Eight
A COUPLE MONTHS LATER, LIONEL is fired from the plant. “What a knucklehead,” Al rants on the drive home, his grip tight on the steering wheel. “Smoking a reefer in the break room with a couple of the secretaries. How’d he even meet them?”
I can’t help but smile, picturing him charming two pretty girls in their dresses and heels, slipping a joint out of his T-shirt pocket. “We all know Lionel has no trouble meeting women,” I say. “Regardless of department.”
Al eyes me in the rearview. “It’s funny to you?”
“Honestly, a little.”
Bernard sets a hand on Al’s shoulder. “He’ll find another job. Plenty of them out there. Lionel’s a likable kid.”
“Not one secretary but two,” Al says. “Priceless.” But the next time he catches my eyes in the mirror, he’s smiling.
Inside the house, Adele and Claire rush from the kitchen to kiss their husbands before hurrying back to their discussion of doubling the green salad and how far the macaroni will stretch.
“Lionel showed up with two friends,” Claire says.
“They’re in the yard. Seems like they might be staying for dinner.
” Clément locks his arms around my leg and it begins: Uncle Lionel came home at lunchtime!
Was there a fire? Rudy looked but he couldn’t find one.
“Fired,” I say, washing my face, washing under my arms. “It means to lose your job. Come on, let’s see who’s outside.”
It’s a warm night, and they’re sitting in the fading light on the garden chairs: Lionel, Jeremy from the Art Department, and a woman I don’t know. She has short, dark hair tucked neatly behind her ears.
“Welcome to my retirement party,” Lionel says.
Al lights a cigarette. “That’s one way to spin it.”
“Hey there,” the woman says as I cross the lawn toward them. “I don’t think we’ve met.”
Clément perks up. “Ginny, this is my mommy.”
Ginny smiles, dimples flashing. “Clément and I were picking blackberries over there just before you got home,” she says, tilting her chin to the far end of the yard.
She’s at ease in the lawn chair, her nails filed short, pink lips smooth.
Seeing her—a flush, a vibration in my chest, sudden and unwelcome.
An awareness I’d hoped only Hattie could spark.
I hold Clément tight against me. There’s no room for this feeling in my life.
She’s waiting for me to introduce myself. “Odette,” I say.
She taps Clément on the knee with her index finger. “Otherwise known as your mommy.” And then, to me, “I work at the plant, too. The night shift.”
I’m striving for aloofness, but Clément smiles, bats his eyelashes. I take the open seat next to Lionel while Al hovers on the periphery. “You look a little uncomfortable,” Lionel tells him. “Feel free to join us.”
Al sits. Shakes his head. “Lionel Dumas. Wreaking havoc on the family reputation once again.”
“Mike’ll forget about me before the week’s through,” Lionel says. “Especially with you and Bernard showing up in your suits every morning. So respectable.” He adjusts an imaginary tie. Al draws on his cigarette, unfazed.
“What department are you in?” Ginny asks me.
“Finishing.”
“What’s it like?”
Clément wriggles off my lap, joins his cousins on the patio. “Strenuous,” I say. “Loud. But I’m used to it.”
Al leans forward. “Ginny,” he says. “You wearing your boyfriend’s clothes or something?”
She has on blue jeans and a button-down open over a men’s cotton undershirt. A gold chain with a medallion, white socks, and white lace-up sneakers. Everything neat and spotless. “These clothes are mine.”
“Huh,” Al says. Ginny’s watching, steady, to see if he’ll say more. Instead, he drifts back into the house once he’s finished his cigarette, and the mood eases.
“Nothing against your brother,” Jeremy says. “I just can’t relax when there’s a manager around. Even if he isn’t mine. I have problems with authority.”
“Don’t we all,” Lionel says.
“Well, we know you do,” Ginny says.
Lionel groans. He bends forward, rests his head in his hands. “I fucked up.”
“Hope it was worth it,” Jeremy says. “Did you get the secretaries’ numbers at least?”
“You should have seen them cry. I feel terrible, to tell the truth.”
“Hey, it’s not the end of the world.” Ginny checks over her shoulder to make sure no one’s coming from the house. “Jeremy already knows this, but I got fired from my job right before this one.”
At this, Lionel lifts his head. “That right? Why?”
She and Jeremy share a glance. I’m an outsider. “I’ll go check on the children,” I say.
“No, stay,” Lionel tells me. To the others: “Go ahead. You can speak freely with Odette.”
“There was a company party at my boss’s house,” Ginny says. “I wasn’t looking for any trouble, but his wife took an interest in me.”
This brightens Lionel up. “Cultural interest?” he asks. “Anthropological? Perhaps biological? Oh no, no, wait: anatomical.”
They laugh, Lionel boisterously, Ginny quietly, averting her eyes. To discuss this, plainly, on a weekday evening in Adele and Al’s backyard. I can hardly trust that it’s real.
“But really, though,” Jeremy says. “The wife kept following her around, making her taste all the food and the cocktails. Took her to their bedroom to look at the art.”
“Were you interested?” Lionel asks.
“Ginny doesn’t kiss and tell,” Jeremy says. “It’s some kind of code among her people.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about, Jeremy. I wanted my job. I was just being polite. The next day I got a call. He’d cut my position.”
“Man,” Lionel says. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine. Wouldn’t have met any of you if I’d stayed.” She takes the last sip of her beer, leans over to set the bottle on the grass. The curve of her breasts, the gold glint of her necklace. Look away, I tell myself.
Our chair legs, digging into Adele’s lawn.
The fence line where it meets the sky.
Blackberry vines at the edge of the garden.
A chip in my nail polish.
And now I can’t resist any longer. A smile at the corner of her mouth when we lock eyes. She gives me a wink.
Later, the guests gone, the kids asleep, Adele says, “Can I ask you a question?”
My heart races, sure it will be about Ginny. I’ve been sitting in the living room with the new Agatha Christie, stuck on the same paragraph for far too long.
But she says, “Maman called today. We had a long talk and the whole time I kept craving things from her—approval, mostly, as embarrassing as that is. But she didn’t give it to me.
All these years, I’ve been waiting for her to think well of me again, but I’m starting to believe she never will.
It made me want to ask what happened between you and her, before we left home. Finally. I know it’s long overdue.”
I set the book down. “Did she say something about me?”
“She didn’t need to. You never speak to each other.”
“You know things were bad between us.”
“I do,” she says. “But then they got worse, and we never talked about it. Maman had such a hold on us. Still does. Like she’s here, watching over my life.
Do you ever feel that way?” She’s on the sofa, legs tucked under her, a striped robe open over her pajama set.
Hair soft, face clean, looking young and lovely.
“I don’t know,” I say. “I’ve tried so hard to leave everything behind.”
“So will you tell me?” she asks.
I tried to, once before, when we were newly in LA, but she changed the subject, didn’t want to hear it. I say, “It has to do with Papa.”
“I’m ready.”
So I explain the difference between the hospital cemetery and the sanctuary.
The small white cross marking the first grave of row thirty-four.
I tell her that as soon as I was hired at the plant, I called the hospital long-distance.
Terry was still there. She said it had never been done before but she didn’t see why we couldn’t replace the cross with a tombstone, and she gave me the number of a man who made them.
I told him I wanted a stone worthy of Papa’s discerning taste, not only his name and the dates of his birth and death engraved, but also beloved father and grandfather, and a bird like the ones in his favorite painting from the foyer.
It took most of two paychecks for the marble and two more for the engraving.
Hundreds of hours stationed on the Finishing line, and then I sent the money away.
“And it’s done now?” Adele asks.
“I called the hospital to confirm it.”
“I swear,” she says. “Sometimes I don’t know what to make of you. It’s like you have a secret life.”
My heart seizes, and then I remember: I don’t anymore. “I went to see him at the hospital once,” I tell her.
Her face turns from disbelief to confusion to something like awe. She leans in close. “You saw him?”
“I did. Delphine came with me.”
“How was he?” Adele asks.
“He was exactly himself. Pulled chairs out for us to sit. Asked about how all of you were doing. Asked about Delphine and me and what books we were reading. He wanted to know whose art was on the covers of the magazines that month. He said he liked getting our letters and wished he could write us back, but he didn’t want Maman to find out and put a stop to us sending them.
” Adele’s brows are furrowed, her thumb rubbing the seam of the sofa cushion.
“He didn’t seem insane,” I say. “That might have been the worst part of all. Maybe a little tired. Definitely sad. But there was no reason, that I could see, for him to be locked away.”
“I wanted to go,” Adele says. “But I thought Maman knew more than we did and we had to trust that she was right.”
“Do you think Claire ever went?”
“I know that she didn’t.”
It’s the answer I expected, but I’m still sick at the thought of him alone at every visiting hour except for one, that entire long year until it was over. I say, “I wish I knew where Delphine is. And if she’s okay.”