Cerise keeps walking, passing the geese and the other birds visiting the pond, ducks with funny red lumps on their heads and the snowy egrets nesting in the trees and the long-necked gray fishing birds perched out on bare branches, staring at the water. Cerise forgot how nice the park can be. She’s real happy she made the effort to come by.
She gets halfway around the path when she sees the sari-wrapped shape of Indira Gupta coming at her. They meet up in the middle. “Hello there,” Cerise says.
Indira has a big smile on. “Dear,” Indira says. She takes Cerise’s left hand and gives a squeeze. “It’s nice to see you.”
“I forget how nice the park is. A good place for walkin’.”
“Indeed, yes. I walk every Tuesday and Thursday between classes.”
Cerise nods. “We can go around the loop together?”
“Surprise company is a blessing,” Indira says. She hangs on to Cerise’s hand like they’re schoolgirls, swinging it a little as they go along the path. They giggle at an orange puppy waggin’ its tail, the young man from Tulane or Loyola smiling at the other end of the leash.
They get to the far side and begin the royal walk down the corridor under the canopy of the live oak trees, all of them planted hundreds of years ago in two lines. Every day in her life that Cerise has come here, the views knock her out. People who never knew air-conditioning must’ve walked through here. People who died of malaria must’ve walked through here. Slaves had to’ve walked these exact steps, carryin’ umbrellas for the people they served. The place ain’t no Hawaii, that’s for sure. Sometimes history can sit like a brick, huh.
A browny turtle the size of an Oreo cookie scootches across the path. Cerise bends and picks it up with her left hand. “Ain’t it beautiful,” she says. She puts it into the cage of her right hand. “Look at that.”
Indira steps close to see. “How wonderful.” She rubs her finger over its shell, and the feet and head tuck in even further.
“We should put it by the pond,” Cerise says. She points at the neat circle of water nearby on the golf course.
“Are we allowed to walk there?” Indira asks.
“I’m too old to care if we can or can’t,” Cerise answers and starts walking off the path and onto the golf course.
Indira doesn’t follow immediately. Cerise turns and looks. Indira stands at the edge of the path like she’s stopped at the ocean. “Oh, come on,” Cerise says. “They’re not going to evict us.”
The lady in the sari tiptoes her way to Cerise. Those getups don’t allow a woman to move very freely, but they sure are pretty. Today, Indira wears one that reminds Cerise of a butternut squash, all yellowy and rich. Maybe Indira could do Cerise up in one sometime. She’d like that.
They both go to the pond, where Cerise bends down and tips the turtle out onto the mud by the edge. Accidentally, she tips it onto its back. She puts it right with her left hand. She and Indira watch the tiny thing for a while till it pokes out its head and quick claws down into the water. Cerise smiles.
“What do turtles eat?” Indira asks.
“I think maybe they’re vegetarians.” Cerise dips her hands into the pond water and carefully washes them. “They can carry salmonella, though.”
“You’re kidding.”
“No, but I don’t think our lil’ shelled friend was hangin’ on to anything but fear up on that path.”
“Is there salmonella in the pond?”
“That’s a good question. Maybe I’m just washin’ on the diseases.” Cerise stands and wipes her hands best she can on her blue jeans. They head back to the paved path. Three bicyclers whiz by on the bike side. A squirrel barks in a tree.
Indira’s sari swishes as she goes. After a while Indira says, “I overheard something terrible yesterday.”
“What’s that?” The green canopy overhead makes an arch for what looks like a mile.
“Ed and Ariel,” Indira says. “They’re having difficulties.”
Well. “It happens.”
“I heard a dish break.”
Cerise looks to the lady. A dish ain’t nothing to worry about in their neighborhood, certainly nothing to worry about in their city. Indira’s a touch oversensitive, likely. “Hmm. That doesn’t mean people parts got broken too. Married folks can get mad at each other.”
“She, Ariel, she’s been unfaithful, with a coworker.”
Cerise doesn’t know what to make of this. She’s first struck that their very own Rescue Ed has been hurt by his wife. But then she’s struck second by the fact that Indira would listen to her neighbors’ business so close. Any marriage that makes it has horrible times. It’s just a fact. Cerise has always found it funny nobody wants to talk about those times to warn other couples. For better or worse means for better or worse. No joke. It will happen. One or both people in the marriage. Now it’s Cerise’s time to be old and wise and impart some knowledge to the naïve lady in her squash-pretty sari. “I’m sorry to hear it,” Cerise says. “Ed’s a brave man, but, to be honest, we don’t know him well other than him being able to lift up a big grill.”
“How do you mean?” Indira asks.
“Well, I guess I think it takes two people to make a mess, and I’ve had a hand in making a couple in my life.”
Indira stops in her tracks. “That is an enormously generous approach to infidelity.”
Cerise stops too. “It’s a real one.”
“Ganesh would never be unfaithful,” Indira says.
The woman doesn’t really want to see with open eyes. Or maybe Ganesh is a saint. Or a monk. Or from Mars. Maybe Indira’s been sitting up in the academic towers too long to know the truth of flesh and marriage. Cerise should say what she’s supposed to say. “Of course not,” she tells Indira. The woman’s a little plain in the face, a little tight around the mouth. Maybe Ganesh is the perfect husband of all time, though Cerise is guessing not, even if Indira doesn’t know it. Everybody wants more, and everybody should, what … should strive for being the best human being she can be. Or he can be. That people make mistakes is part of the sad side of living, along with dying and maiming and all the rest.
“I just find it unseemly,” Indira says. “The shouting and the breaking of things …”
Cerise doesn’t know how to tell a lady who lives in a different world of her own how to take a look at the rest of ’em. There’s always something more underneath. It’s the privilege or the curse of old age to be able to see clearly. You finally know it’s not all as it appears. You can find the carny mirror, if you want, and stand there and stare and say, ‘That’s the true thing,’ but, of course, it’s not. Cerise thinks Miss Ariel has a hard life. She’s never home more than eight hours a day. The woman’s sleep-deprived, likely, for starters.
“Life can be so hard,” Cerise says and realizes what she wants to say from her heart will probably fall wrong. Still, she needs to say something to Indira. “I saw a show on cable about refugees. The parents passed their children to the camera people to take so maybe they could have a better—”
“Miss Cerise,” Indira says as they continue walking along the loop, “I do believe you are the most tolerant person I have ever known.”
“Maybe you just don’t know very many tolerant people, then.”
“That is possible.”
They walk under the spread of live oak branches. “I’m sorry you had to hear that,” Cerise says.
“Hear what?”
The woman’s not so forthright, Cerise thinks. “The arguing and all between Ariel and Ed,” Cerise says. “That’s never what you want next door.”
“No. It was difficult.”
Cerise lets it lie. They finish passing through the corridor of trees, and Cerise asks, “So, any ideas about me taking classes or doing something at the zoo?”
“I’m not sure,” the woman says. “Loyola is rather inordinately expensive, although there are community-based courses. I do not—actually, I’ll get you a catalog.”
Huh. Cerise
could have done that on her own. “Thank you,” she says.
They walk most of the way around the loop being quiet, looking at nature and other people. This park couldn’t be much better, with or without a trip that includes a neighbor, a turtle, and plenty of squirrels and birds. “I think my legs have only so many steps in them today,” Cerise tells Indira. “Best I carry the rest of me home.”
“I’m so happy we met here,” Indira says.
“Me too.” They wave at each other and go. They’re not really kissers or huggers at this point, which is fine by Cerise.
Indira heads back to Loyola and Cerise starts zigzaggin’ a path to Orchid Street. Seems Indira forgot about Cerise taking any classes. That’s fine. The lady’s surely busy. As she goes along, Cerise thinks about a documentary she saw on cable about a woman in a wheelchair whose arms didn’t work either. A quadriplegic rather than a paraplegic. The lady painted with her mouth. She gripped a paintbrush in her teeth and worked her head to make a painting.
On the way home, it’s what Cerise decides to do. Not necessarily paint with her mouth, but just to paint with her new hand. If a lady can do it with a brush in her teeth, Cerise can do it with a paintbrush in her opposite hand, that’s for sure. And what better to try to paint than sights in Audubon Park? Some of the birds sit still a long time. Even if they don’t, the trees sure do.
Yes, that’s exactly what Cerise will do. Left-handers are good at art, aren’t they? She’ll paint her some leafs and sticks, maybe put a person in there sometimes.
The Jazzfest crowd did Ariel in. The aging music lovers in their straw hats and coconut sunscreen overtook the Belle. They’re good-natured enough, she supposes, but yesterday, the last day of the festival, couldn’t come soon enough. P ’n B housekeeping has their work cut out for them today.
Mondays depress Ariel beyond reason. But she’s never been more depressed than today. Ed has barely spoken to her in three weeks, and only in front of the kids. The instant Miles and Ella are down for the count, he’s gone. Tokyo Rose across the street gives him what he craves, she guesses.
Ariel sits in her car in the French Quarter lot and cries. She needs to talk to somebody who’ll cheer her up. Anybody.
The entire hotel knows, down to the last busboy. She feels the stares, catches the smirks. Nobody’s yet disobeyed her, but the onus seems to have been clamped on her as sure as a stockade. How it is that Javier gets off scot-free, Ariel can’t wrap her head around, although it sort of figures in the sickest way. Latino cook lands the white bosslady. Who do you vote for?
Ariel flips down her visor in the car and, there in the mini mirror, stares into one of the most pathetic faces she’s seen in ages. She wipes away mascara and snot. She can’t understand how she got here, making the leap across that enormous divide. Something other than sanity must have coursed through her veins that night she did what she did for the first time. Ariel the Other. And still, still, she feels sorry for herself at least as much as she does for Ed. Work is now utter and complete torture. To maintain her authority, hell, her posture, pains Ariel beyond belief.
And Javier. He’s cut off all communication with Ariel. She never guessed he’d be such a prick. Objectively, she might have seen it, but getting to know him, she really never thought he’d flip like a switch. Shouldn’t he shoulder some of this? Ariel takes makeup from her purse and tries to fix her eyes. She couldn’t say Javier had ever been gentle, but he was reverent enough for Ariel to assume she’d won his respect. Stupid her. Stupid, stupid her.
Just for Ed, Ariel sits in her car with the motor running, cranking the air-conditioning. And because it’s hot in May in New Orleans, and because she wants to, fuck it all.
She scrolls through her cell phone list of contacts, trying to find somebody to talk to. When you aspire to run a place, and you’re a woman, you don’t really end up with a ton of friends. Ariel pauses on the few names from Minneapolis she’d consider calling, but on a Monday, midday, none of them will answer.
The thought that she has no real friends makes Ariel cry again. She drips tears onto her cell. How entirely pathetic.
She’s just so damn lonely.
Okay. Oh. There’s somebody she could call. Sharon Harris. She might make Ariel feel better with her laugh alone. Ariel dials and waits as the phone rings.
“Yeah, Miss Ariel,” Sharon says.
Ariel is suddenly so stunned to reach somebody on the other end who seems genuinely happy to hear from her that she starts sobbing.
“Oh, hey, whatever it is, talk it out. Catch yo’ breath. Talk it out.”
Ariel cries out loud. “I—I screwed up,” she says, not knowing she was going to talk about it at all, and only then, confessing to Sharon Harris, does Ariel realize that’s exactly what she really did do. She really and truly screwed up. “Oh, my God.”
“It gone be alright,” Sharon says. “Just keep breathin’, lady.” Ariel can hear Sharon tell somebody in the backround that she’s going to take a break. “You just breathe and I’m gonna find a quiet stairway or some-thin’.”
Ariel looks for tissue in the glove box. She can’t find anything. She puts her cell to her chest and sniffs as big as she can. “Hi,” she says to Sharon eventually.
“Hi there, Miss Ariel.”
“Thank you for answering.”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“I … I don’t have any friends here.”
“Ain’t you an’ Indira friends?”
“I don’t think she likes me,” Ariel says. “She’s pretty much—” Indira’s siding with Ed, Ariel understands. “I made a mistake with another man,” Ariel blurts.
“Aw. An it makes you sad?”
It gets a little laugh out of Ariel. She guesses sleeping with another man should make her happy, shouldn’t it? “Yeah, I guess so,” Ariel says. “I really hurt my husband.”
“He want a divorce?”
“He hasn’t asked for one yet.”
“You want a divorce?”
Does she want a divorce? She hadn’t even considered one. No. A resounding no. Wow. No. She wants what she, they, have built. “I don’t think so. No. I want my family back.”
“You breathin’ okay yet?”
“Thanks. Yeah.”
“You think he gone do somethin’ foolish now too? Get some vengeance?”
“I don’t think he’s like that. I just think—I think maybe he’s broken.”
Sharon doesn’t say anything for a bit. She lets breath out of her mouth. “I hear you. Let me go get my smokes.”
“Sure.” Ariel listens to the woman move around and then hears street noise, the click of a lighter.
“I’m here,” Sharon says.
“I know I don’t deserve any sympathy. It’s my fault, but …”
“There’s the thing,” Sharon says. “It may be your mistake, but if you heartily sorry, you should be allowed some forgiveness. It just gone take others more time to give it, usually. It’ll come if you work on it. You don’t work on it, likely it won’t.”
“You’re being so nice, and you don’t even know what all happened,” Ariel says.
“Oh, I know well enough.”
“Really?” Ariel wipes dust from her dashboard.
“I know all about it. Not yours, mind you.” Sharon laughs. “Life ain’t perfect.” Ariel hears a cigarette drag. “I know about hard times though.”
“Tell me,” Ariel says, as straight as she’s ever spoken.
“I got three dead family, premature by violence, an’ a husband with a girlfriend I answer the phone to, Miss Ariel, an’ that’s not the worst of it. We can talk on my children if you in the mood to feel good about yoself today.”
Is she being mean? Ariel doesn’t know, once again, exactly how to take Sharon. What she says, though, is horrible. “I don’t mean to—”
“’Salright. I not being vengeful. Some my children don’t do the right things, though, you mighta noticed. And I thought I teach ’em. Ha!” Sharon coug
hs into her phone. “I even can get the girls free birth control with a connection here. Ain’t that beatin’ the band?”
Ariel has no idea what to say. She listens to Sharon smoke. “I think—I don’t know what to say.” What does she want to say most? “Really, thank you for talking to me like a human being. Everybody else makes me feel like a monster.”
“Come on, Miss Minnesota, you ain’t no monster. You just a human being like the rest of us. I stand by you if you need a friend. You in that place you could need a friend, I think.”
Ariel starts crying in her car again. When did life get so hard?
Prancie prepares. While the recipes might not have exacted what she intended at the barnacle, likely due to the fact that the food was so widely dispersed, there can be no question her meals will be more effective at home. She will double, or triple, her secret ingredient. Joe will eat her food, and he will love it, as he always has. Chopping green peppers, Prancie smiles.
His intentions to leave her, or rather, to have Philomenia depart their home, will never materialize. Never.
From the kitchen, Prancie hears the front doorbell ring. They do not allow solicitors, nor is she expecting a package. Prancie wipes her hands on her apron and goes to the foyer, where Joe has opened their door to the neighbor Ed, the local drunk. “Hi, Joe,” Ed says. “Listen. It was nice talking to you yesterday. I wondered if you wanted to grab a drink across the street.”
“Sure,” Joe says. He turns to glance at Prancie and then steps through the screen door. “Love to.”
“Joe, the doctor said—”
Her husband waves her off. How is it he has become friends with one of the enemy? When did they speak yesterday? Prancie needs to know how this connection was made and, more importantly, consider how to sever it.
Philomenia fights the urge to call after him or to press her hands against the screen. He will return, and her meal will be ready. She will say she has already eaten. Afternoon drinking should make him even hungrier.
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