The Dew Breaker - Edwidge Danticat [41]
The tips of Aline’s fingers and toes were tingling, and Beatrice was starting to seem like someone she knew or should have known better, like her college professor girlfriend, who was always looking for new conquests, in both life and career.
“You want to know my secret?” Beatrice asked.
It took Aline a minute to figure out that Beatrice was still talking about the coffee.
“You want to know why it tastes so good?”
“I’m interested,” Aline said.
“The secret is time,” Beatrice said, picking up the cup she’d poured for herself. “I always take my time, whether it’s getting dressed, making coffee, or sewing those wedding gowns.”
As she reached into her bag, pulled out a tape recorder, and put it on the edge of the coffee table between them, Aline thought that if Beatrice took as much time with her work as she did getting dressed and making coffee, her brides would be baptizing their children by the time their gowns were done. However, she simply asked, “Do you mind if I record?”
“First,” Beatrice began as though she were the one conducting the interview, “remind me again what this is for.”
“As I mentioned yesterday,” Aline said, “I write for the Haitian American Weekly. You made a wedding dress for our editor in chief, Marjorie Voltaire. Do you remember Marjorie?”
Beatrice raised both her hands to her chin, her penciled eyebrows creased in full concentration as though she were trying to channel Marjorie Voltaire into the room.
“Well, Marjorie was so sad to learn you’re retiring that she asked me to write this story.”
What Marjorie had actually said was, “I hear that the woman who made my wedding dress is giving up the trade. Go talk to her. Maybe we can get a short piece out of it.”
“I don’t remember that girl,” Beatrice said with a sigh of resignation, as though she’d given remembering her best shot and failed, “but I’ve made a lot of dresses for a lot of girls. In any case, it would have been better for you to write this when I was still working. I could have gotten a few more clients and would have stopped sooner.”
Seeing this as an opportunity to officially begin the interview, Aline leaned over and pressed a button on the tape recorder.
“Do you mind if I ask how old you are?”
“Old,” Beatrice said.
“Forties?” Aline ventured, even though Beatrice looked much older, late fifties at least.
Beatrice threw her head back and let out an earsplitting laugh, contorting her face in such a way that her skin, had it been cloth, would have taken hours to iron out.
“So you would have liked to retire sooner?” Aline continued.
“Everything happens when it’s meant to happen,” Beatrice said. “That’s what I tell my girls when they think they’re either too early or too late in getting married. By the way, are you married?”
“No,” Aline said.
“Don’t worry,” Beatrice said, taking another sip of her coffee. “I’m not going to sit here and tell you what a great institution it is.”
“Please tell me why you’ve chosen to retire now, after all this time,” Aline said. ”You’ve been making wedding dresses for many years, is that so?”
“I’ve been making these dresses since Haiti.” Beatrice arched her neck and pushed her head toward Aline’s. “In all that time, I’ve sewn every stitch myself. Never had anyone helping me. Never could stand having anyone in my house for too long. Now it’s become too hard. I’m tired.”
Beatrice stated this last part flatly, as though it were simply a fact, not a plea for sympathy or pity, which Aline couldn’t help but admire.
“Describe for me the process of making a wedding dress,” Aline said.
“Well.” Beatrice cleared her throat after a series of dry coughs, as sudden and as consistent as a smoker’s cough or a lint cough. “My girls—when I say my girls, I mean the girls I make the dresses for—they come here carrying photographs of tall, skinny girls