Short stories often take a great deal of patience to develop. I don't know of anyone who simply sits down at the computer, starts at the beginning and types through to the end. Some take more development than others, of course. Here is the way a story of mine began, then changed and grew over time into its final published form.

When staying with my sister once in South Carolina, I heard a story about Laura who had visited us that afternoon: Laura's mother had phoned one day to ask if she had anything to wear to her mother's funeral--she didn't want her daughter to show up in another tacky dress.

In the end, Laura's mother had come over, gone through Laura's closet, and couldn't find anything "suitable." The mother-rich, used to having her own way--took her daughter downtown to shop for a black silk dress which the daughter wasn't to wear to parties or dinners or anywhere at all: a dress meant only for her mother's funeral. The fact that Laura didn't own a good silk dress for herself-Laura had four children-and could have used one, didn't seem to cross the mother's mind. Every year, my sister told me, the mother--too cheap to buy her daughter a new dress--would haul Laura downtown to have the dress restyled.

Something about that story stayed in my imagination, grew there. For me, the story caught the power of a dominating Southern mother in a way that nothing else quite did. Then, years later, my sister told me the end of the tale, and I wrote the short story, "Funeral Dress." This is the sequence of composition the story went through, including its brief life as a one act play.

In the first version of the short story, I stayed close to Laura, who is married and has a large, happy family. Here's how I began:

FUNERAL DRESS: FIRST VERSION

"Maurina Elaine, do you have a dress for my funeral?"

7:30 a.m. phone call. Mother's Morning Call, Lane's husband had named it--always the signal that Rena Grace had been up all night working something out.

"Are you feeling unwell?" Lane asked her mother, not without a certain ironic overtone that went unnoticed.

-----

The husband was dropped right away; the tension between the two women felt greater without a man in the picture. After many different drafts, I worked out a story in four scenes. Here are some samples of the project at this point.

----

Lane received a 7:30am phone call from Rena Grace. Mother's Morning Call, a signal that Rena Grace had been working something out.

"Maurina Elaine, do you have a dress for my funeral?"

"I hadn't thought about it, Mother. Are you feeling unwell?"

"I'll have Harris run me by about two and we'll go to Bernaldo's and pick something out."

One by one the saleswomen in the small shop came up to say good afternoon to Miss Rena Grace, and to offer coffee and chocolate mint wafers. One of them, the youngest and newest on the staff of Bernaldo's, seemed to be resisting an impulse to curtsey.

Mrs. Carlson, the clerk who always waited on Rena Grace, and resembled her in body size and shape, held up four dark dresses. "Is this what you had in mind?"

"Not the wool. We want it for all seasons." Rena Grace surveyed the dresses critically. "Maybe the navy. Maybe the black with the shawl collar. Hm. I don't know about that other black. What do you think, Maurina Elaine?"

I think I'd like a scarf to go with my blue silk you hate so much. I could wear it to...

"Maurina Elaine?"

"I like the navy."

"Well, try it on. And the black with the shawl collar."

The dresses didn't fit. The navy almost did.

About a year later, Rena Grace made another morning call about the dress. "I think it will do again for this year."

"Yes, I think so. I haven't worn it."

"Well, that's good news. Estelle"--Rena Grace's cook of 25 years-"said she'd never seen you in it."

"It doesn't fit."

"It fits fine. Don't start that again."

"Anyway, I've got to get ready for work."

"Work? Oh, you mean the library."

"I work at the library."

"We had the dress altered. They sent me quite a bill."

"Breakfast. I have to go fix breakfast."

"Why are you working on Saturday?"

"We all have to work on Saturday now. I told you."

"That's right. I'm finding it harder and harder to remember things these days."

"Mother, I've told you at least five times that if you want to be counted as a full time staff member, you have to work on Saturday."

"Well, work part time. That's what you've been doing."

"I can't afford it since they raised my rent. I TOLD you that."

"As I say, I have a hard time remembering things."

The next year, Rena Grace was on her trip to Italy and sent a card telling Lane to get Bernaldo's to take up the hem of her funeral dress because skirts were very short in Europe. The year after that they added a black lace jabot, although Lane really wanted a white one. When wide shoulders came back in, they added thick pads which made Lane look so stylish Rena Grace seemed a little disappointed she didn't die while that fashion lasted.

----

Lane had been helping her mother sort through her closet when they came across a box marked FUNERAL in black magic marker. Lane started to open it when Rena Grace stopped her.

"Don't you bother with that. One of my children will take care of it."

"But, Mother," Lane looked at the old woman in alarm. "I am one of your children. I'm the only one left."

"Of course, I know that," Rena Grace huffed. "Of course I do."

----

"Well, did you ever!"

"Never."

Lane overheard them as she entered the crowded church and moved slowly down the aisle on the usher's arm.

"Rena Grace is going to jump right up out of her coffin." The old woman's whisper carried at least six pews.

Lane held a handkerchief to her mouth, pressing against a tide of unaccustomed emotion.

"Will you just look at that dress."

Surprised, Mrs. Carlson?

Lane passed her aunts, Maurina and Elaine, from whom she'd gotten her names, but not her skin. She pretended to sag a little so she could hear their muttered whispers.
"To think Maurina. Elaine would dress like that at her own mother's funeral."

"Blood red."

"Maurina Elaine never did have a lick of sense about clothes. Rena Grace said it a hundred times."

Lane pressed the handkerchief harder to her mouth.

"And that hat!"

"Looks like she borrowed it from Estelle."

"That awful bunch of cherries!"

----

My editor had this to say about this early version: " I love your story until the end. Not that the end is, in itself, badly written but I think it's too pat. There's not enough story around it to make it work I'm not sure what to suggest; I love all the scenes you have. Maybe an interwoven story about Lane, how she lives in between the sessions with her mother so that we feel her internal struggle. We see her always going along with Rena Grace and then bingo, the great rebellion when she dies. We need to know her better, feel for her more. This story cries out to be developed further."

I decided to develop the story into a play for a local one act contest. As I keep telling anyone who will listen, there is no greater shortcut in fiction than to cast things into a play or screenplay form. For one thing, the writer is forced to visualize the material and the setting in order to write out the stage directions, the characters speak their lines without the interruption of a narrator's voice, so a writer can just relax and let them say to each other whatever comes out. Also, in a play, the characters assume color, dimension, drama, that can then be put back into a short story or novel,

For example, Rena Grace's personality took on much more lifelike dimensions once I let her speak for herself. Here's a short excerpt from the play:

Rena Grace: I just don't want you to embarrass me with that blue silk you wore to Hattie's at Thanksgiving. I got to thinking last night and couldn't stop until I worked it out.

(PAUSE)

ELAINE: OK, worked WHAT out?

RG: Well, my funeral, of course. I planned the whole thing. (LIGHTS GO DOWN ON ELAINE AND UP ON CENTER STAGE) It will be at the First Presbyterian Church, of course. We'll bring dear Doctor Alexander out of retirement. I certainly don't want that young man they have now to do my service. Doesn't look more than 12 years old. (PAUSE) I don't care where he got his degree. I don't want him at MY funeral. I want it done right. All of it. No lilies. White carnations with a little touch of green asparagus fern. Closed casket. (MUSIC SWELLS) Bach. (LANE BEGINS TO WALK DOWN THE AISLE, SHE'S WEARING BLACK COAT, BLACK HAT WITH VEIL. SHE'S SOBBING LOUDLY, STYLIZED DISPLAY OF GRIEF.)

LANE: Mother, oh, Mother.

SPOT BACK TO RENA GRACE, FANTASY FADES...

----

I didn't win the local play contest, but I learned a great deal by dramatizing my material. First, I added a bit more background information so that the mother-daughter relationship made more sense. But more importantly, the characters became real to me. I felt much kinder towards Rena Grace, so when I wrote the final version of the story, I could be more than one-dimensional in portraying her. Also, I came to respect Lane, which I hadn't very much in the earlier versions. Now, I find myself wondering what happened to her after her mother's funeral, and would like to write more about her.

----

FUNERAL DRESS: PUBLISHED VERSION

The phone rang 14 times before Lane picked it up. 7:01 am. Mother's Morning Call.

"Maurina Elaine, do you have a dress for my funeral?"

"I hadn't thought about it, Mother. Ate you feeling unwell?"

"I don't want you to embarrass me with that blue silk you wore to Hattie's at Thanksgiving."

"Could this wait until, say, after breakfast?"

"Aren't you up yet?"

Sigh.

"No, Maurina Elaine, I got to thinking last night and couldn't stop until I worked it out."

Pause. "Worked what out?"

"My funeral. I planned the whole thing. It'll be at First Presbyterian, of course, We'll have to bring dear Doctor Alexander out of retirement. I certainly don't want that young man they have now at my funeral. Doesn't look more than 12 years old. I don't care where he got his degree. I want it done right. All of it. White carnations with a little touch of green asparagus fern. Closed casket. Bach."

Lane could feel her mother's fantasy surround her, could almost hear the music swelling. She could also supply the details Rena Grace left out in her telling: the packed church, the whispered praise that threatened to drown out the music, Lane standing by the coffin, handkerchief to her mouth, whispering, "Mother, Oh, Mother."

"Mother. . ." Lane said into the telephone.

"The only thing I couldn't quite visualize is exactly what dress you'll be wearing. I went through all your clothes in my mind's eye and nothing you have is halfway suitable. That blue silk you wore to Hattie's would surely disgrace us all. For once I want your dress to be appropriate. Is that so much to ask?"

"Mother. . ." Lane's voice rose in frustration and aggravation.

"All right, all right, go eat your breakfast. I shouldn't bother you with my problems. I'll bear them alone."

Lane paused while she considered, then rejected, all the things she could say to her mother.

"Maurina Elaine, are you there?"

"Yes, Mother."

"I'll come by for you up at two and we'll go pick something out."

"Something in black, but not the kind of black that makes Maurina Elaine look so watered down. Sort of blue-black or even navy," Rena Grace said to the sales clerk. Rena Grace prided herself on being liberal about dress at funerals, allowing navy and forest green. "Maurina Elaine, what are you doing?"

Lane wound the silk scarf around her neck. "What do you think of this one, Mother?"

"We are not here to look at scarves, Maurina Elaine. Do come and sit down."

Lane lingered at the scarf counter twisting the silk until this small rebellion began to make her feel "nervous"-a word she used a great deal. She joined her mother on the beige pouf in the middle of the shop. Rena Grace took up most of the pouf with her girth, her hat, her bags and coat. She always called Bernaldo's to tell them when she was coming in to shop.

"I wish you would concentrate on what we are doing, Marina Elaine."

"And what are we doing?"

"You know very well, you exasperating child."

"I'm 47. And I'm not exasperating."

"Yes, you are. You surely are." Silence. "I just want it all done right, Maurina Elaine."

"And I, of course, couldn't do it right?" Lane voice began to rise. "I can't do anything right."

"I'm simply trying to make things a little easier for you, Maurina Elaine, by planning out some of the details in advance." Rena Grace patted her daughter's hand. They sat quietly for a moment.

"Fashions may change in 20 years. What if the dress is out of style by the time you die?"

Rena Grace apparently hadn't considered this. "Well, I guess we'll just inspect it once a year. When I brush my funeral dress in the spring." She stored it in her closet in a box marked FUNERAL DRESS in black magic marker. She showed Lane where she kept it at least three times a year.

"For heaven's sake, Mother, you don't have to brush that dress every year. I'd see it was right before we went and buried you in it."

"Well, I know you. You might not pay attention to the cuffs the way you should. I just want to be sure."

Lane sighed heavily and pulled her hand away.

One by one the saleswomen in the small shop came up to say good afternoon to Miss Rena Grace, and to offer coffee and chocolate mint wafers. They spoke to Lane only as an afterthought, if at all.

Mrs. Carlson, the clerk who always waited on Rena Grace, and resembled her in body size and shape, held up four dark dresses. "Is this what you had in mind?"

"Not the wool. We want it for all seasons." Rena Grace surveyed the dresses critically. "Maybe the navy. Maybe the black with the shawl collar. Hm I don't know about that other black. What do you think, Maurina, Elaine?"

I think I'd like a scarf to go with my blue silk you hate so much.

"Maurina Elaine?"

"I like the navy."

"Well, try it on. And the black with the shawl collar."

The dresses didn't fit. The navy almost did.

"It's too short, don't you think, Mother?"

"You're just too tall. Your father's side of the family."

"We can take this hem down a full two inches." Mrs. Carlson inspected the underside of the dress as Lane stood between the mirror and her mother on the pouf.

Lane turned this way and that. There wasn't a mirror with a good light in her whole apartment, and she didn't realize just how old she looked.

"It makes you too thin." Rena Grace turned her head to the side, considering. "Turn around."

She buys a dress like she used to buy a horse, Lane realized, remembering stamping horseflesh being critically appraised. She felt sway-backed, lame, split-hoofed.

"No. It won't do. Try on the black again."

"Oh, Mother. You saw how that looked. They'd bury me!"

"True enough. Never seen such sallow skin. You got my sisters' names but not their complexions."

"There's this one." Mrs. Carlson produced the third dress, the one which Rena Grace finally bought, although Lane still liked the navy.

"We should have gotten the blue one," Lane told her mother on the way home, "I could've let it out."

"You'd be tempted to wear it to church, then forget and cook dinner in it. Before long it'd be splotched and botched. You just don't have good sense about clothes, Maurina Elaine. Like that blue silk of yours."

"But, Mother, the blue silk is a good dress." You don't like it because you didn't pick it out yourself, Lane wanted to say, but didn't.

Lane remembered another scene in front of a mirror, her mother sighing and telling Lane how downright ugly she looked in a ruby red taffeta she'd wanted to wear to impress her date for the Junior-Senior high school prom, a football tackle her mother disapproved of. She'd ended up with a shell pink tucked batiste which Rena Grace claimed made her look "sweet." The football player spent most of the prom dancing with a cheerleader while Lane, in deep, wild misery, pretended to talk to her history teacher.

The tackle had been the first in a long line of suitors who didn't work out, but something large and bulky stood in the way of Lane seeing to the end of why. She just knew they were gone, that one by one they'd lost interest or been so severely criticized by Rena Grace that Lane couldn't bear to remain in the room with them. And now she looked so old.

"Besides, the deep black is really more suitable for a daughter," her mother continued. The very thought of deep black mourning made Rena Grace reach for a small, lace-trimmed handkerchief.

About a year later, Rena Grace devoted another of her morning calls to the dress. Lane let the phone ring 18 times before answering.

"I think it will do again for this year."

"Yes, I think so. I haven't worn it."

"Well, that's good news. Estelle"--Rena Grace's cook of 25 years--"said she'd never seen you in it."

"It doesn't fit."

"It fits fine. Don't start that again."

"Anyway, I've got to get ready for work."

"Work? Oh, you mean the library."

"I work at the library."

"We had the dress altered. They sent me quite a bill."

"Breakfast. I have to fix my breakfast."

"Why are you working on Saturday?"

"We all have to work on Saturday now. I told you."

"That's right. I'm finding it harder and harder to remember things these days."

"Mother, I've told you at least five times that if I want to be counted on as a full time staff member, I have to be willing to work Saturdays."

"Well, work part time again."

"I can't afford it since they raised my rent. I told you."

"As I say, I have a hard time remembering things."

Only things that don't have to do with you personally, Lane decided, stabbing at the yolks of her two eggs. "I need about $ 100 a month more than I make working part time." Lane hadn't given up hope that, for once, her mother would offer to help.

"You'll have plenty when I go, Maurina Elaine," Rena Grace answered complacently.

"But I need it now, Mother. Or I can't keep my apartment unless I work full time."

"But you have a lovely home here, Maurina Elaine, if you weren't too stubborn to move back. Your apartment's so small, you can't turn around twice. Can't move at all without falling over some stack of books or papers you keep lying around. I've got a whole houseful of room here. "

"Mother," Lane's voice had started to waver although they'd been over this ground time and time again since she'd moved out at 42, after the family doctor had tactfully suggested she might be less nervous if she lived alone. "I think it is best that I keep my own separate apartment. I can walk to the library, I can take care of my cat. It's just better all the way around."

"Well, keep your apartment." Rena Grace's voice rose higher and higher. "Forget how it looks to other people. Keep it, keep it."

"I intend to, Mother," Lane made one more stab at neutrality, "but that isn't the point. The issue is that from now on, I'll have to work every day plus every other Saturday which, believe it or not, you of great leisure and unlimited means," Lane was sobbing now, "takes away time and energy I don't always have.

"Surely a mother knows more than a doctor does about what's best for her own daughter. You belong at home."

"I am at home," Lane shouted into the phone before she hung up. "I'm 48 years old. I live here."

The next year, Rena Grace was on her trip to Italy and sent her daughter a card: "Italy is lovely but full of Italians. Have Bernaldo's take up your dress. Skirts in Europe very short this year. Love, Mother."

The year after that they added a black lace jabot, although Lane really wanted a white one. As the years passed, the hem came back down, then went up again, then down. When wide shoulders came in, they added thick pads which made Lane look so stylish Rena Grace seemed a little disappointed she didn't die while that fashion lasted.

The last spring, Rena Grace, who was having what they called "a good day" after a winter of bad ones, asked Lane to take her to Bernaldo's, and to call to say they were coming in.

"Greetings, Miss Rena Grace." Mrs. Carlson met them at the door. "It's so nice to see you again." The pouf had long since given way to an underwear counter, so they had to stand.

Lane, looking more and more faded herself, could tell that her mother didn't recognize Mrs. Carlson, but pretended to. "And you, my dear?" Rena Grace asked the stout woman, "How have you been?"-which happened to be the wrong thing to say to someone who'd recently had her gall bladder removed.

"I haven't been well, myself" Mrs. Carlson began with relish. "Not at all. Last fall I started having these pains. Just here. My husband rushed me to the doctor right away and he said that if I had them again, they'd have to take it out. My gall bladder. And you know, that's just what happened. Over Christmas. They told me not to eat rich foods, but they didn't tell me how to go about getting through the holidays without doing it. I mean, we went over to Annie's and she'd just made her first nut cake, so I took just a little bit not to hurt her feelings. Then Bill's wife made a whole tin of cheese wafers and I couldn't hurt her feelings. And that was just the beginning. I mean you can't be both polite and healthy. Not at Christmas. Mr. Carlson said to me, 'You're going to end up going under the knife if you aren't careful.' Got so, on top of everything else, I'd get indigestion from him warning me so much! When Annie made that nut cake, her first nut cake, Mr. Carlson said to me. . . "

Lane drifted off to look at the summer sweaters. They kept the library icy throughout the spring and summer. She hadn't had time to shop all year, her mother being so sick and all. She'd already tried on most of the sweaters from the rack when she heard her mother calling. "Maurina Elaine, we must leave. We mustn't keep Papa waiting."

Papa?

"Mother?" Lane took Rena Grace's arm and guided her towards the exit. Rena Grace seemed to come to herself a little.

"Goodbye, everyone."

"Goodbye, Miss Rena Grace, thank you for stopping by to see us." Mrs. Carlson, her broad face smooth and blank, walked with them to the door. "Take care of your mama, Lane."

On the sidewalk, Miss Rena Grace shook herself out as if she'd gotten covered with something unpleasant in the shop. "That woman talks so much! I don't know why Papa hired her."

"Papa?"

"Papa hired that woman before he died, so when he left me the store, I just had to keep her on."

"Mother," Lane began, "listen to me."

"No. I won't think of firing her now. Papa wouldn't have approved."

"You don't own the shop, Mother. Your father had a dry goods store. Maybe that's what you're thinking of?"

"It's family loyalty I'm thinking of. I'd never go against Papa's wishes." Rena Grace shook her head and the two vertical lines above her mouth deepened in disapproval. "I'm surprised at you, Maurina Elaine. And deeply hurt."

Lane could feel the old pain rise. "I'd better take you home."

"Don't you bother. One of my children will come and get me." "But, Mother, I am one of your children. I'm the only one left."

Rena Grace looked at her meanly. "My son Arthur is on his way."

"Arthur has been dead for 20 years. I will take you home." Rena Grace looked at her daughter blankly. "You don't even see me, do you Mother? Other people don't either. There's just a sort of a blank where a person should have been."

"Arthur will be here soon. My son Arthur will take me home."

"Well, did you ever!"

"Never."

Lane overheard them as she entered the crowded church and moved slowly down the aisle on the usher's arm.

"Rena Grace is going to jump right up out of her coffin." The old woman's whisper carried at least six pews.

Lane held a handkerchief to her mouth, pressing against a tide of unaccustomed emotion.

"Will you just look at that dress!"

Lane passed her aunts, Maurina and Elaine, from whom she'd gotten her names, but not her skin. She pretended to sag a little, slowing so she could hear their muttered whispers.

"To think Maurina Elaine would dress like that at her own mother's funeral."
"Blood red satin. Did you ever!"

"Maurina Elaine never did have a lick of sense about clothes. Rena Grace said it a hundred times."

Lane's pressed the handkerchief harder to her mouth. Bach's music swelled as Lane stood with her hand on the closed casket, bowed her head and whispered, "Mother. Oh, Mother."

The End

Postscript. After my sister read the story, she said that I'd gotten it all mixed up, that Laura had worn the dress her mother had picked out to the funeral, but had gone to K-Mart and bought the tackiest sweater she could find and worn it over it.

Be that as it may, every time I read this story in the south, someone comes up to me and says the same thing: "I didn't know that you knew my mother."

Kimberley Snow

EXERCISE
1 Expand and develop a short story. Experiment turning it (or parts of it) into a play.