Matriarch Tales, Part 7:  Dorothy Alice Continues– by Saga

 Grace and Alice, about 1963

In her widowhood, Alice was pursued (and that is apt description) by several men. She was aware that they were looking for a wife who would cook and clean and do the laundry.  In one or two cases, they were gay men looking for a “beard”, and she was aware of that, too. She never criticized, but rather enjoyed the company of each man, recounting with laughter all the ways they hinted that they needed a housewife. About one of the gay men she said, “He has better taste in clothes than I do.”  A high compliment indeed. After all, she had noticed Bert because of the fine quality of his suit fabric.

One day I asked her how she could work all day and then go out for dinner and a concert and get up the next morning to greet a client for a fitting. She was in her sixties at the time. As if it were a secret, she confided that she woke early and dressed immediately. “Never sit around in your robe, Honey. You’ll never get anything done.”  She worked until no later than noon, then took a long nap. When she woke in the late afternoon, she dressed to go out.  When she returned from the evening out with one gentleman or another, she worked until the wee hours.  “It’s nice and quiet then and no one calls, so I can concentrate,” she said.

And then she fell in love.  Mac was 76, charming, and in uncertain health.  His diabetes was difficult to treat, and he was very careful about taking care of himself.  Alice was delighted in his company and when he was hospitalized to stabilize his insulin dosage, she went every day to visit him in the hospital. One evening she arrived to find a table set with beautiful linens, china, and flowers. The pavilion where Mac was cared for was new and luxurious, but such a dining table was startling. The nurses were all waiting outside his room to hear what Alice said when Mac proposed. They were married on July 15 in the chapel of the church Bertha and Alice had attended since 1920.

Six months later, Mac collapsed in the shower. Alice heard him fall and held him as he died.  We gathered at their home, all of us helpless.  Alice was tearful, but gracious as always as she thanked Mac’s family and hers and a few friends for coming.  It was clear that she was still in shock, an insulation against the sorrow. I was standing at the kitchen sink when her closest friend came in and simply opened her arms to Alice. As she sobbed, Alice said, “You see, it was too good to be true.”  That was the only time I heard her weep for herself. The only time I heard her complain about what life gave her.

Later she told me what she had loved best about being married to Mac. “In the evenings, we’d go to the ice cream store and get a cone. Sugar free for Mac, only one dip for each of us. We would walk along the old canal tow path and feel the cones to the ducks. We held hands the entire time. I loved walking and holding his hands. I felt so loved.”  Mac, who was as smitten as Alice, had been thoughtful and generous to the end. His will, written before their wedding, provided that Alice would own the large house they lived in. 

Once again, Alice emerged from heartbreak and shock to make a new life for herself.  She resumed her work as a fine seamstress, work she had happily set aside during her brief marriage.  Alice became known for her wedding gowns. And it was no wonder; her gowns were unique and beautifully made. Mine was a beautiful on the inside with French seams and tiny hand stitches, as it was on the outside.

About six months before my wedding, the preparations began. I was to have the fancy wedding that neither my mother nor Aunt Alice had had, and it mattered. It mattered quite a lot. I was swept along in the fun and details, and happily so. A friend later said that it was a perfect production, which was no wonder because I knew how to direct good theatre. But, of course, I was not the master mind behind this production.

For Alice, my wedding gown was the center of the entire “big day”.  I poured over bridal magazines, drew sketches that my college costuming professor would have cringed at, and sat with Aunt Alice to design the perfect gown.  It would require yards of lace to make the bodice, sleeves, and a panel from waist to floor, not to mention the heavy silk for a November wedding. Such beautiful fabrics required a trip to Chicago for what ladylike Alice called, “the good stuff”.  Alice and my mother and I set off on our quest.  Alice had found a place that sold remnants and bolts from stores that had gone out of business, sustained fire damage, and ends from fabric mills. The shop was long and narrow and crowded with merchandise and customers. The old wood floors creaked with every footfall and finding merchandise required diligence and physical strength to lift piles of bolts. It had been decided that ivory silk would better suit my skin tones than pure white, a decision fraught with social significance. I had been engaged for three years; would people think I wasn’t a virgin if I wore ivory? Alice declared it was nobody’s business, and we went searching for ivory silk.  

Lo and behold, we found the perfect bolt, pristine and beautiful. Now to find ivory lace and enough of it. In an old cabinet with fragile glass doors, we found a length of French lace that matched perfectly.  It was scalloped on both edges, which we needed for the panel down the front. That was essential and this was a rare find. But was there enough?

Alice bemoaned that she had left her tape measure at home, “I always have a tape measure in my purse!”  Borrowing a yard stick from a clerk, she began to calculate. She used the stiff three-yard stick to measure my arm length, around our proposed neckline, over my shoulders, and around my waist. Then the length from waist to floor. Alice stared into space and began to murmur to herself.  Neither my mother nor I said a word; we just watched and waited. Alice counted the scallops on the lace, calculated how many scallops she needed per yard, and after finishing her calculations – all in her head – she announced, “We will have half a scallop left, but it will be close. I think I can do it.”  When the gown was done, we had one-half scallop of lace left, which she kept.

Then came the all-important bridal portrait. The photographer was well known and catered to customers who could pay handsomely.  No doubt Alice paid for the photographs. It turned out to be a good investment because the photographer was fascinated by my gown. She asked where I had bought it and assumed it had come from New York because the design was unique, and it was so well made. Alice, who was there to be sure the gown looked just right in the pictures – modestly said, “It’s home made.” I remember the photographer insisting that she never use that phrase to describe her work again and asking for Alice’s business card.

It wasn’t long before Alice had a reputation and a grown bridal gown business, still sewing in her guest room. Her gowns were made according to the bride’s wishes, or the bride’s mother’s wishes, and Alice was good at the diplomacy required. She helped each bride dress at the church and “floated the train” as the bride set forth down the aisle.

When Mac died, Alice searched for a way to put her expertise to use and eventually went to work in a bridal boutique. She called her customers “my brides”.  Then her vision began to make her work difficult. Macular degeneration progressed very slowly and took her central vision. But like her grandmother, Alice could sew by feel. She mentioned Nancy Alice’s quilt stitches now and then and I felt my aunt was reminding herself that the women in our family simply do not give up. When I went to visit, she would ask me to thread her needles. She had two pincushions on a hook in her kitchen, each full of needles.  One pincushion held the needles with black thread, the other with white.  Because the texture of each cushion was different from the other, she could determine the color of the thread. She hemmed and mended by feel alone and her stitches were still beautiful.

Alice continued to drive despite her declining vision and told me once that she drove only in the righthand lane on the brief time she needed to use the interstate loop. She could see the barricades in her peripheral vision to her right and stay in the lane. And besides, she said, she drove slowly. I was suitably alarmed, and she soon stopped driving. The boutique staff made sure she could get to work to take care of her brides.

Alice’s 95^th birthday party was a big reception at her church complete with a display of photographs and a wedding gown or two.  I expected to see her elderly friends, but of course the crown included young families as well.  She was irresistible, I believe, because she truly cared about each person she knew. She remembered all sorts of details and asked gentle questions about her friends’ lives. Seldom did she need to ask who someone was; though she couldn’t see faces, she could identify voices and sometimes perfumes.

When it was time to move from the house, Alice did so without complaint. She sold her beautiful furnishings and we held two huge garage sales with her friends making it all possible. She sold her house to a young family who then continued to visit her in the retirement community for several years.

Alice lived in the retirement community for almost twenty years and certainly recouped her financial investment in the process. She welcomed newcomers, played bridge, attended church services, offered her apartment as a model for touring prospective residents, and read using a magnifying device that resembled a microfilm reader. We shopped for her fashionable clothes in catalogues and her wardrobe was up to date until the very end of her life. Like her grandmother, Alice was nearly bald. Her wigs were carefully chosen, and she had them cleaned and styled by a woman who came to her apartment. The illusion was that no one knew she wore wigs and Alice was determined to cling to that belief.

When her body became unable to resist infections, she moved to assisted living, again without complaint. She chose the furnishings to take with her and although she couldn’t see the art, she wanted her small apartment to be pretty and welcoming to others.

At her 103^rd birthday party with her sister, my brother and his wife, she said the only cross words I ever heard from her. I entered with a pile of clean laundry and birthday gifts in a red shopping bag.  Somehow, she saw that flash of red and told me to get it out of her apartment right now. “Only pink in here today,” she announced. I quickly hid the red bag and she returned to asking my sister in law about how her work was going.  After everyone left, my mother and I tidied the apartment and helped her into bed. She said to my mother, “Grace, do you remember where the papers are?” and asked for her checkbook. She wrote me a large check and said, “Go buy yourself a new car; your mother says you need one.”  Then she said, “I’m ready to go now.”  She meant that she would acquiesce to the urging of the staff who had told her they would let her wait until after her birthday.  And she meant she was ready to die.

Despite her clear understanding of the circumstances, or perhaps because of it, she continued to care about how she looked. She said she wanted to go to heaven in her best wig and her pink silk suit.  She refused to give up her wigs and used a narrow chin strap to keep her wig on in bed. It was clearly damaging her skin, so I found some soft skull caps and took them to her.  One evening, as she was fading in and out of sleep or consciousness, the nurse and I took off her wig and put the soft cap on for her. 

“Here is your best wig,” I said. A fresh nightgown became her pink silk suit. When I applied lip balm, I told her it was the lipstick she loved that matched her suit exactly.  She sighed a deep sigh and slipped further away from us.

The next night, I caught a nursing aide sitting in Alice’s room eating a carry-out dinner and watching violent news coverage on the TV. I was livid. After I sent the aide away, carefully avoiding raising my voice lest I disturb Alice further, I changed the TV to a show about weddings and sat by the bed. I discovered that I could stoke a place on her shoulder to calm Alice when she gasped for air. A friend called and I asked her to bring me clothes and toiletries. “I’m staying here day and night for the duration to be sure she is cared for.”  At that moment, my beloved Aunt Alice opened her eyes and took her last breath.

At her memorial service, I could only think to tell one story about her.  About a year earlier I had made an elaborate pirate costume for a friend and Alice wanted to see it. She examined it carefully and I apologized for my workmanship, reminding her (unnecessarily) that it was just a costume. She was complimentary and we moved onto another conversation. A few days later, my mother said, “Alice tells me you put the buttons and buttonholes on the wrong side of that pirate coat. You put the buttons on the woman’s side instead of the man’s.”  I was struck by two things: Alice had noticed despite her blindness and, perhaps more telling, she had not mentioned it to me out of kindness. When I told the story at her memorial, heads nodded all over the room at the mention of her kindness.

My brother made sure that each person who came to her memorial was given a pink rose to take away as a reminder of the beauty and gentleness Alice had loved.

Alice with pink roses, age 100

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