Christine did not say anything at first. She stood in the doorway, a woman of fifty seven in a pink bathrobe with her hair flat on one side, and she looked at the dress hanging on the rack like it was somebody she had once known. Gary put a hand on her shoulder. She shrugged it off. It was the first time in my life I saw my daughter shrug off her husband. “Gary knows why,” she said again, louder. “Tell her, Gary. Tell my mother what you did at the bus station in August of 1991, or I will.”
Gary tried to laugh. It came out thin. “Christine, you are upset.” “I am telling the truth,” she said. “Danny waited for me at that station until nine at night. Gary found him there. He had followed me from the house. He told Danny I was not coming, that I had changed my mind, that I was happy. And he gave him a check.” “A check,” Brianna whispered, and then covered her mouth. I looked at my son in law, a man I had fed at my table for thirty five years, and he looked at the floor.
“Two thousand dollars,” Christine said. “Gary told Danny to get on the bus and never contact me again. Danny was nineteen. He worked at the Texaco on Green Ridge Street, and he had nothing. He took it. And Gary came to me the next morning and told me Danny had taken my money and left, that I had been robbed and left, and that he would marry me anyway. I was twenty two. I believed him. For thirty five years I believed him, until I saw Danny name in the guest book at Daddy service.”
A pink envelope pinned inside a wedding dress, a bus ticket never used, and a daughter who finally told her mother the truth.
I sat down on a stool by the pressing table. I could not feel my hands. For thirty five years I had watched my girl smile at Easter dinners, a smile like a window with the curtain drawn, and I thought it was just who she was. Now I saw what it was. It was a woman holding a door shut with her whole body. “Why did you keep the dress, Chrissy?” I asked. “Why leave it here on my rack?” She pressed her hand flat against the ivory satin. “Because it was the only place Gary would never look. He thought you threw everything out.”
Brianna came and put a cup of tea in my hand and went to stand at the front counter like a sentry. Gary tried one more time. “Irene, the building. All I wanted was the building. Christine and I only want what is best.” “Gary,” I said, as gently as I could, “I sold the building in September. All four stores. You have been asking me to sign something that is not mine to sign.” He stared at me. For the first time in thirty five years, Gary Novak had nothing to say. He picked up his keys and walked out the back door into the alley. The bell rang behind him.
Christine sank down onto the floor of the shop in her slippers, her back against the boiler, and wept the way she did as a baby, with her whole body. I got down next to her. At eighty two, getting down on a floor is a business, and I did not care. “Mama, I took Daddy money,” she said. “Four thousand dollars from the safe. Daddy blamed himself for years.” “Chrissy,” I said, “your father knew it was you. The night before he passed, he told me. He said, Irene, let her keep it. She needed it more than we did. He would rather lose four thousand dollars than lose his girl.”
Christine looked up at me, her face wet and stunned. “He knew?” “Your father knew everything,” I said. “Stan Kowalczyk could look at a customer for five seconds and tell you which suit he had pawned. Do you think he could not tell his own daughter was breaking?” We sat there on the floor of Prospect Cleaners, two women in the smell of steam and starch, and for the first time since August of 1991 I felt I had my daughter back. It was not a happy feeling. It was a deep one, like water finding its level.
It was Brianna who made the phone call. She found Danny in under an hour, because Brianna can find anybody. Daniel Wozniak was fifty four years old, she said, and he owned a small auto repair shop in Wilkes Barre. He had never married. He answered on the first ring, and when Brianna said the name Christine, there was a silence so long she thought the line had gone silent. Then he said, “Is she all right?” Brianna passed the phone to my daughter. I walked into the front of the store so they could have their privacy.
They talked for forty minutes. I will not say what was said, because it was not mine to hear. When Christine came out she had washed her face and fixed her hair, and she looked like the girl who came home from Marywood in 1988 with an armload of books. “I am going to have coffee with him on Saturday, Mama,” she said. “Just coffee.” “Coffee is a fine thing,” I said. “I serve it at the counter.” She laughed. It was a real laugh, a little rusty, like a screen door that had not been opened in years.
On Saturday I worked the counter the way I always do. At ten the bell rang and Christine walked in with a tall gray haired man in a clean work jacket, holding a paper cup in each hand. He set one on the counter in front of me. “Mrs. Kowalczyk,” he said. “I owe you a thank you for something I never did.” I took the wedding gown off the rack myself and laid it across the counter, ivory satin and lace, and said it was thirty five years overdue for a pressing. The ticket was still stapled to it. I tore it in half.