4. Brigid’s Corset Strings
MY WIFE has always pulled her corset strings so tightly it will make an onlooker hold his breath. And it is not as though she is trying to accentuate an hourglass figure. She is shaped with a small waist, with or without a corset, and needs no enhancement to bring this out. From all I know about women’s clothing—which is quite more than the average man—a lady can use skirt padding to create the illusion of a smaller waist with much more effectiveness than pulling a corset on too tight.
It troubles me that Brigid does this but not for the reasons one might suspect.
It is only that I know things…they color her actions. As I watch her pull the strings so tightly around herself in a squeezing embrace I can picture a heart hugged in the same way. Some kind of perverse armor around the heart itself, something I myself can relate to on a daily basis. Mine are airs. Smoke or mist set around a heart that has only a fortress of sand.
But my wife has a different heart. It is steady and strong and when I hear it I envy it.
She has confided in me what happened to her in India all those years ago. A young waif with no family to speak of, serving the British soldiers brought in to cool conflict.
When one of those men chose to harm a girl, a mere child, in a way that we can never erase.
I always imagine that was when Bri began to pull her corset strings too tightly.
My poor darling.
BRIGID
“You’re pulling it too tightly, darling.”
Bri cocked her head, her eyes meeting Orion’s in the full-body mirror as she tied her corset strings.
“Oh good. A husband who knows corsets better than I.”
“I am sorry,” he lowered his head. He was not looking well. Nearly a month after Drusilla’s birth and Bri could not recall her husband sleeping. Yet he had the energy to correct the way she dressed.
“I do not want you to faint,” he reasoned. “There’s no need to restrict your breathing in your state.”
“I am not in a ‘state.’ I feel well. I feel happy. Can’t a woman dress herself?”
“Very well,” Orion straightened his own suit from behind her and stepped over to the bed.
Bri would be lying if she said she minded his presence while she dressed. She quite liked him near her at such moments. For all her bickering she found his tips on apparel useful. Her first husband had been so strict in the rules of men and women’s differences that she floundered when she tried to please him. He was not there to point out that she wore a hat backwards or pulled her corset too tightly. Orion may have known more than the average man about female dress. But that was something she found fascinating in him. He did not want to be a woman and yet he could become one when he pleased. Though that height…
Orion towered over everyone. The woman he became stood out as well, as freakishly tall. But not beside Amadeus Frunberg, the tallest person Bri had ever met.
“Why do you do it?” Orion’s voice traveled to her, interrupting her thoughts on his lover Amadeus. She shook her head.
She was patting down her hair as it rested in a bun on top of her head. She glanced at him again through the reflection. He had a book at hand but she knew he was not reading it. She knew his attention span was dead when he was like this.
“I don’t know,” she shrugged. “To make myself look younger. I’m old in case you don’t remember.”
She had not begun to gray yet but she was aging and she knew it.
“You make it sound like you are a century old. I mean, why pull it that extra inch?”
“No reason. Now are you ready?”
He nodded to her, the dark around his eyes warning that this may be a long evening. They were green eyes, alert and sharp. When Drusilla opened her eyes they were the same.
“It is going to be alright,” Bri assured him.
Seeing Charles and Lucy again promised good luck but there were loose ends between Charles and Orion that needed to be tied and that might be troublesome. In any case Bri was prepared to stand by her husband’s side.
“Then let us go!” she reached a hand out to her husband. He stood and took it. Their gloves covered most but their fingers touched.
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