“It’s okay,” I said. “They told me I could stay.”
I got up and prowled around Mamie’s dresser, looking over her beauty supplies. She had never completely left the glitz of her dancing days behind, even in assisted living. And sure enough, at the base of the mirror, there was a row of candy-colored nail polish.
I picked the one that looked the brightest and made my way back over to the bed. I lifted her hand and held it gently. Then I uncapped the nail polish and began to apply a rich red coat to her right thumb.
“Here is what’s going to happen,” I said. “You are going to be strong for three more days. That’s the soonest I think I can get things together. But I’m going to do it. It’s going to happen.”
I moved from Mamie’s thumb to her pointer finger, painting as delicately as I could, but my hand wouldn’t stop shaking. Mamie looked up at me. I kept talking.
“There’s going to be a big party, full of all your friends, and it’s going to be scandalous and amazing and nothingbad is going to happen because sometimes everything is perfect.”
I painted the rest of the row and blew on Mamie’s fingers. Mamie rested her unpainted hand on my back. And when I looked at her, it was hard to tell how present she was. There was something glassy about her gaze.
“Will you put it on?” she asked.
I looked around.
“My dress,” she added. “The one you brought. I want you to try it on.”
I glanced over at the dress, draped on the arm of a chair. I’d never even seen Mamie look at it.
“I brought it for you,” I said.
“I know,” said Mamie. “I want to remember what I looked like.”
It took me a moment to understand what she meant, but it came to me soon enough. I walked over to the chair where I’d set the gown. Then I went into Mamie’s small bathroom and took off the jeans and tank top I’d been wearing. In the cramped room, I raised my arms and pulled the filmy dress down over my body.
It was a little big in the chest, but otherwise it fit well. It made me look like I had an hourglass figure for the first time in my life. I glanced at myself in the mirror, made surethe zipper was tight, and came back into the room. Mamie looked at me when I appeared. She smiled.
“I remember attaching each of those stones,” she said. “I did each one by hand.”
I felt my eyes widen.
“You made this?”
“My mom taught all of us to sew. I thought I’d save a buck. I made all my own gowns. This one was my favorite, though. I wore it the last time I performed.”
I moved closer to her and watched Mamie reach a hand out and touch the material. She closed her eyes as she rubbed it between the thumb and forefinger of the hand without the polish, maybe envisioning her last dance, maybe just relishing the sensation of the glossy fabric.
“Thank you, dear,” she said.
“For what?” I asked.
“For the funeral party.”
Her voice was so soft now I could barely hear her.
“We haven’t had it yet,” I said. “It’s in three days. Remem-ber?”
Mamie’s eyes closed again, and she smiled.
“No,” she said. “I was there. It was wonderful.”
I stood there and watched her slowly drift to sleep.Moments later, a nurse barged in and shooed me out. She said they were moving Mamie back to the hospital. Something new had shown up on the CT scan. I asked to come along, but I wasn’t allowed. So, I could only watch from a distance as they loaded up Mamie on a gurney and wheeled her away.
I remembered I was still wearing the dress on my way back to the parking lot, which explained the odd looks I got from the staff. My other clothes were left behind in Mamie’s room, but it was too late to go back and get them now. So I drove home in a decades-old burlesque costume, this time getting goose bumps from the breeze through the car, as the blue sky and fields blurred around me.
In the house, I found my father sitting at the kitchen table eating a sandwich. He gave me a double take in the dress, but made no immediate comment. There was a guilty look on his face, and his clothes looked a little disheveled. I poured myself some burnt coffee from the pot that had likely been on all morning. I could feel him watching me.
