Page 88 of Meet Me in the Garden

“All right,” she says. “You undress.” In the fantasy, I’m unfastening my wedding gown. In her bed, Ginny shifts her weight to let me cast the robe aside and now she’s making love to me. We’re on the bathroom floor in Baton Rouge, the water running, the room filling with steam. She isn’t asking me any more questions.

“Don’t let me go,” I say. She flips me over, fills me, her weight an anchor.

“I won’t,” she says into my ear.

It could be minutes or hours, I don’t know. The tub might overflow and we wouldn’t notice it, or morning might come and surprise us. No matter.

Later, Ginny says, “You probably know it already, but I’d give anything to settle down with you.” Her heart’s still pounding, she’s shaky from exertion. I stroke her hair as she falls asleep. I lie with my eyes open in the dark for a very long time.

TWENTY-NINE

LIONEL AND GINNYKEEP BUILDINGthe coop. Sometimes Ginny and I get off work at the same time and walk together to the parking lot, Ginny shooting me a smile as she unlocks the door of her little white car. She’s in my rear view the whole way home, her arm out the open window, and when I’m inside, surveying the refrigerator, her laugh carries from the yard. I wash lettuce, peel carrots and cucumbers. Through the window I see her holding a board steady for Lionel. When I take glasses of water out to them, they’re intent on something, don’t see me at first, and she turns and I keep my gaze on her, appreciative and frank, and she returns it and maybe this can be enough. To love someone and know that you’re loved, even if you can only be together for a short time. I live in the idea for a day or two until doubt creeps in and turns me irritable, snapping at a new man on Production for his mistake, impatient at lunch as Janine tells the story of yet another bad date.

Ginny and I spend almost every night at her place or mine. I don’t start another painting. I barely go down to the studio. I’m either at the plant or I’m with Ginny. I kiss her good morning and I kiss her goodnight. I learn the right ways to touch her. I let go of my shyness. I feel our time together running out. Elise comes by one night and I’m euphoric, bringing drinks out to the patio. Lionel and Ginny and Elise and me andno pretending. The four of us under the oak tree branches, lit candles in the glass orbs above, conversation flowing easily, laughter ringing out into the night. Ginny’s short sleeves are rolled up to her shoulders, her gold chain disappearing at her throat. Each time she looks at me, I savor the warmth of it.

“She’s gorgeous,” Elise whispers into my ear, rising from the patio chairs. “Magnetic. I understand everything even more now.”

Five days until they come home. The coop is covered in a tarp and Ginny’s sitting with her back to me at the edge of my bed. “I can’t do this,” she says. “Go back to how things were before the summer.”

“I know.” She turns to me with hope and surprise, enough to break my heart. “Maybe we could find a way to steal some hours together sometimes.”

“That isn’t what I mean.”

I sit up. “Ginny. You don’t know what I’d be risking.”

“Idoknow,” she says. “I’ve been through it.”

I shake my head. Can’t look at her anymore. Not at the line of her spine or her hair tucked behind her ears or her tanned shoulders. I’ve gotten so used to the softness of her skin against mine. The warmth of her body while we’re sleeping.

“I understand how terrifying it is,” she says. “How it changes the way people see you. How a lot of people don’t understand.”

“My sisters,” I say. Can barely speak it.

“They might surprise you.”

“But what if they tried to take my children?”

“Would they, though?” Ginny says. “Try to take them away? And think of it. If we could stay together. The kids would be gaining, too.”

It was so long ago now that Ginny perched with Mare on the armchair in their near-empty apartment, saying she’d like a family one day. Breathtaking, when I envision it. Ginny, not only with me but with Nathalie and Clément, too. Another person to love them. Another person forthemto love. “I know they would,” I say. “We’d all be so lucky to have you.”

“So why don’t we try?”

My sisters. And Al and Bernard. And my niece and my nephews. The danger of yet another severing. The world so perilous already, even without another risk. What would Emmett Till’s mother do without people to hold her? “What if I lose them, and then you change your mind?” Hattie’s in my head now, telling me there’s no future in us. And Delphine’s threatening me. And Felix is placing his hands on his knee, saying that he’s leaving. And then my family’s here. Feeding me, loving me, building me a place to paint. Maybe Ginny wants me so much because I’ve told her no all these years. I can picture her in the future, strange in the kitchen, not meeting my eye, not so enamored of family life after all. Finding me faded. Tiring of me.

“No,” she says. “This isn’t about me. I’m ready to live my life with you. You tell yourself it’s impossible but it isn’t. People have been living this way for all of time.”

“I don’t know if I can.”

“You’re terrified of love,” she says. “I understand why. But it makes you small. You hide and you lie. You’re better than that.”

“I’ve neverknownlove without hiding. I don’t even know what it would feel like.”

“Let me show you.” She’s flushed, jaw set, eyes fierce and shining. Fighting for me.

And still, I tell her no.

She stays with me for one more night. In the morning, she makes us coffee in my kitchen. I go out and there’s a small box on the table, tied with a bow. “An early birthday gift.” I open it. Ginny’s medallion. “It’s the only thing I have that’s good enough,” she says.