Guests on Earth: A Novel

by Lee Smith

  Then, “Who is it? I am outside, just here—” His booming voice echoed through the little rooms, and there he was, out on the fire escape amid the flowering trees, shirtless, suspenders dangling over his striped trousers, waving a big bottle of red wine. “Evalina!” He sounded delighted, as always. He held up a wineglass full. “Join me!”

  I scurried to do so, first rinsing out another wineglass in the kitchen. My tiredness vanished the moment I stepped through the bedroom window onto the narrow iron fire escape. I was taken aback by his closeness and by the mat of curly black hair on his wide chest. For a moment I thought to run. Yet I held out my glass.

  He filled it, then raised it aloft. “To Evalina!” he cried out. “My little swan!”

  No one had ever toasted me before.

  I had to sit one step above him on the narrow iron fire escape, which was nothing more than a ladder, really. The setting sun shone through the flowering dogwoods all around us; streetcars clanged somewhere below; and the silly tune from an ice cream wagon came wafting up to us on the little breeze that lifted my wispy hair. “Have some more, my Evalina,” Joey entreated, and I did, and yet another glass.

  As dusk came, everything took on a heightened, mysterious intensity. Now streetlights shone through the trees. And it was I—I, Evalina!—who leaned down in the darkening shadows to kiss his neck, thick and salty, to touch the hair that grew in clumps upon his shoulders, to receive his waiting kiss, which was everything I had somehow known it would be. He picked me up like a rag doll, and lifted me back inside.

  I WOKE BEFORE Joey, lying with him in silence while the first faint light of dawn crept through the open window into the bedroom, breathing with him, in and out, in and out, as he lay curled around me, sleeping like a child. Reluctantly I rose, then hurried through the still-dark streets hoping to make an inconspicuous return to the dormitory.

  I arrived instead to find a scene of horror in the early morning light: all traffic blocked from entering our cul-de-sac by uniformed policemen; the blinking red lights of an ambulance and two police cars drawn up before the building; several staff members and many students milling about on the sidewalk, most of them still in their pajamas or gowns and robes. The ambulance pulled out just as I reached the group. One of the police cars followed, siren shrieking.

  “Now, now girls, not to worry, she will be all right,” screeched old Miss Barnstable, the counselor from upstairs, still wearing her ugly black hairnet. Several of my girls were hugging each other and crying. They looked at me curiously. I could not even imagine how I must have appeared to them at that moment, considering the night I had spent. Surely, all could tell!

  Dr. Humboldt, dean of students, turned to me as well, dark circles under his sad, bespectacled eyes. “Miss Toussaint,” he said, “at last.”

  We shepherded the girls back inside, past my own locked door with its several missives still taped or tacked to it: some of them sealed, with my name written on the front of the envelopes, then one sheet of paper that read simply in bold print MISS TOUSSAINT WHERE ARE YOU? MARY STILL WON’T MOVE WE DON’T KNOW WHAT TO DO PLEASE COME, SUSAN ROYSTER

  AFTER LEAVING BALTIMORE, Joey and I traveled constantly (San Francisco, Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal). Wherever we were, I found jobs in churches or schools, gave lessons, or worked in music libraries or stores. Though Joey’s career flourished, his habits and tastes grew ever more expensive—silk shirts, restaurant meals, fine wines, late hours, and taxicabs. Usually I had been asleep for hours when he came in. And yet I was always thrilled to wake and find him there beside me, like a miracle—and glad enough to slip out to the early morning bus or metro while he slumbered on, rosy mouth open, breathing in and out, in and out, lying hugely across the bed in whatever rented rooms in whatever city we inhabited at the time, sprawled out on his back like a great broken statue or a giant angel fallen to earth. Of course I had no ring!

  How happy we were in Paris in those heady days following the end of the War—hugely happy—and here it was that Joey first sang Tristan, the role that would make him famous. O, the Rue Coquillière! Soupe à l’oignon at midnight in the Pied de Cochon just down the street from us, always open for the delivery men who arrived in their clanging trucks filled with all manner of fresh foodstuffs for the stalls, which did a bustling business all night long. Frequently we walked to our building through running blood from the butcher’s on the corner, crowded with its hanging slabs of beef, whole lambs, and pigs. Everybody spoke to us; everybody knew Joey. Sometimes, too keyed up after a performance to sleep, he’d drink at the bar of the Pied de Cochon until dawn, finishing up with dozens of oysters (huîtres de Bretagne) and champagne, paid for by somebody else. Joey and I had a private reference to the “great organ” of Saint-Eustache, and I remember how he stood behind me pushing his erection against my coat at mass in the vast, chilly cathedral with the glorious deafening music booming from every side, filling the nave with exaltation as I swooned with desire.

  But here our troubles began as well, when Madame du Maynadier, our landlady, suddenly evicted us, claiming that she had not received our rent payment for four months, though Joey swore that he had paid her . . . but in cash, so it could not be proved. There was a horrible scene, and a rage, and a broken lamp, followed by our sudden surreptitious move to a smaller set of rooms in the rue Gay Lussac, near the Luxembourg Gardens.

  THE PATTERN WAS established long before our move to New Orleans. Incidents occurred, which I was not to know about, so I did not know about them, concentrating instead upon every moment I had to spend with Joey, for he was still mine then, though not all mine, I suppose . . . but I did not care. I would take what I could get.

  Thus arrived the day that I left work early, feeling slightly ill, and opened the door to our rooms in the Hotel des Fleurs to find him in bed with twin chorines, the Fabulous Fouche Sisters, who beamed at me identically above their round, pink breasts. Joey did have the grace to pull up the covers, though he elected to brazen it out, speaking to his companions instead of me: “Allow me to introduce my little swan, my Evalina.”

  This was entirely the wrong thing to say, as suddenly I saw myself for the creature I truly was: Joey’s pet, his servant, and nothing more. Surely my face must have changed in that instant, yet he took no notice, blundering on, with a grand sweep of the hand. “Come Evalina, and join us—” As if it were a tea party! I really don’t know what he intended by this remark, for I turned and fled, returning only when I knew that Joey would be at the Opera.

  I found the bed made—clumsily—and a long-stemmed red rose laid across the pillow—my pillow! Along with a note which read “Rember Morgen” in his almost illegible hand, for Joey was virtually illiterate as well as intemperate.

  Of course I stayed. What else could I do? By this time, I was nearly three months pregnant, according to my own calculations, though I could not, simply could not bring myself to tell him. And Joey mended his ways somewhat, or at least exercised greater discretion. He was tender and solicitous, even taking me on several outings. We went out on a riverboat for lunch one Sunday, as Mama and I had done years before with Mr. Graves, and I remembered every detail of the outfit she had worn on that day: the pink-and-white-striped dress, the straw hat, the white sandals. I remembered how she laughed when the flame on our bananas Foster would not go out. Joey and I also went to the Audubon Zoo, where he was fascinated by the big cats, the lions and tigers. Remarkably, he had never been to a zoo before. I put on my black dress and went to the opening of Siegfried to hear him in the title role; he was magnificent. The Fabulous Fouche Sisters did not reappear, nor any other woman.

  Instead, much of Joey’s free time was taken up by a young man named Hubert Huffman, the new music critic at The Times-Picayune who had raved about Joey’s Siegfried. It was suddenly “Hubert this” and “Hubert that.” Hubert had been raised in San Francisco and educated at Harvard before beginning his career at The Boston Globe. Now Joey was bent upon introducing him to New Orleans. When I
finally met Hubert, I liked him, too, a thin, blond boy with spectacles and a wide open smile and beautiful manners. He grabbed up my two hands and pressed them, saying, “Ah yes, Evalina. Joseph has told me so much about you”—a lie, I knew, for what was there to tell? Joey did not know my past, nor the link I had with this city.

  During those days, I often found myself sitting at the window, gazing out upon the busy square at the beautiful fountain and the clanging streetcars or a group of nuns like a flight of birds hurrying across the street. I thought of my mother, who must have looked out such a window herself when she was pregnant with me—perhaps the GIRLS GIRLS GIRLS window in our old apartment above the Bijou on the rue Dauphine, or perhaps another, earlier window, or even a screen door, down in the bayou country. What did she see? What did she hope for, or dream of? Was she dreaming me?

  We had supper with Hubert Hoffman, just the three of us, at the Court of Two Sisters, beneath a giant banyan tree in the leafy courtyard. I was wearing a black lace stole Joey had bought me in Paris. I ate every bite of my delicious crab étouffée, then my crème brûlée. The men drank Armagnac with their coffee. By candlelight their faces were beautiful, one so dark and one so light, as they spoke passionately about opera. Suddenly I knew they would soon be lovers. I remembered what Mrs. Carroll had said about tenors so long ago. After Hubert bid us adieu outside the restaurant, Joey and I walked hand in hand back to our hotel, where he made love to me.

  The next morning I lay watching him sleep for a long time, watching him breathe, and when he finally awakened, I gave him his café au lait and croissant and told him about the baby. What was I thinking? What did I expect? I can no longer remember. What I got was an explosion of operatic proportion.

  “Evalina!” He hurled the little china plate against the wall, where it shattered. “What have you done? How can you do this to me? To me? It is not possible, not possible. I will not have a child, not at this point in my career, not never. Never! You hear me? You hear me, mi senti?” He called me puttana, stupida. He grabbed my shoulders and shook me like a ragdoll, until I feared my neck would snap, my teeth would be broken. “How dare you? You who are nothing, nothing, to myself. Do you hear me? Nothing!”

  Finally he let me go, throwing me back against the bed, where I lay in terror, heart beating like a drum in my ears. Joey stood at the window with arms outstretched, as if in monumental prayer. “Tesora,” he said. At length he turned and came back to me; he sat on the edge of the bed where I lay very still, too frightened and exhausted to move even though I had bitten my lip badly. Blood soaked the pillow and matted my hair. “Mi dispiace, cara.” Joey got up and went to the sink where he ran water on a towel and then came back with it to kneel, now, beside the bed, wiping the blood off my face gently, even stroking my hair. “Little swan,” he whispered. “You were with me at the beginning, you were here always. I will never forget.”

  Then he stood up abruptly, or as abruptly as his lame foot and considerable bulk would allow. He placed his hands on his hips, a magisterial pose, then clapped them, surprising me. “Enough!” he decreed. “This little problem will be taken care of immediately. I go now, and I will find a way. You will stay here. When I come back I will tell you, and you will do it. You will do what I say to you. Then it will be over. The end. Fine.”

  I closed my eyes.

  The door slammed.

  QUICKLY I ROSE and gathered all the belongings I thought I could carry, stuffing them into an old satchel, and left the apartment, looking carefully left and right before darting to a taxi. I ordered him to drive me out to Arabi, where I easily found a room in a boardinghouse named Temps Perdu, a peeling old mansion near the river, surrounded by magnolias and inhabited mostly by circus and carnival performers who were odd and kind, ever more solicitous as my condition became apparent to all. My baby would be a girl, announced Madame Romanetsky, a fortune-teller. I determined to take such good care of her!

  I was fortunate to find a little job playing piano at the ancient church school around the corner, for chorus and assemblies and music classes; to my surprise, I found myself playing with my old light touch again, though it had been over a year since I had sat down at a piano. I moved freely about the new neighborhood, never once concerned that Joey would find me. I knew he would never try. As far as he was concerned, I was dead, and my baby with me. In fact I felt lucky to be alive, and as the gorgeous autumn progressed I grew more and more excited, vaguely planning to have her at the charity hospital over by the park. I would just appear at the emergency entrance, I thought, when it was time. My neighbors began to bring me things—a special healthy soup, with cabbage in it, from the Hungarian tumblers upstairs; a pink blanket, soft as angels’ wings, from the dwarf lady, who had knitted it herself.

  One day, coming back from work, I chanced to notice a poster affixed to the kiosk on the corner—LONG JOHN LIGHTNING, it read, the KING OF THE BLUES, soon to appear at a club named Snug Harbor. I kept looking at the keen narrow face, the big white grin, the bright eyes . . . surely this was Mojo, the boy who’d played piano at the Bijou, all grown up!

  On the appointed night, I stood waiting in the alley outside the club, and when he emerged from a taxi, nearly seven feet of him, I stepped forward and touched his arm. “Mojo?” I said.

  He was still a beanpole, though now resplendent in a shiny purple suit, with high, pomaded hair. “What you say?” He looked down at me.

  “I am Evalina Toussaint,” I said. “My mother was Louise Toussaint, the dancer.”

  “Oh my lord, honey!” he said instantly, throwing off his girlfriend’s protective grasp as he bent down, limber as a pipe cleaner, to peer at my face.

  “Do you remember us? over the Bijou?” I asked with my heart in my throat.

  “Remember you? Remember you? I sure do, honey, I sure do remember you. In fact many is the time I have sat up late wondering about you, and where you ever got to, and what happen to you. Your mama—your mama—well, I know she have passed on now, to her reward. But I want to say to you, child, you had the sweetest mama on this earth, I hope you know that. And fun? And beautiful? My gracious. Why, folkses use to come from all over . . .”

  But now two men from the club were pulling him away from me, gently but inexorably, one on either side.

  “What I remember the best, though, is how crazy your mama was about you, Evalina, why, you never saw nothing like it. Seem like the sun rose and set on Evalina! And you used to play some piano yourself, am I right? Lord Lord. What are you doing here, girl? I tell you what, these folks is going to give you a real good seat for the show, and then we will talk afterward, you and me. What you doing, little Evalina? What is your story?”

  The iron door closed, leaving his gorgeous girlfriend to glare at me once, dismissively, before stomping up the alleyway toward the front entrance. Though a man darted back out immediately with a ticket for me, I did not stay, slipping back to Temps Perdu instead, to sit rocking in the chair that the landlord had recently brought for me, clutching the Snug Harbor ticket against my stomach and thinking about my mother, who had loved me. No matter what else had happened to us, she had loved me; this was all that mattered.

  Yet the more I thought about her, the more curious I grew, for my own baby was coming soon. What could I tell her about her grandmother, or myself, or the people we had come from? Was it possible that we even had some family, somewhere? I determined to visit Mr. Graves’s Bellefleur.

  THOUGH MOST PLACES in New Orleans had seemed smaller to me upon my return—since I had been but a child when I left—Bellefleur appeared grander than ever, almost invisible now behind its high pink stucco wall, beneath its immense canopy of live oaks a century old. To my surprise, the side gate was unlocked. I lifted the latch and walked quickly up to the massive door flanked by potted ferns and twelve white columns. I rang, then waited. No one seemed to be about. Dry leaves rattled across the portico. I rang again. Ten years had passed since I left there, yet it could have been a hundred—or only
a fortnight—for Bellefleur seemed timeless, captured beneath a bell jar.

  Alicia herself opened the door. She, too, appeared unchanged in all essentials—thin, but not elegant—rather more like a bird of prey now, her makeup too heavy, her avid mouth a slash of red. She was dressed in a black suit I recognized as French, with large (too large) pearl earrings and choker.

  I started to speak, but she interrupted me immediately, holding up her red-nailed hand as if to ward me off.

  “Never come in this house again!” She all but shrieked. “I know exactly who you are!” She stepped backward as if in fright, one hand fluttering up to the pearls. “You are that crazy girl, the whore’s daughter—Oh, what was your name?”

  “Evalina Toussaint,” I said.

  “It may please you to know, Evalina Toussaint, that you ruined my family, you and your mother, that horrid slut. Ruined us! My father was never the same again after his . . . breakdown. He hanged himself the next Christmas, on Christmas Day. How’s that? Merry Christmas to the family. Love, Dad. Of course he was insane.”

  “I am so sorry,” I whispered, for I had loved Arthur Graves, too, as much as circumstances had allowed.

  I was further unnerved by the appearance of Matilda Bloom, who moved silently, slowly, to stand in the shadowy hall just behind Alicia. White-haired and very heavy now, she did not smile or acknowledge me in any way, her face a dark mask, her black eyes filled with something deeper and harder and more sorrowful than I could bear.

  Alicia went on. “We can do without your condolences, Evalina Toussaint. But I want you to know, it has been a disaster. The business gone, my brothers haywire, a rogues’ gallery of failures and fools—luckily I have been able to stay here and take care of poor Mother who has never been the same again either, as you might imagine, though we pretend. Oh yes, we all pretend—” Suddenly Alicia looked at her diamond wristwatch. “Actually Mother is out having lunch at Commander’s Palace right now,” she announced, “and you shall not be here when she returns.”