“Correct,” Nana said. “Besides, you don’t know what looks good on you.”
I sighed dramatically. “Fine. Since I’m expecting to get the friends and family discount, you can pick out my fancy dress. I promise that I’m only seventy-five percent sure I won’t wear Converse with it.”
Nana pointed at a chair by the fireplace. “You have a seat right there, and I’ll pick out a few things that could work.”
She didn’t ask for my size; she didn’t have to. Fortunately for me, she didn’t overstock sizes six and under to the neglect of the larger ones. She told me once that she’d learned long ago that the zeroes and twos often ended up on the clearance rack, so no need to overdo it.
As I watched her efficiently swan about the room, pausing occasionally to put a dress on the rack by my chair, I thought, not for the first time, that she and Havisham would probably get along swimmingly. My only hesitation in introducing them? I didn’t need them to join forces.
Then again, if they were running the world, it might be a better situation for all of us. Since they couldn’t apply themselves to world domination, however, they’d probably focus on me, and I didn’t need that.
After flitting around the room and even down the hall, she had accumulated five dresses for me to try. She then gently touched my cheek, turning my face from one side to the other. “No makeup. Good girl.”
As if I would risk a tirade on the scourge of foundation stains on her nice dresses. No thank you.
“Hop in there and let me see how that first one looks on you.”
I took a floor-length sour-apple-green sheath into a small room beside the fireplace where I’d been sitting. The small space had once been a pantry of sorts, but Nana had converted it into a dressing room.
The dress slid down my skin as though it had been molded to my shape. There was just one problem. “Nana, how am I supposed to wear a bra with this?”
Her turn to sigh.
We sighed a lot when we were together, but the overall number of sighs had decreased exponentially since I turned twenty.
“I forgot about your bazombas, but I guess you could wear one of those adhesive bras. Come out here and let me see.”
I took another look at the strappy back of the dress in the mirror before returning to Nana.
Her brow furrowed. Her lips pursed as though holding pins that weren’t there as she studied the dress. She stepped back and twirled her finger. I slowly spun.
“No. Try the electric blue.”
I took that dress in, then removed the green one before placing it back on its hanger.
The blue was a shorter sheath. No worries about a bra with it, thanks to its conservative neckline, wide straps, and closed back.
Done deal, so far as I was concerned, but Nana said, “Too conservative.”
“C’mon, Nana. Isn’t ‘conservative’ exactly what I need for that crowd?”
She shook her head. “I think it’ll be the purple.”
Purple.
The color reminded me of Malone, and the memory of Malone caused my pulse to quicken.
I turned around so she could unzip me and took the purple dress with me into the dressing room.
“Purple” didn’t really do the dress justice. It was a luscious almost-eggplant color with gauzy layers of fabric. Low cut, but it had wide straps. Full skirt, but it cinched around the waist and had a daring slit.
And pockets.
“This is the one, Nana,” I said.
“Come here and let me be the judge of that.”
I turned to the right and then to the left, watching the fabric swish with my hands in my pockets. The girls—or my bazombas as my nana liked to call them—were out and proud. “No need.”
