The Dress Shop on King Street

by Ashley Clark

  Millie clutched the beaded handle of her small handbag, her gaze fixed on the train as if it were about to move at any moment. “Did I ever tell you I married a train jumper?”

  Harper’s eyes widened. “As in . . .”

  Millie turned to her and nodded. “Yes, he actually jumped trains. Real dangerous work, but a lot of people had to do it back then. In the years following the Great Depression, you didn’t have the luxury of staying put somewhere. You went where the work was. So my Franklin did just that. And then in the years that followed, after the war, most people settled down and stopped jumping the rails. And it took Franklin longer to settle than most. He used to say that until we met, he had trouble keeping a steady job, but I always suspected he liked the thrill of it all.”

  Harper tried to imagine all this. No doubt, Millie could see her surprise. “Wait. Does that mean you were a train jumper?”

  Millie puckered her lips as if she might as well have asked whether Millie’s biscuit recipe came frozen. “Do I look like the sort of person capable of tossing myself onto a locomotive?”

  Harper started giggling. She couldn’t help herself. “I’m sorry. It’s just the thought of you . . .” She waved her hand in front of her face to try to keep her laughter under control.

  “Yes,” Millie nodded, smiling. “I am well aware why that’s funny. Because if I ever tried to jump a train, the thing would probably run clear over me.” The wrinkles around Millie’s eyes pulled gently, and her expression sobered as if lost in sweet memory. “Back then, though, riding the rails didn’t have the connotation it does now. Plenty of honest people jumped trains—tryin’ to find work, not trouble.”

  Harper hesitated. “What was Franklin trying to find?”

  Millie straightened her hat. “Well, I can’t speak to what he was trying to find, but what he did find was me, and I’ll tell you, that changed things for both of us.”

  Harper put her hand to her chest. “Millie, that has to be the sweetest thing I’ve ever heard.”

  “Do you see a bench?” Millie glanced around the museum, then pointed, and the two of them sat down. “My mama gave me some heirlooms before I left Charleston. See, I met Franklin on a train because I was leaving here to head toward a different life.” She fidgeted her hands.

  “Why did you have to leave to do that?”

  Millie sighed, looking right into Harper’s eyes. “Because being biracial in those days meant I had next to no chance of owning my own store. Being a woman made that venture hard enough. The heirlooms were passed down to my mama from my grandmother, who was sold at the age of nine.”

  Harper imagined the little girl holding the satchel Peter found, and sadness seized her heart. “Nine?” Harper mouthed the word, the air sucked from her chest. She thought of her nine-year-old cousin, who still played with paper dolls.

  “Hard to imagine, isn’t it? So young.” Millie took Harper’s hand and patted it. “That’s how I got the heirlooms, and I took them with me on this big adventure to Alabama. I could talk about my Franklin for days, but the long and short of it is that I was a fool for the man, and several years into our marriage, I got pregnant.”

  “You passed the heirlooms down.” Harper was beginning to understand now. “And your wedding dress . . .” The thought of the artifacts traveling through time together gave her chills. “Peter’s mom was the reason you never opened your store?”

  “Yes.” Millie held on to Harper’s hand. Harper didn’t mind. On the contrary, the motherly affection did wonders for her heart. “But I don’t have one ounce of regret about that part.”

  Harper squeezed Millie’s hand. “Why all the secrets from Peter, then? You know he adores you.”

  Millie looked up at the still train. “Because sometimes we put a halt to the very things that would free us—we stop them, push them away, because our fear becomes too strong. We have no guarantee what will happen, so we make sure nothing happens at all.”

  Millie took the hat from her head to straighten one of the pins in her hair.

  Harper’s gaze suddenly pulled toward the beautiful butterfly button at the rim of Millie’s cloche. “I’ve seen that pattern before . . .” Only, where? Wait a minute. Of course! “This button matches the one on your wedding dress.”

  “The buttons are part of the heirlooms my mama gave me.” Millie touched the fabric of her hat gently. A slow smile rose from the corners of Millie’s lips, blurring the wrinkles and the settled pigment of her pink lipstick. “There are two of them.”

  FORTY

  Fairhope, 1958

  Yesterday, the hummingbirds disappeared from her window.

  There had been two. Always in a battle for food, their rapid wings a deceptively gentle hover around Millie’s nectar-rich basket of flowers. One would come, only for the next to knock it to the ground. Over and over they did this, those dainty little birds, providing hours of fascination for six-year-old Juliet through the other side of the kitchen window. She pulled the little toy train Franklin had made her back and forth over the windowsill, saying all aboard! and choo choo.

  Yesterday, Millie mailed her mama a letter. It read:

  Dear Mama,

  I know you always said early to bed, early to rise, but sometimes I look outside my bedroom window and the clouds stick like marshmallows to the dark starry sky, and I just get to wondering where they’ve been and where they’re going, and then I get to wondering about myself.

  Did the good Lord know I’d be Alabama bound, or did I mess up His plan somewhere along the way?

  I really thought I’d have that dress shop by now. I’ve been working so hard between seamstress jobs and mending folks’ clothes here at the inn that I’m tired as a lark. Sometimes I think I’m so busy in the preparation that maybe I wouldn’t recognize the opportunity when it does come. What I mean is, when I finally do get the money, will I still have the time? And when I have the time, will I have everything else? Guess I thought it would all be simpler. But as it turns out, my dreams still feel far. Is it just like dreams to feel that way?

  Will they ever come?

  I miss you, Mama. Love you always.

  Millie

  Millie was reaching into the barrel full of flour she used for the morning biscuits whenever she heard the door shut behind Franklin. She always mixed the ingredients straight inside the thing like the old-timers did.

  What drew her attention to the door was not the sound but the smell. When the winds shifted, when the tide brought a storm, there was always a particular aroma of leaves blowing the wrong way and air thick with tiny drops of water. It wasn’t a real bad smell so much as a distinctive one, plants and soil and the sea.

  Beyond the kitchen windows, the morning clouds clustered into billowing grey sheets, blowing closer and closer toward the boardinghouse. But Millie didn’t pay them much mind.

  She put the kettle on the stove, grabbed her gingham kitchen mitt, and set the biscuits in the oven to bake. All the while, she thought of the hummingbirds—where they were going, where they had been. The two of them so small, so fragile to be halfway across the States, or halfway across the ocean.

  Awakened by the sunlight every morning to another day’s search for nectar, another day’s search for beauty. She couldn’t get her mind off it. She nearly forgot to close the stove.

  Such were her thoughts when Franklin stepped closer and she realized his trousers were dampened and the hair beneath his cap was strewn all about.

  The kettle whistled as she looked at him. “Franklin, what in Sam Hill—”

  He crossed his arms as the leaves began to smack against the window.

  Millie’s heart lurched to a stop. “Franklin?”

  “Stevens came down to warn us. Said he couldn’t bear anything happening to his mother’s boardinghouse and we better hunker down.” Franklin’s face washed pale as flour. And if Franklin was concerned . . . well, that wasn’t a good sign.

  Millie shook her head. “I don’t understand. The storm?”<
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  “It’s a cyclone, Millie. Mr. Stevens was out on the water at dawn and says he scarcely made it out alive.”

  Millie held up her gingham-mitt hand. “Should we leave? Go someplace with higher ground?”

  Franklin removed his cap and ran one hand through his messy hair. “Ain’t no place we could go, Millie. That’s what happens when you live in secret, like some kind of outlaw.”

  “Oh, that’s real nice, Franklin.” Millie yanked the mitt from her hand and tossed it down on the counter. “You act like you hadn’t any part of the plan to live here.”

  His sigh was deep with frustration—or was it remorse? “I’m sorry, Millie.” He took a step closer. “Shouldn’t have said that. But my point being, there’s nowhere for us to go. And even if there were, roads aren’t fit for driving. The storm is comin’ anytime now.”

  Millie locked her heart with his eyes. His gaze was her anchor, her green-blue steadfast against the bobbing of the clouds.

  “We don’t have any guests coming until tomorrow.” Millie knew this would be his next question.

  Franklin nodded, scanning the kitchen as if seeing it for the first time. “We need to get everything up off the floor in case the house takes on water. The roof will hold just fine, but these windows are old, and the house isn’t as far from the shore as I’d like.”

  The wind began to whistle outside. Millie’s mind flashed with images of all her favorite parts of the boardinghouse. The pier out back and the rose trellis she’d grown from Mama’s clippings and her favorite mockingbird who lived in the bush outside her window.

  “After we get this stuff up, Millie, I need you to grab Juliet and gather any valuables you don’t want takin’ on water. I’ll lock and barricade the doors as best I can, and then we’ll need to get comfortable in a room with as few windows as possible. Better avoid any parts of the house where tree limbs might fall as well. Don’t want any surprises.”

  Millie bit down on her bottom lip. “The honeymoon suite?”

  Franklin smiled, stepped forward, and slipped one hand behind her back. “If I’m going to die in a cyclone, I can think of no better location.”

  Millie picked up the oven mitt and swatted him with it. “Don’t you dare say such a thing! Surely you don’t think we’re in real danger?”

  Franklin kissed the top of Millie’s head. “No, but our boardinghouse may well be. So find Juliet, and I’ll get to work on everything outside.”

  A half hour later, the grey clouds had grown greyer, the whip of the wind against the house had grown harsher, and Millie’s calm demeanor had been replaced by the unsettling reality that a storm was rolling to the shore.

  Outside, a sudden thud shook the house. Juliet shrieked and cowered into Millie’s arms.

  “Hush now, it’s okay.” Millie covered the girl’s hair with her hand. She looked to Franklin and mouthed her question above Juliet’s head. “Tree limb?”

  Franklin nodded. He glanced over to the window at the other side of the room, for he was far braver than Millie, who dared not take a single look. “We’re okay,” he mouthed back.

  Millie nodded, the contents of their valuables scattered across her lap.

  She held tight to her daughter and husband, tight to the stitches of the satchel and all that the words meant to her heart. She hummed softly to keep Juliet calm.

  If only the rain would stop. If only the whistles of wind would cease growing louder, screeching against the side of the boardinghouse like a locomotive at full speed toward its station.

  Fear collided with the future in an intersection of startling clarity.

  Millie realized, as the bushes scraped against the side of the inn, that what terrified her the most was her missing daughter. Who would hold Rosie during cyclones? Who would tell her all would be okay and stroke her hair with a mother’s particular touch?

  Someday Millie would pull the buttons from her wedding dress and give each of her daughters one. Maybe one of her daughters would even want the dress itself. But all that wasn’t enough. She looked down at the satchel, the dress. Why didn’t she see it before now? If the satchel would only survive this storm intact, she would give it to Rosie, since she couldn’t give her more than that.

  Rosie, her hummingbird who had disappeared one morning.

  The electric lights flickered off with a jolt.

  “That’s all right.” Franklin was quick with his match. “I got a candle for that.”

  “Daddy, you think of everything.” Juliet snuggled closer to her father as the candle cast their shadows up against the wall.

  Millie watched them, those shifting shadows, and tried to make sense of how they rose and fell. Franklin told some jokes to keep Juliet laughing, but Millie—with that dress and satchel and half of her little family—was somewhere else entirely.

  She was transfixed by those shadows when she heard the boom. When the windows blew out, and the water began to pool into a flood.

  When Franklin jumped to standing and Juliet grabbed the heirlooms and ran down the hall.

  Millie watched the little shards of glass float across the room, oddly beautiful from the glisten of the candle. An oddly fragile means of keeping the storm outside.

  She was going to tell her the whole story.

  Juliet stood in the doorway as Millie swept shards of broken glass into piles.

  The storm had come to an eerie and sudden stop, but Franklin said that probably meant the eye was passing over and the winds could pick back up at any moment, so they’d better stay good and ready. Loud pounding sounded from the hammer as Franklin hurried to nail boards across the open window. Rain was sure to slip through the little gaps between the seams and flood the floor with storm water, but they would do what they could to minimize the damage.

  Innocent fear flickered from Juliet’s eyes, and she dared not take a half step closer into the room, for Millie had forbid the child lest she get hurt.

  Juliet tightly clutched the satchel and the dress, though the fabric of the latter was double her size, easily.

  What was Millie thinking? She couldn’t tell Juliet the truth about her sister. Not under these conditions. Not with the girl so afraid.

  The glass clinked as Millie brushed several tiny pieces into the dustpan. And that’s when she saw the little train Franklin had made for Juliet blown off the window frame, cracked and soaked with water.

  Millie dropped the broom. She hurried over and picked up the pieces of the train. The splintered wood pricked her thumb, which in turn started bleeding.

  “Drat,” Millie muttered. She flicked her wrist and held her bleeding thumb up to her own lips.

  “Mama, are you okay?”

  Millie bit down on her bottom lip and held out her hands, still holding the broken train for Juliet to see. “I’m so sorry, sweetheart. But I bet your daddy can fix it.”

  Juliet finally set the dress and satchel down on the dry hallway floor; her shoulders drooped from the weight she’d carried.

  “That’s all right, Mama. Besides, I don’t like that train anymore anyways.”

  Millie looked down at the broken pieces in her hands and choked back the emotion threatening to rise. “What do you mean?” Come to think of it, this morning was the first time Juliet had played with the train in a while.

  Juliet shrugged. “Now that I’m almost a grown-up, I like grown-up toys. I only play with that anymore because Daddy made it and he likes trains so much.”

  “He does like trains.” Millie nodded, smiling. “Grown-up toys, you say? And what does that mean?”

  “Oh, you know. Dolls and dresses and thread and string. Like you play with every day.” Juliet leaned against the door frame, her toes wiggling in the rainwater that had sloshed through the room.

  Millie stepped closer and set the train down, away from the pile of broken glass. If only she could sweep all the water into neat piles as well; if only the tide would pull the water out as it’d pulled the water in.

  One week after the
storm, a parcel from Mama came in the mail. Millie brought it inside and set it down by the window where she used to watch the hummingbirds. The house was still humid and too warm from the storm damage and the broken window.

  Carefully, she unwrapped the brown paper, running her fingernail under the tape that bound the package together for safe travel.

  Millie gasped when she saw the neatly folded pile of lace fabric inside. She felt the respite of her mother’s arms despite the many miles, a comfort that was so welcome it brought tears to her eyes.

  Sugar,

  As usual, you’re thinking too much. Hush now with this talk like your dreams are too hard. You’ve made a life for yourself, haven’t you? Which is no simple business, and that seamstress job isn’t small potatoes. Stop looking at all that’s going wrong and consider all that’s going right. You don’t need to fix the world in one night, child. Give it time. Wait for the right shape of the moon to come, and it’ll pull in your tide.

  I put this lacy tablecloth up for you ages ago, but I think it’s high time I send it. Consider this an investment in your dress shop. Keep it safe until the day you can use it, and keep it in your heart too. Dream about all the dresses you can make, then sketch them out and make plans.

  Hold onto your hope, my girl. Always hold onto that.

  All my love,

  Mama

  FORTY-ONE

  Charleston, Modern Day

  A month after the expo, an Etta James track played over the speaker connected to Harper’s phone as she pulled three large cardboard boxes from the storage closet. Peter helped her carry them into the middle of the dress shop. He didn’t know the first thing about inventory, but he’d missed her, so here he was.

  Trying to find the courage to tell her about the need for repairs.

  “Didn’t expect manual labor at a dress store, did you?” Harper showed him where to set the boxes.

  “I don’t mind.” He might’ve seemed as if he were being polite, but it was the honest truth. “I do need to tell you something.”