“Those bottoms are like pajamas, aren’t they? And that blouse, a tunic, really. Such sleeves! They’re like bells! Did you bring a pattern?”
“I thought you would know.”
“I’d have to draft something. It’s been a long time.” Susan hesitated. “This is all so strange to me. Maybe we should just forget about it.” She thrust the fabric at Yasmina. “No. I don’t think so.”
The woman’s face folded in. “I understand. You do not like to make foreign clothes. My cousin said — ”
“No, that’s not it at all! I just — ” Susan waved her hands at her house. “It’s too much just now.”
“I see.” Yasmina tucked the cloth into her tote, held out a card. “Here is my number. Please call if you change your mind.”
The scent of roses had faded when the phone bleated.
“Lauren?”
“Mom, I’ve been looking at condos. Want to fly out this weekend?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
“What’s keeping you in Saskatoon? I can’t keep worrying like this. Half the time you don’t even answer when I phone!”
“It’s just too much effort some days.”
“Exactly. I hate to think of you lying there on the couch, forgetting to eat. It’s a good time to sell, and there are some cute condos on the market in Calgary. If you move here, we could go shopping, and you could have Sunday dinner with Merrill and me.”
“Merrill might get sick of seeing his mother-in-law. This place has been home for so long. And there’s the garden.”
“You need company.”
“I’ll think about it, okay?”
Lauren sighed. “I’ll call you later.”
After hanging up, Susan stretched out on the couch, shoving at the tangle of clothing with her feet. She gazed at the fading flowers on the other side of the window and went to sleep.
The phone woke her. “Mom?”
“What?”
“Make some supper.”
Susan dropped the phone on the couch, sat up and examined the jacket where she had left it. She squinted at the new seams, then the fabric dissolved into the rippling silk of that afternoon. What beauty could you make with such stuff? She went to her bookshelf, pulled out a well-thumbed book and flipped to the index, muttering under her breath. “Silk, Indian … ” She curled up on the couch and started to read. Three pages later, she picked up her phone and dialled.
The voice on the other end sounded like bells chiming. “This is Yasmina Singh.”
Yasmina’s body proportions were challenging. Susan walked around her new client appraisingly, studying her contours, like a soft hillside, hips and waist and breasts all the same dimensions. The tailor’s task of measurement felt like an intrusion into a foreign landscape.
After she’d called Yasmina, Susan had washed dishes, sorted laundry, shelved books, re-stacked DVD cases. She had ratcheted a broom from the jumbled closet, and the floor reappeared. It had been after midnight when she’d finally gone to bed.
“Why did you change your mind, Susan?” Yasmina asked.
Susan stopped, the measuring tape loose in one hand. “That fabric, so startlingly lovely. The idea of drafting a pattern again.” She fitted her tape along Yasmina’s arm, considering. “Making something new.” It helped, she’d learned, to keep the client talking. Chitchat for relaxation. “Are you a film buff?”
“What do you mean?”
“A movie fan.” Susan nodded towards the DVDs. “Films. Doctor Zhivago? Lawrence of Arabia?”
“Oh, movies! Yes. Bollywood is famous for singing and dancing.” She chuckled. “I have to admit I prefer English movies. Period pieces. I love Sense and Sensibility, with Emma Thompson. My daughter calls them historical soap operas. But she likes documentaries.”
As she dropped to her knees to position the tape at Yasmina’s ankle, Susan recalled measuring Peter for his fiftieth birthday present. A velvet and satin smoking jacket, blue and purple. He had loved to slide into it each evening, then perch at the kitchen counter, slowly bending into his book. The last piece she’d made. She’d brought the jacket home and hung it in the closet after the funeral, and after that, accepted only alterations and mending, dull work that dulled her needles.
Yasmina pointed at a photo on the wall, Lauren at ten in a Scheherazade costume. “Is that your daughter?”
“Yes. Lauren as a little girl.”
“She looks like you.”
Susan rolled up the tape measure. “Tales of the Arabian Nights,” she said. “Is that where you’re from, Jas — so sorry — Yasmina?”
A small snuffle that sounded like relief. Then that musical voice. “No. That is Baghdad. Iraq. We are from Punjab. The city of Ludhiana, in northwest India. But there is very fine silk in Iraq.” Another snuffle. “Your daughter is lovely.”
“I hardly ever see her. She sells houses in Calgary. Once while I was visiting her, she took me to a fabric store in the northeast. When we finished shopping, we went to an Indian sweet shop. I had my first chai.”
“Chai?”
“Would you like some tea? I’ll put the kettle on.”
“Oh no! That is too much bother. Do not, just for me.”
“No trouble.”
“I am a customer, I do not expect chai while we discuss business.”
“All right. Suit yourself.” Susan thought she saw disappointment in Yasmina’s eyes, just a flicker of light across the irises. “You want the same neckline as the top you showed me?”
Yasmina’s nails gleamed on the fine weave of the sweater at her throat. “Modest, please. One must be decorous in the Gurdwara, where the wedding ceremony will be.”
She still looked disappointed, Susan decided. “Wait here.” She got up from the couch and went into the kitchen. When she returned, she bore a small plate heaped with gingersnaps. “You must eat something.” A half-smile and half-bow as Yasmina nibbled. Reassured, Susan wrote up the measurements beside her sketches and handed Yasmina the sheet to inspect. “Did I get everything?”
She scrutinized the paper, then Susan’s hand. “You are married?”
“He’s. Gone.”
“Widowed?”
Susan’s pencil snapped between her fingers. Yasmina’s voice quickened. “Oh, my apologies for intruding. My sympathies.” Susan shook her head, scrambled for the pencil shards. “My husband was an engineer,” Yasmina said. “He has been gone many years.” She paused. “Forgive my intruding. It will ease. Eventually.” Susan stuffed the bits of pencil into her pocket. Couldn’t look up. Was relieved to hear Yasmina’s melodic voice resume. “Our daughter, too, will be an engineer. She is studying here, in her third year of university.”
“And your fiancé?”
“Like me. A biologist. I study water. We are both professors.” She laughed. “Although here where winter lasts so long, it seems I spend more time studying ice than water!”
“Water? You mean water pollution?”
“No. Where water comes from, how long it resides in a watershed system, and the kind of water plants use. Water that ends up in streams is different from water used by plants, most likely as a result of plant-based transpiration and photosynthesis.” She caught herself, chuckled. “My undergrad opening lecture. My apologies. Useful things to know. We’re like water. Changed by living in the world.” A shrug. “My daughter likes water, too. She wants to build bridges.”
Susan glanced out the window to the yard, where the saskatoons and mountain ashes were scattering crimson leaves and berries. “Lauren keeps telling me that Calgary is just an hour away. But she never comes. And now she’s after me to move there. I think I’m going to have to.”
“Why?”
Susan stared speechlessly at her, her mind blank.
Susan spent two days bent over her layout table, painstakingly drafting patterns. Her first attempts struck her as clumsy novice’s work, but she finally laid the paper cut-outs on top of the filmy material for the tunic, hesitated, then lay dow
n her pincushion and re-measured each dimension. She paused again, scissors in hand, once every pin was in place. Extra fabric tumbled from table to floor, a waterfall of shifting light. What would it feel like to wear gossamer?
She began to snip. When the phone rang, she let it go unanswered.
After breakfast the next morning, Susan assessed the tea in her cupboard, then she opened the laptop. “All right, mister Google, tell me about chai.” A few minutes later, she dropped her glasses in her pocket, pulled on her jacket and strode out of the house.
She had barely returned from the supermarket when the phone buzzed. “Is that you, Lauren?”
“Mom! Where have you been? Are you all right?”
“Of course I’m all right. I went grocery shopping, bought some spices.”
“Wow, that’s great you’re cooking again! You sound so cheerful. But why haven’t you called?”
“Work, honey. I’ll tell you later.”
As Susan hung up, the bedraggled delphiniums caught her eye.
Susan was crouched in the front yard, clipping the deadwood delphinium stalks, when Yasmina strolled up the walk to the porch. The edges of a yellow tunic protruded beneath her quilted vest and jacket, Susan greeted her palms-together bow with a slight inclination of her head.
“This is nice,” she said, pulled off her gloves to finger the tunic’s hem uninvited. “Good cotton. Maybe some chai before the fitting?” She led the way into the house.
“Chai would be lovely.” Yasmina tugged off her jacket and vest, seated herself and glanced around the tidy kitchen.
“Darjeeling. That’s Indian, isn’t it?” Susan asked, all at once unsure as she plugged in the kettle.
“Most certainly.”
“Star anise. Cloves. Nutmeg. Cardamom and cinnamon?” Yasmina nodded as the phone rang. Susan turned her face away. “Lauren? I have a client here.”
“I just need a minute. I’ve booked you a flight.” Lauren’s voice revved like a racecar. “There’s this absolutely adorable riverside condo in Elbow Park. It’s perfect. But it won’t last more’n a couple days.”
Susan held her breath, counted to ten, exhaled slowly. Yasmina looked down at her hands.
“Mom? Are you there?”
“Your father would be beside himself if he heard you talk like this, Lauren. Please.”
“Dad’s been dead for three years now. I keep telling you.”
“Do you really think I could forget that?”
Silence. Then Lauren’s whisper. “Sorry, Mom.”
“I know, honey. It’s all right.” Susan steadied herself. “Let’s talk later. Promise.” She gently set down the phone. “I’ll get your clothes,” she said to Yasmina. “To check their fit.”
That evening, Susan sat cross-legged on the couch, doggedly picking stitches from the fragile tissue of the kameez. She’d misjudged the belling curve of the arms, and the act of reparation felt like a penance. The walls closed in. Maybe she’d been too hard on Lauren. Maybe she should sell the house. Maybe —
The doorbell rang. At the unexpected noise, the stitch ripper jabbed Susan’s thumb. She dropped the fabric in a welter of jade and emerald, stuck her bleeding thumb in her mouth, left a smear of blood on the doorjamb.
“Yasmina!”
“I am so sorry to intrude.”
“No, not at all! Come in.”
“I cannot stay. I wished to bring you these.” She held out a DVD case and a round stainless steel tin.
Susan felt tears well up as she regarded the packages. Peter had delighted in surprises.
“Oh, Susan. Do not cry. I just thought to give you a movie, my daughter’s favourite when she was younger. Bend it Like Beckham. A bit of laughter, about football, with some curry and two girls. Like our daughters. Perhaps you’ve seen it already?”
Susan wiped her eyes. “That’s so sweet of you. I’ve been watching the same dozen movies over and over again. Since Peter died.”
“We’ll talk about food instead. That is always a cheerful subject. Here.” She thrust the tin toward Susan. “Hold it upright, like so, when you open it.”
Susan balanced it on her lap and pried off the lid. Small tins nestled inside, filled with powders and seeds in shades of taupe, tan, ecru, cream, crimson. In the centre, seedpods the colour of new hay, pink and green peppercorns, amber kernels, dried rose petals.
“This is called masala dhaba.”
“It’s gorgeous!” Susan lifted the tin to her face and sniffed. Cinnamon she knew, and cloves. The rest blurred together in a sea of musk and woodsy pungency and bitterness and unsuspected pleasure. “What’s it for?”
“Spices necessary for making curries. This is fennel, this is cumin. Cayenne. Mustard seeds. Roasted coriander. Turmeric. And this is our family’s special blend I learned from my grandmother when I was very young. Fifteen spices. It is delicious with biryani.”
“This is extraordinary. I’ve never been given anything like it.”
“I will teach you. Yes?”
“Oh yes!”
“Lauren, what was that Woody Allen movie?” Susan cradled the phone on her shoulder and picked up the empty DVD case, the disc still in the player. The cover photograph — two teenaged girls in soccer jerseys, hugging — was as cheerful as the movie had been.
“Which one?”
“The one with that hilarious lobster scene.”
“Annie Hall. Hey, do you remember when you tried to cook lobsters? Wasn’t it Dad who finally picked them up out of the sink and dumped them in the pot head-first?” Lauren’s giggle sounded like a child’s.
How long had it been since she last laughed? Susan’s body felt creaky. She breathed in, tentatively stretching, her lungs, her legs. “Your dad loved shellfish. I miss him so much.”
“I miss him too, Mom.”
“I know, honey.” Susan stopped and re-ordered her thoughts. “Well, I was cutting down an Annie Hall–style jacket when this new client came to the door. I’ve drafted a new outfit for her.”
“Wow, that’s great! I don’t know when you last designed something. That’s partly why you should move. You could start a new business here. Generate a little income to boost Dad’s pension and life insurance.”
Trust Lauren to cut to the chase. “Well, don’t worry,” Susan said. “I want to tell you about this new client. She’s brave. Funny.”
“I’m glad you’re finally meeting people. But let’s get back to the possibility of you moving.”
Susan gathered herself together, remembering the tin of spices Yasmina had brought her, trying to recall their names.
Cloves. Cumin. Coriander. Cinnamon. Fennel. And turmeric.
“Lauren, I don’t want to get folded into a tiny corner of your life, and have you and Merrill resent me.”
“I’d never resent you, Mom.”
“You think that now, but if I was there and you were all I had, you would. I need to be here.”
“But, Mom, what’ll you do?”
“I’ve got my business. No more alterations — I want to see what other interesting clothing I can design. My garden needs attention. And I’ve made a friend. I told you, Yasmina, her name is. She likes movies. Maybe I can teach her to play cribbage. I’ll take a trip to Calgary for fabric after I get some cash flowing.” She stopped, breathless. A little dizzy.
“Mom — ”
Susan could imagine her daughter’s hand absently scrunching her wispy blonde hair into a ball on the top of her head. She’d been doing that since childhood. “What? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. Never mind. Are you sure?”
“I haven’t been sure of anything for years, honey, and I’m not sure of this.”
“Call me tomorrow, okay? Love you, Mom.”
“I love you too. Come visit soon? I’ll cook you some curry.”
“Curry? You don’t know how to make curry.”
“I’m going to learn. Bye.”
Susan dropped the phone and went into the bedroom. She swun
g the closet doors open, pulled out a flared yellow skirt embellished with poppies and vines, eyed it thoughtfully, flung it on the bed. Next was a sombre brown dress of crinkled linen, followed by a fitted black velveteen skirt and jacket — lovely fabrics, both, but the styles did no justice to her slipping belly. Nothing that suited her as she was now. She thought again of Yasmina, in her new suit when Susan had handed it over earlier that day, completely at ease in its ebb and flow of green and mauve.
Peter’s smoking jacket hung alone on the top rack. She slid her arms into its sleeves and wrapped the jacket close. It still smelled of his aftershave.
Peter would urge her on, as he always had. She’d ask Yasmina to go shopping with her. For silk.
Fallen Sparrow
THE PLUM TREES HAVE JUST COME into bloom, and I’m standing behind my cart admiring their rosy canopy when the pain hits, a rocket blowing up in my ribcage, shooting deeper, into my lungs, as if one of my own kitchen knives is fracturing, shards of metal beneath my ribs. Gasp, bent double. Wheeze. Unable to draw a breath. Lurch to the park bench like some old rubby. Sit down, displacing the chickadees.
Slowly the pain recedes. When my eyes clear, I can see the birds again, their glittering black eyes beneath little monks’ hoods, their voices flittering and purling. I’m still panting, light-headed, when a skinny teenager in torn jeans sashays up to me, about my height, his head cocked to one side, fair-skinned, bright bird-like eyes, a guitar on a fraying red cord slung over one shoulder. “I’m hungry,” he says, holds out empty hands.
He’s not the first homeless boy to ask me for food. I get up right away, stumbling a little, one hand clutching the back of the bench, the other on the rail of my cart, trying to conceal my frailties from this perfect child. As I fill a bun with bratwurst, I puzzle briefly over which condiments to include, settle for a gherkin, lace the bun with garlicky fried onions, dither between Dijon or spicy malt mustard, my hand shaking as I reach across the cart to put the bun into his hands. “No charge.”
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