Middle Aged Prom Dress #1
Lael Littke's Prom Dress: Chapter One
Hi, friends,
Welcome back to my deep dive into YA horror of the ‘80s and ‘90s!
As I said the first time around, when I was a kid, I jumped pretty much straight from middle grade to adult fiction, so I missed a lot of REALLY fun stuff. I know that loads of you probably have amazing memories of reading these, but I’ve got to say: Reading them for the first time as a 40-something is pretty amazing as well??
This time around, we’ll be reading Lael Littke’s Prom Dress, which—as far as I can gather without spoiling myself—appears to be about a CURSED PROM DRESS.
Oh, man, am I going to have to dig out prom pictures? Probably.
The dress still hung there in the dark attic closet where Rowena had put it on that sodden morning after her sister’s accident. It hadn’t changed much through the many years that had passed. Under its shroud of old sheets it was still the color of fresh cream, still as lacy and fragile as it had been that soft spring evening when Catherine first put it on and danced off through the twilight with Michael.
Rowena had watched through narrowed eyes from the round attic window.
And after the hideous accident, Rowena had put the dress in the closet where it still hung, waiting.
—Prom Dress, by Lael Littke
Scene 0.5: Prologue
OMG DID ROWENA CAUSE THE ACCIDENT
HOW HIDEOUS WAS IT
WAS IT AS HIDEOUS AS THE DRESS I’M IMAGINING
BECAUSE THE DRESS ON THE COVER IS GIVING ME PRETTY IN PINK VIBES
…WHICH IS NOT A GOOD THING
IS ROWENA A WITCH
SHE *IS* IN THE ATTIC, WHICH SUGGESTS THAT SHE’S A WITCH
THIS IS ALL VERY EXCITING
Robin was breathless when she caught up to Tyler, but whether it was from running or simply from seeing him, she didn’t know. He stood still, watching her coming toward him, his lips curving upward in a grin, eyes lasering delight. All for her.
It was hard to believe.
—Prom Dress, by Lael Littke
Scene One: In which the male lead is immediately WORSE THAN PERCY FROM SLUMBER PARTY OMG
And you KNOW how much I hated Percy.
So Robin runs up to him and they have a chaste smooch and Robin is VERY aware that all the other girls are Enviously Watching, but she attempts to Be Cool and asks Tyler what he’s smiling about:
The grin widened. “Just getting my jollies watching you run. An old leg-man like me can’t help grinning when he seems drop-dead perfection.”
Pleasure flooded through her, and she felt her face flush. But she was careful to keep her tone flippant. “Well, you can blame these drop-dead legs for me being late. They wanted to go on dancing. Today we were rehearsing for the dance concert. Twenties dances. The Charleston — you know, that kind.” She didn’t want to bore him with details.
Which, like. “Getting my jollies” is one of those phrases that just, for no particular reason that I can identify, makes me want to throw the user down a well. There’s something sleazily voyeuristic about it, thanks, I hate it. Also rad that she’s avoiding talking about, like, her interests to her boyfriend because she doesn’t want to bore him. WITH HER INTERESTS.
Also what the hell is a dance concert, I always thought they were recitals. Showcases? Performances? Maybe it’s a regional thing.
Anywayyyy, with all this Business about her legs—she goes on and on about how much she loves dancing—I Immediately Suspect that Something’s Going To Happen To Her Legs. You know, à la that scene in Death Proof where Sydney Tamiia Poitier’s leg—I forget if it was one or both—gets sheared off by Kurt Russell’s murder car and goes bouncing off down the highway? (It’s been a long time since I saw it but that’s how I remember it & I’ll going to go ahead and spare us all from a gif.)
This era of YA feels incredibly retrograde in re: gender stuff? The romance threads are more How To Keep a Guy Interested (in which the focus is only on HIM and what HE wants) versus what I think of as more modern threads, which are more about How To Be An Individual And Part Of A Unit (in which the focus is on both parties)?
Basically, just like in Slumber Party, this stuff all feels very Cosmo—versus, you know, Sassy—to me and I’d LOVE to know if folks who read them as Actual Teens in the late ‘80s have a feel for if that’s what the predominant attitudes in YA actually were??
Like:
Being Tyler’s girlfriend was like winning a lottery. Pure luck. So what if it had been her legs that held the winning ticket? You had to have something a little above average to catch the eye of a guy like Tyler. The trick after that was to keep him. It hadn’t been too hard, so far. Probably because she was so different from the girls he’d been used to hanging around with: rich, well-dressed girls with their own cars and time on their hands. Girls he’s grown up with.
Robin was new to Forest Dale, new to Carlyle High. New to Tyler.
I’M NOT EXAGGERATING ABOUT THIS OMG:
“Robin. Robin Whitford. Calling Robin. You’ve faded out, Robin.”
Tyler’s voice broke through her thoughts. She’d have to watch that. Tyler liked vivacious girls, girls who could keep up a constant line of bright chatter.
Good lord, Tyler sounds EXHAUSTING.
Okay, back to the actual plot: Robin needs a flapper-style dress for her “dance concert,” and Tyler suggests that she ask Miss Catherine—the old lady she works for, who, I note, happens to share a name with one of the sisters in the prologue.
They FINALLY get into his car, and just when I didn’t think he could be more annoying:
Tyler opened the passenger door of his low-slung little Trans Am, whistling appreciatively as she settled in the seat with a flash of legs.
And then even though he KNOWS she has to work—we are on page four and it has already come up multiple times—he is mad when she can’t go make out with him at the lake:
His eyes darkened. “Between your dancing and your working, I hardly get to see you. Where do I rate on your list of priorities?”
She has this whole inner monologue about how he Doesn’t Understand because he’s a Rich Kid, but doesn’t try to explain it, probably because she doesn’t want to bore him.
He claims to be over it, but lays rubber on the way out of the parking lot, so Robin knows that he’s still upset that she’s A Poor.
Also—and I know this is because I’m An Old, but Tyler peeling out like that just made me think WELL OBVIOUSLY THIS JACKASS HAS NEVER HAD TO PAY FOR NEW TIRES, UGH, so I’d have known he was a spoiled goober even if both his behavior and Robin’s inner monologue hadn’t already spilled the beans on that.
And then, just when we thought he couldn’t get any worse, he gets all pathetic miseryguts on her, UGHHHHHHHHHH:
He gave a gusty sigh. “It’s a good thing prom night is coming soon. The dance concert will be over and you won’t have to work. I’ll be at the top of your list on prom night, right, Robin?”
“Right,” she assured him.
Like, STFU, Tyler, and maybe do something to lighten your girlfriend’s load instead of making it heavier??? YOU UTTER TOOL.
So, yeah, all of this has stressed Robin out further about getting a good dress for prom, because:
But she knew Tyler Atkins wouldn’t hang around very long if she couldn’t manage to go to the prom.
Which, woo boy, good riddance.
Miss Catherine’s big, gray house scowled down at the sporty red car as Tyler braked to a stop. It had never seemed like a friendly house to Robin. In the late afternoon light it looked almost secretive, crouching there behind the two tall oak trees. Sometimes Robin had the impression that the house watched her from its one round eye, which was the attic window. Perhaps it was just Miss Catherine who watched, although Robin had never actually seen her do it. But sometimes, like now, she was sure she saw a curtain twitching and a shadow lurking behind the big front window.
—Prom Dress, by Lael Littke
Scene Two: Enter Miss Catherine
Tyler is STILL harping on about how dumb he thinks it is that Robin has a job, though I have to give him ONE SMALL POINT for making me laugh out loud with this line:
“Sometimes I really wonder if she’s knitting with both needles.”
Robin isn’t paying much attention to Tyler’s nonsense—follow that thread, Robin, KEEP IGNORING HIM AND MAYBE HE’LL GO AWAY—because she’s thinking about Miss Catherine and how she’s pretty easy to work for and pays well and also she’s wondering if she’s the source of the shadow in the window. But if she isn’t, WHO COULD IT BE, because Miss Catherine LIVES ALONE?? She finally gets moving, though, because she’s late:
“You’d be even later if I had my way.” He reached over to give her another kiss, this one a little more serious than the one on school grounds. “‘Bye, Babe.” Think about me.”
She got out of the car and he drove away, waving. She wished she had gone with him.
Ugh, WHY. And no, I don’t know why ‘babe’ is capitalized, I guess formatting choices in the 80s were just as odd as everything else.
ALSO. Robin has a SISTER, which I suspect will be Important, as the prologue featured sisters:
From her own house next door, Robin could hear Gabrielle playing the piano. The piano was to her sister what dancing was to Robin. The only thing Gabrielle liked about the move to Forest Dale was the big grand piano in the old house.
Poor Gabrielle. She hadn’t made new friends the way Robin had. Maybe everything was harder when you were fourteen.
But that was Gabrielle’s problem, not hers.
Yeesh.
A brief digression on sunken rooms
I’ve been vaguely obsessed with the idea of sunken rooms ever since I was a kid and I just did some Googling around and I think it must stem from our childhood obsession with the The Beatles movie Help!? My memory told me that their whole living room was a shared sunken space, but it turns out that the set was even COOLER than I’d remembered. Guess it’s time for a revisit!
Inside the house—Miss Catherine’s parlor is a sunken room??? which I think sounds rad and cozy, but Robin thinks is creepy, like a pit—and Miss Catherine is sitting in her usual chair by the fireplace. She doesn’t look like she’s moved recently, even though Robin is sure she saw her shadow at the window.
CONFESSION: I AM DESPERATELY HOPING THAT ROWENA IS SECRETLY LIVING IN THE HOUSE
And now we finally get a description of Miss Catherine, complete with (entirely problematic) jumpscare:
Approaching from the right, Robin could just see Miss Catherine’s profile, delicate as a cameo and still showing traces of the beauty she’d once been. She was small and frail-looking, with skin that was still nice, even though it was crisscrossed with fine wrinkles.
She turned her face toward Robin to say plaintively, “I thought you’d forgotten to come today, dear.”
And as always, Robin was shocked by the ragged scar that disfigured the left side of Miss Catherine’s face, puckering the skin and pulling the eye downward so that it looked like a gaping wound. Even though she’d worked for Miss Catherine for several months now, Robin had never gotten used to that ugly scar.
We get a little about what Robin does with Miss Catherine: reads to her from Jane Austen, looks through her photo albums, just generally hangs out and basically does the exact same job that Anastasia Krupnik was TRYING to get in Anastasia At Your Service.
AND, probably most importantly in terms of plotting, she listens to stories about Miss Catherine’s teen years:
She liked hearing the stories of when the twin sisters, Catherine and Rowena, were girls, when they went to parties and dances, when all the young men came to call. They came to see Catherine, not Rowena. Miss Catherine never came right out and said that directly, but she’d say, in her delicate way, “Rowena had a terrible birthmark, you see.” Or, “I always tried to share my beaux with Rowena.”
I guess we’re maybe going the same route as Christopher Pike, if Rowena has an Evil Birthmark? Were the 1980s really this Victorian?
Robin brings up the Charleston and her need for a dress, and unprompted, Miss Catherine offers to loan one of her old dresses. She sends Robin on up to the attic—solo—with ONE SMALL CAVEAT:
“You’ll have to move some trunks and boxes,” Miss Catherine said. “There’s a small door behind the chimney. You’d scarcely notice it if you didn’t know it was there. Open it up and you’ll find several dresses hanging inside. The red one was my favorite . . . but take your pick.” She paused. “Except for one. You must not take the lace dress. Do you understand?”
The right side of her face smiled again, but her eyes held a strange, warning look.
Uhhhh… something tells me that Robin is about to make a Classic Blunder, and suddenly I think that she might not be the heroine of this novel after all???? Because it is EXTREMELY rare for the person who dismisses A Warning like that at the beginning of a horror story to make it very long.
Will Robin’s sister Gabrielle be the actual heroine of the story, like in Psycho? WE’LL SEE!!
The attic was full of boxes and dark shapes of furniture and stacks of books. There was a wicker baby carriage there, and two white iron cribs. Everything was festooned with cobwebs and dust, like decorations for a Halloween party. It was a gloomy place, but the light coming through the round attic window kept it from being frightening. Besides, Robin found a switch that lit up two dangling light bulbs.
—Prom Dress, by Lael Littke
Scene Three: In the attic
Robin heads up to the attic, which is just as creepy as expected, and has to muscle her way into the closet to get at the dresses:
But the dresses were perfect. There were just two of them there, although from the way Miss Catherine had talked, Robin expected a whole closetful. Each dress was draped in a yellowed sheet. The flame-colored one was in front, and it was easy to see why it had been Miss Catherine’s favorite, with its V-necked top, dropped waistline, and all those slithery fringes. The other was a jaunty, black, beaded one that her friend Cynthie would die for. Robin wondered if she dared ask Miss Catherine if she could borrow that one, too.
What luck, right? What beaded riches! With dresses like that, Robin MUST be satisfied.
No, of course not.
Of course she NEEDS to see the lace dress, and so she looks further back into the closet, which is “narrow and dark as a grave”—let’s simmer down, shall we, Lael Littke?—and she finds it:
The dress was made of deep scallops of creamy lace. It had long sleeves and a high lace collar. Like the flame-colored dress, it had a dropped waistline, but the two were worlds apart. While the red one blatantly called out for excitement and dancing and the braying of horns, the lace one spoke softly of elegance and muted music and romance. It glowed there in the dark closet as if it were lighted from within.
Welp. I think we all knew where this was going from the moment Robin headed up the stairs. Let’s sit ourselves back and let the inevitable happen:
Taking the dress from its padded hanger, she held it against herself. It rustled softly, clinging to her, almost begging her to wear it. It had been in its dark prison too long. A dress like that didn’t deserve to be hidden away. It needed to be worn by a girl who would be dancing with a handsome boy.
TWO MORE PARAGRAPHS of Robin mooning at herself in the mirror, as she gets more and more obsessed with the dress and decides to try to talk Miss Catherine into letting her wear it. And finally, just before she heads downstairs:
She smiled at herself in the old mirror. Then, for a moment, her heart thumped with alarm because she thought she saw a dark blotch on the left side of her face. But when she looked closer, she saw that it was just a ripple in the mirror.
BIRTHMARK! OF! FORESHADOWING!
Phew!
End of Chapter One!
More next week!
Talk to you soon,
Leila
Yeeeeesh, that dress on the cover is giving me hardcore I'm Singing For Church This Week early 80's vibes in the most painful of ways (except the length would hit in that awful Well-Below-the-Knee space that is so awkward because it's neither fish nor fowl). I have ZERO IDEA how she thinks she's going to Charleston in something like that. It's NOT a 20's dress - If I were her dance teacher I'd send her back to the closet.
I'm STILL skeeving on "getting my jollies." Gaaaah, I need eye-bleach.
I swear, Leila, this dude is WORSE THAN PERCY, which I didn't think was possible.
I didn't go to prom at my prim Christian school, but my senior stroll dress is a puffed sleeved, emerald green taffeta monstrosity with a black lace bodice overlay, worn with elbow-length black lace gloves, thankyouverymuch. And since my mother made it, I'm keeping it 'til I die, also because no one else wants that vomitousness but me.
OMG I've been hanging out for this recap and it did not disappoint. I remember the vague details from reading this as a teenager in the 90s, but it's all coming back to me now. Thank you for the hilarity!