Thirty-Two #3
Al shakes his head, opens his mouth to disagree, but the phone rings and Lionel leaves him to answer it. “Hey Ginny,” Lionel says. “I’ve been better, yeah. Okay. Use the back door. You’ll see why.”
Ginny’s here in minutes. She looks like she’s been crying. Maybe I made things difficult by showing up there this morning. Maybe it has nothing to do with me at all. Maybe she’s been worrying about Lionel all day. The truth is it could be anything. I know so little about her life.
“I’m going to clean up the murder scene out there,” Al says.
“I’ll help,” I say.
“Absolutely not,” he says. Lionel rises. “You stay put, too, little brother.”
“Have you all eaten?” Ginny asks. We shake our heads. “I’ll throw something together, and then we’ll figure out what Lionel needs to do.” I watch her opening cabinets, pulling out jars and boxes. Lionel lies down on the sofa and closes his eyes.
Later, we sit around his table, an awkward foursome, each of us jumpy at the cars passing outside. Al’s showered, dressed in Lionel’s clothes. I twirl spaghetti around my fork. Red pepper flakes and olives and capers, briny and bright. “I didn’t know you could cook this way,” I say.
“Was it formal training or osmosis?” Al asks.
“A little of each,” Ginny says.
“Child labor?”
“Pretty sure the rules are laxer when it comes to a family business.”
I don’t know what they’re talking about.
“She grew up in her family’s restaurant,” Lionel tells me. “You didn’t know that?”
“Even I knew that,” Al says, unaware of how it stings.
“Remember when I ordered the whole menu for your thirtieth birthday?” Lionel asks.
“How could I forget? And you told my brother when you went to pay.”
“I swear he started to cry. Slipped that bottle of red wine in, on the house.”
“Yeah, well. Don’t feel too soft about him. He’s welcome to call me anytime.”
“Family,” Lionel says, winking at me. “Right, Odette?”
“Don’t start, you two,” Al says. “Adele and I have been holding everyone together for years. It’s someone else’s turn now.”
We finish eating. We clear the table and wash the dishes. We sit around, waiting for something to happen. It’s late now. “You two go on home,” Al finally says to Ginny and me. “I’ll stay back with Lionel and we’ll figure out a plan.”
We walk outside, stand together at my car. I’d offer her a ride but she lives two blocks away. “I wish I knew everything about you,” I say.
She looks at me again, the way she has been all night, giving nothing away.
Then she opens the door to my car and slides in.
We drive to my house. It’s nearly eleven, a school night, and I pray that Clément and Nathalie will already be sleeping.
We park, I unlock the gate and lead her down the steps.
The kids’ bags are by the door, their shoes kicked off.
The house is dim and silent. Ginny’s face is a blur of sadness.
She accepts my hand when I offer it and I take her into my room and close the door.
She sits on the edge of my bed. “I’m so tired,” she whispers.
I kneel on the floor at her feet. I unlace one of her shoes and then the other.
Resist pressing my mouth to the inches of skin between the hem of her blue jeans and the tops of her socks.
She lies down and I sit next to her, take her head in my lap.
She closes her eyes. A rush of rightness at being here with her, so sweet it has no place in a night like this one.
She falls asleep, her head under my hand as I pet her hair, and for whatever brief and wondrous time we have, I want this and this and more of this.
“Do you still love me?” I ask, but she’s sound asleep.
After a time, she turns over, her head on my pillow now, and I’m wide awake so I get up and go out onto the patio.
The moon’s close to full, the stars brighter than usual, and I sit in the cool night and my heart races.
I hear a car pulling up, and then another. Al’s voice: “Odette, you up?”
I open the gate. Around them, scattered on the sidewalk, filling the back seats of their cars, are cages full of pigeons. “Lionel got a phone call,” Al says. “I don’t especially care to repeat it.”
Lionel’s standing in the yellow of a streetlamp. I remember his soap smell from the morning, the perspiration on his forehead, his urgency. Now his shoulders hunch. “I’ve gotta go for a while,” he says.
We carry the pigeons down the steps and to the coop.
Ginny appears in the doorway. Neither of them seems surprised to see her.
She’s an extra pair of hands, unfastening the latch to the coop and taking the pigeons inside.
The birds ruffle and squawk and now Clément and Nathalie are outside, too. “What’s all this?” Clément asks.
“I need you to take care of them for me,” Lionel says. “A few months, probably.” Clément stands an inch taller than Lionel now. His height, their man-to-man conversation—it fills me with fear.
“Having the birds here isn’t going to put us in any danger, is it?” I ask.
Lionel shakes his head. “It’s not the birds they’re after, it’s me. Plus, I left them the one they want.” Her soft gray body, the quickness of her heart. Our index fingers, making their way down her spine.
“When are you leaving?” I ask Lionel.
“First thing tomorrow.”
“You can sleep at my place,” Ginny says. “I’ll go by your house and pick up anything you need.”
He hugs Nathalie and Clément and Al and me. And then he and Ginny drive away.