She and Gary talked about her going back to work again, but what would she do? He couldn’t get her a job on the show. She’d been out of the game for too long. She took a humbling job at Macy’s, at the mall. A makeup-counter girl. Smiling at strangers who were passing through on their way to the food court. Now and then she got to help a young girl. “Less is more,” Twyla would tell them, but they did not seem convinced. Contouring on a fifteen-year-old made her want to gag, but they wanted to know about that more often than anything else. Mostly it was quiet at the makeup counter. Kids used YouTube videos now to learn about a smoky eye or a lined lip. She worked part time. Her paychecks were spare change. “It’s just something to do,” she told anyone who would listen. “For fun.” Carefree. Still a pretty woman. Still keeping it tight. She quit. Gary had stopped asking how her day at work was, anyway. In her journal she wrote, “If they could only see what is beneath my skin.” Her mid-thirties ennui was unexpected, but there it was.
Then, last year, Twyla’s mother died suddenly, and it crushed her, because Vivian had felt so alive; certainly there had been more left for her to do in her life. She’d had a nice run after her husband passed, first hiring a manager and a bookkeeper to help with the farm, something she’d always nagged at her husband to do. There was less money coming in, but now the pressure was off. She cut her hair short, took good long walks in the morning, lost weight, went off her heart medication. Volunteered at church. Taught Avery how to make pralines and how to shoot a gun, too. Strolled through the pecan groves at sunset as her husband had. “All this is ours,” she told Avery on their last visit, Twyla trailing behind them, smiling. “Every last nut.” A few weeks later, as she walked along a highway at dawn, looking for the trailhead to a path full of morels, a semi picked her off. Her body went flying. The driver disappeared down the road. What will I do now, thought Twyla when she got the call. She waited for someone to tell her how to survive.
* * *
Twyla reached the end of the aisle, turned to dental care, because why the fuck not? Those shiny pink lips needed matching gleaming whites. It was then that she caught a flash of her reflection in a sunglasses display, and realized she was still wearing her bathing suit, she’d been wearing it all day, to the hotel, to the hospital, and now here, a short strapless romper over it, but still it covered little, there was cleavage, there were freckles, here she was, a grown woman, practically naked in a CVS, and in her head she said to herself, “I am having a nervous breakdown in a CVS, I am having a nervous breakdown in a CVS, I am having a nervous breakdown in a CVS,” and then she pushed three boxes of tooth whitener into her shopping cart.
* * *
After the funeral, Twyla packed up her parents’ things at the farm. She found her mother’s Bible, all the family photo albums she had treasured, furniture her father had made himself, quilts her mother had sewed. Bottles of perfume. A framed picture of Twyla in a school play, Curley’s wife in Of Mice and Men. This was when I was perfect, she thought. This was the best version of me.
When her mother was dead and in the ground, Twyla took Avery to the farm for one last look at it before it was sold. Avery loved it there, and though Twyla knew she was sad about her grandmother dying, she couldn’t blame her shy, clever child for having a smile on her face as they pulled across the Alabama state line. Their best trips had been here. Along the way they had picked up barbecue down the road, exchanged pleasantries with Miss Franklin behind the counter while swiping flies away from their faces. Miss Franklin said she was sorry to see them go, sorry to say goodbye to the Clinton family; it had meant a lot to her to know her parents, who were good people during a time when there was a shortage of them. And then she came out from behind the counter and hugged Twyla and gave her an extra side of coleslaw. Twyla and Avery took the pulled pork and the sausage and the mac and cheese and the red beans and the coleslaw and the white bread and the sweet tea and the sides of sauce and they drove another fifteen miles down the road, to the entrance to the farm, and then another half mile down a winding road, through the pecan groves, to her childhood home.
It had rained solidly for two days beforehand, and the grass was high and colored the most brilliant green, and the trees were old and mighty, and they could hear nothing but the occasional buzz of a truck from the highway. They followed the pavement path her father had poured himself thirty-odd years before, and the two of them sat at the picnic table out back and dug into the food that was spread before them. Twyla had wanted her daughter to see the land one last time and know that it was going to provide a future for her. In the silence, they ate. The food was so good. They barely looked at each other as they dipped forkfuls of meat into ripe sauce. But suddenly Twyla noticed a noise, a rustling on the ground. They stopped eating and looked around them. Twyla remembered something from her childhood: the rain brought snakes. The land was full of snakes right then. She gasped, and whispered to Avery what was happening, as if the snakes could understand her words. But Avery, her sweet, nerdy, future-scientist child, wasn’t scared at all; in fact, she was delighted. “I wonder what kind they are,” she said, and she stood and began to walk toward the grass at the edge of the path, tilting her head. Twyla snapped at her to stay on the path.
“Stay away from the snakes, Avery.” She grabbed her daughter. “Get back here.” She shook her head. “I will never understand why you want to walk toward the danger.”
But she admired her child’s boldness and recognized her connection to the farm around her. Family land. What if I stayed here and turned to the land? Brought Avery with me. Gary was rarely around during the week. They could look at the stars at night. She’d homeschool her and work the farm. Avery only cared about science and nature anyway; this whole farm could be an experiment for her. What if she got really quiet here with her child. This was a thing she could do.
Instead, she agreed to sell the land to Darcy’s parents. They wanted to link it with their own property and turn it all into an artists’ residency, an idea foreign to Twyla, but it also sounded lovely and peaceful, and they promised few trees would be felled. It felt like something permanent, and Twyla liked the idea of giving people a place to live for a while. At her lawyer’s office in town, she signed the paperwork with Darcy’s parents, and asked about Darcy. They bragged about her life in New York. She was directing TV commercials while she worked on her documentary. No shame in making a little money, said her father. None whatsoever, said her mother. Times had changed, thought Twyla. “And how are you?” they asked her. I think I might be sad, she thought, but she didn’t say that. She showed them pictures of Avery, was lavish in praise of her own child. No shame in that.
* * *
As she unloaded her makeup at the checkout, the counter girl barely gave her a glance. Eighteen if a day, with flawless lavender-hued braids gathered in a bun atop her head.
“My daughter begged me to let her dye her hair that color,” said Twyla, and then added hastily, “She’s only thirteen, though. But it looks nice on you.”
The girl mumbled a thank-you.
“How’s your day going?” said Twyla.
“Oh, you know, you see it. Working all day and night, got a double.”
The girl methodically scanned each item. It took a while, with Twyla stacking everything on the counter, the girl filling up one bag, double-bagging it, then starting on the next one.
When four bags were filled, a bounty of makeup and skin and dental products amassed before them, the counter girl turned her attention to Twyla.
“You don’t mind me asking, ma’am, what is all this for?”
“Me.”
“Oh, OK,” the girl said. “I was wondering if you were going to donate this somewhere or something. I remember when I was in Boys and Girls Club, these women brought all the girls a bunch of makeup once. I thought maybe you were doing something like that.”
“No, it’s just for me.” Twyla was mortified.
The girl steel-gazed her. Finally she said, “A
re you OK?”
“I just want to feel pretty,” Twyla told the counter girl. There was no one to see it, though. Gary had left her, after all, and she didn’t think he was coming back.
“Well, if all this don’t work, nothing’s going to do it,” said the girl.
Twyla stopped unloading her cart. She was right. Nothing’s going to do it.
“You know what? I don’t want any of it.”
The girl made a short sniff of disapproval.
“You’re going to make me put all this back? For real?”
“I’m sorry, I’m really sorry,” said Twyla. She dug through her purse. “I don’t have any cash. I would give you something if I could.”
“Ma’am, go on, get out of here.”
These people think my time is worth nothing, thought the girl as she watched the woman leave, her hand to her head, muttering, all her skin out like that, sunburned, trashy. She doesn’t know me at all. But my time is worth something. I am worth something. I work hard. I make my money. I save it. I don’t throw it away. Next year, I won’t be here anymore. I’ll be in Atlanta. At school. Next year, I won’t have to deal with a woman like that again. Next year, Atlanta.
16
Alex, on the streetcar on St. Charles Avenue, seeing the city with no distractions, no angles, no edges, just a view. On one block, a row of pink houses wedged tightly together, then stately mansion after mansion, wide front porches for sitting, a blindingly white church, a group of tourists shooting photos in front of it, the trees hanging overhead, traffic churning slowly, a dream, a haze, the heat, the street.
She sat directly behind the driver.
“How far do you go?” she asked.
“To Canal,” he said.
“OK,” she said dazedly. “Canal. All right.”
“Where you trying to go?” Another lost tourist, he thought.
“I don’t know,” she admitted.
They approached a freeway overpass, and beneath it there was a homeless encampment, tents and cardboard boxes and sleeping bags, a few dogs, and some pacing men. Spray-painted messages to a woman named Kat. They’re looking for you, Kat, thought Alex.
“Well, you got the museums coming up here, and if you stay on a little longer, we’ll get you just to the French Quarter.” He stopped at the light and motioned up ahead. “This right here is Lee Circle.”
She looked at an empty pillar, a nub atop it where a statue used to be. “Is it still going to be called Lee Circle now that there’s no Lee anymore?”
“I don’t know the answer to that. I don’t know if we could call it anything but that,” said the driver. “Although I could come up with some suggestions.” He smiled, thinking of his heroes. “I don’t miss seeing it, though, I’ll tell you that.” He paused. “Though some people do. Depends on who you talk to.”
She got out at the stop, perhaps foolishly, for it was extremely hot, she had forgotten. But she wanted to see history, or the absence of it, she supposed. A blank spot. She circled its base, looked up at the nub. Robert E. Lee, I never even knew ye, she thought. And now I never will. We won’t miss you in a hundred years, she thought, or even ten.
She took off walking. The streets were empty, the heat so oppressive and thick, Alex imagined herself fighting her way through it with a machete. Who came to New Orleans in August anyway? Only a fool. Or someone with a dying father.
She passed a small Civil War museum, and then the Ogden Museum, its second floor made of walls of glass block hovering above the earth, and the Contemporary Arts Center, closed for the summer, it seemed, all of it a vortex of a specific kind of culture apparently anomalous to the rest of the city. When was the last time she’d been in a museum? When was the last time she’d been able to invest in any kind of natural curiosity? When had she had time to engage in any non-work-related thinking? Chicago had plenty of museums, culture teeming from its pores. A vast city. A place to hide. Why was she still living in the suburbs? Was life really easier out there? All she did was drive or take the train downtown. If Bobby got to live in Denver, why couldn’t she move back to the city? She felt wild, angry all of a sudden, and stopped in a bar for a drink, ordering a Pimm’s Cup to go from a handsome, white-jacketed bartender with a shaved head and oversize glasses. As he served her the cocktail in a plastic cup, he called her “ma’am,” and she felt old and said, “I’ll give you a big tip if you don’t ever call me ma’am again,” and he thought, I don’t know how not to say ma’am, just like you don’t know how not to give me shit about it. But out loud he said, “How about ‘miss’ instead?”
“Miss” she could tolerate. She smiled, gave him a twenty, and took off, Googling on her phone as she walked.
Things to do in New Orleans. Drink, eat, drink, eat, jazz. The Mississippi. Cemeteries and ghosts. Alligators. She crossed Canal Street and the threshold of the French Quarter. Drink, eat, jazz. Ghosts.
She thought about being a tourist for a while, how a different truth of the city stretched out ahead. She would take the well-traveled path, the one she was directed to follow by forces bigger than herself. Say goodbye to your free will. You think you’re choosing it, but actually it’s already been chosen for you, these bars and restaurants, these street musicians, these antique stores, these daiquiri shops, these tours, the cast-iron second-floor balconies with the flowered, filigreed scrollwork, this fleur-di-lis T-shirt, that vaping pen, this sugar-soaked beignet, that wide-brimmed hat with which to beat the burning sun destroying your skin and eyes. All of this is accurate and authentic, she supposed, in that the tourism economy has its own truth. But someone was behind all of it. There were entrepreneurs and politicians and the basic labor that supported it. And probably ghosts, she thought. Maybe it was the ghosts that ran this town. She squinted in the sun and tried to see one or two of them, but all she saw were boozed-up tourists. If you can’t beat ’em, she thought, then get fucked up.
On Bourbon Street, she bought another drink, a stupid, sugar-sour-sweet daiquiri, and paid a dollar for an extra shot of 100-proof rum, to make sure it would do the trick. Then she bought a pair of cheap cat’s-eye sunglasses from a women’s clothing store, even though the sun was going down, because she felt like spending money she didn’t have. She stood in front of some street musicians and tossed change in their buckets and drank her drink and hid behind her glasses, pretending she was no one at all, certainly not a woman with a father on his deathbed uptown. Alex stopped at a lingerie shop and contemplated buying a sleazy bra, but then realized she had no one to wear it for but herself, and she knew that she herself should be enough, but at that moment it did not feel that way. Tomorrow she would feel differently. Today this was how she felt. You see how you feel when your father is about to die. You won’t know until it happens to you.
She checked her phone for the closest bar on the travel-site list that she was allowing to guide her destiny. The Hotel Monteleone was half a block away, and inside it the Carousel Bar, which was circular and rotated. “Iconic,” read the website. “Don’t miss this spot or you’ll regret it,” an underpaid, uninsured twenty-four-year-old had written at a desk somewhere, nursing a hangover from the night before, contemplating his own regrets. “Crucial,” he wrote. “You need it.”
“OK, all right already,” mumbled Alex, and she veered toward the hotel.
Frigid air blasted her in the lobby, and she steered herself to the bar, where she grabbed the last remaining seat and ordered a Sazerac from the gray-haired, wiry bartender with an angular jaw and eyes like enormous almonds. Next to her, a young couple pecked at each other. The bar moved slowly, almost imperceptibly, but she was definitely in motion. She jammed some cocktail nut mix in her mouth, sighed, and dialed her mother. Away we go, she thought.
“Yes, hello?” said her mother.
“Barbra,” she said. “I can’t believe you won’t tell me the truth.”
“I don’t have time for this,” said her mother.
The people next to her kept pecking, and they w
ere making audible kissing noises. Alex hated that sound.
“I’m pissed,” said Alex. “I can’t help it.” A hand glided in front of her and a drink surfaced. She pulled a twenty out of her wallet, then mouthed “Thank you” to the bartender.
“Death brings out different qualities in people,” said her mother. “Or, I suppose, flaws. Your father knew how to handle death; he aggressively stood to action. I become passive.”
“Become passive?”
Her mother ignored her.
“Your brother, apparently, does not handle death at all.”
“God, where is Gary already?”
“And you get angry,” said Barbra.
“I was always angry,” Alex said, although she wondered if that were true. She’d had many moments of pure joy as a child.
Once I was happy, she thought.
“If anyone should be angry, it’s me,” Barbra said.
Ah-ha, that was something. A crack. Give me one thing, lady.
“Tell me why,” said Alex. She took a big swig of her drink. This is the drink that is going to fuck me up, she thought. This is the one. (She was wrong; she had another two drinks to go yet before she was fully inebriated.)
“Because I’m going to be all alone now,” her mother said, and emitted a small sob.
“Ah, Mom. You’re not alone,” said Alex. “You have me.” She didn’t know how much she could offer, but she didn’t want to be alone herself.
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