In the photo, a woman playing piano, alone. A wide satin ribbon holds back a lace curtain to reveal the shadows of the next room. A new century, unmarred by influenza, world war, nuclear bombs, plastic, or cancer. The chair beside her is empty, the wallpaper is floral, there’s an old mantel clock with a face, it’s ticking.
*
Surely she wears a corset under the bodice of her ivory dress, high-necked, ruched lace along the back, a wasp waist, as they call it, mark of beauty, privilege. “Just hold on and suck in,” Mammy implores Scarlett O’Hara, cinching the laces to create that legendary 17-inch waist.
*
I found a corset once in my great-uncle’s long-abandoned general store, twenty years after it closed for good. The corset, tied with ribbons to hold it in a cylindrical shape, was inside a narrow box. My ten-year-old fingers unrolled it— cotton, bone underpinnings, metal hooks that fastened down the back, and long shoestring ............
laces to tighten the waist in front.
*
Her fingers run across the ivories as she turns her long neck—hair swept up in a chignon—to read the music, the chair beside her empty. But look, another photo, a man sitting there. A man with a high forehead—a mark of intelligence, my mother always said—and thin downcast lips. He looks at the camera, one hand playing against his cheek. Is it he who listens?
*
He’d died, my great-uncle, within a few days of his sister, my grandmother, as the war against Hitler wound down. My army pilot father flew home from Tunisia for the double funeral. It was as if the grief-stricken family had just locked the doors and left it all those years. Dust blanketed the merchandise—wooden cases of empty soda bottles; newspapers with lurid headlines in piles on the counters; old metal signs.
*
I found a photo album made of metal and glass, the cover cushioned in maroon velvet. If you patted it dust motes would fly up sparkling in sunlight that slanted from a window paned in wavery glass. Inside—unsmiling thin-lipped people with high foreheads. The grandmother I never knew as an auburn-haired girl with rose-tinted lips. Her lacetrimmed ivory blouse, high necked, curving down to meet a long brown skirt at her wasp waist.
*
Later, in the privacy of my bedroom, I wrapped the corset around my torso, clasping metal hooks in front and then twisting them to the back. Wearing it felt like being enclosed in a narrow, dusty room. It prickled. I couldn’t breathe. I pulled the laces so tightly in front that one snapped.
