Cutler 02 - Secrets of the Morning

go."
    Then I proceeded to tell her everything in a single breath.
     
    My stomach churned so with anticipation, I couldn't eat a thing for dinner. The food just lay there on the plate staring up at me. I picked away at what I could when Mrs. Liddy looked in because I didn't want her to think I didn't like what she had made. I had washed my hair and set it in large rollers. Agnes and Mrs. Liddy knew I was going to the recital and that Michael Sutton had invited me.
    Before dinner Trisha and I had gone through my wardrobe trying to decide what was appropriate to wear to an evening recital. Most everything was too informal, we thought. Finally, we settled on my sleeveless black taffeta with the V neckline. It had a wide, black bow tie belt at the waist and a full skirt that reached between my knees and ankles.
    After dinner when I went up to dress, Trisha stuck her hand into her top dresser drawer to produce her padded bra. She dangled it before me.
    "Oh, no," I said, eyeing it with temptation. "I couldn't wear that."
    "Of course you could. You want to look older and enhance what you already have developed, don't you? You're going to be among grown women; you can't look like a child," she emphasized. "The bodice of your dress requires it," she concluded. "Just do it," she snapped when I still hesitated.
    I took it from her slowly and put it on. When I slipped into the dress and she zipped up the back for me, my image in the mirror took me by surprise. It wasn't only the padded bra. There had been subtle, but significant changes in my looks since my mother and I had gone shopping in Virginia a little over a year ago. I had been sensitive to the changes in Jimmy, but somehow not to the changes in myself.
    Just as with him, my face had lost its childhood plumpness in the cheeks. I saw a more mature glint in my eyes and found that whenever I looked at anything intently now, I tended to raise my right eyebrow like a question mark. My neck looked softer, the curve into my shoulders more graceful and smooth, and my cleavage deeper with the shadow at the bottom, suggesting and promising. Even Trisha was surprised.
    "You look so much older!" she exclaimed. "Here," she cried, rushing to her jewelry box and producing a gold necklace that sparkled brightly with tiny diamonds. "Wear this."
    "Oh, I couldn't, Trisha. What if I lost it? I know it was a special gift to you from your father."
    "All his gifts to me are special," she shrugged. "Don't worry, you won't lose it and you need something around your neck with that deep neckline. Or should I say, 'plunging neckline'?" she teased.
    "I look like a fool, just like someone trying to appear ages older, don't I?"
    "Absolutely not," she insisted. "I'm just kidding. Don't you dare change into something else, Dawn. Now march yourself right down those stairs and call for a cab this instant before you lose your nerve. Go on," she insisted.
    Agnes was waiting for me at the bottom of the stairway. For a moment I thought she was going to insist I turn around and change into something that would make me look far less enticing and more my age. But suddenly, her dark brown eyes brightened and she brought her hands to the base of her throat.
    "For a moment," she said, her voice nearly breathless, "I thought I had fallen through time and was looking at myself coming down that stairway in a melodrama I starred in when I was only four or five years older than you." She sighed and shook her head.
    "I have to call for a taxi," I explained and started toward the sitting room. Lost in one of her memories, Agnes could go on for hours.
    "Yes, but wait right here afterward," she ordered and rushed off. She returned with a mother-of-pearl white shawl and draped it over my shoulders. "Now," she said, standing back, "you look fully dressed and elegant and like one of my girls."
    My heart was racing so quickly when I walked out and down the stairs to get into my cab that I thought I just might fall in a faint and have to be carried off to a hospital. I felt myself trembling after I got into the taxi. For a moment I couldn't remember where I was going.
    "Which museum?" the cab driver asked again.
    "The Museum . . . of Modern Art," I gasped.
    "Right," he replied and shot off.
    When we arrived I sat there a moment and gaped at the crowd of richly dressed sophisticated men and women stepping out of taxi cabs and limousines and then making their way toward the front entrance of the museum. Here and there I saw some