"What about this one, Miss Alex?" I turned away from the clothing rack I was facing and towards Alfred who stood behind me, holding up an elegant dark blue evening dress. It had subtle sparkles covering it, reminding me of a beautiful night sky. It was funny to come shopping with Alfred, he always had an impeccable taste in clothes; it must be a British thing.
While the dress was beautiful, it looked too old for me, and with a slightly scrunched face, I shook my head at Alfred. He nodded at me and placed it back on the rack where it hung. "What kind of dress are you looking for?" Alfred spoke absentmindedly as he began to rifle through another rack of beautiful dresses that would suit a queen better than a wealthy girl. All these dresses were so overdone, overdramatized, echoing every stitching in the way you walked or posed. It was too much for me; I liked simplicity.
"Something classy, but not showy. Something that would make me look elegant, but also my own age. Look for simplicity, since it seems to be nearly extinct in our world." My last phrase came out as a whisper, only because I knew Alfred didn't need to hear it, and I did.
I looked over at him, a sort of look that doesn't really mean to happen, but does. A kind of look that slides absentmindedly to them, and as I looked, I smiled. Alfred had served in our house and under our name since my grandfather, Thomas Wayne. When he died, he became my father's foster father, and just as so, like a grandfather to me. I had never thought of him as our servant or butler, or whatever his real job is, he was never that to me. He and I, as well as he and my father had a relationship, a friendship so far beyond the means of master and butler. He was family, and he had always been everything to me that my dad couldn't. But that didn't stop much; it certainly never stopped my mind. I had everything I wanted and needed, and I was happy.
But I wanted to know about her; my mother. Ever since I was little, the rule was that I didn't need anyone who didn't need me. But I think my father just told me that so I wouldn't ask questions. And while I didn't ask aloud, I still asked in my head. I still wanted to know. I never remember having a mother. There are no pictures of her, no videos. It's almost as if she never existed, but she must have. I've always wanted to ask Alfred, since I knew he was gentler when it came to the situation. My father would always insist that I didn't need to know anything more than what I do, which wasn't much of anything at all. And while I watched him mindlessly look through racks among racks of clothes, I wanted to do it, to say something. But then I always stop right before I do, and I always think this isn't the right time, but it always is. And I never do anything.
I tried to wiggle those thoughts out of my head and turn my attention back on shopping, but I wasn't as good at blocking things out as my father was.
"Miss Alex?" As quickly as I had torn my vision away from him, it seemed to be back. He held up a black cocktail dress to me; strapless with a sweetheart neckline. It looked tighter around the waist, and then expanding outward down to the length of most likely a little above my knees. It was beautiful and perfect and simple. A smile stretched over my face as my feet carried me towards it.
"That's perfect Alfred. Do they have it in my size?" A worn smile appeared through his soft wrinkles that lined his face; half laugh lines, half worry lines.
"A medium petite," he said as he handed it to me. As I took it in my hands I could see that with closer examination, the neckline was lightly sewn with black lace near the top, as well as at the bottom of the dress. "Well, go try it on." With a slightly look up at him, I felt a small push on my back, itching me towards the dressing room. I loved shopping with Alfred, only because he didn't care what I got, as long as it made me happy.
I scurried my way into the oversized dressing room and shut the door behind me. I hung the dress carefully from one of the many hooks nailed to the walls carefully as I slipped out of my shirt, jeans, and shoes. I grabbed for the dress and slide the hanger off. I unzipped it and placed it near my feet in order for me to step into it. I pulled it up, and since the zipper was on the side of the dress I could do it up myself. It fit me even more perfectly than a glove, as if this dress was made specifically for me and for me alone. It hugged all the right swings and curves of my body, and accentuated the parts that should be. I stared at myself in the mirror for a moment, party admiring how lovely the dress looked, and partly trying to figure out who this dress made me look like, because it wasn't me. Or if it was me, it was the person that was supposed to be great, the girl in the mirror looked more like a Wayne than I ever felt.
I gingerly opened the dressing room door, looking for Alfred before emerging, not particularly wanting anyone else to see me. My eyes caught his balding white haired head beyond a rack of evening gowns, sitting on a bench waiting.
"Alfred!" I tried to whisper yell it, but it came out more like a hissing sound. Nonetheless, he looked over to where I was a floating head behind a door. He picked himself up and started for the dressing rooms. He stood with his hands behind his back, nearly swaying on the heels of his feet, that sweet older smile still on his face.
"Well come now, let's see it. I can't pay for something I can't see." I wasn't wary of Alfred seeing me; he had seen me in dresses thousands of times before, but I didn't know how the dress would make me look to him. Would I look elegant, older, or just like me? Or would I remind him of someone else entirely.
I stepped out from behind the door, ready and willing to take in whatever words Alfred had storing up in his head. His face changed once he saw me; the smile weakening, but existing while I heard air in his lungs; whether that was an inhale or exhale I'm unsure. I rested my hands on the sides of the dress, taking handfuls of it into my hands, gripping and releasing. I felt my lips spread, but they didn't feel quite like a smile, or like anything else.
"Well, what do you think?" As if breaking from a trance, his eyes blinked a few times, and his mouth regained the curve it momentarily lost.
"I think that dress makes you look like royalty. It's beautiful, Miss." I kept on staring at him, waiting for him to say it, say something, say anything else, but he didn't, he only smiled before turning slightly. "So is that the one you want?" His footing marked that he was on his way to the cashier, about to pay, but I didn't feel satisfied. Barefooted, I tip toed my way out towards him some, before my mouth lost its control.
"Alfred," I heard myself say, though I thought for sure I yelled for him in my head. He halted and turned back towards me, his face a mixture between confusion and worry; the same face I had seen him give my father a thousand times.
"Yes?" This was my opportunity, my change to say something, to find out something I've needed to know since I was young. But my tongue forgot out to make words, and I stood there silently in a beautiful dress, only deepening his confusion. "Is something wrong? Do you not like the dress?" At that, my voice booted up again instantly.
"No, no, I love it, it's just," I scavenged my head for the right words, the perfect words. "Does it make me look like anyone?" His eyes furrowed, and I knew he didn't understand what I meant, or at least what I was trying to portray. His feet carried him closer to me, if only an inch or so.
"Why, it makes you look like you." I wandered towards him bit by bit, my hands now gripping the dress to keep my hands busy. I shook my head slightly, trying not to look so sad, but not knowing not how to either.
"No, I mean, does it make me look like anyone before me?" Only seconds more of confusion lasted on his face, before a wash of realization cascaded his features, and his eyes looked at me softly, a sympathetic deepness hidden within them.
"You mean your mother." I nodded at him, unsure if I even wanted to know anymore. With a quiet stare, he held out his arm towards the bench that he had been waiting on, and both he and I walked to it together, nearly in time with each other's footsteps. I sat down, and he beside me. I grew worried. I had always wanted to hear the story of my mother, but now that I was about to hear it, I wasn't so sure I was ready to. Alfred looked at me, but I now felt ashamed for asking.
"Your mother was very beautiful." Despite myself, I looked up at him, trying to examine his expressions as he spoke. "Probably the most beautiful woman that your father ever had the pleasure of bringing back to the manor. And you could just tell that your father was in love with her since the first time he brought her to the house. He would walk around smiling for no reason at all, other than he was in love." Alfred's eyes lingered elsewhere, somewhere in the past. "And I had never seen him that happy. That is, until the night he came home and told me that she said yes. They had the most beautiful wedding ever imaginable," he focused on me once again, "right in your backyard. It wasn't big, but it was beautiful for sure. And then lived in happy bliss for a few months, just the two of them, practically in their own little worlds." I didn't have to see my face to know that I was smiling; it was wonderful to think about my father being so happy, I had always felt like he deserved a sense of perfect happiness that he never really had the chance to obtain.
Alfred leaned back on the bench, his head clearly in memories; a gentle yet hearty laugh escaping his mouth. "Oh but I will never forget the day your father told me your mother was pregnant. Now that was happiness I had never seen emitted from anyone in my life." The creases of the wrinkles in Alfred's face began to grow deeper however as his smile faded, and his eyes watched the memories in his head. Like the change of a channel, his sight flicked to me, a definite sadness on his face. "But you see, your father has a torturous curse on his life. It seems that when wonderful things enter his life, they seem to leave in a mess of sadness and tragedy." I tried to look everywhere on his face for answers, his eyes, his lips, anything, but Alfred was just about as readable as a stone; it was his greatest strength and weakness all at once. "Your mother was a simple woman, and that's all she ever wanted to be. But when you're married to someone with a name like Bruce Wayne, well, society expects a lot from you. You see, your mother felt constantly judged and ridiculed, and felt that she wasn't meeting up to what the Wayne family stands for. When you were about one, she decided that she couldn't handle it anymore. She didn't want to be the reason the Wayne family got a bad name, and she felt like a shell of herself with the way people would talk about her. So she left, and your father was in pieces for months."
I didn't know what to do, or feel, or think. My mother left because of the same pressures and reasons that I'm terrified of facing on a daily basis. And what terrifies me more, is how crushed and completely annihilated my father would be if I made the same mistakes as her. Yet incidentally, this only adds more pressure to live up to everything everyone says I am.
I looked up at him, eyes wide, pain trying to seep its way in through my pores, though since I do not remember her, I cannot feel for her pain, but my own instead. "So that's it? She just left?" Alfred eyed me, before shaking his head.
"Sadly, two years after she left, she died due to medical reasons; heart related if I remember correctly. But," his voice grew bolder and his body turned slightly towards mine. "Make no mistake, Miss Alex, your mother loved you very much. But she knew that in order to insure the best life for you, you had to stay here with your father." I didn't feel abandoned by her; I didn't know her enough to feel that way. More than anything, I felt for my father, and scars that all this must have left on his soul. I can't blame him for never wanting to tell me about her. If I were him, I would never want to remember.
"Thank you Alfred." The smallest of smirks echoed through his wrinkles.
"Everyone should know where they come from, whether their story is happy or sad." I hung my head lower, seeing the dress, and forgetting I even had it on. "But it's getting late, we should get going. Go get your normal clothes back on and I'll go pay." The bench squeaked under us as his weight changed when he picked himself up. I too stood myself up, and watched as Alfred turned and swerved through the maze that was the racks of clothes. I made my way over back to the dressing room, my clothes still where I left them on the floor. I closed the door behind me, though I caught my reflection in the mirror again. I stared at myself, at the dress. I hoped I wouldn't look like my mother when my father saw me in it later.
