Chapter 6
Some people have small rituals to help them find solace after a stressful week. A drink. A hot bath. A novel. A stranger in a two-bit dive.
On Friday night, Lacey went straight to Great-aunt Mimi’s ancient steamer trunk.
She had dragged her butt to the office that morning, scanned her “Fashion Bite” on funeral attire she dashed off after the reception, read her column, “You’re Not Going to Wear That, Are You?” in the morning edition, contemplated next week’s column, discarded a stack of press releases, told Stella she was working out her strategy, and realized that enlightening women on their style options against the tyranny of money-hungry designers and big business would all have to wait. She had to get away.
At home she donned comfort clothes, jeans and a vintage emerald-green sweater. She cleared a stack of magazines off the top of the old trunk, which also served as her coffee table. Inside were Great-aunt Mimi’s patterns, dating from the late 1930s and ’40s.
It was a trunk full of dreams. As she fingered the illustrated envelopes, she could see the fantasies that Mimi had seen. The trunk held everything from slacks and suits to evening gowns. Mimi had kept every pattern she ever bought, carefully matched with cut-out pictures of movie stars wearing something similar that she hoped to re-create. Katharine Hepburn dressed for the country in slacks and a blouse, à la
Adam’s Rib,
1949. Barbara Stanwyck, the ultimate temptress, in an exquisite gown by Edith Head for
Double Indemnity
, 1944. And Joan Crawford, the quintessential businesswoman in a no-nonsense suit in
Mildred Pierce
, 1945. Mimi celebrated a flair for the dramatic.
Mimi Smith had a bad rep in the family as a dotty old lady in the habit of starting projects she never finished. Her trunk was filled with patterns she had bought but never opened, or had half finished or barely begun. Some patterns were still pinned to materials partially cut out. Mimi was a fickle seamstress; the evidence lay in the trunk. Portions of some garments were just basted together. Outfits were dropped as quickly as if Pompeii had erupted between stitches, a sleeve finished, the buttonholes completed, but the hem unpinned and buttons left off. For every five projects she started, perhaps one was completed. But she couldn’t discard them. She had merely packed them away, wrapped in tissue with the materials she planned to use, crepes, wools, cotton. Her intention clearly was to return again and pick up the jilted pieces. Lacey often wondered why so many were unfinished; perhaps Mimi had run out of thread and while buying more had fallen in love with another gown? They left a record frozen in a time when women were urged to sew. Mimi had good intentions and great style, but a short attention span. At the end of the Forties, the collection stopped for unknown reasons. No more patterns, projects, and movie-star photos. She had closed the trunk and left Lacey an accidental time capsule. It never failed to transport her into a more elegant era.
Many things divide the sexes, but none quite like a simple shopping trip for clothes. Men see clothes, they think size. Shirts, pants, jackets, shoes: They fit, they buy them. They go home, they watch the game.
Mmmm, clothes good! Now Tarzan not naked. Tarzan want Jane naked.
Women see a dress and imagine a mood, a moment, a scenario.
This dress would be perfect on the beach at sunset, a barefoot walk along the water with waves lapping at my feet. I’ll carry a pair of slim-strapped sandals to slip on later. Pair it with a broad-brimmed straw hat, tied with a light blue ribbon around the crown, pinned with an antique cameo. It’s just right for a candlelight dinner on the deck of an elegant restaurant overlooking the Mediterranean. And then, perhaps a dance in the moonlight . . .
The fact that the scenario is wildly unlikely, no beach vacation is planned, no romantic walks along the water’s edge at dusk are on the horizon, does not deter a woman in the clutches of the perfect dress. Usually she’ll get ahold of herself and let out a sigh. She won’t buy it, because after all, it is impractical, but she’ll feel better, because for a moment, she was on that beach and smelled the salt air. Someone was waiting for her at that restaurant and she looked perfect.
Aunt Mimi’s patterns did that for Lacey.
“My aunt was a crazy old dame,” her father always said. But Lacey never thought of Mimi that way. She had a formal portrait of Mimi at twenty-five, taken in 1945 at the end of the war. Hollywood’s effect was evident in her sultry look and come-hither hair. The hand-tinted portrait revealed a beauty with high cheeks, green eyes, and deep chestnut-red hair. Mimi gazed out at the world with a look of happy expectation and a hint of her legendary “strangeness.” Lacey always felt closer to Mimi than to anyone else in her family.
Under the influence of the 1939 Jimmy Stewart movie,
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
, Mimi changed her name back to Smith. Her family was aghast. “Nobody changes their name to Smith! Only a criminal would want to be called Smith.” But Mimi was undeterred. Smith it was and Smith it remained.
She left home to go to Washington at the start of the war, looking to be an adventuress, not a happy homemaker. She was the Smithsonian family’s equivalent of Miss Haversham. “Nutty as a fruitcake,” Lacey’s father said. Steven Smithsonian seldom spoke except to state the obvious or repeat others’ opinions. Generally, he was wrong. “Mimi Smith never finished a damn thing in her life,” he always said.
Actually, Mimi had, on occasion, finished a project or two. There was the time during World War II, in a patriotic frenzy to make over old clothes—encouraged by the government to save fabric needed for the military—when Mimi took up the challenge. While her brother, Lacey’s grandfather, was in the U.S. Army and missing in action on some battlefront, Mimi retrieved his best blue serge suit from his closet and had it remade into a suit for her. The pattern, adapted from the popular
Make and Mend for Victory
booklet, was still in the trunk, along with the ancient publication. When her brother turned up alive after all and anxious to change out of uniform into his snappy blue suit, he was furious to find Mimi wearing it. He remained sore about it for decades, no matter how many times Mimi tried to explain that they all assumed he was dead and that this was her memorial to him.
Lacey felt comfortable with the old woman and her dark furnishings and rich colors. Her college summers spent at Mimi Smith’s Georgetown town house were comforting after the riot of orange and lime and cheap pine furniture that her mother had inflicted on the family—and Mimi had her own library.
Lacey discovered the trunk when she was fifteen, while visiting Mimi by herself. It was large and black and banded with thick leather straps, as exciting as a pirate’s treasure chest. And it was in the attic, which Lacey also loved. Her parents’ one-story ranch-style house in Denver had no secret corners, no nooks and crannies to explore. No dungeon, no attic, no treasure.
“Well, open it up, Lacey, if you’re so curious.”
Lacey was almost afraid it wouldn’t live up to her expectations. The buckle was stiff and the lid creaked as she opened it. She wasn’t disappointed with Mimi’s whole cache of patterns and materials and dreams. It was a cabinet of wonders. Full of vintage linens, wools, velvets, and that exciting new fabric of the Thirties, rayon. The materials, kept for years in the dry, well-insulated attic, were still good, only a little musty. Miraculously, the patterns were Lacey’s size. “I could never part with them,” Mimi said. “I don’t know why. Maybe I kept them for you.” It was more than Lacey had ever hoped for.
Every time she visited Mimi she asked to see the trunk. Mimi, the old lady pirate, was Lacey’s guide. They never quite reached the bottom. Together they would explore it and Mimi would tell Lacey stories about dates and dances and music and movie stars that the clothes would evoke. Even more wonderful, Lacey could see that these clothes were designed for real women, women with figures. Women with curves. Women who were strong and feminine. Women with wiles. Women with breasts and hips and a waist that they weren’t afraid to show. Women like her. “Well, they wouldn’t fit that beanpole sister of yours, now would they?” Mimi commented.
When Great-aunt Mimi died, she left the trunk to Lacey, as well as her books, her overstuffed velvet sofa, and her cherry dining room suite. Her parents found it hilarious that Lacey seemed to think these things were worth more than the old china and kitchenware Mimi had left to her younger, taller, skinnier sister, Cherise, who sold her inheritance in a garage sale.
“What on earth,” her mother wanted to know, “are you going to do with that depressing old stuff?”
“I’m going to restore it, love it, and treasure it.”
“Maybe some nice bright yellow and orange polka dots would brighten it up,” her mother—who loved fast-food restaurant decor—suggested for the sofa. She was horrified when Lacey chose a rich sapphire blue velvet for the sofa and a striped rose and navy damask for the dining room chairs. “Well, with you in Washington, at least I won’t have to look at it,” Mother said.
Alas, Mimi’s sewing skills had not been passed on with the trunk. But Lacey had found a seamstress in Arlington who finished and tailored several of the patterns for her. Alma Lopez had a way of subtly adjusting some of the more obvious period quirks, such as gigantic shoulders, to a more natural fit, making the clothes distinctive yet up-to-date at the same time. Lacey started with a black fitted dress and emerald-green bolero with black piping from the late Thirties. It featured a long green and black silk sash wrapped around the midriff. It was a classic look, with irony sewn into the details. The fact that having Mimi’s clothes finished horrified her mother, who preferred matching sweat suits in neons, was a bonus.
“Lacey, what will people think of you in all those funny old clothes?”
“They’ll think I’m something special, Mother.”
Or they may think I’m a freaking loon, I don’t care.
As much as she desired it, Lacey couldn’t afford to have more than a few of Mimi’s clothes finished each year. But whenever she needed a lift, she’d wander through the patterns and select something promising. Little by little she was making a dent in the trunk and creating a unique and offbeat wardrobe.
After the week’s disorienting events, Lacey found herself considering an evening gown with a fitted midriff, a V neck, and full sleeves. Mimi had attached a photo of Rita Hayworth in the spotlight, circa 1939. It was terribly glamorous and Lacey was imagining a promising scenario.
A cozy little club just off the beaten path. The band begins to play an old song with a bluesy beat, when suddenly a handsome rascal . . .
A knock on her apartment door interrupted her reverie. Probably a neighbor with mail. It was a rare day that the postal carriers got everything in all the right boxes.
Too many transient residents, or just dyslexic?
Lacey wondered. She peered out the tiny peephole to see a visitor waiting outside in the hallway. She sucked in a deep breath.
I don’t believe this. Who does he think he is?
Lacey opened the door but blocked the opening with her arm. He looked good, too good, wearing jeans that had faded in all the right places, comfortably scuffed boots, a black turtleneck, and a black leather jacket slung casually over his shoulder. Men in black sweaters, particularly turtlenecks, were a weakness of hers. She thought almost any breathing male specimen looked good in one. And Vic Donovan wasn’t just any specimen. The sleeves were casually pushed up on his forearms, showing curly dark hair above the wrists, which only reminded her that she’d also like to know what his chest looked like uncovered. She was rooting for dark and curly. However, the reality of Donovan showing up on her doorstep was alarming.
“Yikes,” she said.
“You could drop that right eyebrow and invite me in.” Vic grinned. He offered her a six-pack of Dos Equis.
“How’d you get past our crackerjack security system?”
Her World War II-era building featured an intercom at the front door that rang the telephone when guests arrived. Nevertheless, friendly residents coming and going would politely hold the door for complete strangers. This was low-crime Old Town, of course.
“I just followed the pizza boy. I was hoping he was coming here.”
She didn’t bother asking how he found out where she lived. Considering his line of work it would be an insult. And in the old days he was not above giving Lacey a detailed rundown of where she and her car had been seen at any time, night or day.
“Sorry, wrong apartment. You can follow the pizza boy out.”
“Lacey, let me in.” She didn’t budge. “Look, I’m really sorry if I insulted you yesterday. I didn’t mean to. I was just—surprised.”
“I don’t like surprises either.”
“How about letting me in?”
“What if I’m busy?”
“In that case, I’ll just wait until your date comes by. We’ve got things to talk about.”
Date? In that case you might be here until Christmas.
“Stylettos?”
“Among other topics of mutual interest.”
Curiosity got the better of her. It always did and she was forever listening to crazy people with strange stories. Lacey thought if she had one thing going for her as a reporter, it was her passion for knowing how a story ended. She cursed herself.
“All right.”
“You could discourage a guy, you know.” He stepped into the kitchen, opened a beer, and offered Lacey one. He put the rest in the fridge and paused to examine its paltry contents. “I should have robbed the pizza boy. I think it was pepperoni.”
“I can cook. I just don’t care to. Shall I offer you some popcorn to go with the beer?”
“Popcorn is not an entrée.”
He took the beer out of her hand and put it back in the fridge. “I have a better idea. I’ll buy you dinner. It’s chilly out. I’d grab a jacket if I were you.”