Chapter Forty #2
I am discovering that if I want your drawings to become real wedding gowns, I will need a treasure chest full of money to fund the project myself and then peddle them to bridal shops door-to-door.
I don’t have a treasure chest full of money.
Gramps isn’t a rich man, but he’s done well. I can only hope I can convince him to help me do with your sketches what you would have done with them.
But first I will have to tell my grandparents about the brides box.
And what I did.
Julia
November 9, 1958
Dear Emmy,
Gramps said no.
Simon and I took the train to Woodstock and had tea at Granny and Gramps’ house this afternoon. Gramps said he was sorry but neither he nor I know anything about the bridal gown business. We don’t have the know-how, the instincts, the connections.
He said it would cost thousands of pounds to have your drawings made into dresses, provided I could find a suitable seamstress able to read the faded sketches, and then I would have to traipse around London on foot, carrying them from store to store, hoping some shop owner would want to buy a gown that was in style twenty years ago, designed by an unknown who has disappeared off the face of the earth.
Gramps can’t see the value of plodding across London with an armload of wedding dresses no one to date has expressed any interest in.
He also commented that the designs aren’t truly mine to do this with. They belong to you. I don’t have your permission and I’m likely not going to get it.
Gramps and Granny were both appreciative of my desire to make things right between you and me, but they don’t think I’ve anything to regret.
You and I both made mistakes that day. Mine were less egregious, perhaps, but that’s not the point, Gramps said.
The point is, London was bombed a few hours after you and I arrived.
The war is the true destroyer of your dreams, not I.
So it’s not up to me to restore what the war shattered.
Simon was sitting next to me the whole time, stroking my hand under the table and saying nothing.
I wanted him to say, But Emmy’s designs are really good.
Or I’ll drive Julia around London so she won’t have to tramp across the West End on foot with an armload of dresses.
Or even just, Don’t we owe it to Julia’s sister to at least give her dresses a chance?
He didn’t. We left soon after that.
What was the good in finding Emmy’s sketches if not to do something with them? I asked Simon on the way home.
He said maybe the finding was just for me. Maybe I was meant to find the brides box now because I happen to be in need of a wedding dress.
Pick the one you want for you, Simon said. Wear one of your sister’s designs to your own wedding. Wouldn’t that be the good in finding them?
I suppose he’s right.
I laid out all the sketches on my kitchen table tonight after Simon dropped me off. The most faded ones I put back. A couple others just weren’t right for my body shape.
Of the seven that were left, I picked the one I used to call the button dress.
Remember it, Emmy? You had tiny pearl buttons going down the front, all the way to the floor.
And a high, fitted waist. Lacy sleeves you can see through, a heart-shaped neckline, and a swishy skirt with a lace petticoat underneath.
I wonder if you ever imagined that someday your little sister would wear one of your dresses.
Perhaps Simon is right. Perhaps finding the brides box so I can wear one of your designs is what you would have wanted.
I am eager to take it to the seamstress who said she will make one of the dresses for me. I know what Gramps will say when I tell him my dress is to be custom made and might cost a little more than he thought he wanted to spend. He will say he doesn’t care. The dress is for me, for my wedding.
It’s for my happy ending.
One of us should have one.
I guess it will be me.
At least, as happy as I can make it.
Julia
November 19, 1958
Dear Emmy,
The seamstress who agreed to make the button dress for me told me she’d like to change the skirt to a tea length and drop the tops of the sleeves to off the shoulder. She said the style of the button dress is terribly outdated.
I wanted to throttle her.
Instead I told her I liked the original design just the way it was.
She said, You do know no one is wearing this style of wedding dress anymore?
And I said that wasn’t true because I was wearing it.
But I know now why I can’t seem to generate interest in your sketches, Emmy.
I’m too late.
I waited too long to look for the box.
Julia
December 2, 1958
Dear Emmy,
I had my first fitting today. I nearly cried when I tried the dress on, even though it’s only partially sewn.
It’s so beautiful, Emmy. So incredibly beautiful. April seems like such a long way off.
Granny came with me to the fitting and she started to cry.
See how talented my sister was, I said to her as she blotted her tears away.
It’s a wonderful dress, Granny said.
The seamstress just clucked something like Every bride looks like a princess in a wedding gown that she loves.
When I came home, I could feel the dress still on my skin. Your dress, Emmy. I still feel it on me, caressing me. Holding me.
I think I can be happy marrying Simon in the dress that came from the very heart of you. I think you would want me to be happy marrying him.
Snow is falling outside my window now, diamond white in the spreading dusk.
I feel you here with me, Emmy. It’s as if you are looking down on me from heaven, for surely that is where you are, and the snow is a gift you’ve been allowed to give me so that I can mark this day.
The brides box is sitting on the table here next to me and it occurs to me that I shall marry only once.
I have no need of the other sketches in the box.
I have your forgiveness. I see it in the snow outside my window and I felt it earlier when your folds of white caressed my trembling body.
Across from me, my little coal fire is whispering condolences.
And something else.
I see it now, how I can hold you forever and also let you go.
The happy fire is sighing in agreement, the little beggar. It is eager to play its part for me.
The journal I will keep to remind me, should I ever need to be reminded, that you and I did indeed find each other again, within the seams of my wedding dress.
Good-bye, dear sister.
I will love you always.
Julia