Sleeping Beauties Read Free Page A

way, exaggerating the consonants and giving Clio a moment’s shame. Clio’s happiness, however, was so complete that she didn’t even blush when Emma went on to ask Mrs. Okamura if she advised the wearing of nylon slips, as if nylon were more lascivious, more tending to corruption, than cotton. Mrs. Okamura thought that nylon would do very well.
    Clio’s stepmother, Burta Yamada, had enforced stringent economies of dress, as well as of food. She thought it important that her stepchildren learn the principle of cause and effect—or perhaps it was supply and demand, Clio could never get it straight. Clio had been made to wear Burta’s old clothes, dresses fitted with extra panels of cloth to accommodate Clio’s height. She was given four pairs of underpants and two nightgowns each September at the start of the school year, and she wore them until they were gray with use. She often went to school so oddly costumed that her friends gave to her clothes the name Paris-Frocks, which revealed as much about island standards of taste as Clio’s wardrobe. So no young girl in the world could have been happier than Clio when Mrs. Okamura ran her competent fingers under Clio’s breasts to ensure that the brassiere was a good fit. Mrs. Okamura even called it a training bra, but it was fine with Clio.
    Their many packages, Clio’s many packages, were to be sent to Wisteria House, but when Emma saw the dismay on Clio’s face when she realized that the pleasure of laying the new clothes on her bed and looking at them would bedelayed, she allowed Clio to pick three things to carry home. Clio happily lugged the packages after her, banging them awkwardly against her legs as she followed Emma down to the Men’s Department. Emma needed to buy socks for Lester, who’d been complaining of cramp.
    Clio waited patiently, thinking of her new things, while Emma chatted with Mr. Day, the salesclerk. As her aunt and Mr. Day discussed the decline of sugar prices, Clio noticed a woman putting dozens of bow ties into a straw bag. Without looking around, the woman moved confidently to a table laden with men’s bathing shorts. She examined and discarded several pairs before she found a few to her liking. She put them into her bag.
    Clio was astonished. It was not just the thievery that confused her, but the idea that a woman who seemed so respectable, a person so like her aunt, was a thief. The woman wore a
lau hala
hat with a feather band, and a flower-printed dress, and laced white summer shoes chalky with polish.
    Clio was so mesmerized that she did not hear Emma call her name. She jumped as if it were she who was filling the straw bag. She realized that Emma, too, had seen the woman, but Emma did not seem surprised or even concerned. She certainly said nothing to Mr. Day, who, Clio noticed, allowed his eyes to flicker for only the briefest moment to the woman clumsily wrestling with the torso of a mannequin, the better to remove its terry-cloth beach jacket.
    Emma’s car was still in front of the store, undisturbed, although a line of cars was backed behind it. Drivers pushed their horns, and a Chinese man in a van swore furiously at them as he swerved around the Buick. Clio was embarrassed, but Emma was unperturbed.
    When they were in the car, Clio asked Emma if she had seen the woman in the store.
    “Yes,” Emma said, pulling confidently into traffic. The car behind them was forced to change lanes, and the driver made an obscene gesture with his finger.
    “We were at school together,” Emma said.
    “Did you see what she was doing?” Clio was suddenly unsure that she had seen anything, so extraordinary did it seem.
    Emma signaled to turn into the back gate of Wisteria House with her arm held stiffly out the window. “Her name is Alice Stant,” she said as she turned, both hands on the big steering wheel. “I’m afraid she has not been herself for some time. Her mother sees that everything is returned the next day, of course.