The Dress Shop of Dreams

by Menna Van Praag

  “What?” Cora sits up, no longer nervous. Her voice is strong and sharp. “The police told me—their report ruled accidental death.”

  Dr. Eliot sighs. “Well then, they clearly didn’t have the specifics—”

  “The fire,” Cora interrupts. “They told me it was caused by a candle setting some books alight. Wasn’t it?”

  “No.” Dr. Eliot shakes her head. “That is correct. That’s how the fire started.”

  “So, I don’t understand—”

  “You would”—now Dr. Eliot’s voice cuts even sharper than Cora’s—“if you’d listen for long enough to allow me to explain.”

  Cora glances at her lap. “Sorry.” She looks up. “Please …”

  “The fire was an accident in the sense that it wasn’t intentional. But it wasn’t an accident in the sense that no one was to blame.”

  Cora opens her mouth, about to interrupt again, then checks herself.

  “Your parents were found to have a blood alcohol level of nearly three times the legal limit. Thus they were too drunk to act with any rational sense. In all probability they were passed out before the books caught light and died in their sleep. Well, we can certainly hope so.”

  Cora gives a slight shake of her head, the screaming still echoing in her ears.

  “No.” Cora shakes her head. “No, it can’t …”

  “I’m sorry,” Dr. Eliot says, “I’m sure that’s not what you wanted to hear, but those are the facts. You can see for yourself.”

  She slides the file across the desk, rotating it as Cora sits forward so she can see. The pages are a mess of letters and numbers, charts and graphs, black blurring on white. Normally numbers are Cora’s first language but right now they read like hieroglyphics. She follows Dr. Eliot’s finger to read, slowly and steadily, a repetition of what she’s just been told.

  Cora looks up from the file, eyes narrowed and lips tight. “It isn’t true.” Her words are clipped, syllables bitten off slowly. “It isn’t true.” She spits out the last word as if it’s poisonous.

  Dr. Eliot’s face darkens.

  “My parents never drank,” Cora snaps. “Never. Not one drop. So either you are simply incompetent or …”

  “Excuse me?” Dr. Eliot slaps the file shut, hand and paper hitting wood. “But how dare you. I was doing you a favor, giving you access to records that closed twenty years ago. And now you are bringing my professional competence into question. I am excellent at my job. In twenty-five years I’ve never had a case I worked on overturned. I graduated with the highest qualifications in the university, not in my class but the entire—”

  “Well, in that case,” Cora says, “if you’re not an idiot, you must be a liar.”

  Chapter Eleven

  The word hangs between them for a moment. Then Cora pushes her chair back, letting it fall to the floor, turns and runs out of the room. She runs through the hospital corridors, following the signs for the nearest exit, and doesn’t stop running until she’s far down the street, far from Dr. Eliot. Then Cora leans against a wall and vomits.

  She slides down to the pavement, not caring that anyone might be watching, and sobs. All she wants now is Etta. She wants her grandmother to hold her tight and rock her close. She wants to put on her pajamas. She wants to forget everything that’s happened in the last few days and live the life she was living before all these emotions were stirred up: the quiet, dull, boring, predictable life when she was never excited by anything, not joyous or delighted but never terrified, angry or grief-stricken either.

  What’s happening? How could a coroner have found alcohol in her parents’ blood? They never drank. She’s certain of this. It was a thread of consistency woven into the fabric of Etta’s stories about them. Maggie and Robert Carraway never touched a drop of drink, never smoked or ate red meat. Which isn’t to say they were tedious teetotalers who looked down their virtuous noses at anyone less abstemious. It was simply a matter of taste. Maggie harbored a great passion for chocolate sundaes and if she skipped her treat one day she’d find herself very grumpy the next. Robert had a penchant for mint humbugs and was never without a packet in his pocket.

  Cora has heard these things over and over again. She knows them as well as the periodic table or the gene segment coding for hemagglutinin. These tales about her parents were her bedtime stories. She soaked up every single fact and always asked for more detail. What was the color of her mother’s dress when her parents met? What was her father’s favorite word? What did they eat for dinner? What time did they go to bed? These were the building blocks from which Cora pieced together the picture of her parents, until she could at least imagine what they must have been like. Of course the picture wasn’t even a shadow of their brightness and brilliance in real life. It was limited, one-dimensional, unchanging. But it was something, as satisfactory and reassuring as a balanced equation.

  As she thinks of them, all of a sudden Cora is seized by something and stands up. Now she is awake, alert. These are her parents. This is her mystery to solve. She owes it to them. If their deaths weren’t purely accidental, then they didn’t kill themselves. She doesn’t know what happened or why their case files are inaccurate. All Cora knows is that something is wrong and that she must put it right.

  Cora strides along the street, heading straight for the bus station, realizing she hasn’t felt so enlivened in a long time. In fact, she has never felt like this before. It’s as if she has been set alight. Fire and fury rush through her veins, pumping her heart and pulsating to her fingertips. She wants to sprint across streets, to leap from tall buildings and fly. She wants to seize hold of strangers and look them in the eye. She wants to talk to people, to ask questions, to listen. She wants to connect. Suddenly she wants to live.

  Four hours later, when the sky is dark and Cora steps off the bus in Cambridge, she still feels that way. She didn’t spend the ride counting trees or calculating the square footage of fields. Instead she thought about her parents, the policeman and the coroner, and not in a sorrowful, self-pitying sort of way. She isn’t sad anymore. She isn’t lonely or grieving. She’s passionate, excited. She’s furious. Her parents died and either the investigation was completely botched or it was covered up. Which, of course, begs the question: Why?

  As she runs along Trinity Street, her bag bumping on her back, and turns into All Saints’ Passage, Cora is so desperate to see Etta she can hardly stand it. Her grandmother will know what to do next, she’ll have ideas and plans. She won’t be scared of anything. Together they’ll decide what to do. Etta is the one she needs now.

  But the person she runs into is Walt. They almost collide but stop just in time, Cora’s nose inches from Walt’s neck. She looks up, looks him straight in the eye.

  “Hello.”

  “Hi,” Walt says. His sleeping heart is suddenly beating hard in his chest and he’s holding his breath. He takes a step back.

  “How are you?”

  “I’m good, thanks.” Walt exhales. “You?”

  “Fine. How’s your girlfriend?”

  “My …?”

  “Oh, sorry,” Cora says, “the woman in the bookshop who ate my—the cherry pie. I just assumed she was your …”

  “Yes, well, yes,” Walt says, sounding reluctant, “I suppose she is.”

  “That’s nice,” Cora says, hoping to sound as if she means it. And suddenly she’s feeling awkward, standing alone in the street with a man she’s seen most of the days of her life but has never really known that well. It’s strange, because now she wants to stand with him and talk long into the night.

  Walt glances at his watch.

  “Oh, sorry,” Cora steps back slightly, embarrassed, “you’ve got somewhere to go, I’m holding you up.”

  “No, not at all,” Walt says, “it’s just work.”

  Cora frowns. “Isn’t the bookshop shut?”

  “Yes, of course.” Walt flushes. “But no, it’s not that. I work at a radio station, just the local BBC, I read the b
ook at bedtime.”

  “You do?” Cora asks. “How wonderful.”

  Walt shrugs, feigning nonchalance. His heart is still beating too fast and he’s starting to sweat. Why on earth did he just say that? He’s never told anyone before. Only his boss, Milly and a handful of others know his secret. He certainly never advertises the fact. Not to anyone, let alone Cora.

  “What are you reading tonight?”

  Walt wishes he could give a different answer, wishes he didn’t have to admit it. “Sense and Sensibility,” he mumbles. “But I don’t pick the books, I—” But Cora isn’t scornful, as he’d feared; instead she seems intrigued.

  “I’ve never read it,” Cora says, “so perhaps I should listen.”

  “No.” The word snaps out of his mouth and she seems surprised. Walt quickly tries to undo his harshness. “I mean, I don’t think you’d like it, it’s a bit silly, a bit soppy … I used to read nonfiction, my first was The Life & Times of Marie Curie but not anymore, my boss …” Walt loses his words.

  Cora is looking at him so closely, listening so intently that it quite unnerves him, undoing his words so they spool out into the air and drift away. He tells himself that it’s nothing. He’s not in love with her. He’s just nervous. He’s just socially inept. That’s all.

  “Oh,” Cora says. “Yes, I love anything about Marie Curie.” After that, she doesn’t know what else to say. So instead Cora just looks at him.

  Walt glances away, back at his watch, then at his shoes.

  “I suppose I’d better go,” he says, “I’ll see you …” He starts to walk away but turns back after a few steps. “But please don’t listen to me tonight, please.”

  “Okay,” Cora promises, “I won’t.”

  Although she knows, even as she says it, that she will. How could she not?

  “My darling girl!”

  Etta is waiting on the other side of the door when Cora steps inside the shop. She pulls Cora to her chest and hugs her tight. “That Old Black Magic” seeps into the air. Cora tucks her head into her grandmother’s shoulder, trying not to cry with love and relief.

  “How did you know I was coming?” Cora asks as they part, glancing at the floor and quickly wiping away her tears. “I didn’t call.”

  “Don’t ask silly questions.” Etta ushers her through the shop, brushing aside dresses that have crept in too close, reaching out for their mistress. “You need tea and cake.”

  “I’m not hungry,” Cora says, following Etta upstairs.

  “Oh, my dear.” Etta laughs, the sound humming around her. “When is cake ever for hunger? It’s for flavor and, in this case, comfort.”

  Behind her grandmother, Cora smiles.

  They walk into the kitchen and Etta flicks on the kettle. On the counter sits a large chocolate cake, icing shining and dotted with cherries. The room is filled with the thick scent of chocolate.

  “It’s beautiful,” Cora says. “You’re the best grandma a girl could hope for.”

  “Hardly.” Etta sets out two plates and begins cutting the cake. “Anyway, it’s not that cherry pie you love so much, but it will have to do.” She presents Cora with a big slice. “Now sit, eat and tell me everything else.”

  Chapter Twelve

  When Cora wakes the next morning she’s in the same position at the kitchen table, head bent into the pillow of her bony elbows. She pulls herself up slowly, wincing at the pain in her neck, and yawns. It’s only when she glances up at the clock, and sees the radio on the shelf above the cooker, that she remembers Walt and Sense and Sensibility. It’s too late now. Bubbles of disappointment pop in her chest and Cora sighs, far more upset than she should be. She fidgets in her seat, rubbing the back of her neck. A restless feeling has settled over her. She tries to shrug it off like a blanket but it’s in the air, thick and sticky, settling on her skin.

  Cora stands, pulling herself up through molasses. It’s time to go back to work. What else can she do right now, after all? She needs a plan, certainly, but can’t just sit around doing nothing until she thinks of one. She hasn’t been back to her flat for days, has almost forgotten what it looks like, probably because it’s plain, white and utterly nondescript. Cora sighs again. She hasn’t the heart to go home just yet. She remembers sitting on the pavement in Oxford, being overcome with a sudden sense of determination and purpose. She needs to do something now, something positive, proactive, to give her at least the illusion of control.

  Thirty minutes later, unwashed, unfed and still dressed in yesterday’s clothes, Cora arrives at the biology department and hurries to her tiny office, hoping not to bump into her boss. He won’t ask her what she’s been doing, he’ll just fill her in on the latest developments in their research. Usually this would be something worth listening to, especially since she’s dedicated her life to trying to realize her parents’ dream. A week ago Cora still cared about doing it more than anything else. But now other feelings, other concerns, seem to be gradually superseding that desire.

  Five hours later she’s halfway through a particularly dry scientific paper, the top one on a pile Dr. Baxter had left on her desk (along with a note that hopes she’s feeling better), and has a headache. It’s nearly four o’clock in the afternoon and she hasn’t eaten since too many slices of cherry chocolate cake last night. Pressing the fingers of one hand to her temples, and picking up her bag with the other, Cora squeezes out of her office, glances out to check the coast is clear, then hurries down the hall to the vending machine. As she’s pulling two packets of salt-and-vinegar crisps out of the drawer, Cora hears voices behind her and curses silently.

  “Cora!” Dr. Baxter calls out as she stands. “How are you feeling? Much better now, I hope.”

  Cora nods, not correcting his assumption. Her supervisor has someone with him, but he ignores his colleague to focus on his assistant.

  “Anyhow, it’s great to see you back.”

  “Thanks,” Cora says, “it’s good to be back.” And she means it. Excepting the slightly tedious marking of papers, Cora loves her job and admires Dr. Baxter enormously. And not only is he brilliant, he’s also tall and broad-shouldered, with graying black hair. He’s excessively handsome for a scientist, Cora thinks, and looks not unlike Clark Gable in all those films Etta loves so much, which is fitting since, being born and raised in the Midwest, he sounds a little like him as well. Cora knows that half the student body harbors a secret crush on her boss. Perhaps she’d have one, too, if she were inclined to feel such things. Perhaps not. She’s always thought of Colin Baxter as more of a father figure.

  “Are you free for the meeting next week?” Dr. Baxter asks. “I know it’s a chore, but it’s with the financial department, so sadly can’t be avoided.”

  Cora nods. “Of course.” She isn’t sure whether to question him in front of his colleague, but she can see a slight shimmer of concern on Dr. Baxter’s face and needs to know what’s going on.

  “Is everything all right?”

  “Yep, of course, no problem,” he says. “Our funding’s up for renewal next month, but I’m expecting everything to continue without a hitch.”

  Cora nods again. “Great,” she says. And if he’d looked her in the eye when he’d spoken, she’d probably have believed him.

  At the sound of the bell Etta, reluctantly putting down a tiny white cotton dress she’d been holding against her cheek, steps away from her sewing table to greet her new customer in the shop. “All Shook Up” plays as Etta walks across the carpet. Her new customer, a young woman with a mass of brown curls and a bright smile, bounds over.

  “Hi, I’m Cheryl. My friend, well, my boss … she told me about your shop.” She lowers her voice. “How it’s, well, sort of special. And I need a bit of magic in my life right now.”

  “Oh?”

  Cheryl nods. She reaches out to the closest rack of dresses and, almost without looking, plucks out a dark red ball gown and holds it out in front of her. “I’ll take this one.”

  Gently, E
tta takes the dress from her and replaces it among its fellows on the rack, where the ball gown seems to ruffle its silk folds like feathers rearranging themselves as it settles back in.

  “That’s not the way it works,” she says. “You must take your time. You have to wait for the dress to choose you.”

  “But there’s this guy I like,” Cheryl says, not seeming to hear, “and I want him to fall in love with me. I thought that was the sort of thing you could help me with, isn’t it?”

  Etta smiles. “Not exactly. My dresses aren’t just in the business of making women’s wishes come true, though that often happens.”

  Cheryl looks a little crestfallen.

  “But,” Etta continues, “if you’ve lost a piece of yourself, wearing your dress will help you find it. My dresses can open your heart to love, if that’s what you need. But I’m afraid they can’t make anyone fall in love with you.”

  “Oh.” Cheryl sighs. “That sucks.”

  “You may think so now, but—” Etta glances about the shop, then walks across the room and takes a turquoise dress of raw silk out of the window. “—when you’ve tried this one on, you might feel a little differently …”

  “Really?” Cheryl asks. Her big brown eyes widen with hope. “Well, it certainly is a beautiful color.” She reaches for the dress, then slips her fingers over the silk, mesmerized.

  “Try it on,” Etta suggests. “The changing room is just next to the counter.”

  Cheryl nods, walking along in something of a daze, clutching the large puff of crumpled silk to her chest.

  When she steps out of the changing room, the daze has deepened.

  “I don’t, I didn’t … I didn’t expect …” Cheryl trails off.

  “What, my dear?” Etta asks softly.

  “I never expected to feel like this again.”

  Standing at the edge of the changing room, Etta leans forward to catch the quiet words.