Chapter 7 - What Rolled Under the Chair
The door clicked behind us and the ballroom sound cut off like someone had turned a dial. The private dressing suite was smaller than I expected, warm and too bright, a vanity with bulbs around the mirror, a garment rack pushed to one wall, two upholstered chairs. My tray was still in my left hand. I set it down on the vanity because my wrist had started to shake.
The woman in magenta sat down hard in the nearest chair. She kept both hands on her belly. Marcello stayed standing near the door, his jacket pulled tight across his shoulders. Lily stood in the middle of the rug in her dark blue velvet dress, her bows a little crooked now, looking from me to him like she was waiting for permission.
"Show me again, Lily," Marcello said quietly. "Slow."
Lily nodded. She held her hands out in front of her stomach, cupped like she was holding something big. Then she let them drop.
"It went like this," she said.
Her hands slipped down and apart. She bent her knees a little with the motion, the way kids do when they are imitating something heavy. Then she flattened one hand and rolled it through the air toward the second chair.
"It fell and it rolled," she said. "Under."
Marcello glanced at the space under the chairs. There was nothing there now except carpet and a few bobby pins. The blonde woman gave a short laugh that did not sound like a laugh.
"See?" she said. "She is acting it out. Three-year-olds do this."
I watched Lily's hands. She did it again without being asked, slower this time, her fingers spreading as if the round thing had slipped out of something. Not popped. Slipped. That word stuck in my head.
I remembered why she had even been upstairs. The catering captain had told me to keep her in the break room with the coloring book. She had used up the blue crayon down to the nub and started crying because the water in her picture would not look right. I had told her to run up to my tote in the locker alcove and get the zip pouch with the new crayons. Two minutes, I had told her. Right back down. She had come back without the crayons, her face white, and tugged my skirt and said she saw the lady's belly fall off.
"You were getting crayons," I said out loud.
Lily looked at me. "The blue one was gone."
Marcello turned his head toward me. "Where? Upstairs where?"
"The service hall by the lockers," I said. "Past the stairs. There's a sitting area with chairs. Staff leaves bags there."
He nodded once, filing it away, then stepped closer to the woman in magenta. The satin of her gown caught the vanity lights, bright pink along the folds. Up close I could see the fabric was pulled tight over the front and looser at her sides.
"Stand up a moment," he said.
"What?" She kept her hand on her belly. "Marcello—"
"Just for a moment."
She stood. He did not touch her at first. He just looked at the side seam of the gown, near her left hip, where the long sleeve met the bodice. A thin dark thread hung there, maybe half an inch long, against the magenta.
"There's a thread here," he said.
"It is a maternity alteration," she said quickly. "They let it out twice. I told the tailor—"
He reached, careful, and lifted the loose thread between two fingers. The seam gaped just enough that I saw the underside. A narrow strip of pale hook-and-loop tape ran inside the fabric, maybe three inches, half hidden in the lining. Another short piece faced it, the loops flattened with wear.
I heard my own breath catch. Velcro did not belong inside evening satin unless something was meant to open and close fast.
Marcello looked up at her. "What is this for?"
Her mouth opened. For a second she had nothing. Then her eyes filled, fast and shiny under the vanity bulbs.
"It is for the alterations," she said, her voice breaking. "You think I do not know how I look? They said the weight would change. They put in panels so I would not have to buy a new gown. Ask any maternity tailor."
Tears spilled over. She pressed her palm harder against the round front of the gown and sat back down, shoulders shaking. "I am so tired of being looked at like I am lying about my own body."
Lily stepped back until her back touched my legs. I put my hand on her shoulder and felt her trembling through the velvet.
Marcello did not move. He was still looking at that strip of tape inside the seam, at the way the fabric around it puckered from being pulled open more than once.
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"If it is only tailoring," he said, "then you will not mind showing us the sitting area upstairs."
The woman kept crying, her hand circling slow over the magenta satin. The room smelled like hairspray and warm bulbs. Nobody reached for the door yet.
