"The Dressmaker's Dummy"

by Beth Fowler

Copyright ©2001
ISBN: 0-87714-662-4 eBook edition
ISBN: 0-87714-788-4 PB edition

All rights reserved by Denlinger's Publishers, including the right to reproduce this electronic book, or portions thereof, in any form, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review.

This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

THE AUTHOR

Beth Fowler is old enough to remember Eisenhower on TV and young enough to require periodic trips down the feminine products aisle at the grocery store. She's married to a grown-up Eagle Scout. No kids.

For those of you who dabble in psychology and the MBTI, she's a recovering INTJ. For the rest of you, if you invite her to a party, she'll either scuttle to your library or your liquor cabinet or both as a safe haven from the rigors of socializing. She's been told this introverted personality trait is "a gift."

Beth Fowler lived in conservative Pennsylvania for 36 years where she was civilized in the prescribed manner of the Anglo-American tribe. Her reward was a giant house filled with lots of stuff and a job represented by a box drawn on a piece of paper with other boxes and lines connecting them.

Then in the early Nineties she sloughed off her shoulder pads, jumped out of her high heels and tossed the fake alligator briefcase aside to live in Malaysia with her husband who'd just been transferred. Deprived of an identity and suffering an acute case of culture shock, she announced to those who asked, "What do you do?"

"I'm a writer."

Since then she has had more than 300 articles published internationally, won two Stateside literary awards, published two children's books in Southeast Asia, and a non-fiction book in the Far East.

THE BOOK

The Dressmaker's Dummy, a mainstream/contemporary novel of about 88,000 words, traces an American woman's journey of self-discovery with humor, perceptiveness and no holds barred. Fearing that an aspect of her personality that she calls Smart Ass will blurt out what she's really thinking, Rose can't express herself freely and genuinely. She's stifled. Verbally constipated.

She is drawn to an enigmatic transient, Sonny, who doesn't tolerate her evasive verbal tactics and double-speak. After falling for and then losing Sonny and alienating her best friend, Rose seeks refuge in alcohol and one night stands. Her depression deepens. Bitter, alone, jobless and hung over, Rose thinks relief will come from humiliating her parents.

The story unsentimentally examines the forces that assail and aid Rose's sense of self. Spinning in an eddy of emotional distress, will she ever gain the confidence, grace and humor to speak freely and easily?

In the end, readers will cheer for Rose as she makes a life-changing discovery just in time to prevent her from harming herself further and destroying the lives of the people who are most important to her.

What readers are saying

"I enjoyed it two times and found it a definite 'page-turner.'" Sarah Hymas

"I find your (Fowler's) writing engaging and immediate." Margaret Butterfield

". . . very strong — excellent dialogue and wonderful pacing." David Rompf

"It's well-written, funny, sad and full of insight." Annette Green

Read The Dressmaker's Dummy and discover for yourself why these readers are so enthusiastic about the story of Rose and her foibles and triumphs.

Sample

Six thirty a.m. They were sitting in the Ramada Inn restaurant, about 30 miles east of her new place. The waitress hadn't served their table yet.

"Bob? This is it?" He's moussing his hair these days. Too pouffy on top.

"Yes, I suppose so. I don't understand what went wrong. I thought we were happy, Rose."

He'd misunderstood her again.

"I didn't mean us. I meant my half of the money." Rose waved the check at him. "Where's the rest of it?"

"That represents half our joint checking account and half of our investment portfolio. When you quit teaching, I had to dip into our stocks to pay the mortgage." His eyes wandered, searching for a waitress.

He'd explained annuities, equities, zero coupon bonds, T bonds, CDs and mutual funds to her many times, eyes glittering, but Rose never did grasp the difference between investing for income and investing for growth.

"But what about the IBM stock you always bragged about?" she asked, groping for a knowing tone.

"You can't touch it. I bought it before we were married." He signaled the waitress and ordered tea for both of them.

Tea always made her queasy. "You don't care about me. You never did. Getting married was something to get over with, like your CPA exam."

His eyes tightened, calculating. "Take it or leave it. If you want financial advice, make an appointment." He snapped his business card at her.

She stuffed the settlement check in her jacket pocket and scrabbled around for a retort more refined than fuck you.

"Found a job yet? By the way you're dressed. . . " Bob's right nostril lifted disapprovingly. "I'd say not."

"Fuck you!" she said.

Pissed, she gunned her red Toyota out of the parking lot and into the a.m. commuter stream. While driving on the bypass, Rose Kelly pretended she was participating in humanity's busy-ness without the burden of listening to and responding to anybody's excuses, life story or where you could buy pork chops cheap. Drivers communicated efficiently with flashing lights and backhanded waves at four-way stops. No verbalization required. Thank you.

Jacobsville hadn't changed much since the early Sixties when highway crews had dynamited through mountains and hills, cracking wall plaster for miles around, and completed the bypass, marginalizing the town. And, except for the obligatory fast-food restaurants that mushroomed on the edge of town across from the mini-mall next to the field where dairy cows chewed cuds, it hadn't changed much during the past twelve years when she lived in Norristown with Bob either. The church to bar ratio (three to one) held steady, although the elms on Market Street had been replaced with flowering ornamental pears that snowed white petals in April. Neo-Gothic and Federal style buildings housed rotating occupants and businesses. Other buildings, the Art Deco theater for example, remained empty.

She wanted to stay inside her idling Toyota, a metal shell sparing her from devising ways to evade the gaggle of women standing in front of the thrift shop.

Craning her neck to check her hair and makeup in the rearview mirror, she zipped on an unnecessary coat of brick red lipstick, fastening her lips onto her pallid complexion. She grinned, her cheeks forcing the corners of her mouth up. She hated her crooked teeth. She closed her lips. Dampness frizzed her black shoulder-dusting curls. Behind her, the morning sun, a shiny nail head, made promises with yesterday's warmth. But gray clouds with ragged salmon edges rolled in from the northwest, pushing a chilly breeze before them.

She cut the engine in front of dented aluminum-clad townhouses. An unwary pedestrian stumbled over porch steps that lolled out a doorway like a dry tongue. She fed the parking meter and walked past the new Post Office, a broad-shouldered pink brick building. The old Post Office had been demolished to make room for a new bank. With great will power, she did not seek out her reflection in the plate glass stating Pennsylvania Bureau of Employment Security in large white letters. She dawdled past the Episcopal church with the beautiful arched red door and gothic hinges. Three blocks west at the square, Jacobsville's five-tiered fountain dribbled water. After hooligans had dumped soap in the fountain thirteen consecutive years, the town fathers wised up and drained it after Labor Day, only to find a cow tied to the fountain eating variegated ivy the following morning. Folks suspected it was college freshmen fulfilling initiation rites. Rose never pulled stunts like that.

She walked toward the gaggle of women who presumably didn't divorce their spouses or quit good jobs or think about opening quixotic businesses or wear people's cast-off clothing. People who knew what to say next. Their jawing was spliced with he saids, she saids, I told him sos. They gestured and emoted in the manner of scrim village extras, creating the illusion of animated conversation. What did people talk about after "Hello"? On Rose, words were ill-fitting clothes. In the distance, gray clouds bore down on the chalky blue Appalachian Mountains.

She'd observed other people participate in small talk and even scribbled appropriate responses for future use — What's new with you? You sound upset, Tell me more. But she avoided saying those lines for fear of setting off a chain of conversation for which she couldn't supply the next link.

Hands in pockets, fists straining against the seams, she walked toward the thrift shop door. Each day, in attempts to defer social intercourse, she dressed in clothes designed to hide herself, hyperbolizing, camouflaging or disguising her presence. For the second time that day, she wished she hadn't worn a man's quilted silk smoking jacket she'd altered and the bright, notice-me orange palazzo pants. Although the soft, thick jacket made her feel safe, it was too long for her body type, making her look shorter than she really was. The pants, purchased at the thrift shop, added pounds to her thighs. She'd compensated with high heels. She pulled her jacket tight to her hips and watched her toes step on the salt and pepper pavement, being careful not to stick a heel into sidewalk expansion joints and draw attention to herself as she edged around the women.

One lady smiled smugly, and said, "Mrs. Hampstead!"

Rose lifted her shoulders. Mrs. Hampstead was her ex-mother-in-law's name. The clouds darkened, small ones hooking with other small ones, creating iceberg forms. The clouds loomed lower. She felt under pressure.

The woman blocked Rose's path to the thrift shop and asked, "You are Mrs. Hampstead, aren't you?" The other women were poised, ready to close in.

"Oh, hi," Rose replied, head jerking up as if the woman's proximity startled her. The woman's friends stepped away, excluding Rose from their circle. All of Jacobsville High School's teachers, plus one thousand and five hundred students, not counting the students from study hall, drama club and hall duty, and some of their parents had called her Mrs. Hampstead in her pre-divorcée English teacher era. For the life of her, Rose could not remember this woman's name. Maybe moving back to Jacobsville after her divorce hadn't been a good idea after all.

The woman pushed her spectacles up with a chipmunky double twitch of her cheeks, smearing her rouge. The facial tic. Rose remembered now. Mrs. Gabler had helped chaperon Rose's high school drama club's trip to the City Thespians production of "Romeo and Juliet" and, sitting beside Rose, had distracted her from the star-crossed lovers on stage with her constant cheek twitching.

"Billy likes his English teacher this year," Mrs. Gabler said, her voice rocking on likes and this.

Thunder murmured. A damp breeze fraught with dread crawled down Rose's jacket collar.

Billy Gabler. Tenth grade English. He had worn thick glasses with a paper clip in the hole where a tiny screw had fallen out. A loner, he had offered to teach Rose how to play Dungeons and Dragons. Roles reversed, she was his dense student. Billy likes his English teacher this year. Was Billy's mother implying that her son hadn't liked Rose for a teacher? In that case, Rose mentally dismissed the woman as a philistine who didn't appreciate hubris and who let her participles dangle in public. Or had she meant to say that Billy likes his English teacher this year, too, as well as he had liked Rose? If so, the woman was no doubt flattering Rose for an ulterior purpose. Dialogue was stressful for her, the inner second-guessing clogging her throat, rising like bile, threatened to spew on the innocent if she opened her mouth to utter premeditated responses.

"Good for Billy, Mrs. Gabler." Rose stretched her lips horizontally without lifting the corners.

"I'm Mrs. Breckbill now. Remarried. Billy's into computers."

"Good for you. Maybe Billy'll do better this year." Fat Chance. Rose nodded curtly. End of conversation. Her voice had sounded flat, tired. She was tired. After thirty-five years, she was tired of being Rose. Clouds scuffed the dowager Appalachians. Plump raindrops spotted the pavement. Morning traffic was picking up. Windshield wipers smacked at rain. She thought she heard Billy's mother caw, "You can say that again," and assumed it was in response to another woman's derisive remark about Rose.

When she opened the Episcopal church's thrift shop door, a flock of starlings took flight from the roof, rippling as one like a wind-tossed black veil. Their strumming wings made Rose feel desolate.

Sniffing the shop's miasma of mildew, rotting linoleum, old sweat, dust and decaying fabrics, she rifled through bins of clothes. The rank odor was freighted with good memories of past fruitful visits to thrift shops. She never knew what treasures she might find buried at the local thrift shop. Uncovering them was a joy akin to discovering a pearl in a fried oyster sandwich. Each gem promised to add brilliance to the bleached fabric of her dull life. She divined tales of romance, heartbreak, drudgery and triumph by stroking velvet or fluffing taffeta. A ripped hemline alluded to a hasty escape from a masher. A tear-stained bodice was testimony to a mother's grief when she learned her son had died on Normandy beach.

Rain struck the front window and car tires splashed through new puddles. A man entered the store and shook his damp hair like a dog. His red wavy hair was swept back from a placid forehead free of frown lines. His thick eyebrows were animated with potential mischief, subdued by deep thoughts. Fine wrinkles radiated from the corners of his hazel eyes, brilliant with an outdoorsman's vitality. He was about her height and approximately her age — old enough to remember the drumming of Kennedy's cortege; young enough to hope this year's presidential candidate lied about not inhaling.

She found herself becoming irritated when he moseyed to the opposite side of the bin she was exploring. Rose wanted to explore the bins alone.

Keeping her eyes down, Rose bit her bottom lip and stole glances at the man. I'd like ta dig my heels into his calves! Rose swallowed pronouncements like that before they found her larynx and escaped her lips. She claimed no responsibility for constructing those thoughts. The voice in her head sounded like no one she knew. It was sharp, nasal, the way speed freaks from the West coast probably sounded. She imagined the voice came from a rude little fella strutting at the base of her brain who shouted, sometimes used a megaphone, waved his fists, smirked. She couldn't control him. Although she always agreed with Smart Ass, and sometimes envied his cutting bursts, the vigilance his presence required sapped her energy, made her skittish. She assumed everybody had one, including the bum or homeless hunk or whatever he was supposed to be standing at the bin.

He held up a woman's sweater, inspected it, buttoned each pearly button, folded it with precise corners and gently placed it back in the bin as if he had once loved the woman who'd worn it.

He was thinking about the 1958 Dodge Coronet Custom back at the shop . . . about the dorsal fins and protruding taillights and back bumper. He'd already painted the body white, but the owner hadn't decided what color he wanted on the fins and rear panels. Cars, to some people were ultimate symbols of materialism. To Sonny, they're sculptures in motion.  

"Finding anything good?" he asked the woman who was sizing him up.

"I don't have to shop here. I'm looking for something special," she declared, noticing tiny holes in his T-shirt and white paint on his unzipped sweatshirt jacket and retread jeans. You obviously have to shop here, the Smart Ass in her head, the one who always threatened to dub in his voice for hers, said. Her face grew hot. She wondered why she believed it necessary to explain herself to this stranger. Maybe it was the searching, knowing expression on his face, or the bemused smile flirting at his lips. His straight-on gaze made Rose look askance, wishing she'd kept her mouth shut.

"Are you talking to me?" A genuine smile settled lightly on his face.

"Not really," she answered, although no one else was in the shop except for the old lady polishing the countertop at the cash register.

He turned, giving her his complete attention, and asked, "Is it important that I think you don't have to shop here?"

"It doesn't matter to me what you think. I didn't want you to get the impression that I'm poor." Like you are. Hoping that was the end of it, she stroked the cashmere sweater he had folded. She picked it up and held it to her, admiring the braid and pearls sewn to the button panel. Outside silver filaments of rain varnished the street. Her umbrella was in her Toyota.

When she faced him again, his eyebrows were cocked, reminding her of butting caterpillars.

"You don't care," he said, "what I think of you, yet you don't want me to get the wrong impression of you. You're spinning your wheels."

It sounded like an epithet. She wanted to throw the sweater over his freckled face to make him disappear, or rewind the tape and start over. She stared at him, torn between running or finding out what he meant by "spinning your wheels."

"You think I'm a bum, don't you?"

"Oh, no!" Her tone invited argument.

"Don't ever confuse a bum with a hobo. A bum is shiftless and shifty. A hobo is a person who travels to observe. My name is Sonny." He was observing her.

Rose tried her words on for fit and style. Glad to meetcha or Welcome to Jacobsville didn't suit.

"I'm Rose," she said. She'd tell him her last name only if he asked. Having delivered her line, she flung the cashmere sweater over her arm and walked stiff-legged, hard-heeled to the dressing room, leaving Sonny with his own thoughts and a waffle iron.

Behind the dressing room curtain, she waited, listening for the sound of the shop door opening and closing when he left. Her fatigued sense of smell no longer detected the shop's odors. She parted the curtains. Didn't see him.

She tried on hats from decades past. Sliding her eyes to the men's shirt bin, she saw he was still here, shimmying into a flannel shirt. He was wearing a black leather hat. He looked at her the way a German shepherd turns its head and holds you in its bottomless eyes.

Cutting her eyes toward the cashier, defying her to differ, she tried again: "I usually donate clothes here. I rarely come in to shop."

"I knew you'd like that sweater. You always go for the old things," the cashier said.

Rose shot her a hard look.

"Spinning your wheels," Sonny said again. Copper stubble glistened on his chin. His hazel eyes lanced Rose.

She jammed on a blue hat. A tatty pheasant feather quivered in the beret, an antenna homing in on a frequency.

"What do you mean?" she asked.

"Your talk is like an eighteen wheeler spinning its wheels on ice. Fuel is consumed, but the rig doesn't get anywhere."

She knew exactly what he meant, to the point of hearing rubber tires whine on slick black macadam. In a stagy aside, she confided, "To tell you the truth, I don't follow your thinking."

OK. This woman was playing a game. She was trying to make him out to be the one who equivocated. He'd come in here to buy a shirt for the coming winter, something heavier than his T-shirts and maybe a book. Nonfiction. Lack of fusion, guys in the factory called it when one of them failed to communicate. Seemed like too many people made a sport of it. White lies. Saving face. Sonny hooked his thumbs in his beltless loops and said, "'To tell you the truth.' Do you also announce nontruth?"

"Jeez, I better watch what I say around you," she said, as if they'd be seeing each other again. Rose ripped the beret off her head, freeing wings of dark hair. Her eyes darted from rows of heel-worn shoes to towers of wicker baskets and back to Sonny.

He was smiling. "Saying 'To tell you the truth' when you're not," he checked himself, "or even when you are is another wheel spinner."

He had her there. Prevaricating, dissembling, speaking with forked tongue and giving the cat her tongue were Rose's modus operandi. She had been getting away with it all her life, had been rewarded for it even.

She's such a good girl. So quiet, her mother had bragged at card parties.

You're not like all those other girls, yakking all the time, her ex-husband Bob had complimented her.

Still waters run deep, her Greek mythology professor had commented.

The reinforcing messages encouraged her reticence. Her still waters grew brackish. But, here was a hobo onto her tricks already, trying to stir those waters up. She wanted him to do it, like a mosquito bite wants scratching.

"Did the sweater fit?" ratcheted the old lady at the cash register. The lady's dress of orange and red daisies on a black background had faded. The dragon's tooth stitching around the buttonholes had unraveled, leaving raw edges unequal to the task of holding plastic buttons in place. Her slip had yellowed.

She should have donated her dress long ago, Smart Ass piped uncharitably. Watching Sonny's back, Rose handed the cashmere sweater and beret to the lady to ring up.

On her way out the door she glanced over her shoulder, hoping to catch Sonny's eye and wave or holler goodbye. She saw him turning to the book shelves, and open a frayed book. He smiled to himself with the weary anticipation of someone on the last leg of a long trip.

She stumbled on curled linoleum and thought she heard the old lady and Sonny sniggering at her. The rain had stopped. A dank gust whipped a lock of hair across her mouth.

Now and then out-of-towners made a go of it in Jacobsville. Emerald Dragon Chinese Food survived almost a year while the health food store folded after two ailing months. Rose didn't give this new, quirky No Fare Restaurant next to the thrift shop much hope. No Fare: stupid name.

She glanced at her reflection in the restaurant's window and tilted her blue beret, hoping the jaunty angle made her look happy. She plucked the ridiculous feather out and let it flutter to the ground. It stuck to the wet pavement.

Her focus shifted to the menagerie of customers inside the restaurant. Students, no-hopers, old men living off Social Security and muni bonds, and housewives resting their swollen feet between errands ate and gossiped. The restaurant's interior decorator was either highly imaginative or colorblind. None of the tables and chairs were from the same set and the walls were papered with swaths of different patterns. Savory aromas of garlic, herbs and something peanutty delighted her nose. Rose was curious what the new restaurant's food tasted like, but not curious enough to venture inside and peruse the menu. She never knew where to look when she dined alone, and felt vaguely sorry for and yet envious of other loners sitting serenely at large tables, glancing about without really looking at anyone or reading paperback novels, probably without remembering what they'd read.

Everyone in the restaurant hailed and nodded to the man entering the front door to Rose's left. It's Sonny. Rose waved to him then scowled, surprised that her willful hand had hailed him before she had time to censor it. Shit! He'll invite me in and I'll have to sit with him and those old geezers.

Sonny raised his hand and casually touched the brim of his black hat. He sat with two old men and began chatting, leaning forward, eyebrows lifting and falling in time with what he was saying.

She waited for him to motion her to join in. He didn't. A blond waitress blocked him from Rose's view. Embarrassed, she dug into her jacket pockets for nothing and slinked back into the thrift shop for the second time that day. She'd forgotten to finger through the dresses.

That woman, Rose, had looked like she'd wanted to say something to him or ask him something when she looked in the restaurant window. Anybody who dressed in a man's jacket and fluorescent safety orange was begging for attention. She had a nice ass. Kinda big, but nice. Nice and soft in the hands. Sonny finished his coffee, left coins on the marble table and stepped outside. He followed her back to the thrift shop. He strode behind her and said softly, "Greetings, Rose."

His voice made her drop a white eyelet lace sundress she was admiring. She stooped to pick it up and glared up at him with flattened eyes.

He hadn't meant to startle her. What was it with some people that they acted as if he were about to jab them with an electric prod or head-butt them? Rose reminded him of a child trying to hide something — a broken vase or cigarettes — from her parents.

"That hat looks good on you without the feather. Bohemian. Artsy," he said. Rose didn't respond so he dipped his hands into the sock bin. "Socks," he began, thinking a story would put her at ease, show her his intent was harmless. "How people manage their socks echoes how they pattern their lives. I knew a sociologist who wore mismatched socks. One yellow and one argyle. He waited in ambush for someone to say, 'You're wearing clashing socks.' Then he would say, 'Is time spent finding matching socks more important than investing time in one's life mission?' or 'What social value is there in matched socks?' He never said he had another pair of socks just like it at home." Sonny's fabricated story was rewarded with a blinkered smile. "The person who meant to make a passing observation found himself engaged in a philosophical discussion."

"That's some yarn," Rose said.

Good sign. She had a sense of humor. Sonny laughed and held up one yellow sock and one argyle sock.

Laughter lit her face for a second and then she raised her guard again.

"Now me," he continued, winging the socks into the bin, "in case you're wondering, I wear plain, old, functional white socks." He wanted to know what made this woman tick, what caused her double doors to slam shut, how her gears meshed, why she spun her wheels when she did try to open up. She was like the first Chevy engine he'd monkeyed with. A mystery. It'd crank along fine, till you hit 48, and then it stalled out. If he found out what made Rose tick, maybe he'd learn something about himself. He had slammed plenty a door shut in his time too.

"Next time," he said, "join me in the restaurant."

Rose winced. "OK," leaked out her red lips. The lady at the cash register, who was unsnarling a mass of plastic bead necklaces, smiled at them.

"What would I learn about you from your socks, Rose?" He watched her eyes roll to the side, picturing her sock collection. Based on the wacky way she was dressed, he figured she had drawerfuls of tangled, wild-colored socks and sexy hose. And a husband's sorted black, navy, and white cotton socks would be contained in a similar drawer.

"No," she replied. "I'm not answering questions about my socks!"

He'd approached her too directly. Just as well. He hadn't taken a vow or anything, but he'd decided to keep his distance from women, for a while anyhow. Complications always followed. The problem with women was they whipped pop quizzes on you. They wanted you to be slightly dangerous and dirty, yet suave and domesticated. They wanted ruff and tender at the same time. And you had to guess exactly in what doses and when they wanted macho or Romeo. When you screwed up, they accused you of being self-centered, unfeeling. Afraid to commit. He'd lost his patience trying to read their minds. Besides, what woman would accept his transient lifestyle? He enjoyed their company for short stints, but over the long haul they were ballast in his backpack.

In the early twentieth century, Jacobsville experienced its first and last boom time. While the South raised, milled, spun and wove cotton and shipped fabric north on tree trunk-sized bolts, Jacobsville's women sewed frocks, bibbed aprons, housedresses and pinafores from material printed with clocks, stars, trains, cars and other icons of the modern age. Depot gangs loaded train cars and railed the cheap apparel to New York City. Some garments labyrinthined back to Jacobsville's five and dime store.

The four-story, block-long limestone building where the seamstresses labored had sat vacant for decades. Some former employees died of white lung, but not before counseling their daughters to get an education. Itchy boys with stones had shattered every blurred pane in the abandoned building. Cats, rats, pigeons, brown bats, a pair of barn owls and teenagers mated in linty corners and foremen's offices. Then Hague's Construction crew ripped out punky wood, auctioned or junked the sewing machines and subdivided the spacious floors into habitable, trendy condos. Unoccupied executive-priced end-units featured nine large transom windows, wood columns with egg-and-dart entablatures and original tongue-in-groove flooring. It exuded history, provenance.

Shortly after moving in, though, Rose had written a note to management asking them to please consider renaming the condominium. The name Sewers Plaza, which people pronounced sue-erz instead of so-erz, testified to the condo owner's wit or ignorance. Ignorance probably: he sucked a slobbered cigar and wore those maroon pants with sewn-in creases.

When she arrived home from the thrift shop, to her one-bedroom economy-priced unit on the second floor, with two mullioned windows providing views over the railroad tracks to the backs of Addison College buildings, she laid the cashmere sweater and beret on the sofa. The living room was over-crowded with antique and reproduction furniture that Bob never did like: a ginger jar lamp with a pre-UL asbestos cord on a doily on top a late 19th century mahogany commode, a wide Empire-style sofa, a Wooten desk with cubby holes and secret compartments, porcelain vases, rubber trees, a rambling night blooming cereus and solid oak book shelves laden with her books and American crafts. Bob was a chrome and glass man, which was why Rose didn't have a dining room table. He'd kept the smoked-glass banquet table braced with the pewter legs like orthodontia. He'd held out for the Berlouch prayer rug until Rose threatened to take his five-foot high chrome wine rack. He fancied himself an oenophilist. She tucked his settlement check in a pigeon hole in the Wooten. Not enough money to coast on. She'll reassess her financial position later.

She pried off her high heels and walked across the muted rug to the kitchen. All the appliances were white, a novelty these days. In the corner the counter had been cut to accommodate one of the building's original wooden columns. It grew like a tree through her kitchen, its trunk intersecting the next two stories. The digital stove clock showed 12:32:11. Late enough in the day for a beer. She grabbed a Coors from the fridge and went down the short hallway to the bathroom.

Here, the white theme continued. Sitting on the ring, she popped the Coors and peed. The mirror, covering the whole west wall of the bathroom, afforded her a view of her seated self from the bustline up. When she showered, she could ogle herself from the bellybutton up, until the glass fogged. She'd have to buy a shower curtain.

The bedroom, across the hall, was as large as the kitchen and bath together. The neighbors on the other side of her bedroom wall worked second shift and caught up on their arguments after midnight. She'd lain awake the first few nights, picking up random phrases, "Everything's limited, limited, limited . . . Why don't you clean it? . . . I am calm," and wove them together with train whistles into patchy dreams. The tongue-and-groove bedroom floor was uncarpeted, except for a pale blue and black oval sculpted Oriental rug between the bed and her closet. Under the bright window sat her Pfaff sewing machine on its custom-made table. Three lengths of batik fabric her Aunt Jo had bought her while touring Bali lay on the sewing table. Rose unfolded the turquoise one with black leaves and dark blue fish dotted with white and outlined in gold. Standing on the sewing chair, she swagged the fabric over the bare curtain rod.

Rose lay in her Ethan Allen repro-Elizabethan king size bed, arms and legs sprawling across the mattress troughed with Bob's phantom shadow, and finished her beer. ("My first and last husband," she'd called him on their wedding day. After Rose left, Bob bought a waterbed, the likes of which were filed in her mind with the blow-dried Bee Gees, mood rings and wife swapping.) With her finger she stirred a crystal box of buttons on the bedside table. They looked edible. One was pink with gold studs like pinheads in it, another, a tin one, was stamped with St. Peter's Cathedral, another was stamped with a griffin. A set of six bone buttons were stitched to their original card. A sphinx head was pressed into the horn button.

Clothes, as if captured while dancing around her apartment's bedroom walls, hung in suspended animation. A robin egg blue cheong sam floated next to a tomato red 1960s cocktail dress with a double-funneled bodice. An ankle-length black velvet opera cape escorted a sequined écru organza gown. Black and white elbow-length gloves, expandable gold and silver metal belts, milky orange Bakelite jewelry, hand-tatted lace, veiled hats and peach silk chemisettes waltzed in three-quarter time. Three fox stoles were draped over the large mirror. Long ago glass fox eyes had winked at her from the shoulder of blue hairs when Rose sang, as inaudibly as nocturnal snowfall, in the St. Marks cherub choir.

The buttons and vintage clothes comforted her. All of them: stockpiled remnants of Rose's dream deferred.

Rose heckled the stoic, stuffed bird perched on a gold lamé turban on her Chippendale bureau. "Dead bird, bird head, dead head, dead bird. Wheel spinner. What's with that Sonny guy? Why did he follow me into the thrift shop?" She pulled the quilt up to her chin, half hoping she'd see him again, half dreading their next encounter. If she did see him, she'd tell him a story better than his stupid sock yarn. Throwing the quilt off, she stomped to her bureau.

She yanked the Chippendale drawer open. Socks and stockings, arranged by color and style, filled her lavender-scented drawer. Cotton crew socks —pastels for spring and summer, darkies for fall and winter. Wool knee highs. Footies with yellow pom-poms at the heels. Green leotards. Black fishnets. A red lace cat suit still in its plastic mail-order wrapper. Three shades of L'eggs. Clocked stockings. Knee high nylons. The toes of every pair were tucked fastidiously into their cuffs. Socks who had lost their mates waited in a special corner. Seamed silk stockings, the kind held up with a girdle or garter belt, curled in another corner with the white gloves she wore to prevent snags when she rolled them on. If Sonny saw this orderliness, she told herself, he'd think I'm anal retentive. She dumped all her hosiery on the Oriental rug and carefully laid the seamed stockings over the bed rail. She wiped a spider web out of a dovetailed joint in the drawer and threw the rest of her socks and stockings willy nilly back into the drawer.

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