by Lisa Jackson
At four o’clock Tawilda, back from a cigarette and coffee break, urged Olivia to “take a load off for a few minutes.” Tawilda was a reed-thin African-American woman. She wore vibrantly colored saris and slipped matching beads onto the tiny braids clustered in her long hair. With a model’s high cheekbones, and a series of bracelets running up one arm, Tawilda was as exotic as some of the merchandise. “I can handle things for a few minutes. Go get yourself some fresh air, girl,” she insisted as she swept through a curtain of beads hanging in the doorway to the back rooms. A minute later she returned without her coat and purse. The beads danced again. “Go on. Git. I can handle things here.”
Olivia needed a break.
“I’ll be back in fifteen.”
Tawilda waved an elegant hand. “Knock yerself out. Make it twenty or twenty-five. Ain’t nobody shoppin’ here today. It’s not like I’m gonna be swamped or nothin'.”
“If you say so.” Olivia grabbed her jacket and purse and headed outside. Across the street was Jackson Square. A spiked wrought-iron fence surrounded the manicured grounds where paths converged at a statue of Andrew Jackson. Olivia wasn’t interested in the park. Instead she tightened the cinch of her jacket and walked swiftly to St. Louis Cathedral. Only a few pedestrians were out and a stiff breeze rolling off the Mississippi was colder than usual. Pigeons scattered and a lone trombone player, his case lying open, played something bluesy on the street corner.
The cathedral with its three imposing spires knifing sharply into the darkness was not only a grand, imposing structure but the oldest active cathedral in America, a building that had been rebuilt twice and was, Olivia felt, the center of Catholicism in the Crescent City.
She walked inside, where tall arches and stained glass surrounded the nave. She gazed at the altar and blended in with a handful of tourists who milled just inside the door. A sprinkling of the pious or troubled knelt in the foremost pews, their heads bent as they faced the altar. A tall man in an overcoat brushed past her and their eyes connected for a second.
“Leo?” Olivia called as he hurried by. Was Sarah Restin’s missing husband here, in New Orleans? No way. She took a step to follow him, but he was out a side door in a flash.
“Livvie?” she heard faintly.
Olivia froze at the sound of her mother’s voice. But that was impossible. Bernadette was in Houston.
A light touch on her sleeve and she nearly catapulted out of her skin. She glanced back to see the woman who had borne her, paler than she remembered, wearing a cape that reached her ankles and spike-heeled boots. Bernadette’s hair was tucked beneath a wide-brimmed hat and sunglasses covered her eyes.
Olivia was stunned. She hadn’t seen nor heard from her mother since Grannie Gin’s funeral.
“What are you doing here?”
“Looking for you,” Bernadette replied, slightly out of breath. “I stopped in at the shop and that black girl said you’d just left. I ran to catch up and I was lucky enough to see you walk through the front doors, so I hurried to catch you.”
“But why … ?”
“Come on, let me buy you a cup of coffee or something.”
“Mom, I have to go back to work.”
“The other girl said she’d watch the store. Really, Li wie, it’s important.” It had to be. Otherwise she wouldn’t be here. Bernadette inclined her head toward the front doors and Olivia walked into the square with her mother, a woman she barely knew, didn’t understand, and wasn’t sure she liked. As far as love went, well, that mother-daughter thing was a little nebulous. She felt the chill of the winter wind and it settled deep in her soul. As much as Olivia had wanted and tried for her mother’s approval as a child, disavowed it as a teenager, ached for it as a twenty-year-old, she now realized and accepted that Bernadette Dubois Benchet and whatever other names she’d tagged on, didn’t have the capacity to give nor, probably, receive unconditional love. It was a concept Bernadette just didn’t understand.
They found a café that served coffee and alcohol around the clock. A jazz man was seated in the corner, playing a guitar and harmonica simultaneously, his notes soulful. From the heart. Bernadette took off her hat and hung it, along with her jacket, over the top of the post separating the booths, then slid onto the bench opposite her daughter. In the flickering light from the hurricane lantern on the table, her long dark hair took on a burnished, coppery color. The sunglasses remained.
“How are you, Livvie?”
“Okay, I guess.”
“School going well?”
“As well as can be expected. How about you?”
Her mother’s smile was faint. “I suppose. I, uh, I know how close you were to your grandmother and I wonder how you’ve been doing since she’s been gone.”
“I miss her.”
“I know.” Bernadette nodded. “Believe it or not, I do, too. She was … a character. All that silliness with the tarot cards and mind reading or whatever it was.”
A waiter appeared and they ordered café au lait and beignets. “I don’t have much time.”
Bernadette nodded, rolled her lips over her teeth as if now, when she finally had Olivia’s attention, she wasn’t quite sure if she should confide in her. “What were you doing in the cathedral?”
“Looking around.”
“I don’t remember you as being particularly religious.”
“Maybe I’ve had a change of heart,” Olivia said as the waiter carried a wide tray to their booth. She didn’t elaborate as they were served. Only when the waiter had deposited their coffee and a basket of beignets covered in powdered sugar on the table did she ask, “What’s on your mind, Bernadette?”
Olivia’s mother took in a deep breath. Her fingernails tapped on the tabletop. “I heard from your father.” Her voice was a whisper, and tiny lines dared pinch the corners of her mouth.
The sperm donor. Great. Olivia stiffened at the very thought of the man who had sired her. “Oh, yeah? What did he want?” She picked up her cup, took an experimental sip as the jazzman concluded his set, and several people clapped. “Let me guess. Money.”
“Well, that, too. There’s always that.” Bernadette picked up a pastry and tore it in two. “But this time there’s more. He wants to see you.”
Olivia nearly choked on a swallow. “Give me a break.”
“It’s true. He called last week sometime.”
“I thought he was still locked up,” Olivia said bitterly. That her father was a felon and that she hadn’t been told still bothered her. She’d found out from a “friend.” Connie Earnhardt had only been too happy to let it slip when they were in high school. Grannie Gin and Bernadette had thought it best to let Olivia think Reggie Benchet was in the Armed Forces somewhere on the far corners of the earth instead of in the Mississippi State Penitentiary. Incarcerated for armed robbery, assault with a deadly weapon, and murder.
“He’s been out since the first of the year. He called me a few months ago. Jeb found out and there was hell to pay.” Her glossy lips turned down at the corners, and in the soft light Olivia noticed that her mother wore more makeup than usual, a thicker coating of base and powder, probably in deference to her age. As beautiful as she was, Bernadette couldn’t stop the footsteps of Father Time from marching across her skin and leaving footprints of wrinkles and age spots upon her face.
Picking at her beignet, Bernadette said, “Reggie disappeared again for a while, but now he’s back. He’s called three times in the last two weeks and he insists he wants to see you. You’re all he has left now.”
“Forget it.” Olivia shook her head, pushed her coffee aside. “He dumped you, me, and Chandra, killed someone, and ended up in prison, for God’s sake. He made a mess of his life. I’m not interested. Believe it or not, I’ve got my own life. There are things I’ve got to do.”
“So that’s why you were at St. Louis Cathedral?”
Olivia couldn’t confide in her mother. She had as a child and Bernadette’s reaction had only made things worse. �
��Everyone needs a little faith sometimes,” she hedged and glanced at her watch. “I really have to go.”
“Well, okay … but I think you should know that I gave Reggie your number.”
“You did what?”
“He has the right to know,” Bernadette said stubbornly, raising her chin a bit. “He is your father.”
“You just wanted him off your back.”
Bernadette stiffened, and though Olivia couldn’t read the expression in her eyes because of the sunglasses, she expected anger was flaring in those green orbs. “He did his time and paid his debt to society. He has the right—”
“What about mine, Bernadette? What about my rights?” she demanded. Then she shut up. This was a no-win argument. Reining in her fury, she changed the subject. “So what’s with the dark glasses, Mom? It’s twilight, and if you haven’t noticed, this restaurant isn’t exactly well lit. Why are you wearing shades?”
The corners of her mouth pinching, Bernadette ignored the questions. As if they hadn’t been asked. Finally she sighed. “I guess I should have expected this reaction from you. I’d thought, no, hoped that maybe you’d grown up, Livvie. I guess I was wrong.”
Way to go, Mom, Olivia thought. She remembered the way her mother had always argued, forever on the attack. To Bernadette’s way of thinking, a best defense was a strong offense. “I don’t know why I wasted my time. Well, I told you about Reggie’s request. Now it’s up to you.”
“You have to admit he hasn’t been exactly a stellar dad.”
“Fine. We both know that. I passed along the message. That’s all I needed to do.” She stood abruptly and fished in her purse for her wallet.
“I’ll get this,” Olivia said, but Bernadette was having none of that today. She found a twenty-dollar bill and dropped it onto the table. “There’s one other thing, Olivia,” she said icily. “You may as well know, I’m leaving Jeb.”
She shouldn’t have been surprised, as her mother not only had horrid taste in men, but felt compelled to marry them, then divorce when the blush of love subsided. Olivia suspected that Bernadette thought that if she had the right partner she could find a fairy tale romance complete with happy ending, but so far all her princes had turned out to be frogs. Or worse. Ogres. “That’s probably a good idea.”
“I … I hope so.” Bernadette was standing now but some of her fire seemed to have been doused.
“Is there a reason?”
“We … we don’t get along.” Her lower lip quivered in a distinctly un-Bernadette-like fashion. “And it’s gotten worse. He found out that I lied about how much my inheritance was.”
“Why did you keep it from him?” Olivia asked, not wanting to know the answer.
“So I could have something. Something of my own.” Bernadette swallowed hard, then tucked her hair into her hat again. As she did, the candlelight shifted and Olivia thought she saw a blemish under the thick layer of powder on Bernadette’s cheek. A bluish smudge.
“Mom?” Olivia asked, dread mounting.
Bernadette’s head snapped up sharply at the familiarity. It had been years since Olivia had referred to her by anything other than her given name. “What?”
“What’s going on?” Olivia stood and focused hard on the discoloration beneath Bernadette’s makeup. A bruise. As if Bernadette had banged her head against something.
Or been hit.
“Take off your glasses.”
“No. Not now.”
Olivia did it for her. Though Bernadette backed away, Olivia snagged the frames and pulled them from her mother’s face. “Oh, God, he hit you,” she said angrily. Bernadette’s eyes were swollen, the whites reddish, black circles beneath them.
“I’ll be all right.”
“Are you crazy?” Olivia exploded. “You’ll never be all right. That son of a bitch should be in jail. It was Jeb who did this, right? That’s why you’re leaving him.”
“I have to go now,” Bernadette said. “And you’re late for work.”
“Screw work!”
Her mother started to walk away, but Olivia grabbed her elbow. From the nearby tables and booths, patrons stared at them, conversation died.
“This is assault, Bernadette. You have to go to the police. You have to report him, make him stop. I know a cop who—”
“I’m not going to the police, Livvie.”
“But that bastard—”
“Shh! This is my problem. I’ll handle it,” Bernadette said, slipping the shaded lenses onto the bridge of her broken nose again. “You just worry about your father, okay? Don’t cause a scene!” Yanking her sleeve away from Olivia’s fingers, she hurried, head down, through the glass door.
“Is everything all right?” a nervous little man with a pencil-thin mustache asked from a nearby table. He was blinking rapidly.
“Fine. It’s fine,” Olivia said, though she didn’t believe a word of it. Nothing was right tonight. Nothing at all.
Chapter Sixteen
The library was nearly empty, only a few students hunched over books on Sunday night. Just the die-hards. Or those without someplace better to go, Olivia thought as she shut the reference book and stretched her spine. She’d closed up the shop at six then driven to the campus, where she’d spent the last three hours studying and trying to forget her visit from her mother, attempting to convince herself that whatever problems Bernadette was having with her current husband, she couldn’t help.
Or could she?
Had her mother come not to tell her about Reggie, but to try and mend what seemed impossibly tattered mother-daughter fences? You didn’t even give her a chance, her mind nagged, guilt storming through her soul. Catholic upbringing. Compliments of Grannie Gin. Bernadette certainly didn’t have much to do with it.
Pausing at the desk to check out two books on the psychology of sociopaths, she remembered the last time she’d seen her mother. At Grannie Gin’s funeral.
It had been a muggy day, the kind when hot air seemed to adhere to her skin. Bernadette had been distant, but that wasn’t unusual as she’d sat through the mass. She’d listened to the service, dropped a rose on Grannie’s casket, shown up at the house where the few members of the family, distant cousins for the most part, and some friends had gathered, but she’d kept mostly to herself, chain-smoking on the back porch and sipping from a never-finished drink of Jack Daniels. She’d seemed lost in thought, and the few times Olivia had approached her, she’d been subdued, tears slowly tracking from beneath her black veil.
Now, Olivia realized, she’d never taken off her hat or the lacy veil for fear that a bruise might show through.
Again Olivia felt a pang of guilt as she walked, keys clutched in one hand, outside to her truck. The night was cool, winter threatening to grasp hold of the Crescent City. There were only a few students crisscrossing the campus, knots of kids in two-or threesomes hurrying along the walkways. Olivia was the only person walking alone, she realized, and for the first time in her life, it bothered her. Not just because of the cool, dark night and the recent dreams, but because she was unconnected, flying solo when most of the world was coupled up.
Which was ridiculous. She had only to look at her mother, or her friend Sarah, or remember Ted, the man she nearly married, to realize how much better off she was alone. The only two men she’d found remotely interesting in the past couple of years were a world-weary cop and a priest, both, she guessed, who carried a ton of baggage with them. What was wrong with her?
It must be the holidays. Everyone gets a little nuts during the holidays. Isn’t that when the most suicides occur?
She turned the collar of her jacket up and heard the sounds of a stereo playing from one open dorm window and laughter from another.
So what if you’re alone? And why do you always pick men who are unavailable? Off-limits? Because you don’t want to get involved, not really. You know, Livvie, you might just be a candidate for a psychological study … or the subject of one of those trashy afternoon talk shows. “Wom
en who love men who can’t love them because they’re already married to their careers.”
“Idiot,” she muttered as the path cut through a copse of trees. It was darker here and she was alone. All of the other students had disappeared into the buildings on campus. So what? She hurried along the path.
Click, click, click.
A noise came from behind her.
Her heart squeezed. It’s nothing. Just your overactive imagination.
She glanced over her shoulder to the darkened shrubbery flanking the buildings. No one.
Stop it, she told herself. No reason to be jumpy.
But she heard the noise again and her heart began to thud. She started to run.
“Hey! Watch out! On your right,” a gruff voice yelled.
She leapt to the left, out of the thicket to the parking lot.
From the darkness a bicyclist blew past her in a flash of silver spokes and glossy helmet reflecting in the blue light from the security lamps. Click, click, click, the cyclist shifted gears and was swallowed by the night.
So that was it! A sound she’d heard hundreds of times.
You’re losing it, Benchet, she thought, relieved as she spied her pickup, the only vehicle in the lot right where she’d parked it. She jogged across the pockmarked asphalt, unlocked the truck, and slid behind the steering wheel. Get a grip! She fired the engine and gunned it, toppling the sack of groceries she’d picked up earlier. “Great.”
A few minutes later she was on the freeway heading out of the city. She turned on the radio and heard Trish LaBelle’s voice giving out advice over the airwaves. Trish had been with WNAB before joining the staff at WSLJ. Her program was in the early evening, about over now, Olivia thought, then there was Gator Brown’s light jazz, which led into Dr. Sam’s popular late-night advice program. Trish’s format was different. She pretaped questions from viewers, then interspersed the questions and answers with music that seemed to fit the mood.