Queen of Babble

“Oh yeah,” Baz says. “Good idea.”

And he shuffles off, leaving Luke and me standing awkwardly alone together-an opportunity I seize before Luke has a chance to slip away.

“Luke,” I say, my voice sounding very soft compared to the drum of my heartbeat in my ears, “I just wanted to say…about last night…Shari told me-”

“Let’s forget about it, okay?” Luke says tersely.

Tears spring to my eyes.

Shari had said he was bitter. And he has a right to be.

But won’t he even let me apologize?

But before I have a chance to say another word, Monsieur de Villiers, looking spry in a cream-colored suit and tie, comes up to me, holding a bottle of champagne.

“Lizzie, Lizzie,” he chastises me merrily, “I see empty glasses on this tray. I think you need to go back to Madame Laurent for a refill.”

“Here.” Luke tries to take the tray from me. “I’ll do it.”

“I’ll do it,” I say, snatching the tray back. Only the fact that there are three glasses sitting on it, including Baz’s two empty ones, keeps disaster from ensuing.

“I said,” Luke says, reaching out again, “I’ll do it.”

“And I said, I will-”

“Lizzie!”

Luke, his father, and I all turn at the sound of Bibi de Villiers’s excited voice. Looking stu

I look down at myself. I have on the mandarin dress I last wore at Heathrow, when I’d been hoping to impress Andy…a million years ago. It’s the only thing I brought with me that seems remotely appropriate for a wedding. Well, the fact that I can’t wear panties with it aside. Besides, no one has to know about that but me.

“Um,” I say, “at this shop where I work back in Michigan called Vin-”

“Not that dress,” Luke’s mother says. Her expression is a strange combination of excited and anxious. Not that that seems to matter to Luke’s dad, who’s staring at her as if she were something Santa had just dropped down the chimney.

“I mean the dress Vicky is wearing,” Mrs. de Villiers says. “The one she says you fitted for her overnight.”

Beside me, Luke grows very still. His father, on the other hand, is still staring at his wife in a thoroughly besotted ma

Alerted by Luke’s stiffness that something is up, I answer his mother’s question very carefully.

“I found it here at Mirac,” I say. “In the attic.”

“The attic?” Mrs. de Villiers looks stu

I don’t have the slightest idea what’s going on. But I do know that Mrs. de Villiers’s interest in the Givenchy isn’t casual. Was the dress hers? The size is right…it fit Vicky, and Vicky is Bibi’s niece, so…

I’m not taking any chances. No way am I telling her the horrifying condition in which I found her dress. That’s one secret I’ll take with me to the grave.

Unlike all the rest I know.

“I found it in a special box,” I say, fabricating rapidly. “It was wrapped in tissue. I would almost say lovingly wrapped-”

I know I’ve said the right thing when Mrs. de Villiers turns toward her husband and cries, “You saved it! After all these years!”

And suddenly she’s thrown her arms around the neck of Luke’s father, who is glowing with pleasure.

“Why, yes,” Monsieur de Villiers is saying, “of course I saved it! What do you think, Bibi?”

Though it’s clear-to me, anyway-he has no idea what his wife is talking about. He’s just happy to be holding her in his arms again.

Beside me, I hear Luke swear beneath his breath.

But when I look up at him, alarmed that I’ve done the wrong thing-again-I see that he’s smiling.

“What’s this all about?” I ask him out of the corner of my mouth.

“I knew that dress looked familiar,” Luke says in a low voice so his parents-who are nuzzling each other-won’t overhear. “But I’ve only seen it in black-and-white pictures, so I never…That dress you found? The one you took to get the rust out of? That was her wedding gown.”

I gasp. I can’t help it. “But-”

“I know,” Luke says, taking me by the arm and steering me away from his parents, “I know.”

“But…a gun! It was wrapped around-”

“I know,” Luke says again as he guides me across the lawn, toward the table where Madame Laurent has the orange juice pitcher. “That dress has been a bone of contention between them for years. She thought he threw it out along with everything else after the attic leaked-”

“But he didn’t. He-”

“I know,” Luke says again. He stops walking and-much to my disappointment-drops his hand from my elbow. “Look, he really loves her. But he’s not exactly the sentimental type. Mom means a lot to him. But so does his hunting rifle. I doubt he even realized what that dress was. He just saw that it was the perfect size to wrap his gun in and…well, there you go.”

“Oh my God,” I say, horror clutching my heart, “and I moved the darts to make it fit Vicky!”

“Somehow,” Luke says, turning around to gaze at his parents, who are still practically making out in front of everybody across the lawn, “I don’t think my mom minds.”

We stand there watching his parents for almost a full thirty seconds before I remember I’m supposed to be apologizing to him. Even though last time I tried, I didn’t exactly have the best results.

I open my mouth, wondering how I’m going to say this-will a simple sorry suffice? Shari had said something about groveling. Do I need to drop to my knees?

But before I can say anything, he asks, in a voice that’s very different from the terse one in which, a few minutes earlier, he suggested we just forget about it, “How did you know? Not to mention the way you really found it? That dress, I mean?”

“Oh,” I say, suddenly unable to meet his eye. I keep my gaze on my retro kitten heels, which are slowly sinking deeper and deeper into the grass the longer I stand still. “Well, you know. I could tell that dress meant something to your mom, so I just tried to imagine how I’d want a Givenchy of mine to be treated…”

It’s then that Luke takes the tray of glasses from my hands, puts it down at the table Madame Laurent and Agnes have commandeered, and grabs my fingers in his own.

“Lizzie,” he says in a deep voice.

And I have to look up from my French pedicure. I have to.

This is it, I realize. This is when he forgives me.

Or not.

“Luke,” I say, “I’m so-”

But then, before I can say another word, the string quartet, seated in the shade of a nearby oak tree, suddenly breaks into those four familiar notes:

Dum dum da-dum.

The end of World War II brought about a new begi

History of Fashion

SENIOR THESIS BY ELIZABETH NICHOLS