The Dress Shop of Dreams Read online

  Cora knocks tentatively on Dr. Baxter’s door, half-hoping he won’t hear her, so she can pretend that everything is okay, that nothing has changed. But in addition to his excessive handsomeness and chronic messiness, Dr. Baxter also has hearing like a bat.

  “Come in,” he calls.

  Cora pushes open the door and glances around her supervisor’s office. If she thought Etta’s sewing room was untidy, her grandmother is a neat freak compared to Dr. Baxter. Stacks of papers, toppling towers of books, science journals and assorted newspapers cover every surface from floor to ceiling. Cora stands in the doorway, unable to step inside without treading on anything. “So,” she says, “I’m here.”

  Dr. Baxter nods. He doesn’t say anything but reaches into the sea of papers on his desk and pulls out a letter. He holds it out toward Cora, who now has no choice but to walk across fields of scientific research to get it. When she takes the letter gingerly between her fingers, Cora summons a wish, a pleading prayer, from the depths of her thawing heart. Then she opens her eyes again to read it.

  The letter is a single page. Cora scans it in a few seconds (only 143 words, 607 letters) and feels that pesky heart plummet as if she’d just stepped into a lift. She swallows several times and takes deep breaths. But it does nothing to calm her. It’s no good. It’s all over. Their funding has been pulled. She’s lost her job. And the chances of finding another one, of winning another grant to fund their research, are about 278,976: 1.

  “What are we going to do?” Cora asks at last.

  Dr. Baxter shakes his handsome head. “I don’t know. I really don’t know.” He sighs. “I was hoping we’d be safe, given the importance of what we’ve been working on and the progress we’ve been making. But you know what it’s like out there, how hard it is to get grants for independent research, how easy it is to lose them.”

  Cora sighs. “I take it you’ve already investigated all the alternatives?”

  Dr. Baxter nods. “Yes, of course. I’m afraid we’ve reached the end of the road on this one. It’s a dire shame, this financial stranglehold on scientific research nowadays. Finding funding in this economy is a nightmare. It’s a war against … Anyway, we’ve got other options. I happen to know that Dr. Eric Marsden is expanding his project in Angola. I’m sure he’d—”

  “Angola?”

  “He’s looking for a new field assistant. I’ve put in a good word. The job is yours if you want it.”

  “And what about you?”

  Dr. Baxter smiles. “Don’t worry about me, I’ll find something. I won’t give up fighting the good fight.”

  Cora nods, not yet comprehending that this means they won’t be working together anymore. The thought makes her sadder than she might have expected.

  “Eric’s running a two-year project researching nutritional alternatives for infants with mothers too malnourished to feed them. It’s not such a significant detour from what we’ve been working on. You’d have a great deal to offer.”

  “But I’d be working in Angola for two years?”

  “Yes. And working with Eric—you couldn’t hope for a better step up in your career.”

  She should take it. She should go to Angola. She’d be absolutely mad not to. A month ago she wouldn’t have thought twice. She’d have gone around the world, across the Sahara or to the North Pole for science, for the chance to do something of significance. Of course she’d have missed Etta, but that wouldn’t have stopped her. But now it’s not only her grandmother Cora would miss. No longer listening to Walt every night on the radio, she couldn’t bear to lose that. Though that’s silly, she realizes, since they surely have digital radios in Angola she could tune in whenever she wanted. So perhaps that’s not quite the point …

  “So,” Dr. Baxter gently interrupts Cora’s thoughts, “shall I call Eric?”

  “I’m not sure,” Cora says. “Can I think about it?”

  Francesca fingers the rim of her coffee cup, studying the delicate china as she speaks. “I’d like to take Mattie to Italy.”

  “Okay,” Henry says, wondering why she’d bake his favorite biscuits to tell him this. Mateo goes to Tuscany twice a year, in August and December, to visit Francesca’s family for a few weeks. Of course Henry misses him, but he knows it’s important for his son to know his family, culture and history. And then Henry makes the connection. It’s April 15. “Why now?”

  “I don’t think you understand,” Francesca says softly. “It’s not just for a holiday. I want to take him there to live.”

  It’s perhaps a full minute, though it feels like fifty, before Henry can say anything. He just stares at the woman he loves, and now suddenly hates in equal measure, terrified.

  “What?” His voice is soft, barely audible. “Why? I don’t, you can’t …”

  “I’ve been thinking about it for a long time,” Francesca says. “Not forever, just for a year. I’ve been given a sabbatical by the college. It’s not such a huge thing. I know it’ll be hard at first, for you both, but flights are so cheap and quick, and you can visit whenever you—”

  “Hard?” Henry shouts. “Hard?” He wants to pick up his coffee cup and hurl it against the wall. He wants to smack his hand against the table so it shakes. So strong are his feelings, in fact, that they scare him. “I see Mattie all the time. I’m a good father. He loves me. He’d be devastated. Don’t you care? Don’t you care about that at all?”

  Francesca is nodding, tears running down her cheeks. “Of course I do, of course, more than anything in the world. Please don’t—”

  “You’re a liar,” Henry says, his voice sharp and sour as vinegar. “You wouldn’t even think of doing this if you did. Mateo needs me. He needs to grow up with his father.”

  “Don’t be so dramatic, Hen,” Francesca says, though she can’t look him in the eye as she does. “It’s only a year. You can visit as much as you like.”

  “I can’t fly to Tuscany every other day,” Henry snaps. “I could probably make it over once a month, if that.”

  “That’s not too bad then, is it?”

  “Not too bad?” Henry is incredulous. “Have you talked to Mattie about this? Have you told him what you want to do?”

  Francesca stares down into her coffee cup and nods. “He’s … happy, he’s excited to see his nonna every day.”

  “Bullshit. He doesn’t understand what it means. He doesn’t know.”

  “He does. I’ve explained everything to him.”

  “You shouldn’t have spoken to him first,” Henry says, his voice and hands still shaking with rage. “How long has he known? He hasn’t said anything to me.”

  “He was probably protecting you,” Francesca suggested softly. “He didn’t want to upset you.”

  “Bullshit,” Henry says again, though his voice wavers this time.

  It sounds just like his son. When he and Francesca had separated, when Henry had finally moved out, Mateo had seemed to know that his father’s heart was breaking and did everything he could to soften Henry’s sadness. He stroked Henry’s hair, patted his cheek and spoke in whispers. He put himself to bed at night and curled up waiting for sleep. He offered to keep his daddy company “if he was lonely without mummy” in the early morning hours. One day Mateo had heard Henry crying behind the locked bathroom door and had given Henry his favorite bear, Piglet, to cuddle because “every time he makes me feel better” and Henry’s heart had sighed with love for his son. So he knows now that what Francesca is saying is probably true, and he hates her for it. He glares at his ex-wife, at her olive skin and long dark hair. All of a sudden a memory of the last time they made love rises up and flips his hatred over on its head, exposing the soft belly of love underneath it. And so, because he wants to get down on his knees and cry into his ex-wife’s lap, he curses her instead.

  “You’re a selfish bitch,” Henry snaps. “If you do this you’ll damage him, you’ll ruin his life.” And mine, he wants to say, but doesn’t bother since he knows she clearly doesn’t care
either way about that.

  “No,” Francesca says, “you’re wrong. We need to do this. And Mattie’s going to be fine, he’s going to be wonderful. I’d die before I let him suffer.”

  Henry pushes his chair away from the table and stands.

  “And I will die before I let you take my son away. I know some nasty people, lawyers that’d rip your life to shreds if I paid them, and I will. I am going to—”

  “Please.”

  Her voice is so soft that Henry barely hears it. He stops to look at her, the swell of his anger subsiding, and waits.

  “Please,” Francesca says again. She reaches out across the table toward him, her long fingers trembling. “I have to do this. I need to.”

  “Why?”

  Francesca shakes her head, the black curls falling over her face. “I can’t—”

  “You have to, Fran, I’m not even going to think about it, not without an explanation.”

  “I will,” she says, “I will one day, I promise.”

  “No, that’s not good enough, Fran, it’ll have to be now.”

  Francesca fixes her eyes on Henry and holds his gaze. As he looks at her he sees, for the first time, how haggard she seems: her skin pale, sallow and blotched, her hair dank and unwashed, her eyes red and swollen.

  “I’m doing this for Mattie, too, I swear it is the best thing for us both, for us all, I promise you.”

  Francesca speaks slowly, clearly choosing each word carefully. She doesn’t glance away and Henry, before she’s even finished, understands absolutely that she’s telling the truth. This isn’t a decision she’s made on a whim without a thought for their little boy. This is something she’s doing for him as much as for herself. Henry only knows that she’s telling the truth. He has no idea why she wants to go, only that it will be best for Mateo, and that is really all he needs to know.

  “Okay.” Henry nods, though he can’t believe he is, even as he’s saying it. “If you need to do this then I won’t stop you. But it had better be only for a year. And I’m allowed to visit as often as I can. And I want to hear him on the phone at least three times a week, and see him over the internet. I don’t want you changing the rules on me once you’re out there.”

  Francesca gives him a weak smile and the gratitude and relief on her face are so overwhelming that Henry instantly knows he’s done the right thing. He hates doing it and hates not knowing why he must. But sometimes acts of faith are called for in life, especially in love, and Henry understands that this is one such time.

  “When will you go?” he asks.

  “At the end of next month,” Francesca says. “If that is okay.”

  No! Henry wants to scream. It’s dreadful. It’s terrible. It’s awful. It’s heartbreaking. But he doesn’t. Instead he nods and turns and walks slowly out of the kitchen and out of the house. It’s not until he’s reached his own home and closed the front door behind him that Henry slides to the floor and allows himself to cry.

  Dylan sits on the sofa in his office, composing another letter to Milly. The words flow out of his pen so fast he can hardly keep up. He usually has to think and carefully choose which thoughts to commit to paper. But his letters to Milly are entirely effortless and easy. It’s as if he’s talking to her, as if she’s sitting at his feet and listening, smiling and hanging on to his every word, just as he hangs on to hers. They’ve exchanged half a dozen letters in the last two weeks and every day he asks the receptionist, Helen, for Walt’s post before she’s even sat down at her desk. She’s started giving him suspicious looks lately so Dylan knows he’ll have to start playing it cool, lest she bump into Walt and let something slip.

  Dylan tries not to think of Walt while he writes to Milly, which wasn’t easy at first but once he gets caught up with the words he can’t think of anything else except her. If a herd of elephants crashed through the room while he was in the middle of a letter he’d be hard-pressed to pay attention. Sometimes he can’t quite believe that they’ve actually never met. She’s so honest in her letters, so open with her feelings, so willing to expose her heart and soul that he needs to remind himself they haven’t known each other all their lives. He feels as if he knows Milly better than he knows anyone else.

  Dylan finds it hard to look Walt in the eye nowadays and he’s relieved that his employee had never responded to any of Dylan’s previous overtures of friendship. He already feels guilty enough at the betrayal and if Walt was less standoffish then Dylan’s conscience might have won the battle with his desire and held him back. If Walt had been a friend, then Dylan would have given him Milly’s letter after it arrived, or he would have torn it up and pretended it never had. At least, that’s what Dylan tells himself. But once Milly’s words had seeped into his head and wrapped themselves tightly around his heart, he was already unable to think straight, unable to remember right from wrong, unable to act in a rational, decent, moral manner. If Walt had been his own brother he probably would have gone straight ahead and replied to her letter, betraying his own flesh and bone in good conscience and cold blood.

  Now Dylan writes:

  I believe that soul mates will always find each other, that true love will weather all storms, that people who want to be together will always find a way, that once our hearts find a home in another then they will stay, that false love will fade away and be forgotten in time, that a free heart is happier than an unloved one.

  Dylan isn’t simply being self-serving, he believes all that and more. He believes that if Walt and Milly are meant to be together then a few letters from him won’t stand in their way. And that if they’re not (as he hopes), Walt will find someone else to love. But he tries not to think too much about what the fallout could be and how he’s going to explain himself once his epistolary identity fraud comes to light. Because it will, that much is clear.

  One day Milly is going to say something to Walt about all these letters he’s supposedly sending her and then all hell will break loose. Although Dylan entertains fantasies of a fifty-year romance of letters, conducted while Milly and Walt get married and raise children, continuing until she dies, he knows that such things are not possible. Husbands and wives tend to talk about the intimate details of their lives, including the love letters they’re secretly sending each other. And of course there is the small matter of the fact that, once they’re sharing the same address, postal privacy would be rather harder to maintain. So Dylan knows that, sooner or later, the end must come. Until then, however, he will keep writing …

  How many times have you read Sense & Sensibility? It sounds as if you know it by heart. I must confess I’ve only read it once but I loved it, deeply. The moment when Elinor realizes Edward isn’t married after all, and sobs, it brought tears to my eyes. I’m not saying that any of those tears actually fell down my cheeks (that would be too much for me to confess, I think) but I was significantly moved. I watched the film a few days ago, the one Emma Thompson won an Oscar for, well-deserved I think. She did that sobbing scene justice. Hats off to her. I don’t know how these actors do it, really. Are they really just pretending, or are they really feeling what they seem to be feeling, just in that moment? It seems so real to me. If someone acted like that with me, I’d believe them. If Emma Thompson sobbed for me the way she sobbed for Hugh Grant, then I’d think she loved me too. Is Sense & Sensibility your favorite book of all? If not, what is? And why? And your film, what film do you love more than any other? And, if you can’t pick one (I can’t) then pick many and tell me what and why for each of them. Tell me that, tell me everything …

  Milly sits next to Walt in the darkened cinema. Robert Redford and Mia Farrow declare their love for each other onscreen and Milly blinks, trying to concentrate. The Great Gatsby is one of her favorite books and she loves the film, but she’s finding it hard to focus. All she can think about is Walt’s latest letter. She knows they agreed not to talk about the letters, to keep that part of their relationship separate, secret, private, so she won’t mention them aloud bu
t that promise can’t stop her thoughts.

  It’s a strange thing, Milly realizes, that she feels closer to him while she reads what he writes than when she listens while he speaks. She feels closer to Walt thinking of his letters than she does sitting next to him right now. In his letter he admits to things he denies face-to-face—like his love of Austen—and she wonders why he holds back in person. It’s even true of when they kiss. As their lips touch, she lets his sentences collect and curl in the air between them. She seeks comfort in his written words when she feels alone, when they’ve run out of things to say to each other, which happens more often than Milly would care to admit. Which is why, slightly silly secret though it is, she will keep writing to Walt at the station and never mention aloud what they’re doing.

  Walt leans across the seat and presses his mouth close to her ear. “Shall we go for a drink in the café afterward?”

  Milly nods, not taking her eyes off the screen. He’s as distracted as she is and he hasn’t even seen the film a dozen times; he clearly isn’t enjoying it.

  “I need caffeine,” he whispers. “I’m falling asleep.”

  “You’re bored.”

  “No, no.” Walt shakes his head. “I’ve just been having trouble sleeping lately, that’s all.”

  “Oh?”

  “It’s nothing,” Walt says. “It’s not—”

  “Shush!” A voice from the row behind admonishes them. Walt and Milly exchange a silent smile, drawn together by a common enemy. He reaches for her hand and squeezes it. She snuggles down in her seat and nestles into his shoulder. While Mia Farrow cries onscreen, Milly closes her eyes, remembering Walt’s last letter:

  Thursday, 30th April

  I don’t need to address you anymore. I know who you are, you know who I am. I don’t write to anyone else. I don’t think of anyone else. It is you for breakfast, lunch and dinner. And I often snack on you in between. I never knew that love is so substantial, so nourishing, so all-encompassing. I must admit I always thought all those poets and writers were exaggerating, dipping into hyperbole for dramatic effect. Either that or they just felt things differently to the common man. But I was wrong.