The Winters

by Lisa Gabriele

“Another very good reason to marry you.”

  “Maybe we should postpone the wedding. It’s not like we booked a hall.”

  “No. No more waiting. Pick out your dress, and let’s get on with it.” He paused for a moment. “Dani’s not going with you to the city. She’s grounded until the wedding. And I’m going to lock up our liquor.”

  “I have a feeling she never really wanted to go,” I said, quite honestly relieved. Perhaps last night was her way of sabotaging plans, even subconsciously.

  “Why don’t you see if Louisa will go?”

  “No,” I said, so quickly I had to backpedal slightly. “I mean, it’s really not a big deal, Max, picking out a dress. It’ll clear my head to have some solitude.”

  Mostly, I didn’t want Louisa to know about this rift. She’d interfere, and I wanted to repair things on my own. Besides, she’d said she was going to talk to Max about the greenhouse. I didn’t want to be with her when she initiated the conversation, in case Max thought I’d put her up to it.

  “I don’t like the idea of you driving to New York alone.”

  I gave him a look. “I’ve piloted some very big boats for very big clients in very bad weather. I can certainly get a car to a large city with a GPS.”

  He laughed and wrapped his arms around me. “I remember that wildly independent girl. Do you have a dress in mind?”

  “Something really fancy,” I said. “With a big tiara, and a huge train. How would you like to see me in that?”

  “For all I care you can marry me in a garbage bag.”

  I kissed him for that.

  Max gathered his wallet and keys. “Don’t wait on dinner,” he said. “I’ll be late again. A meeting with the county executives.”

  “Max, wait.”

  He looked at me. “What is it?”

  Ask, ask, ask.

  “Why do you never bring me to events?”

  His shoulders dropped, as did the corners of his mouth. “Oh no. Oh, my dear. I just assumed you didn’t want to go to those things. Plus, I wanted to give you some time to settle in, take this on bit by bit. Why, do you want to come to events?”

  “Maybe. Sometimes.”

  “Then you will. But not tonight. You’d gnaw off your arm out of boredom.” He kissed my forehead. “Good luck today. And things with Dani, they’ll get better. I promise.”

  He left me in the kitchen to pick at the cold eggs.

  * * *

  • • •

  I showered and dressed quickly, taking a coward’s early exit from Asherley to avoid Dani. As I headed to the garage, crunching purposefully across the gravel drive, there came that familiar sense that I was being watched. Tiny hairs on my neck lifted. I kept walking. I did not look up. If Dani were indeed up there peering down at me from the turret, eyes full of resentment, I would not give her the satisfaction of unnerving me further than she already had.

  I sat in the car for a second to gather my thoughts, feeling sorry for her, for the way she had left the kitchen sobbing, even if it was theatrical. Doubts began to trickle in. More closeness, not more distance. An apology. Some forgiveness. A discussion about a fresh start. I reached for my phone. Maybe I should text her. I know your dad said you’re grounded, but if you still want to come, I’m waiting out front. Come. I’ll take the blame. Instead I scanned her Instagram, something that now came automatically to me when I wondered where her mind was or what she was doing.

  There was a new post, from this morning. It was hard to make it out in the bright light of the car, but it looked to be a black-and-white candid of Rebekah. She seemed to be falling forward, laughing, hair piled on her head, wearing a dress. She had a fist under her chin, the other held up to block the person taking the picture, as though she was running a paparazzi gauntlet. The photo was artistically blown out so I couldn’t decipher the background. I opened it wider with my fingers. A stray dark tendril poked out from behind Rebekah’s blond hair and a doomy realization fell over me. Whatever filter Dani had added blurred out the edges of the face so that if you weren’t scrutinizing the photo as closely as I was, you’d think you were looking at an old picture of Rebekah. But this wasn’t Rebekah. It was a photo of her, and I was standing behind it. That was a lock of my hair, my arms. That was my ring on my hand. The caption read: “No one will ever replace you, no matter how hard they try.” The likes numbered in the dozens already, with not one commenter aware of the ruse. “Beautiful mama,” wrote one person, “RIP Rebekah we loved you,” “Thinking of you Dani,” and on and on.

  My hand shook; I felt on the verge of throwing up. I went to dial Dani’s number, to scream at her to pull down the post, but to confront her was to admit I was a lurker, too mortifying to contemplate. And to tell Max was to admit to worse. Even the photo, with Rebekah’s laughing mask, and the position of my arms, implied antic complicity on my part. Max would be incensed. How could we recover any sense of normalcy?

  I texted Dani to tell her I was heading into the city, that I assumed she didn’t want to go, but to stick around later because I wanted to talk to her about last night. Even if it meant admitting I snooped, I had to tell her to delete the post, and I had to do it in person, to show her how much it upset me, and how much it would hurt Max. Pulsing ellipsis indicated her imminent reply. One minute passed, then two, before it finally disappeared. She was giving me nothing.

  “Fuck you,” I muttered, feeling like a fool again. I threw the car into gear and spun out of the garage and down the barren drive, leaving a cloud of gray dust in my wake.

  NINETEEN

  Nothing had prepared me for entering a store like this, a two-story bridal-industrial complex, filled with women shopping in pairs, mothers and daughters mostly, for whom this would be an idea of heaven. There it was again, that mother-shaped hole inside me that made itself painfully known. Of course this was a place for mothers and daughters. A mother would pluck all the right gowns from the racks and toss them over the changing room door. The daughter would try each one on. Each time the daughter stepped out, the mother’s face was the first thing she’d search out, even before her own in the mirror. The mother would cluck a no to all but the one dress of which she was certain. That’s what my own would have done. Or she might have made me a dress, something pretty and flattering that I’d have been proud to wear. It struck me that I didn’t know, and this made me sadder than the plain fact of her absence. Time was stretching my memory of my mother so thin, I was beginning to lose even an outline of her. Tears stung my eyes, the stresses of this morning catching up to me. I dabbed them back with the tips of my fingers before giving my name at reception.

  “Did you bring anyone to help you make a decision today?” the woman behind the counter asked me. “You’re limited to two people.”

  “No. It’s just me today.”

  She smiled tightly. “Did you bring pictures or an inspiration book?”

  I was in that common nightmare, trapped in a classroom where everyone’s writing a test I’m entirely unprepared for.

  “No. Was I supposed to bring something?”

  “No, no. It’s just that usually women come here with a pretty good sense of what they’re looking for. Helps your assistant pull the right dresses for you to try on.”

  Her eyes traveled from my hair to my shabby T-shirt to my worn jeans. I imagined her struggling to picture my transformation into a bride.

  From behind came a voice. “We do have an idea of what we want. It’s a casual wedding, so we thought we’d start with some tea-length gowns. Pull whatever you have in ivory.”

  I turned around and there was Dani, standing behind me in dark sunglasses, wearing a tan mackintosh and slouchy boyfriend jeans, clutching a metallic purse.

  “Dani! How— What are you doing here?”

  She shrugged. “You said you had an appointment.”

  “Yes, but I thought . . . your da
d grounded you. How did you get here?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Gus, duh. And you can’t tell Daddy that either.”

  “Is this your guest?” the receptionist asked, sounding way too happy for me.

  “Yes,” Dani said, stepping past me to press against the reception desk.

  “Sisters? Friends?”

  “Yeah, uh, neither,” she said. “I’m Dani Winter. She’s marrying my father, Max Winter.”

  “Oh, well, congratulations!” the woman replied, in a way that made it difficult to discern whether she actually recognized Max’s name or was just doing a good job of pretending.

  “Did she tell you their wedding is in a month?”

  “No.” The receptionist touched her neck. “That changes things.”

  “Yes,” Dani said. “It does. It means we should really only look at samples. Unless we find something we like off the rack. In that case, you should send someone in to pin. We’ll take care of alterations. I have a good seamstress on Long Island.”

  “Of course,” she replied.

  “Also, can we have one of the private rooms?”

  “Um. Yes.”

  “And some water, please. Room temperature. I’m super parched.”

  “Right away.”

  I stared at Dani in disbelief, my emotions a riotous jumble finally settling on something akin to confused gratitude. I was, for the first time since we’d met, more happy than terrified to see her, despite everything that had happened last night and this morning. And her manner, which I would have taken for rude, seemed to be interpreted by the receptionist as purposeful and direct. In fact, she seemed to happily obey this girl who rattled off designers and terminology like an old pro. Then again, she was Rebekah Winter’s daughter. She probably knew the inside of every changing room up and down Fifth Avenue. Even Georgina, the elderly saleswoman assigned to us, thrilled to her every command. We were ushered upstairs and shown to our plush dressing area, where we waited for Georgina to pull the first batch.

  “I apologize for last night,” Dani said without quite looking at me. “And also for this morning. I know you were just trying to be helpful. But seriously, I’m fine. I don’t know what got into me.”

  “Thank you, Dani, for saying that. And I’m sorry, too.”

  “For what?”

  “For telling your father you were drunk. For mentioning your mother.” I thought about bringing up the Instagram post. But things were going well. I decided to wait until later, when we were alone, in case she threw some kind of public fit.

  “Anyway,” she said, “I’m going to lay off the pot. It’s making me lazy and fat.”

  “You’re hardly fat.”

  “Well, I am lazy.”

  I left that one to simmer, marveling at the differences between our adolescences, the ones that went beyond class and money. We were quiet until Georgina returned, pulling a clothes rack that looked entirely made of meringue.

  “Here we are,” she sang.

  In a strange way, the drama in Rebekah’s closet had removed any remaining shyness about my body. After the first misfire (an off-the-shoulder mermaid thing), it became clear that a floor-length gown would indeed swallow me whole, ivory went best with my skin tone, and beading was ridiculous.

  The trying on and discarding of clothes and outfits and identities seemed to be an entirely female endeavor that I had only been introduced to since meeting Max. In my old life, being poor meant having few clothes. But it also meant I wasn’t destined to constantly become different versions of myself. Yet here I was again, Cinderella discarding rags for a ball gown, a hovering stepdaughter to boot, one who was becoming less and less ugly to me by the minute. Watching the stern pride she took in touching the materials, examining the hems, the buttons, the beads, discussing these details with Georgina, warmed me. Finding something I liked became less important than finding something she liked on me, in the hopes that this would be what drew us closer. At one point, while she struggled to close a tiny clasp on my sash, her hair was near enough to my hand to lovingly stroke it, yet I resisted.

  “This thing . . . is . . . a little bitch,” she whispered.

  Don’t smother her with affection. It’s like socializing a feral cat. Let her come to you.

  “There!” Dani said. “What a pain in the ass. But . . . look.”

  I turned around, Georgina chasing my hem to tug it straight.

  When it hung limply on the hanger, there had been nothing remarkable about this dress. But the way the cap sleeves cupped my shoulders, how the ivory silk bodice held my waist and the chiffon skirt brushed my calves . . . it simply looked like my dress.

  “Well, now,” Georgina said, placing her hands on her waist.

  “What do you think?” Dani asked, her poker face cracking.

  “I . . . like it,” I said, lying. I had instantly loved it, but I wanted to know what she thought before I went all in. I didn’t want to have to backpedal embarrassingly if Dani turned her nose up at it.

  “You can’t like it,” she scolded. “People don’t like their wedding dresses. You have to fucking love it. Do you? Do you fucking love it?”

  “I think so. I—”

  “Because I fucking love it!”

  “Then I fucking love it!” I replied, louder still, taking a little leap. I motioned towards her for a hug, but she turned to Georgina and resumed an all-business air.

  “This is the one,” Dani said.

  “In under an hour. Impressive,” Georgina said.

  “It’s because of Dani. I would have dithered all day.”

  I turned back to the mirror. Dani came behind me and gathered up my hair in a rough bun.

  “Wear it like this . . .” she said, tilting her head. Our eyes met in the mirror. There was a flash of something, not love, not friendship, but maybe an alliance.

  A short film replayed in my head, stopping on a frame from a few months ago. I saw myself piloting a dozen drunk men to the middle of the Caribbean to catch and kill fish they did not eat. There was another still: me in a stained golf shirt, trailing Laureen to her car as she barked instructions at me. Then I was cross-legged on a rickety twin bed eating cold noodles out of a Styrofoam cup. A party I wasn’t invited to raged on in the kitchen I shared with strangers. Look at you now. This is real life. Your life. You live in a mansion on an island. In a month you will marry a man you love, who loves you, too, the only obstacle to your happiness his difficult daughter, who might have just granted you a blessed reprieve.

  TWENTY

  Leaving the boutique, wearing my jeans, sneakers, and T-shirt again, my hair back up in a ponytail, was to feel like Superman exiting the phone booth as Clark Kent. We walked to a restaurant Dani liked near Central Park. She kept her distance, pointing out landmarks with a perfunctory air.

  The restaurant was a sea of older attractive people, men with no hair or a lot of white hair, women who’d had excellent work done on their faces and expensive haircuts; I wasn’t properly dressed for this place either. We were seated immediately. As the waiter pulled out her chair, Dani’s phone dinged a text. She glanced at it.

  “Daddy,” she said, wincing. “Making sure I’m still at home.” She typed a quick reply, then put the phone away. “Again, you can’t tell him about today. I mean it. He’ll be so mad.”

  “I’m sure he’d be happy to know that we were able to spend a little time together. Without fighting. Especially after this morning.”

  Now my phone alerted me to a message, which we both knew could only be from Max. Home after midnight. Hope today went well. Can’t wait to hear about your dress. Love M.

  “Promise,” Dani pressed.

  “Fine. But he won’t believe I picked that dress out by myself.”

  “Miss Winter, how are you?” The waiter poured two glasses of water and told us the specials. It clearly pleas
ed Dani that they knew her name, that they knew she preferred sparkling water, and that I was witnessing this. But if she thought I envied being fifteen and a regular at a fancy restaurant, she was wrong. There were other, better things she could be mastering at this age, especially with her fortune, like concerts, or posh camps, or ski trips. Not adult rituals like this. I also noted we were closing in on two entire hours together, the longest we’d spent in each other’s company.

  Dani confidently ordered the chicken dish, which made it easy for me to do the same.

  “You know,” she said once the waiter had left us alone, “I don’t go up to my mother’s old room that often. Not like I used to. Only when I really miss her. The closet still smells like her.”

  I could have cried. “I understand that,” I said, stopping my hand from covering hers in comfort.

  “You don’t, though.”

  “I do. I also lost my mother when I was young. I remember rolling myself up in her comforter. It smelled like her for years.”

  She furrowed her brow, her mind making room for this unexpected bit of information. “I didn’t know about your mom,” she said. “Daddy never told me.”

  “There’s a lot we probably don’t know about each other. But you can ask me anything you want. Go ahead. We can make it like a game. We’ll take turns.”

  “How did your mother die?”

  “Breast cancer.”

  “How old was she?”

  “Mid-thirties. That’s two questions. Now I get to ask you one.”

  She ignored me. “Were you there when she died?”

  “Yes. I was.”

  “What do you remember?”

  I felt a pall come over me. To conjure these memories was always to risk tears. But Dani had never shown this much interest in me.

  “Well, she had been in the hospital for a while. A couple of months. I suppose I thought she’d come home. No one told me the truth about her illness, that it wasn’t something she’d recover from. One day a teacher drove me to the hospital. I knew why. I remember feeling like I never wanted the car to stop. My father was waiting for me in the emergency room area. He told me that my mother had slipped into a coma. They led me to her room. It was dim. She didn’t look or sound like herself. Her cheeks were all hollowed out. She had one of those . . . death rattles. It was awful to watch, to know there wasn’t going to be a goodbye. My father didn’t want me to see her struggling, so a nurse took me to a room down the hall where I waited for him to come and tell me that she had died. I seem to remember waiting a long time.”