The Book of Essie

by Meghan MacLean Weir

  * * *

  —————

  Years later, I went back and saw the black marks on the cement floor where we cooked those squirrels and fried countless cans of Spam and even saved Mo Laramie’s pinky toe. A school group stomped into the Black Rock Visitor Center, but the children didn’t skirt the scorch marks as I had done. They walked right across them. Two little girls were holding hands and laughing. It made me want to hit them, to scream that this building did not deserve their laughter. I was offended that they weren’t saddened by what had taken place there, though they had no reason to be. There wasn’t even a plaque, since that would only encourage other militants. What happened there was just a footnote, a boring history lesson, and nothing more. It was personal only to me.

  Except that I know this isn’t true. It was personal to Mama too. It was why she wrote letter after letter to the parole board and regularly called the Department of Justice to demand that Ames’s case be reviewed. It was why she was calling me now, though we haven’t spoken for years, to ask me to write my own letter. Setting Quentin free had become an obsession for Mama. What she really wanted was to have her daughter back, but since that wasn’t possible, she would settle for Quentin Ames instead.

  Esther

  That night I dream of Livingston James, and though I have only flashes of feeling to remember the nightmare by, I know it was about Libby as well. I should have just slipped her a note or found a way to sneak a text from Roarke’s phone before she and Margot drove out of town, but in truth I’ve always felt that there are not many people in this town I can truly trust. With that many of them around, someone might have seen. They are kind to me. They go out of their way to be solicitous. But even without meaning to, they have a tendency to report my every move to the woman from whom I, at times, desperately want to hide. It is like that for every teenager, I suspect. My mother just has more willing spies than most.

  The next morning she wakes me by pacing up and down the hall. Mother waits until she hears me turn over in bed before she peers around the door. I prop myself up on one elbow and resist the urge to dig myself deeper under the covers.

  “Oh, you’re up,” she says in mock surprise. “Good. You have a fitting at ten. You’ll need to shower. We’ll stop off at Lilah’s on the way and she’ll figure out something to do with your hair.”

  “I don’t see why I have to go. We already know it fits.”

  My weight has evened out now that my appetite is back to normal and I probably have another month or so before I really start to pack on the pounds. At least that’s what Google tells me. Mother sighs and looks at me indulgently.

  “The wedding is only a week away. You know they need to air the teaser tomorrow. They’ll need some footage of you in the dress.”

  I sit up and tuck the quilt around my waist, trapping the warmth, and pull the sleeves of my nightgown down over my wrists. I shiver, reluctant to climb fully out of bed.

  “It’s only a little bit longer, Bug. I know that it all seems overwhelming, but you’re almost there. Once the ceremony is over, you won’t have to worry about anything ever again.”

  I start at her use of my old nickname, short for Lovebug, and at her use of the word you instead of we. This is maybe the first time she has given any indication that this is something that is happening to me, not just to her. For a split second I am sorry about everything, not only about where I’ve tried to lead Libby, but about what I intend to do.

  “Was this what it was like when you married Daddy?”

  “Goodness no. I think there were barely fifty people at the church that day. We could hardly afford any flowers. I carried a bedraggled bouquet that was mostly baby’s breath. It had already begun to rot. I could smell it as I was walking down the aisle. Your father had nothing when I married him. I was the only one who saw the sort of man he had the potential to become.”

  I wrinkle my forehead. This is not the way she tells the wedding story when the cameras are rolling. I wonder which version is closer to being true.

  Impulsively I say, “But you loved him, right? It was more than just his potential. It was love.”

  Mother looks startled; her smile is brittle. “Yes,” she says, “yes, of course. I loved him.”

  I try to hold her gaze, daring her to admit to some deeper darker truth, but she only repeats her command to shower and then slips away.

  * * *

  —————

  Roarke wanted to ask Blake to be his best man, but Mother quashed that idea on the basis that the best man would be in most of the close-ups of the actual ceremony and she didn’t want to have to worry about an amateur fidgeting and ruining the shot. Or breaking out with zits and making the whole production look even more like a group of children playing at being adults than was absolutely necessary. In the end, she offered to let Roarke have Blake as one of his groomsmen and looked affronted when Roarke didn’t trip over himself to thank her.

  Caleb was the superior choice for best man as far as Mother was concerned; she explained her reasoning at length, using the words chiseled features and boyish good looks more than once. She denied that it had anything to do with increasing his visibility for the campaign, but when I suggested using Matty or Daniel or Jacob instead, she dismissed the idea outright.

  So it was that Naomi had been assigned the task of being my matron of honor, since Mother has always been a sucker for symmetry. She and Candy debated for a long time whether it would be appropriate to have a pregnant woman standing beside me at the altar, not seeming to appreciate the irony implicit in the question, and finally decided that it was the perfect symbol of what the purpose of marriage really is. Honor God. Procreate.

  Naomi is already in a dusty blue dress when Mother and I arrive at the bridal shop, and she is turning this way and that in front of a mirror made up of three separate panels. The slippery fabric shimmers and accentuates the curve in her lower abdomen. I try not to stare and Mother rushes to embrace her in an expansive hug.

  “Naomi, dear, you look lovely,” she breathes.

  “You don’t think it’s too much?” my sister-in-law asks meekly. She has always idolized my mother. Her own parents died shortly before she started dating Caleb and I’ve always suspected, but never confirmed, that Mother paid for Naomi’s last year of college. In my more cynical moments I know it would have been because the relationship was popular with viewers and Mother needed Naomi to stay in school, but when I am feeling generous, I recognize that Mother probably saw something of herself in her future daughter-in-law. Naomi may have grown up poor, but beneath all her fluff and simpering was a shrewdness that had bought her a life she could have never earned all on her own.

  Naomi waves a hand in front of her chest, which I take to mean that she is worried about the neckline. Mother tugs on one of the shoulders and lifts Naomi’s left breast by an inch.

  “Well, it never hurts to err on the side of modesty. But I think bringing this in just a bit will achieve the necessary coverage and not compromise the line at all. Don’t you agree?”

  I step forward to take a closer look, but as it turns out, Mother is not talking to me. A sturdy-looking older woman scurries out from behind a counter, a line of straight pins held between her thin lips. She extracts one of these small metal daggers and jabs it through the fabric at Naomi’s bust. Naomi winces but manages to stand still. Mother steps back to give the woman room to work and glances down at her watch.

  “The crew will be here soon. You better go get changed.”

  The pin-wielding woman, whose name I cannot remember, mutters something while keeping her lips pressed tight. I have no earthly clue as to whether she is even speaking English, her words are so garbled by the pins she is holding, but Mother seems to understand her well enough. She takes my arm and leads me through to the back, where my dress is hanging in the largest of the dressing rooms. I shrug off my sweater and lay
it flat on the upholstered bench, then sit to remove my shoes.

  Mother stands uncertainly for a moment with her hand on the heavy velvet curtain, not sure whether she should wait inside or out.

  “I can’t get it on alone,” I remind her.

  Reluctantly she pulls the curtain and begins to ease the dress out of its bag. The dress is the one thing I chose in this entire wedding—except for Roarke, that is. Mother had originally picked out a gown with a stiff beaded bodice that made me look ten years older than I am, but I told her I couldn’t breathe in it and the thought of my passing out on live television was enough to make her relent. In contrast, the dress that Mother is now unwrapping makes me feel light as air. Slipping beneath its layers of tulle is like being wrapped in a cloud that has been backlit by the sun. The delicate beadwork of flowers and vines wends its way over the chest and shoulders and makes me look no more and no less than the seventeen years I am. It is the only honest thing about this entire production and I am surprised to find that I love it. Once I saw my reflection that first time in the mirror, I knew there was no way I could do this wearing anything else.

  It is the exact opposite of the sort of dress I used to clip out of magazines and pin to my paper dolls. Those were big pouffy concoctions of satin and lace, with layers of skirt gathered up in rosettes. Lissa never wanted to play at getting married, which was strange because she usually went along good-naturedly with most of my little-girl games. At first I thought it was because she was too old. Later, I began to suspect it was because she thought that getting married meant you turned into someone like our Mother and I could not blame her for wanting to avoid such a fate. Now I know it was more than that.

  Mother finishes gathering the layers of the skirt up over her arms as I wriggle into the undergarments I have taken from their own hook. I reach above my head and lean forward and Mother slides the gown from her own arms onto mine. The fabric falls down over my shoulders, and as it does, I feel like I am standing outside during a summer shower, warm and cool at the same time, with the small hairs on my forearms standing to attention. I feel Mother tug at the buttons at my back and then wave her hands in frustration.

  “I’ll go get Mrs. Riley. She must have a hook of some sort to help with these.”

  A few minutes pass and Mrs. Riley, mouth now empty of pins, stomps her way back into the dressing room. She uses something that looks like a medieval torture device to thread the small pearl buttons through their loops. When she has finished, she holds the curtain back so I can pass into the hall. The full skirt rustles as I move and brushes against the walls. The cameras are rolling when I walk back into the showroom and Mrs. Riley hustles me over to a small raised dais at the center of the room. Hillary and Lucie have arrived as well and are sitting primly with Naomi, each trying to win the award for best sister-in-law by pretending the sight of me might make her cry. They urge me to twirl and I protest in embarrassment but then give in, letting the air fill my dress and lift the skirt off the floor.

  “Not bad,” a voice says from behind me.

  I feel my heart trip in my chest as I turn to see Lissa standing there.

  “What are you doing here?” Mother demands as she charges across the room and then, remembering the cameras, smiles and turns this attack into a stiff embrace.

  “Making sure you don’t send my baby sister down the aisle looking like a meringue. I needn’t have worried, though. She looks just lovely.”

  Mother squirms, trying to figure out just how closely Lissa and I have kept in touch, whether we might have been sneaking messages to each other all these years.

  “It’s only that I never expected you to come, to drive all this way,” Mother lets out haltingly. “I thought you were…indisposed.”

  Lissa smiles broadly, enjoying the effect she is having on our mother. “My little sister is getting married. I wouldn’t miss this for the world.”

  The sisters-in-law twitter something about how of course she wouldn’t miss the wedding and they all trade kisses and compliment Lissa’s hair and say that we really ought to get together more often because it feels like ages since we’ve all been in the same room. At the periphery of the reunion the cameras circle like predators, zooming in for a close-up of Hillary looking Lissa up and down and telling her she’s gotten too thin, of Lucie demanding that Lissa come over soon for a home-cooked meal.

  While this goes on, I stand as still as I can to avoid being skewered by Mrs. Riley, who is putting on her own show for the cameras by pinning my dress and then letting it out again. When she has finished, she steps away and throws her hands up with a flourish. There are the expected murmurs of admiration. I try to keep from fidgeting as the cameras zoom in.

  “It’s perfect. I know that Roarke will love it,” Lissa tells me.

  “Oh, you’ve met Roarke?” Naomi says. Her voice is too bright, as if she is trying to cover up for Mother’s scowl. She does not wait for Lissa to answer the question before asking another. “Isn’t he just a prince? I think if I were ten years younger and single myself, I might try to fight Essie for him.”

  Naomi giggles, a high-pitched nervous sort of sound. Lissa starts laughing as well, so hard that she has to wipe at her eyes. It’s a while before she can catch her breath.

  “But then you’d have to give up being married to Caleb. Don’t be ridiculous. He’s in a class of his own.”

  Something about Lissa’s tone feels dangerous. I have never thought of Naomi as being particularly clever, but even she can sense it. She quickly says, “Of course. I was only joking.”

  Lissa’s smile broadens at this and she echoes, “Of course. I know that, sis.”

  There’s an uncomfortable silence and Mrs. Riley tries to fill it by fluffing out my dress. Hillary rewards her efforts and says, “Essie, you look truly breathtaking.”

  Mother moves forward to take my hand and then steps back as if relishing this moment. It looks as if she is trying to force a tear. Eventually she gives up, but she dabs at her eyes with a lace handkerchief nonetheless and breathes in sharply through her nose.

  “My baby,” she croaks helplessly, “is all grown up.”

  It is all I can do not to punch her, but then she is pulled away as my sisters-in-law surround her and try to soothe her as the four of them embrace. Naomi is crying, which makes me like her more since she is too poor an actress for the tears to not be real. I think it is possible that she is actually a good person and for a moment I am sorry. She will be all right, I know, but there will still be fallout. Collateral damage, that’s what they all will be. Still, I tell myself, they have it coming.

  Lissa has given up trying to hide her amusement, but at least she has stepped back a little so that she is behind the camera. They will still be able to use this shot. When the snuffling and reassurances have gone on long enough, Lissa steps back into frame. Her timing is perfect. She clearly remembers how this game is played.

  “So,” she says, causing the group to break up and turn to face her, “where’s my bridesmaid’s dress?”

  A gust of wind rattles the door from outside and there is a faint tinkling from the bell hung over the frame. To Mother’s credit, she does not pause for too long before saying, “But you never sent us your measurements, darling. Never mind that now. Let’s have Mrs. Riley take them today. I’m sure she can whip something up in time.”

  Mrs. Riley scurries off to find a measuring tape only to realize eventually that she has one draped about her neck. I step off the small platform and Lissa takes my place. Obediently, she twists and turns and holds her arms out to the side. Mrs. Riley makes note of the size of Lissa’s hips and waist and bust, scribbling the numbers down on a pad of paper she has extracted from a hidden pocket.

  Lincoln, who is in charge of the camera crew, whispers something to Mother and they pack up to go. While Mrs. Riley finishes up with Lissa, Lucie begins telling Hillary
and Naomi a story about how her own wedding dress almost didn’t fit, but Mother cuts her off and tells her to take me back to the dressing room and get me out of “that thing.” Gamely, Lucie struggles with the buttons and stows my dress back in its bag. She leaves me to change out of the slip and back into my own clothes, and as I do, I hear Lissa casually telling the others about school.

  When I come back into the room, Mother makes it clear that she does not want to linger, so I hug everyone and thank them for coming, leaving Lissa for last. She squeezes me tight and then releases me, saying, “I’ll see you at the rehearsal.”

  Mother rolls her eyes and walks out the door. She waits in the car while Mrs. Riley helps me hang my dress in the backseat. There are separate bags for the slip and the veil. The shoes are already at home, though they are not likely to be visible at all. I had argued that I should be allowed to wear sneakers, since they would be more comfortable and I would be less likely to trip and fall, but Mother insisted on heels. Anything else would be unladylike, she said. I wanted to tell her that any chance I had of being ladylike had been taken away a long time ago, but I did not think it would help my cause, so I bit my tongue.

  Mother says nothing to me for the whole ride home. I did not really expect her to. There would be too many witnesses. The day has warmed up and Mother has rolled down the car windows. The air smells alive and I prop my arm out of the window to soak in the sun until Mother tells me to bring it back inside and says something about how ridiculous I would look if I got married with a sunburn on one arm. I tell her that the entire car ride is less than ten minutes, but she pretends not to hear and I obediently fold my hands in my lap.