We turned on Cornelia Street, heading up to West Fourth. She towered over me in her boots.
“Well, he was divorced, just last year. I think that made him turn more inward. It was pretty painful for him.”
“What was his wife like?”
“A socialite type. She never came in the store, and he didn't talk about her much. Blond, a bit prim maybe. I think their families were close. I never understood the connection, but I guess that's why it didn't last.”
“Sounds awful,” she said. “Um. Not that I'm typecasting. Does he come from a lot of money or something? I'm always amazed by these urbane, Manhattan types. It's still so foreign to me.”
“I think so. His mother, yes. His father, less so.”
“Oh, God. I'm going to feel like a weirdo at this ball, aren't I? Not that I'm not used to it.”
“You'll be wonderful,” I said. “You'll be the most beautiful girl there.”
“You're sweet,” she said. “I don't mind, though. Seriously. It'll be a blast. And I'm excited about this dress! I've really wanted a new project. And now I'm thinking of the ice blue. I mean, I'd been thinking of using black fabric, you know, maybe with touches of pink, but that's what I always do. I like your idea, doing something softer.”
A leaf skittered across the sidewalk in front of us. I imagined picking it up and dropping it, having an ice blue silk gown appear before us. The look on her face as she turned toward the mirror, transformed. I bent down and snatched up the leaf, crumpled it in my hand.
“Ethereal,” I said. “It will suit you, with your pale skin and those blue eyes.”
“Yeah. And I just want to go all-out princess if I'm doing the blue. I was thinking a corset top, silk ribbons lacing up the back. For the lower half, maybe a petticoat, like in a darker blue, with a couple of layers of silk on top.”
“What about some tulle?” I asked. “On top of the silk? Maybe we could find some beads or sequins to thread through it.”
I could see it perfectly. With Cinderella I had imagined the gown and it had appeared in my hands.
“Oh, I like that,” she said.
We walked down the stairs, into the West Fourth Street subway. An A train was pulling in just as we moved onto the platform.
I sat down and grasped a bar as the train lurched forward.
“You okay?” she asked, slipping into the seat next to me.
“Subways make me nervous. I usually just walk everywhere.”
“I'm way too lazy for that,” she said. We were pressed together, our legs touching. “Plus, I like the people-watching It's my favorite thing about this city.”
“How long have you been in New York?” I tried to remember if I had read it in her journal, which had gone back at least a few years.
“Five years,” she said. “I can't believe it's been that long. I wanted to come here so badly when I was in high school. I lived right in the middle of cow country, nothing but farmland whichever way you turn and a big university stuck in the center of it. When I'd come to New York, just to visit, it seemed like everything was larger than life. I always felt like a completely different person.”
The train wheezed and shimmied down the tunnel; the lights flickered on and off and back on again.
“Like, when I was here,” she continued, “I was who I was supposed to be. Everything seemed possible here. It still does. Sometimes I'm walking down the street now, not seeing anything, so caught up in my life, and then I remember what it was like when I first came here, how massive everything seemed. And I just get swept up all over again.”
I laughed. “I feel like I've been around for centuries. I can barely even remember being a kid, being young.” But even as I said the words, I knew I was lying Of course I could remember—the images were as clear as if I'd been skimming across the surface of the fairy lake only moments before, the air like water all around me. The memories flooded through me: how the world looked from high, high in the air, how the trees all blurred as I darted down, laughing, to the grass. These were the memories that were crystal clear to me. Not the haze of years that had passed since I'd fallen to earth, the random images that floated up to me as if from an abyss. Not the present, the here and now, that always felt so distant and strange. Though not now, I realized, not this moment right now. It felt good to talk to Veronica. I was surprised by it, how wonderful the world seemed with Veronica next to me, ready to hurl herself into it.
“Lil, you act like you've got one foot in the grave,” she said. “You may be on the mature side, but you're still hot. I bet guys check you out all the time, don't they?”
“Veronica!” I said. “Don't make fun of an old lady.”
“I'm not,” she said. “And you're not that old, either. Look at Eartha Kitt. Vanessa Redgrave. I saw her on Broadway, and she was stunning. Better-looking than half my friends. Oh, and you should have seen my grandmother. A ring on every finger until the day she died. Even on her deathbed, she refused to take them off.”
I looked into the window across from us and focused in on my own reflection. The lines etched in my face, the white hair. It was ridiculous to imagine that I was anything but what I was now.
“Being young is overrated, anyway,” she said.
I laughed. “Only a very young person could say that. When you're young, you have no way to understand how painful it is, watching the world drop away. Your own body turn in on itself.”
“I'm not afraid of dying,” she said, standing up. “That final adventure, right?”
“That, my child, is because you're young,” I said.
She poked me. “When I'm old, I'm coming to find you. We'll duke it out with our canes.”
We got off the train and walked up Eighth Avenue, to Thirty-eighth Street. Fabric and notions stores lined the streets. The windows were full of dresses, mannequins swathed in bright, gauzy materials. We stopped in front of a window and peered in. Tiny gold beads streamed down a vivid red silk lined in shiny gold. A lime green swirled through with orange, like sherbet.
“Oh, these are like saris,” she said. “I was almost thinking of heading out to Jackson Heights and getting one.”
“Miss Lillian!”The voice, coming from the other side of the street, cut through me.
I turned around, my heart sinking.
“Who's that?” Veronica asked. “You know that guy?”
“My landlord.” I wanted to disappear.
Leo approached us, cutting across the street. “I was just at the post office,”he said, “when I saw you.” He looked over at Veronica. “I'm Leo. Pleased to meet you.”
“Veronica,” she said, holding out her hand.
He took her hand and smiled. I was surprised to see how charming he looked, standing there in jeans and a suit jacket, his hands in his pockets. His dark hair curling around his face. “So what are you ladies up to today?”
“Not much,” I said.
“Shopping,” Veronica said. “I'm making a dress. Lil here is helping me.”
“What's the occasion?”
“A gala event at the Pierre. She's setting me up with a prince.” She pursed her lips, and he laughed.
“I suppose you do need a dress, then.” His laugh was open, flirtatious. “Well, I won't keep you, ladies.” He turned to me. “Have you had a chance to go over the papers?”
“Not yet,” I said. And then, quickly, “I will call you.”
“Do,” he said. “It's urgent. You know where to find me.”
“Yes,” I said.
He looked at me one beat longer, then nodded, bowed slightly. “It was a pleasure,” he said. “And lovely to meet you, Veronica.”
She watched him go, then followed me into the shop. “He's so cute,” she said. “What's your secret, lady? How do you know all these guys?”
I felt sick. I put out my hand and started running it over cottons, wools, silks, and satins. There were rolls of fabric piled on either side of us and lining the walls.
“I don't know,” I s
aid. “Just lucky, I suppose.”
“I'll say. Where is your apartment, anyway?”
“Thirty-sixth Street.” I told her the address. “Why?”
“So I can partake of your leftovers, of course!” She picked up a sparkly red fabric lined with silver beading and held the end up to her face. “How does it look?”
Her eyes were bright and an intense blue next to the fabric. Her burnt orange hair looked strange next to the deep red and silver, sort of wonderful.
“It's stunning,” I said. I picked up a light aqua fabric hanging beside me. “Look at this one.”
“Nice,” she said, reaching out and rubbing her fingers over it. “So what was that about, anyway?”
“What?”
“With your landlord.”
“Oh, nothing,” I said. “A repair. Something about the pipes.”
She nodded, distracted by a stretchy mustard-colored fabric covered over in blue butterflies. “I feel truly traumatized by this fabric, Lil.”
“What about this one?” I asked, pointing to an olive green cotton with purple starbursts.
“You know there are entire stores in this neighborhood devoted to spandex? I'm sure you do, but I do think it's a fact worth repeating.”
“There's one called Stretch World, down the street.”
“Hey, do you think I should make the dress from spandex? I'm sure there's a lovely variety of colors. What do you think?”
I was about to respond when I saw it. An ice blue silk, like liquid silver. I walked toward it, ran my hands over it.
“Look at this,” I said.
She dropped the yellow thing and rushed over. “Oh,” she said. “That is stunning, isn't it?” She rubbed it with her fingers. “And so soft. I could bathe in this!”
I rolled off a bit, held it up to her face. Her skin glowed next to it.
“I think it's perfect,” I said.
I was so close to tears I could barely speak. I couldn't have conjured anything better.
“Me, too. This is what I've been picturing since we talked.”
“And I have the perfect thing to go with it. Just a little extra touch. I'll bring it for you.” I thought of the scarf I had bought, that I'd kept folded in tissue in my dresser drawer. “It'll make your outfit complete.”
“I feel like I'm getting married,” she said, laughing. “I should have a line of girls in hideous pink taffeta walk out before me. I'm sure this is the closest I'll ever come, anyway.”
“We'll see about that.”
We found the other materials—the tulle, a very fine silver net, and dark blue organza, for the petticoat. The owner cut the fabric for her and wrapped it in a bag.
We left the store and entered a notions shop down the street. It was my favorite one: like someone's old attic, a beautiful mess with aged wood on the ceilings and towering dressers like card catalogs with lines of drawers filled with beads, buttons, zippers, sequins, hooks, needles, ribbons, and appliqués. Everything crammed up together. Rows and rows of thread and needles. While Veronica picked out thread and plastic boning strips for the corset, silver eyelets for the ribbon to lace through, all the materials to put the dress together, I opened drawer after drawer and ran my fingers through the piles inside. Gorgeous square silver buttons that felt like coins in my hand and clanked together. Tiny pink buttons you could see through, like delicate rosebuds . Heavy cloisonné beads that sounded like marbles rolling around inside.
Veronica was laughing with the man behind the counter. Showing him the fabrics and describing to him, in detail, the embroidery she planned for the front of the corset, thin blue ribbing in vertical strips. I could see he was thoroughly charmed.
Inside a drawer on the bottom row of the dresser was a small, faded box that would once have held jewelry. I pulled it out, heard a rattling inside, like melting icicles. I opened it and looked down on a collection of tiny vintage crystals. They caught the light and sparkled up at me. It could almost have been a gathering of fairies, right there.
“Veronica,” I called. “Look.”
She came over, squealed with delight when she saw them. “Imagine those scattered across the tulle, like a spray of water.”
“Yes. Exactly. Can you do something so elaborate in less than a week?” I asked.
“If I work like a madwoman,” she said, laughing, ebullient. “But I am mad, and I am a woman. And I get obsessive with a project I'm really into. I want this dress to be like something you've never seen before. Like I'm from outer space, or the bottom of the ocean.”
I had a vision then, of Cinderella at her spinning wheel. But the girl before me didn't look a thing like Cinderella had, with her moon hair and pale eyes. Veronica was all color, life.
“Plus I want George to faint dead away when he sees me,” she said.
I scooped a few crystals into my palm, let them scatter back into the drawer. I breathed out, using all the magic I had left, all the magic surrounding me even then, my sister so close to me that I could almost hear her tinkling laughter. The crystals filled and sparked. She was made for him.
“Use these,” I said. “And everything will be perfect.”
Chapter Thirteen
WHY DON'T YOU WANT TO GO? YOU HAVE TO GO. Look how beautiful you are. Look at the carriage and the horses waiting for you.”
She lay in the grass, her hair messed and tangled, her dress stained and sticking to her skin, her feet bare. The shoes and diamonds sparkled in the grass, the weeds shot up all around.
I knelt on the grass and moved toward her. I touched her shoulder, her arm, to soothe her. I pushed up behind her and wrapped my arm around her waist.
The whole night smelled of jasmine and honeysuckle.
I knew I should be filling her up. I dug in to find my fairy powers, my magic, the strength and spirit that would infuse her and make her feel beautiful, make her ready for this night.
But I was empty. It seemed as if it was she who was entering me and not the other way around. My hand rested on her stomach, and I clenched my fist, clutching the silk, trying to stem the flow of pain from her into me. She leaned back, pushing her shoulders into my chest. Her neck was in my face, my hand under her cheek and tangled in her hair.
“I miss my mother so much,” she whispered. I could feel my palms growing damp with her sweat and tears. I was dizzy with it. Her grief seemed to hang over us, sink through skin and bone.
“I know you do,” I said. “I know you miss her.”
“She was my best friend,” she said. “She used to let me help her paint. We used to swim every day in the river. Every night she would spend an hour brushing my hair. I loved her smell, and the jewelry on her dresser that she let me try on. We used to dance around the room and laugh so hard I thought I would be sick from it.”
“Yes,” I said. “Such happy memories. It is good to not forget. But you can't live in them. You can't forget the present.”
The words felt like splinters I was pulling out of skin. They sounded hollow and strange, even to me. I did not know what to say to her, even as I felt the stale words pushing through me. All I could see was the vision of her mother floating on the water. The curve of her lips just below mine.
“I have no present,” she said, her voice barely audible, and I understood.
We were two ciphers lying in the grass, ruined, the horses and the carriages shimmering in front of us, mirages flickering in and out, threatening at any moment to return to twigs and pumpkins, the earth. It seemed, right then, that the whole world was that way, empty, populated by ghosts. That there was nothing real at all. Go back, I told myself. Go back to the fairy lake, your friends, your world.
But I couldn't move. The silk and tears under my palm. Her starlit hair. The darkening night and the musky scent of the jasmine cloaking us, like a veil. I couldn't even imagine moving. I clutched her, buried my face into her neck.
“Don't cry,” I said. “Please.”
“I just want to disappear,” she said.
r /> Even as she said it, I could feel her slipping from my grasp, and I held on to her.
“Help me, Godmother,” she said. “Help me go back to her.”
I could see her mother's body by the edge of the water, her stepmother's face hovering above hers in the dark room, the cooks and maids and stable hands abusing her. I could see her bent over the stone floor with a bucket by her side, covered in ash under the chimney. I could see her on the floor of the stable, clutching herself. I could see the blade against her skin, the moon shining against the river, the drops of blood hitting the water's surface.
I wanted all her pain, her dreams and thoughts and memories. Her skin and hair. The straw pressing into her. She was unspeakably beautiful. All of it was. This pain and desire and emptiness and grief, this terrible longing moving from her to me and back again. The world I knew—the fairy lake, my sister, my friends, our days spent flying through reeds and across treetops—seemed blank, dull. I wanted this. Her life moving through me. I wanted to love a human so much that I could feel pain like hers when they were gone.
I sat up suddenly. There was a buzzing against my ear, but when I turned, there was only empty space. I looked around. The carriage and horses were barely there now, just flickers against the darkening sky. Only the tip of the sun was visible from behind the mountains, a hot orange line searing over them. It seemed as if the whole world had stopped, and yet if I pricked my ears and listened very closely to the night air, I could hear the violins and flutes, the pop of wine being opened, the click of heels on the marble dance floor.
Soon it would be too late for her to go, and I would have failed everyone. This was my job. Who I was.
I tried to pull myself from her thoughts, wrench myself from the pain that was filling me. It was coming into me so quickly I could barely breathe.
“Cinderella,” I said, trying to make my voice firm. And then again: “Cinderella!”
“What is it, Godmother?”
Her voice clutched at me, pulled me down like an anchor. I had to use all my strength to gain control of myself, what I was saying.
I spoke as calmly and deliberately as I could. “The ball has started. I can't take you back to her, but I can take you to him. He is your future.”