Page 117 of Meet Me in the Garden

“You know what I noticed the most?” She takes my hands, one in each of hers, so that our palms touch flat, my fingers and wrists on display. “When we met, your hands were the same shape.”

I nod. My right hand is now thicker at the wrist than my left, its fingers broader. Who knew that the muscles in fingers would widen with use? Who would have guessed that I would like it? Less appealing, though, is the skin on both my hands, cracked from the oil, no matter how often I lotion them. Paint still lodges deep under my fingernails regardless of how I scrub.

“Parts of you are softer,” Ginny says. She runs her hands over my belly, the sides of my breasts. And then she takes my hands again. “And parts are stronger, too.”

I finish the painting. Title it,Marriage Bed Number Two. I wish I could see them side by side, but the first is in a Manhattan apartment, the property of a young collector.

“We’ll get it loaned back for your first museum show,” Elise says, serious.

My last day at the plant comes. Wide halls and cavernous rooms and barely anyone there. Only Gladys is still working in the cafeteria, sandwiches and tomato soup our only choices, a room of vacant tables and chairs. Bernard’s still dividing his weeks between Hollywood and Santa Maria, but soon that will end. He comes here today, a Friday. I’ve been taking inventory for the last week, and now I’m finished. We go over the figures together.

“Are you happy?” he asks when our work is done. “With Ginny?”

“Very,” I say.

“I’m glad, then. I may not understand it, but there’s plenty on this earth that I don’t understand. As long as you still love all of us, I see no harm in you loving her, too.”

I touch his arm, tears in my eyes. “You’ll work on my sister?”

“I’ll do my best.”

He moves on to his next task, and I take one last lap through the building. The Finishing room and the Art Department, Production and Listening. The manager’s lounge, overlooking a near-carless parking lot. The long row of open stalls in the ladies room. I pour myself a cup of coffee in the cafeteria. Gladys is gone and no cream’s out, so I walk behind the serving counter for the first time, take the carton of creamfrom the large refrigerator and top off my cup. I sit and sip until it’s empty. I carry my cup to the counter and go downstairs, take my jacket and my purse from my locker. I clock out.

The next morning, Ginny and I read together in bed, coffee and toast on a tray between us. After a time, her mouth finds my neck, books splayed on the nightstands, moving together. Lunch, talking, falling asleep again in the afternoon. We wake and it’s still light, will be for hours more, so we go out in the garden, pull weeds, and Clément lets himself in through the gate, and Nathalie’s with him. “You had your last day,” she says. “We should celebrate.”

Ginny stands, garden dirt on her knees. “I’ll make us spaghetti and clams for dinner.” She heads into the kitchen. Nathalie tells me about her astronomy class while Clément works in the coop. He lets the birds out and Holiday comes bounding from where he’d been sound asleep in a patch of sun to yap at them. Clément looks down at him and shakes his head. After a time I go in to help Ginny. I wash a cutting board she’s through with, breathe in the garlic and white wine steam from the pan. I put Dylan on the record player because I know the children like him. He strums and rambles from the living room, some never-ending song, and Clément and Nathalie are framed through the window, and Ginny’s hand grazes my waist as she reaches for the bowls.

“Ginny,” I say. There’s a tightness in my chest. “Could we have had this all along?”

She stops, takes a moment to see what I see, to understand what I’m asking. Our faces are reflected in the glass, close together, and through it, the sky is darkening to a purple-blue. Nathalie and Clément laugh over something. She pushes his shoulder, he pretends that it hurts him, but he’s smiling, and the birds are coming back down, perching on the coop. Ginny pulls her oven mitt off, sets it on the counter. She puts her hands on my waist, like we’re dancing. “Not like this,” she says. “Or else we would have.”

THIRTY-EIGHT

IT COMESon a sweltering August afternoon. A Wednesday, two years after the kids moved out and Ginny moved in. I’m checking the mail in my painting smock and here it is. Startling, my vision doubling. A pale orange envelope, sent to my name. The return address says Mary Beth Greer, but I would recognize her handwriting anywhere.

I go back through the gate, sit on the garden steps to read it. Delphine says she’s living in San Francisco. She’s wondering if Nathalie and I might be open to calling her, or even coming for a visit.There’s something important that I need to talk to both of you about, she writes. I go straight into the house and call Nathalie. We have an agreement that whenever—ifever—I hear about Delphine, I’ll tell her right away. I hurry as I press the numbers, each second that passes like another betrayal. “Delphine wrote me,” I tell her.

“Read it to me,” she says. So I do.

“We can handle this however you want to,” I say.

“Okay,” Nathalie says. “I have to go to class but… Okay let’s talk about it later.”

For the past few days, I’ve been working on a commission for the Dooto Center. My first time doing anything like it. It’s a painting of the stage in their new private lounge. Velvet curtains and slick floor, instruments setout and waiting for the players. Back down in my studio, the painting is unfamiliar. The colors are strange, I can’t find the right music. There’s a buzz in my chest, in my brain, a thrum of anxiety that keeps me from sinking into anything. And theheat. I surrender to it, wash my brushes, cover my palette to keep the paints good for tomorrow, hang up my smock. I find a shaded spot on the patio, close my eyes.

Delphine wrote to me.

I wake on the patio to sounds of the gate swinging open, and something farther away, too. A distant crowd. Ginny’s coming down the steps in her scrubs. “Something’s happening,” she says. “People are out on the street. We should go see.”

She stops to kiss me, doesn’t rush it, her mouth against mine and lingering, before going inside to change. I follow her in, wet a washcloth and run it over my face, on the inside of my elbows and my knees, under my arms. “Are we walking?” I ask.

“Yeah, that’ll be better,” she says. I pull on the Converse sneakers the kids gave me for my birthday last year, tie their laces. Delphine’s letter is tucked in the alcove next to the telephone, a charge to it, so much more than folded paper and ink. I tell Ginny about it as we walk, drawing closer to the commotion, the sound of the crowd intensifying, the atmosphere on the streets matching the tumult in my body, so much so that I wonder if my opening Delphine’s letter set whatever this is into motion.

“Hey Ginny, Odette.” There’s a hand on my wrist and I turn and it’s Lionel’s friend who tends the birds when Clément’s away.

“Maurice,” Ginny says. “This is wild, right?”

Maurice tells us to follow him, and soon I see where we’re headed. A house with a stoop that rises several feet above the street, more familiar men presiding over it. “How’d you spot us in all this?” Ginny asks.