Twenty
I REQUEST A MEETING WITH Mike on Monday. He has a corner office, bigger than Al’s and Bernard’s. I’ve only been here for brief performance reviews, have never before initiated a meeting, and he eyes me across the table, plainly curious.
“Thank you for making the time to meet with me, Mr. Harrison. I promise not to take up too much of it.”
“Sure, Odette. What’s on your mind?”
I sit straighter, look him in the eye. “I wanted to ask you how the Finishing Department is doing overall. As supervisor, it’s important to me to know.”
He studies me through his glasses. “Naturally. It’s doing well. Very well. One of my strongest departments.”
“Good,” I say. “I thought so. It’s just that I’ve heard that the Listening Department has made a few mistakes. That batch of ruined Johnnie Ray records … such a shame.”
“Yes,” he says. “That was a sorry situation to say the least.”
I lean forward in the chair. From the other side of the desk, he leans in, too. “Us girls in Finishing. We’re very efficient, you know. And detail oriented.”
“True.”
“If a few of us were to move over to Listening, we could do good work there. The girls who stay in Finishing could train some new hires easily—and I suspect that having just a few of us girls in the booths, really giving it our all—could make quite a difference.”
Mike taps his pen against his notepad. “I’ll keep it in mind.”
He calls me into his office two days later, tells his secretary to close his door, gestures for me to take a seat at his desk. Tells me that the job is mine.
I don’t believe it at first. Too easy, too fast. But he goes over the specifics and it’s true.
The raise: five dollars more per week. The transition: I’ll choose two girls to bring over to Listening with me and he’ll promote Janine to Finishing supervisor.
The need for discretion: It was Ed who signed off on the faulty master, leading to disaster, and he’s now being transferred to the plant in Connecticut.
“It’s a shame, but there’s no way to restore confidence after a mistake of that magnitude,” Mike says.
“I’m sure I don’t need to impress upon you how significant of a position it is to work in Listening. ”
“I understand very well,” I say. “And I assure you I will give it my all.”
“I know you will, Odette. I know you will. And now I have a little surprise.” He presses a button on his desk.
His secretary’s voice: “Yes, Mr. Harrison?”
“Okay, Kimmy, send them in.”
The door opens, and Al and Bernard appear, Al with roses and Bernard with a box of chocolates.
“This is so nice,” I say as they hug me. “It’s too nice.”
“Claire’s fixing her gumbo to celebrate,” Bernard says.
“How long have you all known?”
“Since yesterday,” Al says. “Almost killed us to keep the secret.”
Mike leans back in his chair and smiles.
“Look at you three. I have to say, I feel a sense of pride—in Columbia Records for investing in people from all walks of life, colored people and foreigners, knowing that a good work ethic is a good work ethic no matter who it is that’s working.
I saw talent in you, Al, and knew you could help us make sense of processes that we’d been struggling with.
And Bernard, your strength of character, your loyalty, are unparalleled in this company as far as I can see.
And Odette—quick to learn, smart as a whip.
And strategic. I see that. You dress as neat as a secretary but think the way a man thinks.
You keep track of what’s what. I’ve had to fight a few fights for each of you.
Some people aren’t ready for colored managers yet, or a female in Listening.
But I could not have more faith in the three of you. ”
Next to me, almost imperceptibly, Al stiffens.
But Bernard smiles, extends his hand. “Thank you, Mr. Harrison,” he says. “That means the world, really.”
When we get to Bernard’s house, Claire and Adele and Sebastian and the five children in their matching school uniforms are waiting out front for us.
They see us pull up and they wave and Nathalie and Clément rush to me in the car, opening the back door and climbing in, showering me with hugs and kisses.
“We’re so proud of you, Mommy,” Nathalie says. “The first Listening girl!” She’s been calling me Mommy for months now, but it still feels fragile and precious.
“Wait till you see the banner!” Clément says. “Come on, come on.” And where they were just pushing me farther into the car, now they’re dragging me out of it, each of them with one of my hands so I fear I might fall flat on the curb.
They pull me to the house and there, in the doorway to Claire’s kitchen, is a sewn banner that says, Listen Your Heart Out.
The primary fabric is a beautiful deep blue—the fabric Claire used for the cushions of her dining chairs—and the letters are all different colors and patterns.
It’s like a quilt, using scraps to make something special and one of a kind.
“This is absolutely beautiful. The absolute sweetest thing.”
“We barely pulled it off,” Adele says. “Stayed up last night and just finished a couple hours ago!”
She’s beaming with excitement, and Claire is, too. My beautiful sisters. “We have a special cocktail,” Claire says. “Close your eyes!”
There’s whispering in the kitchen, and I open my eyes to an ice-cold glass of amber liquid with a striking garnish—flat and circular, black with some orange streaks showing through.
“Doesn’t it look like a record?” Claire asks.
“It does! Is it a persimmon?”
“Yes!” Adele says. “I cooked the slices low in the oven for an hour, and then, once they cooled, I painted them with black food dye.”
“Incredible.” We clink glasses and sip. “And it tastes good, too.”
“Lemon and grenadine and whiskey, of course,” Adele says.
The evening stretches on. The children play outside. Baby Sebastian is passed from lap to lap. Nathalie tires of the others and comes in to peruse the records. She puts on Rosemary Clooney, Half as Much, sits cross-legged and dresses her paper dolls.
“Nathalie,” Al says. “Your taste in music never ceases to impress me.”
Claire fills our bowls with gumbo. “I got fresh crab for the occasion,” she says. We eat and swoon. “It’s just too bad Felix couldn’t be here to share this night with us.”
Adele frowns. “He’s on the train three out of four weeks, and even when he’s here he isn’t really here. Not with us, anyway.”
I’m perplexed. We’ve been having such a nice time. “Just think of it this way. When he gets home, I’ll have the excitement all over again.”
“I suppose,” Adele says. “But sometimes, with how little he’s around, I forget that you have a husband at all.”
“Well, he got me out of your house, which I seem to remember was a priority.” Adele’s eyes widen and immediately, I regret it. “I’m sorry,” I say. “I’m not sure where that came from.”
“Gosh,” Adele says. “I remember those years so happily. I hope you don’t think—”
“No,” I say. “I honestly haven’t thought of it in ages. I don’t know what came over me. Just feeling a little tender, I guess. I loved living in your home, with you.”
“Okay,” Adele says, frowning deeper now. “I’ll trust that you mean it so I don’t lose the night fretting.”
I squeeze her arm. “I mean it,” I say. “And it’s really fine with me that Felix isn’t here. It means I don’t need to divide my attention. It’s not sad for me—really.”
But then we get home—Clément, Nathalie, and me—and aloneness swarms me. Like a conversation got interrupted when I still had more to say. I want adults around me. I want to sit in the living room with my feet up and just talk.
The magazines I bought at Pickwick’s weeks ago have been stacked, barely touched, on my bedside table, the novel hidden away in its drawer for the right time.
I reach for a magazine and start filling the tub.
I go to close the bathroom door but then I worry, as I sometimes do, maybe irrationally, that something will happen to the children and I won’t hear it.
Or something will happen to me, and I’ll drown, and by the time they discover me it will be too late.
I take off my clothes. I pull the shower curtain partway over for privacy and lower into the steamy water.
I skim the Kandinsky article, admire a Modigliani portrait.
Turn the page to a recurring feature I like—a studio visit, where a writer and photographer spend time with the artist, watching how a piece is made.
This time the artist is Jean Dubuffet, a Parisian, in the studio he’s renting in New York.
I have a great interest in madness, and I am convinced art has much to do with madness.
The children dart past, slow down by the half-opened door.
I slip deeper into the water, body flushing from heat.
They giggle and move on. I read the words over.
Such a clear statement, but I don’t think it’s right.
Red smeared across Delphine’s mouth. Her gashes in the maple tree.
Nothing created, everything lost. Art must belong to a third place—not madness, not sanity either.
The harder I contemplate it, the more tangled it becomes.
Have I ever truly felt what it’s like, to let go of myself and make something?
Maybe, but the impression’s faint now. I’ve become practiced at holding myself together; Dubuffet loses himself on purpose.
I’m reading about his materials now, his past as a winemaker, when more giggles come.
Their little fingers appear at the curtain, followed by their faces. They smile, shyly, taking in the sight of my breasts buoyant in the water, the slight curve of my belly, my dark pubic hair.
“Are you hiding, Mommy?” Clément asks.
I lean my head against the hard ceramic of the tub. “Well, it appears that I am. Brush your teeth now.”
The children laugh and so do I, and just like that it’s a new game. I listen to the back-and-forth of brushing. To them spitting into the sink and tapping the handles dry, to the plink of the brushes returning to the ceramic cup.
“Very good,” I say, behind the curtain still. “Now put on your pajamas and your nightgown. You be tucked warm in bed when I come in to say goodnight, okay? Show me what mature children you’re becoming.”
“Yes, Mommy,” they both say, giggling again. And maybe it’s all right, being a little bit lonely, when I have a bath and a magazine and two children waiting in the other room.