Page 110 of Meet Me in the Garden

let somebody drive you away

But soon as winter appears

the snow up to your ears

we’ll be in the moon room

in the moon room again

I clap when she finishes. “It’s absolutely beautiful,” I say.

“It isn’t really about her,” she says. “The moon room just sounded nice. Maybe it’s a love song. I’m still figuring it out.”

She’s self-conscious, twisting on the bench, playing a smattering of notes before looking at me again. I wish I could take her discomfort away. All of a sudden she’s the little girl in Elise’s pool, clinging to me while I reassure her. I say, “It can be a love song and a childhood song. It can be a song about a mother and a song about a romance. It can be whatever someone makes of it. Most art is about more than one thing at a time.” She smiles. “How do you feel when you play and sing?”

“Peaceful,” she says, but I can see her doubt the word upon speaking it. “Maybe more like contained. My thoughts don’t race as much. There isn’t space for anything else. Is that what it feels like to you when you paint?”

“Not always. But when it’s going right, then yes. Play it for me again?”

She does, and it’s even more beautiful on the second listen. Wistful and sad and mysterious. I tell her so. We go back to the kitchen, she starts up the sewing machine. “Are you hungry?” I ask. “I could make us omelets.”

“Sure,” Nathalie says. “That sounds nice.”

I take the eggs from the carton, beat them in a bowl. Set them aside and chop onions. They make me cry, they always do.

“Do you and Clément mind it?” I ask, turning to her again. “When I stay out sometimes?”

She finishes a section of the skirt. Stops the machine and looks up. “We don’t mind it at all.”

“Okay,” I say. “Just making sure.” I heat the butter in the pan. A tingle starts at the back of my skull. Like I’m levitating, like I’m outside my body, and I say, “If you ever need me when I’m gone, I’m at Ginny’s house.” I pour the eggs for the first omelet into the pan.

Nathalie stands, stretches her arms over her head, moves her neck from one side to the other. Gorgeous, like Delphine, and I swear that, sometimes, she has something of my smile about her. My love for her almost bowls me over—it always has, something in her that was always meant to be with me, as terrible as the reasons were. Inevitable, Nathalie and me. She crosses to me, takes me in her arms. She’s taller than me now. It happened a few months ago, a fraction of an inch, she threw her head back and laughed when Clément declared it was true.

“You deserve to be happy, Mommy,” she says.

Later, I make dinner for the three of us. A rare night when we’re all home together, present in the house, talking and laughing.

When we’re finished Nathalie says, “We’ll clean up. Won’t we, Clément?”

They do. I go down to the studio and turn on the lights. I look for a while, at my paintings from a distance. When I go back to the house, Clément and Nathalie are sitting at the kitchen table. They turn to me when I shut the door.

“We’ve been talking about our summers in New Orleans,” Clément says.

“We don’t know if we ever mentioned it…” Nathalie says. “Aunt Hattie, she lives with a woman. Did you know that?”

Even after all this time, my heart seizes. “A woman?” I ask.

“Her name is Estelle,” Clément says.

They’re both fixed on me, intent. I take the third seat at the table.

“Everyone knows about their relationship,” Nathalie says. “It’s sort of no big deal. Mama Laurent goes over for dinner at least once a week. Hattie uses the front room as her studio. It’s really big and full of light. Whenever we go, she’s making these incredible costumes for the opera and the ballet. One summer she was in New York, working, and we didn’t get to see her. We still saw Estelle, though. She’s very sweet. Shedoes accounting and keeps house. Hattie gets sort of lost in her work. A little bit like you. They take us out when we’re there, to listen to jazz.”

“You never told me,” I say.

“You didn’t really ask about our summers,” Nathalie says. “It was clear to us, that it mattered to you that we were happy and taken care of, but apart from that you didn’t want to know.”

Clément says, “She always asks about you.”