The Grace Kelly Dress Read online

  “And you’re part of me.” He pulled his sleeve up to show Rocky his matching tattoo, and then leaned over and gently kissed her on the lips.

  She ran her hand over Drew’s cheek. He put his hand over hers and then pulled it away from his face to kiss her palm.

  “So, do they think they’ll be able to find her? Your birth mother?”

  Drew held up his phone to show Rocky the email. “They just did.”

  Eleven

  The mother of the bride, as a bride herself

  Long Island, 1982

  Joanie turned the invitation over in her hands. Was this what it was like for her mother, forever getting the mail of a dead girl delivered to your house, no matter how many times you tell people she’d gone? A painful reminder of the past, every day at 1 p.m.

  She quickly threw the invite into the trash. No point in leaving it on the kitchen counter with the rest of the mail, where it was destined to upset her mother when she got home later. Joanie felt her anger rising—the invite was for the opening of an art gallery in SoHo, the sort of thing Michele had gone to all the time when she was alive. Surely those friends had noticed that Michele was long gone?

  It had been three years. Three long years.

  Everyone knew, didn’t they? Some days, it was all Joanie could think of, and she knew it was the same for her mother. She could always tell when her mother was thinking about Michele—she would get that faraway look in her eye, as if she were trying to remember something, some long-forgotten detail that was there, right there, but as soon as she tried to access it, there it went. Gone.

  Joanie stacked the rest of the mail neatly on the kitchen counter, and made her way towards her bedroom. She stopped as she passed her sister’s room, her fingers grazing the door frame as she looked in. When was the last time she’d entered Michele’s room?

  Joanie took a tentative step inside. Michele’s room still smelled like her. How was that possible? It was as if her essence had seeped into every pore of the room—the wall-to-wall carpet, the light blue curtains that hung around the windows, the white eyelet bedding. Everything was preserved exactly how she’d left it, as if she’d just run out for a moment and would be back at any second—the bulletin board filled with Polaroids and old invitations, a closet full of clothing, bursting at the seams, and her record player, sitting on top of a Lucite cube, hundreds of albums filling the space below. A moment frozen in time.

  From the second Michele got the record player for her thirteenth birthday, she’d shared it with her sister. They’d spend lazy Saturday afternoons together at the music store in town, flipping through albums, pooling their allowances to get what they wanted. How many days did they spend side by side in Michele’s room, listening to Supertramp, David Bowie, and Queen? Whenever their mother wanted to find them, there was only one place she ever had to look—the floor of Michele’s room, where both girls would be lying down, heads together as they passed the album covers back and forth.

  Joanie wished she could have one more afternoon with her sister, one more chance to lie down on the plush carpet, their heads touching, and do nothing more than listen to music together.

  Joanie picked up the record and dusted it off with her fingers. Michele had tried to get Joanie into the new music she’d discovered while living in the city, but Joanie preferred to stick with pop.

  Joanie imagined Michele was there with her as she turned the record over in her hands. The label said: The Runaways. I’d love to listen with you, she imagined herself saying to Michele, and Michele would put it onto the turntable. Joanie picked up the needle and set it to play. An aggressive guitar riff blared through the speakers. A sound she’d never heard before. This was the music her sister listened to when she was in college, the music her sister had wanted her to hear, not the Billboard 100 stuff that Joanie and her friends preferred, Hall and Oates, J. Geils Band, Duran Duran.

  The singer practically screamed the lyrics, like she was angry. But the lyrics were suggestive, flirty even. Joanie felt the music inside her chest, in her bones. She was transfixed and couldn’t turn it off if she’d tried. She picked up the album cover and stared—a young blonde held the mic, and looked at something off in the distance. Her hands were blurry, as if she were in motion. As if she were singing to Joanie right in that very room at that very moment.

  The chorus crashed over her: “I’m your ch-ch-ch-ch-cherry bomb!” It was rough, it was dirty. Joanie almost felt like she shouldn’t be listening to it. But she couldn’t stop.

  When the singer started moaning—it was pure sex—Joanie looked around, to check that she was the only one home. But she knew her mother wouldn’t be back for hours—she always came home in time to watch General Hospital at 3 p.m.—and her father didn’t get back from work until well after seven.

  By the third repeat of the chorus, Joanie was singing along as she watched herself in the mirror, her lips mouthing the seductive words: “I’m your ch-ch-ch-ch-cherry bomb!”

  The next song queued up and Joanie sat down at her sister’s dressing table. A clear Lucite organizer held Michele’s makeup—dozens of eyeliners in varying shades of blue and gray, too many lipsticks to count. Her lip glosses were lined up like little soldiers in tiny compartments, each one big enough to hold just one tube. She fingered one of the eyeliners—it looked like the shade of blue that Princess Diana wore—and opened it. Still perfectly sharpened, probably never even used before. Joanie carefully pulled her lower eye down and applied the liner to the inside of her lash line, the way Diana did. Then she grabbed a pale pink lipstick and carefully applied it, pressing her lips together to get it evenly distributed.

  Michele always favored darker eye makeup, always pushed the boundaries. Even before she moved out of the house to go to college, Michele wore black kohl and dark eye shadow around her almond-shaped eyes. Joanie laughed to herself as she recalled how her mother and Michele would fight over it.

  “Less is more,” her mother would chide.

  “More is more.” Michele’s constant refrain.

  Michele’s bottle of Yves Saint Laurent Opium was half full. Joanie carefully removed the cap and inhaled the heady scent, a mixture of rose, sandalwood, and coriander. This was the smell that lingered in Michele’s room. This was the smell that reminded Joanie of her sister, and always would, even years later. Joanie brought her wrist to her nose—the faintest remnant of her own Love’s Baby Soft remained, but only slightly. She sprayed Michele’s perfume, and then instantly remembered how her mother had taught her to apply it—far away from your skin so as not to overpower. If you sprayed the scent too close, it would apply too much to your skin, and it would walk into a room before you did. The point of perfume was to delight the person who you let get close enough to smell it, not to announce your arrival.

  But Joanie didn’t care. She rubbed her wrists together (bruising the perfume, she could hear her mother chastise), and took a deep breath. The scent swirled around her, making Joanie dizzy. She felt hot, so she took off the pastel pink sweater that she’d had draped over her shoulders, and her white button-down top, too, leaving on only a delicate white camisole.

  When she looked back at her reflection, she liked what she saw. She didn’t look like the preppy good girl. She looked sexier, dangerous. Like someone else entirely.

  Was it Michele she looked like? Even though her sister was three years older, people were always mistaking them for twins, the same heart-shaped face. But now, Joanie realized, she couldn’t quite recall what her sister looked like. She grabbed a Polaroid off the bulletin board. Michele stared back at her with dark eyes, dangerous eyes. Joanie couldn’t quite recall when that photograph had been taken.

  “What are you doing in here?” Her mother’s voice drowned out the music, shaking Joanie from her trance.

  “I didn’t think you’d be home until three.” Joanie quickly pulled the needle off the record. Silence filled th
e room.

  “Well, I’m home now. And I’d ask you to please put everything back the way you found it.”

  “I’m sorry,” Joanie said, but her mother had already left the room.

  Twelve

  The seamstress

  Paris, 1958

  There was talk around the atelier that Rose was having an affair with Madame’s butler. He called for her every day around the midmorning break, and they disappeared into the stairwell. Since no one who worked for Madame would dare come close to her private quarters, it seemed obvious that they left the loft each morning for a rendezvous on the second floor, a guest suite that Madame hadn’t used in years. Rose had no friends to speak of, so there was no one to refute the story. No one to defend her honor. She could see how the girls now eyed her suspiciously, looked at her with disdain.

  If they only knew the truth.

  “Now, would you like to know why you are here?” he had asked her that first day.

  Rose hadn’t been sure if she wanted to know. But her response didn’t matter. He explained: “I am sorry to inform you that Madame died the day she collapsed at the atelier. That evening, to be precise.”

  Rose gasped. She was losing her job. Without a regular paycheck, she would not be able to afford her room at the boarding house. She would be out on the street in one month’s time. Tears sprang to her eyes and she covered her face with her hands. She could not cry in front of this man she did not know, even with what he was telling her.

  “It’s not possible.” She composed herself and looked up at the butler. He had an open face, an honest face.

  He spoke quietly: “I’m afraid it is, dear child.”

  “We’ve all been conducting business as usual. How could this be?”

  “This is what Madame would have wanted,” he explained, retrieving a handkerchief from his jacket pocket and handing it to Rose. Despite her best efforts, the tears were slowly streaming down her face. “She left the atelier to me, and I’ve been running it behind the scenes, as I’ve always done.”

  “I had no idea that you and Madame were,” Rose began, searching for the words, “...in a relationship.”

  “We were not in a relationship,” he said, laughing under his breath. “Madame was my aunt. My name is Julien Michel.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “It’s quite simple, really,” Julien said, sitting down on the longue next to Rose. “Madame was my aunt, and she took me in after my parents died. When I turned eighteen, she put me to work at the atelier, and I’ve been here ever since.”

  “You’re an orphan.” Rose used his handkerchief to wipe away her tears. “Like me.”

  “Yes.”

  “What happens now?”

  “Onward,” he said, rubbing his temples. “Just as she always wanted. Her plan had been to select a protégé, someone she could train, but life often does not follow a plan. No one could have suspected that she would pass so quickly—we had no idea she had a bad heart. So, we adjust.”

  “How?”

  “Why, you will finish Mademoiselle Laurent’s dress,” he said, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

  “Finish the dress?” Rose asked. She felt a sinking feeling in her stomach. “It hasn’t even been started yet.”

  “Madame created a few sketches before she passed.” He walked over to Madame’s desk, and pulled out the drawings. “At the next meeting, you will present these sketches to Mademoiselle Laurent. She will pick one, and that is the dress you will create for her.”

  “Won’t the Laurents wonder where Madame is?”

  “Monsieur Laurent will be traveling to London for his work. And I’ve recently discovered that his wife will accompany him. It will be easier to keep up our ruse with only young Mademoiselle to fool.” Julien passed the drawings to Rose.

  Rose studied the sketches. They were perfect. Madame’s lines were so assured, so clean. Each design was a work of art, truly. “Won’t Mademoiselle wonder where Madame Michel is?”

  “We shall create an excuse for each meeting,” Julien explained. “Florence one week, Monaco the next. The possibilities are endless.”

  Rose shook her head and looked up at Julien. His words seemed so confident, so sure, but she could see a thin layer of sweat gathering on his brow.

  “Mademoiselle mustn’t know about Madame, of course,” Julien said. “She must not know. The fate of the atelier depends on it. If one bride finds out, the atelier’s business would dry up before we had the time to create the illusion that you are her chosen protégé. No one would dare order a wedding dress from our atelier again. No one would take the risk on an unknown designer, someone who Madame has not vouched for. After all, the gown is the most important part of the wedding. And you will create a dress so beautiful that there is no doubt in anyone’s mind that you have been trained by Madame. That you were chosen by her to take over the atelier. And then, that is exactly what you will do, while I continue to run things behind the scenes. We’ll make the announcement after Mademoiselle Laurent’s wedding. After the world sees her wedding dress, you will be the toast of Paris, and the new lead designer of the atelier.”

  Rose didn’t respond. She agreed with Julien’s assertion—the gown was the most important part of a wedding—but she was stuck on Julien’s words. Create the illusion. Because the truth was that Julien had chosen her to play the role of Madame’s protégé.

  Madame had not.

  Thirteen

  The bride

  Brooklyn, 2020

  Rocky balanced her laptop on her knees in the car. She had dozens of emails to respond to, and three open projects at work, but none of that mattered today. Today, she was on her way to see her father. She had a million things to tell him, a million things to discuss. First, there was the matter of the dress. Oh, the dress. Then, there was Drew’s search for his birth mother. Rocky cringed as she thought about what it would do to Drew’s mother. Rocky opened the notes app on her phone and listed the things she needed to tell her father, in order of importance. She looked up and saw that she had at least another twenty minutes in the car. She turned her attention to emails next.

  Rocky wanted to get all of her emails cleared before seeing her dad—an empty inbox always had such a calming effect on her, but just as she was making a dent, a ping rang out. She clicked over to Mail and saw her mother’s name on the From line, and Wedding! in the subject line. She felt her temples pulse. Now was not the time for this. She took a deep breath in, two, three, four, and then out, two, three, four, and looked again. She hit Delete.

  Her mother was taking over every aspect of wedding planning, bit by bit. The only thing they had agreed upon was the date—both women immediately loved the idea of a June wedding. But that was the only thing they could agree on. Where Rocky wanted a small, casual dinner on the rooftop of her apartment building, her mother was inquiring about a three-hundred-person formal affair at her country club. Where Rocky wanted a local DJ to come spin after the dinner, her mother had an appointment already set with a fourteen-piece band. And, of course, there was the dress. Oh, the dress.

  But she wouldn’t let this upset her. She was going to see her father. It was her time alone with him, and she wasn’t going to let her mother’s ideas about the wedding take away from that.

  Rocky had always belonged to her father, just as her sister, Amanda, had always belonged to her mother. It wasn’t anything specific, there was no particular reason, but ever since she could remember, Rocky had gravitated towards her dad, and Amanda towards her mother. A memory: Rocky going into the office to work with her father on Sunday mornings—armed with dozens of doughnuts for the staff—and coloring on Xerox paper while he punched away furiously on his calculator. And another: getting her first bike with him, the evening before her fifth birthday, at the shop in town. And more still: how he would grab her hand after every school play a
nd tell her that she had been the best one on stage, even when she wasn’t. Rocky remembered countless Saturday afternoons at the local park, feeding the ducks in the pond, careful to stay out of their reach. She never knew what Amanda and her mother were doing those days, probably sipping tea out of fine china or shopping for clothes (again), but she didn’t care. Rocky reveled in her father’s attention. Craved it. Needed it. It was as if Amanda and her mother were a closed set of two. And Rocky didn’t mind it. She was happy to be a daddy’s girl and leave her sister to her mother.

  Rocky looked out the window, watched the trees passing her by, and did a meditation exercise: take note of the world around you without judgment.

  The trees are beginning to change color.

  The air is cool and crisp.

  Email from my mother.

  Rocky shook her head, brought herself back to the present.

  The sky is perfectly blue, like in a postcard.

  The leather seats of the car are soft and smooth.

  Email from my mother.

  Guilt overcame her. She opened her laptop and rescued her mother’s email from the Trash folder.

  Hi honey! it read. Are you free to come look at a band with me on Thursday night?

  Rocky drafted a response about having a work dinner, but then reconsidered. She didn’t want to lie to her mother. She was not a person who lied. She wrote back: Sure, what time?

  “Excuse me,” the driver said to Rocky. “You’ll have to show me which road to take up here.”

  “Follow the main road and make the third left. It’s there on the corner.”

  The driver did as she said, and pulled up to the spot. “Am I coming back or waiting for you?”

  “Drive around and come back for me in an hour,” Rocky said, sliding her laptop into its case and grabbing the flowers. “There’s a coffee shop around the corner that serves a phenomenal blueberry pie. I’m happy to pay for the wait time. And the pie.”