Page 46 of Meet Me in the Garden

FIFTEEN

ON THE LAST SATURDAYof October, we go to the beach. Al drags a wagon laden with folding chairs and towels and sand toys and hats. Bernard carries a cooler in one hand and a picnic basket in the other. Adele’s radiant in her bright-blue sundress, holding Titter’s hand, and Claire’s lovely in yellow gingham, holding Bobby’s. The older children and I carry the stray things. Some paperbacks, an assortment of hats. We set up our beach chairs, spread out the towels. Bernard and Al throw a Frisbee while the children get to work on a sandcastle. An hour in, we eat the chips and sandwiches we brought, and when that’s over, the children hold hands in the water, waiting for waves to come and lift them. “Don’t go farther than your knees!” Adele calls, and Al, the only strong swimmer among us, stands closer to supervise. Nathalie runs back up the beach after a few minutes of it, rubbing her eyes, climbing onto me.

“Rudy kept letting go of my hand.” She butts her head into my clavicle, hard.

“That must have been scary,” I say. She settles her body onto my lap, her bathing suit’s cold dampness seeping through my shirt to my skin. Her hair drips onto my shoulder.

After a little while, she says, “I’ve been here before.”

“To the beach?”

“Thisbeach.”

Her childhood until now, a blankness cast over it. A photograph with a light leak. Her head rests on my chest; if my heart quickens, she’ll hear it.

I will myself to stay calm. “When?” I ask.Tell me everything you know. Tell me everything you remember.

“When we lived in the moon room.”

I rest my hand on her back. Her breaths turn short and jagged. I say, “You know, she didn’t want to leave you. She got very sick.”

“But she didn’t have a fever.”

“That’s true. It’s a complicated kind of sickness. A sickness in her thoughts. But she still loves you more than anything in the whole world.”

Nathalie sits up. “You’re crying,” she says.

“It makes me sad, what’s happened to her.”

She hugs me, pats my back with her little hand. “Shh,” she tells me. “Dry your eyes.”

Soon she’s ready to go into the water again.

Claire’s watching me over her magazine. “What were you talking about?”

“She thinks she’s been here before.”

“Hm,” Adele says. “What a strange thing that we have no idea if she has.”

I take it all in: Children splashing. A couple embracing. Tilted umbrellas. A pair of dogs bounding through the surf. And then a small hand, placing a shell in my palm. I look up, and here’s Clément. “Isn’t it nice?” he asks.

White ridges on the outside, smooth and pearlescent inside. “Beautiful,” I say, running my finger across it.

“It’s for you.” He scampers back through the sand, and I’m overwhelmed by it all—the smell of salt and sun lotion, the happy dogs, my sisters stripped down to their bathing suits, Nathalie and Clément holding hands in the water now, catching their own wave, not letting go. It’s possible to believe that no matter what happens next, we’ll make it through, we’ll be all right. Al and Bernard are on their knees, buildingthe sandcastle the children abandoned, and a dog runs up, shaking himself dry. He sprays Adele and Claire and they yelp as his flustered owner runs over calling, “Scout, stop that!” A surfer nears us with a long, yellow board. I look and then look again—a woman, muscular, easy in her body. She sees me noticing her, smiles. I turn to the shell in my palm, but there’s an electricity to the air now, and I don’t lose track of where she is. I watch her riding a wave like it’s easy, and Al notices me staring, looks to see. “Is that a woman?” he asks.

I nod.

Claire says, “It isn’t very feminine, but it sure looks fun.”

Later, Clément arranges smooth stones in a spiral near my chair. A flock of birds fly overhead. “Clément, look.” He follows where I point and we watch them moving together, shifting, falling into place until they’re spaced perfectly apart, a beautiful symmetry.

Later still, alone in my bed, I call back the surfer. Her smile, how she moved through the water. The tension between us. I imagine her coming to the door of my apartment at night. I step aside, I let her in.

The next time I visit Delphine, the day is cloudy, softer light through the windows. Her hair’s been washed, longer than it’s ever been, in a braid down her back. “Tell me the plan,” she says.

I tell her that Nathalie’s doing better all the time—in school, at home, with her cousins. “We’ve decided to keep her at Adele’s through Christmas. After that, my son and I will be moving to an apartment, and Claire will take Nathalie to live with her and Bernard.”

“Claire? Why not you?”