Authors: Erin McKean

The Secret Lives of Dresses (32 page)

BOOK: The Secret Lives of Dresses

6.38Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub

ads

Dora sorted quickly through the photographs, looking for a picture of a woman in a wedding gown. There wasn’t one, but Dora didn’t need it. She didn’t think she needed anything she didn’t have at that moment.

Epilogue

I
t was almost spring before Mimi’s reopened. Dora had pushed and prodded and pushed again to get the store open well before the beginning of February—Forsyth College, weirdly enough, had a tradition of costumed Mardi Gras parties—and they had made the deadline, if just barely. Dora had commuted back and forth to Lymond, graduated, and worn a dress with a very small and tasteful sash (
not
, Maux had pointed out, by any stretch of the imagination something that could be called a butt bow) to stand up in Maux and Harvey’s wedding, where she had danced with Con. She had spent a lot of time next to Con, in one way or another—scraping, then painting, or then arguing about painting, followed by moving in all the boxes of stock, and rearranging them, and rearranging them again, interspersed with the occasional movie and sandwich from Lud’s.

Gabby had walked through the night before the official opening, and nearly water-spotted a 1930s silk dress by bawling dangerously near it. “It’s okay,” she said, waving Dora off. “I’m okay. Mimi would have loved this, you know.” Jerry led her outside, where she couldn’t do any damage.

Con looked around the store with her. “I think it will do,” he said. “What do you think?”

“There’s just one last thing,” Dora said, “but I’m working on it.”

“What?” Con was concerned. “We’ve thought of everything, I’m absolutely sure.”

“There’s this.” Dora had put a plaid day dress on the mannequin nearest to the register. She hung a little cardboard placard around the mannequin’s neck. It said, “Ask me about my secret life.”

Con frowned. “I thought you bought that dress last week. How could it have a secret life?”

Dora blushed. “I wrote it.” Dora pointed to a few pages resting on the counter. “From here on out, every dress at Mimi’s is going to come with a secret life. I’m even printing them out on fancy paper, so customers can frame them, if they want.”

“You wrote this?” Con picked up the pages. He started reading.

“Hey, stop,” Dora said. “You only get the story if you buy the dress.”

“It won’t fit me,” Con said. “That’s not fair.” He started reading out loud. “‘It was only on Friday that I knew she was going to marry that man.’” He stopped.

“Today’s Friday.” He smiled at Dora. “I think I’d better buy you that dress.”

Reading Group Guide

If the outfit you’re wearing right now were going to tell a story, what would it say? Do you have any items in your closet that would have interesting stories to share?

Do you think it’s true that “the clothes make the man”? Why or why not? Would Dora’s perspective and goals have changed if she had continued to wear cargo pants and raggedy T-shirts?

Maux has a very flamboyant personal style; she never excuses the way she loves to dress. Do you wear something you love every day?

What do you think compelled Mimi to begin writing the secret lives? Were they for Dora or for herself?

If Mimi hadn’t fallen ill, do you think Dora would have learned about the secret lives or about her mother and father? What was Mimi waiting for?

Mimi spent a lot of time assembling Dora’s closet, yet Dora never wore anything from it. Why do you think each of them did this? Has anyone ever done you a favor so huge that it felt like an obligation?

Con falls in love with an ideal of Dora (as put forth by Mimi) before ever meeting her. How do you think he would have felt if he’d met Dora at Lymond? Did Dora have an ideal of Gary in her mind, too?

After many in-between relationships, Gabby ends up remarrying her first husband. Will it work out? Do you believe in giving second chances to relationships?

Mimi’s family relationships are troubled: she was estranged from her son, distant from her half-brother, and even slightly removed from Dora at times. Why do you think Mimi held herself apart? Are any relationships in your life like this?

Do you think Dora eventually would have come home even if Mimi hadn’t fallen ill? What else might she have done instead?

About the author

Erin McKean lives in California, south of San Francisco, and spends her free time reading, sewing, blogging, roller-skating, and arguing about whether robots or zombies would win in a fight (lasers optional). She loves loud prints, quiet people, long books with happy endings, and McVitie’s Milk Chocolate Hobnobs.

This is Erin’s first novel, and indeed, it’s really her first book where the words are arranged in something other than alphabetical order, as her day job is as a dictionary editor, currently for
Wordnik.com
. Her other books include
Weird and Wonderful Words
,
More Weird and Wonderful Words
,
Totally Weird and Wonderful Words
, and
That’s Amore
(which is also a collection of words).

Do visit Erin’s website
www.dressaday.com
where you will find a number of the original ‘secret lives’ that were the inspiration for this novel.