Cutler 03 - Twilight's Child

She and I would sit before a vanity mirror like this when she was older. I dreamed about helping her prepare for her first date or dance. I would be the mother to her that I had never had.
    "There," Mother said when we were finished, "just look at how much more beautiful you are now."
    I gazed at myself. I did look older, more alluring. Was Mother like the devil making me as vain as she was? I thought. I couldn't stop gazing at myself.
    "Thank you, Mother," I said. "I'd better finish dressing and see how Jimmy is coming along."
    "Don't worry," she sang. "It's fashionable to be late. Bronson expects it of me anyway," she added, laughing. "He told me if I came to my own funeral on time, the minister would be shocked to death himself."
    Jimmy looked sincerely impressed when I stepped back into our suite. He whistled and nodded.
    "You look great!" he said.
    "So do you, Jimmy." He wore a dark blue sports jacket, matching tie and slacks. After I put on my dress I took his arm, and we stood before the full-length mirror gazing at our images.
    "Is this the little girl who used to streak mud all over herself while playing with her toy teacups in the backyard?" he asked.
    "Is this the boy who fell off his bike and smacked his head so badly he had to have stitches?" I responded.
    "Hey," he said. "You've never forgotten that. You were so frightened." He started to laugh.
    "The blood was streaming down your face. I thought you were going to die," I protested. "And you shouldn't have laughed at me."
    "I had to," he confessed. "I was so scared myself at the sight of all that blood. I was glad I had to calm you down first."
    "I was only—what, four, five?"
    "Five," he said. "Daddy was so mad. 'We ain't got money for this kind of nonsense,' he said. Remember?" I shook my head. "I couldn't ride my bike for weeks after that. That old bike," he said, shaking his head and recalling. "I had to leave it behind when we packed up and moved. No room for it in the car. I'll never forget how I felt when we pulled away and I looked-back and saw it leaning against the side of the house." He swallowed back his tears, and I kissed his cheek.
    "Maybe we shouldn't think about those days so much, Jimmy. Maybe we should think only about the future," I suggested.
    "Yeah, I know. Once in a while, though, I can't help remembering, and then I think about Fern and wonder what happened to her. Mr. Updike still can't find anything out, huh?"
    I had asked him to try, but he had had no luck. I didn't want to tell Jimmy how pessimistic Mr. Updike was about it, but I explained it to him the way Mr. Updike had explained it to me.
    "No, Jimmy. When people adopt children like that they want it kept secret just so the baby's old family doesn't come around, and so they can tell the child she's their own. Then if she does find out she's adopted, she can't go off looking for her real family and trying to find out why they gave her away."
    "I understand," Jimmy said. "I just wish we could see her, see how she's grown, what she's like. I bet she looks more and more like Momma, huh?"
    "Probably. She had Momma's dark hair and dark eyes."
    "I'm ready," Mother sang from the corridor.
    "The queen is calling," Jimmy said, smiling. "Shall we?" he added, and he held out his arm for me to take.
    Mother hadn't shown me her newest dress until this moment. It was a pearl-white satin strapless gown with a bodice that dipped scandalously low on her bosom, easily revealing half her cleavage. Her crimson breasts bubbled over, raised by an uplift bra. Yet the hem of the skirt was quite conservative, a little below the ankle. Around her neck she wore a necklace I had seen only once before. It was an enormous pear-shaped diamond in a white-gold setting with a white-gold chain, and I would never forget it, for Grand-mother Cutler had worn it. Mother had the earrings to match.
    Mother threw her crochet lace shawl over her shoulders and ran it over her arm before stepping toward us.
    "Do I look beautiful?" she asked, spinning around.
    "You certainly do," Jimmy said. He nodded appreciatively.
    "Thank you, James. And Dawn, you look so pretty, too," Mother said.
    "Where did you get that necklace, Mother?" I asked pointedly.
    "Necklace? Oh," she said with a nervous little laugh, "this was one of the last things poor Randolph gave me before he . . . before he passed on," she said.
    "Wasn't it Grandmother Cutler's necklace?" I pursued.
    "So? What if it was? What good did it do her anyway? She never