“She’ll say no,” William said, turning away.
Victoria reached her hand out, holding the fingers right above his skin where Chloe-with-no-rules had touched him. It’d be warm, she knew. She remembered that much, the warmth of skin. No touching. Not him. Not yet.
Rule number one. Every rule, the only rule.
She’d broken it once. Touched one of the hims in her life. She’d loved him; she remembered that even though his name was as frayed as her dress. The memory of him just a faint image of a dream. Not even real any longer. If it ever had been real. If any of the fragile memories were real.
So many papas. So many principals. So many hims. Lost to time, frayed strings falling to the earth and fading away like lost memories. There’d been the boy with the long blond hair and the wild eyes and the broken rule. He’d serenade her on the corner, motorcycles idling on the street, filling the air with noxious fumes as he played his guitar and sang for her and passing strangers would fill his case with change.
The songs were full of sadness, longing to hold her, just once, since she’d never let him touch her. Chaste, he named her, and wrote poems for her, to be turned into songs, asking always to allow him the blessing of unbuttoning her dress and finally letting him taste the warmth of her in his arms.
But the rule was the rule was the rule. And touching him would be bad, she knew. The rule was all she had of Papa. All that was left after he was taken away and burned at the stake like Mama.
And now, this boy sang to her on the streets of Haight-Ashbury and offered his song for just a touch.
Victoria shook her head even as she accepted his sacrifice. His skin so warm, soft as he touched her, kissed her. So cold as he died in her arms.
She pulled her hand back, away from William. Unwilling to risk his soul for one simple touch. Not when so much more was finally so close.
“Go,” she said, pointing to where Chloe had turned the corner to head to her house.
And William went, Victoria trailing behind to offer encouragement.
Outside Chloe’s house, Victoria hid behind the familiar tree while William walked to the door. She counted the seconds, knowing he’d never knock.
Victoria smoothed her dress down once more before sprinting up the stairs, running around him to press the doorbell and then racing back to the tree. Hidden by leaves, she tried to catch her breath as one string after another fell to the earth, sinking into the dirt.
The dress was almost white now, no color remaining at all, and for a moment she couldn’t even remember her name.
Long after watching William head home to get ready for his date, Victoria remained in the tree, staring at Chloe’s house while she tried to smooth out the wrinkles in her dress. Every tug straightened out the fabric for less time than the tug before. Each pulled multiple strands free to float on the wind or sink into the dirt. Some were too thin and frayed to even see.
Victoria clutched the air to catch them but they evaded her, seeming to drift on air currents just a little out of reach, disappearing before she ever caught one. Still, she worked on the wrinkles. She pressed down on her collar, trying to get it to stay flat.
She climbed down and walked to the house to ring the bell.
“Hi, Mr. Crowe,” she said, waving so he wouldn’t try to shake her hand.
“Chloe!” he called up the stairs before opening the door wider to let her in.
Victoria squeezed by, holding her dress so not even a fraying string could escape to touch him. Then Chloe was there and Victoria grasped her hand, the skin warm.
She followed the other girl upstairs and into a room so pink it hurt her eyes. It was so Chloe and she loved it more than she knew how to express, knowing how happy she’d be there. There’d been rooms before that were so Victoria or, well, all the prior names that had disappeared to time. But the memory of the rooms remained even if remembering was more difficult every day.
Small and cramped, with a narrow metal bed with a lumpy mattress that squeaked every time Papa sat on it. She’d curl up in a ball, pretend to be asleep, and Papa would leave her alone. Or not. Depending on his mood and how much he’d had to drink or if Mama was home.
That was the Papa with the thinning hair, she remembered now. Another thread slid free from her dress, floating away as it escaped. So many papas. So many squeaking mattresses bumping against the wall as she pretended she wasn’t herself, she was someone else, anyone else. Everyone else.
And she was.
“You heard?” Chloe asked.
“About your date?” Victoria smoothed out her dress. “William told me.”
“Sure you’re okay?”
Victoria smiled. “Depends on whether you let me help pick out your dress or not.”
Chloe laughed. “And if I don’t?”
With a matching laugh, Victoria shrugged. “I’ll have no choice but to tell him you are unworthy due to poor choice in clothing.”
Chloe opened her closet door, pulled out the first shirt she could find and threw it over Victoria. “Well, wouldn’t want that to happen.”
“No, of course not,” Victoria said as she lifted the purple blouse off her head. “Not this.”
“I was thinking—” Chloe turned around holding a sparkling red dress against her. Long blonde hair covered most of the top until she moved it out of the way.
Victoria shook her head. “Much too much,” she said. “Do you have anything that isn’t, well, you?”
“Me?”
“All bubbly and pink and—” Victoria stood next to Chloe studying her closet.
Chloe pushed Victoria out of the way with another laugh, the sound filling the pink room. “What about this?” She twirled around, a pale silver gown far too formal for a summer date, neckline plunging down way too low.
“You want him looking at you,” Victoria said. “Not your dress.” She pressed down on her collar but it popped right back up. Another string fell loose, from the sleeve this time, almost sliding into her palm before falling to the carpet and getting lost in the pile.
So many papas. So many principals. So many rooms. So many hims.
But most of all . . . so many dresses.
She’d lost count with the fading memories. They lasted only so long before needing to be replaced. Fraying over time. There’d been the starched black dress with the matching veil. Was that the first, taking her privacy and solitude so seriously, married to God and Christ? The father was Papa and principal, and her room was cold and austere. Rock walls and a metal pan for unmentionables. Father had been kind. And unkind. In equal measure.
Was there a dress before that dress? A papa before Father? A room before a convent’s cell? A him before him?
The memories were faded away and hard to catch as they escaped. Free, free at last.
Victoria slid the pinks and purples and reds to the side, exposing a rather plain, more traditional sort of dress hung all by itself. It had a simple collar, flat against the shoulders, even if the neckline was more daring than she’d like. The sleeves were longer than she wanted, tired of not feeling the sun on her forearms. Nothing to be done about it. A sturdy hem with no frayed edges to be seen. Not too many buttons.
In the back, the dress would let peek a hint of shoulder blades behind the long blonde hair. It would do. Shorter than she was used to. Not as short as the little thing she’d worn when the boy had sung to her on the street corner. That was scandalously short, exposing far too much of knee and thigh and, if she sat too quickly, even more than that. She’d let him see once, to show she wasn’t chaste, so much as cautious, but in the end it hadn’t mattered. She’d accepted his gift and only remembered the song now in brief snippets that faded like strings escaping on the wind.
She’d sung it once, as they lowered him into the ground, and never again.
Perfect dress. She held it out to Chloe, who
shook her head. “My mom bought that,” she said. “I’ve never even tried it on.”
“He’ll love it,” Victoria said. “Trust me; he’ll only have eyes for you.”
Chloe stared at it. “It’s so . . . plain.”
Victoria smiled. “A dress is never plain,” she said. “A dress is the gift wrap.”
“He is so not unwrapping me on a first date.”
“Not that!” Victoria said with a laugh.
“Maybe the second,” Chloe said, taking the dress off its hanger. “I want him looking at me, right?”
“Right.”
“If he hates it, I’ll have no choice but to tell him you are unworthy of him due to poor choice in clothing.” She laughed then pulled the pink shirt off, exposing an equally pink bra. The blue jeans followed and Victoria covered her eyes and spun to face the door.
“Pink bra okay?” Chloe asked.
Victoria shrugged, still not looking.
“You can turn around.”
Long blonde hair hid most of the collar, and most of the cleavage. The dress wasn’t as plain on her as it was on the hanger. It had curves now and flow. Chloe brought it to life and Victoria smiled.
“It’s perfect.”
Chloe ran her hands down the front of the dress, smoothing it out even though it was too new to have any wrinkles. The doorbell rang. Her father called up and she smiled. “Showtime.”
“He’ll love it,” Victoria said as they descended the stairs hand in hand.
Victoria and Mr. Crowe watched William and Chloe walk down the driveway. The moon reflected like fireflies off her blonde hair until they were too far away to see.
“Have a good night,” Mr. Crowe said as he turned to go back inside.
“You too,” she said, and then Victoria hurried after the young couple. She knew William, knew the town. There were only so many places to hang out on the final night of summer vacation.
A first date required some privacy, at least. Victoria counted on it, turning down one street after another until she’d long since lost track of William and Chloe. It didn’t matter. Might actually be better to wait for Chloe to be alone, but there was too great a risk of losing the dress.
She’d done that once too. A brief memory, too short to really count. Caught too late, she’d been stuck in a nightgown that time, all frilly and scandalous. She shivered as the memory faded. Victoria tried to smooth the wrinkles away but the dress tore with the motion, the fabric so fragile it could no longer sustain its own cohesion. Individual stitches were escaping; every step left a trail of thread like breadcrumbs, disappearing in the moonlight.
Time, like memories, was running out, fading away. A risk remained that if she’d chosen wrong, if William failed to bring Chloe to the private garden along the riverbank, she’d never even make it back to Chloe’s house. There might not be enough time or memories or thread for a Plan B.
The garden was covered in leaves, gold and red and yellow. Wild apple trees along the river, stirring her earliest memories, as fragile as the dress. Winter roses had yet to bloom but the garden was inviting nonetheless. It belonged to someone, leaves raked even as more fell to color the paths. But they didn’t know who and no one ever bothered them for walking there.
It was where William had first tried to touch her. She’d barely skirted his fingers in time. Instead, she laughed, batted her lashes to show there was no rejection in backing away. If he’d known the word, he’d surely have called her chaste as well. He’d never known her desperate ache to be touched by him, to show him how well she knew all that would prove her unchaste.
By habit, she started to smooth the wrinkles out, stopping just in time before more of her dress ripped. With each breath, threads floated around her, the very air itself tearing them free. The memories, of all those papas and mamas, and Father and Christ with the dirty feet, and some even older than that. Of songs and boys and dresses and beds, faded away until nothing remained but the yearning to touch William.
To be touched.
The memory of a new dress. A flat collar. A pink bra.
She’d never worn a pink bra.
William and Chloe walked into the garden. Not hand in hand, but close enough to touch shoulders where the path narrowed. Chloe laughed at something and William blushed in the moonlight. Victoria shivered, threads falling to the earth as the dress faded and frayed.
The wind swirled around her, filled with thread. Her fingers shook as she finally caught them, like catching lost memories slipping away. The rules returned to her, every blessed word of them. She whispered them, lost in the shadows of the garden, as she remembered.
When the dress begins to fray
Only touch the next dress to wear
When the dress begins to fade
Touch wrong and kill the love so dear
When the dress begins to fray
Forget the memories with every tear
When the dress begins to fade
Lose the dress and disappear
There were buttons on her dress, forgotten and unused. It had been so long since she’d been naked she couldn’t even remember if she had a bra on underneath. Not that it mattered.
The new one would be pink.
Like Chloe. So pink.
Victoria undid the first button with shaking fingers as she whispered the rules over and over again. The fabric stiff around the buttonhole, only successful because the dress was so threadbare the stitches of the button popped free. The skin beneath was pale and warm where the moon shone upon it for the first time since the days of the song and the broken rule. She’d been so good ever since and this must be her reward.
The loose button went on top of the little pile of threads. Another button. Another.
Memories of pain returned. Of hating this step. Of knowing it had to be done. She always forgot the pain. Blocked it out. Now, she remembered. The choice was pain or death, and she always chose pain; no matter what her name might be, the choice was always the same.
Victoria grabbed the hem of her dress, the edges splitting even as she touched them, and took a deep breath. She began to pull the dress off over her head in one motion.
Inside her shoes, the skin of her toes parted. Big toe first, as it was farthest away. Then the next as bones escaped, scratching against cotton until, free at last, they melted away. Leaving behind nothing but socks steeped in rich red blood.
Unable to stand, she collapsed to the ground. Still, Victoria pulled at the dress. Inch by painful inch, slicing skin and tearing muscles and ripping nerves as though skinning an animal.
The pain never ended as she undressed, willing herself to keep removing the wrinkled, fading dress. The skin of her ankles parted, exposing white bone for just a moment before her insides became outsides and escaped. The skin came free in one long molting whisper, teeth breaking as she bit them against the pain.
The hem reached where her hips would be, attached to her skin as though they were two parts of the same thing. Nothing remained below but a spreading pool of blood as skin and dress were slowly pulled up. The lining of her stomach tore, intestines spilling free and escaping with a sigh until she had no more lungs to sigh with.
The memories of her name disappeared with her heart, dress and skin pulled up and over her head. Her skull bright white in the moonlit shadows before it too dissolved, leaving nothing but a graying pile of brain to be caught by the wind before escaping.
And Victoria was nothing but inside-out skin and dress now.
Free. Free at last.
The pile of skin and dress dissolved until nothing was left but threads upon the air.
She floated on the breeze, close enough to Chloe to smell the perfume she’d sprayed on her neck. Then, as light as air, one thread after another landed, burrowing beneath the smooth pink skin.
Chloe cried out as though cau
ght in a swarm of gnats, before slumping against William for just a moment.
She opened her eyes.
Long blonde hair fell around her shoulders, covering the plain brown dress.
Perfect.
Chloe smiled, smoothing her dress down out of habit. It wasn’t necessary. This dress was new. With a pink bra underneath that William wouldn’t get to see but she’d let him touch. There was so much she’d let him do now.
Soon enough, the dress would fade and fray, and she’d have no choice but to say goodbye. He’d be old, while she’d still be a teenager, in her plain brown dress, with her long blonde hair. Chloe. She’d try to remember her name this time.
A new papa and mama too. They seemed nice. That pink room, she’d be happy there. For a while, at least. Until they noticed one day she never aged. Then they’d have to die too, so she could live just a little longer as Chloe.
For now, though, finally, so long spent watching William, she could finally touch him. Safe until the dress once more began to fray and fade.
Chloe hadn’t planned on being anything but chaste on their first date.
Victoria had no such plans.
William smiled as Chloe kissed him, his fingers clumsy where they tried, in vain, to unbutton enough to reach her skin.
Chloe laughed, placing his hands where she wanted to be touched and pulling him to the ground on top of her.
“You’ll get all dirty,” he said, even as she rolled him over so she was on top.
“Don’t worry,” she said, running her hands down her skin to smooth out the wrinkles. “It’s just a dress.”
The Dishes Are Done
Carol Pierson Holding
When we first read the story below, we were taken by the confident voice of the narrator and the feel of a classic John Collier offering—in which the setting and the characters are engaged in things so utterly ordinary there couldn’t possibly be anything amiss. And we admit it didn’t hurt to agree with the notion that dishwashers cannot be expected to violate the laws of physics and hydraulics. Or can they?
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