Emily Winslow - The Whole World

Eleanor said, “Gretchen, you tell him. Tell him I can’t go.” Then she locked herself in the bathroom.

I stayed in my chair. The bell sang me songs. Then it stopped. Later, Eleanor came out. She still had the dress on.

She read to me from a storybook illustrated by Marc Chagall. I was still young enough to see. I put my face right up to those pictures. His happiest people always float in the air. Goats too. Happy people, floating goats.

Eleanor loved books. She made me love them too; it was inevitable that anyone who lived in our house would become an expert in literature, whether they wanted to be or not. She loved adventure in books. She loved men in books. She was in awe of people who created books the way religious people are in awe of God.

Chagall contained happiness like that: colour and captured motion, tethered by a frame or windowpane. His figures aren’t limited to feeling happiness inside; they float and fly, arc through the sky. And their goats fly with them.

The downward half of my arc sped up, rushing me toward the rutted road. I passed a goat. I trailed colour. Suddenly I was in the Fitzwilliam Museum, and the paintings were all Chagalls, from that storybook. Eleanor was there. Wearing that dress.

Nick became a calendar.

Wednesday December second became: The Day Before Nick Was Gone.

I carried around his gloves most of the day; I finally got a chance to hand them over to him at Gretchen’s house. Then Gretchen and I had a fight, and he stayed to fix it. He was gallant. I had to go, and he was doing something else later. It was all, “See you tomorrow!”

Then, tomorrow, Nick was gone. That was Thursday, which became Day One, but we didn’t know that yet.

It was the choir dinner. I knew he’d be there. It was black tie, not academic gowns. I had secondhand dresses I’d gotten cheap from the charity shops on Burleigh Street. Old May Ball dresses from last year. That’s where I shopped with Polly when we were friends. Then we’d eat at the café of the public library, outside on the high-up deck: cheap baked potatoes, cups of tap water, and the tower cranes building the Grand Arcade swinging not too far overhead. We’d read our borrowed books. It had been enough. Someone’s old clothes, borrowed books, and cheap potatoes. It was very La Bohème, a starving-student sort of thing. It was fun. I didn’t mind.

But there’s a boutique on Magdalene Street, just by the entrance to college. They have shoes and purses, and dresses. Not Cinderella-type fuss, just real modern, feminine dresses, in my face, every day.

There were two other customers in the shop: a tiny elderly lady indulging in a really great pair of shoes, and another Magdalene student whom I’d seen around. I knew she had money. She was buying three dresses and a purse. I could tell from the conversation that she knew the sales clerk.

I waited for her to leave. Then I asked the clerk, who had beautiful straight blond hair, if she had the dress in the window to fit me. She took a long time to consider, and all I could think was: She’d fit into the bitty one in the window. Finally she went in the back and there was one in a normal, human size for me. I tried it on behind a curtain. The dress was knee-length and white, with a splash of red poppies clustered at the hem. The top was ruched around my chest, with smaller flowers scattered there. A skinny red ribbon traced the waist. I’d never had on anything so pretty.

I had to get shoes as well.

I keep my cards in a little zipper thing that fits in my pocket: credit card, ATM, public library, student I.D. The zipper thing is only just a little bigger than the cards themselves, and it kind of holds on to them when I try to pull one out. The bag and I had a little fight about the credit card. In the end I snapped the zipper pull and now it doesn’t close anymore.

I might have stopped myself. I could have stopped somewhere between the dressing room and punching in my PIN on the little machine. I needed to make it through to Christmas, when my dad would pay tuition and top up my living expenses again. But when my own purse tried to stop me I just got defensive. I’m not going to let a stupid bag tell me what to do.

The price came in just three pounds under my limit.

I wouldn’t be able to return the shoes; they would show scuffs. But I’d return the dress. So long as I was careful with it, I could return the dress, saying I hadn’t used it, and get the money back.

After all that, Nick didn’t come to the dinner.

It was held at Magdalene, with the usual formality. All the men looked alike, and the women looked different: different hems, different colors, different hairstyles. Except for the girl I’d seen in the shop, who was wearing the same dress that I was. Poppies on white.

I was angry. Nick was supposed to be there. Instead-what? I didn’t even think of him being with Polly. I assumed him to be at some sort of family event, something to do with his sister, or maybe something with the Chanders. Some performance or presentation at their school. Because he’d spent his whole life going to dinners like this. They weren’t special to him, so he had no respect that they were special to some people.

I was so angry I couldn’t eat. I didn’t want to risk dropping anything on the dress anyway. Dinner was roast beef. Even one drip would force me to keep the dress. I was careful with the wine, careful with the water even. I was between someone named Mark and another guy. Mark asked me if I’d ever sung Scarlatti’s “Stabat Mater,” which I hadn’t. He said it had more than thirty-part harmony. I told him he was full of shit. The girl on his other side said it does have that many parts, and what was my problem? I was really mad from Nick being so cavalier about where he bothers to show up, so I told her to fuck off. And she said, “How very American of you.” Five or six people laughed at that. The girl who said it wasn’t even English; she was Canadian. I wanted to leave but everyone would have looked at me walk out.

I picked up my wineglass, which was still full because I’d been avoiding it. Mark reached for his water at the same time, and our arms knocked lightly. If my glass hadn’t been full, it wouldn’t have been any big deal. But the wine was close to the top and sloshed over the side. Just one plop of it, but it hit my plate with momentum enough to send a drop sliding up over the edge. It hit my lap, on the linen napkin there, which I grabbed up quickly, to keep the purple from soaking through onto the dress. That’s when Mark’s water spilled onto the dress instead. Clear water, but any wet at all would ruin the fabric. It could be dry-cleaned away maybe, but not enough to make it look like it had never been worn. Two hundred and eighty-nine pounds. I gasped. Mark apologized, but the girl on his other side covered a laugh.

I was too angry to move, and if I swore again that would just set off the Canadian girl. “It doesn’t matter,” I said. “It doesn’t matter.” I thought, It’s Nick who should be apologizing. And, It’s Polly who would be laughing, isn’t it.

There was nothing Mark could do; it’s not like he could dab at my crotch with his table napkin. He stopped saying sorry eventually. Now I really couldn’t get up; it would have looked like I peed myself. The guy on my other side finally said something to me. He said, “These things go on forever.” What did he mean? Did he kindly mean my skirt would dry into a wrinkled mess before I’d have to get up? Did he obnoxiously mean that he hated being stuck next to me and my problems?