Forty-One
FELIX APPEARS TWO AND A half weeks later, a box in his hands at the garden gate.
It’s gold with white embossed letters: Studio Laurent.
“I have a special delivery,” he says. He’s still in his uniform, called from Union Station to warn me he was coming.
I accept the box and we walk together down to the patio.
I take a good look at him. He has new lines by his eyes, a new shape to his hairline, curved like the Mississippi River.
I tell him so and he throws his head back and laughs, and his laugh is the same as it always was.
“I hate it when people disappear,” I say. “Why did you do that?”
“I often ask myself the same question,” he says, serious now. “I lost hold of time. I felt bad about myself over it. And then so much of it had passed that I was sure you wouldn’t forgive me.”
“I forgive you,” I say. “Please, Felix. Let’s not be that way with each other.”
“All right,” he says. “But tell me now. What’s this I hear about you and Ginny? Seems I was missing a crucial piece of information.”
“You were. I don’t know why I didn’t tell you. It doesn’t make sense to me anymore. Except that I was so afraid. I’m sorry.”
Hurt in his eyes. Understanding, too. “Water under the bridge,” he says.
“Tell me you’ll stay for the wedding.”
“Hattie told me I wasn’t allowed to call it a wedding.”
“Stay for the ceremony. For the party. Everyone will be so glad to see you.”
“I’m not so sure about that.”
“I’ll force them to be glad.”
He grimaces, doesn’t meet my eye.
“Felix,” I say. “Let’s be brave, both of us.”
We prop open the gate, Holiday losing his little mind at the parade of guests.
We hide nothing, greeting them on the sidewalk, me in the emerald dress Hattie made, sleeveless with a low V down the back, Ginny in a burnt-sienna suit.
We exclaim and we embrace and we welcome, the bougainvillea pink and bright behind us.
Elise and Espen. Marty and Rose, all the way from Montana.
Claud and Ivy. Adele and Al and Elizabeth and Paul.
Rudy with a date. Nathalie with her friends, Clément with his.
Felix, alone, hands clasped behind his back until the family holds out arms to embrace him.
An older woman now, appearing a bit lost with a man my age behind her.
She stops short when she sees me, and she looks me over, and she has Ginny’s mouth and when she smiles it’s Ginny’s smile and I start to cry.
I take both of her hands in mine, and I say, “You came. It’s so wonderful to meet you.
” And here’s Ginny now, beside me. They embrace for a long time, and when they let go Ginny’s cheeks are wet but she’s so happy, happier than I’ve ever seen her.
And I keep myself from standing too long at the gate, stop myself from hoping.
Over long ago. No one gets everything. Just one more minute for Claire and Bernard and Sebastian, but no sign of them either.
Pain now but it’s all right. One gets over things.
The priest arrives—young, in robes, a solemnity that belies his rebelliousness.
Ginny and I stand in the center of a circle while he speaks about love and reads from the Bible.
I’ve called you by name, you are mine. He blesses us but I feel so holy I could have blessed us myself.
Afterward, Nathalie sings while her friend plays the guitar, voice like silk as she croons, At last, my heart’s an open door.
We’re pouring champagne when Claire and Bernard and Sebastian appear at the top of the steps. She’s flushed, wringing her hands. “I couldn’t decide. Bernard ended up pushing us out the door, and now look at this. Look at you. And I missed it.”
“Everyone’s still here,” I say. “You didn’t miss everything.” And Adele hands them glasses for the toasts, and Ginny and I sit together, our fingers intertwined, as Lionel stands, the most dressed up I’ve ever seen him in a blazer and a narrow black tie, a crisp white shirt tucked into slacks.
He taps his glass with a knife and the guests quiet. He clears his throat, flashes everyone a smile, pulls a note card from his pocket, begins.
“For a man who has never desired to get married and settle down, I’ve thought an inordinate amount about mating rituals.
Not only the human variety, but also the ornithological one.
Most specifically the often derided but truly extraordinary, magisterial breed of bird commonly referred to as the pigeon.
” Clément whoops. “Take these basic facts: One. It’s widely known that many bird species mate for life, and pigeons are especially fidelitous.
Two. In my line of work, I decide which birds I choose to breed for my next generation of fliers.
I am sorry to admit that I break up pairs of them sometimes.
Separate them. Put them together with a different bird.
I can’t force them to cheat, but give them a little time, and animals will follow their nature.
Still, even after these dalliances, many of the original pairs will come back together again.
By the way, I’ve noticed, quite a few times over, that while there are plenty of male and female bonded pairs, some of the pairs are male and male, and some are female and female.
” He winks and the crowd laughs. “Three. If a pigeon is sick or hurt, its mate attends to it. Makes sure its sweetheart gets the food that it needs, keeps it warm, keeps it company. I’m not waxing poetic here.
I’m just stating the facts. Now, you might be asking yourself, ‘Why is Lionel Dumas standing here going on and on about birds?’”
“No one’s asking. We’re all used to it by now,” Al calls from his table.
“All right, all right. I’ll cut to the chase.
” He sets down his note card. He looks straight at Ginny and me.
“I’ve been blessed with a lot of good people in my life.
You’re two of the best. My closest of friends.
My dearest of family. Both of you. I spent an awfully long time watching you two love each other from afar.
Sometimes a bird builds a nest and waits for the other one.
Sometimes birds are divided for a time and there’s nothing they can do about it except make the most of the situation they’re in.
The luckiest ones? They find each other and they stay together until the very end.
” He lifts his glass, and the rest of us do the same.
“To Odette and Ginny,” he says. He hugs us both, clumsily wipes the mascara from under my eyes with his thumbs, says, “Ginny, you’ll have to help me out here.
” Ginny dips her clean napkin into her water glass, gently blots.
And then more people stand. One after another wishes us health and happiness and long futures and tells stories and jokes, and none of them are mean, and everybody’s sweet, and I’m so lucky.
We eat gumbo and thick slices of French bread.
We drink Sazeracs and we dance. And it gets late, and some friends say they should go.
Embraces at the gate again. Ginny’s mother saying goodbye, saying dinner at their house one night, she hopes.
Marty and Rose, heading back to their hotel.
Clément’s friends out to a bar, Nathalie’s friends home to get some sleep before work and school.
And then it’s quiet on the street, quiet down on the patio and inside the house.
“Where are all the rest of them?” I ask.
Ginny closes the gate. “I don’t know,” she says. “Let’s go see. But kiss me first.”
I place my hands on the sides of her face. Dark eyes, smiling. Hair tucked behind her ears. I draw her close. Kiss her in the cool night, the lanterns lit in the trees above us, Holiday lying on his side on the patio, fast asleep.
And then we’re guided by voices from below.
My studio lights are on and I can see them gathered inside through the windows.
Adele’s leaning against the wall, just inside the door when we enter.
She says, “I’ve been standing here, watching people’s faces as they come in and look. I couldn’t be prouder.”
My painting is finished, leaning across the expanse of the far wall, large as a mural.
First came a pale pink background, the color of Delphine’s old dress.
Then, her apartment. Red-and-white curtains, calico cat, empty blue chair.
Where her rag rug would be, I put a patch of blue sky instead.
It startled me, wasn’t what I’d been planning.
I spent a day watching Clément’s birds spin in the sky, mixed colors the next morning, painted a pair of birds in the patch of blue.
Look, it’s us. And from there the painting became like the camera obscura, a shifting horizon line, no up or down, and I moved around it instinctively, orbiting it.
More images came to me. A scrap of lace.
Claire’s green-and-beige linoleum, slicked with wax.
Laundry on a line. A thicket of blackberries.
At first I was timid and then I was certain, and Ginny held me at night when I stumbled in, bleary-eyed and exhausted, and Elise brought me lunches, craned her neck from the doorway, didn’t step over the threshold.
I was down each morning with the first light, I was there until my legs couldn’t hold me.
I kept records playing until I lost the sense of sound altogether and then I remembered sound again, one afternoon, my hands covered in yellow and white, and it came on like an intense hunger, a craving for something specific, something I didn’t have.
I went up to the house and called Elise.
“Is it finished?”
“No. I need something.”
“What is it?”
“Music. Something with a violin.”
“I’ll go to Wallichs. I’ll head straight over from there.”