Page 84 of Life Out of Order

“Well, I used to have a cat, but she died, so I made a cat who looks and acts just like her, but she’s digital.”

“Sorry about your cat. Can you do that with people? After they’re dead?”

Clare regards her daughter with horrified appreciation. “Did you have someone in mind, sweetie?”

Alba refuses to be diverted. “Can you?”

“Yes, but it wouldn’t be very convincing,” I reply. “There’s something creepy about a digital avatar that’s close, but not perfect. It would be like having a zombie.”

“Oh,” Alba says, disappointed. Then she brightens. “So you have a cat zombie?”

“Kind of,” I say. “She’s not warm and soft, like my cat was. It’s nice to see her wandering around inside my website, though. Sometimes I project her onto a wall, just to have her company for a while.”

“I understand.”

I bet you do. Clare collects our soup bowls and disappears into the kitchen. Alba gets up to help, and they return with the fritters, which have been carefully interspersed with arugula, pistachios and asparagus spears, with a yogurt dressing. It looks very professional, and I glance at Kimy, who gives me an anxious, thin smile. When I first met Kimy (who Clare told me was almost a mother to Henry, more than a mother-in-law to Clare and exactly like a grandmother to Alba), I worried that she might think I was trying to replace Henry; now I realize that she’s worried I won’t be able to. Which of the seats at this table was his? Probably the one Kimy’s sitting in; mine is the farthest from the kitchen, the one reserved for guests.

We eat in silence for what seems like eons. Clare has an old analogue schoolroom-type clock in her kitchen, and its ticking seems to fill the house. “This is wonderful,” I finally say, my voice too loud, just as Clare says, “Kimy, this is delicious.”

“Beautiful colors, too,” I add. I find I am staring at Alba’s beet-red hands.

“What’s your favorite color?” Alba asks me.

“Blue,” I say out of habit; blue was my favorite when I was a kid.

“What kind of blue?”

“Hmm, I have to think about it. No one’s ever asked me to be that precise before.”

Alba asks to be excused from the table. Clare nods, and Alba runs out of the room, then reappears holding a red plastic bucket full of tubes of paint. She rummages through the bucket, and lays a few half-spent tubes at my elbow. The tubes are a mix of watercolor, acrylics and gouache; they must be Clare’s—they are too expensive for an eight-year-old. Soon there are nine different blues. “That one,” I say, handing her Cerulean Blue. “That makes a lovely sky.”

Clare asks, “Do you paint?”

“I haven’t for a long time. The only thing I’ve painted recently is the walls of my studio.” I feel wistful; my world has become monochromatic, a series of white-walled apartments and black-walled studios. The walls of Clare’s home are all vibrant colors: deep burnt orange in her kitchen, sage green here in the dining room, bright yellow in the living room. Her bedroom is sky blue.

Alba hands the paint back to me and says, “You keep it.” She sweeps the rest of the tubes back into the bucket. I place the Cerulean Blue next to my spoon, and thank her. She nods, and runs off to put the bucket away. Clare and Kimy look at each other; I can’t tell by their expressions if things are going well. When Alba sits down again, she asks me, “Do you know any mermaids?”

“Did someone tell you I did?” I ask, pleased but perplexed.

“No, I just wondered. You seem like someone who might.”

Clare interjects, “We’ve been reading Hans Christian Andersen.”

“Ah, got it. I don’t think I know any mermaids. Wouldn’t they be in water?”

“Not always,” Alba replies, mysteriously. “Sometimes they get sent on special missions. Does your cat know any mermaids?”

“I’ll ask her,” I say.

Alba says, “If I had a cat, I would name her Ariel.”

I’m lost. “Like the spirit in The Tempest?”

Now Alba’s confused. “What?”

“Ariel’s a mermaid,” Clare explains. “In the Disney movie.”

“Ohhhh. Sorry, like I said, I’m not a mermaidologist,” I say. Alba shrugs and smiles, offering forgiveness. There’s such complexity in her expression: sly humor because she knows mermaids aren’t real; eagerness because I’m a grown-up and we are having a serious conversation about something she likes; shyness because I’m a stranger; and perhaps anxiety—Clare tells me that Alba worries about getting too attached to people since her dad died. Isadora is child’s play compared to this child.