The Last Dress from Paris(103)
“So that was it? Your marriage was dissolved, and then what? Did your parents ever get in touch?”
She forces a small, brave smile to hide the emotion this heartlessness still provokes in her. “I wrote to my mother when the baby was born, hoping she might feel differently by then. I received one letter back from her. She didn’t mention the baby at all. She wrote to tell me that a parcel had arrived in Norfolk for me, all the way from Dior in Paris. It was the christening dress, not that I knew that then. The last time I had seen it, it was just a sketch on paper. I had no idea it had even been ordered. With everything else that was going on, it was the last thing on my mind. So I wrote back and told her to donate whatever was inside the package. Obviously, when she opened it and saw what it was, she decided it had to be donated anonymously. It was just one more way of erasing a link between my actions and the family name, I suppose.”
I take her hand again and lower my face to it, planting a kiss, wishing there could have been so many more. That I could somehow have sent my love and kisses through the universe, racing back through time to when she needed them most, so she knew she was loved, so deeply loved. I allow my head to rest there for a minute, turning my cheek so I can feel the coolness of the back of her hand on my skin. I feel her fingers lovingly smooth my hair, and I look back up at her face.
Perhaps for the first time, it is not the tired features of an elderly lady looking back at me. All I can see is Granny’s strength and fortitude, the fire in her belly. I see a life fully lived, one where her determination to survive, to reclaim herself, was so much stronger than the hurdles placed in front of her. I see the burden of secrets carried close to her heart for an unimaginably long time. I think about all the other women who must have envied her, wrongly apportioning their own desire on the parts of Alice’s life that meant the least to my grandmother. I see her grit, her optimism, and her forgiveness.
I see the sort of woman I want to be.
And I also feel the unasked question that threads between the two of us, hot on the edge of my lips. The conclusion that will have to wait. I can’t ask her tonight, not when she has unburdened so much already.
“Why did you send me to Paris, Granny? Why did you wait all this time and then make me think it was all about the dresses?”
She shifts forward in her chair, like she needs me to hear every word she is about to say, then fixes me with her full focus. “I needed you to see my life, Lucille, to discover the woman I was so you can understand the choices I made and the woman I became. To give you a window into the world Alice lived in. If I had simply told you the story, it would have been as if you were seeing it in black and white. I wanted to open your heart, my darling, to the richness of it. The pain and the elation. For it to be real. My choices back then are your choices now, albeit made in a very different time. You are lucky, Lucille. I was one very small footnote in a much bigger story, where the other characters dictated a lot of the action. My voice was small, but yours can be big. I was dependent until I forced myself not to be, but you can be truly free, if you choose to be. Please promise me you won’t waste that privilege. Find true love, even if it shatters your heart. You owe it to yourself to experience it. Chase down your happiness. It wants to be found.”
I grip her hand a little tighter. “I promise you, I will. I already am.” And I mean it. I have never meant anything more.
“This makes me happier than anything else could. I have made mistakes, Lucille, ones that I must ask you to forgive me for. Ones that altered your life in ways you don’t even know about yet. And it is my guilt that has caused you the most pain. I struggled to show your mother the power of love, and so she has been incapable of giving it to you. For that, I will always be truly sorry.”
“Please don’t apologize, Granny. Mum has had many chances to be a good mother and she never took them. But she will, I can see now that she will, and I will be there when she does. We will get there together, slowly.”
“Thank you, Lucille.” Her eyelids look heavy, and I know that if I stop asking questions and let a silence creep between us, she will be asleep in a few minutes.
“My goodness, I almost forgot. The dresses. I have them all with me. Would you like to see them?”
Granny raises a hand to her heart and laughs. “I suppose I should, since I sent you such a long way to get them. Do you have the Debussy? I’d love to see that one.”
“I do, yes. I have all of them. Why don’t I make a quick cuppa and you can have a moment alone with them? I know it’s been a very long time.”
I lift the Debussy from its stiff cotton hanging case and drape it across her lap, its feathers lifting on the air just as I imagine they might have done the evening she wore it to the Monet exhibition. I step back out of the room but linger in the doorway to the kitchen, where I know she can’t see me. She lifts the dress to her face, seems to study the detail across the bodice, then pulls it in closer to her, wrapping her arms tightly around it, holding it to her heart. Then she is searching inside, and I know exactly what she is looking for. The two entwined initials of A&A. The clue that she laid all those years ago when she believed herself on the brink of the greatest love affair of her life. She traces a finger lovingly across every one of her stitches, and then she whispers something that makes me stand up a little straighter.
What did she say? It sounded like my dearest Antoine, but I can’t be sure.