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Karin felt her face heat up, she felt the shock of those words. It was something she’d never heard before. Rich as stink. It sounded hateful.
He said, “Okay-into town to see when they’ll develop this.” He didn’t ask if she wanted to go along and she could hardly have answered him anyway; her eyes were filling up disastrously. She was struck and blinded by what he’d said.
She had to go to the bathroom, so she walked over to the house.
There was a good smell from the kitchen-the smell of some slow-cooking meat.
The only bathroom was upstairs. Karin could hear A
She had put makeup on her face so it didn’t look so blotchy.
There were piles of clothes lying around on the bed and on the floor.
“I’m trying to get things organized,” A
That meant she was serious about moving out. Getting rid of things before she moved out. When Rosemary was getting ready to move out she packed her trunk while Karin was at school. Karin never saw her choose the things that went into it. She just saw them turn up later, in the apartment in Toronto and now in the trailer. A cushion, a pair of candlesticks, a big platter-familiar but forever out of place. As far as Karin was concerned it would be better if she had not brought anything at all.
“You see that suitcase,” A
Karin climbed up and pushed the suitcase over so that it teetered on the edge of the wardrobe, and A
“I’ve got the key, I’ve got the key here,” she said.
The lock was stiff and the clasps hard to pry open. Karin helped. When the lid fell back a smell of mothballs rose from a heap of limp cloth. The smell was well known to Karin from the secondhand stores where Rosemary liked to shop.
“Are these your mom’s old things?” she said.
“Karin! It’s my wedding dress,” said A
“My veil, too,” A
There was a long fine slit in the skirt that looked as if it could have been made by a razor blade.
“I should have had it hanging up,” said A
Now she began to separate one piece of material from another, lifting it bit by bit with little private sounds of encouragement, until she was able to shake the whole thing into the shape of a dress. The veil was loose on the floor. Karin picked it up.
“Net,” she said. She talked to keep the sound of Derek’s voice out of her head.
“Tulle,” said A
“Tulle,” said Karin. “I never heard of tulle. I don’t think I ever heard of taffeta.”
“They used a lot of it,” A
“Do you have a picture of you in it? Do you have a picture of your wedding?”
“Mother and Dad had a picture, but I’ve no idea what became of it. Derek isn’t one for wedding pictures. He wasn’t even one for weddings. I don’t know how I got away with it. I had it in the Stoco church, think of that. And I had my three girlfriends, Dorothy Smith and Muriel Lifton and Dawn Challeray. Dorothy played the organ and Dawn was my bridesmaid and Muriel sang.”
Karin said, “What color did your bridesmaid wear?”
“Apple green. A lace dress with chiffon inserts. No, the other way round. Chiffon with lace.”
A
“What did the one who sang sing?”
“Muriel. ‘O Perfect Love.’ O, Perfect Love, all human love transcending-but it’s really a hymn. It’s really talking about a divine kind of love. I don’t know who picked it.”
Karin touched the taffeta. It felt dry and cool.
“Try it on,” she said.
“Me?” A
She didn’t listen to Karin say yes. She must of course have heard the car.
“He thinks he has to get a pictorial record,” she said. “I don’t know why all the hurry. Then he’s going to get it all boxed and labelled. He seems to think he’s never going to see it again. Did he give you the impression the place was sold?”
“Not yet,” said Karin.
“No. Not yet. And I wouldn’t do it unless I had to. I won’t do it unless I have to. Though I think I will have to. Sometimes things just become necessary. People don’t have to make it all into a tragedy or some personal kind of punishment.”
“Can I try it?” Karin said.
A
Karin stepped out of her shoes and her shorts and pulled off her shirt. A
The taffeta had to be pulled out from between her legs and arranged into a bell-like skirt. Then lace fell in loops over the skirt.
“You’re taller than I thought,” A
She took a hairbrush from the dresser and began to brush Karin’s hair down over her lace-covered shoulders.
“Nut-brown hair,” she said. “1 remember in books, girls used to be described as having nut-brown hair. And you know they did use nuts to color it. My mother remembered girls boiling walnuts to make a dye and then putting the dye on their hair. Of course if you got the stain on your hands it was a dead giveaway. It was so hard to get out.
“Hold still,” she said, and shook the veil down over the smooth hair, then stood in front of Karin to pin it on. “The headdress to this has disappeared altogether,” she said. “I must have used it for something else or given it away to somebody to wear at their wedding. I can’t remember. Anyway it would look silly nowadays. It was a Mary Queen of Scots.”
She looked around and picked some silk flowers-a branch of apple blossoms-out of a vase on the dresser. This new idea meant she had to take the pins out and start again, bending the apple blossom stem to make a headdress. The stem was stiff, but at last she got it bent and pi