“Ah, yes, the daughter,” Harvey says, giving Juliet’s hand a strong, athletic shake.
Who can guess how many horror stories her mother confided to this man, most all of them casting Juliet as the villain and she the victim? Harvey, despite this secret knowledge, seems ready to pinch Juliet on the cheek and reward her with a Tootsie Pop for arriving on time.
“Maria will show you to the library,” he says, “and be sure to take in the view. You can almost see the state of Mississippi—the red of their already red necks broiling in the noonday sun.”
“The red of their already red . . . ?” She’s playing dumb. “Oh, okay. They’re rednecks!”
“Miss Beauvais?” The secretary is standing at the entrance to a hallway, waving in the fashion of a flight attendant to boarding passengers. “If you’ll come with me, please.”
Juliet follows her into a large, book-filled conference room where Sonny sits with Anna Huey at a long mahogany table. Although he seems loath to acknowledge her, Juliet leans over and brushes her mouth against Sonny’s face. It’s the sort of half-felt gesture that college sorority girls, too sophisticated for handshakes, reward each other just for being wonderful. “Hello, sweetie. How are you?”
“Julie,” he allows with a note of formality.
Sonny doesn’t look right. Something about his face suggests a recent trauma. He was always on the pale side, but today purple streaks mark the corners of his mouth and make his overall cast appear abnormally white. It’s as if he talked too much and bruised his lips.
“Baby, are you okay? Did they beat you, too?”
“What?”
“You didn’t hear about the other night? Somebody beat me with a club.”
Sonny starts to speak but the cleaning woman interrupts. “‘Somebody beat me with a club.’ Juliet, I can’t believe you just said that. What in the world is wrong with you? Juliet, you’re mocking your mother’s death. You’re making fun, and of all times now!”
“Hey, Julie, why don’t you have a seat?” Sonny says.
Juliet stares at Anna Huey even though she still seems to be addressing Sonny. “As I was saying, somebody came to my hotel and let me have it with a pipe. I put up a fight. I kept clawing at the sonofabitch, trying to rip his eyes out. The best I could do was get some skin off his arm.” Juliet, looking at Sonny finally, touches a spot on top of her head. “Come feel. It’s as big as a goose egg. You believe me, don’t you, sweetie?”
“Believe you? Why wouldn’t I believe you, Julie? You’ve never lied to me.”
Anna Huey, pushing her chair back, laughs as she comes to her feet and walks over to the window. The vertical blinds are open and she brings her gaze to the rooftops of the French Quarter, the neighborhoods beyond.
“Oh, okay,” Juliet says. “I kept trying to figure out what was different about you today, Anna Huey, and it’s the clothes. My heavens, you’re actually wearing some. Hey, lady, where’s the uniform?”
“I think I’m leaving,” Sonny says.
“Stay where you are,” Anna Huey tells him.
Nathan Harvey shuffles in carrying a stack of folders and sits at the head of the table. As he’s sorting papers, Harvey’s secretary passes out ink pens and yellow legal tablets. “For any notes you might want to take,” he explains. “And now a surprise. Or what I hope is a surprise.” Harvey waits, obviously enjoying the moment. He raises an eyebrow and screws up his face in a smile. “The great lady herself is going to be speaking to us this morning.”
“The great lady?” Juliet involuntarily comes up an inch in her chair.
“Well, she won’t be here in the actual flesh,” Harvey says, “but your mother did elect to appear on video giving a loose reading of her will and we’re going to watch that now. To avoid any confusion, I should tell you that recorded wills such as the one you are about to see have no validity in the state of Louisiana. They’ve become popular since the VCR revolution in recent years and their purpose is strictly as a companion to the statutory will, which we will discuss in detail as soon as the tape is over.” The lawyer glances back over his shoulder. “Maria?”
Harvey’s secretary wheels a television and VCR hookup into the room. Harvey dims the lights and the screen flashes and a block of color fills Juliet’s face. She shifts in her seat, and suddenly her mother appears seated in her favorite chair in the parlor at home.
“Hello everyone,” the dead woman begins, fingering a thicket of index cards in her lap. “As this is my last will and testament I’ll try not to ramble and veer too far off course but that won’t be easy with that camera in my face. Juliet, I must say, darling, I now have a new appreciation for what you do. My heavens. And, look, I’ve kept my clothes on.”
Only Harvey laughs. Miss Marcelle, in no hurry, pours herself a cup of coffee, and Juliet notes the antique silver service and dish of lady fingers on the butler’s table. The showoff. Why didn’t she use one of her regular cups? With a camera in the room, were the color-coded plastic mugs no longer good enough?
“Well,” Miss Marcelle continues, “I don’t plan to die any time soon, but my dying will be made less a bother by this will and that’s why Nathan has advised me to do it.
“First of all, I want to leave one hundred dollars to Sonny LaMott. Sonny, this is not a gift but a commission to paint my portrait, which I’d like to hang in the parlor here at home. Anna Huey, if you can stand to look at me, I’d like it on that wall there.” She points to a place in the room. “Sonny, you’ve been a friend and I admire anyone who aims to greatness. If I might make a suggestion, Sonny, paint me not as I am today but as I was when I married Johnny and first moved to the mansion. I was young once, too, and some say quite the lady. And you might if you look closely find a native resemblance to your Juliet, and let this inspire you, Sonny, as I know how you’ve always felt about her. Thank you, darling.”
Miss Marcelle consults her cards again. “Anna Huey, I leave you my wardrobe. Please have your friends come by and choose from what clothes of mine you don’t want yourself. The rest you can give to St. Vincent de Paul. Anna Huey, please think of me every morning when you sit down in the kitchen to your biscuit and jam. I hope you will tell Anthony how grateful I am to him for sending all those precious cards pretending they were from Juliet. I hold no grudges against the dear boy and I never have. Tell him I said so, if you would.
“Juliet, darling, I want you to have the wedding band your father gave me, as it is the most valuable item I have left in my possession.” She shuffles her crib notes and uses her thumb to square them. “Also, I’d like to leave you what money I have left after Sonny gets his commission. It should amount to a few hundred dollars, but if it’s less please try to understand. Money is something I’ve had trouble with these last years, and I’m sure when I’m done Nathan will provide you—”
“Stop the tape,” Juliet says.
“. . . with more details and I’ll be disgraced to a degree—”
“Stop it,” Juliet says again. “Stop it now.”
“. . . but not nearly so much as when your father . . .”
Harvey, in the dark, hurries over to the machine.
“Mr. Harvey? Mr. Harvey, what is she rambling on about?”
He punches a button and brings the show to a pause. “Miss Beauvais, I’ll have to ask you to quiet down and be patient. It’s coming.” He turns from Juliet to the image of Miss Marcelle on the screen, then back to Juliet again. “May we continue, please?”
Harvey doesn’t wait for her response. The tape starts to play again and he returns to his seat, settling in with a sigh. “Juliet,” says Miss Marcelle, “I pray that you have a daughter of your own one day and I pray you’re a better mother to her than I have been to you. As you well know, your father never loved me and I spent your childhood resenting you because you were the one he cared about. This is no easy admission for me to make, but there you have it. Your father and I were never meant to be together, I’m afraid, and yet we did have you . . .�
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Miss Marcelle stops and clears her throat, and something in the room distracts her. It’s Anna Huey, her white-stockinged thighs whistling as she carries in a glass of water. Miss Marcelle takes a sip and looks down at her cards, and the camera focuses in tighter. Her face occupies every inch of the screen. “For the record,” she says, “let me say again to you, darling, that your father’s death was a destiny that came at no fault of mine. I know you’ve blamed me but blame doesn’t equal truth and the truth in this case is all I have and all I’ve ever had. I still dream of that sad day at Lake Pontchartrain and always I wish it were I who was lost to the water and not Johnny. I know he was your happiness.”
She places the index cards on the table then takes one of the lady fingers and nibbles its edge. “Nathan,” she says upon realizing that she’s still being filmed, “you can turn that off now. I’m done.”
The overhead lights come on and Nathan Harvey reclines in his chair scratching his short yellow whiskers. Someone is crying and Sonny swivels in his chair and discovers Anna Huey racked with sobs, a hand covering her mouth.
Juliet wears a befuddled expression, but no more so than the one Sonny is wearing. Miss Marcelle did not give a complete accounting, after all.
Why did she fail to mention the fate of the mansion?
“Any questions,” the lawyer says.
“Did she mean to leave everything out?” Juliet reads from her yellow tablet. “A commission for Sonny. Some hand-me-downs for the maid. An old ring and a few dollars for me. Can that be it?”
“Maria?” Harvey, snapping his head back, talks toward the door. “Oh, Maria? We’re ready for you now, darling.”
The secretary returns and passes out Xerox copies of a document titled with bold block lettering. Dated and signed by Marcelle L. Beauvais, Nathan Harvey and two witnesses, it is Miss Marcelle’s last will and testament and it consists of two pages only. Sonny reads quickly. Finished after less than a minute, he looks up and faces Juliet.
“This is a joke,” she says.
The lawyer doesn’t answer.
“Mr. Harvey, the Beauvais Mansion has been in my family since the early 1800s. When it was built it was the finest house of its kind in all the South and not a few architectural historians still regard it as such. My father was the fifth generation to live there, and I the sixth.”
In an instant Juliet has abandoned her sex kitten persona and adopted that of a preservationist on loan from a local historical society. Sonny, for one, couldn’t be more impressed. Now she glares at the lawyer with equal parts rage and curiosity, then points to the TV set. “Am I right to assume Mother didn’t include any mention of the Beauvais because it automatically goes to me?” When there is no answer, Juliet says, “I’m the last of them, in case you forgot.”
Harvey rocks in his chair and lets a smile tug at the corners of his mouth. Sonny halfway expects him to call Maria back with more papers, with something, but in a moment the lawyer reclaims his formal deportment and makes a steeple of his hands. He takes in a breath of air and as quickly exhales it. “She didn’t include the mansion in the will, Miss Beauvais, because it wasn’t hers to include. Your mother didn’t own it.”
“She didn’t own it? You’re full of crap, mister.”
A silence follows, and the only sound is the squealing of the videotape rewinding in the VCR. Sonny slumps in his seat. “If not my mother,” Juliet says, “then who does own it, Mr. Harvey? Tell me that. Who does own it?”
It isn’t the lawyer who provides the answer.
“I do,” says Anna Huey, slowly rising to her feet and returning to her spot by the window.
“I got nothing against you wearing that dress,” Juliet says, “but I draw the line . . . I do draw the line at you claiming my house. Goddamn, Mr. Harvey.”
Harvey digs in his folder for another document. “If you’ll allow me, Mrs. Huey?”
Anna Huey gives a nod and Harvey says, “As you either are unaware or have forgotten, Miss Beauvais, Mrs. Huey’s husband, Charles, was killed a number of years ago in an accident on a drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico—”
“Right. Charles. But what does that have to do with anything?”
“Please, dear. Let me finish.” Harvey waits until Juliet is quiet, then he says, “This firm on behalf of Mrs. Huey brought a civil action against the oil company for which Charles was employed, and at trial we prevailed. Mrs. Huey’s suit resulted in one of the largest jury awards in the history of the state of Louisiana.” Harvey brings a hand to his mouth but too late to hide his satisfied smile. “She got twenty million.”
Juliet stares straight ahead without saying anything.
“Mrs. Huey?”
“Go on, Mr. Harvey.”
“If we might look back several years now, Miss Beauvais, you’ll recall the extreme situation your father’s business affairs were in at the time of his death. For starters, he owed everyone, having committed to assorted risky ventures that put him on the brink of bankruptcy. To protect the mansion, he logically concluded that he had no choice but to separate his and your mother’s community assets. In other words, he elected to make your mother the sole owner of the family estate to keep from losing it to his creditors. Simultaneous to taking this action, your father created a trust in your name and funneled everything he had left into it, some two hundred thousand dollars. This money was to be for your college education and expenses, to be spent at your discretion. Your father died shortly after taking these steps, leaving you a generous legacy, but leaving your mother insolvent and with a vast house to keep.”
“I don’t know how vast it is,” says Juliet.
“Pardon?”
“It isn’t so vast. It’s big, maybe. Maybe even real big. But I wouldn’t call it vast.”
Harvey seems lost for a response. “Fine. However you wish to describe it.”
“Just admit to me it isn’t vast.”
“It isn’t vast,” he allows. “Now may I continue?” Harvey glances down at his notes. “Marcelle Beauvais, faced with ruin, was forced to get by on her wits. She approached area banks about obtaining a mortgage, but none was interested in making such a loan because of the condition and location of the house, and because she was without means to pay back what she hoped to borrow. Banks are not in the business of real estate, let me remind you. And a place such as that one would’ve been difficult to unload in the likely event Miss Marcelle defaulted on her loan.”
Harvey pauses for a drink of water.
“It was a lot of things but it was never vast.”
“Miss Beauvais?”
“You must have it confused with someplace else.”
Harvey waits until all is quiet again. “Your mother did everything in her power to keep the mansion,” he says. “In the fall of 1971, a few months after you ran away to California—” he drinks again—“she opened it up to boarders but that ended when one of her guests was mugged at the front gate. She sold off important pieces of furniture and some of the more significant works of art. NOPSI eventually cut off her power when she failed to pay her bills, and soon after both her water and gas services likewise were suspended. The house began to deteriorate from neglect, and her lawn without a gardener began to resemble a jungle. She fired Mrs. Huey although in actual fact she hadn’t paid her in many months. To trace back a bit now if I may, Charles Huey had died nearly four years before your father did, and at last came the trial and subsequent verdict. Mrs. Huey, through my office, hired an appraiser to assess the value of the mansion, and another—an art and antiques expert—to fix a price on its contents. These figures, added together, came to just under two million dollars. I myself considered the sum to be on the low end, but the gentleman who appraised the house, a Mr. Girault . . . he maintained that if the place were situated on Saint Charles Avenue and not in a blighted neighborhood it would be worth several times as much. ‘Location, location, location,’ he made a point of reminding me.”
“Vast my ass.”
> Harvey places a hand on top of a document in front of him and slides it down the table. “This is a copy of the deed conveying the property to Mrs. Huey. You may pretend to know nothing about the sale, but I think you’re familiar with the money it generated, as it’s my recollection that your mother, after paying taxes and honoring your father’s debts, which were many, sent the entire balance to you.” Harvey smiles a cheerless smile. “It seems she thought you deserved it.”
Juliet mumbles. Harvey again: “For the record, Mrs. Huey, in buying the house and its contents, elected to pay twenty percent above appraisal, acting against my better counsel. She also allowed Marcelle Beauvais to remain rent-free as a resident of the mansion, and—forgive me if I’m revealing too much, Mrs. Huey—she gave your mother a monthly allowance of five hundred dollars. In consideration she received nothing but your mother’s companionship. Now, Miss Beauvais, you may choose to hire a lawyer to contest the sale’s validity, but I think he or she will have a hard time prevailing, as the transfer of funds is well documented and you alone ultimately were the party enriched by the deal.”
Harvey lowers his head, examines more papers. “Am I leaving anything out? Ah, yes.” He brings his gaze back to Juliet and holds her with it until she looks away. “Miss Beauvais, Mrs. Huey has asked me to ask you to turn over your house key before leaving my office today.” He collects his papers and puts them back in the folder. “She also would like to tell you something in the presence of those of us here today as witnesses.”
Juliet scans the room, but even Sonny pretends to be occupied with other concerns, in this instance a sketch of Nathan Harvey on his legal pad.
She swivels in her chair and faces Anna Huey.
“Juliet, get the fuck out of my house,” says the maid, before quietly exiting the room.
She doesn’t remember leaving the law office. Was it Sonny who brought her back to the Lé Dale? She thinks they took the streetcar. She thinks she can remember sweating tourists, locals reading sections of the Times-Picayune, the high shine of the few empty seats as the afternoon light struck the blistered varnish. Sonny, what a hero, reaching up and pulling the cord to tell the conductor to stop.
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