Vivianne and Her Red Dress

I have grown up with the impression that every small town in America has an outcast, someone who lives on the cusp of society and stands to give all the others something to gossip about. Vivianne was ours.

My mother claimed to know her history better then anyone else in town, and I have overheard much of what I know of Vivianne through the keyholes of doors as my mother gossiped eagerly. Vivianne and her mother arrived eleven years before I was born, with shabby clothes and bags full of strange foreign objects, that slightly resembled pots and pans. Wherever they came from must have been on the other side of the world, because the aromas floating out of their house were like nothing anyone in the town had ever smelt before.

The town of my childhood was like most other small towns in the bible belt of America. There was one road that ran straight through it and into the horizons on either side, giving the impression that the town was trapped between them. Several houses, an elementary school, a city hall and a sort of market square made up the whole of our town. And Vivianne’s house was teetering on the north edge of its borders.

My parents owned the convenience store and my father also worked as a mechanic at the gas station across the road. My mother, a fresh bride who was then deeply in love with my father, tended the convenience store where Vivianne would come every afternoon after school. She still remembers the items that the young outcast bought every single day: the local newspaper --, some glue -every once in a while a pair of scissors-, and a small chocolate bar. She always paid in small change that she reached deep into the chasm of her pocket for and never said a word. But smiled once when she entered and once more just before she left.

Vivianne’s mother died when I was at the tender age of two. She was twenty years old and took over her mother’s job as a cook the elementary school in town. As always, she never spoke, but smiled at each child as they collected their lunch.

When it came time for me to attend the elementary school, I got my first up close glimpse of Vivianne. Like every other child, she smiled at me and it was such a smile. Her cheeks blossomed on either side of her face. Her rosy red lips were stretched thin and wide so that the overall impression was that you were the greatest thing she had ever seen.

One day, I was with my mother at the convenience store, when Vivianne came in to buy her newspaper, her glue and her chocolate. When she entered, I ducked behind the magazine shelf, and took quick glances at her while she scanned the newspaper. She picked up the glue and the chocolate bar and went over to the counter where my mother was listlessly flipping through a magazine. Mechanically, my mother took the small change Vivianne handed her and placed it in the cashier box. My mother didn’t see, but Vivianne smiled at her. Her gaze found mine and as she passed, she patted my blonde head gently and then left.

I was so shocked that I sprinted into the little nook beneath the counter. It took my mother two hours of kind words and my father one sentence of threats to get me out again.

***

Almost two months later, I was playing outside my house when I lost control of the ball I had been bouncing up and down. I watched its progress down the road until it landed, a thick layer of dust covering its surface, right in front of Vivianne’s porch.

I glanced up and down the road and found it deserted. When I was sure, I skulked over to where my ball sat, as if I were treading on spikes. For some reason, intentionally walking over to Vivianne’s house seemed like a crime. I gulped and reached down; when my sweaty fingers finally grazed over the dusty ball, I was so relieved I could have collapsed on the ground. Instead, I clutched it to my chest and turned quickly on my heel and began to scamper back to my front yard. But, I heard a faltering voice behind me and nothing in the world would have stopped me from turning around to see its owner.

Vivianne stood on the porch, her hand outstretched to me as if to beckon me towards her. She said something more that seemed like a foreign language to my fairly immature ears and I simply gawked at her in awe. I felt the true significance of the moment. The town outcast, who never spoke a single word to anyone, was speaking to me. She made more strange movements with her hands, and like a fog being lifted from my eyes, I realised that she was calling me towards her.

I took timid steps up to the steps of her porch and then hauled myself up them until I was standing in front of her. Vivianne smiled that gorgeous smile at me and I couldn’t help but be entranced by it. Without a word I followed her through the front door and into her kitchen. She pulled out a chair which I sat in with the ball still pressed to my chest.

As she poured two glasses of lemonade for us, I glanced around at the kitchen just as a child would take in any other wondrous new location. Except my wonder was founded in the knowledge that I was the only one in town that had ever entered Vivianne‘s house. My developing mind managed to retain that thought, even if it would take years to process into a fully fledged memory.

She placed the lemonade on the table, and I watched a wet ring form around the bottom of the glass. This would be a heresy in my house. But Vivianne’s house was like another world, a world separate from the small town outside its walls. I felt like I had been transported there by chance and chance alone. The legendary pots and pans hung on hooks from the walls, strange liquids bubbled on the stove and various bowls sat on the counters with ingredients unrecognisable to me.

Vivianne noticed my interest in these things and moved gracefully over to them, gliding along the floor like a ghost. As she pointed to one of the pots on the stove she said a mixture of words that sound like “Zupa Ogorkowa”. Next, she traced her fingers through the curling smoke over the next pot and said “Barszcz” as if it made total sense. She picked up a bowl of slightly congealed goo and said “Jablka Smazone w Ciescie”. Finally she placed a loving hand on the last bowl and whispered in words that I could hardly hear; uttering some sort of mantra from her home country: “Chrust”.

It hit me why I couldn’t understand her. I suddenly realised why she never spoke to anyone. It was because she could not speak our language. She spoke the language of foreign gods and those things she is concocting in her kitchen were the recipes of her past. They were the most important part of her life. Those recipes huddled in the pots that the were lugged halfway across the world.

Then she sat back down and I examined the rest
of her kitchen. On the wall opposite from the table I noticed that it wasn‘t simply an ordinary wall. I saw that it is covered with newspaper clippings. Articles announcing the births, deaths and engagements of people in town. There were articles about local garden shows and fires, school sports and store openings. Every event that had taken place in the past sixteen years was chronicled on the wall and I saw a blank space at the bottom, still waiting to be covered up.

My mind was snapped from the alternate reality that was Vivianne’s kitchen and back to the real world outside of it. I heard my mother frantically calling my name and Vivianne appeared to hear it too. She ushered me out of the kitchen through a door that led out of the back of her house.

As my mother pulled me into her arms, my eyes flickered towards Vivianne’s house. There was no sign of her anywhere and I felt as if I had just lost something inconceivably valuable.

***

A whole week passed and Vivianne didn’t come to the convenience store, she wasn‘t even at school during lunch. It was as if she had just disappeared into the very air she had appeared
from sixteen years ago. Then late one afternoon, I caught a glimpse of that vivid red dress that would dwell in my mind forever. Whenever I see red, I am brought back to my childhood and back to Vivianne.

On that road that cut through straight through town is where she stood, about twenty yards down from her house. Her red dress the only speck of colour in the otherwise barren wasteland. It would be years before I would be able to travel down that road.

I spotted her from my kitchen window and I ran outside to get a closer look. At first I stood at the edge of my yard, about to topple over onto the dusty road. I took a moment before taking the plunge, then with one deep intake of breath I ran down the road towards her. I kept on running, past Vivianne’s house. I was no longer inside our town; but for the first time in my life, I was on my way out. But Vivianne held me in and I stopped at her side. I had a feeling that if she hadn’t been there, that I would have kept running forever.

Even with me panting beside her, she had eyes only for the road in front of her. We stood there together, both of our eyes on the road ahead. Then, when the sweat was pouring down my neck and back in uncomfortable torrents and my feet were beginning to hurt, I saw a metallic black spot moving towards us. I took a hurried glance at Vivianne and saw the ghost of a smile flicker across her face and knew that this was what she had been waiting for. The apprehension inside of me grew with every moment that the spot approached us.

The spot was a dark car that suddenly stopped about a quarter of a mile up the road. Vivianne and I watched in silence as one of the car doors opened and a figure stepped out of it. The figure was completely clocked in black and as soon as he or she had collected their suitcase, the car’s engine revved up. It turned around and went buzzing back down the road at breakneck speed.

I’m not sure why, but I sprinted up the road towards the figure. The dust rose around my feet and enveloped me so that I was a travelling brown cloud. The figure stopped and waited for me; once again I had the strange sensation that I could run forever.

The figure was a she. She had thick black eyebrows and deep-set, sullen eyes underneath them. Her features were harsh and marked with old age and depression. She reminded me of a more melancholy, feminine version of my father. We were like mirror images, each inspecting the other as if we weren’t sure if the other was indeed real. Finally I held out a shaking hand and took hers. The old woman was surprised, but that is really not a strong enough word for the emotion she expressed with that sharp, angular face. I must confess that I don’t know how else to describe it. But surprise comes to mind. And then a sudden softness overcame her as she smiled and I saw the family resemblance between her and Vivianne. Both smiles lit up their faces and gave them a luminous quality, even if there was nothing particularly luminous about them.

When the two of us reached Vivianne, the women
stared long and hard at each other and then their tight lips broke out into smiles and they came together. I remember the tears glistening on Vivianne’s smooth ivory skin and the stranger’s wrinkled cheeks.

I heard my mother calling me again, so I hurried home. When I glanced out of my window before I went to bed several hours later, I saw them still standing there on the road, in each other’s arms. The stranger’s black garments and Vivianne’s red dress becoming one in the dimming twilight.

***

Her name was Dorota, and she came from somewhere named Poland. I heard my mother asking other women what state that was in, and none of them seemed to have heard of it. Several years later, when I was at college, I found a globe and looked up Poland. I discovered what I had already unconsciously guessed, that it wasn’t in any state at all, but there was an entire ocean and part of a continent separating it from the American states. I never told my mother that.

Dorota worked with Vivianne at the school, and came with Vivianne to the convenience store to buy their three items. I made it a point to be there everyday after school was over so that I could see them. My mother hardly took any notice; she just kept flipping through her magazines, or going into the backroom to gossip with her friends.

One day, my mother was in the backroom, when Vivianne and Dorota came in. They smiled at me and each of them patted my head absentmindedly before dispersing around the store. I watched them from my perch on top of the counter, recounting what I had seen when I went into Vivianne’s kitchen. As she flipped through the newspaper I remembered the clippings branching in all directions around the wall and couldn’t help but smile.

Just then we heard a huge commotion outside. All of our heads jerked in the direction that it had come from. Vivianne ran to the door and a look of utter horror came over her face, her hand clasped to her mouth. Her eyes sought mine and when our gazes met I felt a sinking sensation in my stomach; a feeling of utter dread. My mother’s head poked out around the door to the backroom, she began to scold me but realised that whatever the noise had been, it had come from outside. It had come from the gas station.

***

My father was dead. There was an accident and no one ever told me what really happened. Up until the moment of my mother’s death, I would be constantly pressing her for the information. But whenever I brought up father’s name, she would act as if she had never heard of him before.

We had the funeral three days after the accident. My Uncle Ned brought me, my mother being too indisposed to go herself. She had spent the days after the accident sitting on the porch and staring off down the road that trailed off into distance.

My Uncle Ned and I sat in the front row of the church, listening to the priest speaking in words I couldn’t understand. Words that were strung together hopelessly and I didn’t even bother to attempt to remember them. There was no feeling behind them. They were empty.

Most of the town showed up for the funeral and I recognised most of the men from the long summer nights that my father would spend with them, sitting on our porch drinking whiskey and smoking cigars. Women brought their children, kids I knew from school dressed in their best pairs of overalls, their mothers nudging them to be quiet during the service. But the people that really stand out in my memory are Vivianne and Dorota. Vivianne wore her red dress and Dorota wore a plaid jacket and a blue ruffled dress with a matching wrap around her head. She had continued to wear her black garments after she had first arrived, but today she made an exception.

After the service, my Uncle Ned suggested that we all go down to the gas station and say a few words about my father at the place where he had devoted so much of his time. Uncle Ned held my hand tightly as we walked from the church to the gas station. He seemed to think that I needed comfort, but the truth is, that I had never really known my father.

When we reached the gas station we all stood for a moment. Everyone shifted restlessly -especially the children, and I stood with my eyes on the desolate ground. I felt a hand on my shoulder and looked up into the smiling face of Vivianne.

She stepped away from me and stood in front of our small group, taking every person in turn with her sparkling dark eyes. She said something in that foreign language of hers. And these were words that had something that the priest’s had lacked. Even though none of us, except for Dorota, could know what she was saying, we felt a connection to the feelings behind the words. Those feelings that turned from loss into hope, into salvation. And suddenly I felt a pang in my heart, not for my father, but for Vivianne.

She had been touched by the people in this town, even when some of us hadn’t. She had lived through our sorrows, our joys, our loves and our victories. Even if she couldn’t read those newspaper articles, even if we couldn’t begin to comprehend her words, she had lived through the best and worst moments with us. And so, with a flourish, Uncle Ned and the other men all lifted their hats to my father, but especially to Vivianne.

***

My mother and I began to grow closer after I left town to go to university. Distance seemed to be what drove us together in the end. When I left, it caused quite a stir within the town borders, and I wish I could say that I never looked back, but I most certainly did. On my childhood days. I contemplated the relationship between my parents, and came away with a greater sense of both of them. Distance seemed to also bring me a greater understanding of things. And I still think about Vivianne, who has remained a large part of my life.

I could have abandoned my home earlier, but I felt tied to the town whilst Vivianne was there. For some reason, whenever I walked down that road to try and leave it all behind, Vivianne pulled me right back in. It wasn’t until her death that I was finally released from the bindings of home. It wasn’t until her death that I felt like I was truly ready to leave. To find my own version of what she had discovered in our little town. She gave it the breath of life and sadly, people didn’t realise this until she was gone.