The Grace Kelly Dress

by Brenda Janowitz

  “It’s yours now,” her mother said, smiling warmly. “The dress belongs to you. Put it on.”

  Joanie kicked off her ballet slippers, and her mother helped her ease the bodice on. Joanie stood at attention as her mother snapped the skirt into place and wrapped the cummerbund around her waist. Joanie held her hands high above her head, not wanting to get in the way of her mother’s expert hands, hands that knew exactly where to go, fingers that knew exactly what to do.

  “You ready in there, Birdie?” her father yelled from the hallway, impatient, his French accent just as strong as the day he left France. Joanie always loved how her father had a special nickname for her mother. When they first married, he would call her mother GracieBird, a nickname of Grace Kelly’s, because of the Grace Kelly–inspired wedding gown she wore on their wedding day. Eventually, it was shortened to Bird, and then over time, it became Birdie. What would Joanie’s fiancé call her?

  Joanie inspected her reflection in the mirror. Her shoulder-length blond hair, recently permed, looked messy. Her pink eye shadow, which had always seemed so grown-up on her sister, made her appear tired and puffy-eyed. But the dress? The dress was perfect.

  Her mother opened the door slowly, and her father’s face came into view. His expression softened as he saw his daughter in the wedding dress. She walked out into the hallway, towards him, and she could see a tear forming in the corner of his eye.

  She turned to her mother, about to tell her that Daddy was crying, when she saw that her mother, too, had teared up. Joanie couldn’t help it—seeing her mother and father cry, she began to cry as well. She could never keep a dry eye when someone else was crying, least of all her parents, expats from Europe who hardly ever cried.

  Michele’s presence floated in the air like a haze, but no one would say it. No one dared mention that she would have worn the dress first. Should have worn the dress first.

  “And look at us,” her mother said, her hands reaching out and grabbing for her husband and daughter. “All of us crying like little babies.”

  All three embraced—carefully, of course, so as not to ruin the dress.

  Her father kissed the top of her head. “Give us a twirl.”

  Joanie obliged. The dress moved gracefully as she spun. Joanie curtsied, and her father gently took her hand and kissed it.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” her mother said, her voice a song.

  “What?” Joanie asked absentmindedly, while staring at her reflection in the mirror. She knew the first thing she’d change—the sleeves. The dress needed big, voluminous sleeves, just like Princess Diana had worn on her wedding day.

  “Or I should say who you’re thinking about,” her mother said, a gentle tease.

  “Who?” Joanie asked, under her breath, twirling from side to side in front of the mirror, watching the dress move.

  “Your fiancé,” her mother said, furrowing her brow. “Remember him?”

  “For sure,” Joanie said, spinning around to face her mother. “My fiancé. Yes. I knew that. And, yes. I was.” But the truth was, she had completely forgotten.

  Three

  The seamstress

  Paris, 1958

  Rose loved this moment. She relished it. Each and every time, she held her breath when a new bride entered the atelier.

  Madame Michel stood in the front of her shop, head up, back straight, hand elegantly resting on her cane. The faint scent of her ylang-ylang perfume drifted up towards the loft where Rose perched.

  Watching. Waiting.

  Madame Michel was a woman who knew her worth. Since coming back to Paris after an illustrious career in America, creating costumes for Paramount Pictures under the tutelage of Edith Head, she was in high demand. Hundreds of young girls yearned for her to design their wedding dresses, hoping to be dusted with the magic so many others had experienced. It was said that to wear a custom-designed Madame Michel wedding dress was to guarantee a happy marriage.

  Madame Michel was a woman who knew how to choose her clients well. Today, the daughter of a prominent businessman. A man who was well connected in the newly re-formed government. After the coup d’état that had returned Charles de Gaulle to power, Monsieur Phillipe Laurent was a good man to have as a friend. Madame liked nothing more than a powerful man. An influential man. When the guests at his daughter’s wedding—the best and brightest of Paris society—saw the dress Madame would create, her business would double overnight. Of course, if she were to fail, her business would dry up completely. Dress orders would be canceled, her waiting list would disappear. But she would not fail.

  Madame took a deep breath as Monsieur Laurent opened the door to the atelier. His footsteps reverberated on the hardwood floors, and Madame opened her arms out wide to welcome him. He was tall, so incredibly tall, and had a neatly trimmed mustache. His black hair was slicked back with pomade, and he wore a small smile on his lips. Monsieur Laurent delicately took Madame’s hand, kissed it, and then introduced her to his wife.

  But that wasn’t who Rose was waiting to see. Her favorite part was this: seeing the future bride for the first time. Laying eyes on the girl for whom she’d hand-sew delicate designs, eight hours a day. In that moment, Rose would create a narrative, a story, to fit each girl. And that story would keep her mind busy through the endless hours of labor. Working on Madame’s designs until her hands ached, away from the customers, in the tiny upstairs loft.

  She shouldn’t complain. Rose was lucky to have this job—to train under the tutelage of Madame, to learn from a master, to get a weekly paycheck. An orphan, Rose needed the money to pay for her room at the boarding house where she lived.

  The bell chimed again, signaling the arrival of the bride. Rose tiptoed to the edge of the loft—she knew that she was supposed to be at her sewing station, working on the embroidery of a duchess satin gown, but she couldn’t help herself. She looked out the tiny window of the loft and watched, waited. Mademoiselle Diana Laurent walked in, and immediately smiled. She turned her head to and fro, taking it all in. Madame’s beautifully curated atelier; the dresses on the forms, taking shape; the reams of fabrics, lined up like soldiers; and the impeccable sketches that were tacked to the walls, delicate works of art.

  This bride would be a perfect muse for Madame. Like a Degas ballerina, she had a tiny waist and a long, graceful neck. Her dark hair was styled in a poodle cut, with tight curls and short bangs. The girl had a tiny button nose, and full lips, parted slightly, as if she had something to say.

  She wore a Pierre Cardin coat, one Rose had seen in the windows of the shops she could not afford. Rose fingered her own dress, a dress she’d made herself from a wool that was on sale at the fabric shop. The first time Madame saw Rose wearing it, she stopped to admire the design, the clean lines of the neckline, the way the embroidery on the waistline enhanced her shape. Rose smiled, bathing in the praise. Then Madame felt the fabric, and a slight frown formed on her lips. Still, Madame often complimented Rose on the clothes she designed for herself, which did not make her very popular with the other seamstresses. Most days, Rose ate lunch by herself on the back door stoop.

  “Oh, I’m so delighted to meet you!” the girl cried out.

  “Decorum, Diana,” her mother said firmly, and Diana lowered her head.

  “Yes, of course,” she said. “I’m honored that you’ve agreed to work on my wedding gown.”

  “Aren’t you going to be my most beautiful bride yet?” Madame said.

  Diana’s face flushed, and she smiled carefully. “Why, thank you,” she quietly said.

  Madame said this very thing to each and every bride who walked through her doors.

  “Come, dear child.” Madame ushered Diana to a table already set with afternoon tea. “You must tell me all about yourself so that I may design the dress of your dreams.”

  Diana tried to give Madame a sense of who she was, what she w
anted. But she didn’t need to. Everyone already knew what she wanted. She wanted what every girl wanted that year: the dress that American actress Grace Kelly wore to her wedding to Prince Rainier of Monaco. The Grace Kelly dress.

  And Diana Laurent was no different. As she gushed about the rose point lace, the peau de soie, and of course, the prince himself, Madame smiled broadly, and her butler furiously took notes.

  Rose knew that Madame was conflicted about all of the Grace Kelly dresses she was asked to create. Not because they weren’t beautiful, of course they were all beautiful. Each and every one of them. It was because of her loyalty. She’d worked for ten years under Edith Head, and respected her fully. When Grace Kelly became engaged to Prince Rainier, Edith Head had assumed that she would be asked to design the wedding dress. After all, they were friends. But Grace Kelly was contracted to do two more movies with MGM studios, and they weren’t about to allow an opportunity for great publicity to pass them by. MGM’s head costume designer, Helen Rose, would have the honor of designing the thing that would go down in history: the gown. Edith Head was asked to design the going-away suit for the honeymoon, but of course, no one remembered the suit.

  Rose knew what she would design, if given the chance. She’d make the neckline higher, the sleeves shorter, and the skirt, edged with embroidered flowers. She would create a dress that honored the inspiration, but truly belonged to the bride herself. But no one ever asked Rose. And she knew better than to suggest a design element to Madame.

  The meeting ended, and Madame walked her new clients to the door. The Laurent family exited, and with that, Madame spun around, looked around her atelier, and dropped to the ground.

  Four

  The bride

  Brooklyn, 2020

  It was hate at first sight. Was that an awful thing to say? Maybe it was, but that didn’t change the fact that it was true. From the second Rocky laid eyes on Drew, she absolutely, positively hated him.

  Rocky sat across from him in a meeting about funding for her start-up. She was supposed to be impressing them, Drew and his team, wooing them, but instead she was just angry. Yelling at them, almost. And a bunch of men in finance? They do not like an angry woman.

  But she couldn’t help it. Drew’s firm barely listened to her team’s presentation about her video game app and declined to make an offer (his firm was their fourth appointment of the day, and their fourth no of the day). Drew, himself, seemed more interested in the tray of mini muffins than in what she was saying. When he approached her afterward to shake her hand (“No sore feelings, right?”), Rocky instead challenged him with a question: “Do you even know what the game is about?”

  Drew furrowed his brow. “Of course I know what the game is about.” He shrugged his shoulders and popped another mini muffin into his mouth.

  Rocky waited. She stared Drew down until he finished the mini muffin, and then washed it down with a swig of coffee.

  “What, are you waiting for me to explain it to you?” Drew asked, stifling the laughter in his voice.

  “No,” Rocky quickly said, all at once realizing that this was not the way to get funding for her company. She hated this man, hated his company, and hated the way they didn’t take the meeting seriously. But challenging him, the only member of the team who was confident enough to shake her hand after saying no to their proposal, wasn’t going to change anything. Wasn’t going to turn the no into a yes. “Thank you for your time.”

  That night, Drew downloaded Rocky’s app—a game that was a mash-up of Scrabble, Boggle, and Rummikub—and invited her to a game. He was terrible at it, truly terrible, and Rocky stopped playing with him after an hour.

  He messaged her in the app’s mailbox feature: I’m really more of a math guy.

  Rocky did not respond.

  He messaged her again an hour later: Drinks?

  Rocky didn’t respond to that message, either, but she did invite him to play another round on her app. Drew eventually got the hang of the game—it was addictive; Drew’s team had made a huge mistake, he would later realize—and the following month, when they bumped into each other at a mutual friend’s birthday party, Rocky noticed how handsome he was, what a good dresser, and mostly, how he treated everyone on his team like equals, even the female assistants that most men in Drew’s position ignore (or hit on shamelessly, inappropriately). From across the bar, she messaged him: I’ll take that drink now. And they spent the rest of that night side by side, inseparable. They didn’t notice when Rocky’s friends went home. They didn’t notice when Drew’s team decamped to another bar. And they didn’t notice when the birthday girl closed the party down at 11 p.m., when she realized the guy she’d been seeing was a no-show. Rocky and Drew didn’t notice any of it as they climbed up to the rooftop deck with a bottle of champagne. Rocky kissed him at midnight and they’d been a thing ever since.

  * * *

  “The couple I’ve been waiting to see,” Rocky’s doorman said, as she and Drew came home, walking hand in hand. “Thank you, Rocky.”

  “It was nothing,” Rocky said, smiling, walking past his desk.

  “It was hardly nothing,” Sal said, coming out from behind his desk, arms thrown out wide. He was a hugger, Sal the doorman. Rocky was not. The faint smell of his cigars enveloped her as Sal embraced her. “Thank you,” he whispered.

  “You’re welcome.” Releasing a hand from his embrace, Rocky patted his back awkwardly.

  Sal turned to Drew and gave him the bear hug treatment as well.

  “You two are the best,” Sal called out as Rocky and Drew made their way to the elevator.

  “Sal gives too many hugs for no reason.” Rocky pressed the button for their floor.

  “You’re probably the only person in the building who sent something when he had his heart attack, Rock.”

  “It was just common courtesy. Anyone else would have done the same thing.”

  “And then paid for the visiting nurse for a month.”

  “It was nothing.”

  “Sure,” Drew said, but something in the curl of his lip told Rocky that he had her number. He knew the truth. Drew always had a way of seeing through Rocky’s tough guy act. Could always see right through her, right down to her soft, gooey center.

  Rocky busied herself with the mail so she didn’t have to meet Drew’s eye.

  “So,” Drew asked, putting the key into the door. “How was it?”

  “I can’t even.” Rocky threw her work bag down in the entryway. Drew hung his up on the hooks he’d installed to keep the entryway neat and organized.

  “I’m sure it wasn’t that bad,” Drew said, his face open and bright, the perpetual optimist.

  “Wasn’t that bad?” Rocky asked, the perpetual pessimist (or realist, Rocky would hasten to correct). “I’m sorry, but were you there?”

  “I was not.”

  “The dress is really more Amanda than me.” She flung open the refrigerator door and rooted around for a drink. Drew opened the cabinet and grabbed a glass—“see what a great husband I’ll make?” the subtext that sparkled in his eye—and handed it to Rocky. She was already drinking straight from a bottle of Red Stripe.

  “I got you a glass.”

  “I didn’t even look like myself,” Rocky said, between sips.

  “Well, then, who did you look like?” Drew said, putting the glass back into the cabinet and grabbing a Red Stripe for himself.

  “Amanda,” she said slowly, overenunciating each letter of her sister’s name. “I just told you that. I looked like Amanda. But, like, a less attractive version.”

  “That’s impossible, babe,” Drew said, matter-of-factly. “How could you look like Amanda? She’s a generic Barbie doll. She looks like half the bland, cookie-cutter women walking around the Upper East Side. You? You are a fucking original.”

  Rocky tried to hide the smile coming over her lips. Bu
t it was no use. She loved how Drew saw her: fierce, powerful, and just as tough as she pretended to be.

  She reached over to Drew and kissed him. It never ceased to amaze her what a good kisser Drew was. He may have looked like the requisite nice boy, with his clean-cut hairstyle, freshly shaven face, and sensible shoes, but he did not kiss like a nice boy. He kissed like one of those bad boys you met at a seedy bar after last call.

  Drew’s kisses—the perfect balance of soft and strong—made Rocky melt. When she closed her eyes and let their lips meet, the world could be crashing down outside the door, but Rocky wouldn’t notice. She could live in those kisses.

  No, Drew did not kiss like a nice boy. He didn’t do a lot of other things like a nice boy, either. In fact, there were a number of things Drew did to her on a regular basis that might not be considered nice by polite society.

  They didn’t even make it to the bed. Clothes were off in the hallway, and Drew pressed Rocky against the wall, his hands everywhere. Drew’s kisses trailed down her body, and Rocky called out what she wanted him to do next. The nice boy that he was, Drew always listened.

  Drew loved how noisy Rocky could be during sex. Advantage of top-floor loft living: no neighbors to complain about how loud you were. In Drew’s last apartment, his next-door neighbor had cornered Rocky in the elevator to remind her that there were three children living next door, one of whom shared a bedroom wall with their bedroom wall. Drew and Rocky went apartment hunting the following weekend.

  Rocky loved their loft. It was in a brand-new building in Brooklyn, which meant that all of the amenities were state-of-the-art and totally tech friendly. Their loft was what they called “a smart loft”: they could control the lights, the HVAC, and the entire sound system from their phones.

  In the shower afterwards: “See, now this is why I shouldn’t wear a white dress.”

  Drew laughed. “You’re right. I won’t wear a white tux, either. Pizza for dinner?”