House of Blues

by Julie Smith

  It seemed immeasurably sad to her, that life would go on without Jim, and yet it did occur to her to consider the alternative. What's wrong with me? I haven't got time for this crap, I'm a cop. But she had a nagging feeling somewhere in the back of her brain that she wasn't done with it; that it wouldn't let her alone, whatever it was.

  When the service was over, she and Steve walked back to her house, so she could change for lunch, but they were barely inside the door before they were all over each other like a couple of teenagers. They ended up making love on the living room rug, not even managing to climb the stairs, and they didn't make it to lunch either.

  Because she had worked so late the night before, Skip had taken the morning off, but the case really couldn't wait while she took Steve to the airport, especially since the trip there involved a stop to get Napoleon. So she had called him a cab.

  She made a couple of tuna sandwiches to eat while they waited for it. She was only able to nibble, pretending a little. She found the food wouldn't go down past the lump in her throat.

  Steve said, "I don't know if I should say this, but I can't help worrying about you sometimes."

  "When you're in LA., you mean? Why?"

  "Oh, I don't know, it's like a magic spell. If I'm here, nothing can happen to you. If I'm not—if I call you and you don't answer—my imagination runs wild."

  "Look. What happened to Jim was a freak. I mean it; Homicide's one of the safest places a cop can work. Think about it. We get there after the shooting." She was trying hard to keep her voice from breaking. What she was saying was true, but at the moment not even she believed it.

  She forced a smile. "Let's talk about you. The famous project that's going to bring you back to New Orleans."

  "I wish I could meet Delavon."

  "Delavon! Do you realize he probably set us up? I mean, Jim was probably killed on his orders. You can't mess with a creep like that."

  "He must be a true psychopath. I'd love to get a psychopath on film."

  "Forget it," she said. "Why don't you do kids with gay parents?"

  "Whatever made you think of that?"

  "Or French Quarter kids. On the one hand surrounded by drag queens and literary eccentrics, on the other, known by everyone in the neighborhood. Big-city, small-town life all rolled into one."

  "Not bad. It's not exactly the heartland."

  "Or just—you know—weird lifestyles; odd families."

  "I can't think where I'd find any of those."

  "Maybe Dee-Dee and Layne'll get married." She was babbling. They were both babbling.

  The taxi had honked once; it honked again.

  * * *

  Grady had been drinking all morning. He never drank to write. Couldn't focus, couldn't think, couldn't even stay awake. On the other hand, he hadn't been able to write about The Thing sober. The worst that could happen was he'd waste another day; he'd already wasted plenty of them.

  He plunged in, as far back from the bad part as he could remember:

  * * *

  It was Easter, and Reed had awakened both of us early, Evie and me, so we could see what the Easter bunny brought. The Easter baskets varied from year to year. That year I got green and the girls got purple; that is, they were straw-colored with another color woven in—green for me and purple for them. They had that synthetic grass in them, the stuff that looks like shredded AstroTurf, and plenty of jelly beans in the bottom. Then there were chocolate bunnies and marshmallow chicks that tasted like cellophane, and chocolate-cream eggs. The Easter eggs weren't there, because we'd dyed them ourselves—so the bunny couldn't be expected to bring them.

  We always got some little gift besides the candy. One year I got the duck that became the bane of all our lives, but it wasn't that year. That year I got a Mickey Mouse watch. Reed got what Dad insisted was a "bunny lady," a purple and white stuffed rabbit with short mouselike ears instead of long ones, red cheeks, and feminine features, pouty mouth included. Evie got some sort of jewelry-making kit, and frankly, I don't think she liked it much. She was in a horrible mood that day, cranky and snappy.

  She even threw a tantrum before church.

  "I don't want to go!"

  "Quiet, Evie."

  "You can't make me."

  "I'm going to count to three . .

  That sort of thing. At the time, I didn't know what it was about—no one paid any attention to Evie, except to tell her to shut up—but now that I think back, she was in a tomboy stage.

  She was probably pissed that the bunny hadn't noticed and brought her some boxing gloves or something.

  She must have hated her dress too. It was some kind of light pink extravaganza; and Reed had white lace, I think, with a pink sash, those tiny little black shoes with straps (are they the ones called Mary lanes in books?), and white lace socks. I'll never forget how she looked that day. I thought she was the cutest thing I ever saw. She had a neatness to her, a compactness, even as a tiny child, that I always admired. Evie on the other hand was all over the place.

  I wonder what on earth I'm saying here. Perhaps I'm talking about energy, whatever that is. Reed's was contained, I think, just as it is now (too much so, I think). Evie's was full-out.

  A child like that is an inconvenient child; a child who takes I up a lot of space; space I felt should have been mine, I guess; space our parents would just as soon have had empty and peaceful.

  Naturally, Mother and Dad won the fight, and Evie did go to church. It's worth noting here that she always seemed to think she'd win, and she never did. I never even tried, and I don't suppose Reed did either because we saw you couldn't win. But that never seemed to occur to Evie for a moment. What was wrong with her, I wonder?

  Anyway, we did go to church, all five of us, and afterward we were supposed to go have lunch with our grandparents—Dad's parents, the ones who started the restaurant.

  They were old even then, and had long since retired from running it. They lived in Covington, across the causeway, and the ride over always seemed endless to us, or perhaps only to me, if it's true that boys are noisier and more rambunctious. Anyone who's ever had Evie for a sister would doubt it, but there is only one such male and I did turn out to be a writer, a distinctly effeminate calling in my father's opinion.

  We all knew the afternoon would hold no pleasures for us children. First there would be a lunch of ham, probably, with a million vegetables, followed, if we were lucky, by some passable dessert. The whole procedure would be far too formal for my taste, and none of the food appealing except the dessert. But with luck Ma Mere would make a peach pie, I thought (though I know now it was far too early for peaches).

  The worst was that we wouldn't be permitted to remove our oppressive Sunday clothes until after lunch had been consumed and—tedium of tedium!—photographs taken. Hair would be combed and recombed. Then we'd have to stand still and squint endlessly into the sun, holding our Easter baskets and possibly the treasures brought by the seasonal rodent. With luck, Evie and I would be posed together and I could untie her sash, or hit her upper arm or something. Both girls had Easter bonnets that year. On the way to church I had jerked Reed's off her head and threatened to throw it out the window. She cried and Mama hit me, but I could probably attack Evie's with impunity. It was a sort of wide-brimmed straw affair with a pink velvet ribbon around it and a nosegay stuck in the ribbon. I might be able to pull the flowers off, or perhaps sail the entire hat into the neighbors' yard.

  We had to make a stop first, and I remember thinking about that in the car—the little ways I could torture Evie. When I look back on it, it amazes me that I wasn't remotely worried about punishment. I am not quite sure why, but I have some ideas. There is the possibility that I was just dumb, unable to think that far ahead. But I have considered this a lot—I have had much occasion to ponder it, as the day's subsequent events will show—and I think not. I think that I believed I could do what I wanted with impunity, especially where Evie was concerned, and I think I had good reason for s
o believing. Why, I really do not know.

  I am over thirty now, and that was in the early sixties, before feminism got going, I think. I wonder if it was simply that I was male (a poor specimen in my father's opinion, but male nevertheless) and therefore privileged. It doesn't seem possible, and yet how else to explain it? Reed was self-censored, so far as I can tell. She never did anything wrong. Evie did everything wrong. But surely not everything because it is not she who would have sailed the hat, and then there was the other thing. The thing that I call The Thing.

  The stop we had to make was at the restaurant. I don't know why we stopped that particular day, but it wasn't unusual for us all to stop there on a Sunday, or any other time when Dad had business to do. And Easter was a huge day, a day when all those who didn't have to go to their grandparents' got to have Shrimp Arnaud at Arnaud's, or Bananas Foster at Brennan's, or Oysters a la Foch at Antoine's, or Crab Hebert at Hebert's.

  While we had to eat ham.

  Not only that, we weren't about to get any ham for at least an hour.

  We were starved. But when we went in the kitchen at Hebert's, the cooks made over us and gave us tidbits, especially, one named Albert, an old black man, or maybe he wasn't so old, but his hair was starting to gray and he was slightly stooped.

  Albert had a gentleness about him, a maternal quality, it seemed to me, though that sounds contradictory considering his sex. I felt—I don't know—loved (I guess I can say it, I'm half drunk) in his presence, in a way I never did in the presence of either of my parents. Albert simply was more gentle, there's no question, by temperament, but I think perhaps there might be more to the story.

  All parents say they love their children, and no doubt they believe they are telling the truth (though I never saw the slightest evidence that either of our parents loved Evie, unless you count the fact that they took care of her in material ways). No doubt they would have felt bereft if their children had died (though Evie might as well have, and I am not sure that anyone missed her after she left, except for me, and I was always attracted to her. She was a sexy child, I think—can children be sexy?).

  But I think that many parents, ours included, simply do not like children much. Do not like the noise they make, their high level of energy, the way they are always in perpetual motion—and the care that must be taken of them. In a word, they find children inconvenient, and an inconvenient child like Evie they particularly dislike, though they may "love" her in some vague way that probably has more to do with parental ego than otherwise. (I guess I must have thought of all this because Reed was so very convenient; so calculatedly convenient; so obedient and helpful, such a little volunteer. In short, being intelligent and being the youngest, in a perfect position to observe, she figured out what would fly.)

  Albert, I think, actually did like children as a class, something I hadn't seen before. He was even nice to Evie, which was something of a taboo in our family. Whenever we saw him, it almost made me rethink her: If Albert liked her, could she really be so—bad?

  Mother always said the way he treated us was just his way of sucking up to her and Daddy, which hurt my feelings. But not for long because even in my seven-year-old heart I knew it said a great deal more about her worldview than about Albert. The way Albert was, the way he felt, the intuitive sense I got from him—his vibe, his energy, his presence (I don't know what to call it because there isn't a word for it)—this feeling belied what she said.

  Albert had the job in the restaurant of making the pommes de terre soufflés. This is a dish served at most of the great New Orleans restaurants as an hors d'oeuvre, sometimes, though not always, with béarnaise sauce. At Hebert's the pommes are always served plain.

  Once, before the day of The Thing, Albert showed me the whole procedure. First he'd slice his potatoes thin, thin, thin with a tool called a mandolin, then dry them, then toss them in boiling oil, very hot. He'd let them float to the top, then take them out and pop them in another pan of boiling oil, even hotter than the first, smoking this time—45o degrees. I'll never forget how proud he looked when he told me that.

  The thing I never could understand, and never will understand is that the flat slices miraculously puff up into little pillows, as if two pieces of potato have been glued together around a bubble of air. How one slice of potato can do this is beyond me.

  The oil makes the pommes puff up, but they aren't perfect unless they're crisp, somewhere between french fries and potato chips; in other words, they don't crunch when you bite into them, but they aren't soft and soggy either. Only Albert could accomplish this miracle. I've had the potatoes at every restaurant in town, and nobody then or now can make them like Albert.

  This is all Albert did—all day, every day, day in, day out. A lesser cook would have been bored to tears, but Albert took great pride in the perfection of each potato pillow he turned out. On his day off, Hebert's didn't even serve the pommes—nobody else's could come close to Alberts

  I could watch Albert do this for hours, and sometimes I did. The best part, of course, was that I was free to nibble now and then, especially when he spoiled one.

  The day of The Thing, Albert barely had a word for any of us. The restaurant was working at full capacity, and two of the line cooks had the flu. Everyone was flying about looking like speeded-up film.

  In fact, Albert was entirely out of character that day. Perhaps he was angry at Dad for some reason; perhaps it was just the heat and the pressure.

  "Albert! How're ya doin'?" I shouted gleefully.

  Without looking around, he said, "Grady? That you, boy? You chirren shouldn't be here today. Too much goin' on; you better get out of the way."

  Crushed that my idol had spoken harshly to me, I withdrew against a wall. After a while I noticed Evil Evie picking cherry tomatoes from the salad plates. Reed, too young to know this was forbidden, was watching too. Next thing you know, she had joined her. They were systematically denuding all the salads, already made up and waiting to be ordered, of their round red fruit.

  Wanting to strike out, I grabbed Dad's hand. "Daddy, Evie and Reed are stealing the tomatoes." At the time, he was in conversation with someone, I couldn't have said who—if it wasn't Albert, I didn't care much—and he shook my hand off. I'm quite sure he didn't hear what I said, because to this day I believe he'd have minded that his salads were under attack. "Don't bother me now," he said, and then I had been rebuked twice.

  There was nothing to do but charge.

  I came up behind the girls and pinched each of their arms simultaneously, which so startled Evie that she knocked to the floor four or five of the nearest salads. Furious, she turned around to hit me, but I ran away.

  "Reed! Get him!" she shouted, and tiny Reed, ever-obedient Reed, came after me. I looked over my shoulder, laughing, and ran smack into Albert, who fell forward, hitting the handle of his first pan of grease. Sensing disaster, he hurled himself toward Reed, but he wasn't fast enough. He landed on top of her, but she had already slipped on the oil and her legs had straightened as she went down. That in itself wouldn't have been so bad except that Albert, in his leap, had knocked over the second—and hottest—pan of grease, and its entire contents poured onto Reed's feet and legs.

  I missed the first part, but turned around just in time to see the second pan of grease empty its contents on that tiny, innocent, inoffensive child. Evie, half crazed with fear, ran to our end of the kitchen, and I guess all our parents saw was that blur of motion.

  But none of that is what is most horrible to me. It is two other things: first, what happened later—in the hospitals, the burn hospitals, before the skin grafts, and after them—knowing the way she suffered. And yet, I didn't know. Later, in that way that we are fascinated by what horrifies us, I read a magazine article by a man who'd been badly burned, and I really had had no idea. I threw up after reading it; I dreamed about it four days running.

  I didn't know the details, but I knew what her face looked like. I saw the happy child replaced by that
pinched little mask.

  Her face, remembering her face, is why I could not write about this, could not think about it, and yet, that is only part of it.

  There was the other thing, the thing that is worse. And that is remembering the sounds of that moment.

  Albert's anguished emission of emotion—something like "Uhhhhhh," but full of tears. A vampire shriek from somewhere—I guess it was Evie. The clatter of the two pans hitting the floor. The manifold screams of the kitchen staff. Reed's whimper. That's all there was—a whimper.

  And Dad beating Evie.

  He spoke first. "Evie, I'm going to kill you," and he reached her in two quick strides. He struck her face with the back of his hand, and the noise it made is something that is with me still, in my dreams, in my sickest fear fantasies. I didn't see what happened to Reed, who picked her up, who took care of her, I was too fascinated by the horrible, the unthinkable. Dad began hitting Evie with both hands, with his fists, and someone—several people, I think—finally pulled him off of her.

  She didn't protest, didn't even try to explain what had happened, probably because she couldn't speak under the rain of blows. Nor did I, and no one ever brought it up, never even asked.

  The loudest noise, the most terrifying, the one that is most debilitating today, was the sound of my silence.

  But maybe it never mattered at all. Perhaps both parents knew perfectly well what had happened, had even seen it. Not long after, I asked my dad, timidly, why he had beaten Evie. "She's the oldest," he said. "She should have been watching the younger kids."

  23

  Skip got up an hour early on Wednesday and drove straight to Manny's, hoping she'd catch him before he left. But all was quiet at his apartment, a dump of a place on Jackson Avenue. She got out and walked around, even rang the bell, backup or no, thinking to play the Avon lady trick again. She had been in uniform when she arrested Manny; surely he wouldn't recognize her. But she didn't think it would come to that, and it didn't.