Her Fearful Symmetry

The Violet Dress

EDIE AND VALENTINA sat together in Edie’s workroom, sewing. It was the Saturday before Christmas; Julia had gone downtown with Jack to help him shop. Valentina pinned the dress pattern to yards of violet silk, careful to lay out the pieces without wasting fabric. She was making two identical dresses, and she wasn’t sure she’d bought enough silk.

“That’s good,” Edie said. The room was warm in the afternoon sun, and she felt a little sleepy. She offered Valentina her best scissors and watched the steel work through the thin material. That’s such a great sound, the blades moving together that way. Valentina handed Edie the pieces, and Edie began to transfer the seam lines from the pattern to the fabric. They passed the silk back and forth, working companionably out of long habit. Once the fabric was marked and unpinned and repinned without the pattern, Valentina sat at her sewing machine and carefully stitched the dress together while Edie began to pin and cut out the second dress.

“Look, Mom,” said Valentina. She stood and held the front of the dress against her chest. Static electricity wrapped the skirt around her with a crackle. There were no sleeves yet, and the seams were raw; Edie thought the dress was like a costume for a fairy in a Christmas pantomime. “You look like Cinderella,” Edie said.

“Do I?” Valentina went to the mirror and smiled at her reflection. “I like this colour.”

“It suits you.”

“Julia wanted me to make them in pink.”

Edie frowned. “You’d look like twelve-year-old ballerinas. We could have made hers pink.”

Valentina caught her mother’s eye, then looked away. “It wasn’t worth the hassle. She wanted whatever I was making for myself.”

“I wish you’d stand up to her more often, sweet.”

Valentina peeled the dress away from her and sat down at the machine. She began to make the sleeves. “Did Elspeth boss you around? Or did you boss her?”

Edie hesitated. “We didn’t-it wasn’t like that.” She laid the second dress flat on the table and began to roll the tracing wheel over the seam lines. “We did everything together. We never liked to be alone. I still miss her.” Valentina sat still, waiting for her mother to continue. But Edie said, “Send me photos of the flat, will you? I imagine it must be full of our parents’ furniture; Elspeth loved all that heavy Victorian stuff.”

“Okay, sure.” Valentina turned in her chair and said, “I wish we weren’t going.”

“I know. But it’s like your dad says: you can’t stay home forever.”

“I wasn’t going to.”

Edie smiled. “That’s good.”

“I wish I could stay in this room forever, and sew things.”

“That sounds like a fairy tale.”

Valentina laughed. “I’m Rumpelstiltskin.”

“No, no,” said Edie. She put down the dress pieces and went to Valentina. Edie stood behind her and put her hands on her shoulders. She leaned over and kissed Valentina on her forehead. “You’re the princess.”

Valentina looked up and saw her mother smiling at her upside down. “Am I?”

“Of course,” said Edie. “Always.”

“So we’re going to live happily ever after?”

“Absolutely.”

“Okay.” Valentina had an acute moment, an awareness of a memory being formed. We’re going to live happily ever after? Absolutely. Edie went back to the other dress, and Valentina finished the first sleeve. By the time Jack and Julia got home, Valentina was wearing the violet dress and Edie was crouching in front of her with a mouthful of pins, hemming the skirt. It was all Valentina could do to hold still; she wanted to twirl and make the dress flare out like a carnival ride. I’ll wear it to the ball, she thought, when the prince invites me to dance.

“Can I try it on?” said Julia.

“No,” said Edie through the pins, before Valentina could speak. “This one is hers. Come back later.”

“Okay,” said Julia, and she turned and ran off to wrap the presents Jack had bought.

“See,” said Edie to Valentina. “You just open your mouth and say No.”

“Okay,” said Valentina. She twirled and the dress flared. Edie laughed.

Boxing Day

JACK WALKED into his den and found the twins watching a movie. It was midnight and usually all three of them would have been in bed by now.

“That looks somewhat familiar,” said Jack. “What are you watching?”

“The Filth and the Fury,” Julia said. “It’s a documentary about the Sex Pistols. You and Mom gave it to us for Christmas.”

“Oh.” The twins were sprawled together on the couch, so Jack lowered himself into the recliner. As soon as he was seated he felt exhausted. Jack had always enjoyed Christmas, but the days after Christmas seemed vacant and cheerless. The effect was compounded by the fact that the twins were leaving for London in a few days. Where did the time go? Five days until their twenty-first birthdays. Then gone.

“How’s the packing going?” he asked.

“Okay,” said Valentina. She turned off the sound on the TV. “We’re going to be over the weight limit.”

“Somehow that’s not surprising,” Jack said.

“We need to get converters, you know, to plug in our computers and stuff.” Julia looked at Jack. “Can we go downtown with you tomorrow?”

“Sure. We’ll have lunch at Heaven on Seven,” Jack said. “Your mom will want to come with.” Edie had been shadowing the twins for weeks, hoarding them, memorising them.

“That’s cool, we can go to Water Tower. We need new boots.”

Valentina watched Johnny Rotten singing silently. He looks deranged. That’s a great sweater. She and Julia had studiously prepared for the trip to London, reading Lonely Planet and Charles Dickens, making packing lists and trying to find their new flat on Google Earth. They had speculated endlessly about Aunt Elspeth and the mysterious Mr. Fanshaw, had been very pleasantly surprised by the amount of money in their new bank account at Lloyd’s. Now there was hardly anything left to do, which created an odd void, a feeling of restless dread. Valentina wanted to leave right this minute, or never.

Julia watched her father. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. Why?”

“I dunno, you seem kind of wiped.” You’ve gained a huge amount of weight and you sigh a lot. What’s wrong with you?

“I’m okay. It’s just the holidays.”

“Oh.”

Jack sat trying to imagine the house/his marriage/his life without the twins. He and Edie had been avoiding the subject for months, so now he thought about it obsessively, oscillating between fantasies of marital bliss, his actual memories of the last time the twins had left home and his worries about Edie.

For some time before Elspeth’s death Edie had been distracted. Jack had hired the detective in hope of discovering the reason for her absentmindedness, her vacant stare, her bright, false cheer whenever he asked her about it. But the detective could only observe Edie; he had no answers for Jack’s questions. After Elspeth’s death Edie’s distraction had been replaced by a profound sadness. Jack could not comfort her. He could not seem to say the right thing, though he tried. Now he wondered how Edie would fare once the twins were gone.

Each time the twins left for college, things started out well. Jack and Edie revelled in their freedom: there would be late nights, loud sex, spur-of-the-moment amusements and slightly excessive drinking. But then a kind of bleakness always set in. Soon it would be upon them, their empty house. They