Thirty
AT ADELE’S HOUSE ONE NIGHT, she proposes a Halloween bash. “Now that the kids are getting older, it seems smart to be the fun parents, right?” she says. “The ones who throw the best parties. We can show them a great time while keeping them close.”
“Sure,” Claire says. “I miss planning parties together.”
Since Adele quit Les Dames Amis, Claire has taken on more responsibility, become Bea’s second in command.
She tackles our Halloween party plans with new authority.
We host it at Adele and Al’s. Lionel dresses as a skeleton.
Nathalie and Clément and I go as ghosts, dressed all in white with pillowcases over our heads and circles cut out for eyes.
We make ghost sounds when we enter, toss the pillowcases on a chair soon after.
My sisters and I serve orange punch and play spooky music and the house is full of girls in the midst of growth spurts and boys with cracking voices.
I join a group of mothers in the den, commiserating over how impossible it is to keep our refrigerators stocked and pantries full.
“The children are, quite literally, devouring my husband’s paycheck,” one of the mothers says.
She speaks huskily, scans the small crowd of laughing women, lands on me.
Communicates something with her eyes. Like the surfer. Like Ginny. But not Ginny. I look away.
Later she finds me in the kitchen, leans against the counter with her drink.
Looks me over, my white dress and white stockings and white gloves.
Gaze stopping again at my face. She’s dressed as a witch.
My opposite, all in black. Square jaw and dainty nose and a mouth like a slash.
“Claire and Adele’s elusive younger sister,” she says.
“The one who skips the parties and rarely goes to Mass.”
“I didn’t realize I’d earned a reputation.”
“I’ve just noticed you over the years,” she says. “That’s all.”
And then Nathalie’s storming in, calling for me. “Rudy’s being horrible,” she says. “He keeps lunging at me with his stupid vampire teeth,” and she grabs my wrist and yanks me out of the kitchen and I’m glad of it. Released of the moment. No choices to be made.
The next week, I strip Clément’s bed and something on the sheets is glue-like, hardened.
I tell Al the next day at the plant and he comes later.
I eavesdrop from the kitchen as they sit on the sofa and talk about men’s bodies and what they can do.
The responsibilities that come with it. Realize I should have had Al come sooner, before the dreams, and how alarming it must have been to wake up that way.
But then Clément says, “I go to school, Uncle Al. I know all about it. Plus Rudy’s been talking about this stuff forever. ”
Later that night I call Nathalie into my room.
We sit on the bed and talk about bodies.
The words don’t come easily; I never had this conversation with Maman or my sisters.
She says she already knows a little bit, but she listens intently as I describe menstruation, watches as I clip a pad onto a pair of underwear, tries doing it herself.
“We’ll keep one in your school bag, in case it comes while you’re there.”
It doesn’t, though. It comes at home, just two weeks later—I was almost too late—and she cries no matter how I try to console her, and that night I’m seized.
Delphine, Delphine. I don’t know where she is, if she’s alive.
If she’s growing older inside the hospital or making a life outside of it.
I don’t know if she’s sane, if she thinks of us, and the questions swarm my brain and my body until I take a stolen minute alone in Bernard’s office one afternoon and dial Camarillo.
A man answers. I tell him Delphine’s name. He’s never heard it.
Through the winter and spring, Nathalie’s body changes before my eyes.
The new contrast of her waist to her hips.
A slight filling out and then, seemingly overnight, another two inches of height.
Eye to eye with me now. I take her to Bullock’s, sit on the fitting room’s sofa where, behind a screen, a matronly saleswoman fits her for a bra.
At home, I catch her posing in front of the bathroom mirror, angling her face to the side. “I want short bangs,” she says.
“Like when you were little?”
“No,” she says, rolling her eyes. “Like Audrey Hepburn. Will you cut them?”
“Sure,” I say. Holding her chin steady, a blurring of time. She’s five and she’s twelve. Her breath against my hand like the first time. Like I’m just meeting her. I pause for a moment to collect myself. “Good?” I ask.
“Good,” she says.
On an April morning, when I’m about to leave for the plant, she slips into my bedroom, pauses at my vanity.
Blur of motion, something disappearing into her pocket.
She comes home that evening, her lips painted Cashmere Bouquet.
I check my vanity and the gold tube is missing.
“You look lovely,” I say. “You’re free to borrow my things. I just need you to ask next time.”
“Fine,” she mutters, but I hear her on the phone later, cord pulled to the patio. “You look lovely,” she mimics. “But next time you really need to ask.” She snickers and I’m cut by the meanness. Clément sees me frowning.
“Gin rummy?” he says.
We play hand after hand until she joins us on the rug. “Switch to a three-person game,” she says. “Don’t leave me out.”
A few weeks later I’m home from work and Nathalie has the sewing machine set up at the table.
She’s taking her uniform skirt up at the hem, pinning it at least three inches shorter.
I just bought her this one a month or two ago, after she outgrew the last. She glances at me across the room. “How was your day, Mommy?”
“It was fine.”
“What did you listen to?”
“The Platters,” I say. “‘Smoke Gets in Your Eyes.’”
“Sounds nice.” She steps on the pedal, feeds the fabric through. I’m caught. She knows it. Either I let her go ahead, pretend I don’t see or don’t care, or I say something and risk angering her.
“How will the sisters feel about this?” I can’t help myself. “It will be an expense if we need to replace it.”
Machine still running, she doesn’t glance up.
“Don’t be silly, Mommy. All the girls are doing it.
” The next morning she’s adorable in her shorter skirt, her short bangs, ankle socks trimmed with lace, and shiny loafers.
I’m applying lipstick in my bedroom and she joins me at the mirror, asks if she can wear some.
I blend it onto her lips, a thin stain of coral.
Clément eyes her with skepticism, tying his tie by the refrigerator.
I kiss their cheeks, receive hugs. They’re still out when I get home from work.
I heat soup for dinner, warm bread in the oven, and then they come in, Clément subdued, Nathalie storming.
She throws her schoolbag down by the door.
“The sisters made me stay after school.” She’s been crying. I’m worried they’ve embarrassed her. Her new awareness of her beauty, her pride.
“Was it the skirt?” I ask.
“No. It’s not the skirt. They’ve had it out for me for years, and you’re asking about my skirt?”
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I didn’t mean anything by it.” I go to hug her but she tenses and pushes me away. Rushes to the phone and starts dialing.
“Who are you calling?” I ask.
“Oh my God. Really?” Her voice is a shriek.
Clément shakes his head. Sets up with his textbooks at the table.
All I wanted was a normal evening together.
I am so tired of getting things wrong. I take the bread from the oven, thrust the pan with a clatter onto the stove.
“Dinner’s ready,” I say, “serve yourselves,” and I storm past Nathalie and poor Clément, too, slam the gate shut and walk to Lionel’s house.
He’s on his front steps when I get there, locking his door with a key. “Oh,” I say. “You’re going out?”
“I’m meeting a girl at the bar up the street,” he says. “But I can be late. You look like you could use a beer.” We sit on his front steps. Clink bottles. The beer is cold going down.
I say, “Now I understand why you never wanted children.”
He smiles. “They’re giving you a hard time? I guess they’re at that age.”
“It’s all Nathalie. Clément’s fine. He seems as perplexed as I am.”
“Little man,” he says with affection. We sit for a while, drinking our beers, watching people pass. Just being with him calms me.
“The worst part is I don’t think I’ve ever loved her more.
I mean God. Have you noticed how beautiful she is?
How smart? I can’t believe Delphine is missing it.
All of this. Do you think she’d be doing a better job than I am?
” Lionel wipes tears off my face. Leans his shoulder into mine.
A woman comes into view, slowing as she nears us.
Rich brown skin, her hair straightened and shaped into a flip.
Lionel’s date. I raise my hand in a wave, smile reassuringly.
She lifts her hand, sends a cautious smile back.
“It’s my fault he’s late,” I call to her.
“Family trouble.” I pat his knee. “Go on then,” I say, and I watch them walk together up the block.
The rest of the week passes. A strain through the house.
More rolled eyes. Whispered phone conversations, her hand cupped over the receiver.
Clément steers clear of us, out at the coop or engrossed in his schoolwork.
On Friday night, I’m peeling carrots, listening to a review of Hitchcock’s latest film on the radio—set in San Francisco, starring James Stewart and Kim Novak—when, from out of nowhere, Nathalie stomps into the kitchen and says, “Why aren’t you talking to me?
” I almost check behind me to see who else she could be asking.
Her fists are tight, her face flushed. I switch the radio off. “Honestly, I don’t know what I can say that won’t make you angry.”
“Just act normal,” she says. “All I want is for things to be normal.”