Thirty-Five
A COUPLE WEEKS LATER, I follow Ginny home from work after her final shift.
The days are getting warmer, longer. She pours chilled tea from a jar she brewed last night.
We sit at her table, fan running, careful not to touch each other.
I feel her protecting her heart. I want to protect it, too.
She tells me about her childhood in the restaurant.
Peeling garlic bulbs with her brother after school, heavy blocks of cheese and jugs of cream, slabs of meat hanging in the walk-in, sauce cooking on the stove for hours.
She’d clear invoices and time cards off the desk in her parents’ office, make just enough room to do her homework until she was called out to help.
“My favorite waitress was named Esme,” she says.
“She had a very long neck, carried a pencil behind her ear even though I never saw her write down an order. She was quick and knew all the regulars by name. She’d offer me puffs of her cigarettes out back sometimes.
Gave me cuts of her tips when I helped bus her tables. My first crush, probably.”
She sips her iced tea, wipes her mouth with the back of her hand.
A couple evenings later, we’re at her place again. Stripes of light through her shutters, shadows on her wall. “Tell me what happened with Pamela,” I say.
“That morning, after you came here, we fought. She accused me of things I never would have done to her.” She adjusts the shutters to let in more light.
Keeps her hand on the lever a moment longer.
“But at the same time, she was right. I’m not saying I didn’t love her, too.
It’s just that it was never the same as with you, and it doomed us, I think. That difference.”
Low in my stomach, a twist of regret and guilt and gladness. For a few minutes I’m unable to say anything. “I’m sorry,” I finally whisper. “I’ve loved you all this time.”
Still, we don’t touch.
Another day, a Saturday, we’re in her living room chairs under an open window. “What should I know about you?” she asks.
“Delphine,” I say. Her name lingers in the quiet of the room.
Ginny waits. “She’s alive somewhere. When I let myself think about it, it’s like I’m being swallowed up by grief.
To know that she’s living her life and it isn’t alongside mine.
” I tell her the story of how we ended, realize it isn’t the right one.
I should tell her about everything before—before Los Angeles, before Bill, before her portrait in the window.
The story of our girlhood. But it’s too much for me right now.
Ginny’s eyes are sad. Her mother. Her brother. The losses we survive.
Later, she tells me about the courses she took in X-ray technology. The certificate she recently earned.
“When did you start taking them?”
“When it was clear the plant was leaving. Thought it would be best to make a plan right away.”
“I’m trying to hold on to it as long as I can,” I say. My booth with its music, the bustle of the cafeteria, after-work drinks with the girls, the long familiar drive to Hollywood and back … Her hand touches mine, the first time since the party.
“What are you afraid of?” she asks. As absurd as asking if there’s a sky above us.
“Everything,” I say.
She laces her fingers through mine. “But not this, right?”
“Especially this.”
“The laws have changed,” she says. “Your children are older.”
When it’s time to go, I walk out of her door, down her front apartment steps to where I’ve parked my car, and the light hits me a certain way—warm and at a slant—and I remember Delphine.
We were in the middle of Crenshaw and the traffic was stopped all around us, and she was in a different place, somewhere very far away, and I couldn’t reach her.
How lost she was, how unable to see what was true.
I unlock my door, slide in, rest my head on the wheel.
Could it be possible that Ginny’s world is the real one?
At home, Nathalie’s at the table, sewing machine humming, clips of fabric and thread everywhere.
She shows me her dress pattern, the progress she’s made.
It’s black with thin straps, a bodice with a big black bow at the chest, and a full skirt.
“I wouldn’t normally choose a dress with a bow across it, but it’s very sophisticated, don’t you agree? ”
“I do,” I say. “I can picture you in it.”
It’s for the Jefferson High talent show.
She’ll be performing an original song. “And we just heard the most incredible thing,” she says.
“Dootsie Williams is going to be there. He donated some money to put the show on, and Al says that if someone catches his eye he might offer to produce their record.”
I run some water at the sink, watch Clément in the yard with the pigeons, a young man out there with him. He shows the man Ace’s wingspan.
“Would you like to hear my song?” Nathalie asks.
“Yes,” I say. “I would love to hear it.”
We move into the living room. She takes a seat on the piano bench and I sit in my garden-motif chair, where I have the best view of her.
She takes in a quick breath, nervous, and begins.
Her playing is pleasing, confident, fingers pressing chords and notes, a new effortlessness to it.
She’s been practicing. And then she starts to sing.
I gave you my heart in the moon room
We’ll never part in the moon room
Summer might come
and you’ll stick out your thumb
let somebody drive you away
But soon as winter appears
the snow up to your ears
we’ll be in the moon room
in the moon room again
I clap when she finishes. “It’s absolutely beautiful,” I say.
“It isn’t really about her,” she says. “The moon room just sounded nice. Maybe it’s a love song. I’m still figuring it out.”
She’s self-conscious, twisting on the bench, playing a smattering of notes before looking at me again.
I wish I could take her discomfort away.
All of a sudden she’s the little girl in Elise’s pool, clinging to me while I reassure her.
I say, “It can be a love song and a childhood song. It can be a song about a mother and a song about a romance. It can be whatever someone makes of it. Most art is about more than one thing at a time.” She smiles.
“How do you feel when you play and sing?”
“Peaceful,” she says, but I can see her doubt the word upon speaking it. “Maybe more like contained. My thoughts don’t race as much. There isn’t space for anything else. Is that what it feels like to you when you paint?”
“Not always. But when it’s going right, then yes. Play it for me again?”
She does, and it’s even more beautiful on the second listen. Wistful and sad and mysterious. I tell her so. We go back to the kitchen, she starts up the sewing machine. “Are you hungry?” I ask. “I could make us omelets.”
“Sure,” Nathalie says. “That sounds nice.”
I take the eggs from the carton, beat them in a bowl. Set them aside and chop onions. They make me cry, they always do.
“Do you and Clément mind it?” I ask, turning to her again. “When I stay out sometimes?”
She finishes a section of the skirt. Stops the machine and looks up. “We don’t mind it at all.”
“Okay,” I say. “Just making sure.” I heat the butter in the pan. A tingle starts at the back of my skull. Like I’m levitating, like I’m outside my body, and I say, “If you ever need me when I’m gone, I’m at Ginny’s house.” I pour the eggs for the first omelet into the pan.
Nathalie stands, stretches her arms over her head, moves her neck from one side to the other.
Gorgeous, like Delphine, and I swear that, sometimes, she has something of my smile about her.
My love for her almost bowls me over—it always has, something in her that was always meant to be with me, as terrible as the reasons were.
Inevitable, Nathalie and me. She crosses to me, takes me in her arms. She’s taller than me now.
It happened a few months ago, a fraction of an inch, she threw her head back and laughed when Clément declared it was true.
“You deserve to be happy, Mommy,” she says.
Later, I make dinner for the three of us. A rare night when we’re all home together, present in the house, talking and laughing.
When we’re finished Nathalie says, “We’ll clean up. Won’t we, Clément?”
They do. I go down to the studio and turn on the lights. I look for a while, at my paintings from a distance. When I go back to the house, Clément and Nathalie are sitting at the kitchen table. They turn to me when I shut the door.
“We’ve been talking about our summers in New Orleans,” Clément says.
“We don’t know if we ever mentioned it…” Nathalie says. “Aunt Hattie, she lives with a woman. Did you know that?”
Even after all this time, my heart seizes. “A woman?” I ask.
“Her name is Estelle,” Clément says.
They’re both fixed on me, intent. I take the third seat at the table.
“Everyone knows about their relationship,” Nathalie says.
“It’s sort of no big deal. Mama Laurent goes over for dinner at least once a week.
Hattie uses the front room as her studio.
It’s really big and full of light. Whenever we go, she’s making these incredible costumes for the opera and the ballet.
One summer she was in New York, working, and we didn’t get to see her.
We still saw Estelle, though. She’s very sweet.
She does accounting and keeps house. Hattie gets sort of lost in her work.
A little bit like you. They take us out when we’re there, to listen to jazz. ”
“You never told me,” I say.
“You didn’t really ask about our summers,” Nathalie says. “It was clear to us, that it mattered to you that we were happy and taken care of, but apart from that you didn’t want to know.”
Clément says, “She always asks about you.”
Nathalie leans forward, rests her chin on her hands. “We thought maybe you’d like to tell us.” So I do. I start at the beginning, when I was seventeen, and I went to Hattie for dresses for me and my sisters. I tell them how I felt something I never had before. How it grew into my first real love.
“Where did my father fit in?” Clément asks when I’m finished.
“Oh, the feelings for Hattie had long faded by then,” I say. He nods, he believes me. I wear the lie like a sweater too tight around the throat, a discomfort I can live with.
After we’ve said goodnight, when I’m in my nightgown in bed, sitting up reading, the two of them appear at my door. Nathalie says, “There’s something we’ve kept from you, too. Something that happened a couple years ago, on the train.”
“It wasn’t anything bad,” Clément says.
“It was late at night and our porter came by our seats and woke us up, just Clément and me. He told us to follow him and we did, through the train cars to the dining car. They weren’t serving anymore, they’d been closed for hours already.
But there was one table all set for dinner.
White tablecloth and a little vase of flowers, silver cutlery and cloth napkins.
Very elegant. Our porter told us to sit, and we did, and then Felix was there, taking the seat across from us.
It was so strange. Like a dream, almost.”
Felix. Like he’s suddenly here, breathing in the room.
“He was in his uniform,” Clément says. “Just the same as it used to be.”
“The cook brought us shrimp cocktail and steak and dinner rolls.”
“Then there was chocolate cake and coffee. We talked for a long time.”
My eyes burn. The missing him palpable, a pressure in my chest. Tears fall, I can’t stop them. “I’m just crying because I miss him,” I say. “Please tell me more. How did you feel?”
Nathalie says, “At first, I thought I’d be angry. But … it was just so good to be with him again.”
“We felt worried about you,” Clément says. “We felt like we were betraying you.”
“You weren’t betraying me.”
“But we had fun,” Nathalie says. “We shared stories. We played poker with a couple of the other porters.”
“After he abandoned you,” Clément says. “We didn’t even say anything to him about it. We just ate and played cards and had a good time.”
“That’s exactly what you should have done,” I say. “If that’s what felt right to you, if it’s what you wanted.”
“But aren’t you angry with us?”
“It’s painful,” I say. “That he still wouldn’t write to me or call me up. But it also makes me happy, picturing you three together, knowing that he’s all right.”
“We didn’t tell anyone,” Clément says. “Our cousins were still sleeping when we got back to our seats.”
I shake my head. “I don’t want you to feel like you have to keep secrets,” I say.
“I don’t want that for you, ever, with anyone.
” I say it more forcefully than I mean to.
They’re startled. “I’m not angry with you,” I say again, my voice softer.
I’m trying my best to get this right. “I want you to have the most true and beautiful lives. I want you to have the kind of lives where you never have to hide and you never have to pretend and you know that the people you love can handle the truth, even when it’s hard or uncomfortable. You don’t need to protect me.”
They’re standing side by side. Watching me closely.
“Okay,” Clément says.
“Yes, Mommy,” Nathalie says. “Okay.”