Twelve
I CALL CAMARILLO STATE HOSPITAL the next day and ask for Delphine Kelley. Hold my breath. She’s there. I can’t talk to her. They can’t share her information with me. If I’m to be Delphine’s primary contact, I’ll need Auntie Bertha to call the hospital and make it so.
“All right,” I say. “I will. I have a pressing concern, though, and I’m wondering if you might be able to help me.
” Impatience on the other end. I tell the receptionist about Nathalie and her voice softens.
She tells me she’ll look into it and let me know if she hears anything.
She takes down my phone number and address, reads them back carefully, tells me to take good care.
I ride in Claire and Bernard’s car to Mass. “Camarillo,” Claire says from the passenger seat. “It’s a well-known hospital. I’m sure they’ll give her the very best treatments. Don’t you agree, Bernard?”
“I certainly do hope so.”
She turns to look at me. “I know it’s hard for you, thinking of Delphine going through all of this. But really, it’s right that she’s there. It’s necessary. When a person needs psychiatric help, the only thing to do is to give it to them.”
All through Mass, my head is full of Delphine in the hospital, Nathalie alone somewhere in Los Angeles.
How to find a five-year-old girl in a city of two million people?
A handful of families from church follow us home, crowding the kitchen and the living room, spilling out to the yard.
At just about five o’clock, as the last guests leave, the phone rings.
Al answers, says it’s for me. I press the receiver to my ear, and the receptionist from this morning says, “I have Delphine here. It’s against policy, but she said she could tell only you.
Wouldn’t give anyone a message. Hold on. ”
“Delphine?” I say, and then a voice comes, so low I can barely hear it, guttural and slow. A voice I’d never recognize but maybe there’s something of Delphine in it, buried deep.
“It’s laundry night,” she says, each word an effort. “Santa Monica and Sycamore. She’ll be there.”
“Santa Monica and Sycamore,” I say. “All right. I’ll go now.” I hang up and Al is back with his hat and his keys.
As we near the intersection, I roll the window down to get as clear a look as I can, grip the door handle, and there it is, two buildings in from the corner, flanked by a donut shop and a barber: Clean as a Whistle Automatic Laundry.
We park in the lot behind the building, enter through the back door.
Inside is spacious, an orange-and-white checkered floor, pastel green washers and burnt-umber dryers, the air soapy and damp.
Al and I scan the aisles between machines for a little girl, and a figure at the far end makes me catch my breath.
A child, bent to collect the clothes from a dryer.
But then a woman appears with a rolling metal basket and the child turns, her arms full of warm clothes, and she drops them in.
She’s too young, too much like the woman she’s there with to be Delphine’s daughter. I walk over to them.
“Have you seen a little girl here this evening?” I ask them. “Five years old?”
Al follows my lead and asks the men and women in the various seating areas.
No one’s seen her, so we wait. It’s possible that she isn’t alone, but as much as I hope for someone to be with her, I can’t picture it.
No family. No friends from her old neighborhood.
I’m watching the doors until I can’t stand it anymore—all the opening and shutting and no Nathalie.
I lean forward, rest my head in my hands.
“Odette,” Al says, voice low. “Look.”
The street-facing door is open. I stand as a little girl holds it with her weight while dragging a bag over the threshold.
She steps to the side and the door shuts behind her.
She drags the bag across the floor to a machine in a near row of washers, scooping in clothes by the armful.
She looks around, fixes her eyes to a box of laundry soap sitting on another person’s washer.
She takes a small step toward it before changing her mind and reaching into her pocket for coins.
The machine whirs to life and she closes the lid, and when she turns I get my first clear look at her face.
Her eyes are sea green, her hair a warm brown, darker than I imagined it would be, and wavy.
Her mouth is as soft and pretty as Delphine’s.
She scans the seats and walks toward me, sits with only one empty chair between us. I could reach out and touch her shoulder. Al widens his eyes at me, tilts his head. He’s telling me to talk to her, but Delphine turned from me and ran, and I can’t afford to get it wrong again.
“You’re Nathalie, right?” I finally ask. As good a start as any. Her head whips toward me. “My name is Odette.”
“Odette from the story?” she asks in a clear, strong voice.
“What story?”
“Mommy told me a story about Odette. She made paintings and lived in a blue house with two sisters.”
Tears prick my eyes. “Yes. That’s me. Except I don’t live in the blue house anymore.
I live in a cream-colored house, with just one of my sisters.
The other one lives three doors down. This man here,” I say, tapping Al’s knee, “is my brother-in-law. He has three children, and I have one, and we all live in a nice house together.”
“Are they boys or girls?”
Al speaks very sweetly. “Well, I have one boy, Rudy, who is the oldest. And then twins, Titter and Bobby, one girl and one boy. And Odette has a boy named Clément.”
“Clément’s just a few months younger than you are,” I say.
“I’m five-and-a-half,” Nathalie says.
“I know,” I say.
“How?”
“Because your mommy is very special to me. She’s my cousin and my best friend.”
“Do you know where she is?”
“I do.”
Nathalie scoots into the chair next to mine. The half moons under her eyes are pale purple, and when she reaches for me I see dirt under her fingernails. She squeezes my wrist tightly. “Where is she?”
“She’s in a hospital. She told us where to find you.”
Nathalie nods. “It’s laundry night.”
“That’s what she told us. She wanted us to know so we could take you home with us and take good care of you while she’s gone. Does that sound all right with you?”
She scoots up onto her knees, leans to my ear to tell me a secret. “I want a sandwich.”
“I’ll make you one.”
“But we have to wait,” she says, sitting back down. “The clothes take twenty-one minutes to wash, and forty-four minutes to dry.”
“What if we wait for them to finish washing, and then take them home and hang them on the line?”
“We always put them in the dryer.”
I glance at Al. He shrugs. “We can wait,” I say.
She twists her mouth to one side, thinking, then slides off her chair and walks the perimeter of the room. I clutch Al’s hand when she nears the entrance, terrified she’ll bolt, but she does a full loop and when she returns to us, she says, “We can dry them on the line.”
Claire and Adele are watching from the front window as we pull up in the car.
I open the door for Nathalie, who drops her bag of wet clothes on the drive before scooting out.
When we turn toward the house, Claire is frozen in the window, covering her mouth with her hand, and Adele is at the entry, so astonished she doesn’t know what to say.
“Where is the line?” Nathalie asks, scanning the front.
“Through the house to the back,” I tell her. Claire’s here now, too, in the foyer, gazing at Nathalie like she was born of thin air. But Nathalie doesn’t seem to notice either of them. “She wants a sandwich,” I say, following her in. “And to hang her laundry.”
“But it’s dark outside,” Claire says. “Past bedtime. The other children are sleeping already.”
Al shakes his head and Claire stops protesting.
“Ham?” Adele asks. “Or peanut butter and jelly?”
“Ham,” Nathalie says, finding the sliding door and using all her strength to open it.
Bernard’s out back, smoking a cigarette in a lawn chair. He blinks, rises as we go toward him, gazes in amazement.
“Who are you?” Nathalie asks.
“This is Uncle Bernard,” I say. “Bernard, we’re hanging Nathalie’s laundry.”
“Now?”
“It’s a dry night,” I say. “A warm one. It’ll be fine. Would you like to help us?”
He nods and heads to the line. Nathalie takes garment after garment from her sack and hands them to us. We fix them to the line with clothespins and soon Delphine’s dresses and undergarments and Nathalie’s shirts and skirts and pajamas and underpants hang, neatly spaced, in a row.
Bernard leads her to the table for her sandwich, and I go to the den and shut the door.
I call Camarillo and the police station to let them know that I’ve found her, that she’s safe here.
I call Auntie Bertha. She doesn’t want to come be with Nathalie or know anything about her.
“Then phone the hospital in the morning,” I say, vision blurring with fury.
“Make me Delphine’s primary contact and I’ll handle everything.
” She agrees. After, I find my sisters sitting on either side of Nathalie, watching her take bites.
Nathalie sets the sandwich down and drinks a sip of milk so cold water beads to the outside of the glass.
She picks the sandwich up again and eats.
When she’s finished she asks for the bathroom, and Adele and Claire both walk her to the hallway.
She shuts the door and Claire whispers, “Should we bathe her tonight? She’s filthy. ”
“We’d better wait until the morning,” Adele says. “She looks exhausted.”
“We could give her the choice,” I say from behind them.
“No,” Claire says. “Adele’s right. Let’s let her sleep. She’ll need a good wash, a lot of conditioning and brushing of that hair.”
My stomach twists but it’s all right, it’s all right. They know best when it comes to the children.
When Nathalie comes out of the bathroom, Claire crouches so she’s eye level with her. “We’re so happy you’ve come to stay with us,” she says.
Nathalie stares back, says nothing.
“We’ll show you your bed now,” Adele says. “You can borrow a pair of pajamas. Good thing your twin cousins are still small enough that they share a bunk. You’ll have the whole top one to yourself.”
I see a twitch in Nathalie’s little jaw, as though she’s doubting her decision to come here. She stands very still, her shoulders tight and raised, before sighing and following them in.
It’s ten o’clock now and I’m wide awake.
Bernard and Claire leave and Al pours himself another whiskey.
Adele flips through the records. She takes one out, slips it from its jacket, pauses at the sound of the children’s room door opening.
We hear a set of footsteps down the hall.
It’s Nathalie. Skinny body swimming in Clément’s plaid pajamas.
Opening the hall closet and standing there, head tipped upward, scanning the high shelves, picking up a box of Arm and Hammer and setting it back down again, crouching to see the linens folded on the lower shelves.
She closes the closet door, heads to the next place. My room.
“Did we forget to show her around?” Al says.
“It didn’t cross my mind,” Adele murmurs.
I go to the hallway, watch her from a distance as she opens each one of my drawers, runs her hand along my bedspread, pushes back my dresses to see the shoes lined up on my closet floor.
Her brown hair falls into her eyes. There’s a scab on her elbow and on one of her ankles.
She walks straight past me to the living room.
At the credenza, she flips through the records and slides open the cabinet door.
She picks up a pack of playing cards and fixes us with her big green eyes. “I want to play Go Fish.”
“It’s bedtime,” Adele says, hiding a smile. “We can play Go Fish tomorrow. Your cousins love to play it. They’ll be glad to play with you.”
Nathalie’s brow furrows. Just like Delphine’s.
“Here,” I say, offering her my hand. “I’ll lie with you for a little while. It’s hard to sleep the first night in a new place.”
She looks from me to Adele to Al as though assessing her options.
Reluctantly, she sets the cards down. She puts her hand in mine, small and squeezing back.
I lead her to the children’s room, climb into Titter’s bunk with her.
The covers pulled up to our chins, I whisper, “Is there anything you like to do at bedtime? Does your mommy sing you a song?”
“She sings the song about the moon room.”
“I don’t know that one. Can you sing it for me?”
She shakes her head. “It’s always changing. She makes it up.”
“Oh, I see. Well, what is the moon room?”
“It’s where we live.”
“Are there things there that you need? Should I take you tomorrow to get them?”
“The door’s locked now,” she says. “I made a mistake.”
She turns away so that her back is to me.
Enough for tonight. Clément likes it when I put my arm around him, but I don’t know what Nathalie likes.
I give her arm a gentle squeeze and let go, stay next to her until she’s sleeping.
It’s only then, her belly rising and falling, that I realize: There’s so much she could tell me about Delphine.
I have an urge to shake her awake. Lace my fingers together to stop myself.
She’s Delphine’s daughter. Her little girl.
It wouldn’t be caring for her at all, to make her relive everything.