Page 49 of Meet Me in the Garden

“Mine,” I say.Mydecision to make.Mybest friend.MyNathalie, even though I can’t have her.

They don’t ask me to explain, say they’ll give me time, leave me in the yard.

Over the next two days, Nathalie asks us question after question about what it means to die. Bernard arranges for me to take the week off work, and I tell her about hearts and how they stop beating. Adele tellsher about Heaven. Claire urges her, over and over, to think of happier things. “But what about herbody?” she asks Adele when I’m brushing Titter’s and Bobby’s teeth before bed. “Does it go to Heaven, too? How does it get there?”

Adele sets her hand on Nathalie’s shoulder. “Her body will be buried in the ground.”

She says okay, she goes to sleep. But in the morning she hurls a glass of juice across the kitchen. It shatters against the wall, orange everywhere.

The day is cloudy, colder than usual. I dress us in sweaters and take her hand and we walk to my car in the driveway.

“Where are we going?”

“I don’t know.”

She scoots to the edge of the front bench seat, runs her hands along the glove compartment, the dashboard, the clock. She slides back and pushes hard on the upholstery.

“We’re going to do something special together, to remember your mommy.”

She furrows her brow. “I already remember her.”

“Yes. Of course. That’s not exactly what I mean. Usually, when someone dies, we have a funeral. We say prayers and share memories and we go to a cemetery where bodies are buried, and we mark the grave with a tombstone so we have a place to visit them.”

“Why aren’t we doing that?” She pushes her bangs from her eyes to see me better. They’ve grown so much in two months’ time.

“Sometimes…” I search for an answer that’s true. Land on Papa’s white cross in the sanctuary and the tombstone I purchased to replace it. “Sometimes we don’t get the things we expect. Sometimes situations are more complicated, and we need to come up with solutions ourselves. Should we come up with something together? Some way to honor your mommy?”

She nods.

“We should go somewhere you love, that your mommy loved, too.”

“The beach,” she says.

I set off toward the coast and on the way, on the side of the road, a manis selling flowers at a stand. We pull over and I tell her to choose what she likes. He has white metal buckets full of roses on the ground, their blossoms deep red and bright yellow and pale pink. I take one of each and Nathalie chooses pansies, hydrangeas, snapdragons. I count out the money—far more than I can afford—and we load them into the back of the car. We drive to the ocean, the same beach as before. It’s almost empty, just some fishermen and us, and we carry the flowers to a place where rocks rise up from the sand, forming an alcove. I step into it first and Nathalie follows, and I don’t know how she can see with the flowers covering her face.

I sit in the sand, twist the blossom from a rose, let the petals fall by my feet. We’re sheltered from the ocean breeze by the rocks. Nathalie watches me and does the same to her flowers and we work in silence until we’re surrounded by petals.

“Are these for my mommy?” Nathalie asks.

“Yes. Are you ready to send them to her?”

She nods, and we wait until the breeze picks up, hold them until it’s time.Now. They flutter into the air, some falling, some floating, some cast over the water, others drifting to the sand. Nathalie throws another armful, grunts from the effort, hurling them this time, making them travel farther. “Come,” I say, and we scoop up as many as we can and run into the cold shock of water. I lose my breath. Nathalie gasps, in up to her waist. “Ready?” I ask when my voice returns to me, and we fling the petals as hard as we can. It rains pinks and yellows and reds and blues. “I love you, Delphine,” I say. “Goodbye.”

“Goodbye, Mommy,” Nathalie shouts. Our hands are empty. I lift her up. Pressure of her arms and her legs tight around me. I’m afraid we’ll be swept away by the waves. I hold her close in the cold, her fingers digging into my shoulders.

In the parking lot, I help her step out of her blue jeans, soaking wet and stiff with salt. Her lips are purple, her body shivering. Reckless of me, to take a child into the Pacific Ocean in November. “This was just our first try,” I tell her. “We’ll keep saying goodbye as long as we need to. We’ll talk about her anytime you want. Okay?” I’m shivering, too, from the cold, and from the effort of convincing myself, the feeling oftraitorousness I can’t slough off. The words rise in me:I take it back. She isn’t dead. It’s just that I’m a coward.I give her a blanket from the trunk to wrap around herself and tuck a sweater between my wet dress and the car’s leather seat as we drive home, and she falls asleep, breath hitching, head on my lap, warming me.

Thanksgiving approaches. Bernard and Al go golfing with some of the other managers from the plant. Claire and Adele and I spend the afternoon in the backyard, drinking lemonade, planning the meal. When I’m with them, I’m at war with myself. A desperate, seething feeling that I suppress as best I can.Mine, I keep thinking. A primality to it.

“I think this time I’ll make my pumpkin pie with a crunchy walnut half on every slice,” Adele says. “Bea told me that’s how she does it.”

“Mm,” Claire says.

“Now help me decide on the stuffing. I’ve marked two recipes, one for oyster and one for giblet.” She opens two magazines, lays them flat on the table for us to compare. “What do you think?”

“Oyster stuffing over giblet, always,” I say.

“It calls for threecupsof chopped oysters, though,” Adele says. “Plus, one and a third of the liquor. Very strong. The giblet stuffing is more of a traditional bread stuffing.”