why can’t you wear it?”
Cora turned the dress to show Elvira the sleeves and the back. “Look at all these covered buttons. Can you imagine how uncomfortable they are when I lean back against this chair?” She grimaced. “Torture.”
“But you’ll be walking again soon,” Elvira said. “And then you’ll regret giving this away.”
“Certainly I’ll be walking again—and dancing! Oh, how I miss the waltz. George loves to waltz. But think of the fun I’ll have buying new things.” With a kind of scorn for herself, she turned the wheelchair away from the sofa. “Now, let’s plan the party.”
When Lizzie looked in later, the two women had finished making their party plans. “The baby’s down for his nap,” Lizzie said. That girl’s strained through a sieve, Elvira thought. No spirit. What Cora needs is someone to buck her up.
Cora asked the hired girl, “A pot of tea? And slice us some of the gingerbread, please. Get yourself a piece while you’re at it.”
Turning back to Elvira, Cora said, “It’s none of my business, but I have to ask.” She clasped her hands beneath her chin in a girlish gesture, as if meaning to coax a secret. “A girl as pretty as you must have a swain.”
Elvira looked confused. “A swain?”
“A suitor?”
“I . . . no, no.”
“I didn’t mean to embarrass you. But you’re lovely and fun. Someone should be setting his cap for you.”
Cora sounded like Nell. “I guess I’m just not interested in that kind of thing.”
“Well, someday.”
Easy with one another, they sipped tea and finished two slices of gingerbread each before Elvira said good-bye, taking the dress with her.
“George could deliver the clothes,” Cora told her.
“Oh, no,” Elvira said, “I can’t wait to show them to Nell.”
Walking home through the early November gloom, with a bleared sun low behind banked clouds, Elvira relived the afternoon’s plummy pleasures: the strong, pliant baby, soft and warm against her; the genuine appreciation she felt from Cora; the beautiful clothes she held in her arms, given without condescension or patronage. She clasped them to her face, savoring the scent of friendship. A swain?
With a puzzled scowl, she shook her head and plunged on.
FINGERS TREMBLING, Elvira slipped into a watered-silk moire the color of red grapes. “What do you think of the color?” she asked Nell.
“It’s beautiful. It changes when you move. Sometimes it has a green cast.” Nell began buttoning the back. “Poor Cora.”
“I know. I feel guilty wearing this to a party at her house.”
“She’ll be happy to see you in it.”
“But it feels . . . like I’m walking on her grave.”
“You’re in a strange mood.”
Moving to the parlor, Elvira paraded up and down. Hilly, in his Dr. Dentons, watched from the kitchen door.
“I can’t get used to it,” Elvira said. “It’s one thing to stand still in a dress like this. But dancing in it!”
Without warning, Hilly cried, “Wanna go!” and flung himself sobbing at Elvira, grabbing handfuls of her skirt. “Wanna go dance!”
“It’s a grown-up party,” Elvira told him, trying to loosen his grip.
“No! Wanna go!” he screamed, beating her thighs with his fists.
Then Nell was on him, snatching him roughly, twisting him toward her. “Don’t ever hit! Do you hear me? Never! Never!”
“Mama,” he bawled, clutching her knees. “Mama!” When had his mother ever raised her voice to him? What was happening? He had only wanted to dance with Elvira.
A few minutes later, shaken by the scene with Hilly—what had gotten into Nell?—Elvira studied herself in the mirror above the bureau. Even by dim lamplight she saw that her cheeks were flushed. She felt feverish and weak.
She had an unsettling sense that she’d attended this very party a long time ago. For weeks she’d heard echoes of it in her head, voices and music, like the scratchy sounds from the graphophone tube at the Harvester Arms. And when she heard them, she grew melancholy.
In George and Cora’s dining room, Elsie Schroeder, wife of Howard the store manager—Elsie who had taken the pledge—poured herself a cup of fruit punch. Across the broad table, Elvira ladled out a cup of the brandy-laced version.
“Imbibing, are we?” Elsie lifted an eyebrow and smiled.
“As Anna always says, ‘That’s the advantage in being Catholic.’” Elvira moved toward the door and stood watching dancers in the parlor, where the furniture had been pushed against the walls and the carpets taken up.
Elsie followed. “That’s a mighty fancy dress.”
“Mrs. Lundeen gave it to me.”
“Mrs. George Lundeen?”
“Yes.”
Elsie pondered this. “Well, I suppose it was too nice for the missions box at church.”
At this, Cora appeared around the corner of the parlor door and wheeled across the hall. “There you are,” she called to Elvira. “Would you be a dear friend and pour me a cup of brandy punch?”
“I was just complimenting Elvira on her dress,” Elsie said. “She’s fortunate to have a fairy godmother.”
“Oh, no, Elsie. The fairy godmother is fortunate to have Elvira.” Cora took the cup and drank deeply. “Now, Elvira, I want you to save several waltzes for George. He’s too kind to say it, but I know he misses dancing.”
“I’m not very good.”
“Doesn’t matter. He’s a strong lead. Just let yourself go.”
Over the course of the evening, Elvira lost count of her dance partners. The manager of the lumberyard asked for two or three schottisches. A teller at the bank stole the polkas, while Howard Schroeder was partial to the two-step. In the dining room, finishing off a roast-beef sandwich, Anna told Elvira, “Elsie’s given up dancing now. Howard says she’s immodestly virtuous.” Anna wiped mustard from the corner of her mouth and looked up as George Lundeen approached.
“Elvira? I think you owe me a waltz or two.” The quartet had struck up “The Sidewalks of New York,” and George led Elvira into the parlor.
“The color of your gown becomes you,” George told Elvira, whirling. “The men in the back parlor are saying you’re the prettiest young woman in Harvester.”
“Cora’s the prettiest woman in Harvester! And she gave me the dress.” Then, afraid she’d spoken sharply, she added, “Because of the covered buttons in the back.”
“They’re a problem,” he agreed. “Cora’s had to make a lot of adjustments. She’s a good scout about it all.”
“She says she’ll be dancing again, maybe this time next year.”
George said nothing.
“Don’t you believe?”
Again,