Page 95 of Meet Me in the Garden

“You’ve always been good,” Elise says. “You’re undeniable now. You need toshowpeople. Otherwise, it’s a one-way conversation. Just consider it. Now let’s get more to eat.”

She orders us big bowls of black-shelled mussels and brown-and-white-striped clams in a fragrant broth, specked with parsley and chili flakes. Charred half lemons sit atop, next to long slices of toasted bread drenched in the broth. I take a bite. The ocean and butter and wine and salt. I clutch my heart. She does a little shimmy in her chair. We’re quiet together for a while, intent on our food, each delicious bite of it. Out the window beside us is the dark ocean, the sky with a near-full moon. Inside are white tablecloths and low murmurs, the occasional call for a waiter or burst of laughter. Next to us, two couples sit across from each other, on a double date. One of the husbands asks the table, “What do you want for your children? Most of all, out of everything?”

“To be good people,” the man across from him says. He puts his arm on his wife’s shoulder. “What about you?”

“A successful career. A big, happy family.”

The other wife says, “Everything that we have, plus a little more. Okay, Tom. Time to answer your own question.”

Elise and I lock eyes across the table, both of us listening.

“I don’t know,” Tom says, his voice faltering. Elise widens her eyes at me and I widen mine back. If they weren’t within earshot we’d theorize over what poor Tom is going through. I contemplate his question but no easy answer comes to me either. “I keep trying to figure it out,” Tom says. “I just really don’t know.”

“What would your answer be?” Elise asks me later. We’re in our pajamas, sipping tea on the guesthouse’s big bed.

“I want so many things for them,” I say. “Feels impossible to choose.” They’re in New Orleans now, living their summertime lives, calling meevery few days to check in. “They were excited for me to come here with you.”

She stretches her legs out, flexes her toes. “I care about them, you know,” she says. “Very much. It’s a new experience for me to care for children this way, to get to watch them grow. Though I suppose they aren’t quite children anymore, are they?”

A couple weeks later, I agree to invite Espen to see my work. I tidy my studio in the morning, go to the market for ingredients for étouffée and cook in the afternoon. Dice the holy trinity, brown the roux, peel the shrimp.

“Look at this tiny house,” Espen says in the early evening when they come down the steps.

“See?” Elise says. “This is why I never bring him along.” She kisses me on the cheek, introduces me to their friend Douglass. They’re just back from San Francisco and I serve Sazeracs and listen to them talk.

“We went to the Dilexi. An informal sister gallery to Ferus. It’s exactly what San Francisco needs,” Espen says.

Elise plunks onto one of my patio chairs, crosses her legs. “You’d love it, Odette. It’s right above a jazz club. Great energy.”

Once we’ve emptied our glasses I guide us to the table, carry out étouffée and rice and green salad on a tray.

“Nowthis,” Elise says, “is art.”

Douglass, mouth full, points to his bowl with his spoon, emphatically, as though stabbing it. Espen says, “If your paintings are half as good as your cooking, then we’re in for a treat.” I still don’t understand what he does for a living—maybe nothing—but he’s always doing studio visits, talking to curators, giving his opinions. I hope he’ll give Elise her gallery, wish she didn’t need him to.

Before I’m ready, it’s time. I lead them down to the studio and open the doors. Pull back the curtains for the summer evening light. I’ve hung the canvases up along the walls, set others on the easels. I have drawings and paintings on paper spread out on the table, and that’s whereEspen and Douglass begin. They start with my painting of KR. “What’s it called?” Espen asks.

“Still Life with Feathers,” I say.

Douglass brings his fist to his chin. “They’re all still lifes. A little old- fashioned, right? Have you tried abstractions?”

Espen puts a hand out to stop the thought. “No, no,” he says. “Clyfford took me to Diebenkorn’s studio a few months ago. He’s painting still lifes. Doing it in a new way, of course. These evoke one of them especially—irregular composition, nothing in the middle of it except this gorgeous blue. An orange and an orange peel and a bottle of Coke and a rotten lemon.”

Douglass laughs. “Sounds revolting.”

Gravely, Espen says, “Transcendent, actually.”

Douglass is quiet after that, and Espen flips through more of my works on paper and cardboard. Past the kitchen sink full of dishes and the vase of flowers. Past the studies I made alongside Nathalie. Past a painting of Nathalie’s hat hanging from a hook by the door—I made it in a burst of tenderness one morning. He turns his attention to the canvases and I smile at Elise from across the room, remembering our first drink when she saw the blue smear on my wrist. He pauses at a painting of shoes by the door, moves on. “Turn on a light, will you?” I take a desk lamp from my drafting table and move it to where he’s standing. Turn the switch. Light pours overMarriage Bed. “This one…” he says. “I wouldn’t have guessed a woman painted it.”

Elise huffs. “Onlya woman could have painted it.”

Espen fixes her with a glare. She meets it. He glances at me. “I meant it as a compliment,” he says. “Do more like this.”

The desperation of those days and nights rush back. “I don’t know if I can,” I say. “Something took me over.”

Douglass, finding his voice again, says, “If it doesn’t terrify you, then what’s the point?”

Later, when they’re at the gate on the verge of stepping onto the street, Espen pauses. “There was one more,” he says. So we follow himback down to the studio. I’m certain he’s going to choose the birthday cake and prove Douglass’s theory. But instead he finds the painting of Nathalie’s hat. “This,” he says. “It’s just a hat on the wall, but I can’t turn away.”