The Seamstress of Hollywood Boulevard (30 page)

"That's not fair," I said. "I never misled you."

"I thought I knew what was happening. I had made plans. But I didn't know the first thing, and everybody understood that but me."

I looked at my voile curtains lifting in the breeze. "Have you found me wanting?"

"You're no cook."

"I look good and act better. I don't smoke or flirt. You've never had reason to doubt me for one second."

"Will a few more sisters be coming next? I guess you and I could sleep out back with Mary."

"Those are all the sisters. You don't need to worry."

"Yes I do. I need to worry from now on."

I reached out to take his hand, which lay in my grasp like an old fish. "They won't stay with us long. I'll make sure of that." Looking at his expression, I added, "They won't change anything."

"It would be nice to believe that."

"Do. Believe it."

His voice remained pleasant, very nearly the voice he used with me every day. "I'm doing my best here. But you've got to tell me some things about yourself. Who are you? Where did you come from? Tell me about a horse if you want. But tell me something." His eyes had turned so deep a blue that they looked black, like holes in his sun-gilded face. I had watched him get angry a hundred times, over the more and more frequent electricity shortages, the car's thrown rod, the day Mary had discovered both my unattended scissors and his cream-colored sports jacket. Never had I seen the face he wore now, as stiff as the Egyptian mask I'd seen in an illustration in
Westways.
If I had been an actress playing this scene, I would have flung myself at him, clung to his lapels, and wept as though my heart would break. Weeping, which didn't require words, was good.

"We had neighbors, too," I said slowly. "The Haddons owned a big spread, three hundred twenty acres. Their house was made out of brick and the kitchen had a pump right inside. Pa said they put on airs, and I thought if airs meant I didn't have to haul water, I wanted some, too. When we children saw them in town, Mrs. Haddon would give us candy that we had to eat fast, before Ma would take it away from us. Pa would slap it away.

"They got a dog. Everybody had dogs, but they sent off for this one. It was from Belgium—the first time I'd ever heard of Belgium. It had long hair and a long snout and its bark could wake the dead, but it was a gorgeous beast. They let it come in the house, it was that pretty. They had it for three months before somebody shot it. Nobody knew who."

"Figured," George said.

"We were the ones who lived closest to them, but it still would have been a good walk. After it happened, Pa's boots were muddy, but they were muddy a lot of the time." I could not hold back the memory of that silky black animal, its mouth open in a sharp, white smile.

"That's a story about your pa, not you."

Frustration clogged my mouth. The years I had spent not thinking about Jack or the babies had corroded every detail around them, and now I scrambled to remember a story to tell my husband. The delay made me sound like a liar, I knew. "One year I got some flower seeds in town. Just pansies. I planted them up next to the house, where nobody cared and they got enough sun. They should have done fine. But only half of them came up, and the others looked shriveled. In the first good rainstorm, they were gone."

"Oh, for crying out loud." He didn't have to slap the table. That was just a flourish.

I said, "You want me to tell some story I don't have. Kansas wasn't like Waynesburg. We didn't have an Orland Murray. We had Indians." Mama had talked about them all the time, and when I was Mary's age I was afraid one would climb through my window.

"Little Nell. Raised among the savages. Mary Pickford could play you."

"No, she couldn't. Mary Pickford wouldn't know the half of it." I lowered my voice. "This won't go on. I'll find a way to get them work. We can't have Mary sleeping outside." And I couldn't bear to have the other two crammed together in Mary's little bed. Already, even with the door slid shut to separate us from the girls, there seemed to be too little air in the house. Standing in barns had made me feel this way, as though those huge animals taking their huge breaths would use up all the air and leave me nothing.

George was studying me. "They are family."

"I didn't ask them to come."

"For cripe's sake. It's just decent to let your own family in the door." His nose was short, his chin a smooth cup, and his expression was complicated and sad. He understood, though I wished that he did not, my readiness to place Lisette and Aimée on a streetcar tomorrow with their bags, my mumbled best wishes and fifty dollars from the cracker tin. He saw all that, and he probably also saw some likeness—a tilt of the head or a fold to the lips. If I made them leave, I would disappoint George a second time.

"Maybe if they hadn't arrived the day I finally decided to put the money down. If they'd just come next week, when the ink on the mortgage was dry." He smiled badly, and I had sense enough not to try to touch him again. "I picked out a model for us: 'The Seville.' It has two bedrooms."

"Luxury!" My voice rasped.

"I thought of you when I looked over the blueprints. I kept asking, 'What would Nell like?' There are closets in every room."

"Plenty of storage for fabric and notions," I said. George nodded. My voice was breaking apart. "A month from now, we'll be laughing about this. Two months, and we'll have to be reminded."

"How are you going to make that happen?"

I said, "What's the capital of Maine? How many yards are in a mile? We know all kinds of things that we don't remember."

"Augusta. One thousand seven hundred sixty. Just because something isn't constantly in my mind doesn't mean I forgot it."

"Then you've got more closet space in your mind than I do. When I came to California, I started from the ground up, everything new. I didn't have room for the old things."

"I'll bet your sisters wouldn't like being called 'old things.'" He laughed a little, and I knew we were on safe ground again. "All right, Nell. Is Nell your real name? You didn't change it when you got to California?" I shook my head, and he said, "I want this to be the last surprise. Anybody can have family show up. I just don't want to find out anything new about you again," he said.

"You won't." My eyes dropped to the ruined table, the wood so spongy now that I could dig out a tiny trench with my fingernail. This was the time to tell him about babies, and about Jack. The two big, crude girls curled together in Mary's bed were a snare trap stretched across the house. There was no telling when I would find my neck caught in a filament I did not see until too late, as I had not seen the girls until they stood before me. The only way to unstring the trap was to tell George now. Though it would be terrible, there would not be any better time.

I looked at the relief on his face, the sadness and resolution. No one had ever known me as well as George. Together, we had made this life, decision by decision, day by day. He knew my truest self, the one I had stitched together out of the harsh stuff Kansas had given me. For a moment, as long as I could bear, I imagined my life without George.

"You know everything there is to know," I said.

"Well then." He pushed himself to his feet, his hands splayed across the stained table. "If we get the house, they can help us move, like Aimée said."

"Lisette. Lisette's the one who said that."

Annoyance wrinkled across his face, but then was gone. He pursed his lips and said, "Claudette."

"Monique."

"Marie."

"Marie Antoinette."

"What did your folks call them?"

I needed a moment to understand his question, already forgetting my new role as sister, who would have overheard her parents naming their babies. "Lucille and Amelia. Back then, they were the prettiest names anybody knew."

"You're kidding."

Ordinarily I would have pretended to take offense, and he would have pretended to carry on the insult, and we would have kept talking until we chased each other to the bedroom. Now, exhausted, I smiled and shrugged. "They sounded nice, out there."

"California is going to offer a few shocks to their way of thinking."

"That's what happens." I touched his cheek. "First comes Vision, then Clarification."

"We can teach them the Seven Steps to Success while they help us pack dishes," he said.

I thought the girls had worked out the steps just fine for themselves, vaulting right over Plan to Helpmeets. Fear gripped me again, and I nearly opened my mouth to say: Wait. There is something else I need to tell you.

He stood up. "Come on, sweetheart. It's too late to talk anymore." I sat for one more moment and looked at his broad face. "It will be all right," he said.

"Promise?" I said.

"Promise."

We skipped toothbrushing and went straight to bed, where I lay awake, fretful beside George's steady breathing. Too late, the memory he wanted came back to me. When Lucille was about nine months old, Amelia big under my apron, a drummer came to the house. He arrived a few times a year, and like everybody, I made sure to buy a packet of needles or a button card so he'd come again. This time he had a woman with him. Teeth jutted from her mouth, and her loose black hair held twigs in its snarls. Lucille, with her pitch-perfect grasp of what would upset me, made right for her. The woman crooned in a foreign accent while I kept yanking Lucille back. "Be quick," I told the drummer. "Show me what you've got. I don't have time today."

"This is Florence," he said. "She has the sight."

Not enough to notice the mud all around her hem, I thought. She grinned at me. "I tell you things," she said.

"I could use black thread," I said to the drummer.

"And ribbons for the little girl?" Florence said. The wheedle was built into her voice, like the wheeze in an accordion. "The pretty little girl?" she said.

At home with us, Lucille was rarely a pretty little girl. Certainly she was not pretty at that moment, her jaw rigid as she set out again to reach the dirty stranger.

"Thread," I said to the drummer. "If you don't have that, come back next time."

"You usually need more than just a spool of thread," the drummer said, picking slowly at the knots in the rope that held his case together.

"Let me," Florence said, grabbing my hand. Lucille let out a happy little bark.

"I won't pay you," I said.

"I have two sizes of spools," the drummer said.

"The big one," I said, forgetting to ask the price.

Florence was brushing my palm with her dirty fingertips, a feeling that reminded me of loose horse lips going over my hand for something sweet. The touch made queasiness unspool in my stomach, and I thought that the new baby didn't like this woman. Florence was muttering a word that sounded like "zdoo." Just then, Jack came into the kitchen. If I told the story to George, I would have to say it was Pa who came in.

"What is that?" he asked, pointing to Florence.

"She can tell you what to expect," the drummer said. "Weather, crops. She can help you."

"Huh. Where was she last year, when I bought up that bad seed?"

"She'll save you from doing it again."

I couldn't stop watching her fingers, black under every fingernail, brushing across my hand. Lucille was leaning against my leg, gazing at Florence. The fortuneteller looked at my hand, not my face, when she said, "You will travel. You will see new places."

I took back my hand and laughed. She was probably saving the handsome stranger for after Jack left the room.

"You will see things," Florence persisted, grabbing at my hand. I tucked it in my pocket, and she gestured as if my hand had just that instant become important. "You will carry things."

"I told you—no money."

"Listen!" She bent down to Lucille, who reached out to touch the stranger's bumpy mouth. "Tell your mama. Remember Florence, who told you. All her life, she will carry."

"Like a mule?" I said.

"You must pay, if you want me to tell you more."

I looked at the drummer and said, "Black thread. Next time, come alone."

He shrugged. "She told me to go over to Saline before Clay. Two days later, a twister came through and knocked down half of Saline County."

Florence grinned at us. I said, "I don't care. No money."

"Very foolish," she said. That night, while I was feeding Lucille, Jack put the Bible on the arm of my chair, opened up to the map of Palestine in the back, the only map in the house.

"Take a look," he said. "New places." He didn't mean it ugly.

George, whom I'd thought asleep, turned over. "I must be nuts. Here I've got two jazz babies moving right under my roof. Any fellow worth his stuff would celebrate."

"Bring home champagne," I said. "Ain't we got fun."

"And you know what, Nell? The fun is just beginning." He rolled back over then and didn't say any more.

Lying still, listening to George's breaths lapping like a slow tide, I tried to work up some righteous anger. Not a word from either girl for twenty-three years. Not a message or telegram or post card, and then they materialized like a mesmerizer's trick, confident that we would make room for them. I had every right to get angry. I would be wise to get angry. Anger would burn through my brain and obliterate fine gradations of judgment I had no desire to contemplate.

Everything I had striven to put away had arrived at my door, wearing cheap dresses and holding tired flowers. I should have been outraged, I supposed, but what I felt instead of rage was recognition, a dull, serviceable emotion that always stayed once it landed. The girls' arrival had changed nothing. They were the girls they had always been, and my past was the past it had always been. Nothing was the smallest bit different. It was a bitter thought.

Everyone in Los Angeles knew the stories about lives re-created. Our favorite tales involved the scrappy girl who sewed herself a smart dress and married a duke, or the ambitious boy with a feel for machinery who left the farm and became a motorcar king. We heard those stories again and again, like Scripture. And as with Scripture, we let ourselves be shaped by them, remembering the scrappy girl's triumph and the ambitious boy's dominance. Never in those stories did someone arise from the past with a few stories of his own to tell.