Part 21 (1/2)

”The Presentation Ball is in five nights,” Laura Hame added, as though to explain something vital.

”Laura wants to stay till the very end of the ball,” the young man said. He blushed and looked around nervously, as though he had no right to speak. Then he squared his shoulders. ”But I will sign up to play the night of the ball, and for however long the dream lasts after that.”

”I can come back too, and sleep with Sandy-only not on the night of the ball,” Laura said. Her chafed cheeks dimpled.

Alexander Mason looked stony.

Grace Tiebold turned around in her chair to look at the young dreamhunters. She froze, staring, then said, ”You should shave, Alexander.” She sounded wrathful. The director couldn't imagine what the boy had done to offend her, or what his position was among this talented and high-handed family.

Grace turned back to the director. ”These young people should wait outside while Tziga and I settle details.”

”It's been a pleasure to meet you, Miss Hame, Miss Tiebold, Mr. Mason,” the director said.

The young people left, the girls whispering fiercely. The director busied himself with the paperwork.

Rose said to her cousin, ”I hope you can get rid of that rash by Sat.u.r.day night.”

”What rash?”

”On your chin.”

Laura touched her chin. She gave a secretive smile, then she looked at Sandy. ”Aunt Grace is right, you should shave,” she said.

”Oh-it's a kissing rash,” Rose said. ”I've heard about those.”

8.

OSE STOOD IN THE LOWER HALLWAY OF THE FOUNDERSTON HOUSE, READY MINUTES BEFORE EVERYONE ELSE, THOUGH hers had been by far the most involved preparations. Her hair had been washed and loosely curled in the morning, then pinned into seemingly artless whorls and tendrils shortly after lunch. After dinner it was decorated with real pearls, both fixed pins and drops that s.h.i.+mmered and s.h.i.+mmied every time she moved her head. Rose had been sponged down, powdered, and perfumed by eight o'clock and had gotten into her stockings and slip, then finally her dress. She'd had a maid to help her, hired especially for the occasion, since the household ordinarily had no need of ladies' maids. The maid had worn cotton gloves to protect the l.u.s.trous silk of Rose's ball gown from her hands. Rose was gloved now too, in one of the five pairs she had gotten for the season. She had covered herself with her white velvet cape. She was ready-ready to be presented to society, and to make a spectacle of herself. It was nine p.m. The ball was to begin at nine-thirty.

Where was everyone?

Rose tapped her foot. She didn't touch anything. She began to imagine that dust and cobwebs would jump off the walls, that fingerprints would float off the banisters beside her and drop greasily onto her clothes like soot from a s.h.i.+p's funnel.

Rose heard a door latch. It was the back door. Laura pushed through from the kitchen, walking backward, her brilliant skirt bunched in one hand. In the other she had a large canister of film. She had her gloves on, but her hands were poking out from the unb.u.t.toned openings at her wrists. There was a small spray of dark mud on the back of her skirt.

”This is it!” Laura said, panting. She opened the door under the stairs and went into Chorley's darkroom. Rose followed her, stopping in the doorway when she caught a whiff of all the chemicals.

Laura put the film canister on the table and opened the drawer where Chorley kept his pasteboard labels. She uncapped a bottle of ink, dipped her pen.

”Be careful,” Rose said.

Laura stopped, pen poised. ”You're right. What should I put? I can hardly write 'd.a.m.ning Evidence,' can I?”

”I meant don't get ink on your gloves.”

Laura laughed, overexcited. She'd been like this all week. At times she was deliriously happy, at other times she seemed paralyzed by gloom. The dream alone couldn't explain it. Rose supposed that it was whatever Laura and Sandy were up to-more than kissing maybe. She felt left out, and left behind. It wasn't that she saw herself as less grownup than Laura, because Laura wasn't acting particularly grownup-she wasn't acting like anything, except perhaps a string of firecrackers lit at both ends and dropped in the street. It was just that Rose found she couldn't imagine what it took to generate this crazy pitch of feeling.

”I've come home every day just to watch for his sign,” Laura said.

She meant her monster's sign, his five stones in a line. Rose said, ”There I was thinking you'd come home to bathe in b.u.t.termilk, like me.”

Laura hadn't spent the last days was.h.i.+ng her hair in chamomile (or rosemary in her case) to brighten it, or having manicures and pedicures. Instead, she would come back from Fallow Hill midmorning, with Sandy Mason in tow, and they'd sit in the library or parlor alone together. Chorley had pointedly opened the door the one time they'd closed it.

”I came downstairs about fifteen minutes ago and heard a knock on the door, then someone tormenting the pump in the yard. He'd come in the back and left the film on the steps. With a note.” Laura pulled a paper out of the top of one glove and pa.s.sed it to Rose.

The handwriting was in smudgy charcoal, the letters evenly sized and backward sloping. The note read: ”I am under Market Bridge.” Rose turned the paper over and saw that it was a paste-scabbed strip from some bill advertising a dream.

”I have a bone to pick with him,” Laura said. ”It's almost as if he knows and is avoiding me.” Then, ”d.a.m.n ball.”

”d.a.m.n inconvenient Presentation Ball,” Rose said. ”d.a.m.n untimely debut.” Then, waspishly, ”Our big milestones are very different these days, aren't they?”

”Yes.” Laura was blunt. ”But you want this film to see the light of day just as much as I do.”

”True,” said Rose. She came all the way into the darkroom, forgetting her fear of the contaminating chemicals. She took the canister from her cousin and stowed it in a drawer. ”We'll hand it over to Da tomorrow. He can deliver it to the Grand Patriarch. Or straight to the Commission of Inquiry. His decision.”

From the hallway Grace called, ”Rose! Laura! Where are you?”

Rose swept out of the darkroom, clutching her cape around her. Laura followed, struggling to stuff her hands back into her tight kid gloves. Grace started fussing. ”Where's your wrap, Laura?”

Laura dashed into the kitchen to retrieve it. When she returned to the hall, her father had appeared. He kissed her on the forehead and said, ”Have fun.” He kissed Rose too and wished her the very best of luck. ”I wanted to go, but I don't think I can manage the excitement.”

Grace was fl.u.s.tered. ”Rose-are you all together under that cape? I didn't get to inspect you.”

”Ma, I'm a work of art,” Rose said.

Grace hustled her family down the front steps.

Rose was muttering mutinously that it was silly to take the car when the People's Palace was only five minutes' walk away.

”You must be delivered to your debut, Rose. You can't walk there,” her mother said.

”Here, let me help you with that,” Chorley said to Laura. He'd been watching her attempts to fasten the b.u.t.tons on her right wrist with her left hand. He helped her into the car, sat beside her, and bent over her hand. She felt his fingertips on the inside of her wrist and said, dreamily, ”Sandy will be there.”

Everyone laughed. ”Yes, we know Sandy will be there,” chorused Rose and Grace.

At the People's Palace there was a separate entrance for the debutantes and their mothers. This took Grace and Rose straight up the building's secondary staircase to the debutantes' dressing room. It was, in fact, a series of rooms, one where they left their coats, then a large, mirror-lined room with love seats and ottomans, then an innermost room, with attendants in black-and-white uniforms, and lavender-sprinkled towels, big bottles of cologne, and a seamstress-should one be required. Rose looked at all these elaborate comforts and mused on the value Founderston put on the female offspring of its first families. It all made her feel rather like a prize racehorse being transported to an important fair.

The rooms were crowded with slender girls in white and their generally more substantial mothers, in every conceivable color. Grace, accustomed to dream palace finery, had welcomed the chance to get into something plain. When Grace removed her daughter's white velvet cape, she felt that she was indeed unveiling a work of art. She stood beside Rose and basked in her daughter's glow. Rose shone, she scintillated, and she towered over most of her peers, even in her flat-heeled dancing slippers. Grace saw various mothers bridle at the sight-the shock-of Rose's beauty. Rose's friends' reaction was quite different. As soon as they caught sight of her through the crowd, they squealed and rushed over to Rose, who collapsed into their cl.u.s.ter, hugging and bouncing around, a giggly girl again. Grace blinked away tears. She was glad Rose couldn't hold her composure-it was just too much, too soon, and could serve only to isolate her, to set her apart, among older male admirers. Grace could imagine it already, the sterile triumph that was waiting for her daughter, who, she judged, was too young to escape the traps of flattery.

Mamie's mother was determined to make the best of the ball, to put on a brave face, and to show her daughter how to do it. As she said to Mamie when she was making her final, short-tempered motherly adjustments to her hair and wrap, ”There are some things that are simply expected of ladies, and that is that.” Mrs. Doran wasn't blessed with docile children, but Mamie could usually be relied on to be calm, if only as a result of being chronically unimpressed. However, for the past week, Mamie had been stuffing herself shamefully, and for the last twenty-four hours, on and off, she'd been vomiting. Mrs. Doran was determined that her daughter wasn't actually ill but was only giving way to nerves.

Everything necessary had been done for the girl's debut. She had a double strand of pearls-a gift from her father. She'd had five hair appointments till they found a style that suited her. And she had gotten her way about her deviant black-and-white gown. She had her black gloves, her crown of flowers. Mamie's interests had been served with the best possible care, attention, and expense. And now, her mother thought, it was time for Mamie to show that she could make the best of her lot.

What Mamie's mother couldn't see was that, while the ball had been still far off, Mamie had been happily scornful about it and anyone who hoped to enjoy it. She'd gone along with plans, scoffing at all the fuss. Then, one night, a week before the event, she woke up with a heart full of dread. This was it, the first occasion in her life on which it would matter that no one much liked her. She wouldn't fit in, wouldn't be just one more goose in the gaggle of girls. She was too serious, too ponderous. She wouldn't be sought out. Her dance card had a number of names on it-friends of Ru, who understood what was expected of them-but no one would actually want to dance with her, or sit with her.

Mamie knew Rose had done her best for her. She also knew Rose understood that Mamie was unattractive-and it seemed to matter to Rose, though perhaps only as a problem with possible, partial solutions. Rose had served her friend;Mamie knew that. But now Mamie was on her own, with her transformed cla.s.smates, and all the people who knew how to behave, how to enjoy themselves, how to rise to occasions.