Page 68 of Meet Me in the Garden

“You have talent,” Bernard says. “You shouldn’t let it go to waste.”

“Okay,” I say, my gaze fixed to the edge of the yard. “Incompatible, then.”

“With what?” Al asks.

“My life.”

A pause. Throats clearing. Al changes the subject. “I saw in the paper that Bayard Rustin’s coming out here from New York.”

“Is that right,” Bernard says. “What for?”

“To give a lecture on nonviolence. Problem is, it’s to the Women’s League. Think we could disguise ourselves?” They laugh.

And then it’s back to the Listening booth, back to my sketchbook. Felix back home and conversations over dinner. I stop into a toy store after work and ask for a good family game, come home with Clue. We examine the figurines and miniature knife and pistol. We sip hot chocolate and Nathalie sits with her legs lined up with mine and I begin to forgive myself. One night Felix and I stay up reading in the living room by the fire. He’s scanning theLA Times, turning the pages. A quick intake of breath.

I set down my book. “What is it?”

He hands me the paper.Bayard Rustin, 40-year-old nationally known Negro lecturer, was jailed on a morals charge in Pasadena early yesterday a few hours after he had spoken on the subject of world peace…It goes on to say that he was arrested while in an automobile with two other men. All three were booked on lewd vagrancy charges. The other men’s full names and ages are stated, along with theneighborhoods they live in. I lower the paper. Felix doesn’t meet my eye. “How careful are you?” I ask.

The wrong response, suspicious and blaming. He doesn’t know that I once kissed Ginny under the open sky outside her old apartment. Anyone could have seen us there. He doesn’t know how I avoid her each time I make a run to Production for new records to test, how I never stop at her machine because I still flush each time she looks at me.

“Careful,” he says, and averts his eyes.

The next day, Rustin pleads guilty, and he’s sentenced to sixty days in the county jail. “There goes his career,” Bernard says over dinner.

“Shh,” Claire says. “Not in front of the children.” But later, swirling an ice cube in her glass, she says, “To think a man like that was masquerading as an upright citizen. Aleaderof the movement, no less.”

Tears rush in, burning. I blink and blink, turn for the bathroom before anyone notices. On my way I hear Al say, “Not so sure it negates what he brings to the movement, but it’s a shame he showed so little self-control.”

TWENTY-THREE

IAM VERY GOOD FORa very long time. I make new rules for myself. Just as I am not allowed near Ginny, I am not allowed to paint. I am not allowed tothinkabout painting.

And then it’s summer—six months since my self-portrait—and Adele and I send the kids off on the train and I let go. Allow myself late nights out with Elise. Go back to the figure drawing class knowing exactly what to expect. I take my paints down from the closet. Just opening the box lid is enough to make me weep. All thiscolor. I start with a series of laundry paintings, skirts and tops and dresses hanging from the line. I begin tight and get looser. Move from bold colors toward pastels. By the end of the summer, my work is almost abstract, the paint thick, brushstrokes lively.

I pack my supplies away before the kids get back. Take them to Sunday Masses and the parties at Adele’s house afterward, where all the cousins descend upon me begging to be entertained. One Sunday they want paper and glue and paint and a snack and glasses of apple juice and milk. I set them up at the table and they demand me to draw a giraffe, so I do, and they want it bigger. We tape together sheets of paper to make one giant sheet, and I sketch the outline for them to fill in. This week, I come with supplies to make a camera obscura: a large piece of cardboard, a cutting blade, tracing paper, a magnifying glass, and instructions I foundin a magazine. The kids huddle around me as I measure and cut, fold and tape. When it’s ready we move around the yard, taking turns with the box raised to our eyes, the world turned softer and upside down.

It’s the day before my birthday. We take a break to eat—burgers from the grill, green salad and potato salad and curved slices of melon—and my sisters appear over my shoulder with a wrapped gift.

“Shouldn’t we save it for tomorrow?” I ask. “We’ll have dinner together, won’t we?”

They glance at each other. “We have a Les Dames Amis event,” Claire says. “A baby shower for one of the girls.”

“But we could skip it?” Adele says. “We figured you’d have plans with your friends.”

Claire nods. “We haven’t seen very much of you lately. You’ve been so busy.”

“But we really can miss it,” Adele says.

“Yes, of course we can,” Claire says. “The shower is for Bea’s little sister. Her first baby. But we don’t even know her that well.”

“No, it’s okay. I understand,” I say. I want them to insist, to go right to the phone and call Bea and let her know they can’t come. But they exchange another quick glance and Claire holds out the gift again. I take it, slip off the bow, run my finger under the edges of the paper to undo the tape. Inside is a box. I take off its lid and there are two objects wrapped in bright-green tissue paper. I take the first out and unwrap it. It’s a gleaming saltshaker in the shape of a deer’s head with wide antlers. “It’s so pretty,” I say. I set it gently on the table and open its match. The same, but for pepper.

“Do you like them?” Adele asks.

“They’re from Bullock’s,” Claire says. “Sterling silver.”

I’m holding the pepper shaker in my palm, deer eyes gazing up at me. “They must have cost a fortune.”