Rare Objects. Kathleen Tessaro

were extraordinary, and as a result she was the first choice for eveningwear alterations. Behind her on a dress form was a fitted gown of black velvet with rhinestone straps. When I arrived she was kneeling on the floor, pins in her mouth, taking up the hem.

      Mr. Vye scowled at me, an intruder in his domain. “May I help you, young lady?”

      “Oh, that’s my daughter!” Ma got up, brushed the stray threads from her knees. “You remember my daughter, Maeve, don’t you? She’s just come back from New York!”

      “I’m sorry to disturb you,” I apologized. “Only I wondered if I could have a quick word with my mum.”

      He nodded begrudgingly, and we went into the hall.

      “I need a favor, Ma.”

      “Tell me what happened at the interview. Did they have anything for you?”

      “There’s not a lot out there, but there is one job. Only I need your help.” I lowered my voice. “Ma, I have to dye my hair.”

      “Dye your hair?” She recoiled as if I’d just slapped her across the face. “Certainly not! You have beautiful hair! It was bad enough when you cut it. Only fast girls do that sort of thing!”

      “But it’s for a job, Ma!”

      “What kind of job? A cigarette girl?” She folded her arms across her chest. “Absolutely not!”

      I would’ve happily taken a job as a cigarette girl, but I didn’t tell her that.

      “Look, I don’t want to look fast, or cheap,” I explained. “Which is why I came to you. It’s for a job in Charles Town. An antiques shop. They want a woman of quality.”

      “Really?” Now she was indignant. “And what are you, may I ask?”

      I lost my patience. “What do I look like, Mum? Do you think anyone’s going to figure me for Irish? Why don’t I just go in clutching a harp and dancing a jig?”

      “There’s no need to be vulgar!” But she frowned and bit her lower lip. We both knew she’d spent years erasing all traces of her Irish brogue for exactly the same reason. But dying one’s hair was vulgar and brazen as far as she was concerned. She tried to sidestep the question. “Well, I can’t help you tonight. I’m going to mass.”

      “We can go to mass any night! And we haven’t got time—the interview is first thing tomorrow morning!”

      But she dug in her heels. “I’m afraid I have a prior arrangement, Maeve.”

      “If you help me, it will turn out all right, I know it will. I won’t look cheap or fast. But I can’t manage it on my own. Please!”

      I could feel her wavering between what she thought was respectable and what she knew was necessary.

      “Who knows when I’ll have another chance?” I begged.

      “Maybe. If you come to church.” She drove a hard bargain, leveraging my eternal soul against the certain depravity of becoming a blonde. “But I’m warning you, Maeve, this is a terrible, terrible mistake!”

      Nonetheless, she took me up to the ladies’ hair salon on the top floor and introduced me to M. Antoine. M. Antoine was French to his wealthy clients and considerably less Gallic in front of staff like Ma. Originally from Liverpool, he’d apparently acquired the accent along with most of his hairdressing skills on the boat on the way over.

      He gave me the once-over from behind an entirely useless gold pince-nez. “It’s a shame, really.” He poked a finger through my red curls. “I have clients that would kill for this color!”

      I avoided my mother’s eye. “Yes, but you can see how it limits me, can’t you?”

      “It’s true,” he conceded, “especially in this town. Some people have no imagination.”

      M. Antoine sent us home was a little bottle of peroxide wrapped in a brown paper bag, which Ma quickly jammed into her handbag as if it were bootleg gin. “No more than twenty minutes,” he instructed, firmly. “The difference between a beautiful blonde and a circus poodle is all in the timing. And remember to rinse, ladies, rinse! Rinse as if your very lives depended on it!”

      The sign above the door read “Winshaw and Kessler Antiquities, Rare Objects, and Fine Art” in faded gold lettering. It swung back and forth in the wind, creaking on its chains like an old rocking chair.

      I stood huddled in the doorway, waiting.

      Maude’s voice rang in my head: “The girl in question should be a young woman of quality, well-spoken and professional, able to create a favorable impression with affluent clientele.”

      A blueblood.

      I’d looked the word up the night before. The term came from the Spanish, literally translated sangre azul, describing the visible veins of the fair-skinned aristocrats. But of course here in Boston we had our own special name for these social and cultural elite, Brahmins—old East Coast families who’d stumbled off the Mayflower to teach the English a lesson. There was an even more telling lineage behind that word; it referred to the highest of the four major castes in traditional Indian society. The Boston Brahmins were a club you couldn’t join unless you married into it, and they didn’t like to mix with anyone who’d floated in on one of the newer ships, landing on Ellis Island rather than Plymouth Rock.

      Adjusting my hat in the shop-window reflection, I wondered if it would work. The effect was more dramatic than I’d expected. I looked not just different but like a whole other person; my eyes seemed wider, deeper in color, and my skin went from being white and translucent to a pale ivory beneath my soft golden-blond waves. But would it be enough?

      To my mother’s credit, she’d been thorough, covering every inch of my scalp in bleach at least three times to make certain there were no telltale signs. And when it was rinsed clean, she wound it into pin curls to be tied tight under a hairnet all night. When I woke, she was already up, sitting by the stove in her dressing gown sewing a Stearn’s label into the inside lapel of my coat. “It’s one of the only labels people ever notice,” she said. “And a coat from Stearn’s is a coat to be proud of.”

      “Even though it’s not from Stearn’s?” I asked.

      “They won’t know that. They’ll look at the name, not the cut.”

      For someone who didn’t approve of what I was doing, she was dedicated nonetheless.

      Now here I was, on a street I’d never even been down before, in my counterfeit coat and curls.

      It was almost nine in the morning, and no one was around. In the North End everything was open by seven; there were people to greet, gossip to share, deals to be struck. The streets hummed and buzzed morning till late into the night. But here was the stillness and order of money, of a life that wasn’t driven by hustle, sacrifice, and industry. Time was the luxury of another class.

      So I practiced smiling instead—not too eager, not too wide, but a discreet, dignified smile, the kind of gentle, unhurried expression that I imagined was natural to women in this part of town, an almost imperceptible softening of the lips, just enough to indicate the pleasant expectation of having every desire fulfilled.

      Eventually an older man arrived, head bent down against the wind. He was perhaps five foot five, almost as wide as he was tall, with round wire-rimmed glasses. He glanced up as he fished a set of keys from his coat pocket. “You’re the new girl? From the agency?”

      “Yes. I’m Miss Fanning.”

      “You’re tall.” It was an accusation.

      “Yes,” I agreed, uncertainly.

      “Hmm.” He unlocked the door. “I ask for a clerk, and they send me an Amazon.”

      He switched on the lights, and I followed him inside. Though narrow, the shop went back a long