by Barbara Hall
“Now, the house was destroyed by a fire in 1834, and that’s when Madame’s ugly secret was discovered.”
Simone said, “She barely escaped with her life. The neighbors tried to kill her on the spot.”
The driver said, “Who’s givin’ this tour, babe?”
“You are, handsome. Go ahead.”
Poppy, who had been staring resolutely at her lap the whole time, finally looked up as if she had been awakened from a trance. “Why don’t you take us past the projects?” she said. “Why not clop on over to the cemetery, where about fifty tourists a year are robbed and murdered? And maybe, while you’re at it, take us past the criminal courts building, where all the judges are taking kickbacks, and then the gambling casinos, which are bankrupting the city, and then the KKK headquarters . . .”
The driver said, “Lady, this is my tour, my bu’iness. You want the bad-news tour, go take it yourself.”
“It’s dishonest,” Poppy said, “the way they peddle this city.”
Simone lit a cigarette and said, “Poppy, when did you grow these opinions?”
“She’s always had opinions,” Nora piped up, a little too eagerly, always ready to take on the role of peacemaker. “Remember in college? She was a communist.”
Poppy laughed. “It was the eighties. Anyone left of Franco was considered a communist.”
“Still, you were always protesting, and writing op-ed pieces in the school paper. I forget. What was your big complaint?”
“South Africa,” Poppy said. “Enslavement has always bugged me.”
“They’re better now, aren’t they?” Simone asked.
“Oh, yes. Black people get to ride the bus out of the ghetto.”
“You know me, Poppy. I’ve just, never been political.”
“What does that mean?” Poppy demanded. “That’s like saying you’re not an organism. Everything is political, and if you choose to isolate yourself from the issues of your time, you are, in effect, being political. That is a political stance. A stance of apathy. It adds to the problem, and that is your contribution.”
Simone thought about this for a moment, blowing tobacco smoke into the air. “I see your point. But I happen to think I’ve made more of a contribution than that.”
“Like what? Writing about food? Modeling? Making people feel bad about the way they look?”
“First of all, food is important. Good food is more important. It’s an art.”
“Please.”
“It is important to eat well, Poppy. Why deny yourself pleasure? Is that a healthy way to live? Is that self-love?”
Poppy ignored this question and asked instead, “What about modeling?”
“Beauty,” Simone replied. “Also important.”
“Whose standard of beauty, though? Starving women? That’s beautiful?”
“The public responds,” she said.
“They are bombarded. They are told what to think.”
“Oh, mercy. So the masses can’t think for themselves? Listen to yourself. And besides, people do understand the difference between looking and being. They can look at a fine painting without wanting to go home and make one. You can look at a model and admire her without wanting to be her.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“Look, remember when Princess Diana died?”
The driver said, “If y’all are interested, that’s the Old Ursuline Convent, oldest building in the Mississippi Valley.”
“Of course I remember when she died,” Poppy said.
“And Mother Teresa died the same week? And who got the most press?”
“Diana, which is thoroughly disgusting.”
“No, it’s not. People loved her because she was beautiful. People want and need and crave beauty. All those dresses were a service to the world. Mother Teresa in that potato sack—she didn’t value beauty. And the people know that is wrong. That is not self-love, to walk around in a sheet with your face all shriveled.”
“She healed people! She fed them when they were starving!”
“So did Diana! And she did it in a Chanel suit! Are you telling me Mother T’s got a higher spot in heaven because her face looked like a baseball mitt?”
Nora listened and squirmed, trying to think of something neutral to say, when Poppy began to laugh. She snorted into her fist and then got the giggles, and Simone followed suit, her loud laugh echoing off the walls of the buildings and down the street. It scared the horse and he jerked forward.
“Y’all calm down now,” said the driver.
Nora smiled, suddenly remembering that Simone and Poppy had always gone at each other this way. For hours it seemed, back in that house on Vinegar Hill, sitting at the kitchen table, dunking bags of tea into hot water, or sometimes sipping scotch. Their voices would resonate, waking up the floaters or the people next door, who yelled for silence. But they wouldn’t stop, and Nora would sit watching them as if it were a spectator sport, wishing she had enough nerve or opinions to join in.
Why had she forgotten those evenings? Over the years she had smoothed out the edges, and in her memory everyone had been made polite, reserved, respectful. But they had been boisterous in college; of course they had. Maybe she had, too. Maybe she had taken away her own edge in reconstructing the past.
When Poppy finally had stopped laughing, she said, “Simone, what is all this self-love business?”
“I’m in therapy,” Simone said.
“Ah. Well, it seems to me that this country is a little too afflicted with self-love.”
“You’re wrong. You’re talking about narcissism. That is a totally different thing. Narcissism is rooted in self-loathing.”
“I don’t believe that. I think that people are inherently flawed, and we should acknowledge that and stop all this self-aggrandizing.”
“Holy moly! Inherently flawed? That’s the best part, Poppy. That’s where the challenge is. You’re an artist, think about it. Is a perfect painting beautiful? Is it even possible? And when people try to re-create human beings in art, they know it is important to capture that imperfection.”
Poppy said, “Have you ever seen Michelangelo’s David?”
“Yes, I have, and the man is standing like a faggot. With that slingshot over his shoulder? Right. He’s going to kill a giant? He’s a fucking hairdresser. He’s going to mousse Goliath to death.”
“He is a bit precious,” Poppy conceded.
“What about Degas?” Nora said suddenly. She wanted to be in this debate.
They looked at her, waiting.
“Those ballerinas are kind of perfect,” she said.
“Pedophile,” Poppy said.
“Cross-dresser,” Simone suggested.
“Clearly the man is obsessed with prepubescent girls.”
“I think he was traumatized by a tutu as a child.”
“The Napoleon House,” the driver said. “They have real good muffulettas. Y’all hungry?”
“I think he wants us to get out,” Nora said.
“That’s fine. I’m hungry.”
They got out at the corner of Chartres and St. Louis, at what appeared to be a dilapidated bar. Nora had not yet adjusted to the old charm of the city. Everything seemed dirty to her, and dangerous. In Charlottesville, you knew what a restaurant was before you went in. Mostly big chains or family-run diners. She would never go into a place like this in Virginia. It just wouldn’t make sense. Once inside, she saw the plaster was crumbling off the walls, revealing aged brick underneath. The floor was concrete, and the air was blue with smoke. There were tables pushed right against each other, and there was a long bar, full of drinkers even though it was barely noon. These were not beer drinkers either. Martinis, scotch, margaritas. A ceiling fan stirred the smoke around and made a shadow like a starfish on the floor.
They sat away from the bar, trying to escape the pollution and the boisterous chat of the locals.
Simone explained the Napoleon House to Nora.
“The mayor and J
ean Lafitte the pirate and a whole bunch of other people built it for Napoleon after he was exiled to Elba.”
“St. Helena, actually,” Poppy said.
“He had a bunch of supporters here, and they wanted to bring him over and give him a nice place to live. It was originally the mayor’s own house. He was going to give it up! That’s how much they loved the little guy. But Napoleon died in 1821, without ever setting foot inside.”
A waiter in a white shirt and black bow tie approached them with menus, but Simone waved them away. “Three muffulettas and three Pimms.”
Nora said, “I don’t recognize any of that.”
“You’ll like it,” Simone assured her.
“It’s pleasant,” Poppy said, “to eat greasy meat and drink potent liquor in the home of a despot.”
“You said it,” Simone said.
“Who was Jean Lafitte?” Nora asked.
“A pirate,” Poppy said, “who is given credit for doing almost anything of merit or notoriety in this city. It’s mostly apocryphal. He was a pirate, for God’s sake. He didn’t hang around the city. He hid in the swamp like a good outlaw.”
“There are plenty of outlaws in this city who don’t hide out,” Simone said.
“That’s true,” Poppy admitted. “My father was one.”
They looked at her. Nora felt a little breathless, as if she were about to hear something sacred. Poppy never talked about her father, except to say that he was a bad man, and that she had nothing but unpleasant memories of her upbringing. She was raised by him and a black maid named Esther. Her mother had died under mysterious circumstances when she was a child. An unexplained fall down the stairs. Drunk, perhaps, or maybe a “My Last Duchess” scenario, she thought, remembering the Browning poem. Or was the duchess strangled? She used to know that poem by heart. Now she knew nothing substantial.
“Did you ever make peace with him?” Simone asked.
Poppy stared at her. “In my way.”
They didn’t talk for a while. The Pimms came, a sweet golden liquid with cucumbers floating in it. Then the muffulettas arrived and Nora ate hers quickly, ravenously. She thought she had never tasted anything so good. It made her forget about the restaurant’s crumbling walls and the smoke and the water bugs scuttling across the concrete.
When they had finished eating, Simone lit a cigarette and said, “Now. We have to talk.”
“What about?” Poppy asked. She had eaten only half of her sandwich and had made no mess at all. Nora felt like a slob, olive confetti splattered around her plate. She put her napkin over it.
“About why we’re here,” Simone said.
“In New Orleans,” Poppy asked, “or on the planet?”
“Can I go to the bathroom first?” Nora asked, standing.
“No, Nora Kay. Stay put.”
She sat back down. Simone’s expression was gravely serious. Nora wasn’t sure she’d ever seen her look this way. She glanced at Poppy, who was starting to recognize the same thing.
“It was nearly a year ago,” Simone said, as if she were about to tell a fable. “I was in New Orleans on assignment. Seduction in the South, or some damn thing, was my topic. I was supposed to write about a romantic evening in New Orleans. Restaurant, hotel, dance spot, buggy ride, so on. It was my last night here, and I went to this place on Bourbon Street, a dance club called Oz. It’s a gay bar, but a lot of straight couples go there. I thought it might be interesting to include the place in my article. Anyway, I danced a little, had a beer, and started walking home. It was around eleven o’clock. The streets were pretty crowded still. I decided to walk down Pirates Alley, over by St. Louis Cathedral. It’s listed as the most romantic walk in the city.”
She paused here to take a drag from her cigarette. Nora could see that Simone’s hand was shaking.
“So I was walking along there, and I realized that someone was walking behind me. I didn’t pay much attention at first. Then the next thing I knew, he had his hand around my throat and I was up against the wall.”
Nora sat paralyzed. She did not want to hear the rest. She did not want to know that this thing had happened, this terrible big thing. It was starting to happen now, that her life was collecting tragedies like bugs in a net. But maybe it wouldn’t end badly; maybe there was a way out of this tale. She waited and hoped.
Simone said, “I couldn’t breathe, so I couldn’t scream. He explained what he wanted me to do, and I did it. I was afraid I was going to die.”
“He raped you,” Poppy said.
Simone nodded. “In a number of ways. It was horrific. I won’t go into the details, but that wasn’t even the worst part. And thinking I might die right there and be a body in the alley, next to the homeless guy—who did not one thing to help me, by the way—that was not the worst part either. When it was over, he gave me a lecture. He told me I shouldn’t be walking around New Orleans by myself. It was a dangerous city. He told me not to be stupid. I stood there nodding, agreeing with him, saying I was stupid. I just kept yessing him like crazy, hoping he would let me live. And finally he walked away. Just walked. He felt no urgency.”
She paused to take a sip of Pimms, but her momentum was going now, and she did not back off her story.
“I walked to the hotel, to the Collier House, in fact. And I told the clerk what had happened, and he called the police, and so on and so forth. Just like a bad TV movie. All the uncomfortable questions and the humiliating exam at the hospital. I had to take the AIDS cocktail as a prophylactic measure. That’s part of the treatment for rape these days.”
“Oh, God,” Nora said suddenly. It was all too much to hear.
“I’m okay,” Simone said. “I’ve been tested, and so has he. But that’s another story. You’ll hear it all at the trial.”
“Trial? They caught him?” Poppy asked.
“Yes. And the trial is Wednesday.” Simone paused. “And that’s why you’re here.” She exhaled a long breath and smiled. “There. That wasn’t so bad.”
Nora shook her head. Her eyes were clouded with tears and she was finding it hard to breathe. “I can’t believe it,” she said.
“Neither could I,” Simone said. “Even when I tell it, it sounds like something that happened to another person.”
“Why didn’t you tell us?” Poppy asked, and there was a degree of indignation in her voice.
“I couldn’t. I don’t know. I was ashamed.”
“You did nothing wrong! He should be ashamed.”
“Yes, but the human psyche’s a weird little number, isn’t it?”
Poppy stood and put her arms around her friend. Simone started to cry in earnest then, and Nora cried, too, watching them. She cried for her friend’s pain and anguish, and she cried for her own helplessness, the fact that she could not even make a move toward reassurance. She had nothing at all to say.
6
In the afternoon, the heat became unbearable. Blistering. There was nothing to do but lie down in the cool hotel room and wait for it to pass. Nora tried to hypnotize herself by staring at the ceiling fan slicing through the air. She did not want to feel anything. She held off her emotions like two hands trying to hold off a hurricane. They were coming, but she would make them wait. She learned this trick when Cliff left her. Everything was battering at her, but she became skilled at emptying herself of all emotion, creating a void inside. She would retreat there; for hours at a time she could lie there and think of nothing at all, feel nothing. It was a useful skill, and she didn’t even know how she did it. If she could explain it, she could make a million.
She exhausted herself into a fitful sleep, dreamed stupid dreams filled with talking animals and people from her childhood; when she woke up, she was crying. How could any of this be? How could she, who had stepped so carefully around life, be smack-dab in the middle of it? How could so much pain have tracked her down? She realized this was not her own pain, but there was such a slight difference. She realized, too, that she had arrived at a point in life wh
en things happened from which she would never recover. There would be more things like this. Cancer, soon, as they all entered their forties. More divorces. Troubled children. Unfaithful men. Menopause. Dead parents. Epiphanies.
She wanted none of it, yet she did not want to be dead. She felt stranded and alone, here in the middle of her life. She did not know what to do.
She was ashamed to admit that she did not want to go to the trial. Her selfish thought was, I have had enough. My own pain is still too fresh. I can’t bear it. But she knew that this was such a bad thought, if she gave any weight to it her soul would be irreparably damaged.
Boo would say, “I told you she was trash.”
“She was raped, Mother,” she would spit back.
“Some people go looking for trouble.”
She shut down the conversation. There were enough troubling discussions with Boo that were real. She didn’t need to start making them up. But she couldn’t really help it. Sometimes she felt she carried her mother’s personality inside her—the ugly reprimands, the skeptical eye, the constant criticism.
What Nora could not believe was that this happened to Simone of all people, who had never put a foot wrong, had never had anything bad happen to her, could negotiate her way out of the tightest spot. Being raped was more like something that would happen to her, Nora. She wasn’t sure why she felt that way. Perhaps because she was nearly raped once, in college. She had been so grateful to be in the company of a football player, she actually believed he wanted to leave the party so he could see her apartment. (He said he was looking for a place in that complex.) So she took him there, and the next thing she knew, her hands were being held down, and she was on the bed, and he was on top of her and shushing her. She could not move at all. He could have killed her if he had wanted to, snapped her neck at will. Somehow she thought to bite him, on the cheek. He screamed and jumped up, concerned, no doubt, about his perfect countenance. She ran out and he left. That was all. She never told anyone. Why would she? It had been humiliating, and it had been mostly her fault.