to make a matching sash. There is. And, there would be even more extra fabric if the hemline were raised a few centimeters, which would also make the garment look more youthful and appropriate for a twenty-two-year-old woman like Breine. I wish I had a sewing machine. But maybe this work would be better by hand. I wish, at least, I had Baba Rose’s good set of needles and a spool of yellow silk thread.
Still, my fingers feel tingly and alive again, the way they did riffling through the donation box. I feel purposeful. A problem needs to be solved, and for once, I know how to solve it.
“I could fix this,” I say.
“Really?” Breine asks.
“The material is too fragile for me to completely remake it, but I could raise the hemline and do something to fix the waist. Maybe rework the neckline, and rearrange some of the beads so it looks a little more modern.”
“You know how to do all that?”
“I do. We owned a clothing factory.”
“You never said it was clothes,” Breine says. “My mother taught me to fix a button, and that’s all I’ve ever managed. She said maids would do the rest.”
“I can’t even do that,” Esther offers. “My father wanted me to come work with him at his newspaper. He told me editors don’t need home economics.”
“For private clients, we’d do fancier work, sometimes by hand,” I say. “I haven’t made anything like this in a while.”
“But you have before?” Breine asks.
I nod. “If you trust me, I can try to fix this. I can at least make it better.”
“Oh, Zofia, honestly. If you can even make it look like I have two breasts instead of four, I’ll love you forever.”
Esther hands me a pencil so I can make some markings for alterations, and then she and I slide the dress over Breine’s head, while Breine stands with her arms straight up and tries to remain motionless. But the fabric is old and fussy. She giggles every time a bead hits the floor and then apologizes, but then Esther starts giggling, and then I do, too.
“You know what, it doesn’t even matter,” I say. “We’ll remove most of them anyway.”
“Really? Remove the beads?”
“Really, truly. They’re not doing you or the dress any favors.”
“Be free, beads!” Breine yells, shimmying her shoulders until a dozen come off at once, and then we’re laughing again.
When we finally blow out the lamp, it must be two or three in the morning. I sink into my bed, and my pillow has never felt softer.
Then I’m thinking of everything. Of Hannelore and Inge. Of Josef and his sister. Of the conversation we had on the way home, about hope and happy endings and sad endings. And of Abek, always Abek, and all the last times I’ve dreamed I saw him.
I would like them to be better stories. Happier stories about last times. The problem is, my last times are inherently sad: The last time I saw my brother. The last time my family was together. The last time my city was Sosnowiec and not Sosnowitz.
I suppose there are stories about the last times of bad things. The last German uniform I had to help make. The last night I had to sleep, frozen in the barracks, before the Red Army liberated us. The last time I ate a raw potato with my bare hands, so starved I almost swallowed it whole. Do those count as happy last times? I don’t know. The absence of pain is not the same as the presence of happiness.
And what if the times I think are last aren’t really over? Some last times are open-ended. When I find Abek again, then our separation will no longer be “the last time I saw Abek,” it will only be “the last time I saw him before the war.”
I think of all this as Breine and Esther stop giggling in the dark and eventually fall asleep.
But I also think about a dress. A dress, and measuring tape, and tangy pins that leave indentations on my index finger, and the methodical work of putting something right again. It feels like a balm, a cool balm for my brain, to fall asleep thinking about a dress.
HIS BLURRY FACE APPEARS IN FRONT OF ME AGAIN. HIS VOICE IS so sad. And this time we’re not in a memory, not one I can identify. We’re sitting together in a dark space that could be my bedroom, or it could be my father’s office,