The Wedding Dress

by Danielle Steel

  Miss Benson told her to take the rest of the week off. After she thanked her, Eleanor went to the military hospital in the Presidio to see Alex. He was surprised and pleased to see her so early in the day, but as he saw her approach, he could see that something was wrong. Eleanor looked devastated. He held his breath, praying that nothing had happened to Camille.

  “What is it? Why are you here so early?” he asked, dreading her answer.

  “It’s my father,” she said and dissolved in tears. And this time he comforted her, as she had done so lovingly for him. She had convinced him that they would manage without a problem. She would continue working. He would get a pension and maybe would find some kind of job that suited him. They would save a little money here and there. And the loss of Alex’s salary was small. Eleanor refused to be defeated, and she was carrying Alex along, on the strength of her love for him. But now the loss of her father had hit her hard, and it would hit her mother even harder. After leaving Camille with the neighbor again, Eleanor left for Tahoe that night in Alex’s car, which was getting old, and she used it sparingly.

  She found her mother awake and distraught when she got there. Louise was bereft.

  “I don’t know how I’m going to go on without him,” she said to Eleanor, as they sat and held hands in the living room in the house she had made so pretty for them.

  “You have to, Mother. We need you. I need you. And you have a granddaughter who loves you.” Louise looked at her as though she were lost in the forest. Eleanor realized now that her father had been her mother’s reason for living. She had been the stronger of the two and had kept him going since they’d lost everything fourteen years before. It had taken a toll on her too.

  Eleanor made all the arrangements for her the next day, and planned a small simple funeral for her father in the local church. He had become a recluse since they moved there. He had maintained no contact with his old friends. Her mother had been his whole world, just as he was hers. They were so intertwined that Eleanor was seriously worried about her now, but she had Alex to think of too.

  Only a few of the people who worked on the estate attended the funeral, and Eleanor and Louise. It was heart-wrenching and dignified. Eleanor supported her mother on their way out of the church, as they followed the casket to the cemetery.

  Eleanor went back to the city on Sunday after the service, and promised her mother that they would spend the summer with her, as they always did. And by then, Alex would be able to come home. It dawned on Louise then that there were two floors in the cottage they stayed in, with both bedrooms upstairs, which would be impossible for Alex with the wheelchair, whereas the house which she and Charles lived in was all on one level. She suggested exchanging them over the summer, which made perfect sense, and would give her something to do before they arrived. School would be out in six weeks, and they were hoping Alex could be released by then.

  Eleanor drove back to the city, thinking of all she would have to arrange and be responsible for now. Alex, Camille, her mother. She had to find a new apartment for them in the city, so she could keep working. It was overwhelming, and she realized too that her father’s death left an enormous hole in her own life. He was a kind, intelligent man, who had always given her wise advice and been good to her. Thinking about him and how much she would miss him made her cry most of the way home. She had so much on her plate now, she had no idea how she would get everything done. They were teaching her at the hospital how to help care for her husband, and she was going to get one of the men on the estate to help. And Alex was determined to be as independent as he could.

  Once she got Camille back from the neighbor, she put her to bed and fell into her own bed exhausted. She didn’t see Alex until the following afternoon. He was deeply sympathetic to the loss of her father, which was a major loss for him too. And he was worried about Eleanor and all she had on her shoulders. He was anxious to leave the hospital so he could help her, but he was still too weak to be discharged.

  The next six weeks flew by, as she finished the term at school, and once he was stronger, Alex was able to leave the hospital, after almost four months. His internal wounds seemed to be healing, and the wounds from his amputations. In mid-June, she picked him up at the hospital, and drove him and Camille to Lake Tahoe. It was the first time he had seen their daughter in sixteen months, and he was stunned by how much she’d grown and how bright and talkative she was for an almost three-year-old.

  He looked like a happy man as they drove to Tahoe, and Eleanor began to relax with her husband at her side again. And even with Alex’s infirmities, life in partnership was so much easier than life alone. After a few minutes of hesitation, Camille was at ease with him too. She wanted to know where his feet went, and said she wanted to ride around in the wheelchair with him.

  When they got to Tahoe, they discovered that Louise had already moved to the cottage, and had the house she normally occupied filled with flowers for them. The one-level house was exactly what Alex needed. There were no stairs anywhere, and one of the handymen on the estate had built some minor accommodations for him, handrails, a special seat in the shower, and a wooden ramp at the front and back doors. He rolled from room to room, beaming at the familiar home after a year and a half away. He had been to hell and back, and it had never dawned on him that he might come back seriously damaged. He had so many things to relearn as a handicapped person. Louise embraced him the moment she saw him, and he told her how sorry he was about Charles, which brought tears to her eyes again, but she didn’t give in to them. She wanted to be strong for Eleanor and Alex, and all they had to face.

  Their time together that summer was good for all of them. Louise and Eleanor had both been shocked at the reading of Charles’s will. He was by no means a rich man compared to what he had been, but he had made sound investments with what he had left, he had saved much of the money from the sale of the Tahoe property, and he spent almost none of what the earl paid him annually to run it. Louise would have no financial worries for the rest of her days, and he had left half of what he had to Eleanor, which would give them a cushion now, if none of them were extravagant.

  Alex grew strong and healthy in the mountain air. He even devised a system to take Eleanor boating. He wheeled down to the boathouse with her one day, lifted himself into the driver’s seat of their favorite boat, and told his wife to get in, in front of him. He reached around her and held the steering wheel and instructed her to work the pedals, which were similar to those in a car. So together, they drove the boat, with Alex steering, and Eleanor in charge of the gas pedal and the brake. It was a little out of sync at first, but they both got the hang of it quickly, and had a good time running the boat around the lake, while her mother babysat for Camille, and was delighted to do it. She could hear the sound of Alex and Eleanor laughing as Eleanor pushed his chair back up from the lake. It was music to her ears. The agony of war was starting to dim for Alex, despite the horrors he had seen and what it had cost him. He still had nightmares on many nights, but they were fading slowly.

  He had written to his brothers and told them about losing his legs. Both of them were desperately sorry to hear it. They couldn’t imagine him in a wheelchair for the rest of his life, at his age. But after their initial sympathetic letters, he hadn’t heard from them again. In reality, he wasn’t part of their lives anymore, and only a distant voice from the past, and he knew it, and expected nothing of them. He kept in touch because they were his brothers, even if only in name. Eleanor and Camille were his life.

  On a sunny summer day, Alex and Eleanor were just a happy couple, lying in a hammock and laughing or quietly side by side at night. Eleanor’s love and strength was healing him more than the doctors.

  While Louise kept busy with her gardening, Eleanor decided to explore the barn one day. She was looking for something of her father’s that her mother had put away, a box of rare books that Alex remembered and wanted
to see again. It had been years since Eleanor had looked into the barn with any seriousness, and as she peeked under the dust covers, some of them custom made, she pushed aside sheets and drapes and plastic covers and suddenly remembered more of the furniture she had grown up with in her parents’ house and how beautiful it was.

  She was surprised by how much her mother had kept. There was nowhere for her to use it in the small house and the cottage at Lake Tahoe. There was enough there to furnish several houses, and it was sad to see it abandoned and unused, knowing they would never use it again. And in a stronger economy now, it was worth a lot of money, far more than when Louise had put it away. She mentioned it to her mother that night at dinner.

  “Now that you’re going through Papa’s things, why don’t you send all of that furniture to auction? You might as well get rid of it, it’s been sitting in the barn for years.” Fourteen years to be exact, beautiful things but that she no longer had any interest in. At the time, Eleanor had paid no attention to what her mother put away. It seemed pointless to Eleanor to keep what was there. She thought they should sell it now.

  Louise didn’t answer for a moment.

  “I thought maybe we’d use it again one day,” she said sadly. “We would have gotten nothing for it when we sold the house. Everything was selling for so little, and no one had any money. So I kept the best pieces. They’re a memory of a happier time,” she said wistfully. Selling the house and everything in it had been so hard. She never talked about it and neither had Charles. And Eleanor didn’t want to upset her now. It wasn’t hurting anyone in the barn, so she dropped the subject when she saw the pain in her mother’s eyes. She wasn’t ready to give up the last vestiges of their past, even now. “Your wedding dress is there too. And your debut gown,” Louise added, and Eleanor smiled thinking of it, and so did Louise. No one had dresses like that anymore, or weddings like hers. It was part of a lost era, a time that would never come again. Everything had crashed around them, only weeks after their wedding. Their apartment in Chinatown was a sharp contrast to their old way of life, which seemed like a dream now.

  They had to decide too, with her father gone, who would oversee the Tahoe estate for the earl. It ran itself with the people Charles had hired, but it needed someone on the spot to keep an eye on things. Alex told Eleanor he’d be happy to do it, when they came up for weekends. And her mother was well aware of how things should look, and loved the gardens. The earl had sent a very kind condolence letter to Louise and hadn’t been pressuring them about who would replace Charles. Both women were grateful to Alex for the offer. He couldn’t walk, but he could certainly come up and speak to the groundskeepers and the gardeners, the boatmen and the maintenance people, and he needed something to do. He didn’t want to sit around and be an invalid for the rest of his life. It reminded Eleanor of what a blessing it had been that her parents had been able to continue living on the estate, thanks to the absentee owner. They didn’t seem to miss the big house they had occupied there before, or at least they never said so. But she wondered about it now, with her mother storing so much in the barn, hoping they would need it again one day. But for what? Their old way of life and the houses that went with it would never return.

  It was a difficult summer unexpectedly in the end. In August, a month before Eleanor and Alex were due to return to the city, and she was planning to go back to town to find an apartment that would work for Alex, her mother had a heart attack. The shock of losing her husband had been too much for her. Eleanor and Alex had a serious conversation while Louise was in the hospital. Eleanor didn’t want to leave her alone in Tahoe, she was fragile now, and there was no one to look after her. And Alex had thrived in Tahoe over the summer.

  “Maybe I should take a leave of absence this year, so I can stay here with her?” Eleanor suggested. They didn’t have a place they could live in now in the city anyway. Alex couldn’t get up the stairs of the Chinatown apartment in his wheelchair. And she hadn’t had time to find another one yet. A year in Tahoe would give Alex time to get stronger, and help manage the estate at close range. And the money her father had left her made her job at the school less of a dire necessity. She could take a year off if she felt she had to, and it looked that way. She hadn’t touched her father’s money and didn’t intend to, and they spent almost nothing in Tahoe. They talked about it for several days, and by the time Louise got out of the hospital, they had made the decision to stay in Tahoe for a year. It seemed to be what they needed to do, and made sense to all of them.

  Eleanor didn’t feel comfortable leaving her mother alone now, so soon after her father’s death, and in ill health. And Alex liked the prospect of staying in Tahoe. He had no idea what he was going to do in the city. He could return to his bank job eventually, losing his legs didn’t affect his ability to work, but he hadn’t fully recovered yet, and he loved being with Eleanor and Camille all the time now that he had survived the war. His job at the bank had been dreary and he’d hated it for years before he had left. He wasn’t looking forward to going back, and his options were limited in a wheelchair although there were many men like him returning from the war who were seeking employment, and many veterans were begging on the streets.

  They told Louise when she got home from the hospital, and she insisted she didn’t want to be a burden to them, but she liked the idea of their staying too. She said she was comfortable in the cottage, and urged them to stay in the larger house as they had done that summer. The decision was made. They were staying. Eleanor sent a long apologetic letter to Miss Benson, and asked for permission to take a year off, to attend to her convalescing mother and husband. And her response a week later was warm and kind and she agreed to give Eleanor a year’s sabbatical for compassionate reasons. It would have been hard not to, and particularly since Eleanor had been a faithful employee of the school for fourteen years.

  In September, Eleanor went back to San Francisco to give up their apartment. Because it wasn’t accessible for Alex, they couldn’t use it. She was sad to let it go. They had been happy there and she liked their neighbors, but another chapter had ended. She sent their furniture to Tahoe to add to what was in the barn, since she had borrowed it from her mother originally. And on a warm Indian summer day, she left their Chinatown apartment for the last time. She walked to where she had parked the car, past all the open markets and the familiar sights and sounds of the neighborhood. She sensed that another door had closed silently behind her, and once again, the future and the mysteries it held were unknown.

  Chapter 11

  Louise seemed to get some of her strength back in the fall, after her heart attack, and she started spending a lot of time in her garden. It was part of the healing process for her and she said it was good for her soul. She had taken refuge and great comfort in her gardening when they first moved to Tahoe as well.

  Eleanor and Alex kept a watchful eye on Louise, and as the winter set in, the colder weather and heavy snows, Louise spent most of her time in her cozy cottage and slept a lot. Without Charles to take care of and fuss over, she seemed to be losing interest in life, and Eleanor was worried about her, and glad they had decided to stay in Tahoe with her.

  In contrast, Alex had recovered and was fully engaged with whatever was done on the property. He had his energy back. The only difference was he couldn’t walk now. But there was very little he couldn’t do. His back had been somewhat damaged in the explosion too, so he couldn’t stand well enough to wear prostheses, but he got around everywhere in his wheelchair once the paths were cleared of snow, and he loved being with his family. Eleanor knew they had made the right decision to stay in Tahoe. She and Alex had time together, Camille flourished from having her parents close at hand, and Eleanor could keep an eye on her mother. It was harder and harder to coax her from her cottage. By January, after a quiet Christmas, their first without Eleanor’s father, Louise seldom left her cottage for meals now. She was content to stay tucked up with a
book, and spent more time asleep than awake.

  Eleanor went to check on her one morning when she hadn’t heard from her yet, and was shocked but not entirely surprised by what she found when she entered the cottage. Her mother had had another heart attack sometime in the night, and hadn’t survived it. The doctors said afterward that she must have died instantly. It saddened Eleanor to have lost both her parents so young, but the traumas they had weathered almost fifteen years earlier had eroded their spirits and their health, and without Charles, Louise had lost her will to live. Even her daughter and her grandchild weren’t enough to stem the tides. She had slipped away quietly and had no desire to live without Charles. Eleanor was sad, but had a sense of peace about it. At least their final years had been comfortable ones in a place they loved, and they had each other. And Louise had gone to join him in the end.

  * * *

  —

  The war in Europe was fierce by then and had been for some time, in the spring of 1944. Alex followed it avidly in the newspapers and on the radio. The Allies were fighting hard to defeat Hitler, but victory wasn’t assured yet. In spite of that, the Allies had liberated Rome in June of 1944 and at the same time, the Allied invasion of Normandy had begun. And as Charles had predicted for years, it had taken a war to end the Great Depression and turn the economy around. The economy was much stronger due to war production and new fortunes were being made. No one lived the way the very wealthy had when Eleanor and Alex were younger, but the country had money and was gaining strength.

  It was in the spring after her mother’s death that Eleanor turned her attention to the barn, and decided to go through what was in it, and possibly sell it. She hired two young local boys to help her take everything out in the good weather, and she stood marveling at what they found there, including her wedding and debut dresses, which Louise had had carefully sealed in special boxes to protect them.