Free My Life in Black and White by Kim Izzo

that was really a converted bedroom. It was stacked to the rafters (if the room had rafters, but really it had fifteen-foot ceilings) with clothes, shoes, coats and accessories. There was an old wooden screen that my mother used to change behind and I used to hide behind. Marjorie kept everything, or it looked like she did. She still had her favourite dresses from high school right up towhat she wore to her friend’s wedding last summer. If I had been a girlie-girl, then this room would have been heaven to me growing up. But as I said, I was a tomboy, and so I avoided it like homework and Brussels sprouts.
    The only part of the closet that ever held my attention was one special section that was entirely devoted to my grandmother. It was like a shrine to her style. Painstakingly packed in acid-free tissue in carefully labelled boxes were every suit, cocktail dress, evening gown, piece of lingerie and every pair of shoes and slippers she either wore when she was a struggling starlet in the 1940s or when she worked as a wardrobe assistant on film sets in the 1950s. Marjorie had inherited the entire collection when she was old enough not to wreck them. And through the years, she had tracked the origin of most of the items, partly from Alice’s notebooks and partly from her own research. It was a time capsule and probably worth a small fortune.
    I found the formless clothes kind of sad, once alive with my grandmother’s vibrancy, a woman I never knew except for a few flickering images on a videotape, but with no life in them now. Growing up, Marjorie told me how she played dress-up with them when she was younger; it made her feel close to the mother she barely remembered. I never played dress-up once, not a chance … until today. The box that had fallen and exploded was one of my grandmother’s. Marjorie and I stood staring down at the spilled mound of chiffon and satin like it was pixie dust.
    “You were going to get rid of Alice’s dresses?” I asked in disbelief.
    Marjorie kneeled down and began to fold the pile, and I kneeled down to help. It was a box full of dresses, yellow ones, pink ones, green and purple.
    “There are so many great pieces but I never wear them, and neither …” She stopped short but I knew what was coming, so I finished it for her.
    “I’ll never wear them either,” I said. “Another reason I’m a disappointment.”
    “I had hoped you would have the same passion as I did,” she admitted sullenly. “Like Alice had too. But there’s no point hanging onto them. I can get a pretty penny for the collection.”
    I wanted to shout to save them for a granddaughter, but I kept quiet and let the guilt bear down on me as it had for as long as I could remember, no less heavy for the span of time. There was little point in objecting on behalf of a daughter that didn’t exist, and may never exist, like some twisted version of a hope chest. Nor was there any point arguing that my life wouldn’t have turned out any differently if I had dressed better or pursued acting or any of the things that had, in effect, brought only unhappiness to Marjorie and Alice. As I watched her painstakingly handle each item, I realized that my mother, for all her vibrancy and wit, was aging. She wouldn’t be around forever, and something inside her seemed to tell her it was time to clean house, especially since she’d long ago given up on me ever living up to expectations. From deep inside I couldn’t let her be right, not entirely, and unlike my marriage or writing an award-winning film, feigning an interest in fashion was an easy win.
    “Tell me about that one?” I asked when she held up a bottle-green bouclé shift dress. “It’s so bright.”
    “You can’t be afraid of colour.” She smiled slightly. “Though I know how you love black. This was one your grandmother made for an early fifties film noir. It was worn by the femme fatale, that’s why it’s so sexy. She was dangerous!” My mother laughed