjected.

Olivia’s eyebrows cinched as she considered this. Were they related? With Miles’s dark features and multiracial complexion, and Bowie’s, well, Bowie-ness…Olivia couldn’t imagine how it could be true.

“She’s my stepsister,” Miles clarified. “I told her about the tour my mom made me give you the other day.”

Olivia felt her cheeks flushing and looked away. Somehow she’d forgotten that her mother was the reason she had anybody to talk to at this lame reception in the first place.

“I mean, not that I minded.” Miles smiled with considerable effort, needlessly clearing his throat. “It wasn’t a big deal or anything.”

Bowie rolled her eyes. “Smooth, Miles,” she said. “Way to make a girl feel welcome. Even
I
wouldn’t say something that awkward, and I’m a freshman.”

Olivia took another, heartier sip of her wine and tapped the rounded toe of her shoe against the polished travertine floor. “Which one’s your mother?” she asked, less because she cared about the answer and more because she didn’t want Miles to think she was upset.

Miles swayed back on the heels of his mushroom shoes and scanned the mingling crowd of San Francisco’s legal elite. “There she is,” he said, pointing toward a large oval window, beneath which stood a striking African-American woman, talking to a group of enraptured male attorneys. She was wearing a pin-striped suit, softened by stilettos and a chartreuse silk scarf, tied in a perfect knot at her neck.

“And she’s remarried to the David Bowie guy?” Olivia
asked. She was straightening out facts and hadn’t meant to be funny, but Bowie was suddenly laughing so violently that it appeared she might choke.

“Not exactly,” Bowie said after catching her breath, gesturing back to where Miles’s mom was standing. Another woman had joined the small group, younger looking, with angular features, a sleek black bob, and rimmed eyeglasses similar to Bowie’s own. The two women slipped into each other’s outstretched arms, sharing a quick but comfortable kiss before turning back to the men, who were pretending to study the labels on their bottles of imported beer.

“Oh,” Olivia said, gradually registering the scene. “So they’re—”

“Gay, gay, gay!” Bowie crooned, stealing Miles’s cup and waving it in the air as if leading a chant.

Miles narrowed his eyes and snagged back his glass.

“But don’t tell Miles,” she whispered, leaning in closer to Olivia. “He still thinks they’re just really good friends.”

A laugh escaped Olivia’s lips, surprising them all, and she took another healthy sip.

“Ready?” Bowie asked, finishing the last of Olivia’s seltzer and slapping the empty cup on the table.

Miles looked to Olivia and raised an eyebrow. “Ready for what?” he asked, looking like he might be afraid of the answer.

Bowie threw her hands up dramatically and tugged at Miles’s unbuttoned sleeve. “Come on,” she whined. “You said you’d take me to that spring break after-party in Sea Cliff. There’s going to be live music and everything. You know they’ll never let me go by myself.”

Olivia suddenly felt like she had been eavesdropping. She began fidgeting with items in her purse, checking the time on her phone as if there were somewhere else she needed to be.

“I don’t know,” Miles said. “I’m not sure I can handle another White Stripes cover band.”

Olivia reached to the back of a tall chair for the ugly, tasseled shawl her mother had insisted she throw over her shoulders as they were walking out the door.

“Let’s go. We can even bring this one,” Bowie said, grabbing Olivia’s wrist and shaking it. “It would be the
neighborly
thing to do.”

“Oh, thanks,” Olivia said, “but I should probably go keep my dad company.” She gestured across the lobby to the bar. Bowie followed her gaze, to where Mac sat hunched over a bar stool with an empty seat beside him.

“That’s your dad?” Bowie asked. “He’s hot.”

It was not the first time Olivia had heard this about her father, but it still made her fidget and blush.

“Fine,” Miles groaned and grabbed Bowie by the shoulders. “Let’s go before you get us all arrested. I guess this
is
my last chance to watch Graham have a tantrum when his disco ball turns into a piñata.”

Bowie cheered and clapped Miles hard on the back. “That’s more like it,” she said, linking arms with Olivia. “Now let’s go say some good-byes.”