Page 4 of Meet Me in the Garden

“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. Istep 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.

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 mysisters 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.