Chapter 8: The Woman Who Made the Dress
Her name was Dora, and she worked out of a studio three streets away.
Tia had found her eight months ago through a friend of a friend — a woman who did alterations and small repairs and, occasionally, when the right person came to her with the right idea, something more.
The orange gown had been the something more.
Three fittings, two adjustments, six weeks of work.
Dora had been seventy-one years old and had measured Tia's shoulders with a cloth tape and said, in the particular tone of someone who does not hand out assessments lightly: "You have good posture.
Most people lose it by forty.
Don't lose yours."
Tia buzzed the studio intercom.
The door clicked open.
Dora was at her cutting table when Tia came up the stairs, a length of deep green fabric spread before her, her reading glasses pushed to the top of her head.
She looked up.
She looked at Tia's empty hands.
"You're not wearing it," she said.
"No."
Dora set down her shears.
She pulled out a stool from under the table and placed it across from her.
She sat down in her own chair and waited.
Tia sat.
She told her what had happened.
All of it — the dressing room, the scissors, Marissa, Sayan, Elena, the lobby, the corridor.
She did not perform it or soften it.
She said it the way you say something to a person you trust to simply receive it.
Dora listened without interrupting.
She had the stillness of someone who has lived long enough to understand that the most useful thing you can do for another person, very often, is to stay quiet and let them finish.
When Tia was done, Dora said: "Where is the dress now?"
"Still in the dressing room.
I left it on the table."
"The cut — which seam?"
"Center front.
Top to bottom, nearly.
She used the full blade."
Dora made a small sound.
Not shock.
Assessment.
"Bring it to me," she said.
"Marissa will pay for it."
"I didn't ask who was paying." Dora folded her hands on the table.
"I asked you to bring it to me." She looked at Tia over the rim of her glasses.
"Can it be saved?"
"I don't know," Tia said honestly.
"Neither do I, until I see it." A pause.
"But I made that dress for you.
I'm not handing the final word on it to a woman with a bad afternoon and a pair of scissors."
Tia looked at her.
Something in her chest, which had been very controlled since the moment she walked out of the dressing room, came a little undone.
"Dora."
"Don't," Dora said, not unkindly.
"Not yet.
Cry later.
Right now tell me about the man."
Tia steadied herself.
"He lied to both of us.
Kept two doors open because he couldn't stand to close either one.
When he finally had to choose, he didn't choose.
He just — waited for it to collapse."
"And did you love him?"
"Yes."
"Do you still?"
Tia thought about it.
A real answer, not a fast one.
"I love who I thought he was," she said.
"I'm still working out how much of that was real."
Dora nodded.
"That's honest.
Most people don't say that.
They say yes or no and pretend it's simple." She reached across the table and covered Tia's hand with hers — dry and warm and steady.
"Some men are very good at being real in pieces.
They give you the real part in the moments when it matters, and the rest of the time they are improvising.
That is not a you problem.
That is a them problem."
Tia turned her hand over and held on for a moment.
"Go get the dress," Dora said.
"Come back this afternoon.
I'll make tea."
"I'll come back this afternoon," Tia said.
She stood.
She looked around the studio — the bolts of fabric, the thread racks, the pinboard covered in cut patterns, the low window that looked out onto the roof of the building below and, beyond it, the pale winter sky.
"Dora," she said.
"Did you ever have a day like this?
When you were younger."
Dora considered it, leaning back in her chair.
"I had one very much like it," she said.
"When I was thirty-four.
Different details.
Same architecture." She picked up her shears.
"It was also a Tuesday, now that I think about it."
Tia laughed despite herself.
"What did you do?"
"I repaired the thing that could be repaired," Dora said.
"And I left the rest on the table." She looked up.
"That was the right decision, as it turned out."
Tia took the stairs back down slowly.
She pushed out into the afternoon and stood on the pavement for a moment with the low winter sun on her face.
Her phone buzzed again.
Sayan.
She let it go.
Then a new message, from a number she had just added to her contacts this afternoon.
Elena: *Marissa just called me.
She told me everything.
I'm sorry for my part in today.
I meant what I said about dinner.
Only if you want to.*
Tia typed back: *I want to.
Not yet.
Soon.*
She walked back toward the building where the dress was waiting.
The street was the same street it had always been.
She passed a flower stall and a coffee cart and a woman pushing a pram and a man reading a paper on a bench who did not look up.
May you like
She had a dress to collect and a seamstress waiting with tea.
That was enough for today.
