Page 31 of The Party Line

“Not really, but you are welcome if you get bored or weary from cleaning Gracie’s closet. We’re going to organize recipes into folders.”

I went on up the stairs to the landing, slightly amused that Mama said what she did to keep me moving toward the job at hand. She and Iboth knew I was procrastinating so I wouldn’t have to admit that Aunt Gracie was really gone. “I’ll keep that in mind. Have fun.”

“You, too,” she said and ended the call.

When I looked into Aunt Gracie’s bedroom and saw the stack of red underpants on the same color bedspread, I almost closed the door. What was in her room had been private for almost a century. What right did I have to go through any of her things?

I gave you that right in my will.Her voice in my head sent chills down my backbone. Evidently, she intended for me to dive into her past.

“I’ve got to do it, and I’ve got all day with nothing else to do,” I said out loud and looked up at the ceiling. “If you’ve got anything else to say to me, just spit it out.”

Her voice didn’t pop into my head, so apparently she had finished fussing at me. That told me there wouldn’t be a single piece of paper or another journal hidden anywhere that would have a clue to the big secret. Aunt Gracie had put everything to rights before she passed away, and she didn’t care if I found the diary or riffled through her closet and drawers.

I crossed the room, opened the closet doors, and took the first dress off the hanger. I laid it out on the bed to take to a women’s shelter and stared at it for a full two minutes. Today’s women lived in jeans and T-shirts. No one would want a 1940s dress with a tiny waistline, buttons all the way up the front, shoulder pads, and a pristine white collar. One that fit a woman who was only a couple of inches over five feet, or maybe a little taller if she wore heels.

I had never seen Aunt Gracie in that dress—but then, she would have worn it years and years before I was born. A memory played at the corners of my mind, but I couldn’t place the picture. Maybe I’d seen something similar in a magazine. Then boom! The memory took form, and there it was. A lady in a play at the university materialized.

“That’s it!” I snapped my fingers.

The Drama Department had put on a play my senior year. I couldn’t remember the title, but it had been based on a book, and the main character wore a dress exactly like the one lying on the bed. I was sure the school would love to have all these old dresses for their costume collection and made a mental note to ask them for a mailing address that week.

Still thinking about that, I went back to the closet and noticed I had missed a note pinned to the bottom of the hanger.This is the dress I wore to my high school graduation. Davis and Jasper both told me I was beautiful that evening. I’ll never be as pretty as my mama, but they made me feel like I might be someday. Daddy was too busy to attend, and Mama didn’t come back for the event, but I had my two best friends, and that was all I wanted.

The next outfit was a straight pink skirt and matching jacket. This time a note was pinned to the jacket lapel. Gracie had done a lot of preparation before she died.I wore this on my first day at the dress shop. I was so nervous, but Phyllis said that I had a natural knack for selling clothing. Davis and Jasper have gone off to basic training. I promised that I would write them every day, and as soon as they sent me an address, I would send all the letters I had written up to that time. I will miss them horribly. Maybe working at the shop will help pass the days. Daddy and I seldom speak to each other anymore—his fault, not mine. Mama remarried last month and moved to Boston. I hope she’s happy in her new world, but I’m glad she is gone.

I arranged the notes on the bed and wept when I reached a black dress with a matching coat.I wore this to Davis’s memorial service. Jasper is still off somewhere fighting in the war, so I stood by myself by the flag-draped casket and cried for what might have been if circumstances had been different. His mother and I didn’t speak to each other, but we did exchange a look through all the tears we shed that morning. We both loved him so much. My precious Davis won’t be coming back to me. My heart was broken before. Now it’s shattered and can never be put back together.

The next outfit was that bright red pantsuit. The note pinned to the lapel of the jacket made me giggle.This was the last thing I brought home from the shop before I sold it. Red has always stood for independence to me. I’m not sure that Sarah’s mother ever knew anything but submission to her husband, and she would have never been brazen enough to wear red—or pants, either, for that matter. She was furious with me for taking Sarah in, but then, I was just as angry with her for not supporting her only daughter.

I was surprised to find a pink dress in her closet, even if it was the hottest shade I had ever seen. A couple of sizes larger than the ones I’d found before, it had tiny white polka dots and a pleated skirt. I carefully removed it from the hanger and unpinned the note from the lace collar.This is what I wore on the day Sarah went into labor. I wanted the baby to be a girl, and I got my wish. I wanted Sarah to go to college the semester after the baby came, but she wouldn’t. She told me she hated school and was happy being a mother. Each woman should have the opportunity to choose her destiny. I chose mine, so I didn’t argue.

There was what she had worn when I graduated from kindergarten and right next to it was the one she had worn when I finished high school. The next one I remembered well because I had a picture of her standing beside me when I graduated from college. I flipped through the rest of the clothing, looking for notes, but there were no more.

“I should have known you’d leave notes for me—but why pinned to just part of your clothing?” I whispered.

To help you remember,was all I got from the voice that often popped into my head.

Who would have thought I would find Gracie’s life story in her closet? I carefully arranged all the notes into chronological order and carried them to my office. Mama had given me a small picture album with a beach scene on the front for Christmas and said that someday she was going to go there. When I asked her if she was going to swim in the ocean, she shook her head and said, “I want to smell the salt air, let the warm sand drift through my hands, and listen to the waves splash against the shore.”

I found the album in my desk drawer and carefully slid each note into a protective sleeve.

Mama used to say that my mind reminded her of a hamster on a wheel. One minute, I was talking about one thing, and before I could finish a sentence, I would jump course and ask a question about something totally different from what we’d been discussing. My gaze went from the album and then over to the closet shelf where I stored my office supplies.

“Good Lord!” I gasped. “I’ve already forgotten what those outfits look like, and I haven’t even started going through the other boxes.”

I laid the album on my desk and hurried back to Gracie’s bedroom. There might be something on the shelf in her closet that would continue the story of who Aunt Gracie was before I knew her. I stopped in my tracks when I looked at the clothing piled up on the bed and forgot all about taking down the boxes on the closet shelf or going through the stuff on the closet floor.

I slid my phone from the hip pocket of my jeans and snapped a photograph of each outfit that had had a note attached to it. Then I went back to my office and printed them all in the right size to go behind the notes in the album. It took the better part of an hour to get them arranged, and I ripped a tiny tear in the note about the red pantsuit. Tears rolled down my cheeks as I carefully taped it back together. These little pieces of paper were like an autobiography, and not one of them should be destroyed.

I could not give all her things away to be used as costumes. No, ma’am! I had to keep these milestone markers. Someday, when I had children, the stories I would tell them about the wonderful woman who helped raise me would keep her memory alive. I went back to my room, tossed my winter coats and jackets out of a plastic storage container and onto the bed. I didn’t take time to hang them up but carried the empty box over to Gracie’s room, picked up the first dress, folded it neatly, and laid it in the container.

Just when I’d finished with the last item, the phone rang with a generic ringtone—it couldn’t be my mother or Jasper. I answered cautiously on the fourth ring. “Hello?”

“Is this Delilah Matthews?”

“Who’s asking?” Saying yes could mean the beginning of identity theft.

“It’s Derrick,” he chuckled. “Don’t you recognize my sexy voice?”

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