Forty
BACK HOME, IT TAKES DAYS to return to myself.
To Ginny. To the empty rooms after the crowd of people sleeping on the sofa and the floors.
Days to recover from the shock of seeing Delphine.
The pain of separating again. Of saying goodbye.
The view out the car window—streets gutted, unrecognizable—each time I have to go somewhere.
And then, one morning, I wake up and go down to my studio. I pin the notes I took on Delphine’s apartment to the wall. Stare at them over coffee. Turn the paper around and study the other side over lunch.
Eventually, a shape comes to me—as tall as I am and very long, nearly the length of the studio.
I build a frame, worrying that it’s too flimsy.
I’ve never worked so large before. It takes me hours, and it’s skewed to the right, and I cry in frustration prying the nails out, call Lionel to help me.
He’s here an hour later, showing me where I went wrong, saying, “All right now, let’s start over,” telling me about the apartment he’s found in Compton.
We build deep into the night, and this time when it’s finished the lines are straight, the corners sharp and precise, the linen taut.
I’ll need to make a stand next. Something like the base of a table so I can reach every part of it without having to kneel on the floor or climb a ladder.
He helps me plan it out. It takes me a couple days, and then Ginny and I move the canvas onto it.
I spend the next day on colors, asking myself all the while if this is something I can do—paint a scene from some sketches and notes when I’m so used to looking closely, relying on what’s in front of me.
The trust in myself that this will take—it intimidates me.
Delphine says red-and-white curtains hang above her kitchen window.
Says her room has a view of hills and rooftops.
A calico cat likes to curl on her pillow, and a rag rug rests on the spot where she first stands in the mornings.
She keeps a blue chair in a corner. I scour my art books and magazines for shapes and references, stumble upon the old interview with Jean Dubuffet.
I am convinced art has much to do with madness.
Still not right. The same swarm in my head from long ago. And then I grasp it, that third place:
Not sanity, not madness, but dreaming.
A new concept rushes at me. A dreamscape.
Look closely and find the vase hovering over the table, the cat the size of a mouse, the shadows with lives of their own.
The symbols she used to study. The lightness I wish for her.
But then I find myself with her rose-engraved compact in my palm, turning it over. Not all lightness, then.
A feverish stretch of days preparing, the house quiet again, save for Clément stopping by to tend to the birds, Nathalie with him sometimes, the sound of her singing carrying down to the studio.
And Ginny, every morning next to me, every evening home by the time I come through the kitchen door.
We talk about her day, what it’s like to look inside bodies, at bone.
She tells me about breaks and fractures and I read to her from a list I’ve made of memories of Delphine and me from when we were girls.
She asks me if I’ve started painting yet and I say no, that I don’t know why, that I keep making lists even though I have far too many images already, need to winnow them down.
I pace the garden and the house. One afternoon, in front of my bookshelf, a certain red spine calls to me.
The other purchase from that night long ago.
I page through the final chapters to find the line I’m looking for.
Somewhere near the end. Once quoted to me by Elise in a Hollywood bar. And here it is.
“One gets over things,” Carol said.
I didn’t trust it then. Maybe now I do. Carol goes on to describe the life ahead of her, different from what she’d expected.
She says she’s going to like it, and I have a sudden vision of Delphine after the hospital, finding herself in San Francisco, in a bookstore where people are gathered to hear poetry read aloud.
She’s in her old pink dress with the dropped waist. Sandals hastily clasped around her ankles.
A jacket, an expression of wanting. New people around her, new views from every window.
Nothing tying her to Bill or her neighbors.
Nothing tying her to Camarillo. Trusting that I’m taking care of Nathalie, that nothing needs to tie her to anyone anymore. Her life, brand-new.
Morning comes and I make coffee and kiss Ginny goodbye at our threshold.
I refill my mug, warming my hands as I wander past the oak and the coop and the palm and down the steps to my studio.
My canvas fills the room. Ready for me. No traces of resentment or anger or tumult in my chest. In their place, new feelings sprouting, soft pinks and greens, like a garden.
And then I start.
In late September, after a day of painting, Ginny and I have dinner on the patio, push our plates aside, open a beer to split between us, stay out as the light fades. Ginny steals glances at me, a question in her eyes.
“What is it?” I ask her, my feet in her lap.
“I want something,” she says. “I don’t know how you’ll take it.”
“What is it?”
“A ceremony. Not anything traditional, but … Marty knows a priest who will bless us. An ex-priest, I should say. Neither of us go to church anymore, I know that. But, do you think…?”
The mornings at Saint Peter Claver. The stained glass in all its colors. Kneeling and rising. Watching my sisters marry the men they love. A thrill, remembering Ginny’s smile. You marry me.
“Yes,” I say.
We decide to have the celebration at home, to invite all the people we love. Phone calls instead of formal invitations. A list of guests, a blankness at the top where our mothers would be. We spend a long night deciding what to do. “We could write to them,” Ginny finally says.
“All right.”
We compose our letters. Each of them brief and factual. No justifying. No explaining too much. We walk them to the mailbox together and drop them in. I save Claire’s call for last. “A priest?” she says. There’s curiosity in her voice.
“I don’t know much about him, honestly. Except that he’s coming on Saturday, October twenty-third, at three o’clock.”
She laughs, an ease I didn’t expect. “Bernard and I will be there.”
“And Sebastian?”
“I don’t know.”
“I only want you to come if you believe that we deserve it. I don’t want anyone here who doesn’t approve, or want us to be happy. Who doesn’t believe this should happen.”
“What if I want you to be happy, but I also don’t know that it’s right?”
“Then don’t come. If you decide that Sebastian shouldn’t witness us, then I don’t want you there either.” I hang up. Ginny’s hand is on my back, a pressure that keeps my breath steady.
Delphine sends her regrets, but a gift arrives in the mail.
A set of Winsor & Newton brushes, finer than the ones I buy for myself.
To make something beautiful, says the note.
I sit for close to an hour, alone in the kitchen with the brushes in my hands.
And then I go to the phone and I flip through the Rolodex to a number only the children have ever dialed. Hattie answers on the third ring.
“Hattie,” I say. “This is Odette.”
Even though she’s in her own home, I picture her in the old basement sewing studio. Sometimes she’d take calls there and I’d listen in as she spoke about fabrics and measurements or scheduling fittings.
“Is everything okay with the family?” she asks.
“Yes. Everyone’s doing just fine.”
“Oh, good. It isn’t like you to call me. As soon as I heard your voice, I found myself bracing for bad news.”
“No, nothing like that. Good news actually.” I search for the right words. “The kids told me about you and Estelle. I hadn’t considered that it could be possible. To live openly, that way.”
“Huh,” she says. “Well, you know. It’s New Orleans. We’ve always been a little loose about things here.”
“But you and I used to be so careful.”
“That’s because we weren’t quite grown yet. You get older, you learn more about how to make your place.”
“Yes,” I say. “I’m with someone, too. We’re going to have a ceremony. Ginny—that’s her name—she found a priest who will bless us. Have you ever heard of such a thing?”
Hattie laughs. “Sure. I’m very glad for you. When will it be?”
“Just a few weeks from now.”
“Odette,” she says. “Listen. Let me make you a dress.”
“It isn’t a wedding.”
“I know what it is.”
“I’m not sure.”
“What’s your current plan? Some department store thing?”
I laugh. “Not everyone gets custom-tailored clothing, you know.”
“I do know, and it’s a shame. I’m going to have to insist. Will you let me? Or is Ginny the jealous type?”
“No,” I say. “She wouldn’t mind.”
“All right, then. It’s settled. But half our lives have gone by, so long since I’ve seen you. What do you look like now?”
I stretch the cord into the bathroom, look at myself in the mirror. “My hair’s still mostly dark brown. A hint of silver at the temples.”
“How do you like to wear it?”
“Down, most of the time.”
“And what jewelry do you wear?”
“A gold bracelet. A necklace with a medallion, also gold. I have some turquoise earrings that Nathalie gave me. A few bangles that I put on to go out sometimes.”
“So mostly timeless pieces, with a little of the going trends, would you say?”
“I like to think so.”
“While I have you, go ahead and take your measurements.”
“Hattie. The ceremony’s three weeks away.”
“Go on and measure. Take your time.”
I open the kitchen drawer, the sewing tape nestled in back. “All right,” I say. “I’m setting the phone down.”
I wrap the tape around my waist, across my chest, my hips, each time picking up the phone and telling her the numbers. “I can’t fit into the chartreuse dress anymore. I gave it to Nathalie. She’s stunning in it.”
“I’m glad,” she says. “Now measure shoulder to shoulder.” I do, and she asks about what Ginny’s going to be wearing, and what colors would complement it.
“Autumn in California…” she says, and I remember the look she gets in her eyes when she begins to conceptualize a garment.
“I don’t know why it scared me so much,” I say. “The idea of keeping in touch with you. The kids told me about your flat, and your work. The costumes for the opera—they sound beautiful. Are there clippings you could send?”
“No, please don’t apologize,” she says. “I’m sorry. About all of it. What I had you do—it wasn’t fair of me.”
And I’m in the passenger seat of a borrowed car with Cyril, heading to our little honeymoon, and he’s nineteen years old and he believes his future is long, is entwined with mine, that it’s only the beginning for us.
“I don’t regret any of it,” I say. I repeat the words in my head, trying them on, finding that they’re true.
“It gave me my children. It gave me my life. It was another time. What were we supposed to do?”
We speak more, and I listen to her rasp and her drawl. Why did I hide from her for this long? As though all these years hadn’t passed, and I hadn’t grown up and found myself with nearly everything I wanted after all. “Hattie, one more thing,” I say. “Do you know how I can get a hold of Felix?”