She Walks in Beauty (8 page)

“P?”

“Yes. See? Again.”

“P.”

“Yes. And you may add prunes and prisms to it. Peas, prunes, and prisms.”

“Peas, prunes, and prisms?”

“Say those words over and over and over. When you wake, as you fade to sleep, and anytime in between that you remember. It will have the effect of reforming your lips. Of making them plumper rather than wider. And in the meantime, before that work has been accomplished, you must always enter a room with the word
prisms
leaving your lips. Go ahead. Try it.” She was waving her hand toward the door.

I obliged, leaving and then, at once, returning and taking up my seat beside her.

“Prisms!” She fairly exploded with the word.

Oh!—I had forgotten. I turned around and tried it once more.

“Prisms.” The sound of the word died as I stepped across the threshold of the door.

“Yes. The first impression you make will then be one of elegance. And of a smaller mouth, of course. Now, come here.”

I obeyed, letting
prisms
drop from my thoughts altogether.

“Sit.”

I sat.

“We must now—” She leaned forward. Looked as if she were trying to peer around my side. “Do you always do that?”

“Do what?”

“Do you always let your shoulders roll forward in such a lackadaisical manner?”

I pulled them up and rolled them back before she could expand her comments. “No.”

“What did that Miss Miller teach you that was of any importance?”

Mathematics, geography, and literature. Italian and Latin.

“It is said that Consuelo Vanderbilt’s mother has a metal rod affixed to her spine.”

A metal rod!

“Though I don’t make it a rule to agree with those types, it is possible that an extreme measure such as that one might need to be undertaken if you cannot correct your posture on your own.”

“No!” I straightened as I said it. Edged forward on my seat and folded my hands into each other.

Aunt stared at me for one long moment. Then she frowned. And sighed. “I
have
noticed that the corset has already helped to improve your comportment. If you can endeavor to maintain proper posture at all times, then . . .” She sighed again. “You must understand that I am only trying to help you. If your mother had not died, she would have taught you all of this long ago. And there would be no need for my instruction. But really, you cannot hope to succeed in society without such correction.”

One of the dogs barked.

Aunt bent slightly and put a hand to its head. “There will be no need for such undertakings if you can manage to cure this deficiency on your own. Understood?”

I nodded.

It was with great relief that I snuck away to greet Lizzie the next Thursday afternoon. I slipped past the dogs, not daring to look at them for fear they would discern my purposes. Pulling on a cloak, I stepped out the back door and made my way through the garden.

Lizzie chided me as I entered the hedge. “I’ve been watching you forever. It seemed as if you would never arrive! What were you doing?”

“I was walking. In a ladylike fashion. Aunt says, ‘No girl of good breeding ever goes anywhere directly.’” I sniffed the way Aunt always did. “‘She is not in a hurry like some common servant. The most beautiful lines in nature are not straight. They are curved.’”

Lizzie clapped her hands. “Wait—wait. I’ve got one! Mama says to always hold one’s hands close to the skirt when walking.”

“Really?” I hadn’t heard that before. “Why?”

“So that they don’t swing about unbecomingly.”

I added it to my burgeoning list of things not to do.

Lizzie stepped away from the bushes and drew her hands around in front of her. “I’m not to stand with my hands behind me either.”

“Truly? I hadn’t known … and I don’t know if I can remember.”

Lizzie’s face flushed. “I can’t. So Mama said always to clasp them within each other.”

“I’m not to wink . . .”

“And I’m not to let any young man address me by my first name . . .”

I held up a finger the way Aunt always did when she admonished me. “And never, ever allow a young man to take your arm—”

“Because doing so implies that you are weak.” Lizzie finished with a giggle.

Those rules were all well and good, but what
were
we supposed to do with young men? “Have you ever wondered, Lizzie … what it is that we’re allowed to do? When we’re with a young man?”

Her brow furrowed and her laughter ceased. “Well, be … kind. And frank. And gracious. And … catch one of them as a husband!”

“What if I forget and do something … or forget
to
do something?”

“Then I shall come to your rescue. And you’re to come to mine.”

Dear, sweet Lizzie. It seemed she had an answer for everything. And I had only questions. “I don’t want to debut.” I never had.

“You’ve never wanted to debut.”

I had to smile that she could read my thoughts so well. “But I’m not ready. Not like you are.”

“Of course you’re ready.”

“I’m not.”

She leaned forward then and took up my hands, pressing them between her own. “You were born to debut and so was I. It doesn’t matter if you want to or not, if you’re ready or not. We have to.” We did. And that was the plain, simple, unadulterated truth.

The day of my tea dawned cold and cloudy. Rain threatened most of the morning, but by afternoon the clouds had been blown back by a ruthless wind. In the garden, hapless leaves were being tossed helter-skelter. “Do you think … ?”

“What?” Aunt was busy watching the maid attend to me.

There were a hundred thoughts to think, but I did not know which one to settle upon. Would anyone come? Would I bobble my tea? Would my hair stay in place? Would I be able to think of something clever to say? To all of the people who attended? If anyone attended at all? “Do you think it will go well?”

“Of course it will go well. It has to go well. Like a ship that has just been launched, either you will drift onto a sandbar and be grounded, or you will sail off into the sea with great aplomb. Be warned: We cannot afford to have you flounder upon some desolate shore! Easter is rather late this year: that gives us an advantage. There are eleven weeks between the official start of the season next month and its end at Lent. We must gain as much ground as we can in these next few weeks. You must succeed; you will succeed. The Carter family honor depends upon you. Besides, this tea is more for the mothers than the men. Impress those women, and they will push their sons in your direction.”

I had to worry about the mothers as well?

I had been put in my dressing sacque, not yet ready to don my gown for the tea. The maid ran a comb through my hair, gathering my locks at the top of my head.

“Stop!”

Both the maid and I jumped at Aunt’s cry.

“I think a lesser height is needed. She is tall enough already.”

The maid let go my hair and tried again, the tines of the comb creating what felt like furrows in my scalp.

“No. No, I think something less severe. Part it in the middle for just an inch. We’ll curl the fringe. And then gather the rest around back in a twist, with some small curls escaping at the nape.”

The maid let go my hair once more. This time, the part was less brutal, the gathering of locks less violent. But just when I thought myself saved, she secured my hair with pins she sunk into my scalp. And then she approached me with curling tongs.

Aunt buried her nose in one of her dogs as she gave it a kiss. “You’ll thank me when you’re the focus of the society column in the newspaper.”

I rather doubted it. I sat there as the maid passed the tongs back and forth between a candle’s flame and then seized my fringe and applied the tongs to it.

Once done, she turned to help me with my gown. But Aunt directed her to lay it aside and tighten my corset first.

“Please! I can hardly breathe as it is.”

“The gown is meant to fit perfectly … as long as the wearer has an eighteen-inch waist.”

Eighteen inches? Already? That was one and a half inches less than I had.

“Tighten the corset.”

I felt the maid at my back, loosening the laces. There was a moment of sweet freedom when I could breathe unimpeded, and then she violently wrenched the laces, forcing all of the air from my chest. Once I had grown accustomed to the constriction, she helped me into a corset cover, a hooped skirt, and then my gown. It was a traditional white debutante’s gown. It had been made in crepe de chine with satin bows fixed to the shoulders and a satin rose set upon my waist at the back. It had no similarity to my former loose gowns. Those had dropped freely from my waist to my ankles. This gown fit the upper half of my body tightly, exquisitely. And it nipped in at my waist, only to fan out from the hips in a multitude of pleats.

Aunt took me by the hand and led me to the mirror.

The image staring back at me was astonishing.

I was no longer a girl.

I was no longer seventeen.

I was a debutante, a woman. In search of a husband.

“Now the gloves.” Aunt gestured to the maid. “Here is how it’s done. First, you must sprinkle them with powdered alum.” She took a jar from her pocket and shook it into the glove. “Give me your hand.”

I put it in her own.

She pulled me toward the stool in front of my dressing table. “Sit there and put your elbow on the table.”

I looked at her with a frown. My elbow on the table? Surely she was joking. If I was still a bit unsure of fish knives and lemon forks, I knew this rule by heart: No elbows on the table.

“Now!”

I did as she ordered, fearing still that at any moment I might be scolded. But I was not. She simply began to turn one of the gloves in upon itself until the openings to the fingers were displayed. Then she fit the glove over each of my fingers in turn. She jammed my elbow into the table with the effort it required to pull the glove on over them. But she was not done yet. She had not fit my thumb into it. “Brace yourself.”

“Pardon me?”

“Brace yourself! With a hand to the knee.”

With those words the struggle began. Eventually, after some moments of tugging and wrenching, the feat was accomplished. Aunt waved the maid toward me so that the gloves could be buttoned. Then she stood back, panting, hand at her chest. “It will go easier the next time.”

I hoped so. I’d lost all feeling in my thumb. “I can hardly move my fingers.”

“I know it. But see how nicely your hand is cupped? Doesn’t it look much smaller?”

It was. It did. But was it worth such discomfort?

I descended the stairs behind Aunt at a sedate pace.

Upon reaching the first floor, Father thrust a bouquet of white roses into my hands. “For the fairest of them all.”

I blushed at his compliment.

“Remember, my dear, that you’re a Carter and deserving of the very best of them.”

Aunt crooked her arm through my own. “And that would be the De Vries heir.”

At the new hallstand’s mirror, Aunt paused to make an adjustment to her hair. Her mauve cuffs looked unfamiliar against the black of her gown. But for now jet earrings still dangled from her ears and her hair was still covered with its lacey widow’s cap.