Page 122 of Meet Me in the Garden

“I agree with you,” I say. “Of course, he’s devoted to nonviolence. But it still lands like a betrayal, for him to talk that way.”

She sets the paper aside, shifts her position so she’s facing me. Her hair’s fastened in a loose bun, freckles smattering the bridge of her nose. “Can you believe we lived through that?” she asks. “I’m still in shock. Uncanny, right? Hearing all the noise, and everyone coming and going, but never going outintoit. And then the streets after. All covered in glass and broken things, and the buildings burned. And now we’re in an inn in San Francisco? And maybe we’ll see Delphine?”

“I know,” I say. “It’s so much. I know.”

In the early afternoon we go downstairs and eat in the inn’s restaurant. Bright white tulip tables and matching chairs, burnt-orange water glasses, black teapots, floor-to-ceiling windows like at Elise and Espen’s house. When we’re finished eating we walk down the hill and the view catches us by surprise. Somewhere, to the east of us, there’s a city. Cable cars and skyscrapers and paved hills, bookstores and record storesand Macy’s. Art galleries. A bay. But it’s hard to imagine any of that here. This place where we are is called Land’s End. The ground drops off and all we see are cliffs and ocean and sky. We follow the road, pass the restaurant where we’ll have dinner later, the prospect of it sending a bolt of anxiety down my spine.

“Look at that funny building,” Nathalie says, pointing down some steps from the Cliff House. A miniature castle, something built for children. But no—it’s in the shape of an oversize camera, turned on its back. What I thought was a tower is a lens. We go closer to see what it is.GIANT CAMERAis painted across its side, admission is twenty-five cents. “It’s a camera obscura,” she says. “Remember when you made us one?” I do. The eve of my twenty-seventh birthday. All of us so young.

We pay and go in. It’s a small room with a six-foot concave circle at its center. Pure darkness but for the light that streams through a point in the ceiling, the circle it illuminates, its reflection on the few people gathered around. Nathalie and I find a spot on the circle’s perimeter. First, we see trees and the road in saturated color and sharp focus. Slowly, the picture shifts, turning. Trees give way to a long strip of beach, and then cliffs, and then water. A glimmer, growing bright until it hurts my eyes, bursting with light, the sun shining on the ocean. We stay and stay and watch the circle. Sometimes the world is on its side and other times it’s upside down and then it’s right again. People come and go but we don’t know what else to do. We’re waiting for evening. The attendant pokes his head in, tells us he’s closing up.

The brightness of stepping outside, the softer mist in the distance.

“Should we call her house again?” I ask. “To see if she’s planning on coming?”

But Nathalie shakes her head, and secretly I’m relieved.

Baths at the inn. A quiet hour, getting ready. Nathalie wears a pink-and-yellow checkerboard dress cut high above the knee. I wear a black top and skirt with a camel-colored jacket. We’re windswept by the time we reach the Cliff House, its pink fluorescent sign bright through the fog. The restaurant is bustling, warm. We’re led to our table and we siton the same side of the booth, both of us staring at the door. It’s been fifteen years. She might not look the same. I don’t know. Out the window is the ocean. The vast, misty sky, the gray-blue water, and Nathalie says, “She’s not going to come.”

I’m terrified. Almost hope Nathalie’s right, that we’ll go home and continue as we have been.Two mothers.I’ve said it so many times but suddenly, shamefully, I ache to be her only one. “Maybe not,” I say. “But maybe she will.” I imagine Delphine arriving and it being okay. I imagine rising to greet her, a tight embrace, smiling, saying she looks well, not sobbing or trembling or running away. Not steeling my heart against her. Not feeling under attack. Greeting her as simply a person greeting another person. We’ll be three women in a restaurant on a Wednesday night. But even remembering her in the hospital, her jolt, her pain a living thing, there’s a current of fury running under my skin. I would have stayed with her through anything. But she left me for Bill, and then she left me again. A betrayal, after years of listening carefully to everything she ever told me. After years of always telling her the truth.

The waitress comes to our table, sets a cup of hot water and lemon at my place. It’s the perfect thing, exactly what I want. “How did she know to bring me this?” I ask when she’s gone.

“You ordered it,” Nathalie says.

I have no memory of it. I don’t know if I can do this. My breathing is shallow. I’m spinny, nauseous, and there’s a figure at the hostess counter now, blocked by other people, maybe it isn’t her, but the hostess walks her toward us, and there’s Delphine, clear as day, and now she’s slipped quickly into the booth, no time for us to stand to greet her.

Her hair’s pulled to one side in a braid. Little makeup, a naturalness to her that seems to be the fashion here. A softness around her eyes, but still youthful. Lovely. Nervous, but nothing of the franticness of the street, the brokenness of the hospital. It’s the Delphine of before all that. Just herself, only I know nothing about her anymore.

Apparently she’s used to the summer chill, wears a turtleneck pulled to her chin, long tight sleeves that bell at the wrists. Nathalie scrutinizes her. Of course. There’s nothing Nathalie won’t look at straight on.

Delphine says, “You used to watch me in exactly that same way.”

Nathalie says nothing but finds my hand under the table and squeezes it so hard I fear she’ll snap a bone.

“How long have you been here, in San Francisco?” I ask.

“Almost ten years.” I wait. “I work at the state college,” she finally says. “I’m an assistant in the Psychology Department. I handle the admissions materials. Arrange faculty meetings. Assist some of the professors in their research.”

I get a flash of Delphine in a grand library, pouring over a thick book, taking notes. Another of her in an office, speaking on the phone with efficiency and importance.

“You’re probably surprised,” she says.

“I’m not at all surprised, actually,” I say.

“I guess I’m the one who was surprised,” she says. “I surprised myself.” I wait for her to say more but she shifts in her seat and asks, “How are your sisters?”

“They’re well.”

She says, “If you two have time tomorrow, the cable cars are fun. And the sea lions are very cute.”

“We didn’t come to sightsee,” Nathalie says. “I have to get back for work. You said there was something you needed to talk to us about.”

“I know. I’m sorry. I prepared for this, but everything I rehearsed has flown out of my head.”

Nathalie squeezes again. I say, “I found the drawings we did of each other and got them framed.”

“They’re hanging in my room,” Nathalie says.