an adult?” I thought it came out sounding judgmental, as if I had decided already that she was not showing the proper drive and ambition of any self-respecting American. But the question wasn’t truly directed at her, and she sensed it.
“Aren’t you happy?” she asked me, and if there was a Goddess, she seemed to be looking at me with infinite compassion from Cassie’s eyes.
I felt tears start in my own, taking me by surprise, and I tightened my lips against the sudden quivering there.
“Oh, sweetie,” Cassie said as the X-Files theme started whistling in the background. “It’ll be all right. You expect too much of yourself, is all.”
“But…” I blubbered, a vast blackness of want seeping up from the dark depths, the ice cream in my hand a cold and empty comfort. “But there’s so much I—”
“So much you thought you’d have by now? Husband, children, SUV, golden retriever? A house in the west hills?”
“A Volvo, not an SUV—”
“Hannah, you’re so predictable,” Cassie said, and somehow her gently sardonic tone was comforting. “Everyone thinks they’re supposed to want those things, but I don’t think you really do.”
“Yes I do. Especially the husband.”
“If you were ready, you’d have one. Maybe right now you’re doing exactly what you’re supposed to be doing.”
I looked down at my Chunky Monkey. “You think so?”
“It’s your sewing business that matters to you. That’s why you moved up to Portland to begin with. Concentrate on that, and let the universe handle the rest in its own time.”
I wished I had her faith that all would come right in the end. It seemed to come so easily to her, so naturally. I never saw Cassie worry about anything. “Can’t I have a little of the rest right now? Like a boyfriend?” I asked.
“He’ll come when you’re ready.” She smiled. “In the meantime, there’s David Duchovny.”
I looked at the screen, where Mulder and Scully were arguing in a repeat episode, and sniffed back the remainder of my weepy self-pity. “I don’t want him.”
“Why not? I’d do him.”
“He never smiles,” I said.
“You don’t want a guy to be grinning while he’s got your legs over his shoulders. Talk about creepy.” She shuddered, and I gave a small laugh, glad of the change of topic and of mood.
“Can’t be much worse than how they usually look.” I squeezed my eyes shut and groaned as though I was in pain, straining out the words, “I’m coming, I’m coming! I’m almost there… Can I come? Can I come now?”
“They ask you that?”
“One of my ex-boyfriends used to.”
“Did you let him?” Cassie asked.
“Depends how long he’d been going at it. Past a certain point, I just wanted him to get it over with. I started thinking about urinary tract infections.”
Cassie winced, and I knew both our minds had gone to the unopened jug of cranberry juice in the cupboard, kept there in case of emergency.
“Maybe it’s for the best that your sex chakra is blocked up,” Cassie said.
“Maybe you’re right.”
Two
Orange Tiers with Bric-a-brac Trim
T uesday evening found me knee-deep in bridesmaids’ dresses, my Bernina sewing machine humming smoothly up and down seams and around armholes. I’m a seamstress, and have my own pick-up-and-deliver alterations and custom sewing business, Hannah’s Custom Sewing. I’d left off my last name, O’Dowd, as it had less than desirable connotations for one whose work was mainly with clothing.
Six months ago I had been living in Eugene, working in an alterations shop. My degree in history was going as unused as Cassie’s coursework in sociology, but I didn’t care. I’d realized that the only part of history that I really liked was examining the clothes in old paintings. The French Revolution was more interesting to me for its effect on fashion than for its effect on the French aristocracy, although the two were inextricably intertwined. Any history paper where I’d had the choice of topic had focused, in some manner or another, on clothing.
When my off-and-on boyfriend of two years had at last been permanently switched off, I’d taken a page from the Book of Cassie and decided to move up to Portland. I was tired of Eugene with its determined tofu-eating and tie-dye, and tired, as well, of working for someone else. The alterations shop had been turning away business, there was so much of it, and I felt certain I’d be able to find ample work for myself up in Portland, where people actually bothered to wear clothes that fit. To make my services special, I would pick up and deliver clothes and other sewing work to people’s homes and businesses. That would also save me from worrying that someone would slip and fall on my front steps and decide to sue me.
It’s a good thing I like to drive. I’ve put nearly ten thousand miles on my Neon since I’ve been in Portland.
The first few months I barely managed to scrape by, and used up all my savings staying ahead of car payments, gas, insurance, and that nagging little lump of credit card debt that festered like a nasty pimple, never completely going away. These last two months, though, I had hit some sort of critical sewing mass, and I had a steady stream of clients, some of whom had already become regulars. I made more money than I had at the alterations shop, but on my own I didn’t have health insurance or paid sick days. I was debating which to buy first—the health insurance or a hemmer.
My sewing room is upstairs in the small 1920’s stucco house that Cassie and I share. In exchange for taking up two rooms to her one, every four or five weeks I make her a new dance costume or something for her room, like a new comforter cover or floor pillows. This month was going to be curtains, made out of some filmy Middle Eastern material she’d bought at a belly dancing festival. I think I’ll put bells on the bottom, just for the fun of it. When the wind moves the curtains, they’ll make soft tinkling sounds. Cassie will like that.
I glanced at the clock and grimaced: 7:00 p.m. I was due at San Juan’s Mexican Restaurant in half an hour. Cassie, Louise, Scott and I were all meeting for dinner, to celebrate Louise finally getting off nights and onto days at the crisis line. She’d been working there for two years, and the screwy sleeping schedule and proscribed social life had driven her to the brink of clinical depression. And she should know, being a counselor and dealing with the mentally ill all night.
I slipped the jacket I was working on onto a hanger and hung it up along with the others, giving the lineup a critical look. The bride, genuinely concerned that her bridesmaids be able to wear their clothes again, and having the good taste to abhor butt bows, taffeta and sleeveless dresses that exposed flabby upper arms, had chosen to garb her friends in Jackie O-style skirt suits in a neutral blue.
It was a nice idea, but all lined up together I feared the bridesmaids might look like 1960’s flight attendants. All they needed was a pair of wings pinned to their lapels and pillbox hats, and the guests would be expecting them to throw peanut packets
