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We dress
You dress
They dress
Present continuous:
I am dressing
You are dressing
He/she/it is dressing
We are dressing
You are dressing
They are dressing
Optional imperative: Let’s dress
And, alongside it, their Latin conjugation, which he did not understand and could not correct, but which he was told by Mr. Edwards she should be tasked with:Vestis, Oranuts, Habitus.
“Okay, okay, I get it,” he said. “So you already know how to conjugate verbs.”
And in the end, having finished her work quickly, he admitted to the struggle he was facing. He needed a suitable costume. “What do you think I should go as, since you’re full of so many bright ideas?”
“Well, you said you hate being looked at, so maybe you should go as a ghost. Cover you up entirely. I have just the sheet for it.”
“Already tried that. Any other ideas?”
“Hmm …” She brought the nub of the pencil to her lips and tapped it animatedly. “Well, I still think you should at least wear a mask. You’d think that at a masquerade ball, everyone would be wearing a mask, but Daddy actually only put ‘costume party’ on the invites, and, well, I just think it would be really cool if we were all in some sort of disguise. You know, like—”
At this he sat up; sparked by an idea that corseted his stomach and beat at his temples. “Ada, I have just the thing. Why, you’re a genius.”
“I know I am. But what’s the thing?”
He had yet to spend much of his wages. Mr. Edwards even insisted on giving him a hundred pounds extra to help him with his costume, so he had a large enough sum to pull together a garment he could be proud of.
He skipped the cheap high-street costume shops that only came alive around the holiday season and picked out the white facade wedged between the champagne-bricked streets like a slip of paper. The dresses in the window, the silk, the chiffon, the lace, set his heart aflutter. A push of the emerald-green door, heavier than he suspected, and the sweet chime of a bell as it opened, alerted the woman behind the desk to his presence. She offered her assistance should he need it. He thanked the lady and appreciated her smile, but felt her eyes follow him as he made his way over to the rows of cream and ivory dresses hung together and displayed on elegant headless mannequins. He read their meaning: He should not be there.
The material felt soft in his hands, and he swooped, swooped through the hangers, knowing he’d never be daring enough to attend the Edwardses’ party in such a lavishly civilized get-up. Not to mention the price. No, he was in need of something more modest, and quickly vacated the store. He moved along the street, to a vintage shop that offered boutique clothing for a morereasonable fee, and trimmings to accompany these selections. A quick rummage through and he found something he knew would bring his plan to life. Though crisp and in desperate need of an iron, the taffeta skirt was long and voluminous, designed to take up space. At forty-five quid, the silk and polyester piece seemed almost meant for him. A tenner for white powder and a couple of trinkets and bracelets.
This, he knew, would do the trick.
On the night of the party, Bron half hoped angels would descend from the heavens as he slept and guide the transformation, or that he could cross out the day from his life with a pen and find it securely behind him. But it wouldn’t be as easy as that. He would not sleep for seven days only to wake up and find himself completely transformed like Tilda Swinton inOrlando.No. It wouldn’t be as comfortable as that. He would have to rely on years of honing his skills with a brush, a good YouTube tutorial, and a tight enough corset to execute this right. After he’d shaved away the burgeoning hairs from his chin and neck—alleviating his body dysphoria, at least momentarily—and while he waited for the heavy makeup to set, he flicked through the pages of his favorite book, in the interest of rereading the chapter that had always arrested him every time he’d come upon it. A moment that had inspired his costume.
As Bron rose and stood before the mirror in his new garment, he felt all the more powerful. Just as Mr. Rochester had lowered his social ranking by transforming himself from a wealthy, educated man into a poor woman, so too had Bron transformed himself into something else. His waist wasn’t as small as a woman’s could be, but he reasoned it wasn’t large either. His shoulders weren’t broad—he’d never developed that mound of muscle that crests into the neck, and was confident in the peaklike folds of flesh and bone there—and he slipped into the bodice comfortably. His collarbones framed the neckline nicely. It wasn’t quite Jekyll into Hyde—the effects of the alternation were notas great as that—but he was confident it would do the trick. The bones of his face did not change, his lineaments were naturally small, and the contour had the effect of lifting his cheeks. He did not stoop lower; if anything, his spine stood that bit more erect even before he’d slipped into the heels. He was not altogether another person. Instead, he lurked beneath the heightened feminine facade. The foundation gave him a peachier complexion, neutralizing the grayish, milklike tint of his skin. The stroke of powder had almost removed the leatheriness underneath, like a facemask, leaving him softer and a little more blushed with the rouge applied. He wore his hair, and the accompanying extensions, in an elegant braided up-do. This completed the guise.
He was still Bron underneath, but who was it that adorned him? How would he be seen tonight? This was not an urge to trick anyone into confession; he was not a figure come off the early modern stage, nor was he the lead performer in an impersonation act of Madonna’s “Vogue.” But he felt a thrill: Would he pass as a woman? Blend comfortably with the others in their hyper-feminine costumes, or hear cheers of“Yaass! Queen! Werk!”—words intended to bring him empowerment, but which only tripped him up. Because, like Mr. Rochester’s guise, he was only accepted as performance, a fabrication. He thought of Darcy, of the shame he’d elicited in him, how men can get away with all sorts of trickery, and yet it is nonconforming people like himself that the world is taught to fear. He wrapped his mustard shawl around his costume and put on his pearls.
He hoped to impress Giovanni in particular, who had claimed to have no interest in the Victorians but had all the time for the early modern playwrights.But look at me,Bron thought.A body through which I can be both.The transvestism of the early modern stage existing at once with his beloved Jane Eyre. He’d never quite understood it before, that the problem with Mr. Rochester’s cross-dressing was the trickery at play. So here he was, reclaiming what it meant. Giving Jane her power back, to be the one incognito at a party.
He hadn’t felt such nerves in a long time, had bitten his thumbnail right down to the edge until it bled, tasting the metallic blood when he sucked its corner to alleviate the sting. The puffed sleeves made his shoulders feel both heavy and light, and the curls of his hair rested neatly on his collarbones. When he came into the hallway, he heard the music playing and the chatter of voices, the clinking of glasses. He wasn’t expecting an announcement or for all the eyes in the room to turn on him as he descended the stairs like they did in the movies. But his cheeks burned as he held the banister. In fact, nobody was looking at him. Nobody at all.
He took off to the side of the foyer and tucked himself away beneath the left side staircase. Here he sat among the beautiful women who dripped in diamonds and floated in gowns fashioned from the night sky, strands of black and purple crafted into glossy fabric; or wore burgeoning gowns like downy clouds—the over-puffed skirts, the dramatic mermaid drops to the floor, the great white fur draped around the shoulders; and the men, who all looked the same in their three-piece suits, though he spotted the occasional superhero, a tennis player, and even one who claimed he was the scariest thing of all: a “stay-at-home dad.” And still, no one batted an eye his way, but everyone smiled politely. He was delighted.
He enjoyed picking out his favorite trims: the lace, the fringe, and the Bertha collars, the bony shoulders and swanlike necks, the things people wore in their hair. He’d even seen what resembled a live raven perched on somebody’s shoulder. What world had he stepped into? Where Halloween dress meant stumbling into a party for the rich and fashionable, where such luxuries were the norm, and people danced one moment to Strauss’s “Blue Danube Waltz” and the next to some acoustic rendition of “Crazy For You.”
