“You know what I mean,” she’d said. “Successful.”
Yeah, I knew what she meant. Success to my mother meant academic achievements, professional accomplishments, and important titles. A type-A overachiever, Mom went from high school valedictorian to summa cum laude MBA graduate at Northwestern to vice president at a publicly traded investment firm at a time whenfemale executives were unheard of. She’d wanted her only daughter—the daughter she’d had at the age of forty-two—to follow in her footsteps and benefit from all the inroads she and her fellow female type As had made in the seventies and eighties.
The problem was, my idea of success didn’t jive with hers. I didn’t want to become an attorney or doctor or high-powered executive. I didn’t want to wear designer clothes or go to power lunches or board meetings. I just wanted to paint—to lose myself in a flow of creativity, to produce art that captured my thoughts and feelings.
Mother never said I was a disappointment, and I know she didn’t want to make me feel like one, because her father had done that to her. But deep inside, I’m pretty sure I disappointed her all the same.
Pushing aside my thoughts, I opened the front windows to let in a breeze—it was a cool day in late March, not warm enough to warrant air-conditioning—then went upstairs to my mother’s old bedroom, the room where I always stayed. I dropped my bag on the floor, peeled off my clothes, and took a long shower in the vintage black-and-white-tiled bathroom. When I came out, I rummaged in my bag and threw on a pair of sweatpants and an old T-shirt. I thought about taking a nap, but it was getting late and I felt kind of wired. I decided to look around the house and see just what I was getting myself into. I wandered downstairs into Gran’s bedroom.
It looked the same as it always had. Gran’s big oak bed with a curved footboard sat against the wall opposite the door, the large, elaborately framed print ofStarry Nighthanging over the high oak headboard, my smaller painting, in a simpler frame, hanging above it.
I smiled and focused my gaze on the Van Gogh print. I still love it, but now I appreciate it for different reasons. Now I love the way Van Gogh lets you see his brushstrokes, how he didn’t try to hide the effort, how he lets you see where he dabbed and dawdled and meticulously layered color on color, where he reworked the parts that weren’t right until they matched the picture in his head.
Even in a print, you can tell that his paintings are uneven andtextured and layered with paint, and you just know that there are probably different colors under the colors you see, and maybe even a whole other picture under the picture you’re looking at. The underneath picture is probably just as beautiful as this one, but he needed it as a base to build this one on, so it’s okay that you don’t get to see it. It’s enough to know it’s there.
I’m sure God can see it. I wonder if people in heaven can see it, and if maybe one day I’ll get to see it, too. I wonder if cats can see it. They look at things with those funny slanted eyes, and I’ve always thought they must see things we don’t.
But there I go, off on a mental tangent. My mother used to scold me for getting distracted, saying I needed to stay on task.
When I’d told Gran one summer that I sometimes got in trouble at home and school for daydreaming, she’d given me a big hug. “That’s the sign of a creative mind.” She told me that when she was a girl, her mother had called her a flibbertigibbet. The word had made me laugh and had become something of a secret code between us.
I pulled my gaze away from the print and looked around the room. The furniture—a matching oak highboy with an attached mirror, a blanket chest, and two night tables with lamps on either side—was covered with a fine film of dust, but Gran’s bed was as neatly made as ever, so neat you could bounce a quarter off the old white chenille bedspread. Her terrycloth slippers peeked out from under the bed, and I was certain I’d find her pajamas folded and tucked under her pillow.
I hadn’t been in her closet since I was a child. I used to love to play in there, to try on her shoes, to put on her dresses. Her closet was large and cedar lined, and it smelled like an old forest. Remembering what Eddie had said about it, I walked across the room and opened the door.
“Holy Moses,” I muttered. The cedar scent was still there—but instead of space under the clothes where I used to play, every square inch was taken up with boxes—boxes stacked on the floor and on the shelves above the hanging clothes, boxes reaching up to the ceiling.
The hanging rods were jam-packed with clothes that would probably bring a fortune at a vintage store. I personally loved vintage clothing—I was a regular at several vintage stores in Chicago—so I rifled through the hangers. They were so crammed together that I could barely move them. A filmy swatch of fabric way at the back caught my eye. Curious, I wrangled the hanger free and pulled it out.
“Oh wow,” I murmured. It was a pale blue peignoir set—a sheer float of a robe that went over an equally sheer nightgown. The floor-length gown was embroidered with strategically placed clusters of rhinestone-encrusted white flowers. I held it up in front of me. I had never seen anything so lovely, so ethereal. What a shame that people didn’t wear things like this anymore! I wondered what year it was from. My guess was the forties or early fifties.
Before I stopped to think about it, I pulled off my sweats and slipped the nightgown over my head, then, carrying the robe, headed for the cheval mirror in the bedroom.
Holy cow—I looked like Lana Turner, minus the styled hair and makeup. The gown fit as if it had been custom made for me, with embroidery strategically placed to cover my naughty bits. I twirled around, admiring the back. Embroidered flowers formed an optical thong, then gracefully trailed down my leg. I had to hand it to the designer—he was a master of peekaboo.
It was gorgeous. It was sexy as sin. It was the kind of thing a woman would wear on her honeymoon, back in the days when wedding preparations involved sultry French words liketrousseau, peignoir, negligee. I let out a sigh. Such magical words from another era.
I wondered what occasion Gran had bought this for. Or had it been a gift? I’d seen pictures of Gran as a young woman, and she’d looked a lot like Katharine Hepburn. She’d had the same tousled, shoulder-length hair, the same air of confidence, the same dazzling smile. Maybe she—
“Are you the tooth fairy?”
A child’s voice abruptly startled me out of my thoughts. I whipped around to see a little girl wearing shorts and a Disney princess T-shirt,staring at me from the bedroom doorway. She had long blond hair with bangs and the kind of poreless skin you usually only see on dolls. I wasn’t very good at estimating kids’ ages, but I guessed she was about four. “Wh-who are you?” I stammered. “How’d you get in here?”
“I’m Sophie. I came in through the doggie door.” She looked up at me, her brown eyes solemn. “Are you the tooth fairy? ’Cause my sister has a loose tooth.”
“Umm, no. No, I’m not.” I grabbed the robe and hurriedly pulled it on. “What are you doing in here?”
“I came to see Snowball and Mizz McCauley. Sometimes she gives me cookies.”
That sounded like Gran. Grinning, I struggled to fasten the sheer robe, which was fitted on top and held together by a rhinestone clasp at the waist. “She’s not here right now. Do you drop in through the doggie door very often?”
“Sometimes.” She tilted her head up and looked at me hopefully. “I know where the cookie jar is.”
I laughed. “Well, then, why don’t you show me?” I followed her into the kitchen, the floaty circle skirt of the robe billowing around me. She dragged a chair from the breakfast table to the counter, the leg screeching on the wooden floor. She climbed up, stood on the seat, and reached for the cat-shaped jar on the counter. Lifting the lid, she pulled out an oatmeal cookie. “Would you like one?” she asked politely.
I smiled at her hostessing skills. “Yes, thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” She handed it to me, then extracted another cookie. Replacing the lid with great care, she set the cookie on the counter, climbed down, moved the chair back to the breakfast table, then retraced her steps to retrieve her treat. She carried it to the red stool in the corner—the stool where I’d spent hours as a child watching Gran bake—climbed up, and regarded me. “Are you a princess?”
