Chapter 7: The Envelope Addressed to Carol
Patricia called me on a Thursday afternoon, ten days later.
"Your mother telephoned the atelier yesterday," she said.
"She's demanding the alteration order be reinstated.
She told Margot that the gown is needed for a family event and that the estate dispute is a private matter that does not affect the atelier's obligations."
"Margot's response?"
"Margot told her that the atelier acts on written legal instruction and invited her to direct any further communication to this office." A brief pause.
"Your mother then told Margot that she would ensure the atelier's reputation suffered."
I sat down on the edge of my kitchen table.
"She threatened Margot."
"She did," Patricia said.
"Margot has documented it.
She would like to add it to the written account she's already preparing." Another pause, shorter.
"Ms.
Hale, I think it's time for the second envelope."
I had been thinking about it for ten days.
How to give my mother a letter written by her own dead mother without it becoming a scene.
Whether a scene was what was needed.
Whether a scene would do any good at all.
I thought about my grandmother at that worktable on those three Saturdays.
Her reading glasses pushed up on her forehead.
Sixty hours of her hands in the silk.
"Set up a meeting," I said.
"My mother, you, and me.
Here in your office.
Tell her it's about the estate.
Don't tell her what specifically."
"When?"
"As soon as she'll come."
She came on a Monday.
She wore the grey coat she wore to important occasions and she sat in the chair across from Patricia's desk as though she were chairing a meeting rather than attending one.
"I assume this is about the atelier situation," she said.
"Which is, frankly, being blown entirely out of proportion."
"There are a few matters to address," Patricia said pleasantly.
She placed the documents on the desk in order.
The original estate filing.
The gift-in-kind notation.
The Ashcombe booking records, which showed the reservation in my name and the transfer attempt flagged as unauthorized.
The atelier's own records, showing the commission under my grandmother's hand.
My mother's expression did not change.
She looked at each document with the focused calm of a woman who had been hoping certain things stayed buried and was now calculating how much each one cost her.
"These records demonstrate," Patricia said, "that the funds used for both the gown commission and the Ashcombe booking belonged legally to Juliet.
Any attempt to transfer or reallocate them without her consent constitutes a breach of the estate terms."
"I am her mother," Carol said.
"I acted in the family's interest."
"You acted without legal authority," Patricia said, in exactly the same tone.
"I would like to speak to Juliet," my mother said.
She looked at me for the first time since she'd come in.
"Alone."
"No," I said.
Her jaw tightened.
"There is one more item," Patricia said, and placed the cream envelope on the desk.
My mother looked at it.
At her name in her own mother's handwriting.
Something happened in her face that I had never seen before.
Not quite guilt.
Something older and deeper than guilt.
Something that had been living under everything else for a long time.
She did not pick it up immediately.
"What is this," she said.
Not a question.
"A letter from your mother," Patricia said.
"To be given to you when certain conditions were met."
The room was very quiet.
My mother's hand went to the envelope.
She did not open it.
"I'd like to read it privately," she said.
"Of course," Patricia said.
I watched my mother hold her own mother's letter in both hands and I thought about the veil.
The way she had held it in the salon.
Both hands.
Like it already belonged to someone else.
She had been holding things that didn't belong to her for a very long time.
"The Ashcombe booking has been restored to your name," Patricia told me.
"The atelier has been notified.
The gown is waiting."
I nodded.
My mother was still looking at the envelope.
"Whatever she wrote," she said quietly, to no one, or to me, or to the room, "she should have said it to my face while she was alive."
"Yes," I said.
May you like
"She should have."
It was the only thing we agreed on.
