Meet Me in the Garden

Odette, now a supervisor on the Finishing line at the Columbia Records plant, notices a man in the Listening department doing crossword puzzles during his shift. This sparks an idea: If she worked in Listening, a coveted, less physically demanding job, she could draw all day. Felix supports her ambition. Soon after, Odette attends a massive yard sale on Delphine’s old block. While there, she buys a chair and is confronted by Delphine’s former neighbors. She tells them that Delphine died in the hospital from an infection.

Later, at a family gathering, Al and Bernard mention a costly mistake made in the Listening department that resulted in a thousand ruined Johnnie Ray records. Odette recognizes this as an opportunity. The family discusses domestic matters, but Odette feels a general restlessness.

Odette proposes to her boss, Mike Harrison, that moving some detail-oriented women from her department to Listening could prevent future mistakes. Two days later, Mike offers her a position in Listening, explaining that Ed, the man responsible for the error, has been transferred. Odette is allowed to bring two women, Sally and Ivy, with her. Al and Bernard surprise her with flowers, and Mike gives a patronizing speech praising himself for hiring “colored people and foreigners” (174).

The family throws a celebratory party, but Adele criticizes how little Felix is around. Later that night, feeling lonely in her quiet house, Odette takes a bath while reading an art magazine. She contemplates an article on the artist Jean Dubuffet, who connects art with madness, but concludes that art must fall somewhere between sanity and insanity. Nathalie and Clément interrupt her thoughts with a game, alleviating her loneliness.

The men in the Listening department are hostile toward Odette, Sally, and Ivy. The women decide to ignore them and focus on their work. Odette begins drawing in her booth with an ink pen, as a pencil is too noisy. She finds that the women in Production prefer bringing records to them, having been sexually harassed by the men in the past. During after-work drinks, the women at the table mention that Ginny is returning to the plant. Odette is shaken but hides her reaction.

A few days later, Odette takes the children to visit Lionel and finds Ginny there. Ginny recounts her time working in Montana. The encounter leaves Odette unsettled. That evening, inspired by a Miles Davis record Felix plays, she feels a sudden urge to paint. Lacking proper supplies, she uses paint samples on a piece of a record jacket to create a small, experimental painting of her kitchen.

Odette calls Elise, and they meet for a drink to discuss The Price of Salt. Elise insists on seeing Odette’s art, so Odette takes her home to Willowbrook. Impressed, Elise declares Odette a “true talent.” Their friendship blossoms, and they spend time at galleries and shops. Elise helps Odette build her first large canvas. Over the winter, Odette begins painting a self-portrait of herself as a mother, kneeling on a circular rug surrounded by the children’s toys. While she is engrossed in the work, she and the children are overcome by turpentine fumes. Frightened and angry at her own carelessness, Odette scours the painting off the canvas. Later, she and Felix read that civil rights leader Bayard Rustin was arrested on a “morals charge” after being found in a car with two men, which leaves them both unsettled.

Odette imposes strict rules on herself, barring herself from painting and interacting with Ginny. Six months later, while the children are in New Orleans for the summer, she allows herself to break her rules. She resumes painting, producing a series of works based on laundry hanging on a line, and later begins drawing self-portraits. For her 28th birthday, her sisters give her a gift but reveal they have other plans, leaving Odette feeling hurt and forgotten. That evening, she bakes a cake, and in a fit of anger and sadness, she and the children eat it messily with their hands.

The image of the ruined cake inspires a new painting. As Odette works, Felix returns home early from a trip, having flown from New Orleans with beignets as a surprise. Later, he tells Odette he doesn’t understand how she can be satisfied in their marriage and encourages her not to give up on finding romantic love. Resolving to keep her secrets, Odette insists she is happy with their life as it is.

Ginny approaches Odette in her listening booth, using a nonexistent flaw in a Doris Day record, “Secret Love,” as an excuse to talk. She invites Odette to dinner. After some hesitation, Odette accepts and arranges for the children to stay with Adele and Al. At dinner, Odette insists their night together can only happen once. She reveals that her husband, Felix, is also gay, but she has not told him about her own sexuality. Ginny shares her painful past, explaining that her mother first sent her to confession and asked her to stop seeing the girl she loved. When Ginny told her mother this was who she was and asked for help, her mother threw the 16-year-old out of the house. After dinner, Ginny takes Odette to a gay bar, the Star Room. Though initially terrified, Odette agrees to stay for a drink and a dance. They go to Ginny’s apartment, where Odette is at first too tense for intimacy. Ginny is patient, and later, Odette is finally able to relax and surrender to the moment as they make love.

Odette leaves Ginny’s apartment the next morning, and they resume their distant behavior at work. Odette confides in Elise about the night with Ginny and about Delphine. This is the first time she’s ever told anyone about “the agony of the hospital” and “the terror of her threat” (223). Odette tells Elise she let Delphine pretend to be dead and never called again, just as Delphine wanted.

Elise invites Odette to a dinner party at her modern glass house in Laurel Canyon and introduces Odette to the rest of her friends as an artist. Odette enjoys the evening’s sophisticated conversation, but one of the guests stares at her after learning that she’s Black. Afterward, Elise shows Odette her swimming pool and invites her to bring the children for a visit.

Odette brings Nathalie and Clément to swim at Elise’s house, and Elise gives them swimming lessons. One night, Felix unexpectedly brings friends home from a bar, including Ginny and her new date, Patsy. The evening is tense and awkward. Ginny confronts Odette on the patio, urging her to stop living in fear. Felix’s date James stays the night, and Odette sleeps on the sofa, troubled by her dishonesty toward Felix. She begins watching Ginny from a distance at work. Later that year, as the family prepares for Christmas, Odette gives her children meaningful gifts: Clément receives a brass paperweight that belonged to his father, and Nathalie receives contour drawings she and Delphine made of each other.

Felix becomes distant and finally tells Odette he is leaving her and returning to New Orleans because he is not “built for this” life (237). He arranges for a church annulment, claiming the marriage is invalid due to his sexuality. The night before he departs, he reads the children a story, hugs them, and tells them he will miss them. The next morning he leaves by taxi. He asks Odette to break the news to the children after he is gone.

Devastated, Odette tells Al and Bernard, who inform her sisters. The family rallies around her. Recognizing her need for a creative outlet, Lionel, Al, and Bernard decide to build her an art studio in the backyard.

Felix never writes or calls, leaving Clément heartbroken while he and Nathalie are in New Orleans. Meanwhile, the men finish Odette’s studio. Adele, horrified by the photo of Emmett Till’s mutilated body in Jet magazine, quits her Creole social club, Les Dames Amis, questioning the value of making distinctions among Black people in America.

At a picnic, Nathalie helps her cousins announce they will no longer use their nicknames, Titter and Bobby, but their real names, Elizabeth and Paul. Another mother warns Odette that the nuns consider Nathalie defiant. Nathalie begins getting in trouble at school and coming home with bruises from the nuns’ punishments. Odette mistakenly thinks she sees Felix in a grocery store, prompting her to realize how much his departure still pains her. She advises Nathalie to conform at school, but Nathalie is hurt and disappointed by this.

Lionel plans to give Clément a pigeon, KR, for his birthday. Since Al is busy, Lionel asks Ginny to help him build a coop in Odette’s yard. Ginny agrees after confirming with Odette that her presence won’t be uncomfortable for her. As they work, Odette pours her energy into a new painting of a chair set against the wild, forested of her yard.

When the painting is finished, she shows it to Lionel, who is so impressed he calls Ginny down to see it. The painting moves Ginny to tears. Witnessing their connection, Odette tells Lionel about her and Ginny’s relationship. This opens the door for Odette and Ginny to begin a secret affair, which they agree will last only until the children return from New Orleans. Ginny helps Odette heal from past trauma by guiding her through a fantasy of what her wedding night could have been if she had married a woman she loved.

As the summer ends, Ginny asks Odette to build a life with her. Fearing she will lose her family if her secret is revealed, Odette refuses. Ginny accepts her decision, gives Odette her medallion as an early birthday present, and leaves.

Heartbroken, Odette channels her grief into a new painting, Marriage Bed, which depicts her mattress on the studio floor with the chartreuse dress Hattie made, the novel The Price of Salt, and Ginny’s medallion. When the children return, Lionel presents Clément with the new coop and the pigeon, KR. Odette stops painting and dedicates herself to her children, secretly wearing Ginny’s medallion.

At a Halloween party, a woman flirts with Odette. In the following months, Odette talks with her adolescent children about their changing bodies. She calls Camarillo State Hospital to ask about Delphine but is told there is no record of her. Nathalie, now 12, becomes more rebellious and clashes frequently with Odette.

One morning, Clément’s prized pigeon, KR, suddenly falls from the sky mid-flight and dies. Clément is devastated, but the tragedy unexpectedly brings Nathalie and Odette closer as Nathalie comforts her brother. Clément asks Odette to paint a portrait of KR in his makeshift casket, a bowl filled with flowers. As she creates the painting, which she calls Still Life with Feathers, she incorporates the children’s old toys, reflecting on their passage from childhood.

At Elise’s suggestion, Odette shows her paintings to Elise’s husband, Espen, who is an influential and wealthy art aficionado. He praises her work, especially Marriage Bed and a painting of one of Nathalie’s hats. Inwardly, Odette notes that pain and tenderness are the common thread that unites the two pieces.

One day, Odette is called to the children’s school. Sister Bethany berates Nathalie, saying that the girl is defiant and cares too much about art and music. Odette takes her daughter’s hand and runs from the school with her. She apologizes to Nathalie for asking her to conform and promises that she won’t send her back to the school. Clément joins them and says that he’ll switch schools with his sister. Odette holds their hands and tells them, “What I want you both to know […] deep in your bones, is that you are beholden only to yourselves” (288).