Deprived of the prospect of an elegant luncheon, Mother lapsed into decorative melancholy after I placed our sandwich order with the cafe. Even Mrs. Waterston's best jasmine tea in a delicate china cup produced little improvement.
"I can see why Eileen is having so much trouble." She sighed to Mrs. Fenniman. "They simply don't make gowns like they used to. I mean the styles, of course," she said quickly to Michael.
"I like to split a gut laughing the first time I saw a bride in a miniskirt," Mrs. Fenniman cackled. "And that Demerest girl last year--out to here!" she exclaimed, holding her hand an improbably three feet from her stomach. "It's a wonder she didn't go into labor right there in the church, and her in a white gown with a ten-foot train."
"I always thought the gowns Samantha had made for her other wedding were really sweet," Mother mused.
"Her other wedding?" Michael and I said in unison.
"Oh, dear," Mother said. "That's terribly bad luck, two people saying the same thing like that. You must link your little fingers together, and one of you has to say, "What goes up a chimney" and then the other has to say, "Smoke."" Michael was wearing the you've-got-to-be-kidding look that was becoming habitual these days. At least when my family was around.
"Just do it," I said, extending my little finger. "For the sake of all our sanity. What goes up a chimney?"
"Smoke."
"I hope that was in time," Mother said. "Well, you'll know next time; at least you will, Michael. Meg is so stubborn."
"I'll work on it," he said. "Tell us about Samantha's other wedding."
"You remember, Meg, it was supposed to be at Christmas, a year and a half ago. She was engaged to that nice young boy from Miami."
"Oh, yes, the stockbroker," I said. "I remember now. And how many millions of dollars was it he embezzled? Or perhaps I should say cruzeiros; he skipped to Brazil if I remember correctly."
"No, dear, that was his partner. They arrested Samantha's young man in Miami before he got on the plane. And he said his partner got away with all of the money. The partner claimed otherwise, of course, but they never found a penny of it."
"Poor thing! So Samantha dumped him and went after Rob," I said.
"That's so cynical, Meg," Eileen said, looking up from her catalog.
"That's me, town cynic," I said. "Anyway, I do think her first gowns were lovely," Mother continued. "Not that the new ones aren't lovely too. But these were rather unusual, too, and your mother's ladies did such lovely work on them."
"Mom made them?" Michael asked, surprised.
"Why, yes," Mother said. "They might still be here; I remember when we told her about Samantha and Rob's engagement she said something about hoping Samantha would finally take them off her hands, but of course Samantha didn't want anything to remind her of that ill-fated first engagement."
"I'm beginning to wonder if your mother breaking her leg just now was entirely an accident," I said to Michael.
"What do you mean?" he asked, with a start.
"Perhaps subconsciously she preferred to break it rather than stick around for Samantha's second wedding." He laughed.
"Why blame her subconscious? Seems like a rational decision to me."
"I thought it was her arm she broke," Mother said.
"No, I'm sure Michael said it was her leg," Mrs. Fenniman said. They both looked at Michael.
"Both, actually," he said, nervously. "They knew the leg was broken right away, and at first they only thought the arm was sprained, but then when they x-rayed they found the leg was a simple fracture and the arm was some sort of more serious kind of break so we were more worried about the arm and I might have forgotten to mention the leg at that point, but now we know they're both broken, but mending nicely." Only a trained actor could have gotten that out in one breath, I thought.
"Poor thing," Mother said. "How did she do it, anyway?" Michael looked nervous again and hesitated.
"To tell you the truth, I don't really know," he said finally. "She's told me several completely different stories, and I've decided she probably did it while doing something she thinks I would disapprove of or worry about. We may never know the whole truth." He walked over to the curtained doorway and called out something in-- Vietnamese? Whatever. Mrs. Tranh appeared and they talked rapidly for a few moments, then Mrs. Tranh disappeared behind the curtain.
"Mrs. Tranh says the gowns Samantha originally ordered are, indeed, here, and she's going to bring some of them down."