A Ghost of a Chance

by Cherie Claire

  “I thought we were going to that weird festival you mentioned,” Portia replies.

  My mom glances at me, and even though she’s probably ready to bolt as well, she asks for a glass. This gives me hope although neither woman moves to sit down.

  “Y’all relax and take a seat,” I say, but the two stand awkwardly in the center of my potting shed, looking like two Evangelicals at a death metal concert.

  I hand my mom her lemonade in the cup that promotes Blue Bell ice cream. Before she takes a sip, she gazes at the little girl and her cow gracing the outside.

  “I got that in Brenham, Texas,” I explain with a goofy smile. “Got to sample the ice cream right off the factory line.”

  I love Blue Bell ice cream, and tasting that creamy concoction before they froze it was the highlight of my Texas press trip. And, I must admit, I’m bragging about my new job, hoping my family will be as impressed as my friends are.

  “Get this,” I continue, my voice still struggling through that ball that won’t disintegrate. “We asked the owner if he was struggling through the recession and he said they actually make money in hard times. That people eat more ice cream during recessions.”

  I thought that fact was interesting, something fun to write about in a year that was causing me to rethink my new career. The recession wasn’t hitting Lafayette and Louisiana as hard as the rest of the nation, thanks to the booming oil industry and the money rolling in for hurricane recovery. But, magazines and newspapers were on the decline and the recession only gave those companies ammunition for cutbacks and layoffs. So far, I lost two clients, took a pay cut on one of my best publications, and had three people insisting the check was in the mail — three weeks ago.

  The current recession was one reason I had asked my mom and sister to visit. That and the rising over Blue Moon Bayou.

  “Are you eating more ice cream?” my mom asks me and I wonder if she sees through my veiled invitation.

  I sip my own lemonade from a cup that quotes Henry Miller: “One’s destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things.”

  Okay, so I bought that one.

  “My favorite is Millennial Crunch,” I say. “It’s Blue Bell’s latest since they just turned one hundred.”

  I’m so their demographic. Even though my lights might be cut off tomorrow, I have ice cream in the freezer.

  “I can tell,” my mom says, looking me over. “Just because they feed you on those trips doesn’t mean you have to eat everything.”

  It never ceases to amaze me how family members pick the scabs off vulnerable sores. Yes, I’ve gained a few pounds. It’s what I do under stress. And yes, I don’t have to eat all that’s put in front of me on press trips, can bypass the open bars and the dessert trays. But I live on mac and cheese when I’m home, since writing remains such a high-paying profession. Who wouldn’t indulge whenever possible?

  I pull my blouse down over the belly that’s been growing consistently post-Katrina, although I’m not as thick as all that, considering that hurricane took off close to twenty pounds two years ago.

  “You shouldn’t be drinking lemonade,” Portia adds. “That has so much sugar in it.”

  I close my eyes and instruct myself to breathe. How the hell will I be able to ask these middle-class women, who live in perfect houses and afford gym memberships, for money?

  Mom hands me back the cup, while Portia pulls her purse tight over a shoulder, her hand resting on top. Neither says a word or looks at me, so I get the message.

  “Ready to go?” I ask, trying desperately not to feel disappointed that they didn’t like my meager little home, the one I created from scratch along with my new career with nothing in the bank but a FEMA check.

  Both women immediately head for the door, my mother asking Portia where she got that snazzy new purse and Portia replying with a lengthy discourse on the pros and cons of Northshore shopping, post-storm; Portia moved across the lake after Katrina damaged her Old Metairie home. I follow behind, feeling disappointment lingering behind my eyes, demanding release in a good old-fashioned cry.

  As Portia and my mom head down the brick walkway to their car, I turn and lock the door. Just before I do, I spot Stinky in the hallway licking the remnants of that awful cat food off his paws, bless his little heart.

  “Man the house,” I tell him, and he looks up ever so briefly and winks, that weird cat thing that makes you wonder if they know what you’re thinking. Because for a moment, I believe he does.

  I wonder about a lot of things these days, mainly if I’m as intuitive as my aunt claims I am. I had been born with “the gift,” according to her, but over the years repressed my ability to speak with the dead. People tend to do that, considering how conversing with the deceased doesn’t go over well with friends and family members. Over time, I ignored cousin Harry with the hole in his head from the time he went fishing, got drunk, and fell overboard and into the path of the outboard motor. Or poor Mr. Stanislos, the former second grade teacher who walks the halls of my elementary school reciting times tables.

  No one believed I saw them anyway.

  By sixth grade, I was done being polite to the little old lady with hair worked up into a bun who would call to me from the porch of my neighbor’s house like that crazy woman in To Kill a Mockingbird. In college, when the frat boy who committed suicide appeared at my dorm room door, I slammed it in his ethereal face.

  I convinced myself it wasn’t real, that I was imagining things, and over time those spooks disappeared.

  Katrina blew that psychic door wide open, however, but now I only speak to those who have died by water. I’m called a SCANC, a stupid abbreviation that stands for “Specific Communication with Apparitions, Non-entities, and the Comatose.” In other words, I can only speak with those related to my trauma. In my case, it’s water.

  “Where are we headed again?” Portia asks when we climb into the car, me in the back seat.

  “Blue Moon Bayou.” A shiver rolls across my shoulders, considering the town a half hour away from Lafayette complements a water source. But then, I have never had ghostly experiences in this quaint south Louisiana town known for antiques, boutiques and a world renown zydeco brunch.

  “And what’s this festival you are so anxious for me to see?” my mom asks.

  Deliah Valentine taught Shakespeare at Tulane before the storm and, even though the New Orleans university cut staff after Katrina and my mom makes due with adjunct classes at Baton Rouge Community College, she’s still considered one of the country’s foremost Shakespearean scholars. Ask my mom and she might say the world. It’s why my sister was named Portia from The Merchant of Venus and my twin brother and I Sebastian and Viola from Twelfth Night.

  “It’s called Blue Moon Rising and it’s quite the thing,” I tell her. “There’s a legend that upon the rising of the blue moon, the first person you will see is the one you are destined to fall in love with.”

  I thought my mother would eat this up. Reminded me so much of a Shakespeare comedy, like Midsummer Night’s Dream. We’re closing in on the summer solstice, so the timing is perfect.

  “That’s ridiculous,” my mother answers.

  I lean forward between them. “Imagine it. What if the person you wanted to see is suddenly called away when the moon rises and another person takes his place. You’d fall in love with the wrong person.”

  “If there was such a thing…,” Portia adds.

  “Better yet, what if, as in the case of this year when we have two blue moons within three months, you see the wrong person the first time and the right person the second?”

  Portia huffs and starts spouting off how legends such as these keep society stupid but I see the wheels turning inside my mother’s head. My mom is all scholar, always preferring the Shakespeare tragedies to the comedies because the latter were created, according to her, to humor the masses without brains. But I know her anthropologic mind finds this local tradition fascinating.

  We park
near the bayou and head toward Café des Amis, a restaurant located in a former coffin factory next to The Mortuary Bed and Breakfast. Annie Breaux sticks her head out the front door of the B&B and yells my name and waves. I wave back. Annie is one of the people I’ve met writing stories for national publications about my new home in Cajun Country.

  “That place used to be a mortuary and is supposed to be haunted,” I tell my sister and mom, although the ghosts are thankfully people who have died without the assistance of water so I can’t see them.

  “They all say that,” Portia says. “Every hotel and B&B in Louisiana has ghosts now.”

  “Most of them do,” I answer and Portia rolls her eyes. If only she knew.

  We enter the restaurant on the tail end of brunch, with Curley Taylor and Zydeco Trouble rocking down the house on an impromptu stage in the front alcove. There are tables for eating but most people visiting today flood the makeshift dance floor, bopping up and down like a heartbeat, not caring that they run into each other regularly.

  I can’t listen to Cajun or zydeco music without moving — or smiling for that matter — so I immediately begin swaying to the vibrant tunes as we saunter up to the hostess.

  “Viola Valentine, table for three.”

  “Do you want to sit up front and dance or a quieter table in the rear?”

  I look back at my family with hopes that we will enjoy this unique-to-Louisiana wild ride that people from around the world come to see, routinely packing this restaurant every Saturday, but my mom and sister reply in unison, “In the back!”

  We follow the hostess to the back room and mom insists on the table in the corner, as far away from the zydeco as we can get. I’m sad to miss Curley Taylor but equally disappointed that my family, once again, fails to appreciate what I’m offering. The waitress arrives, asking for drinks and appetizers in a sing-song Cajun accent. When we ask for three unsweetened teas — I’m not about to ask for anything with sugar — both my mom and Portia turn serious.

  “What?” I ask, behind my water glass.

  “This silly festival isn’t why you asked us here,” my mother begins.

  I swallow the gulp of water lingering in my mouth. “What do you mean?” I answer as innocently as I can.

  “What do you need, Viola?” Portia asks.

  I need two thousand dollars to meet bills, replace my faulty brakes on the Toyota and buy groceries, but I don’t know how to ask the two biggest critics in my life. Instead, I lie.

  “I’m doing great. My new career is taking off. Reece still won’t let me pay rent. What do you mean, what do I need?”

  My mother gets right to the point. “How much?”

  I place my water glass on to the table and sigh. “I started this business with nothing, you know. Most people who become freelance writers — especially travel writers — have savings in the bank. I was doing really well until this recession hit. Not many people can say that.”

  “Is this why you haven’t divorced TB?” my mother asks.

  My ex-husband who’s legally still my partner married me years ago when I became pregnant at LSU. We barely knew each other, let alone considered it true love, although TB insists he loved me then and loves me still. When my sweet Lillye died of leukemia, my heart died with her, and TB and I lived a lonely, distant existence until Katrina pushed us on to the roof, washed away our jobs, and I found myself in Lafayette with the opportunity to start over. One of the first things I did following the storm was file separation papers. But that was before I really thought things through.

  “We’re staying married for the time being so I can share his health benefits,” I say.

  Portia huffs at this and I’m reminded how much I really hate when my sister does that.

  “It makes great sense,” I say in my defense.

  “What would make great sense,” my sister replies smugly, “is if you moved back in with him and did your ‘freelance’ in New Orleans.”

  Only thing I hate worse than her huffing is when she uses her fingers to mimic parenthesis. Who started that ridiculous gesture, anyway?

  I grind my teeth. “I’m not moving back in with TB.”

  Portia crosses her arms about her chest. “Well, I’m not giving you money because you’re too stubborn to make the right move.”

  “I don’t need that much.”

  “Which will make moving back home that much easier for you.”

  I can’t move back to New Orleans. Remember all those ghosts who have died by water?

  I gaze over at my mother who’s staring down at her lap.

  “Don’t ask Mom,” Portia says sternly, and just like that, the conversation’s over.

  The waitress returns, we order crawfish cornbread and crab cakes for appetizers and I pick the pecan-crusted catfish although how I will be able to enjoy it knowing my newfound career is to crash and burn in the next two weeks is beyond me. Portia launches into how her two children are driving her crazy, their private school’s depleting her disposable income and the new housekeeper is unreliable, which means she must search for a replacement ASAP, preferably one who speaks English. My poor sister, they will only be able to spend one week in Cabo this year instead of two and Christmas will be tight.

  I glance over at my mother who’s usually full of piss and vinegar, chiming in about her own shortcomings and lack of vacation time since she lost her plum teaching job, but for a change she’s not talking. Since Katrina, I’ve suffered through hours of these conversations, listening to horror stories about disaster repairs and renovations, even though Portia lived far from the levee breaks and only had six inches of water and my mother had a tree damage part of her house. Neither lost their homes, nor had floodwaters to their attics. And I haven’t had a vacation in years.

  As usual I say nothing and nod and express sarcastic outrage over the fact that Portia can’t buy a new BMW until Frederick, her husband, gets that raise, which has been pushed back until next year because his company’s still rebounding from the storm. My mom sends me an evil eye for that one.

  We eat lunch, me barely touching my fish, and then the bill arrives, which Portia grabs.

  “Do you want me to help?” I ask.

  “Yeah,” Portia says, placing the bill in my hand. “You asked us here so you pay.”

  I look down and notice that the bill is thirty dollars more than what’s in my checking account. I bite the inside of my cheek wondering what to do next when Portia grabs the bill. “Just kidding.”

  After planting her gold American Express on the table, Portia heads to the bathroom. My mother places a hand on my arm when she notices I’m about to let my façade slip and cry right there in front of Curley Taylor and the tourists from Australia.

  “Why don’t you come home?”

  I shake my head. How can I convince my mother New Orleans holds too many ghosts, not to mention all those bad memories of losing my precious baby girl, the one person who’s passed I’m not able to see.

  “I can’t,” is all I manage to whisper.

  “Don’t you miss us?”

  There’s pain lingering in her gaze I haven’t seen since dad left. Something is amiss here and the hairs on the back of my neck rise. I briefly think to inquire but that old defensiveness remains.

  “I love it here, Mom. I finally have a chance to do what I’ve always wanted to do. Can’t you all understand that?”

  She squeezes my arm and that sadness lingers. “We miss you.”

  My mother is a tough cookie, one of those professors you both admire and dread, for getting an A in her class means giving up sleep for five months. She’s been nicknamed the “Bard Bitch,” although my mother secretly loves it, wears the title like a badge.

  Underneath, however, when the mom side emerges, she’s all heart. She was my rock when Lillye died.

  I place my hand over hers. “I miss you, too, Mom, but I need to be here right now.” That lump emerges again because those tears have never left their starting line and are wai
ting for the gun to go off so they can turn me into an emotional mess. “This is my dream,” I manage to whisper.

  Mom’s about to reply and I pray it’s about loaning me money when Portia arrives and barks for us to leave. We travel through town for the remainder of the day, shopping at antique stores and Portia buying new clothes at two of the swanky boutiques. We pause for coffee and dessert, then head for the bayou’s edge when the sun begins to set. Moonrise is scheduled for seven thirty-six so by the time we reach the bayou park, the place is swarming with people.

  Portia still rebukes the festival, my mother says nothing, and I’m quaking inside about how I will make it through another week when I spot Reece on the far side of the crowd. Portia follows my line of sight — and no doubt wonders why my mouth is hanging open — and mutters, “Who’s that gorgeous man?”

  I don’t answer. I’m too busy watching my sexual fantasy laughing at a woman with silky blond hair tossed back over her shoulders, lips full and pursed like Julia Roberts and telephone poll legs falling gracefully into fashionable high-heel pumps. This woman exudes perfection. Tailored dress. Coiffed hair. A girl and a boy equally adorable and well-dressed at her side. It was a like a mother-of-the-year advertisement.

  “Do you know him?” my mom asks.

  “He’s my landlord,” I manage. My hero in a storm. My hope for love at last.

  At least until he decided to get back with his wife.

  The crowd teeters and I look to the horizon. There’s too much sunlight for us to spot the moon but the mayor begins the countdown on the loudspeaker. Portia huffs, my mother gets a phone call and excuses herself to the car, and I can’t help looking longingly at the man of my dreams, hoping he might glance my way. When the mayor reaches one, noting the moon is rising over the bayou, Reece looks lovingly at his wife so I cast my eyes to the ground. No use confusing fate. Obviously, Reece belongs with his wife, the mother of Dick and Jane.

  As the mayor mouths the final moment, I hear someone call my name. I look up to find a young girl dressed in a simple pair of overalls and flannel shirt watching the event curiously from the bayou’s bank. She’s a stark contrast to Mrs. Louisiana: uneven cut hair that sticks out beneath a ragged cap, dirty shoes with holes in the sides, bruises and mosquito bites on her legs. She senses me watching her and looks my way, eyes squinted as if not expecting anyone to notice her.