Page 96 of Meet Me in the Garden

I look from the bed to the hat. Pain, tenderness. Worth in all of it.

The kids return from New Orleans, tired from the train ride but happy, new strength in their arms as they hug me hello. We pick up where we left off, peace among us again. I give them more responsibilities and more freedoms. Nathalie gives me more patience, and Clément spends hours reuniting with his birds, taking notes on how they’re flying. When I was finished painting him, we buried KR near the coop. Bernard carved a small wooden tombstone, which Clément now keeps clean and tended. Life feels comfortingly predictable until a day in early January, when I get a call at the plant from Our Lady of Victory, asking for me to come in. I clock out early and drive to the school. When I get there, Nathalie is sitting stiffly in a corner chair in Sister Bethany’s office, staring at her lap.

“Please sit,” Sister Bethany tells me, gesturing to the chair across from her at a desk. My first time in her office, and it smells of metal and bleach, and Nathalie’s positioned so that my back is to her. I have to crane my neck to see if she’s all right. “It’s rare that we need to meet with parents this way,” Sister Bethany says, interlacing her fingers. Her eyes are piercing blue, her bare face and habit making me aware of the sparkle of my earrings and the wave in my hair, my thin arc of eyeliner and curled lashes. Even in my simple blouse and trousers, I must seem vain to her. “Nathalie has proven to be unusually difficult.”

I turn to my daughter. She’s still staring at her lap. “That surprises me,” I say.

Sister Bethany narrows her eyes, smiling ruefully as though my response is evidence of something. I don’t want to be here. I want to take Nathalie and go. But Sister Bethany has more to say, about Nathalie’sinsolence, her lack of respect for authority. She doesn’t respond to punishment and she sets a poor example and she neglects her academic subjects in favor of music and art. “What’s funny?” she asks, and I shake my head and say, “I’m sorry, it’s just… Music and art. I love them, too.”

“You aren’t comprehending the seriousness of the situation.”

“Yes,” I say. “I mean, no. Maybe I’m not.”

This time when I look at Nathalie her head’s lifted. She’s watching me. That same expression from the night she showed me her swollen hand. I told her to play along but I know with a suddenness that makes me dizzy that I was wrong to tell her that. Sister Bethany drones on but I don’t turn back to her or listen. Instead, a revolt in my body. I’m up from the chair, taking Nathalie’s hand, and now we’re flying out of the office, around a corner, down the dim hall, and out the double doors to the street. We cross to the car, lean against it, facing the squat school building adjoining the grander church. It’s decades newer, but not so unlike the school Adele and Claire and I went to when we were young. All three of us knew how to be there, never had trouble. Maman had trained us well.

“I hate Sister Bethany,” Nathalie says.

“I hate her, too,” I say.

A car door near us slams shut. A dog barks. A crow alights from a tree, dashes through the sky.

We get into the car and wait. Clément will be dismissed soon. Gradually, cars driven by mothers fill the parking spots ahead and behind us. I say, “Honey, I’m not sending you back.”

Shocking to decide it, but Felix showed me with his leaving that what’s terrible at first can turn ordinary. It was a January when he left us, right about this time. Since then: Rainstorms. Heat waves. Afternoons swimming. Birds and painting. Thanksgiving dinners. Christmas wreaths and Easter Masses. Four years. From children to teens. The days between then and now like the view from a moving car. I open my arms to Nathalie. She’s not a little girl. I can’t assume that she’ll come to me. Shehesitates before sliding over, but then she leans against me and sobs into my shirt. I pet her hair like I used to when she was little. At some point Clément spots us and opens the car door. Climbs in. I tell him what happened and what I’ve decided. “I’ll leave, too,” he says. “We’ll start at a new school together.”

We sit in the car, in no hurry to go, and I swear, they mature yet again before my eyes. And as we sit, a voice surfaces, strange at first. Poor Tom at the restaurant. “What do you want for your children? Most of all, out of everything?” There was a time when Clément would wrap his arms around my legs until I scooped him up and carried him. A time when Nathalie would cry and rage and only I could calm her. Over now. On from that. Nearly grown and on the verge of making all their own choices. I say, “Nathalie, I was wrong when I told you to play by their rules. I was wrong and you knew it.” I take her hand and Clément’s, hold them together. “What I want you both to know,” I say, “deep in your bones, is that you are beholden only to yourselves.”

PART FOUR1962–1965

THIRTY-TWO

AT TWO IN THE MORNINGon a night in April, the telephone rings. I rush out of bed, toward Clément and Nathalie’s door. They’re high school juniors now—they stay out late sometimes on the weekends, past the hour when I fall asleep—and I’m disoriented and panicked, feeling my way through the dark, turning the knob. Nathalie’s bedside light clicks on. They’re sitting up in their beds, as alarmed as I am, home and safe. A wash of relief but the phone’s still ringing, and I go to the kitchen to answer it. Lionel’s voice speaks low on the other end. “This is gonna sound strange,” he says. “You know how I went with some bird men to Palm Springs?”

“Yes.”

“These aren’t the guys from the neighborhood. One of them drove me out here in his car, and at first it was fine but… We’re at a house, waiting for a cat named Raymond to come. A real old guy, best breeder in the world, so they tell me. But he keeps not showing up. The whole mood is off. No one’s telling me anything.” He pauses. “I’m starting to think I’m not here by choice anymore.”

Prick at my palms, an instant sheen of sweat. “I can leave right now,” I say.

He exhales, hard and fast. “I thought about calling Al but it’s a delicatesituation. He might fuck it up. If you can leave in the morning, that’ll be fine. No need to drive in the middle of the night. I’ll offer to pick up sandwiches. That’s what I’m going to tell them. There’s a deli a few blocks from the house. You can wait for me in its parking lot around lunchtime. It’s on Indian Canyon Drive, a big yellow sign out front.”

“Okay. And give me the house address just in case.”

“No. I’m not about to put you in any danger. If I can’t make it to the deli at lunchtime, there’s a motel across the street from it. Soon as I get a chance, I’ll meet you there.”

“Lionel. The house address.”

“Not gonna happen. I’ll see you soon.”

I hang up and turn around and Clément and Nathalie are in the doorway, Clément’s shoulders newly broad, Nathalie’s body a woman’s, twin furrows in their brows as they watch me. “I have to do something for Lionel,” I say. “He’s gotten himself into a situation. I need to help him out of it.”

“Should we be worried?” Nathalie asks.

“Lionel’s plans tend to work out. Now let’s all get back to sleep.”

But each time I start to drift off, Lionel’s exhale, his instructions, his refusal to give me the address startle me awake. I toss and turn until the sun rises. I call in sick to work. I pack lunches for Nathalie and Clément, and two more for Lionel and me. And then I’m in my car before they’re awake, morning light across the dash as I take my Thomas Guide from the glove compartment. I search the index for Indian Canyon but the street isn’t there. None of my maps go far enough. I start the car anyway. I know to take the 60, and from there I could probably rely on road signs but what if I can’t, and Lionel goes to the deli and I’m not there, I’m turned around on some desert back road? I decide to stop at a filling station for a map along the way, but some primitive, less rational part of me guides me to Ginny’s street, then up the stairs to her door. I hesitate before knocking. I could change my mind. But I don’t.

Pamela answers. I’ve never before seen her up close. She’s taking a curler out of her hair. She has delicate wrists, downy blond hair on her forearms, a crisp blouse with a square button at the collar. She’s waitingfor me to speak, so I apologize for showing up like this, ask if Ginny’s home, say we have a mutual friend who’s in some trouble. Ginny appears, her hair a little longer now, midway down her neck, surprised to see me, eyes widening at what Lionel’s asked me to do. “I’m pretty sure we have a Palm Springs map,” she says.