Twenty-Nine
LIONEL AND GINNY KEEP BUILDING the coop.
Sometimes Ginny and I get off work at the same time and walk together to the parking lot, Ginny shooting me a smile as she unlocks the door of her little white car.
She’s in my rear view the whole way home, her arm out the open window, and when I’m inside, surveying the refrigerator, her laugh carries from the yard.
I wash lettuce, peel carrots and cucumbers.
Through the window I see her holding a board steady for Lionel.
When I take glasses of water out to them, they’re intent on something, don’t see me at first, and she turns and I keep my gaze on her, appreciative and frank, and she returns it and maybe this can be enough.
To love someone and know that you’re loved, even if you can only be together for a short time.
I live in the idea for a day or two until doubt creeps in and turns me irritable, snapping at a new man on Production for his mistake, impatient at lunch as Janine tells the story of yet another bad date.
Ginny and I spend almost every night at her place or mine.
I don’t start another painting. I barely go down to the studio.
I’m either at the plant or I’m with Ginny.
I kiss her good morning and I kiss her goodnight.
I learn the right ways to touch her. I let go of my shyness.
I feel our time together running out. Elise comes by one night and I’m euphoric, bringing drinks out to the patio.
Lionel and Ginny and Elise and me and no pretending.
The four of us under the oak tree branches, lit candles in the glass orbs above, conversation flowing easily, laughter ringing out into the night.
Ginny’s short sleeves are rolled up to her shoulders, her gold chain disappearing at her throat.
Each time she looks at me, I savor the warmth of it.
“She’s gorgeous,” Elise whispers into my ear, rising from the patio chairs. “Magnetic. I understand everything even more now.”
Five days until they come home. The coop is covered in a tarp and Ginny’s sitting with her back to me at the edge of my bed. “I can’t do this,” she says. “Go back to how things were before the summer.”
“I know.” She turns to me with hope and surprise, enough to break my heart. “Maybe we could find a way to steal some hours together sometimes.”
“That isn’t what I mean.”
I sit up. “Ginny. You don’t know what I’d be risking.”
“I do know,” she says. “I’ve been through it.”
I shake my head. Can’t look at her anymore. Not at the line of her spine or her hair tucked behind her ears or her tanned shoulders. I’ve gotten so used to the softness of her skin against mine. The warmth of her body while we’re sleeping.
“I understand how terrifying it is,” she says. “How it changes the way people see you. How a lot of people don’t understand.”
“My sisters,” I say. Can barely speak it.
“They might surprise you.”
“But what if they tried to take my children?”
“Would they, though?” Ginny says. “Try to take them away? And think of it. If we could stay together. The kids would be gaining, too.”
It was so long ago now that Ginny perched with Mare on the armchair in their near-empty apartment, saying she’d like a family one day.
Breathtaking, when I envision it. Ginny, not only with me but with Nathalie and Clément, too.
Another person to love them. Another person for them to love.
“I know they would,” I say. “We’d all be so lucky to have you. ”
“So why don’t we try?”
My sisters. And Al and Bernard. And my niece and my nephews.
The danger of yet another severing. The world so perilous already, even without another risk.
What would Emmett Till’s mother do without people to hold her?
“What if I lose them, and then you change your mind?” Hattie’s in my head now, telling me there’s no future in us.
And Delphine’s threatening me. And Felix is placing his hands on his knee, saying that he’s leaving.
And then my family’s here. Feeding me, loving me, building me a place to paint.
Maybe Ginny wants me so much because I’ve told her no all these years.
I can picture her in the future, strange in the kitchen, not meeting my eye, not so enamored of family life after all. Finding me faded. Tiring of me.
“No,” she says. “This isn’t about me. I’m ready to live my life with you. You tell yourself it’s impossible but it isn’t. People have been living this way for all of time.”
“I don’t know if I can.”
“You’re terrified of love,” she says. “I understand why. But it makes you small. You hide and you lie. You’re better than that.”
“I’ve never known love without hiding. I don’t even know what it would feel like.”
“Let me show you.” She’s flushed, jaw set, eyes fierce and shining. Fighting for me.
And still, I tell her no.
She stays with me for one more night. In the morning, she makes us coffee in my kitchen. I go out and there’s a small box on the table, tied with a bow. “An early birthday gift.” I open it. Ginny’s medallion. “It’s the only thing I have that’s good enough,” she says.
Ginny is gone now. I walk into my room and it comes back to me: Marriage Bed.
I wrestle my mattress out the kitchen door and down the steps to the studio; I’ll sleep on Felix’s old one. I make the bed with white sheets. Place The Price of Salt splayed open. Drape the dress Hattie made for me over the foot. I unfasten Ginny’s medallion and set it gently on the pillow.
It’s a Friday and I call in sick to work.
I mix creams and whites for the bed. Grays for the shadows.
I touch brush to linen and I barely have to try.
My body does it all for me. I cry so hard I can barely see, but still, the shapes and the colors build on the canvas.
I look to my palette: the perfect chartreuse, mixed as if by magic.
The red of the book. The gold of the medallion.
Light shifts in the room, time passing. When it’s too dark to work I move the book and the dress, clasp Ginny’s chain back around my neck, climb into the bed and sleep.
Wake with the sun the next morning. Coffee in the house and back to painting.
The beauty of it propelling me. Not even finished and the best thing I’ve made. The truest.
And then Claire and Adele and I meet the children, Sebastian bursting into tears at the sight of his mother, Rudy dutifully accepting Adele’s kiss on his cheek while Elizabeth and Paul each put an arm around her.
Nathalie and Clément hug me tight. I swear, they’ve grown over the weeks they’ve been gone.
Clément tells me stories in a rush as we drive home.
Nathalie studies my face and asks me if something’s wrong.
“Just tired, sweetheart,” I say. “I was working on a painting but I finished it this morning.”
I wear Ginny’s medallion like a wedding ring.
Sleep in it. Wake to find it tangled in my hair.
Tuck it safely into my blouses in the mornings, a secret.
Each day in the booth, I pray that she’ll come to my door with a record, even if it’s only to sit together for the length of a song.
Once, I see her approach. My breath catches but she passes me. Goes to Ivy’s booth instead.
October arrives, Clément’s birthday with it.
The gate swings open and the children and I step onto the patio together and here’s Lionel, a cage in his hands.
An empty space behind him where Ginny should be.
Clément is frozen in disbelief. I undo the tarp and reveal the coop and Clément stares, his slim chest heaving.
“All right, little man. Why don’t you show your birds their new home?
These other pigeons aren’t good fliers. They’re just here to keep KR company.
” Clément turns to me, incredulous. Sure enough, in the cage is a cream bird with a gray head and blue-tipped wings.
“He’s served me well for five years, given me a number of excellent offspring.
Only right that you should have a shot with him now.
” Nathalie darts ahead and opens the door to the coop so Lionel can carry the cage in.
“Time to talk about acclimation. There’s a lot to go over.
You can’t let them fly too soon. First, they’ve got to make themselves a home in here. ”
Months pass and I stay close to the house, away from the studio, my attention on the children.
I check Nathalie for bruises or signs of distress.
Ask her about her teachers and her lessons.
She tells me everything is fine. After school, Clément goes straight to Lionel’s or home to his coop.
Sometimes the group comes to our house, Lionel and his disciples, and they spend hours examining Clément’s birds, discussing their bone structures and wingspans.
Lionel chose a young female bird for Clément to buy with the chore money he’s saved, and they bred her with KR, and now little yellow squeakers hop around in their own section of the coop. They’ll change color as they grow.
Elise brings art books over and we spread them out, study them in the light. She hates that I’m not painting but I assure her I will again. “It’s just so hard for me not to get carried away.”
She nods, mouth tight, disapproving but trying not to show it.
Winter comes and goes and in May, Lionel tells Clément it should be safe to fly the three adult birds.
“You never know anything for sure,” he says.
“They might choose not to come back. Or a hawk could descend at any moment. But KR’s clearly settled here, so it’s as good a time as any to let him fly. ”