her, and she'd blush. If Owen had wanted to be less flattering, he might have remarked that it was easy to dress my mother, or her dummy, because all her clothes were black and white; everything went with everything else. There was that one red dress, and we could never find a way to make her like it; it was never meant to be a part of her wardrobe, but I believed the Wheelwright in my mother made it impossible for her to give or throw the dress away. She'd found it in an exceptionally posh Boston store; she loved the clingy material, its scooped back, its fitted waist and full skirt, but she hated the color-a scarlet red, a poinsettia red. She'd meant to copy it-in white or in black-like all the others, but she liked the cut of the dress so much that she copied it in white and in black. 'White for a tan,' she said, 'and black in the winter.'' When she went to Boston to return the red dress, she said she discovered the store had burned to the ground. For a while, she couldn't remember the store's name; but she asked people in the neighborhood, she wrote to the former address. There was some crisis with insurance and it was months before she finally got to talk with someone, and then it was only a lawyer. 'But I never paid for the dress!' my mother said. 'It was very expensive-I was just trying it out. And I don't want it. I don't want to be billed for it, months later. It was very expensive,' she repeated; but the lawyer said it didn't matter. Everything was burned. Bills of sale were burned. Inventory was burned. Stock was burned. 'The telephone melted,' he said. 'The cash register melted,' he added. 'That dress is the least of their problems. It's your dress,' the lawyer said. 'You got lucky,' he told her, in a way that made her feel guilty.
'Good Heavens,' my grandmother said, 'it's so easy to make Wheelwrights feel guilty. Get hold of yourself, Tabitha, and stop complaining. It's a lovely dress-it's a Christmas color,' my grandmother decided. 'There are always Christmas parties. It will be perfect.' But I never saw my mother
take the dress out of her closet; the only way that dress ever found its way to the dressmaker's dummy-after my mother had copied it-was when Owen dressed the dummy in it. Not even Owen could find a way to make my mother like that red dress.
'It may t>e a Christmas color,' she said, 'but I'm the wrong color-especially at Christmastime-in that dress.' She meant she looked sallow in red when she didn't have a tan, and who in New Hampshire has a tan for Christmas?
'THEN WEAR IT IN THE SUMMER!' Owen suggested. But it was a show-off thing to wear such a bright red color in the summer; that was making too much of a tan, in my mother's opinion. Dan suggested that my mother donate the red dress to his seedy collection of stage costumes. But my mother thought this was wasteful, and besides: none of the Gravesend Academy boys, and certainly no other woman from our town, had the figure to do that dress justice. Dan Needham not only took over the dramatic performances of the Gravesend Academy boys, he revitalized the amateur theatrical company of our small town, the formerly lackluster Gravesend Players. Dan talked everyone into The Gravesend Players; he got half the faculty at the academy to bring out the hams in themselves, and he roused the histrionic natures of half the townspeople by inviting them to try out for his productions. He even got my mother to be his leading lady-if only once. As much as my mother liked to sing, she was extremely shy about acting. She agreed to be in only one play under Dan's direction, and I think she agreed only as an indication of her commitment to their prolonged courtship, and only if Dan was cast opposite her-if he was the leading man-and if he was not cast as her lover. She didn't want the town imagining all sorts of things about their courtship, she said. After they were married, my mother wouldn't act again; neither would Dan. He was always the director; she was always the prompter. My mother had a good voice for a prompter: quiet but clear. All those singing lessons were good for that, I guess. Her one role, and it was a starring role, was in Angel Street. It was so long ago, I can't remember the names of the characters, or anything about the actual sets for the play. The Gravesend Players used the Town Hall, and sets were never very specially attended to there. What I remember is the movie that was made from Angel Street; it was called Gaslight, and I've seen it several times. My mother had the Ingrid Bergman part; she was the wife who was being driven insane by her villainous husband. And Dan was the villain-he was the Charles Boyer character. If you know the story, although Dan and my mother were cast as husband and wife, there is little love evidenced between them onstage; it was the only time or place I ever saw Dan be hateful to my mother. Dan tells me that there are still people in Gravesend who give him 'evil looks' because of that Charles Boyer role he played; they look at him as if he hit that long-ago foul ball-and as if he meant to. And only once in that production-it was actually in dress rehearsal-did my mother wear the red dress. It might have been the evening when she is all dressed up to go to the theater (or somewhere) with her awful husband, but he has hidden the painting and accuses her of hiding it, and he makes her believe that she's hidden it, too-and then he banishes her to her room and doesn't let her go out at all. Or maybe it was when they go out to a concert and he finds his watch in her purse-he has put it there, but he makes her break down and plead with him to believe her, in front of all those snooty people. Anyway, my mother was supposed to wear the red dress in just one scene, and it was the only scene in the play where she was simply terrible. She couldn't leave the dress alone-she plucked imaginary lint off it; she kept staring at herself, as if the cleavage of the dress, all by itself, had suddenly plunged a foot; she never stopped itching around, as if the material of the dress made her skin crawl. Owen and I saw every production of Angel Street; we saw all of Dan's plays-both the academy plays and the amateur theatricals of The Gravesend Players-but Angel Street was one of the few productions that we saw every showing of. To watch my mother onstage, and to watch Dan being awful to her, was such a riveting lie. It was not the play that interested us-it was what a lie it was: that Dan was awful to my mother, that he meant her harm. That was fascinating. Owen and I always knew everyone in all the productions of The Gravesend Players. Mrs. Walker, the ogre of our Episcopal Sunday school, played the flirtatious maid in Angel Street-the Angela Lansbury character, if you can believe it. Owen and I couldn't. Mrs. Walker acting like a tart! Mrs. Walker being vulgar! We kept expecting her to shout: 'Owen Meany, you get down from up there! You get back to your seat!'
