Family Reunion Nancy Thayer (summer reads .txt) 📖

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 kind of gaudy.”

“Yes, but it hangs low, so it will cover my wrinkled chest.” When her granddaughter looked unconvinced, Eleanor opened her sock drawer and lifted out the diamond and emerald necklace that had been her mother’s. “This is what you should wear.”

Ari squealed. “OMG, is that real? Gram! Why have you never worn it before? Here,” Ari said, unfastening her eBay jewelry. “Put this on and let me try on that beauty.”

Ari was wearing a simple green slip dress with spaghetti straps that fit her snugly.

“That’s a very sexy dress,” Eleanor said, “but I don’t think the skirt will twirl.”

“I’ve decided I don’t want it to twirl,” Ari said with a light laugh. “I want it to hug my curves. No one would ever expect that I’m pregnant when they see me in this dress.”

“That’s true.” Eleanor sat down on the bed. “But you are pregnant, Ari. And you really need to see your physician.”

Ari sat down on the bed next to her grandmother. “I know. I do know. But just for tonight, I want to feel carefree.”

Eleanor nodded. “Well, then, let’s see how the necklace goes with your dress.”

Ari was wearing her long dark hair up in a chignon, with a few strands curling down on each side of her face. She sat still while Eleanor fastened the choker on her. She rose and walked to view herself in the mirror.

“Oh,” Ari said.

“You look regal,” Eleanor said. “Beautiful and elegant.”

Ari touched the large square-cut emerald, the diamonds surrounding it. “I’ve never seen you wear this.”

“I’ve never worn it. It was my mother’s, and the occasion never arose. For my wedding, my future mother-in-law wanted to loan me her triple strand of pearls, and I obeyed. And it was a lovely look, those pearls. But really, I don’t think women wear these sorts of jewels anymore. Too flashy.”

Ari frowned. “I don’t want to look flashy.”

“You don’t. Your hair is up and elegant. Wear small diamond studs in your ears and no other jewelry.” Eleanor gazed at Ari’s shoes. “Those heels are rather high.”

Ari grinned. “Not changing the shoes, Gram. And before you ask, yes, I can dance in them.”

Eleanor nodded. She went to her room to put on her gray satin pumps. It had been years since she’d worn them, and they were a little tight now. Her feet had spread somehow, and she had a bunion on her right foot that stuck out like a marble. The younger women didn’t wear hose anymore, and Eleanor envied them because they didn’t have to wrestle with hideous pantyhose, and felt sorry for them because they didn’t wear, as Eleanor had when she was young, silk stockings and a garter belt.

As she sat on her slipper chair in her bedroom, easing on her shoes, she sat very still for a moment. She wondered how many women had been in this house, in this very room, over the generations of people who’d lived here since 1840. At moments like this, she felt such a companionship, an awareness of all of the people who had made love and fought and dressed for a party and laughed and lived and died. It made her feel better about her eventual death. She wondered if, when she got to heaven, the first woman of this house would greet her, saying, “I love what you did with the front parlor.” It was a daft thought, Eleanor knew. Maybe she was getting senile, but she’d felt these invisible others since she was a child. It made her smile, and she could never tell anyone, but she wasn’t convinced it couldn’t happen.

Eleanor and Ari were still primping in front of the hall mirror when lights flashed. Two cars turned into the driveway. They glanced out the window and saw Silas stepping out of his freshly washed ancient Jeep and Beck emerging from his red convertible. The two men shook hands and talked for a while