Page 74 of Meet Me in the Garden

I see her puzzling. My head spins. “It’s just… I haven’t told him. About me.”

“Really? Why not?”

“It isn’t relevant,” I say.

“Whatisn’t relevant?”

She’s being obtuse. I want to cry. The ups and downs of this, the confidence turning to foolishness. Too much. I’m with her here, now, aren’t I? I’m not hiding. The waiter comes with our drinks. Sets them down. Leaves us. “Felix would be fine with it,” I say. “But the world is still the world.”

“You’re upset,” she says. “I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable. I was just trying to understand.”

“It isn’t you,” I say. I could tell her more. That in certain light this life I’ve assembled looks like enough, but there are cracks in it. That I thought it was fine, but now she’s back and my heart is a tangle of wanting and terror. I shake my head, can’t say any of it. She spares me. Lifts her glass and sips. I do the same. When I place my glass on the table again, she’s watching me. “What is it?” I ask.

“Dates don’t usually go this way,” she says.

“How do they go?”

“Well, for one thing, I’ve never had a girl call things off so early.”

“I haven’t called it off. We have hours and hours.”

“That many?”

“We’re just starting.”

Our shrimp cocktail comes on a plate of crushed ice. I’m getting the enjoyment back, just a little bit. Maybe it’s the drink, maybe it’s the pleasure of Ginny’s gaze—warm and admiring.

“So,” she says. “You want to know what I’ve had to give up.”

“I do. I was hoping it wasn’t much, but now I’m fearing otherwise.”

“I had to leave home at sixteen. It wasn’t my choice. I was in love with a girl. I told my mother because I’d always told her everything important. She threw me out.”

“Just like that?”

“She wanted me to go to confession, so I did. She wanted me to promise I wouldn’t see the girl again. I did try, for a couple days, but I knew even then that this was always going to be a part of me. It wasn’t just the one time, or the one girl. I told my mother—that it was who Iwas, and I needed her help to understand how to live with it. That’s when she told me to pack my things and leave. Nothing could have prepared me for it. I’d never doubted her love. That’s why I went to her in the first place. I had this certainty that we’d figure out what it meant and we’d find a way for me.”

“Have you seen her since then?”

“Three times. Twice, when I was young, I went to her house when I was in a bad place and desperate. Once at my father’s funeral. She never spoke to me. In her mind, I think, I’m the one who brokeherheart.”

“I’m so sorry. It’s terrible.”

“Are you close with your parents?”

“No. My father died. What you’re describing with your mother… I never had that. She was always more attached to my sisters. I was my father’s child. But then she had him committed to an institution.”

“What for?”

“He was melancholy, after he came back from the war. He got tuberculosis and died there.”

“I’m sorry, Odette,” she says. “And your cousin was committed, too, wasn’t she? Nathalie’s mother? Lionel told me a little. He was vague about it. She had a breakdown of some kind, and then…?” I’m caught in the web of it. I don’t want to lie to Ginny, don’t want to betray Nathalie. She spares me. “Maybe we should talk about food instead,” she says. “The pork chop’s good. And the brisket.”

“I love a pork chop.”

She catches the waiter’s eye.

After dinner she says, “There’s a bar a couple blocks from here. TheStar Room.” It’s on the corner of South Main and 127th, not much from the outside. A man at the door greets Ginny—he knows her—and lets us in.