"Oh, let me help you dress tomorrow night," she begged. "Please."
"I know how to get dressed, Mother," I said. Her smile wilted so much I thought she might burst into tears. "But I don't mind you giving me some hints," I added charitably.
"Good," she said, hugging my new dress to her bosom. She closed her eyes. "We'll be like mother and daughter getting ready for an important ball . . . like a debutante's ball. Oh, I can't wait," she cried.
True to her promise, she was at my side the following day as I began to prepare to go to Bronson Alcott's dinner. Following her suggestion, I changed my hairstyle somewhat by brushing and pinning one side. I let her brush and trim my bangs. Then she insisted I go back to her suite and sit beside her while we did our makeup together. Jimmy shook his head, laughing as she seized my hand and pulled me away.
But as she sat there giving me instructions on how to do my eyes, how to work in the makeup, what color lipstick to choose and what perfume to wear, I couldn't help wondering what it might have been like if she and I had been together since my birth. It made me feel a bit guilty to wonder, for I truly missed Momma Longchamp and mourned her passing; but I couldn't help longing for the feminine things.
I would have had beautiful dresses and stylish clothes. As I grew up, Mother and I would have been like two princesses in the hotel. Maybe she wouldn't have become so self-centered if she had had a daughter with whom she could really share things. We could have been good friends, confiding in each other, sharing hopes and fears.
All these things I longed for, I vowed Christie would have. She and I would sit before a vanity mirror like this when she was older. I dreamed about helping her prepare for her first date or dance. I would be the mother to her that I had never had.
"There," Mother said when we were finished, "just look at how much more beautiful you are now."
I gazed at myself. I did look older, more alluring. Was Mother like the devil making me as vain as she was? I thought. I couldn't stop gazing at myself.
"Thank you, Mother," I said. "I'd better finish dressing and see how Jimmy is coming along."
"Don't worry," she sang. "It's fashionable to be late. Bronson expects it of me anyway," she added, laughing. "He told me if I came to my own funeral on time, the minister would be shocked to death himself."
Jimmy looked sincerely impressed when I stepped back into our suite. He whistled and nodded.
"You look great!" he said.
"So do you, Jimmy." He wore a dark blue sports jacket, matching tie and slacks. After I put on my dress I took his arm, and we stood before the full-length mirror gazing at our images.
"Is this the little girl who used to streak mud all over herself while playing with her toy teacups in the backyard?" he asked.
"Is this the boy who fell off his bike and smacked his head so badly he had to have stitches?" I responded.
"Hey," he said. "You've never forgotten that. You were so frightened." He started to laugh.
"The blood was streaming down your face. I thought you were going to die," I protested. "And you shouldn't have laughed at me."
"I had to," he confessed. "I was so scared myself at the sight of all that blood. I was glad I had to calm you down first."
"I was only—what, four, five?"
"Five," he said. "Daddy was so mad. 'We ain't got money for this kind of nonsense,' he said. Remember?" I shook my head. "I couldn't ride my bike for weeks after that. That old bike," he said, shaking his head and recalling. "I had to leave it behind when we packed up and moved. No room for it in the car. I'll never forget how I felt when we pulled away and I looked-back and saw it leaning against the side of the house." He swallowed back his tears, and I kissed his cheek.
"Maybe we shouldn't think about those days so much, Jimmy. Maybe we should think only about the future," I suggested.
"Yeah, I know. Once in a while, though, I can't help remembering, and then I think about Fern and wonder what happened to her. Mr. Updike still can't find anything out, huh?"
I had asked him to try, but he had had no luck. I didn't want to tell Jimmy how pessimistic Mr. Updike was about it, but I explained it to him the way Mr. Updike had explained it to me.
"No, Jimmy. When people adopt children like that they want it kept secret just so the baby's old family doesn't come around, and so they can tell the child she's their own. Then if she does find out she's adopted, she can't go off looking for her real family and trying to find out why they gave her away."
"I understand," Jimmy said. "I just wish we could see her, see how she's grown, what she's like. I bet she looks more and more like Momma, huh?"
"Probably. She had Momma's dark hair and dark eyes."
"I'm ready," Mother sang from the corridor.
"The queen is calling," Jimmy said, smiling. "Shall we?" he added, and he held out his arm for me to take.
Mother hadn't shown me her newest dress until this moment. It was a pearl-white satin strapless gown with a bodice that dipped scandalously low on her bosom, easily revealing half her cleavage. Her crimson breasts bubbled over, raised by an uplift bra. Yet the hem of the skirt was quite conservative, a little below the ankle. Around her neck she wore a necklace I had seen only once before. It was an enormous pear-shaped diamond in a white-gold setting with a white-gold chain, and I would never forget it, for Grand-mother Cutler had worn it. Mother had the earrings to match.