Revenge of the Wrought-Iron Flamingos (11 page)

Mother swept away, fanning herself with a fan ever so slightly more ornate than Mrs. Waterston's.

"Your mother looks nice," Michael said, in a suspiciously noncommittal tone.

"Yes, I can't wait to see your mother's reaction," I said.

He rolled his eyes.

"It's very odd, don't you think?" I went on. "It's almost as if she knew exactly what your mother was wearing and deliberately set out to show her up."

"But how could she possibly know that?" Michael said.

I pointed to Mrs. Tranh, who, while ostensibly supervising her seamstresses, had turned her attention to the party and was glancing intently from Mother to Mrs. Waterston and back again.

"Oh, God," he said. "They must be feuding again. I hate it when they do that."

Maybe the party wouldn't be so boring after all, I thought, as Michael and I approached Mrs. Tranh.

"We got your costume," she said. "You go in dressing room and change now."

"I wish you hadn't gone to so much trouble," I said.

"I rather make ten dress for you than one of those," she said, indicating the blandly pretty colonial dresses on the rack.

"Yes, but this whole weekend is already such a lot of work for you."

She shrugged.

"No problem," she said. "Lot of work; lot of money for the ladies. Lot of work for her, too," she added, jerking her head at Mrs. Waterston, who was over by the bar, apparently giving the bartender the third degree about something.

"Yes, isn't it lovely how it's kept her out of your hair for so long," I said.

Mrs. Tranh rolled her eyes.

"Don't worry," I said. "I'm sure she'll find another project before too long."

"She better," Mrs. Tranh muttered. "You and Michael gonna get married, maybe? Let her plan the wedding?"

Michael chuckled. Had he put her up to this, the rat? Or had she come up with the idea on her own? Either way, I wished she'd drop the subject.

"I should change," I said.

"Make it a big wedding, biggest one we ever had in town," Mrs. Tranh said. "Keep her busy for a whole year, planning a wedding like that."

"I'll keep it in mind," I said, retreating toward the dressing room.

"And grandchildren!" Mrs. Tranh called after me. "Plenty of grandchildren! Keep her real busy!"

I ducked into the dressing room. Outside, I could hear Michael laughing and talking with Mrs. Tranh in a mishmash of French and Vietnamese. I pressed a hand to my cheek, which felt hot. Was it the weather, or my embarrassment? Dammit, I thought, I wish everyone would stop trying to push us toward the altar. Maybe my problem wasn't fear of commitment; maybe it was just plain, old-fashioned stubbornness. Maybe if everyone started trying to pry Michael and me apart….

Later, I told myself, and I shed my workday gown and turned to see what Mrs. Tranh and her ladies had made.

They'd designed it to go with Michael's white-and-gold uniform that was clear. Off-white dupioni silk shot with gold threads, and trimmed with lots of lace, most white but some gold.

The improvised dressing room contained a full-length mirror. I held the dress up in front of me and sighed. I couldn't just let Mrs. Tranh do this for me for nothing. Even though Michael had probably already paid her, I had to do something to thank her.

First, of course, I had to get into the dress. And for that I was going to need help; it hooked up the back. And was it my imagination…no, I spread the material at the waist to see how it fit. Definitely too small. I wasn't fat, but I wasn't anorexic either; I could see no chance of squeezing into that dress.

I heard the curtain rustle. Mrs. Tranh, I assumed, or one of her ladies, come to help me into the dress. I'd have to break the news that they'd miscalculated, I thought as I turned.

And found myself looking up at Michael.

"Mother would have a fit if she saw the glaring anachronisms you're wearing instead of plain, sensible, colonial undergarments," he said, putting his arms around my waist. "Although I rather like them."

"Not surprising," I said, reaching up to put my arms around his neck. "You picked them out. Do you own stock in Victoria's Secret or something?"

"No, but maybe I should buy some," he said, reaching down to kiss my neck.

"You should," I said. "Might as well get something out of all the money you spend there."

"Oh, I do," he said, with the sort of soft laugh that distracted me completely from the business of getting into the costume.

I was about to suggest that we skip the party and adjourn to our tent when I heard Mrs. Waterston's voice outside, berating someone. .

"Damn," Michael said. I had reason to believe his thoughts had been running along the same lines as mine, but his mother's voice brought both of us back to Earth. "We don't dare leave her alone for long; she's so keyed up there's no telling who she'll upset. I'd better behave, and lace you into your costume."

"Hook me up, actually, but I don't think it's going to work," I said. "This thing is definitely too small."

"Not when you put the corset on," Michael said.

"Corset?" I said. "You've got to be kidding!"

But no, when I looked back at the hook on which the dress had been hanging, there was, indeed, a white-and-gold corset. The real thing, with boning and laces up the back.

"You're right," I said. "Although they'd have called it 'stays' in this time period."

"I stand corrected."

"Look at all the work she put into this," I said, "All that lace and decorative stitching that no one will ever see."

"I think it was intended for a small but select audience," Michael said. "She told me you'd need help getting into it."

"Badly thought out," I said. "It should be designed so I need help getting out of it."

"Oh, I'm sure you will," he said.

Although it took longer than expected, for one reason or another, Michael eventually managed to lace me into the stays – not all that tightly, thank goodness. I'm not into bondage. But it did take enough off my waist that the white-and-gold gown fit like a second skin.

"I suppose we'd better go out and let Mrs. Tranh admire her creation," Michael said.

"And see what your mother has gotten up to," I added.

"That, too," he said.

"I like this dress already," I said. "It's probably an anachronism of the first order, but she's given me pockets."

I put a few essentials in the pockets and stepped outside, where we allowed Mrs. Tranh and the ladies to ooh and ahh over their handiwork for a few minutes. Then we braced ourselves and stepped out into the party.

We must have stayed longer in the dressing room than I realized – the party had gotten crowded, and almost all of the rental costumes were in use. The effect was rather impressive, as if we'd really been transported back into colonial Yorktown.

At least from a slight distance. Closer up, women didn't look too bad – "One size fits most" is easier to achieve with period dresses. Although most weren't wearing stays, of course, so they hadn't quite achieved what I was now learning to recognize as the authentic period silhouette.

The men, alas, looked pretty motley. Apparently, Mrs. Tranh had estimated on the small side in making the men's costumes, and a fair number hadn't been able to get into the tight knee breeches. Looking around, I could spot half a dozen men whose costumes looked perfectly fine until you noticed that beneath their blue coats you could spot denim or fluorescent polyester or garish plaid.

Luckily, Mrs. Tranh and the ladies had also made a lot of what the reenactors called "overalls" – though to me, they looked more like long white gaiters. The overalls began at midthigh and reached down to cover the tops of the shoes, which meant that you only caught occasional glimpses of the modern pants when their wearers walked. Or modern shoes, for that matter. Evidently Mrs. Waterston hadn't even tried to provide period shoes, simply instructing people to show up in dark shoes if they didn't have proper footgear. She'd had me make a quantity of large buckles that could be clipped onto a shoe to give at least a suggestion of authenticity. I saw my handiwork gracing a remarkably wide range of shoes. They made penny loafers and black leather Reeboks look rather plausible, at least from a distance, but I wasn't sure they did anything to improve the authenticity of Air Jordans.

Fortunately, the majority of the guests came in some kind of costume. Except for the deliberate rebels, most crafters just wore whatever they'd been wearing all day. What they'd probably be wearing for the next two days, for that matter. Well, that would add to the air of authenticity. Michael had invited half a dozen of his fellow French soldiers, and a few people had burst forth with truly wonderful costumes. Tad was still resplendent in his silk and velvet, while Faulk had decided to pay homage to the Scottish side of his ancestry by wearing a kilt and was attracting a great many admiring glances.

So was I, though for rather different reasons.

"Meg, you look fabulous," Amanda told me. She was still in her homespun outfit, but from the look on her face I could tell she was kicking herself for not researching period party clothes. "And you've lost weight," she added. "I didn't notice it in that baggier dress you were wearing all day."

"That's because I didn't lose any," I said. "I'm wearing a set of stays under this dress; the damned things really do take inches off your waist."

"Where does it put them?" she asked.

"It pushes everything up and out," Michael said, with an appreciative glance.

"Well, yes, actually it does," I said, adjusting the lace at the edge of my bodice in a vain attempt to disguise exactly how very much of me there was to push up and out.

"Isn't that a mite uncomfortable?" Amanda asked me.

"Actually, it isn't," I admitted. "Sounds weird, but it gives your back a lot of support which, after standing around all day, isn't exactly a bad idea. And it doesn't feel constricting – but more regal, if that doesn't sound too weird. I mean, there's no way you can slouch in this thing."

"Yes, it makes you look taller," Michael said. Which didn't bother him, of course, since at six feet four inches he still towered over me, no matter how much taller the stays made me.

"Taller, yeah; and that's not all," Amanda said, chuckling.

"Honey, you'd better keep your eye on her in that thing. You don't want some fast-talking redcoat to cut you out."

"Don't worry," Michael said, putting a proprietary arm around my waist. "I intend to."

We strolled around the party, taking in the sights. The string quartet was a little shaky. Obviously, they hadn't been here all day, like the rest of us. They still jumped every time the cannon fired, while most of us had learned to ignore the artillery. I wondered if the residents of Yorktown in 1781 had gotten so oblivious to cannon fire. Probably not, if each boom signaled that somewhere in town a cannonball was about to fall. A couple of houses in town still had cannonballs in their sides. Although I knew at least one of the most picturesquely embedded cannonballs, the one in the Nelson house, had fallen out in the twentieth century and was cemented back in by a Hollingworth cousin who worked for the Park Service, during preparations for the 1931 Sesquicentennial – one of the things they don't tell the tourists.

Someone had told Mrs. Waterston that lawn bowling was a popular social activity in colonial Virginia, so she'd roped off part of the lawn and provided several sets of balls, hoping some of the guests would strike up a game and add to the picturesque period atmosphere.

Unfortunately, she'd neglected to provide a set of rules, and anyone who actually knew how the game was supposed to be played had long since deserted the bowling lawn.

By the time Michael and I arrived, we found a standoff between a group who wanted to play something resembling horseshoes without any stakes and a flock of my aunts, advocating a mutant form of wicketless, malletless croquet. The argument was purely theoretical, since the balls had long since been appropriated by my nine-year-old nephew, Eric, and his friends. They hid in the bushes, rolling balls out among the guests' feet, trying to see how close they could come to selected relatives' ankles without actually hitting them. From time to time, you could hear startled squawks from various parts of the crowd, as someone stepped on a ball. If you happened to be watching, you'd see the victim's head suddenly disappear into the crowd, usually accompanied by a small eruption of food and drink.