Every night for a week, she dreamed of doves. A white clapboard church, bells ringing, and birds suddenly loosened from every window, the air filling with white wings. They floated down and settled around her on the grass, like wisps of paper from the snowflakes she had scissored as a girl.
The dream seemed prophetic, and every morning Dorrie lay in bed waiting for the significance of it to seep into her like ink into water, but it never did.
On the eighth night, the doves turned to butterflies and fell, soft rain all around her, and when she looked down, she was astonished to see that her hands and arms—all she could see of her body—were white with butterflies.
Dorrie’s grandmother, who was a great believer in signs, listened pensively. They were sitting at the table in Dorrie’s kitchenette drinking iced tea.
“That was the last one,” Dorrie said. “With the butterflies.”
The doorbell rang and she rose, crossing the living room, and calling, “Who is it?”
“Martin,” a voice said, “your neighbor,” and she swung open the door.
He stood squarely on her welcome mat, his light brown hair feathered by a thin breeze. “Sorry to bother you,” he said, “but could I borrow an egg? I must have left them in the shopping cart.”
“Of course,” Dorrie said. “Come in.” She pulled a carton out of the refrigerator and handed him two. “Just in case.”
“Thanks.” He smiled amiably at the two women, and said, “Well, I’ll see you around.”
After he had gone, Dorrie’s grandmother said, “That’s the one.”
“The one what?” Dorrie asked.
“From the dream. Birds, butterflies.” She flapped her hand impatiently. “It was about your soul mate.”
“What are you talking about? I barely know him.” Dorrie laughed, blushing with embarrassment, hoping that in the apartment next door, Martin could not hear even the faint murmur of their voices in conversation.
***
On Monday morning, Dorrie opened the blinds and sat down in front of her sewing machine. The second bedroom was a pleasant jumble of patterns and bolts of fabric, dresser drawers filled with thread, appliqués, lace, buttons.
Dorrie looped a tape measure around her neck. She was sewing six bridesmaids’ dresses. She hummed as she worked, smoothing material over the ironing board, pinning and unpinning, stitching things together.
At six o’clock, the doorbell rang.
“Just a minute,” she called.
Her grandmother was on the step with a small paper sack full of oranges. “Here you go, doll,” she said, pecking Dorrie on the cheek before she walked into the living room, dropped her canvas bag on the coffee table, and sat down.
“What did you do today?” Dorrie asked.
“The usual. Gave a few tours at the museum, met Winnie for lunch.” She reached into her bag and pulled out a pattern. “I got this for you.”
Sketched on the front of the package was a woman in the most beautiful wedding dress Dorrie had ever seen: a broad, billowing gown with a veil sewn into a coronet of roses.
“Why…?”
Her grandmother patted her arm. “Trust me. Just make it.”
***
Martin came back with a spice cake, still warm in its tin. “My brother and his wife just had another baby,” he explained. “I made yours with the extra egg.”
“That was sweet,” Dorrie said. “Would you like to come in? You could have a glass of iced tea or something.”
“No, thanks,” Martin said. “I should really be getting back.” He gestured toward his open doorway.
“Thanks again,” Dorrie said.
He nodded and turned to follow the upside-down U of the sidewalk back to his apartment next door.
Dorrie took the cake into the kitchen and set it on the counter. She finished washing the dishes and set them to dry by the sink.
She felt restless, but it was too dark to go for a walk alone. Reluctantly, she sat down on the couch and used the remote to flip on the television. “Now you can own this deluxe set of kitchen knives for only $19.95!” a voice blared, and Dorrie switched the TV off again, leaving a much deeper silence.
Even from across the room, she could smell the spices from the cake Martin had brought over. Finally, she pulled the tissue paper from the package on the coffee table and began to study the dress pattern.
Dorrie returned the cake tin with two oranges inside.
The layout of Martin’s apartment was a mirror image of her own, a battered green couch the only furniture she could see. The walls were lined with boxes he had not yet unpacked.
Martin switched on a lamp, and the room filled with a muted yellow glow. “I’m not quite settled in, obviously, but please make yourself at home.”
Dorrie sat down on the couch, and offered the tin up to him.
“Thanks.” He sat cross-legged on the floor in front of her and pulled a pocketknife from the hip of his jeans. The light rested easily on his hair and shoulders.
“What do you do?” she asked.
“You mean for a living?” He flipped out a small knife and pulled one of the oranges from the tin.
She nodded.
“I fix things,” he said. “Whatever people need. I’ll install window screens or paint a nursery. Buy a new mailbox for someone who hit theirs with the car. That kind of thing.”
He peeled the orange in one long spiral and handed her a section.
***
Dorrie went out to buy gingham for a woman’s kitchen curtains, and ended up at home with an oversized shopping bag filled with reams of white satin. She couldn’t seem to stop herself.
Martin came over sometimes—a slow, bashful suitor who brought her wildflowers and books of poetry. He asked about her day, told her funny things that had happened to him. Sometimes as he was leaving, he would rest his hand lightly under her arm, between her elbow and wrist, and she felt him swinging her toward him, the pull was so strong, but he never completed the motion.
***
By the following June, the dress was finished, and Dorrie found her grandmother in the sewing room, the closet door thrown open.
“It’s beautiful, just the way I imagined.” Her grandmother shut the closet door. “Where’s the veil?”
“I haven’t made one.”
“Why not?”
“You know why not. I shouldn’t have made this.”
Dimly, Dorrie heard the bell ring, and her grandmother scurried past her.
By the time Dorrie got to the living room, she was telling Martin, “She made such a gorgeous wedding dress.”
“Who’s it for?”
“For Dorrie, of course,” her grandmother said. She reached into her canvas bag and held up a powder blue swatch. “What do you think of this for the bridesmaids’ dresses?”
Dorrie yelped, “Grandma!”
Martin looked at Dorrie. “I don’t understand. Are you getting married?”
“No,” she said.
Her grandmother pulled out a swatch in lavender and held it toward Martin. “Do you like this better?”
Looking puzzled, Martin backed away from them and left.
***
Dorrie was too embarrassed to leave her apartment. And she was still angry with her grandmother, who in the silence after Martin left, had only put away her swatches and said, “Don’t worry. It’ll all work out.” Already Dorrie had been able to sense the needle whipping through her grandmother’s mind, patching things together.
It was evening when Martin came back, a balmy night.
“Could we go for a walk?” he asked her. “I guess we should talk.”
Dorrie was somber. She’d heard this speech before, or one very much like it, and sadness settled over her like a heavy sweater, thick around her chest. She followed him outside, and they walked silently toward a park next to the apartment complex.
He stopped abruptly in a grassy clearing surrounded by trees. She could hear the sounds of children playing around them, a car driving past.
“I should have come back before,” Martin began. “I was a coward for not doing it, and—”
A blue Frisbee flew past him and struck Dorrie on the side of the head.
Martin looked stricken himself. “Are you all right?”
Dorrie tried to smile. “I’m fine.”
He was standing close to her, but she didn’t look at him.
Intuitively, as though he were experiencing the pain himself, he found the sore spot on her head with his fingertips, and kissed it—a gentle, tender kiss that made tears come to her eyes.
She saw it, then, as if in a dream: a cliff overlooking the ocean, her grandmother in rose silk, and herself as a bride, loosening the ribbon of her bouquet and flinging cut flowers into the sea.
Martin pressed his hand to her hair, cupping the side of her neck and cheek, his touch as light as a butterfly. He looked into her face and leaned down to kiss her, as though he had been waiting a lifetime for the chance.
