Mary Russel - Dreamers of the Day

She stuck a hand through the curtains; in it was a limp length of ivory charmeuse. “No, really, Mildred,” I started to protest. “I have no use for—”

“Just try it!”

The fabric slid over me like a waterfall, and I let Mildred adjust its drape before I looked in the three-way mirror. Then—my fingers went to my lips. What had been woefully inadequate in the era of the Gibson girl was now a slim, elongated, shimmering elegance. And the color made my complexion look fresh as cream.

Mildred clapped her hands like the delighted child she was. “I just knew you’d be a knockout in that dress! Do you have pearls? Oh, my gosh, you’d be positively stunning in pearls!”

Agnes, don’t be foolish. You don’t want that dress, said Mumma. It’s completely impractical. What you want is a good woolen skirt and a nice cotton blouse that can take bleach and stand up to hard use. Where on earth would someone like you wear a silk charmeuse—?

“I’ll take it,” I heard myself say.

Piece by piece over the next two hours, a wardrobe was assembled. Like a butterfly in reverse, I drew on one cocoon after another. With every change of outfit, a new and different Agnes appeared in the mirror, and Mumma hated them all.

Tailored frocks with boyish collars and turned-back cuffs, belted low. (You look like a stick in those things.) Simple straight skirts in good Scottish wool, to be worn under the most beautiful costume tunics in crepe de Chine and printed silks. (They’ll be ruined the first time you wash them.) Round-necked voile blouses with hand-drawn embroidery work. (You’ll snag the openings, Agnes, you know how careless you are.) Shoes next, three pairs. (Two are enough, surely. One for church and one for everyday. Why would anyone need three pairs of shoes?) A long loose overcoat in jade green wool, with a deep shawl collar—stunningly expensive, but the loveliest thing I’d ever worn.

I brought you up to think of others, Mumma said with a defeated sigh . The moment I’m gone, you sink into selfish profligacy .

I will give an equal amount to charity, I promised silently.

“I’ll take it,” I said aloud.

With the dressing room filled and me beginning to wonder where on earth I’d hang all these clothes once I got them home, the jubilant Mildred crooked a varnished finger and led me out to a cosmetics counter. While my purchases were being bagged and boxed, my lips were to be rouged and my eyes smudged with kohl.

“Oh, Mildred, really, I couldn’t!” Balking at long last, I gestured toward my forehead and confided my reluctance. “It will draw attention to—”

“What?” she asked.

“My eye,” I whispered.

“What about it?”

“Well, it—it crosses.”

“Which one?”

“The right. It crosses. When I’m tired.”

She shrugged. “So? Take naps.” She stared hard and finally admitted, “I suppose it does turn in, but it’s not that bad. Makes you look … like you’re really paying attention. Anyway, you’ve got lovely lips. We’ll play them up.”

Mildred and the Elizabeth Arden lady consulted on colors and application, and when they were finished, Mildred produced a bell-shaped cloche hat made from the same green wool as my beautiful new coat. She settled it onto my head and tugged it down until it dipped rakishly over my right eye. “In case you get tired,” she said, winking. “What do you think?”

I walked to the nearest full-length mirror and saw someone chic and modern, youthful if not young. In a daze, I stood there reassessing everything I had ever thought about myself. “Mildred,” I whispered finally, “you are a miracle worker.”

“Don’t you dare cry!” she warned. “You’ll ruin your makeup.”

We embraced then as though we were old friends, and I waved to half a dozen other girls beaming happily at the magic they had accomplished. I didn’t even ask how much the bill had totaled. It doesn’t matter, I told myself. I am not a penny-pinching schoolteacher anymore. I am a lady of means.

Not if you keep up this kind of spending, Mumma warned.

Paying no attention, I sailed out of the store followed by three boys laden with the boxes and bags they would carry to my car. The doorman, who barely noticed when I entered Halle’s five hours earlier, looked at me now with frank and cheeky admiration as I departed.

I tipped the boys a dime apiece when the car was loaded, and gave a nickel to the valet who held my car door open. Rosie hopped in, and for a time I sat still, gazing at the green-gloved hands resting on the steering wheel. I felt as transformed as the society I lived in.

The spell was not broken, but only slightly cracked when a trickle of melted snow slipped down a newly bared neck that had never before gone out in such weather without a sensible crocheted scarf. Even inside the car and out of the winter wind, my silk-stockinged legs felt exposed and cold beneath the knee-length skirt.

You’ll catch pneumonia, Mumma said.

Maybe so, I could hear Mildred say, but she’ll die happy.

What about Egypt? you ask. What has any of this to do with Egypt?

Well, I’m getting to that, but you have to know all about Mildred to understand why I went to the séance. You see, Mildred and Mumma began to argue on my way home, and they never seemed to stop. Every time my mother rebuked me for that spending spree or anything else, for that matter, Mildred’s voice would come to my defense.

What would she be like if you’d let her make the most of herself instead of the least? Mildred demanded, bold as brass. You always acted like her life was over before it got started.

But a silk charmeuse dress! A waste of money if ever there was one. It’ll sit in the closet forever.

Not necessarily … Why, it’s perfect for a cruise! It’s the very sort of dress ladies wear when they eat at the captain’s table on a cruise.

And what would you know about such things?

More than you would! I have lots of customers who go on cruises. Anyway, Agnes should get out more, see more things, said Mildred. Say! A change of scenery would be just the thing! She might meet someone on a cruise.

Meet someone? Why, the very idea!

And why shouldn’t she?

She’s nearly forty!

She doesn’t look it, not when she’s all dolled up.

It went on like that for a week. Nothing seemed to quiet the dispute I heard inside me. And it was in that state of mental instability that I found the courage to do something else completely out of character. I visited a medium.

I know, I know. You’re absolutely right. The séances popular in the twenties were shameful, silly affairs, designed to fool the gullible and take advantage of grieving families. I grant you that, but then again, here I am, telling you this story! So you just never know, now, do you? And remember, please, all the other invisible forces that had so recently become a part of our lives in those days. Madame Curie’s radiation, and Signore Marconi’s radio, and Dr. Freud’s unconscious. Even before I died, it seemed possible that there might be some scientific basis for communication with the unseen soul. There might be a sort of telephone of the spirit, or maybe radio waves, which were there to be heard if only one were tuned to the right frequency. Why not try to assuage our hunger for one more moment with the shockingly, suddenly absent? Why not yield to the desire to contact the dead, to ask one last question, to receive one last message?

And I did so long to hear my sister Lillian’s voice again! Maybe she could settle the differences between Mumma and Mildred.