Turn 8 of 44

Ask Vivian to put the stockings on you first which she says that was the plan. You giggle like a housewife in excitement as she giggles back. The stockings soon are on your legs and connected to the garter belts. She opens your closet and you see that it’s full of 1950s dresses and shoes. Vivian grab the white sailor dress with a navy blue and red sailor collar and a pair of red high heels.

"Vivian?" you call toward the hall, and your voice comes out in that delighted lilt, breathless as a girl at a birthday party.

"Do the stockings first! Please?" "That was the plan, silly!" she calls back, and then she's in the doorway laughing, and you're laughing too, the two of you giggling like schoolgirls at a slumber party, a sound you have never made in your life and now make as easy as blinking.

She kneels on the rug in her orange heels with the nylon box open on her lap, and her hands are cool and sure. The first stocking gathers down your leg like cool water, and she points your toe and draws it up, up, over the calf, over the smooth thigh, smoothing the seam straight with two orange fingertips.

"Seams straight as a sermon, honey," she murmurs. "A gal can tell everything about a woman from a crooked seam." The second follows, and then the little clasps, four of them, fastening the stockings to the garter belt with tiny clicks, snug and exact, and you feel it like an anchor dropping — held, finished, real.

"Now for the fun part," she says, and opens your closet.

Your closet. Your blazers and interview blouses and the one pair of broken-in sneakers are gone, and in their place hang dresses — dozens of them, swinging softly on padded hangers, full skirts and fitted bodices in every pastel a paint chip ever dreamed of, gingham and polka dots and one in cherry red with a bolero. Shoes line the floor in tidy rows, little heels and kitten heels and saddle-toned flats. It smells like cedar and lavender. You don't remember buying any of this, and the not-remembering slides off you like water off wax paper, because of course you did. Look at them all.

Vivian's hand moves down the row like a pianist choosing a key, and stops.

"Oh," she breathes. "Oh, *honey*." Out it comes on its hanger: a crisp white sailor dress, the bodice fitted, the skirt full, and a wide navy collar falling down the back, edged and tied with a bright red scarf, little brass anchors marching down the buttons.

"Nautical but nice," she says, delighted with herself. "Every gal needs a sailor dress. It says *wholesome*." And over her arm, a pair of red high heels, gleaming like candy apples, sized for your new dainty feet.