Olga Grushin - Forty Rooms

Over Mrs. Caldwell’s shoulder, she watched the creamy foam of vintage lace spill out of the box.

“No, there is nothing like this in my family,” she said quietly.

“You can see it full-length here.” Mrs. Caldwell pointed to one of the pictures on the vanity. When she moved, the sculpture of her gleaming blond hair did not move with her. “That’s my mother on her wedding day, she is nineteen here… Oh, which one? Ah, that was my grandmother, this toiletry set belonged to her, a present from my great-grandfather on her sixteenth birthday… No, no, you’re most welcome. I’ll leave it with you, unless you’d like to try it on tonight. But you’re probably too tired… Are you sure? I’ll be right outside then, just call when you’re ready.”

When Mrs. Caldwell exited the room, she hurried to strip, anxious not to make her future mother-in-law wait in the hallway. Underneath her prim black sheath, she wore a racy red bra, the tiniest of thongs, and stockings with a garter belt; earlier in the day, she had nursed a halfhearted plan of paying Paul a tiptoeing visit at two in the morning. Now the appearance of a gartered tart amidst the bedroom’s blue-and-silver refinement made her avert her eyes from the mirror with something nearing shame.

She looked again at the photographs on the vanity, at the solemn young bride in her luminous sepia fog. This must be Paul’s grandmother Cecilia, dead these three years, she thought—and felt suddenly, deeply touched. In the hazy warmth of her expanding emotion the palatial room itself appeared transformed: not a daunting museum exhibit with constellations of fussy trifles, where one was not allowed to indulge in the mess of living, but a cherished collection of family memories stored, preserved, and amplified in heirlooms made priceless with meaning. She touched the brush again, overwhelmed by a surge of affection (a poet’s affection, she said to herself) for all the old things that carried echoes of former lives. Her own family was rich in stories, of course, but theirs were mostly tales of dramatic upheavals and forbidden romance—wars, revolutions, secret trysts with gypsies and dukes—with only a few chance treasures and hardly any photographs surviving to provide illustration or offer proof; she had never even seen the faces of her great-grandparents. To her, family past was a misty realm of conjecture and imagination. The idea of mundane, practical objects—combs, vases, dresses—perpetuating the quiet remembrance of a different kind of life, the tranquil, linear progression of several generations’ worth of marriages, children, traditions, took her completely by surprise.

All at once she longed to become a part of someone’s tangible history.

The dress, when unfolded, proved long and narrow, with sleeves of intricate lace and a row of incredibly small silk-covered buttons all along the back, from the neck to well below the waist—no less than a hundred, she thought. Imagine some seamstress’s skillful hands encasing them in silk one by one, what infinite patience! She was glad, for the sake of her gratitude, to find the gown so graceful and simple, but the buttons—oh, she just fell in love with the buttons.

She stepped into the dress, instantly nervous—what if it did not fit? The neckline was modest but wide, and the straps of her red bra hung out slovenly on both sides. She shrugged the bra off, then fumbled for the buttons at her back.

“How is it going in there?” asked Mrs. Caldwell’s voice from behind the door.

“It’s beautiful, Mrs. Caldwell, I just need a few seconds,” she replied.

The buttons were tiny and sleek and slipped out from under her fingers. After a minute of panting contortions, it became clear that not only could she not reach any of the buttons in the middle—she could not manage any of the buttons she could reach. Abandoning her acrobatics, she wiggled out of the sleeves, twisted the bodice around, and, ignoring the cold air on her naked skin and the sensation of her nipples turning into raisins, hastily traveled along the row of buttons, doing them up. Finished at last, she breathed a sigh of relief, twisted the dress back into place, and found—naturally—that she could no longer squeeze her way back into it. She felt like Alice before the locked door to the Wonderland garden, with the key forever out of her reach. Cursing her stupidity under her breath, she set about undoing the buttons, which grew agile like water bugs and kept skidding away from her increasingly frantic fingers. She counted them this time: there were forty-eight, and she hated each and every one of them.

“Is everything all right, dear?” asked Mrs. Caldwell from the hallway. “Do you need help?”

“No, no, I’m fine, I’m really done, just one moment—”

It now occurred to her that she should indeed ask Paul for help; but he would not hear her shouts across the mansion, nor could she very well send Mrs. Caldwell on an errand to get him, and it would hardly do to go wandering in search of him while falling out of his grandmother’s nuptial gown. Yanking it all the way down, she stood half naked in her red wisp of a thong and bordello stockings, surveying the room, wondering where the maid had put the sweater and jeans she had worn earlier, the dress piled at her feet—and it was precisely then that Mrs. Caldwell chose to propel herself inside, saying, “Perhaps I could… ah, ah, so sorry!”

The door slammed with a loud bang, and Mrs. Caldwell was now gasping apologies in the hallway.

“No, no, please—” As she lunged to grab her bra off the floor, she got entangled in the gown’s silk folds and made an awkward step. There was the terrible sound of something ripping, something popping, which she hoped to all the gods was not audible outside the room. “I—I’m just having some trouble with the buttons. Please, do come in.”

By the time Mrs. Caldwell edged into the room, she had struggled anew into the imprisonment of the dress, and, her back gaping open, stood in silent mortification, crimson-faced, not meeting the mirrored eyes of Mrs. Caldwell, who for the next minute, the longest minute of her life, strained to button the buttons.

In the end, it proved much too tight.

“You couldn’t be any skinnier, my dear,” Mrs. Caldwell repeated for the third time, smiling kindly if somewhat grimly. “People were just frailer in the old days, I think, not as healthy as today… We could take it to my tailor, perhaps, see what could be done…” There sounded another ominous creak of a seam about to split. “Oh, but we wouldn’t want to tear it. Well, we’ll think of something. Vera Wang makes lovely gowns.”

Later that night, when Paul stopped by for his—conjugally chaste—good-night kiss, she chose not to tell him of her sartorial misadventure. Later still, already in her nightshirt, she walked along the perimeter of the bed, liberating the impossibly starched, taut sheets, when she stepped on something hard and cool with her bare foot. A tiny silk button the color of spilled milk lay on the carpet. She bent to retrieve it, held it for a moment on her palm, then pushed it deep between the mattresses. She realized, of course, that Mrs. Caldwell could not have failed to notice the damage, but all the same, she did not want anyone stumbling upon the fresh evidence of her crime.

If I sleep soundly tonight, she thought as she climbed into the bed, it should put to rest my mother’s theory of royal blood in our veins. Though I rather suspect I’ve flunked my princess test already. Ah, that was awful, just awful… Well, but I can learn, I can attend princess evening courses, I’m sure if I iron enough curtains, I will get good grades… No, I must be asleep, this makes no sense—or does it? She giggled aloud, indeed surprising herself out of a shallow dream, then waded back in, smiling a little into her starched, lacy, color-coordinated pillow.