They would see Margaret and her husband Daniel (who always called her “Sister Elizabeth” and made her laugh by tickling her cheeks with his mustache) and the girls today at Giving Day. All of the families of the City gathered in the Great Square for their children to receive their gifts from the City Fathers.
Elizabeth had noticed last year that some families—her own papa, even—also gave something to the City Fathers in return. She couldn’t tell what it was, though, because it was a sealed envelope.
She paused outside the door of the breakfast room, to make certain that Papa and Mama were both in there so she could make her grand entrance and hear both of them ooh and aah at how pretty she looked. The two of them were murmuring quietly to each other as they passed the jam and the butter.
Elizabeth swept into the room and paused just inside the door, holding the hem of her new dress in both hands. Mama hadn’t even seen the dress because Dinah had gone with her to the shop to choose it. Elizabeth wanted it to be a surprise for everyone, and of course her hair had never looked quite so nice as it did just then. Dinah had taken extra care on it that morning.
“Ta-da!” Elizabeth said, and waited for the applause.
Instead her mother gasped and said, “Alice!”
Papa’s face went from ruddy to white in a moment, and he looked at Mama and said, in a warning voice, “Althea!”
Mama covered her mouth with her hand, and Elizabeth heard little coughing sobs leaking out from behind her fingers.
Alice again, Elizabeth thought. This time she was not curious about the name so much as annoyed. Who was this Alice to steal Elizabeth’s thunder? Where were her “oohs” and “aahs”?
“What’s the matter, Mama?” Elizabeth asked. “Don’t you think I’m pretty in my new dress?”
Papa took a very long draught from his teacup and put the cup back on the saucer with a clatter. Then he held his arms out to Elizabeth, who went to her father and climbed into his lap.
“Of course you look pretty, my sweetheart. I’ve never seen a creature so lovely as you.” He winked at her. “Except your mother, of course. And you are just the image of her.”
Elizabeth smiled proudly across the table at Mama, who seemed to be struggling to get herself under control. She stared at Elizabeth as if she were a ghost instead of her own daughter.
“You look very pretty, too, Mama,” Elizabeth offered.
Mama did look pretty in her white gown, the same one that she always wore to Giving Day. It was her nicest one and it never was taken out except for this special day once a year. Mama usually wore it with a pink sash around her waist but that sash had been replaced by a blue one that was a little darker than the blue of Elizabeth’s dress. Elizabeth wondered what happened to the other sash.
“Elizabeth said you look pretty, Althea,” Papa said.
The way he said it was like he was talking to a child that needed to be reminded of her manners. Elizabeth had never heard Papa talk to Mama this way before.
Mama closed her eyes, gave a shuddering breath and then opened them again. When she did the ghost hadn’t left her face entirely but she looked more like Mama again.
“Thank you very much, Elizabeth,” Mama said. “You look charming in that dress.”
If Mama had said this the way that she usually said it Elizabeth would have wriggled with pride but it didn’t sound the way Mama usually said it. It was stiff and hard and Mama didn’t mean it. Elizabeth could tell.
“Why don’t you have some breakfast?” Papa asked, kissing the top of her head. This was the signal for her to hop off his lap and go to her own chair.
She did, though a lot of the joy of the day had been drained out already. Well, perhaps Daniel and Margaret would compliment her dress when they arrived.
Still, Elizabeth thought as she put an extra-generous dollop of marmalade on her toast, I must discover who this Alice is.
Elizabeth was tired of Alice spoiling her days.
After breakfast Elizabeth went into the garden to wait for Margaret and Daniel and her nieces to arrive.
“Mind you don’t get your dress dirty,” Mama said. She sounded almost normal when she said that.
The roses were in the fullest bloom, all of them fat and red and giving off thick perfume that made Elizabeth feel dreamy and drowsy. Mama loved her roses, never let the gardener go near them but insisted on tending them herself.
And of course the roses were the crown jewels of the garden, more luscious than any of the other flowers. The dahlias and tulips always looked like sad little broken soldiers next to Mama’s roses.
Elizabeth found her favorite place in the garden, a little nook underneath one of the rosebushes with just enough room for her to sit without anyone spotting her from the house. It was the perfect place because there was space between her hair and the catching thorns of the roses. In fact, she was so well hidden that if you didn’t know she was there you would walk right by the rosebush and never see her.
Though if she got any taller she likely wouldn’t fit anymore, Elizabeth reflected. She’d grown a little in the last year—not much, but she was hoping to be very tall like Papa. Her mama was slender and delicate and not too tall, but taller than the average neighbor who called for afternoon tea.
Elizabeth wanted long legs and long arms, though she suspected that if she got tall she’d lose some of her roundness.
Well, she thought, it would be a small price to pay for being tall. And of course, if she ate enough cake she could make herself as round as she liked again. At least, Mama seemed to think it was Elizabeth’s love of cake that made her so. Maybe it wasn’t true. Maybe Elizabeth was just naturally that way.
Elizabeth wanted very much to be taller than almost all the boys on the street. She wished to stare down at them imperiously and make them cower. Then maybe they wouldn’t say rude things about her face and her soft arms and her round thighs. It didn’t bother her to be this way until they said something about it. Though it only bothered her because she felt she ought to be bothered, not because they made her feel bad, really.
Not really.
Besides, it was only poor people in the Old City who should be very thin. Elizabeth had seen some of them pushing up against the bars whenever they drove past the border. They always appeared so pale and spindly and desperate that Elizabeth wanted to stop the coach and hand out all of her pocket money.
She said this to her parents once and her father had scoffed. “Charity is all very well, Elizabeth, but any money you gave those creatures would end up in a bottle. Don’t let your sympathy be misplaced.”
Elizabeth hadn’t understood what Papa meant by “in a bottle” so she’d asked Dinah later and Dinah told her that it was someone who drank a lot of spirits.