Eleven
I REACH THE ONE-YEAR MARK with seven hundred dollars in the shoebox.
Saving goes slower with fuel costs and insurance and repairs.
Tuition money, too, now that Clément’s starting kindergarten at the Catholic school where Rudy goes.
It seems like a lot of money, but I’ve worked out the figures.
Once I’m paying ninety dollars in rent while maintaining the car and filling the refrigerator and paying tuition, I’ll be lucky to save a few dollars a month.
I’ll need to dip into my savings for anything unexpected or extra—clothes or gifts or nights out or emergencies.
Once the money’s gone, it will be nearly impossible to replenish, so I need to store it up.
Then comes a Thursday in September, sharing Ivy’s cigarette in the coworkers’ lounge.
“Just the girl I was looking for,” a voice says from above. It’s Claud. “Lawrence is moving. He has a darling two-bedroom, just a few blocks away from here. And guess what? It’s only seventy dollars a month.”
“Seventy?” I repeat. It sounds too good to be true.
“He’s moving in a few months, at the beginning of the year. He said he’d be happy to let you take over the lease.”
I find Lawrence refilling his coffee, tell him I’m interested. Bernard and Al agree to make the stop on our way home to see it.
Lawrence leads us into the building’s shared foyer first. He’s standing tall, making conversation, seeing this visit as an opportunity to get in good with the managers.
I cross to the bank of silver mailboxes along a wall, imagine a small key of my own, turning, opening. I follow up several flights to the fifth floor, to the door marked 522. Lawrence unlocks it. “Welcome,” he says to me, extending his arm, and I step in.
The living room looks out on the street, the city fascinating from above—the rows of apartments and shops, the cars going by, the pinpoint tops of people’s heads.
Lawrence has a sofa and two chairs around a coffee table.
There’s plenty of room for a bookshelf in the corner, even an extra chair with a reading light.
“You keep a tidy place,” Al says.
“The army trained me well. Plus, my girl has a tendency of stopping by unannounced.”
Al winks. “Good incentive.”
I wander into a short hall as they talk, end up in the kitchen.
The blue-and-white linoleum floor pleases me, even though it’s a bit scuffed and old-fashioned, and there’s a little brass light fixture hanging above a breakfast table.
Clément and I will sit here in the mornings over eggs and grits.
Play Go Fish and Memory in the evenings while dinner warms in the oven.
I move through the apartment, imagine a bright-blue quilt in the far bedroom, a modern dresser with simple lines, like the ones in Claire and Adele’s magazines.
In the second bedroom, a flash of memory: Cyril’s train-covered wallpaper, his twin bed, his small desk.
A boy’s room. I’ll ask Clément what he wants, we’ll decorate together.
“So?” Al asks when I finish my lap.
“It’s perfect for me,” I say.
“It’s across town from the rest of us.”
“It’s the same city,” I say. “Not so bad.”
“How are the neighbors?” Bernard asks.
“Mostly quiet,” Lawrence says. “A family with a couple kids lives at the end of the hall. You’d have friends for your son.”
I can see Clément, running back and forth down the hallway with the neighbor children. “You said you’re moving by January first?”
“That’s right. A December wedding. A house instead of a honeymoon.”
“You can take a nice anniversary trip once the finances have evened out,” Bernard says.
“As long as Al and my sister will have me for a few extra months, I’d love to take it.”
Al makes a show of thinking, and then smiles. “I’m sure we can work that out.”
On the drive home, I tune out Bernard and Al’s conversation and picture Delphine. She’s in a sunroom, aglow in the early evening light. She’s sewing a button onto her daughter’s dress. She stops, sets down her mending, closes her eyes. My life is coming together. She senses it. She knows.
And then, a week later, on Friday, I see her.
I’m heading to pick up groceries after work, President Truman on the radio, when the cars ahead of me swerve and stop, and I slam my foot on the brake.
There’s a woman in the middle of Crenshaw Boulevard, slowing traffic across four lanes.
Her back is to me. Slender frame, long dark hair, a brown dress, mirage-like.
I’m certain it’s Delphine, I’d recognize her anywhere.
But how could Delphine appear this way, out of nowhere, in the middle of the street?
She turns and I see her profile. Unmistakable now. I open the car door, call her name. She’s going to see me and come rushing over. Delphine and me alone in my car, going anywhere we want to. “Delphine!” I shout again.
She’s looking down. Has she dropped something?
Or maybe an animal’s been struck, or her daughter—I crane my neck and thank God there is no little girl there, not even some poor dog escaped from a yard.
But she’s barefoot on the road and there’s more honking now.
She doesn’t seem to hear it. She lifts a tube of lipstick in one hand, a compact mirror in the other, and applies the color to her mouth.
“Oh, come on,” a man shouts out his window.
Delphine draws slow circles around her lips, and even from two car lengths away I see that red is smearing all over now, all over her beautiful mouth, and the honking’s getting louder and voices boom through the rolled-down windows.
I cut the engine and I get out, leave my car right here in the middle of the lane.
“Delphine,” I call as I hurry toward her, but my voice is nothing against the horns and the strangers’ shouts, and now I’ve reached her, but she doesn’t see me.
I touch her arm, but she shakes me off. Steps back.
Bare wrists and a pungent odor, grease in her hair.
She applies another layer of color. Red on her teeth, red in a smear across her cheek, her gaze fixed to the compact mirror.
“Delphine. It’s me. Odette.” My voice isn’t loud enough. I can barely speak. “Come with me.” I touch her elbow, so gently.
She flinches. Her eyes are unfocused, alarmed, they don’t know where to rest. I can’t tell if she knows me.
“It’s Odette,” I tell her again. I’m panicked, I’m crying, I’m trying my best to be calm for her.
She drops the compact—silver, engraved with roses—against the asphalt.
I bend to pick it up and in the second it takes me to rise, she’s turning.
I reach for her arm but she’s too fast. She’s across Crenshaw and the cars are moving again and the drivers honk and I realize it’s me they’re honking at now.
Like I’ve lost my mind, taken her place.
My vision tilts, rights itself. I run back to my car, steer it in the direction she ran, but there’s so much traffic, and even though I circle and weave through the streets, scanning from the window, parking and running the blocks she disappeared into, I don’t find her.
Adele’s in the kitchen when I get home. She hears the door shut, calls, “Just in time. Will you slice up the bread?” Her back’s to me, she’s spooning tomato soup into bowls.
Children’s laughter in the living room. Al’s voice, scolding one of the twins.
Sinatra croons from the Victrola. Adele turns around. “You didn’t make it to the store?”
There’s a folded paper with a grocery list in my pocket. I was supposed to pick up bread and rice and carrots and butter. “I forgot,” I say, and then my legs are weak and Adele’s crouching in front of me, asking me what’s wrong, what’s happening, and I choke out the words as best I can.
There’s a flurry then—the children are hastily fed, Claire and Bernard arrive, Betty from across the street comes to babysit, and Adele’s on the phone to New Orleans, asking Auntie Bertha to tell her what she’s heard over the last few years, if she has an address for her, any idea at all about where Delphine might be.
“Ask for her last name,” I say. I listen as she presses, as her questions become more grasping.
“Isn’t there anything you know about your own daughter?
” she finally asks, voice tremulant, and it’s unlike her, and I’m grateful for it. I’m not the only one who’s afraid.
Claire stands in the living room and says, “We’ll go to the hospitals and the police stations. We’ll ask for a woman in a brown dress. If we can find her ourselves, we’ll be able to handle this discreetly.”
“You girls take the stations if that’s all right,” Al says, his face clouded, and it brings me back to the panic-charged nights in the blue house when we didn’t know where Lionel was or if he’d be okay. “Bernard and I will take the hospitals.”
It feels like months have passed since I saw Delphine and lost her.
I’m slipping into something, I’m underwater now.
All I can do is nod and follow their movements, put my shoes on when they do, wave to Betty when they do, follow them outside.
Adele guides me into the front seat, sits next to me, our arms pressed together.
The doors shut. Inside is hushed, it smells like Claire’s perfume.
She adjusts the mirror while she and Adele check with each other about directions, but I can barely hear them.
It’s only when we walk into the station that the world snaps back.
The ringing phones and shuffling papers, so many conversations all at once, people coming and going and standing and pacing, voices firm or plaintive, some low, some rising.
Wooden benches line one of the walls and I scan them for Delphine, imagine her sitting straight-backed among the others, waiting for us.
If only.