Page 85 of Meet Me in the Garden

That night, I lie in my bed, staring at the ceiling, thinking of Felix and me, my time in this house like a paper folded at the center.

Winter comes with a family Mass at Our Lady of Victory, sitting in the pews. The older students in their Sunday best, serious, blushing, smirking from the choral risers. Claire’s fingernails a festive red, a pine-green handkerchief peeking from Al’s jacket pocket. The organ player starts. Rudy’s class sings first, Adele leaning to my ear and whispering, “See the girl in the violet dress and matching hat? Rudy’s sweet on her, I’m almost sure.” I squeeze her hand, and the children sing, and midway through the song Rudy steps forward for a solo, his voice smooth and melodic, startlingly low now. We’re still dabbing our eyes when the song ends and a new class comes, none of our children in it, and then it’s Clémentand Nathalie’s class, and I wait for Nathalie to step forward but she stays where she is, her voice indistinguishable from the others no matter how hard I listen. A different girl has the solo.

Later, I ask Nathalie about it. “I auditioned,” she says. “I guess I wasn’t good enough,” and I bite my tongue against saying that she’s better.

Later still, a minor frustration, the box of dominos not fitting into our overcrowded drawer, and she turns and swipes her arm, sends the lamp flying. Wooden rabbits split down the center, cord ripped from the wall. She stares for a stricken moment at the broken glass and bent lampshade before closing herself into her room. I sweep up the glass, set the base aside to see if Bernard can fix it. The silver-and-indigo shade is torn, its fabric too delicate to repair. When I go to my room, I find that she’s left a pile of coins at the center of my bedspread.

I’m up through the whole night, mind swarming, landing on the Brookside Park picnic, the woman taking me aside. “Pooryou, with your husband leaving…” Seeing myself under the fluorescent lights at Vons, no sense of decorum, not hiding what I felt, ready to cry and yell in the middle of a grocery store, ready to tell the truth about how deeply Felix hurt me. I see myself as I almost was: Grotesque in my desperation. Humiliating in my public display.

And then I sit up in bed.Maman.Her face from above, from my childhood vantage point. Her disapproval, telling me I should be more like my sisters. Less distracted, less dreamy, less difficult to make sense of.Lessmyself, not more so. Never more so.

With the memory, a realization: Felix was so happy at first, in Los Angeles, visiting us at Adele’s house. The idyllic domesticity. The clearly defined roles. He wanted to dress up as Santa Claus. Wanted to step into the fantasy. He must have pictured me greeting him after his long weeks on the train, dressed like a wife from a television show, ready to serve him an elaborate meal. Ready to entertain, keep conversations light and engaging, keep the children well behaved and well dressed, sweet to look at and docile. Instead, they were dirty from playing outside, shrieking and grabbing the moment they caught sight of him. Instead of Adele, hegot me—moody, withholding. The problem isn’t that I concealed too much. It’s that I didn’t conceal nearly enough.

He wanted an Honoré sister.

In the morning, bleary from insomnia, buzzing with new understanding, I take Nathalie aside before school. “Listen,” I say. “I’ve been thinking about all this trouble with the sisters. When it isn’t in your nature to follow along, to do what’s expected of you or even know what that would look like. It’s been that way for me, too. My whole life.” Her eyes are wide, she’s taking in every word. “Here’s what you do: Remember that the sisters are in charge. Do what they say, even when it seems unfair. You don’t need to understand it. Treat it like a game. Learn the rules and play by them. And then come home and tell me everything you feel. You never need to hold back from me.” I’m full of certainty but her expression has changed, hardened, as though I’ve disappointed her. “We’re safe with each other,” I say.

Finally, she gives me a small nod. Doesn’t say anything more.

And the rest of the winter passes fast, and then the spring, and I forget to look for Felix’s handwriting when I collect the mail, and by the time the summer comes and we tuck the children into the train car together—Rudy and Elizabeth and Paul; Nathalie, eleven now, pulling Sebastian onto her lap; Clément with a deck of cards in his hand—there hasn’t been any more trouble at school, and nobody says a word about Felix.

TWENTY-EIGHT

ON A LATE JULY WEEKENDmorning, I near Lionel’s apartment, “Earth Angel” spilling out from his open door. The song’s been out for a year and a half but no one in the neighborhood’s tired of it. Al’s in the living room, standing by the record player, holding the dust jacket, saying, “If I had to name one man who is doing the most for the community, I’d hands down choose Dootsie Williams.”

I drop my purse on the coffee table, sit next to Lionel on his sagging, scratchy sofa as the Penguins croon and harmonize. “He sure has brought us some good music,” I say.

“He’s doing that and so much more. Raised here in Watts,” Al says. “Cut his teeth at the Central Avenue clubs.”

Lionel raises an eyebrow. “Odette, did we ask for a history lesson?”

“Just listen,” Al says. “This is important. Dootsie watches as his fellow musicians are seduced by white managers. By the big record labels—including our own, Odette. These fine musicians are wooed with promises of fame and fortune but instead the companiestaketheir songs and give them towhitemusicians to arrange and perform and make money from. Dootsie knows this isn’t right—and he sees an opportunity—so he decides to do something about it.”

“We know the rest,” Lionel says. “You can spare us. We drive by the studio every day.”

It’s just around the corner from here in a house with an enclosed front porch, a sign fixed to it that saysDootone Records. It’s been there for a few years, but ever since Dootone put out the Penguins’ single, it’s taken on a new magnitude.

“Al,” I say. “I know what you mean. A major hit like this, by boys from the neighborhood, recorded here in the neighborhood, by a colored man who’s from here, too… It’s significant. It really is.”

“Thank you,” Al says. “At least I married into some sense.”

Lionel laughs. “Okay, okay. I’ve assembled you two for a reason. In three months, little man is turning eleven.”

Al whistles. “Eleven years old.”

A wave of the old guilt comes back, the impossibility of a time I hadn’t wanted him. I push it away, and Lionel says, “I’ve decided to give him a bird for his birthday. A fine quality bird, to breed. And a couple more, to keep the good one company. As long as it’s all right with you.”

To imagine Clément with his own birds. “Lionel,” I say. “This is incredible.”

“Little man’s got a passion.”

“Thanks to you,” I say.

“Oh no,” he says. “Maybe I introduced him to the birds but he’s the one who fell for them. Rudy barely gave them a second glance. So you’re happy with the plan, then?”

“Yes,” I say. “Do you remember that day you took us to see the birds for the first time? ‘A boy can dream’?”

“Won’t ever forget it,” Lionel says. “So, Al. Here’s where you come in.”