Twenty-One #2
I should start dinner, but I go into the kitchen and then right back outside again, a tightness in my chest that won’t let me be.
In the corner of the patio, tucked against the wall, a tarp covers my yard-sale chair, untouched since I brought it home.
It’s no time of day to start a project but I pull off the tarp and get my upholstery tools anyway.
Flathead screwdriver, prying up staples.
Knife against fabric, cutting in. The husband’s Manhattan seeped through the cream wool and the cotton batting underneath it, but the wood’s still good as new.
Nathalie and Clément are downslope, playing in the forest part.
By the time Felix comes home, I’ve finished shaping new batting onto the chair and I’m measuring the fabric, marking it with a sewing pencil.
He’s carrying a bag from Wallichs Music City with a record inside.
The children run to him, wrap their arms around his waist. He laughs, drags them across the patio to where I’m standing, holding the record high in the air to keep it safe.
“I thought they were children,” he gasps. “But they’re not—they’re barnacles!”
“We aren’t barnacles, we’re leeches!” Clément shrieks.
Nathalie tightens her grip. “We’re sucking the blood from your body! Soon you’ll faint!”
“All right now,” he tells them. “Let Daddy get in the door.” They break away and tromp back down to the forest part, and he says, “Well, that was a greeting.”
I smile. “Are you hungry?”
“Not terribly.”
“I’ll start dinner soon.”
“There’s no rush. I got a new record. Miles Davis, a trumpet player. They had it on in the store and I about lost my mind. I’ll enjoy a listen, and you keep going on your project. Or just relax. Do whatever you want to do.”
I have no will to finish the chair tonight, none to fix dinner either. In the pause, there’s only Ginny. Bebop pours from the Victrola, a trumpet’s notes coming quick and scattershot. I’ll join Felix in the living room, let the new record distract me.
He’s listening with his head back and his eyes closed, a cigarette between his fingers, rapturous.
He tells me to be free, to do the things I want to do, but I can’t have what I really want, so what then?
Impossible to sit here. Back to the kitchen.
A song fades out and a new one starts, casting frenzied notes through the house.
I take out the saltine crackers and the tin of clams, check the refrigerator for butter and cream.
I have everything I need, but I stand still.
The music is telling me something else. Look at this right here.
You’re meant to make something of it. Then I’m opening my sketchbook and pencils.
Not enough. I need color. Chair to the cabinet, reaching all the way back for the cans of paint samples.
I pull them out, dusty but still good. Several pinks for the door, a dark blue that I tried on the walls, two shades of white.
I cover the table with a cloth, pour colors on an old plate.
My sketchbook pages are too small, the paint too wet.
It would ruin it. Back to the living room, flipping through the records for one I’ve taken from work and don’t care about.
I cut open its jacket; inside is plain white.
I begin. I have a small brush for painting along the ceiling trim—still too large for what I’m doing, but the best that I have.
I use a darker pink for the sardine tin, a lighter pink for the sink.
The tin turns out too big. The sink darkens as it dries, it needs to be lighter.
I take the other half of the jacket and start over, looking closer, allowing myself the time it takes.
I have a rough painting by the time the children burst through the door. They look at what I’ve made, perplexed. “Why are the colors wrong?” Clément asks.
“It’s the only paint I had.”
“You’re better at drawing,” Nathalie says.
“Well, I have to start somewhere. Come help me make dinner.”
Felix comes, too. I give the children the crackers to smash into crumbs. I melt butter and instruct Felix in spreading the clams on the dish. He starts the record over as dinner bakes and the children play outside again and I rinse my brush in the sink, the water bright pink and then fainter.
He smiles at me while we eat but I can’t shake my stubbornness.
I hate not knowing the right way to fix myself, hate relying on him for permission.
Later, the dishes are drying on the rack and the children are sleeping and music’s playing softly from the living room.
My painting is on the table, and I’m adding to it, using a toothpick for the details.
I need brushes. Need better paper. The colors sink into the album jacket.
And still, something’s stirring in me. Ginny pressing me against a wall.
Sunlight glinting off the surfer as she notices me watching her.
A garden. A bouquet of wildflowers. I sewed blue curtains for our house when I once dreamed of white ones.
I married Felix in a courthouse, his friend our witness, gave him my cheek to kiss and said, “I’m lucky.
” Twice, I’ve married men I don’t love in the right way.
Felix appears above me at the table. “So? It feels good, doesn’t it?” he says. “Just doing what you want?”
I stare into the blue paint. “What if what I want is dangerous?”
“How is it dangerous? What—because the children will go to sleep a little past their bedtimes?” He laughs.
Unfair of me, to resent him this much when it’s my choice not to tell him.
Ginny starts back at the plant, and I learn her schedule. I know where she likes to eat and when she breaks for a cigarette. I know she hardly smokes it, just lets it burn between her fingers. I know where she is, so I can avoid those places.
Sometimes something goes wrong, though—she shows up when I don’t expect her.
I trust she’ll be at her machine but I’m by the back entrance, overlooking the shiny cars in the lot, and then she’s there, her arm is close to mine, the sleeve of her shirt rolled up to the elbow, and I haven’t had time to prepare.
I’m exposed, startled, losing even the simplest of sentences, forgetting the word hello.
And then it’s July, and Adele and I are at the train station, sending the children off on the Sunset Limited to be with their grandparents.
Mama and Papa Laurent have folded Nathalie into their family without hesitation.
Maman and Auntie Bertha want nothing to do with her, so Clément and Nathalie stay with the Laurents the whole time.
Adele and I found a colored train car with a bunch of empty seats, and in go Nathalie and Clément and Rudy and Titter and Bobby ahead of us.
The five of them will spend two days together, without us, on the train.
We’ve packed meals in a basket, given them pocket money for hot dinners.
They have cards and games to play, a stack of new comic books, some paper for drawing and a pack of colored pencils.
Sebastian’s still too young, but once he’s three, he’ll go, too.
I go to look for a porter, find one and return with him just as Adele’s saying, “Rudy, remember: As the oldest you’re in charge of making sure all the children are safe and making good choices.”
“This is Mr. Freeman,” I say to the children.
The porter in his crisp uniform smiles down at them. “Are you boys and girls ready for the journey?” he asks.
They nod, some of them more certain than others. Clément’s holding back tears, though I know that, despite the nerves and homesickness, he’s excited for the trip. He’s been going on about beignets for the past two weeks.