Too Late, Don Russo: His Pregnant Wife Signed First novel · Chapter 16 of 24
Chapter 16: The Dress
Carmela's seamstress worked out of the sunroom of a house in Greenwich, and she had pins in her mouth and no opinion about scandals.
"White," Carmela told her. "Not cream. Not ivory. Snow."
"Beige photographs better on her," Bea said from a wicker chair, her bruised hip propped on a footstool.
"She is not a pigeon, Beatrice."
"She has auburn hair, Carmela. White washes her out."
"It will make every woman in that room look dirty."
"That's your plan?"
"That's my plan," said Carmela.
I stood on a little round stool in a slip, with my arms out, and listened to my grandmother and my mother-in-law fight over my body.
It was the happiest I had been in a week.
They had met four days ago.
They already finished each other's insults.
The seamstress held up the dress.
It was white silk, plain at the neck and cut close through the ribs, with a skirt that fell.
No sleeves, no beads, nothing to hide behind.
I put it on, and the room went quiet.
"There," Carmela said softly. "That's her."
Bea cleared her throat twice and looked out the window.
"You look like your mother," she said.
I had to look at the ceiling for a moment.
Carmela took the pins from the seamstress, waved her out of the room, and knelt in front of me to fix the hem herself.
She talked to the fabric.
"Do you know how his father proposed?"
"No."
"He didn't. He handed me a receipt for a ring and said, 'It's in layaway, I'll finish paying in March.' Then he went back to work."
Bea snorted.
"I was nineteen and furious," Carmela said. "For thirty years he never once said it out loud. I learned to read the other way. The ring was paid off in March. Every Sunday he fixed my shoes at the kitchen table. When he died I found a drawer full of my own handwriting. Every grocery list I ever left."
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