Sixteen
I’M FURIOUS WITH THEM, can’t meet their eyes at dinner.
“How does this work?” I ask them later, outside where the children can’t hear us if they wake. “What about a funeral?”
“She doesn’t know about funerals,” Claire says. “She’s five years old.”
Young, yes, but old enough to feel a lack. The way I felt a lack when Papa died. No ritual, no grieving together, no putting him to rest. I want to scream and rage like Nathalie does, want to throw my body onto the earth, dig out clumps of Adele’s lawn with my fingers.
“Listen,” Adele says.
“We knew you’d be angry,” Claire says. “And we understand.”
They’re quiet until I look at them again. “We said we’d do it after Christmas. Together.”
Adele touches my arm. “We did it so you wouldn’t have to.”
“Mine,” I say. My decision to make. My best friend. My Nathalie, even though I can’t have her.
They don’t ask me to explain, say they’ll give me time, leave me in the yard.
Over the next two days, Nathalie asks us question after question about what it means to die.
Bernard arranges for me to take the week off work, and I tell her about hearts and how they stop beating.
Adele tells her about Heaven. Claire urges her, over and over, to think of happier things.
“But what about her body?” she asks Adele when I’m brushing Titter’s and Bobby’s teeth before bed.
“Does it go to Heaven, too? How does it get there?”
Adele sets her hand on Nathalie’s shoulder. “Her body will be buried in the ground.”
She says okay, she goes to sleep. But in the morning she hurls a glass of juice across the kitchen. It shatters against the wall, orange everywhere.
The day is cloudy, colder than usual. I dress us in sweaters and take her hand and we walk to my car in the driveway.
“Where are we going?”
“I don’t know.”
She scoots to the edge of the front bench seat, runs her hands along the glove compartment, the dashboard, the clock. She slides back and pushes hard on the upholstery.
“We’re going to do something special together, to remember your mommy.”
She furrows her brow. “I already remember her.”
“Yes. Of course. That’s not exactly what I mean. Usually, when someone dies, we have a funeral. We say prayers and share memories and we go to a cemetery where bodies are buried, and we mark the grave with a tombstone so we have a place to visit them.”
“Why aren’t we doing that?” She pushes her bangs from her eyes to see me better. They’ve grown so much in two months’ time.
“Sometimes…” I search for an answer that’s true.
Land on Papa’s white cross in the sanctuary and the tombstone I purchased to replace it.
“Sometimes we don’t get the things we expect.
Sometimes situations are more complicated, and we need to come up with solutions ourselves.
Should we come up with something together? Some way to honor your mommy?”
She nods.
“We should go somewhere you love, that your mommy loved, too.”
“The beach,” she says.
I set off toward the coast and on the way, on the side of the road, a man is selling flowers at a stand.
We pull over and I tell her to choose what she likes.
He has white metal buckets full of roses on the ground, their blossoms deep red and bright yellow and pale pink.
I take one of each and Nathalie chooses pansies, hydrangeas, snapdragons.
I count out the money—far more than I can afford—and we load them into the back of the car.
We drive to the ocean, the same beach as before.
It’s almost empty, just some fishermen and us, and we carry the flowers to a place where rocks rise up from the sand, forming an alcove.
I step into it first and Nathalie follows, and I don’t know how she can see with the flowers covering her face.
I sit in the sand, twist the blossom from a rose, let the petals fall by my feet. We’re sheltered from the ocean breeze by the rocks. Nathalie watches me and does the same to her flowers and we work in silence until we’re surrounded by petals.
“Are these for my mommy?” Nathalie asks.
“Yes. Are you ready to send them to her?”
She nods, and we wait until the breeze picks up, hold them until it’s time.
Now. They flutter into the air, some falling, some floating, some cast over the water, others drifting to the sand.
Nathalie throws another armful, grunts from the effort, hurling them this time, making them travel farther.
“Come,” I say, and we scoop up as many as we can and run into the cold shock of water.
I lose my breath. Nathalie gasps, in up to her waist. “Ready?” I ask when my voice returns to me, and we fling the petals as hard as we can.
It rains pinks and yellows and reds and blues.
“I love you, Delphine,” I say. “Goodbye.”
“Goodbye, Mommy,” Nathalie shouts. Our hands are empty. I lift her up. Pressure of her arms and her legs tight around me. I’m afraid we’ll be swept away by the waves. I hold her close in the cold, her fingers digging into my shoulders.
In the parking lot, I help her step out of her blue jeans, soaking wet and stiff with salt.
Her lips are purple, her body shivering.
Reckless of me, to take a child into the Pacific Ocean in November.
“This was just our first try,” I tell her.
“We’ll keep saying goodbye as long as we need to.
We’ll talk about her anytime you want. Okay?
” I’m shivering, too, from the cold, and from the effort of convincing myself, the feeling of traitorousness I can’t slough off.
The words rise in me: I take it back. She isn’t dead.
It’s just that I’m a coward. I give her a blanket from the trunk to wrap around herself and tuck a sweater between my wet dress and the car’s leather seat as we drive home, and she falls asleep, breath hitching, head on my lap, warming me.
Thanksgiving approaches. Bernard and Al go golfing with some of the other managers from the plant.
Claire and Adele and I spend the afternoon in the backyard, drinking lemonade, planning the meal.
When I’m with them, I’m at war with myself.
A desperate, seething feeling that I suppress as best I can.
Mine, I keep thinking. A primality to it.
“I think this time I’ll make my pumpkin pie with a crunchy walnut half on every slice,” Adele says. “Bea told me that’s how she does it.”
“Mm,” Claire says.
“Now help me decide on the stuffing. I’ve marked two recipes, one for oyster and one for giblet.” She opens two magazines, lays them flat on the table for us to compare. “What do you think?”
“Oyster stuffing over giblet, always,” I say.
“It calls for three cups of chopped oysters, though,” Adele says. “Plus, one and a third of the liquor. Very strong. The giblet stuffing is more of a traditional bread stuffing.”
“Make the giblet if you want to,” I say. “Either will be delicious.”
“All right. I’ll decide soon. Now for vegetables, should I do the creamed onions again?”
“Yes,” I say. “And I’ll make the scalloped potatoes. People seemed to like it last year.”
Adele hands me a magazine with a recipe for cranberry salad. “Claire,” she says. “You aren’t giving your opinion.”
It’s true. Claire’s been pensive, in her own world.
Rudy and Clément send a handful of tiny toy cars careening down the playroom stairs to the twins’ delight. Nathalie’s across the yard, over by the fence, searching for the last of the season’s blackberries. She stands on her tiptoes, reaching.
“I’m pregnant,” Claire says.
Adele stares. “What did you say?”
“The doctor told us two weeks ago.”
A swell of rightness washes over me. I wrap my arms around her, thankful for the purity of my feeling, the respite from my anger. A reason for gladness. “Maybe it’s a boy,” I say when I let go. “Exactly what you dreamed of.”
Claire dismisses it. “Boy or girl, it doesn’t matter. The doctor says the heartbeat’s strong. It wasn’t the other time. So. That’s all I really care about.”
“Of course,” I say.
“Of course,” Adele says. “Oh, Claire.”
“I know,” Claire says. “I know.”
Claire calls Maman on Thanksgiving morning, arrives at Adele’s flushed and happy. “You should have heard her voice when I told her the good news,” she says. “And I told her all about how grown up and sweet the children are getting, and about your apartment, Odette. I hope you don’t mind.”
“Of course not.”
“Did she say anything about the pictures of the children I sent her?” Adele asks.
“It must have slipped her mind,” Claire says. “I’m sure she loved them.”
It’s a small Thanksgiving this year, just us.
We invited Felix to join but he’s on the train.
He promised to come for Christmas instead and stay awhile.
Lionel arrives just before dinnertime, a bottle of brandy tucked under his arm.
Next Thanksgiving, Clément and I will be arriving as guests, too, carrying something we’ve brought to add to the table. So soon, my life is going to change.
And then it’s the beginning of December, and a package arrives in the mail from Maman. Adele cuts the box tape. “Look at all this! Gifts for the children for under the tree. And, oh my gosh. Odette, come.” I see her lifting two objects from the box. Framed art, wrapped in tissue.
“It can’t be,” I say. But here they are, in their gold frames, just as I remembered them. A painting of a horizon. A painting of birds in the sky.
“For your new place,” Claire says. “I’m so glad I thought to tell her.”
I keep staring at the paintings. I’m in love with them, but also unnerved. Are they a gesture of peace or a casting away? I can’t tell which.
“Oh, my goodness,” Adele says. “Claire. Look. She sent you her silver tray.”
“No,” Claire says in awe. “Really?”
“Really.”
“And for me…” Adele rummages through the crumpled newspaper. Stops. Rummages again. “Nothing.” She sits back on her heels, blinks hard. “She’s still punishing me for marrying Al.”
Claire takes the box from her. “There must be something for you in here.” But Adele leaves the room. “It can’t be,” Claire murmurs. And maybe the paintings don’t have much to do with me at all. Maybe they’re simply another way for Maman to admonish Adele.
The faucet turns on in the kitchen. I find Adele scrubbing, the sink full of soapy water and dishes. I rest my hand against her back. “I should stop caring,” she says. “I should expect it.”
I say, “What would that be like, to stop caring?”
Adele bends over the sink, stays that way. Silence but for the clock on the wall. She straightens again, smooths her hands down her skirt. “Let’s hang the mistletoe.”
It’s late at night. I’m at the table, writing a list of all I’ll need for the apartment.
Claud’s told me about a flea market with bargains on cookware and dishes.
Sally and Janine have offered to go around to garage sales on Saturday mornings with me, and Sally says that if we find some good furniture, her husband will move it for me in his truck.
In the kitchen, Claire and Adele have been planning Christmas gifts for the children, and Al and Bernard are there, too, smoking cigarettes in the doorway.
“Odette,” Bernard says. “Can you come in here for a moment?”
I’m focused. I don’t want to. I go in anyway, lift myself onto Adele’s sparkling clean counter—strictly against the rules—sit with my legs dangling over the edge. “What is it?” I ask.
No one answers at first. A mood I can’t identify hovers in the room, turns me uneasy.
“Go ahead, honey,” Bernard says.
Claire rests her palm against her flat stomach.
Invisible, but real. I can only imagine what it’s like, to have a person growing inside my body and feel hope instead of dread.
Wish I could go back and give Clément that kind of welcome.
She takes a breath. “I haven’t wanted to say it. But I’ve been having doubts.”
Quiet again.
“Doubts about what?” I ask.
She twists her mouth, she looks to the floor. “Nathalie,” she says.
“It’s okay,” Adele says. “It’s hard, being a parent. And we’ve only just known her for a couple months. No one expects you to fall in love immediately. Or develop a special bond so soon.”
“But I did,” Claire says. “I do love her. I just don’t know if love is enough. Especially when there’s another person who’s better suited.”
She looks at me. They all do. Claire with an open question in her eyes.
Bernard, composed, solemn. Adele, tentative.
Al, dragging off his cigarette, a slight amusement behind his eyes at the sight of me on the counter, my small act of rebellion.
And maybe there’s more in his gaze. Maybe he’s telling me that we’ve known this all along.
That it’s about time someone said it. I feel Delphine here, too, with all of us. Not Claire, she’s saying. You.
“Let me explain,” Claire says. “Nathalie came into our lives, and she gave me a gift. For the last couple months, I’ve felt like a mother.
I got to give all my love to her. Learn everything I could.
Ask myself what she needed. And the answer’s so clear.
The way you are with her. It’s something special.
It can’t be replicated. I don’t even want to try. ”
“But what if…” I start. I don’t want to say it.
She nods, her hand still pressed against her stomach. “I know it’s a risk. But if I get to be a mother, I want to be an unselfish one.”
“Odette,” Adele says. “You have a choice in all this, too. You know what it means. You don’t have to say yes.”
But that first glimpse of Nathalie in the laundromat, the way she took my wrist. How Delphine lives in me, still, after everything. Binding Nathalie and me together. Turning the two of us inevitable. Impossible to deny it any longer. “I’ll do it,” I say.
And a sob rises in me, and as soon as it comes, I can’t stop.
The next morning, I get up with the first light and go outside.
Hair unbrushed, robe pulled over my gown.
I’ve barely slept, the sunrise a relief, pacing the perimeter of the yard, grass underfoot, stopping when I see a cluster of blackberries at the top of the fence, more than I thought possible this late in the season.
I tiptoe back into the house and to the children’s room and scoop Nathalie up.
I carry her outside. She’s smiling, rubbing her eyes, warm from sleep.
“What are we doing?” she asks.
“I want you to see what I found.”
She gasps in delight. I hoist her small body higher and she plucks the berries one by one, plopping them into her mouth and, occasionally, into mine. And for a few minutes, all that exists is her: hands stained blue-black with berries, body solid in my arms, morning sun on her skin.