Two #2
Morning comes and I wake up with humility.
All night, my head was full of music, the sound of true artists.
Meanwhile, my attempt at Papa’s chair dries against the mantel, the latest in a series of failed paintings.
Papa’s black oxfords. His last pack of cigarettes.
Our blue house from the outside with its side-by-side front doors and the brick walk where he stumbled on the morning he was taken away.
None of them close to what I’d envisioned.
None of them worth stinking up the house with turpentine.
From the kitchen I hear my sisters’ voices, Al’s low laugh, Baby Rudy’s squeal.
I meant to get up before the rest of them and clear the sofa, brew the coffee, show that I’m useful. Instead, I’m the last one to rise.
By the time I fold the blanket and stash it in my corner, use the bathroom and brush my hair and tie my robe over my nightgown, something is happening in the kitchen.
A hush, only Bernard’s voice now, all of them watching him and listening as he nods along with whoever is on the telephone. I wait in the doorway.
“Yes,” Bernard’s saying. “Wonderful. Maybe French Restoration. Still elegant but not quite as ornate. I’ll draw up some concepts.
” Waiting. Listening. Claire’s whole body tilting toward him from her place at the stove.
She nods when he nods. Her lips mouth his words after he says them.
The conversation goes on and Bernard stands taller.
I get a flash of his younger self, five years ago when he and Claire were married at Saint Peter Claver.
No one was surprised when she chose Bernard.
He walked down the aisle smiling, boyish and open, tall with russet eyes and hair, an ease about him that got lost in the war.
“Three o’clock is just fine,” he says. “See you then.” He hangs up. “Twenty-two tables,” he says.
“Twenty-two?” Claire’s jaw drops and Bernard kisses her forehead, holds her close against him. He lets himself smile—the old smile, the one that spreads across his face.
Al gives a low whistle. “Twenty-two tables,” he says. His arm’s slung around Adele’s shoulders and she’s leaning into him, bouncing Rudy on her knee.
“Who’s the client?” she asks.
“New restaurant in the French Quarter. Going in right by the Carousel. They have a load of chairs from a restaurant that closed and now they need tables to match.”
“Well, they knew the right man for the job,” Al says.
“I’ll need help,” Bernard says, fixing his eyes on Al. “And a lot of it.”
Al holds his gaze, nods. No trace of sympathy in his sharper, darker face.
Enough of a blow to Bernard already to be a master carpenter unable to close his right hand, enough to spend hours at the kitchen table, training his left hand to approximate his once-elegant penmanship.
The shrapnel cut through to the tendon; too much time passed before the hospital.
Enough of a blow, all of it. No need for pity from any of us.
“When do they want them by?” Claire asks.
“Soon after the New Year.”
“I assume it’ll pay well,” Al says. “I can quit the record store, put all my time into helping you. If we keep spending carefully like we are now, it should give us what we need for Los Angeles.”
“Sounds about right,” Bernard says.
“I’m not going to miss scrubbing floors, I’ll tell you that much,” Al says.
“One more Christmas at home,” Claire says, wistful. “One more New Year’s. Maybe even Mardi Gras, too. Just a small celebration, respectful of the men overseas. And then we’ll go.”
I walk to Hattie’s house in the afternoon, blur of cobblestones underfoot, last of the deep-pink crepe myrtle above, air thick with late summer heat.
It’s Thursday, nearing two o’clock, the time Hattie sets aside for us each week.
A white man comes toward me, guitar slung over his shoulder.
I step off the sidewalk to clear the way and he passes without acknowledgment.
For the hundredth time, I think of Delphine’s portrait in the window, the sign hanging next to it, and an ache starts at the back of my skull.
The alley alongside the Laurent house leads to Hattie’s basement sewing room door.
She’s watching for me, close to the window.
Lashes thick and black. Full mouth turning down at the corners.
Always a look of sadness until she smiles.
She lets me in. Grazes a kiss on my lips before pouring me a glass of iced tea.
She sets the glass in my hand and turns back to her sewing table, cuts a sharp line through navy linen.
I don’t want to think about Los Angeles. Can’t think about it, here, with her. Instead, I imagine a long stretch of Thursdays, week after week, year after year, the two of us together, as far as I can see.