“Tony’s an asshole,” Raphael chimes in.
Mom gasps like always and lectures Raphael on the evils of curse words. I don’t even bother to point out her hypocrisy because she’d just shrug.
“I thought you might want to look inside this old trunk,” I tell her once she finishes her reprimand.
“What’s in it?” Mom stops beside me and stills her hands.
I have a notion of what’s inside, but I’m not sure. The buckle finally gives way, and I push the two halves apart. Clothes tumble out and fill the air with the smell of musty old fabric, mothballs, and dust.
Mom puts one hand on the trunk as she reaches for an enormous deep blue hat with a broken ostrich feather and smashed rosettes. She puts it on her head, and I tie the wide ribbon into a bow by the side of her face like she’s Scarlett O’Hara. “I love a good hat,” she says, and prances around laug
hing. I take a picture of her in her very large “good hat” and deep red lipstick. “What’s that?” She points to the yellowed sleeve, and it turns out to belong to a wadded-up dress with streaks of orange discoloration on the lace and satin. She wants to try it on, but I can tell without even holding it up that it’s too small. Instead, Lindsey and I get her into a green-and-yellow-striped skirt and matching jacket with balloon sleeves.
“Put that on, Lou.” Mom points a red parasol at the lacy dress, seemingly unable to let it go.
I really don’t want to. The dress is yellowed and scratchy and smells like mothballs and old trunk, with just a hint of burnt starch. MISS LILLIAN SUTTON ON HER WEDDING DAY is embroidered on a silk tag. “This belonged to Grandmother. It’s her wedding dress.”
Mom looks up from a box of gloves. “It’s not white.”
It used to be. I shake out the mess of a dress, and light from the window picks up tiny glass beads and seed pearls hand-sewn into the lace. This is the dress that Grandmother wore at her first wedding, to my grandfather Louis.
Mom orders me to put it on again, and I reluctantly strip to my underwear and pull the stiff fabric over my head. A row of silk buttons runs halfway down my spine, but the fabric loops are also stiff, and we leave the back open. The chest is tight, and the long lace sleeves are snug on my arms and scratchy against my skin. I run a hand over tiny beads and pearls sewn into the sweetheart neckline and wonder how Grandmother felt in this dress. Happy, excited, scared? Was she madly in love with Louis Jackson? Did she want to run into his arms as he waited for her at the altar?
Mom used to have a black-and-white photograph of Louis in his uniform, but I don’t remember exactly what his face looked like. Other than his war hero status, Mom has never really talked about her dad. He left when she was four and died when she was seven, so she never knew him. Grandmother never talked about him either, and I don’t know if that was out of respect for Papa Bob or because she’d moved on and forgotten him. Everyone has forgotten. I don’t even know where he’s buried. It’s sad, like he never lived at all.
“I think I found that dress in this photo album,” Lindsey says, and brings it to me. She places it on top of the trunk, and it’s open to an eight-by-ten photograph taken in a flower garden. Grandmother Lily’s floral bouquet is so big it looks like a funeral spray. She’s wearing a simple headpiece and a long veil, and if I look close enough, I can see the same lace sleeves and sweetheart neckline. The wedding party is small, with only two family members on each side, and most of them look happy. Gone was the era of dour-faced photographs. Too bad someone didn’t tell the groomsmen that their joyless expressions were twenty years out of fashion.
I zero in on the man standing next to Grandmother, wearing a dark suit and tie, a white shirt, and a very dapper pocket square. He’s old-school handsome, and his hair is slicked back from a nasty widow’s peak.
My nasty widow’s peak. The one I had lasered off. The one that still grows an occasional stray hair from my forehead. I never knew my dad or grandfather, and for the first time in my life, I’m staring at a male with the same DNA as me.
I show the picture to Mom, and she looks back and forth from the picture to me. “That’s Momma and Grandmere and Grandpere.” She points to the groom. “That’s my daddy.” She moves her finger. “Jasper and Jed.”
“Where’s Grandfather’s family?”
She shrugs. “Momma didn’t know them.”
Which I’ve always thought was strange, but I seem to be the only one. “Why are they on the groom’s side?”
“School friends.”
This time she doesn’t lower her voice or look around when she says, “Jed and Jasper were gay as a box of sprinkles.” Mom shakes her head, and the broken feather falls and hangs off one side. “Momma said Daddy’s kin didn’t want him to get married.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.” She digs in a small compartment of the trunk and pulls out earrings, heavy with clusters of rubies and emeralds.
I return my attention to the photograph. My great-grandparents look pleased, Lily and Louis smile pleasantly, but Jasper and Jed look like they’re headed to a memorial service instead of their sister’s wedding.
Lindsey helps Mom clip on the heavy earrings, which immediately pull at her lobes. “Don’t those hurt?” I ask her. She shakes her head and the earrings swing from side to side.
Lindsey takes out her phone and says, “Let me take a picture of both of you.”
We walk across the hall to the library, where the lighting is far better. Raphael screams from the chandelier overhead like someone’s stabbed him.
“Shut your beak,” I say.
“Merde! Shut the fuck up, Boomer!”