Two #3
Hattie’s five years older. Twenty-three, same as Claire.
Always prepared, always impressive, her studio elegant despite its low ceiling and the crack across its floor.
I noticed its specialness the first time I came here, sent by my sisters to get dresses made for Rudy’s baptism.
I knew Hattie from Sunday Mass, from the New Year’s parties her parents threw, from the neighborhood.
But we’d never talked just the two of us until that day.
She greeted me and led me to the love seat, took the chair next to it, checked the notes with our measurements, listened carefully to what my sisters envisioned: three calf-length white dresses with variations to the necklines and sleeves.
I took in the sewing room’s details as she started sketching, all the aspects she’d considered for her customers: Here is a rug, soft and warm under your bare feet.
Here are magazines to help you know what you like.
Here’s a screen to dress behind in the event you’re feeling shy.
A soft love seat, mauve velvet, for you to rest on.
I waited and I watched her sketch and the room seemed to say: All of this, for you.
Finally, she said, “I think I have it. Are you in a hurry? Could I drape them on you?”
I had all afternoon and I told her so. I was eager; she could sense it. She flashed me a smile that made me blush though I didn’t yet understand why.
With Hattie, I’m aware of my body—a singular body, not one of three sisters, just myself.
Lithe and quick, drawn toward pleasure. My desire, easy to spark.
Hattie’s body is larger, stronger, and more substantial.
When she presses me to a wall or the floor, the world gets so small and she’s in control of it. Such relief.
But today she’s busy with sewing.
I stand over her and look. There are cutouts for two long sleeves, pinned together where the seams will be. A blazer. “Menswear?” I ask. She usually only sews for women.
“For Cyril,” she says.
“Ah,” I say. “Of course.” Her little brother.
Her voice goes soft with love whenever she speaks his name.
Tall and fair with hazel eyes, a suave smile, a beauty that’s never moved me.
For a series of Sundays last year, he tried talking to me after Mass.
Delphine would take my arm, drag me off somewhere to save me.
“How funny,” she’d say. “A brother and a sister, both sweet on the same girl.” If Hattie knows anything about it, she’s never said a word.
“Can I help?”
“You can match a thread to this fabric,” she says, handing me a scrap of the linen. I find the perfect navy, hold it out to her, perch on her table.
“Al and Adele took me to the Drop last night. One of the songs made me think about you.”
She’s squinting now, lining up the thread through the hole in the lever, guiding it through, but she smiles. “What about, specifically?”
I move a foot onto her lap. “This and that,” I say.
Finally, she gives in to me. We end up on her rug, my legs wrapped around her neck, her hand over my mouth to quiet me in case anyone’s near enough to hear.
At some point the sky bursts, rain pounding the windows, thunder, a flash of light.
Afterward, I say, “I’ve heard it doesn’t storm like this in California.
Isn’t that strange? How does the heat break?
” My worries slipping out like another secret.
Surely, Hattie’s heard that my sisters plan to go.
People talk. But she doesn’t answer, runs her hand up and down my back, and I see both paths: The one where I remain the youngest Honoré sister, go where my sisters go, leave New Orleans and start over in a different place, an unknown place, that’s promised to give us all we could dream of.
And then there’s the one where I stay. With Delphine. With Hattie.
We lie together until the rain stops, and then I stand and step back into my underwear, pull on my dress.
“Why don’t you stay a little longer?” Hattie asks.
I kiss her. Shake my head. “I’m meeting Delphine.”
She’s waiting for me when I get there—the garden damp with rain and heat, every shade of green on display, the trumpet vine fragrant and blooming. She narrows her eyes at me. “You were just with Hattie.”
“Maybe I was,” I say. Her hair’s even more tousled than usual, only a trace of color left on her lips, the third button of her blouse unfastened. “And you were with Bill.”
“Maybe I was,” she says, and we laugh. Water pools on the leaves, on the ground. “Can you believe how good it smells?” We push water off the bench seat with our hands. Delphine uses the hem of her dress for the rest.
“I’ve been wondering,” I say. “Are there beignets in California?”
“California,” she says, frowning. I tell her about Bernard’s tables, about the morning’s conversation. The line between her brows deepens as she listens.
“I don’t know what I’ll do,” I say.
We sit quietly. A bright-red cardinal lands on the ground, pecking at the water. “Here,” Delphine says, turning her body to face me. “Tell me about your life in five years. Say whatever comes to mind.”
I close my eyes. “Restaurant lunches at marble-topped tables. Bouquets of wildflowers. Days spent painting. Waking up in a light-filled bedroom, a white curtain fluttering in the breeze. There’s a body next to mine, still sleeping.
It’s Hattie. Oh, I’m still in New Orleans.
I’m somehow still here. And you’re here, too.
You’re across the table from me at lunch, sitting in a curved walnut chair.
” I open my eyes, amazed by how fast it all came to me, how certain it felt.
A new start in New Orleans, this place that I love, where five generations of our family have lived. How could we dream of leaving it?
And now tears rush in because of everything I’ll have to lose to make it true—Adele and Claire and Bernard and Al and sweet Baby Rudy batting his eyelashes.
Delphine’s eyes fill, too. “It’s so hard,” she says. “But imagine. What a beautiful life. We’re going to have such beautiful lives.”