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"Congrats, Mom," he said to her and pecked her on the cheek. There was
a bit of a bristle to his chin. "This has been a long time coming."
He was beaming at her, though he barely knew Tom. A handful of hellos at the
door, that was all. They celebrated with cookies and cider. She filled the
glasses, passed the plate, but still she was somewhere apart from her body, and
this moment was somehow apart from the rest of her life. Again and again she
felt they were practicing, all three of them, and each time she smiled at Tom or
Peter, she felt they were acknowledging that, too.
She walked Tom out to his car. She hoped that this would serve as their date,
that she could have the rest of the evening to herself to finish her work. But
he hugged her again and said he'd pick her up at seven.
He got into his car, then leapt out. "I almost forgot." He reached
into the backseat. "A little engagement present."
It was a blue box with his insignia on it, Belou
Clothiers. He had been that certain she'd
say yes.
"When I was a very little boy," he said, leaning against the car and
pulling her toward him in a gesture of familiarity that was probably familiar
only to his wife in the grave, "my grandfather made a dress for a customer,
a very simple dress. A few weeks later a friend of hers came in the shop and
ordered the exact same dress. She said her friend had told her it was a magic
dress. After that he got another request, and another. My grandfather must have
made twenty-five of those dresses. I forgot all about them and then when I saw
you I remembered. I remembered the dress exactly, right down to the pearl
buttons. I don't know why."
She lifted off the top. It was yellow, a color she never wore. She was relieved
that it was a summer dress with tiny capped sleeves: it would be at least eight
months before she'd be expected to wear it.
"It's lovely," she said, holding it up to herself. Dear God, what had
she done?
"It's magic." He kissed her again. The kisses were different nowfirmer,
possessive.
Tom the Tailor made me a dress, she imagined telling Carol, though she knew she
wouldn't.
She watched his car turn off her gravel road and onto the paved school avenue,
which carried him past the mansion and all its new limbs, then the tennis
bubble, then the hockey rink, in a long arc before finally setting him back on
the main road. She would have to leave this campus, this haven of fifteen years,
if she actually married him.
"Aren't you freezing?" Peter called to her from the front door. There
was a thrill, a wildness, in his voice she'd never heard before. She opened the
trunk of her car and tossed the box in. What's in the box, he'd ask when she got
a little closer. He was going to have so many questions this afternoon. She
stopped on the path to the house and lit a cigarette to buy herself some more
time.
From The English Teacher by Lily King. Copyright Lily King 2005. Reprinted with the permission of the publisher, Atlantic Monthly Press.
The secret of freedom lies in educating people, whereas the secret of tyranny is in keeping them ignorant
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