John Saul - Nightshade

As beautiful as it had once been…

* * *

JOAN STOOD AT the door to her sister’s room, her eyes fixed on the large gray cardboard box on cynthia’s bed. She knew what was in the box, for it was all her mother and sister had been talking about for weeks.

The dress.

The dress Cynthia would wear tomorrow night when she went to the prom with Marty Holmes.

The dress that Cynthia and their mother had started planning weeks ago, on the day Marty asked Cynthia to the prom.

The dress that Mrs. Fillmore had made, making Cynthia come over for fittings day after day.

“I’m starting to hate that dress,” Cynthia had whispered to her last week. “I can never stand still enough for Mrs. Fillmore, and she always sticks pins in me, like I’m some kind of voodoo doll or something.”

“But Mom says it’s going to be the most beautiful dress anyone’s ever seen,” Joan said. “If she finds out you don’t even like it — ”

Cynthia, four years older than her twelve-year-old sister, fixed her eyes on Joan. “Why would she find that out?” she asked. “I’m not going to tell her — if she wants me to wear the stupid dress, I’ll wear it. What do I care?”

“Don’t you even want to go to the prom?” Joan asked wistfully. Since the moment she’d heard about the prom, she thought everything about it sounded wonderful. All the boys would be dressed up in dinner jackets, and the girls would wear beautiful dresses, but none of them as beautiful as Cynthia’s. The wonderfully soft and smooth satin from which Mrs. Fillmore was making the dress was the exact same blue as Cynthia’s eyes, and the dressmaker was even letting Cynthia wear a string of her own pearls.

“They’re not quite real,” she’d admitted to her mother when she brought them over. “But they match the seed pearls on the bodice perfectly.”

Joan had stared longingly at the pearls, wishing she could try them on, but knowing she shouldn’t even ask.

Maybe in four years, when it was time for her own prom…

“I don’t care if I go or not,” Cynthia said, finally answering the question that had begun Joan’s reverie. “And I sure don’t want to go over to old Mrs. Fillmore’s again.” She cocked her head then, her eyes fixed on her younger sister. “Why don’t you go to the fitting tomorrow?”

Joan’s eyes widened. “Me?”

“Why not?” Cynthia countered, her eyes sparkling with mischief.

“But it won’t fit — ” Joan began.

Cynthia didn’t let her finish. “It won’t matter if it doesn’t fit perfectly, because she’s only doing the hemline tomorrow! Stand up.”

Joan scrambled off Cynthia’s bed.

“Stand next to me.”

Joan moved next to her sister, who was standing in front of the full length mirror on her closet door.

“See? It’ll be perfect!”

Joan gazed at the two images in the mirror. There was no resemblance at all. Cynthia’s figure was almost perfect — Joan’s own chest looked completely flat compared to her older sister’s, and where Cynthia’s body was all soft curves, her own was nothing but straight lines and gangly limbs.

She didn’t have a waist, and she didn’t have hips, and she didn’t have a bust.

Even her hair — dark and straight — paled by comparison to Cynthia’s wavy blond tresses.

“See?” Cynthia said. “We’re exactly the same height! So you can go to the fitting tomorrow, and I — ” Abruptly, she fell silent.

“You can what?” Joan had asked.

Cynthia smiled. “Never mind. What you don’t know can’t hurt you.”

So she went to the fitting instead of Cynthia, and Mrs. Fillmore had lowered the dress over her head, and she’d turned to look into a mirror, certain the dress would somehow transform her into as beautiful a creature as her sister.

It hadn’t.

Instead of seeing the fairy princess she’d let herself imagine — even hoped for — she was still the same gawky girl she’d been before.

“It’s just not your color,” Mrs. Fillmore had tried to reassure her, reading her thoughts as clearly as if she’d spoken them out loud. “When it’s time for your prom, I’ll make you a red dress. It wouldn’t be right on Cynthia, but red will be perfect for you. You’ll see.”

Joan had made no reply, because even though she was only twelve, she was already sure no one would ever ask her to the prom. But she’d stood perfectly still, and Mrs. Fillmore hadn’t stuck any pins in her, and that night when their mother asked Cynthia how the fitting had gone, her sister lied so smoothly that even Joan almost believed it had been Cynthia who went to Mrs. Fillmore’s that afternoon.

And then the dress arrived, carefully folded and wrapped in tissue paper and packed into the gray cardboard box. And even though Joan knew she should wait until Cynthia got home and tried it on, she couldn’t contain herself. The unfinished dress had looked so beautiful that she could hardly even imagine what it must look like now.

The box drawing her like a magnet, Joan moved toward it, her fingers untying the string and lifting the lid almost of their own volition.

And then, from behind her, she heard her mother’s voice.

“What are you doing? How dare you touch that box!”

Joan spun around, her hands going behind her back as if to hide from her mother’s wrath.

“Useless!” her mother said, shoving her out of Cynthia’s room and closing the door so she couldn’t even see the box, let alone the beautiful dress inside. “What if you’d ruined it? What if you’d spoiled the most wonderful night of your sister’s life?”

* * *

BUT SHE HADN’T ruined the most wonderful night of Cynthia’s life.

And, despite what Mrs. Fillmore had promised, she’d never had a prom dress of her own.

“Useless!” she heard her mother mutter behind her. “You’re just as useless now as you ever were. I don’t know why I ever had you!”

I don’t either, Joan thought. I truly don’t. But she said nothing, reminding herself once more that her mother didn’t mean what she was saying.

It will be all right, she insisted to herself as she carefully hung the dress in the exact spot her mother wanted it. I’ll get through this.

I’ll get through this, just as I’ve gotten through everything else.

But even as she repeated the reassurances to herself, she still heard her mother’s angry words echoing in her mind.

Useless… useless… useless…

* * *

BILL HAPGOOD GAZED down the fourth fairway of the granite Falls Golf Club course. The fourth hole had always been his favorite — the fairway ran 180 yards from the tee, then veered sharply to the right to proceed another 150 yards to the hole. There was a dense stand of forest to the right of the first run, and if you couldn’t control your slice, there was no chance of finding the ball. On the left was a grove of pines that Bill’s father had planted (“Why should the hookers get off easy?” George Hapgood, a notorious slicer, had complained, instantly earning himself a reputation as being a stalwart foe of prostitution, a profession that no one in Granite Falls was practicing anyway.) But once you got successfully through the narrow slot off the tee and made the turn to the right, you discovered that your troubles had just begun. The woods were still on the right, but now there was a pond on the left, and six deep bunkers guarding the green, which most members were absolutely certain was becoming smaller every year. There were even rumors that Bill himself sometimes snuck onto the course at night to cut away small sections of the fourth green, making the sand traps even larger than they already were.