Chapter 10: The Dress

Dario wanted Alessia kept home on Friday.

"Gallo's name is on the program, and Gallo is the one man who knows your face," he said on the phone Wednesday night.

"Don't put your daughter in a ballroom with him."

"She is going," I said.

"Marisa."

"She wrote that proposal, and she is going to hear someone else read it.

"You tell me what kind of mother makes her stay home."

He was quiet.

"Two men on every door," he said finally. "One on her. If I say go, you go."

"If you say go, I'll consider it."

"That's the most I'll get."

"That's the most you'll get."

On Thursday I took Alessia to a tailor's shop on a side street, with the gold gown in a garment bag over my arm.

The seamstress had pins in her mouth and a measuring tape around her neck, and she looked at Alessia's brace and then at the dress.

"We can't zip this over that," she said.

"Can you take out the back?"

"I can take out the back."

Alessia stood on the little round platform in the middle of the room, in the brace and leggings.

The seamstress walked around her with chalk.

I sat in an armchair with a coffee I wasn't drinking.

"Mom," she said to the mirror. "If Jared looks at me tomorrow, I think I'll cry."

"Then cry."

"In front of everyone?"

"Cry, and then ask your question," I said. "Nobody has ever lost an argument because they cried first."

She laughed.

"You really think I can ask it?"

"I think you wrote the proposal."

"I put a thing in it," Alessia said, and lowered her voice for the seamstress.

"On page fourteen, in the revenue table, there's a number that's wrong on purpose. Only I know the right one."

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