Thirty-Seven #2
Claire agrees and they follow me in Adele’s car, and as soon as they’re in my living room, I pour us all bourbon on ice, my hands shaky as I hold the bottle, as I hand them their glasses.
They’re together on the sofa. I perch on the edge of Nathalie’s piano stool, right across from them.
I say, “I have something to share with you. It’s not going to be easy for you to accept it.
” The whole drive home, I thought about the words to use.
I don’t want shadowy ones, words with room for misinterpretation or ambiguity.
So I say, “I’m a homosexual,” and I let it stand, watch Claire balk.
“No. No. Absolutely not.”
I say, “Claire, I’m thirty-six years old. I know myself. Plenty of people, here and back home, live openly. Men with men and women with women. I’m going to do the same.”
“With who?” Claire asks.
“With Ginny,” I say. “It’s been going on for a long time. I did everything I could to let it go, but I can’t. I don’t want to. I want to live with the person I love.”
“You always liked other people more than us,” Claire says. “You liked Delphine more than us. Lionel more than us. Your Hollywood friend, your girls from work, Nathalie, even when she was a stranger.”
The words startle me. So far from what I expected.
Adele puts her hand on Claire’s, an attempt to quiet her.
I say, “I don’t know if that’s true. It’s more like it felt difficult to fit in with you.
You two always had each other. I felt more comfortable with them.
We were all different in one way or another.
I fit better. It doesn’t have as much to do with liking as it has to with fitting. ”
Claire’s shaking her head. “You’re still so beautiful. So many men—”
“Shhh,” Adele says. “You aren’t listening to her.”
“Next time you come here,” I say. “It will be Ginny’s home, too.”
Claire stands, collects her purse, sets her drink, unsipped, on the coffee table.
“I’m going to wait outside,” she says to Adele, and Adele nods, and we let her go.
My dress is damp under the arms, my shoulders tight.
Adele hasn’t said anything to me. I look at her and wait.
Her face is concerned but open. I wonder if Al prepared her.
“Are you sure?” she asks.
“I’m sure.”
“All right, then. Okay. Al and the boys will come help you move Ginny’s things.” She stands and I stand and she hugs me. Her gentle arms, her floral perfume, her barrette against my cheek. She steps back, keeps her hands on my forearms. There’s amusement in her eyes.
“What is it?” I ask her.
“Our worry was always that you’d fall for Lionel, and here you go, falling for his best friend.
” She smiles wide and I do, too. “I’ve always liked Ginny,” she says.
“And you drive me crazy sometimes, but I admire the way you keep us on our toes.” She kisses my cheek, and then she’s gone.
I’m alone in the house. A numbness, an exhaustion.
And then the strange sensation of a light rain, falling all around me.
I’ll paint it, maybe. A living room scene.
For so long, my whole life, I’ve been holding myself so tightly, I’ve been so afraid of my own self, of being found out, of being dangerous and bad and destructive. But I’m not. I’m not.
The weekend of moving comes. First the kids to their ground-level apartment in Westwood.
Al and Bernard do most of it—the sight of them together making me cry—and Nathalie arranges for piano movers to come, pays for it herself from money she’s earned babysitting.
The men file into my living room, take it away, and here’s my fireplace again, my mantel, so much space for walking.
For a minute, I stand in the dusty spot where the piano was.
Then I load my car with the kids’ clothes and drive the boxes over.
By the time I leave, they’re eating pizza, happy and tired, promising they’ll come over one night soon for dinner.
Clément will be here nearly daily to care for the birds.
A comfort, because otherwise they might fade away from me.
Their full lives, their deep friendships, their jobs and their classes and their new neighborhood, no time for me anymore.
Just let me be an observer, I want to say. Tell me about it, let me stay close.
I clear out the left side of my dresser, empty half of the medicine cabinet and the upper two bathroom drawers.
Ginny isn’t attached to any of her furniture, but her pots and pans are a better quality than mine, and she has a small collection of art that we find places for on the wall.
One is a photograph from her time in Montana.
We hang it in the alcove above the telephone.
In the days that follow, I stare at it when I’m on a call, and sometimes I get a feeling like I’m on a mountain, and it’s very cold, and I’m living an entirely foreign life.
She fills a shelf with her paperbacks and she leaves a pair of soft plaid slippers by the door.
She showers in my tub. She spits toothpaste in my sink.
She sleeps in my bed. She makes coffee on my stove.
She reads on my patio. She peels oranges at my counter.
She kisses me good morning and goodnight and whenever we pass each other in the hallway.
We watch The Ed Sullivan Show and we divide the sections of the paper and every evening we talk.
I show her my paintings. I show her all my favorite shades of blue.
She wrinkles her nose at the turpentine.
She sits with a painting of flowers for a long time, just looking.
“I want to paint you,” I say. “I know exactly how it should be.”
She helps me carry down the mattress. I place it where I put my chair years ago, at the edge of the forest part, make it up in the white sheets again, tell Ginny how and where to lie. She’s nude. I need to paint all of her. “Are you okay with it?” I ask.
“Sure,” she says. “I have nothing to hide.”