Sleeping Beauties Read Free

small animal trotting down the center of the second-floor hall. She thought it might be one of the rats that sometimes slipped inside the house and she stepped back calmly to let it pass. To her surprise, the door behind her fell open.
    A large
koa
bed sat heavily under a swag of faded striped damask. Festoons of dusty yellow feathers were tied to the top of each bedpost, an adornment, Clio knew, once allowed only the nobility. There was a slender chaise, its covering of gray sprigged silk faded and torn. There was a dressing table made of mother-of-pearl. She knew of the table; Lester had described it to her, a wedding gift to her great-grandmother from the ambassador of China. There were large mirrors in gilded frames, the glass blind with rust. There was a chamber pot under a tall
koa
chest.
    She opened the chest. Hundreds of feathers floated to her feet. White doves, she thought in astonishment. And then she saw that they were not birds. They were shoes. Shoes sewn with feathers and lace and tiny rosettes of seed pearls, shoes with soles of thin white leather and the words Madame d’Espina, Rue Cambon embossed in gold in the faded satin linings. She sat on the floor and gathered the shoes into her lap.
    A light fragrance of dusting powder rose from the shoes. Some of them had never been worn. She tried to pair them, delicately tucking her fingers into the toes so as not to soil them or injure the brittle velvet ribbons. She hesitated for only a moment, then slid her foot into a shoe that looked as if it had once been the color of lavender. She walked up and down the room, arms aloft, toes pointed like a ballerina.
    Clio did not tell Lester that she had discovered the secret of the unlocked doors, nor did she fidget or otherwise give herself away while he slowly searched for the key to thenursery. But she did avail herself night and day of the rooms that her ancestors had left open for her.
    Lester pointed out to Emma that if Clio were staying, she would require new clothes. Could he put her into something of Miss Clara’s?
    Emma, who was frowning with the effort of rendering a name-chant into English, a chant that had never before been written in any language, looked up absently and said, “Good heavens, Lester. You must be mad.”
    Miss Clara had died in 1937. Lester looked at the floor, his face pinched with anger.
    “They wouldn’t fit the child,” Emma said in explanation.
    Clio exhaled with gratitude. It was the first time that her stay at Wisteria House, permanent or not, had ever been acknowledged, and she had thought for one moment that Emma’s chastisement meant that she would not be staying long. But neither Lester nor her aunt were thinking of that, nor was her presence at Wisteria House ever mentioned, not in all the years that she lived there with them.
    Later that afternoon, after she had finished the translation, Emma took Clio to Stant’s Department Store. Emma parked her black Buick in front of the Stant building on Fort Street, only four blocks from Wisteria House. Clio had not been to the store for many years, not since her mother moved to Australia. Few people still patronized Stant’s, preferring instead the big mall at Ala Moana, even though their families had been dressed by the Stants for generations. The merchandise at Stant’s was not very fashionable.
    There were no other customers in the store that day. Emma and Clio took the wrought-iron cage elevator to the second floor, the Children and Foundations floor, where they were greeted ceremoniously by Mrs. Okamura. Mrs.Okamura proudly told Clio that she had helped her mother to order her first trousseau from
Harper’s Bazaar
. Still looking a little dazed, Mrs. Okamura said that Kitty had not thought the selection at Stant’s quite right.
    She neatly laid out for their approval all of the things deemed essential for a thirteen-year-old girl, including, to Clio’s delight, a white cotton brassiere. Emma pronounced brassiere the French