happy Martha was having such fun, but she missed having her friend around to talk to about the very private matters she couldn’t share with anyone else.
She walked slowly back to her house and was glad when the phone rang, interrupting her turbulent thoughts, and even more glad to hear Silas’s voice.
“Eleanor,” Silas said, “I should have asked earlier, but I’m afraid I just took it for granted—would you be my partner for the Mid-Summer Ball next Saturday? Please don’t feel obligated.”
“I’d be delighted, Silas,” Eleanor said. “Are you putting together a table?”
“To be honest, I hadn’t thought of that,” Silas said. “I’d only gotten as far as asking you.”
Eleanor said, “Well, we must put a table together. If we sit alone, people will gossip.”
“A little gossip is a fine thing at our age,” Silas said.
Eleanor laughed. “I’ll call Sissy Hampshire.”
“Good girl,” Silas said. “Oh, damn, is it incorrect of me to call you girl? Or even a good girl?”
Eleanor laughed again. “As long as I can call you good boy.”
“I’ll try to earn that appellation,” Silas said.
When they ended the call, Eleanor sat down on the overstuffed chair in a corner of the guest room. She hadn’t gone to the ball since Mortimer had died three years ago. She tried to remember how dressy women were at the dance, and as she recalled, they were very fancy, wearing their best dresses and jewels. Most of the dresses had full skirts, which were such fun to swirl when they danced.
For a little while, Eleanor sat there, just remembering. Mortimer had always insisted on going to the various balls the yacht club held, but he had been an absolutely terrible dancer, stiff and as plodding as an overloaded mule. Eleanor couldn’t remember her husband ever twirling her, not even once. But she could remember Silas dancing with his wife, Maxine, how perfectly matched they were, even daring to do the tango. Oh, Maxine had swirled her skirts a lot.
The image woke a memory. Up in the attic, inside a plastic wardrobe, hung “special” dresses she and, years later, when she was in college, Alicia had once worn. Eleanor wondered if she could squeeze into any one of them. Well, she could always alter one with her handy sewing machine. Humming the tune to “I Could Have Danced All Night,” Eleanor went up to the attic.
For the rest of the week, Eleanor worked on a dress that Alicia had never liked, and altered it at the bosom and waist to fit her own figure. It was a pale gray satin knee-length dress, with a full skirt, a princess neckline, and a fitted bodice covered with a light layer of lace. Short sleeves made of lace did the most generous job of covering the wobbly part of Eleanor’s upper arms.
When Ari came home from working at the camp, they talked about the Mid-Summer Ball.
“I’d be glad to alter a dress for you,” Eleanor offered.
Ari’s lips curved in a satisfied grin. “Don’t worry. I have one that will be perfect.”
“When you were little,” Eleanor mused, “you spent hours going through the old photo albums. You were infatuated with my wedding dress, and my honeymoon suit and hat.”
“I remember,” Ari said. She clapped her hands. “Oh, please, let’s look at the albums again.”
Eleanor possessed many photo albums. She took them off the bottom shelf of the bookcase and sat with her granddaughter, gazing at the marvelous creations Eleanor had worn for her wedding and for formal dances throughout her life. The occasions for Alicia’s wedding gown and party dresses filled another album.
“Men’s clothes are so colorless compared to women’s,” Ari noted.
“It wasn’t always that way,” Eleanor said. “Men used to wear velvets and lace and chains of jewels.”
“What caused the change?” Ari wondered.
“Let’s blame the Puritans,” Eleanor suggested with a laugh.
* * *
—
Saturday evening, grandmother and granddaughter posed together in the guest bedroom, which had the full-length mirror. They were getting ready for the Mid-Summer Ball and they were as silly as schoolgirls.
“What do you think?” Eleanor asked her granddaughter.
“I think you look absolutely beautiful!” Ari said, clapping her hands. “Now. You need jewelry.”
“My pearls,” Eleanor said.
“No, not your pearls. That’s too conservative. You should go wild.”
“Actually,” Eleanor said, “what I’d like to wear is your necklace. And you can wear one of mine.”
Ari was shocked. “Gram, I got this necklace from eBay. I think I paid maybe fifteen dollars for it. The flowers are plastic and the diamonds are rhinestones, plus it’s