The Story Sisters

The dress Natalia made was stunning—white tulle and silk. Every seam was perfect. There were sixty pink pearls sewn into the bodice. When she’d presented the dress to her granddaughter, Claire had cried and said it was far too beautiful for her. She was afraid she might ruin it.

“Wear it and be happy,” Natalia told her.

Now Claire was standing near a bank of wild ferns that grew beside the restaurant. Bullfrogs were calling in the reeds. The heat had settled on Claire’s skin and she looked flushed. She was drinking a glass of vodka and soda. She was a nervous wreck. She didn’t know if happiness would suit her. She wasn’t prepared for it. Philippe wasn’t supposed to see her in her wedding dress until the ceremony, but he went right over. He didn’t care about rules. He never had. That was why Madame Cohen had kept him out of the shop when he was a boy. He was nothing but trouble back then. But a boy who is trouble is something entirely different as a man. He was leaning in close, whispering. Claire laughed and let him have a sip of her drink.

Peter Smith had come from New York to give the bride away. They had teased him that hell must have frozen over because here he was back in Paris, staying with Philippe’s parents, who didn’t speak a word of English. Pete was surprised to find that this time around everything was better than he’d remembered, especially the food. He was becoming an expert on cheese and thought he might open a shop in North Point Harbor, right on Main Street. Elise and Mary Fox were there as well, splurging on the Ritz. Mary was delighted to find that so many of the guests were doctors, even if she couldn’t speak the language. She’d discovered that one of Madame Cohen’s grandson’s friends was working at NYU Medical Center. She and Claire had already discussed catching the bouquet; Claire was to throw toward the right, where Mary would be standing, arms outstretched.

But the wedding gown wasn’t the last dress Natalia had sewn. She had made a pink silk and tulle dress for her great-granddaughter. It arrived in North Point Harbor in a huge white box tied with string. The package was so special that Mimi had to run upstairs and get her mother to come out to the porch and sign for it before the postman would hand it over. They carried it up to Mimi’s room, then sat it on the bed and stared at it, wondering what on earth it might be, before Elv went to get the scissors to cut the string.

“It’s definitely something French,” Mimi said solemnly.

“Definitely,” Elv agreed.

There was a huge amount of tissue paper, and then the dress. Elv looked at it, then turned away, overcome. Mimi was too excited to notice; she grabbed the dress and raced down to her grandpa’s apartment to show it off. It was by far the most beautiful dress in the world. Elv stayed behind and took up the envelope inside the cardboard box that had been addressed to Miss M. Story. It was an invitation to Claire’s wedding. Elv opened it. She shouldn’t have, but she did. She couldn’t believe how much time had passed. It was low tide in the bay. The birds were swooping over lawns and through the tall marsh grass beyond the yard. Bring your mother, Claire had written.

NATALIA PAID FOR the tickets, as she’d always said she would. But of course Elv and Mimi were too excited to sleep on the plane. Elv whispered how every year the Story sisters would notice a new shade of light in Paris. The sisters were in love with French milk and French bread; they all practiced tying their scarves the way French women did, but could never get it right. Every spring the chestnut tree in the courtyard bloomed. The river was green in the daytime, and black as evening approached. One night Elv had rescued a cat that had fallen into the water. Their ama had named it Sadie, and it was still alive, only now the cat was very old and cranky.

Mimi did not find Sadie cranky in the least. It sat on her lap and purred and she sneaked it bits of her dinner. She loved being in Paris in her great-grandmother’s house. They stayed in the guest bedroom, the room that had been Claire’s before she’d moved in with Philippe. The parlor was still painted red, lacquered so that it gleamed when the lamps were turned on. The light was still a thousand different colors, changing with the weather and the hour of the day.

“It’s the color of lemons!” Mimi declared when she woke to her first morning in Paris. “Now it’s the color of peaches!” she said as she and her ama later fixed a pot of tea in the kitchen. Mimi had seen photographs of her gigi on the mantel, but Claire still hadn’t been by after two days.

“She doesn’t want to see me,” Elv said to her grandmother while Mimi was doing her best to watch French television.

“She wouldn’t have told Mimi to bring you if she didn’t want you here,” Natalia assured her.

But Elv got herself so worked up the night before the wedding that she came down with a fever. In the morning she dressed, then went to splash water on her face. She was burning up. She told Natalia she couldn’t possibly go, but then she saw Mimi in her frothy pink dress. She wished Lorry were there to see how beautiful his daughter was. Oh, baby, he would have said. How did you get to be so grown-up?

Mimi talked her mother into going with them to the park. “Maybe you’ll feel better once you get there,” she said reasonably. “You don’t have to go any farther if you don’t want to.” She was practical, the way Meg had been. Plus she had Lorry’s talent for talking you into nearly anything.

“Sure,” Elv said, catching up her daughter’s hand. “Will do.”

Pete was there with a taxi, which they took to the Bois; the driver went wickedly fast. Pete had second thoughts about Paris all over again.