I wish I could go back to that day and comfort myself by explaining that all that was happening was that the missing pieces of my life were being filled in so that the picture of my future could be complete. I needn't be so frightened and overwhelmed. All would be well – all would be most spectacularly better than well.
That night I'd had no idea that this small re-entry to society would quickly and completely alter my life – I'd only been lost in my fear and loneliness.
Two days passed in a frantic haze for me. Cook and I planned lobster creamed bisque, roasted duck breast with asparagus, which was very hard to find this early in the season and her after-dinner iced vanilla cakes, which Father loved so much.
Mary brought me Mother's collection of emerald velvet gowns. There were more than a dozen of them; she laid them out across my bed like a green waterfall of fabric. I chose the most conservative of them – an evening dress modestly fashioned and unadorned except for pearls sewn into the bodice and the sleeves. Mary clucked her disapproval, muttering that the gold-trimmed gown would make a more dramatic impression. I ignored her and lifted my choice over my head so that she had to assist me into it.
Then the alterations began. I am shorter than Mother, but only slightly and have a smaller waist. My breasts are larger, though and when Mary finally helped me lace myself into the gown and I stood before my full-length mirror, Mary immediately began to cluck and fuss and open seams, trying to contain my flesh.
"All of her dresses will have to be altered, they will," Mary had spoken through a mouthful of pins.
"I don't want to wear Mother's dresses," I'd heard myself saying, which was the truth.
"Why not? They're lovely and your looks are alike enough to hers that they will be beautiful on you as well, most of them even more than this one." She'd hesitated, thinking, then while she stared at my bosom and the material stretched tightly there, she added, "Sure and they won't all be appropriate as they are made now, but I can find lace or some silk to add here and there"
As she continued to pin and stitch, my gaze went from the mirror to my own dress that lay in a discarded heap across my bed. It was cream coloured, lacy, covered with blushing pink rosebuds and it was as different from Mother's fine velvet gowns as was Mary's brown linen uniform dress from Lady Astor's day dresses.
Yes, of course I'd known then, as now, that I should have been delighted by the vast addition to my wardrobe. Mother had been one of the finest dressed women in Chicago. When my gaze made its way back to the mirror, the girl swathed in her mother's gown that looked out at me felt like a stranger and me – Emily – had seemed to be utterly lost somewhere in her unfamiliar reflection.
When I wasn't talking with Cook, standing for alterations or trying to remember the endless details of entertaining that Mather had mastered with what had seemed like no effort at all, I wandered silently through our huge mansion, trying to avoid Father and speaking to no one. Odd how I'd not thought of our home as huge until after Mother was no longer filling it, but with her gone it had become an enormous cage, filled with all of the beautiful things one woman had collected, including her only living child.
Living child? Before that Wednesday evening, I had started to believe that I had quit living and I only existed as a shell, waiting for my body to catch me up and realize that I was already dead.
Miraculously it was then that Arthur Simpton brought me back to life!