by Ann Packer
I turned around and headed up State Street. The display windows in the storefronts changed fairly often, but today that seemed like a particularly malevolent lie because the stores themselves didn’t change. There was the place with the comfortable shoes, there the one with the Badger paraphernalia. Even the clothing stores were predictable, the one with sweaters and baggy pants, the one with short skirts and leather. There were no big surprises on State Street.
But there was Fabrications. I walked right in, no lingering at the window, no wondering if there’d be anything I could afford. It was nice and cool, all that air conditioning for a shop in which a single saleswoman sat in front of an open drawer of patterns, a clipboard on her knee, no one else in sight.
I went straight to the silks. First to catch my eye was the blue I’d seen on the night when I cried in front of John Junior at the ice cream parlor, which seemed as far away now as a dream. The fabric was the deep sapphire color of a ring my mother kept in her jewelry box but never wore. It caught the light and seemed to shine, and when I unrolled it to feel it again I was reminded of how light and crisp it was, like expensive wrapping paper. It would make a nice suit—the kind of thing called a “little suit” in a fashion magazine, as if you’d have six or seven of them—and I pictured a short, fitted jacket over what I’d once seen called a tulip skirt, rounded over the hips and then close-fitting to the top of the knee. I’d never in my life been anywhere where I could wear such a thing, but maybe that was the point.
Next I turned to the fluid print in black and gold and red that had caught my eye that same night. It was a very silky silk, the kind of thing that would swirl around you when you walked. It struck me as something a model would wear in a perfume ad, for one of those perfumes described as spicy—she’d be sitting on a couch in lounging pajamas made of this fabric, wearing a lot of gold jewelry, a tableful of burning candles at her side. I looked at the tag: forty dollars a yard. I was about to turn back to the blue when a roll of washed silk caught my eye.
The color was beautiful: a warm, pale gold, like honey in sunlight. I let it run over the back of my hand, and I was enthralled by the feel, soft but not slick, like some kind of magical, weightless suede. I liked the way its appeal was quiet, unlike the print’s: the satisfaction it gave would be private and subtle, not obvious to everyone. But what would I make with it? I looked up and found the saleswoman watching me.
“Buying or browsing?”
“Maybe both, but I can’t decide.”
“On the fabric or the pattern?”
“Either.”
Smiling, she stood up and set her clipboard on a counter, then came over and took down the three rolls I’d been looking at. She touched the blue. “This shantung is great to work with—have you ever used it before?”
“Actually I’ve never made anything out of any kind of silk before.”
“You’re going to get spoiled. The washed silk’s great, too, and it’d be a fantastic color on you. Here, let’s try something.” She picked up the roll of washed silk and led me to a full-length mirror. “Look,” she said, unrolling a couple of yards and holding it up in front of me. “Gorgeous with your dark hair.”
It was gorgeous, a sheet of pale gold, moving with a subtle luster. I lifted my arm until it met the silk, the softest of strokes.
“Can’t you just see yourself?” the saleswoman said. “At a summer wedding, with nice cream-colored shoes and a big straw hat with flowers on the brim?”
That sounded about as stylish as Ladies’ Home Journal, but I didn’t want to be impolite. “I don’t know,” I said. “I guess if we were doing a kind of country casual thing.”
“Not if you were the bride,” she said with a laugh. “Unless it was your second time or something. Are you getting married? We have some beautiful ivory charmeuse.”
I shook my head. Without quite meaning to, I felt for my engagement ring and slid the stone around to the inside of my hand.
“I meant if you were going to be a guest at a wedding,” she said. With her free hand she gathered the fabric together and held it at my waist. “It’s great on you.”
Looking at the mirror, I imagined a whole dress of it sliding over my head: not some full-skirted thing you’d wear with a straw hat, but a narrow, slinky one that would lie luxuriously against your skin. “It feels so good,” I said.
“It’s sexy stuff,” she said with a smile. “I made a nightgown out of it for a friend who was getting married, and she was pregnant before the end of her honeymoon.”
A nightgown. A silk nightgown with spaghetti straps, and over it a long, flowing robe with hugely gathered sleeves and a satin ribbon at the neck. I heard my mother’s voice asking if I’d get much use out of it, Jamie’s saying I could buy a nice nightgown, but then I wondered what Mike would say, and in a moment he was standing in front of me, carefully untying the ribbon, pushing the robe from my shoulders, sliding the straps of the gown down until it slid over my hips and fluttered to the floor, and I thought that although he would probably never be able to do that, I should make the gown and robe anyway: an offering to memory, or to the future.
I carried the fabric back down State Street to my car, all eight and a half yards of it, over two hundred dollars’ worth of silk in a paper bag. I drove home and found a parking place in the shade.
It was August now, and the cosmos my downstairs neighbors had planted looked weedy, the withered magenta blooms fading in front of the gray-brown fence. Our landlord had let the grass go this summer, and it was wheat-colored and stubbly, patches of bare earth showing alongside the walkway.
My apartment was still in the sun. I sat on the downstairs porch, on a wicker armchair left behind by a former tenant. I set the bag on the splintery porch floor, then thought better of it and rested it on my lap. Poor Jamie, I thought, caught between her mother and her sister. Well, maybe not caught between them, but only because she refused to be. Caught near them, anyway. Jamie’d always been torn about Lynn, wanting to protect her at the same time that she wanted to give her a good shake and tell her to grow up. Lynn was the youngest of three girls, and she’d had the bad luck to be born not just last but least smart and least pretty. The beauty in the family was Mixie, the middle sister—she was spending the summer in Southern California, living near Venice Beach with some UW friends and working in a T-shirt store. Jamie suspected her of doing a lot of drugs.
The fast clicking of a bicycle suddenly slowed, and I looked up to see Tom, Viktor and Ania’s neighbor, swinging his long leg over the back of his bike. He leaned the bike against the front fence and came into the yard. He wore mud-colored cargo shorts and a torn white T-shirt, and his blond hair stood up in a frizzy crown.
“Bet you’re surprised to see me here,” he said. “Wiktor gave me your address.”
Poor Viktor, I thought, even as I was wondering why Tom had wanted my address.
“So what’s up?” he said.
“I just had lunch with Ania, actually.”
Tom held his palms to the sky. “And then I appear on your doorstep. The world is full of that, don’t you find?”
I suppressed a smile. Mike would have called him dippy, but I thought it was a pose.
“So, I’ve been a real renegade,” he said, shrugging off his backpack.
“What do you mean?”
“I have something for you—I’ve been meaning to come by for weeks.”
I couldn’t imagine what he was talking about. “You have something for me? What? Why didn’t you just give it to Viktor?”
He shook his head. “Strict orders to hand it to you personally.” He climbed the porch steps and sat on the top one, unzipping the pack. Inside was a chaos of notebooks and loose papers, and, inexplicably, half a Frisbee.
“Here,” he said, pulling the Frisbee out: he made as if to toss it to me, then stuffed it back in. “Just kidding.” He rummaged some more and brought out a dog-eared white envelope. He tried to smooth it out, then gave up and handed it to me
. “Oh, well. It got a little mangled. Sorry.”
I examined the envelope. “What is it?”
“Kilroy wanted me to give it to you. Remember Kilroy? From that night?”
I nodded.
“Well, he wanted me to give it to you. Sorry it took so long, but I’ve been working like a fucking dog this summer. Or maybe a horse. What animal do people work like again?”
I shook my head impatiently. The envelope was blank, front and back.
“So how about those Sox, huh?” I looked up at him.
“Just kidding.” He pulled his backpack onto his shoulders and went down the steps to where his bicycle leaned. I couldn’t help staring: it was the tallest bike I’d ever seen, the frame a good foot taller than the one on my bike, the seat raised eight or ten inches above that.
“They’re selling bikes out at Harry’s Big and Tall now,” he said. “Saved my life.” He waved, and then he was on the bike again, his long legs pumping.
I leaned back in the wicker chair and slid my finger under the flap of the envelope. Inside was a piece of lined yellow paper. I unfolded it, looked first at the signature, and then started to read. “Sunday, 2 a.m.,” it said at the top.
Dear Carrie Bell,
Finally I know the reason for your sad eyes and silence, and I’m selfishly looking for forgiveness. The problem with reading minds is that you can get awfully close and still miss the essential thing. I hope Mike wakes to your vigilance and love soon, and that you’ll be well together.
Kilroy
P.S. Try pool.
I thought of that evening, back in June: Ania in the kitchen cooking, Viktor towering over Kilroy in the living room, so offended by his questions that he finally stalked away. Kilroy with his narrow body and sharp face—staring at me, summing me up.
I read minds, sideline to pool. There had been a quietness to him, some kind of smooth, bland covering over a sharp watchfulness. The sense of an engine in there, running all the time. Something else, too, though: he was cocky at the same time that he mocked his own cockiness. You don’t like pool? You don’t know what you’re missing. On Sixth Avenue right near my apartment there’s a bar called McClanahan’s with a pool table that’s got a tiny little gouge in the felt right near one of the side pockets, and I’m such an accomplished student of that table that I can just about always make the gouge work for me.
I read the letter a second time, then I put it back in the envelope and put the envelope in my purse. I’d felt his eyes on me all through dinner that night. Studying me, it turned out. Wondering about me.
Mike was quiet that evening. His high school hockey coach was there when I arrived, and while it was kind of him to visit I was sure his presence had Mike thinking of skating, the long, powerful strokes across the ice that had come so easily to him and brought him such joy. Coach had retired in June, and he talked about how he was moving on to other things, projects around the house, an Airstream he and his wife had bought so they could see the country. He talked fast, laying it on: his message was that Mike could do the same, “refocus”—he actually used that word. I figured coaching was ingrained in him, but still: I wanted him gone.
“All right, pal,” he said at last, standing. He had a thatch of gray hair, and he wore a spotless white T-shirt and blue gym shorts over low white socks and brand-new Nikes. His calves were as ropy as his muscular forearms. So many times I’d watched Mike at hockey practice, Coach yelling, Come on, you guys—you couldn’t beat your sisters skating like that. Mike all padded up, helmet on, stick taped and ready. Hockey players are all but indistinguishable once they’re on the ice, but even without a numbered jersey I knew him, his hips and the shape of his butt and the way he tucked his head.
He watched Coach from the bed, purplish marks under his eyes, his atrophied legs bent spastically. “Thanks for coming,” he said.
Coach looked at the floor. He hesitated a moment, then went over and patted the bed, a foot or so away from where Mike’s feet were. “You’ve always been a fighter,” he said. “With this girl’s help you’re going to do OK.”
He gave Mike a wave and then headed for the door, resting a hand on my shoulder as he passed but carefully avoiding my eyes.
“That was nice,” I said when he was gone.
“Coach?” Mike said. “Yeah.”
He closed his eyes, and I pulled a chair close and settled into it. With this girl’s help. Mrs. Fletcher drifted into my mind, still a girl at forty-seven. And Ania, already so surely a woman. She and Viktor seemed to have passed a milestone my friends and I hadn’t encountered yet, and not just because they were older and married, either. Maybe it was being away from their home, from their younger selves—we might work at banks and libraries and car dealerships, but somehow the trappings of adulthood were merely that for us, merely trappings: the truth about us seemed to lie in the fact that we were still closest to the people we’d known since childhood. It would always be too easy to remember Saturday nights driving up and down Campus Drive six or seven to a car, passing around contraband bottles of wine and listening to the driver obsess about how important it was not to spill because his parents would definitely be able to smell it when they used the car to go to church the next morning.
“What are you thinking about?” Mike said.
He was watching me closely, and I realized I’d zoned out, that he’d said something a moment earlier that I hadn’t even heard. “Coach calling me a girl.”
“Is that so bad? He’s known you since you were a girl—he probably feels fatherly toward you.”
“Well, they do say nature abhors a vacuum.”
Mike hesitated and then laughed uncertainly: it wasn’t like me to allude to my father, let alone flippantly.
“What about you?” I said. “Do you think of me as a girl or a woman?”
He moved his shoulder. “I think of you as Carrie. Actually, I don’t even really think of you as Carrie. I think of you as ‘her.’ Or I just think of you.”
I reached for his arm and ran my palm up and down it, then took his limp hand in mine.
“How do you think of me?” he said.
“You mean as a boy or a man?” I smiled. “A guy or a man?”
“I mean how.”
“As you. Sometimes Mike, but mostly I just sort of have a picture of you and that’s thinking of you.”
He bit his lip. “Where am I in the picture?”
“Front and center.”
“Look at me, Carrie.”
I looked into his face, his worried eyes. The frame of the halo cast a faint gray shadow onto his cheek.
“Am I here?” he said. “Am I paralyzed?”
“No,” I lied. Then I looked away. “Well, sometimes. I guess sometimes you are.”
He closed his eyes for a moment, and when he opened them again he was on the verge of tears. “I’d give anything for this not to have happened.”
“I would, too.”
Again he closed his eyes, and now tears seeped out, a single trail moving down each cheek. I set his hand down and began stroking his forearm again. I wish I could say I felt selfless then, unaware of myself. That I was thinking only of him, or that I wasn’t even thinking. But I was: This is me doing the right thing. This is me being brave and strong for Mike.
CHAPTER 11
The silk was like nothing I’d ever worked with before, slippery and so fluid it was almost as if it were alive, slithering from my table onto the floor, sliding off the deck of my sewing machine if I was careless when I pulled the needle out, if I didn’t have my hands right there to coax it to stay.
I wasn’t careless much. I’d never been so cautious, in fact, not even as a beginner—so slow with pinning, so careful with knots at the beginning and end of each seam. And the care felt good, as if the fabric itself were teaching me how to sew all over again, the right way this time.
Cutting out had been terrifying, each stroke of my scissors a pathway to disaster, but once I began sewing I got into a nice,
slow rhythm, and I grew to love the way the fabric felt, all the different textures it had: grainy to the tips of my fingers, satiny to the backs of my hands, heavy at the beginning of a seam, light at the very end. I didn’t tell anyone what I was doing, and at night, home from the hospital, I often stayed up until one or two in the morning, a sea of light gold around me, coming together piece by piece.
I made the nightgown first. It was basically two bias-cut panels, A-shaped but just barely, joined along the sides. Simple but not easy—in fact, the word “simplicity” had never seemed so loaded, though it was a Butterick pattern. Hand-stitching the rolled edge at the neck took forever, and then the straps nearly finished me off, strips so thin that when it came time to turn them right side out I had to use a turkey skewer. The first time I tried it the skewer poked through the fabric and made a jagged tear, so I started over with a new piece and this time wrapped the tip of the skewer with just the tiniest bit of cotton from a cotton ball, a trick that actually worked, to my surprise.
I was tempted to save the hem until I’d done the robe, but that seemed wrong somehow, a cheat—I should finish the gown and then do the robe, keep to some kind of order. I had a scary moment trying the gown on, thinking it was going to be too tight, but it wasn’t: it was tight, but not too tight, tight the way a well-fitting bias-cut garment is always tight, the fabric smooth and close, hugging me just to the tops of my thighs, where it gradually loosened until at the bottom it was wide enough to twirl when I turned. I finished the hem late one night and then hung the gown on a hanger and put it in my closet, where it would be the first thing I saw when I woke the next morning.