Going Vintage (18 page)

I write two pages of notes about the Industrial Revolution. The virtual project took less time. The historical information is all on one site—each time the user adds an element, a lesson is attached. So if I have a dress factory, and click on a seamstress, five pages of facts appear. With books, I have to read a lot to get to the words I want. Then I need to quote those words, combine the quotes, and add my own arguments and thoughts to that.

This crusade would have been a lot easier in the summer, when school projects weren’t involved. Too bad I didn’t see into Jeremy’s cheating soul three months earlier. I would have saved money on his birthday present too.

“Being at the library on a Friday night is geeky enough, but you’re reading books about the Industrial Revolution on top of it?” Ginnie slides into the chair next to me.

“Homework.” I check my watch, which I’ve taken to wearing again now that I don’t have a cell phone. “Our sewing class starts in ten minutes.”

“Homework
and
sewing on a Friday night? What a social calendar.”

I stack up three books, hoping I can find more information later. I’m starting to form a thesis, but in no way do I know enough to write five pages. “You’re also at the library on a Friday night. What does that say about you?”

“That I’m a nice sister.” Ginnie picks up
The Busy Girl’s Guide to Etiquette
, published in 1959, and starts thumbing through. She stops at a passage and snorts. “‘Wake up two hours before your husband so you can have time to bathe, do your hair, powder you nose, and make a healthy breakfast. No man wants to see a sleep-tousled wife!’ Oh, Mallory. This is awful.”

I reach for the book. “That’s one passage.”

Ginnie holds the book up higher. “Really? What about this? ‘Don’t whine to your spouse about your daily troubles. He’s had a harder day providing for you and your children.’
This
is what you’re aspiring to? To be some guy’s house slave?”

She thumps the book down and I slide it across the table so I can read for myself. Ginnie was reading a chapter called “The Happy Husband.” There is not a “Happy Wife” chapter.

“It’s not that bad. Besides, you even said that it would be nice if Mom cooked dinner every night,” I reason.

“What, and miss out on pizza night? Thai night? Sushi night—”

“The point is, I’m not trying to be a housewife. I’m a teenager; Grandma was a teenager. That’s what The List is about.”

Ginnie hops out of her seat. “I hope you’re not romanticizing this too much. That prefeminist movement crap is scary.”

“What do you know about the feminist movement?” Um, what did I know? I’d meant to read some books on that too, but when I thought of old feminists, I thought of armpit hair and bra burning and lots of angry, political yelling, which is not nearly as fun as party dresses and school clubs. “So what if women cared about their families and cleaned a lot? That’s probably why Grandma ended up so great.”

“Grandma ended up great because she worked her butt off, not because she went to the soda shop with her steady. I’ve read up on the sixties too. They didn’t have hardly any sports for woman, or jobs, and they made less money for doing the same work.” Her voice has taken on that matter-of-fact edge. I hate when she thinks she knows more than me.
Younger
sister, remember? “It’s not like today, where you can say you want to be a doctor and work hard and it happens. You have better opportunities now than she did then.”

“You’re totally missing the point.”

“Am I?”

I blow out an exasperated breath. “Let’s just go to sewing class.”

I check out the Industrial Revolution books, but don’t bother with the sixties stuff. I’m worried history will only discredit my sunshiny hypothesis.

The classroom on the first floor of the community center is packed with wannabe sewers. No, that’s not what you call them, right? Seamstresses? But that’s girls, so what are the guys? Oh, tailors. We are a robust group of future seamstresses and tailors.

Except it turns out everyone already has basic sewing skills and they’re here to learn more. Even Ginnie nods along as the teacher explains we’ll be working on cross-stitching and hemming and fusing, whatever that means.

“How do you know what she’s talking about?” I whisper to Ginnie.

“From when I used to sew with Grandma during our weekend vacations. Didn’t you?”

No, I got early-morning wake-up calls and shopping trips. Which I would normally prefer, but it’s not fair that Grandma’s tutelage means Ginnie is better than me at something else.

I spend twenty minutes trying to thread a needle, tie that little knot at the end, and stitch two pieces of fabric together in a straight line. My hands shake as I poke, poke, pull, all the while trying to ignore the hum of sewing machines run by professional sewers … seamstresses masquerading as beginners.

Meanwhile, my sister has already rummaged through the fabric scraps and is designing a quilt. Swell. She can make my dress. Make it, wear it with her steady, cook a fabulous dinner, and finish the whole stupid list.

No. Delegation is not as worthwhile as participation. I will do this, even if my homecoming dress ends up looking like a pillowcase. I stick my needle into the fabric again and prick my finger on the side.

Ugh. I’m trying to abandon the present, but I don’t even have the skills to master the past.

Grandma picks me up Saturday for an afternoon of fabric and pattern shopping. Orange County is famous for its big retail centers like Fashion Island and South Coast Plaza, but the very best shopping in all of Southern California is ten minutes from my house at the boutiques at Orange Circle. One of the stores also sells vintage fabrics, and I’m hoping we’ll find something perfect for my dress.

We find a spot on the street and Grandma effortlessly
parallels her Mini Cooper, all without interrupting her Ode to the Fancy Senior Community. “We’re reading
The Awakening
for book club. It’s amazing how progressive Chopin’s views were for the time, and how relatable the text can be over a hundred years later. Oh, and tennis is better, I can overhand serve now. Not over the net, but it’s progress. But my favorite friends so far are the ladies in the Slot Group.”

I’m pulled away from my daydreaming about pale blue satins to ask about that last one. “Slot Group?”

Grandma feeds the meter and slings her purse over her shoulder. “The ladies and I carpool to Las Vegas once a month. It’s only a four-hour drive, fun chance to gab. We eat at the buffet, play poker … I won a thousand bucks in fifteen minutes, so my new nickname is Cool Hand Luke.”

“Who is Luke?”

“Never mind. It’s an old movie.”

“Grandma, you gamble?” I’m scandalized. For how world-weary she is, my grandma is straight-edged. She rarely drinks (and only wine), doesn’t smoke, and saves unhealthy food for special occasions like sunrises. She always says she got her wildness out in her twenties, that stability looks better on her.

“Yes, I gamble and play tennis. I’m not dead yet, Mallory.”

“It just doesn’t seem like you,” I say.

“Who does it seem like?”

“No one. You just, I mean, you’re usually at charity galas or hobnobbing with another ambassador.”

“I’ve only met three ambassadors.”

“Only?”

Grandma’s wearing a cropped Indian sari, pink leggings, and glitter flats with her hair knotted in a loose bun. She marches down the street, a one-person parade, each passerby stopping to stare. It’s just so evident that she’s seen and understands the world in ways the guy in the Dodgers T-shirt doesn’t. “You sound like your sister,” Grandma says.

“What did Ginnie say?”

“That I’m forgetting who I am.” Grandma stops at a rack of sale clothes outside an overpriced maternity store. “That’s not what I’m trying to do. But I spent almost forty years with your grandpa. You know sometimes I still wake up, roll over to tell him about my dream, and I have that realization that he’s not there? You can’t know what that feels like.”

“Of course not.”

“So I got a new bed. And a new home. And maybe a new life. He still haunts me, but at least I’m not tripping over his shoes and finding old notes he left me in the drawer.”

Or old spiral notebooks with teenage lists.

Grandma blows out a breath and dabs at the corner of her eye. I reach across the rack of clothes and hug her. She gives me a curt pat and pulls away. “Anyway. There is one old thing I’m good at, and that’s shopping. Here’s your store.”

She pushes open the blue painted door of Worn Again Vintage. I stand outside for a minute, trying to come up with the right thing to say. I don’t know if I should ask her more questions about her two-year loss, which is really no time when you consider their decades together. Do I bring it up again or make a joke about something else? Stay quiet? I have no idea how to
touch someone else’s pain, and it makes my own, again, seem so trivial. What Jeremy and I had was a speed date next to my grandparents’ relationship.

The bell clangs as I enter the funky store. Chinese lanterns and old Tiffany lamps offer warm lighting, and vintage gowns hang from the exposed ceiling beams. A line of mannequin heads sport hats from different eras, many of which I’ve tried on but never had the confidence to purchase. The girl at the counter, Kimmy, looks up from the antique cash register and flashes me a bright red lipsticked smile. “Mallory! Are you here to sell or buy?”

“Kimmy, this is my grandma, and she’s going to help me sew a homecoming dress. Late fifties, early sixties cocktail. We’re looking for patterns, fabric if you have it.”

Kimmy peers down at me over cat-eye reading glasses. “Isn’t homecoming soon?”

“Next week,” I say. “But I don’t need anything fancy.”

“It’s homecoming. Of course you need something fancy.” Grandma leans against the counter and says in a conspiring whisper, “The labor is going to be an eighty-twenty split. This girl can’t even thread a bobbin yet.”

“What’s a bobbin?” I ask.

They both laugh.

What?

Kimmy points us to the back of the store, where bolts of fabric are shoved into shelves. Most of the fabric is thirties or forties replica cotton prints with sailboats or ducks, but there are a few shelves of “new fabric to create that old look.” We
came here last year when I wanted Grandma to make me a flapper costume for Halloween. Chiffon, pleather, muslin, calicos, and silk. I try not to look at the price tags—vintage isn’t cheap. Grandma plops a bolt of purple velvet onto the small table in the corner. “Velvet’s formal, but the stretch is forgiving.”

I make a face. “Grandma. When I said I wanted vintage, I didn’t mean eighties rocker. I want something that you would have worn when you were my age.” I spot some soft peach chiffon and reach up on my tiptoes. “Like this.”

Grandma purses her lips. “I don’t understand this blast-from-the-past thing. There are plenty of beautiful on-the-rack dresses. We looked like big powder puffs back then.”

“No, you were
perfection
.” I grab a male mannequin wearing a tux and wheel him over to Grandma. “Come on. Tell me about your junior homecoming. Was it different from prom?”

“I didn’t go to prom,” Grandma mumbles.

“Okay, but did you go out to dinner at all? Or did everyone just stay at the dance the whole time?”

“I can’t remember.”

“I wish they still did that. Sometimes people just come to take their picture and leave for an after-party. No one really dances. Oh, did you go to the drive-in after? Was there a bonfire?”

“Honey, you’ve been watching way too many movies. Let’s find you a fabric, already. I’m getting a headache.”

“But I’m just trying to
visualize
.” My voice has gone a little whiny. I can’t help it. There’s this poem we read last year in
English from
Spoon River Anthology
, which is a collection of voices from everyone who died in a small town a hundred years ago. It’s not like I memorized the whole thing, but there was one poem, a short one, that talks about how, when the guy was young, his wings were strong, but he didn’t know the mountains well. When he was old, he knew the mountains, but he didn’t have the energy to fly them. And the last line says, “Genius is wisdom and youth.”