Chapter 4 - Seventeen Names, Fifteen Answers
On Monday morning, we put the ruined dress on a padded table at Blue Thread. The workshop occupied two former classrooms in a college annex, where sunlight came through tall windows and every drawer had a label written by a different hand. Usually there was music. That morning the only sound was the ventilation fan and the soft pull of cotton as Odessa unwrapped the gown.
My hair had been washed twice. The lace still carried the adhesive in hardened white streaks. Across the inside train, however, every blue signature remained visible.
“That's the work,” Odessa said, touching the edge without touching the glue. “Not the silk. Not the beads. The names.”
Kiki passed around copies of the two documents she'd found in her workshop email. The first was a straightforward consent form allowing photographs of the gown and its makers for the wedding program. Fifteen women had signed it. I had not. Sloane had only sent me the separate photography form meant for the bride, never anything transferring rights to my own pattern revisions. Odessa had held off signing the photograph release because a page was missing from her copy. Six weeks earlier, however, she had signed a different form allowing the workshop to borrow the family shop’s large-format scanner. The second page of that form had gone missing too, and she wanted to know why.
The second document had the same first page but a different page two. Its heading read IRREVOCABLE EXCLUSIVE LICENSE. The signatures had been attached below it in the version delivered to Wynn Retail.
“That's not what I saw,” Ruth said. She was a hospital laundry supervisor with three grandchildren and no patience for softening an accusation. “I signed for a picture. I didn't give somebody my patterns.”
“Before we say forged, we need to know how the pages were assembled,” said Maya Chen, the labor attorney Odessa had asked to attend. “An altered document is serious, but let's establish what each person signed and what the buyer received. It also matters who actually owns each drawing.”
Nobody wanted to hear caution. It felt wrong that a woman could pour glue on my head and we still had to be careful with the word thief. But Maya wasn't protecting Sloane. She was protecting us from making a claim we couldn't support.
We spent the next hour talking about things the wedding had hidden beneath its bright flowers. The seventeen women hadn't all come to Blue Thread for the same reason. Ruth came because she liked working with her hands after long hospital shifts. Celia Grant, who was recovering from a layoff, hoped to sell embroidery online. Kiki wanted an apprenticeship that wouldn't leave her paying for supplies she couldn't afford. Two of the women were sisters who rarely agreed on anything, including how much money they would accept for their labor.
“Some of us would've licensed our designs,” Celia said. “If the terms were fair. Don't go around saying we all wanted to give you that gown for nothing and nothing else.”
“You're right,” I said. “I'm sorry.”
She nodded. “You can be mad about what happened without deciding what we would have chosen.”
The distinction stayed with me. I had turned the seventeen signatures into a story about how much they loved me. They did love me. That didn't mean I got to speak for their financial interests.
Odessa laid out her original pattern book, its corners soft from nearly twenty years of use. Inside was the winding river border Sloane had put on the launch slide. Odessa had first sewn it onto a baptism gown for a woman whose daughter had arrived six weeks early. The little girl had survived; the family called the border the river home. The pattern had changed over the years as Odessa taught people how to adapt it.
“My book proves I drew a version in 2007,” she said. “It doesn't prove she copied this exact page. Mara made changes for the wedding. Kiki added the broken curve.”
Kiki looked startled. “I thought that part was just a mistake.”
“It wasn't by the time we were done with it.”
I remembered my sister visiting the workshop eleven weeks before the wedding. She brought pastries and said she wanted to photograph our progress for the venue's promotional materials. At the time I was relieved. For once, she seemed interested in something I cared about. She asked to take the paper templates to the family shop, where the larger printer could scan them without folding them.
“She never brought those originals back,” I said.
Odessa closed the pattern book. “I thought you collected them.”
“No.”
Maya wrote that down. “We need the dates and the messages about the loan.”
By lunch, the women had voted on two things. We would keep the gown intact while an independent conservator evaluated it. We would also send Wynn Retail a joint letter demanding preservation of the documents behind the license and clarification of exactly what had been purchased. No one would publish the dressing-room footage without first discussing its effect on the women whose work had been used.
Then the workshop door opened and my mother walked in carrying a cardboard archive box. There was a small purple mark at her wrist where she had gripped the vanity on the wedding day; I hadn’t noticed how hard she was holding on.
“I heard you were meeting,” she said.
“It's not a family meeting, Mom.”
“I know.” Her hands tightened around the box. “I brought the shop's copies.”
Maya invited her to sit. My mother shook her head and took out a printed contract, a payment statement, and a letter from our landlord.
The buyer's release carried fifteen scanned signatures. Below them was the printed title of my mother's role: AUTHORIZED AGENT, BLUE THREAD WORKSHOP.
“Mom,” I said, “you weren't our agent.”
“No,” she answered.
“Then why is your signature there?”
May you like
She looked around the room, at each of the women whose names had been attached to a document they hadn't seen.
“Because I signed it,” she said. “And I let Sloane tell you she had handled everything.”
