32
Harper
I run my finger over a rusty brass bin pull, trying to make out its intricate design. “How about this one?” I hold it up to show Ann.
We’re at one of my favorite stores in New Orleans. It’s an architectural salvage warehouse in Mid-City. Ricca’s has been around since the fifties; the family has made a business of going into homes that were scheduled for demolition and taking doors, windows, shutters, and every kind of hardware you can imagine, for resale. I like the idea of being able to keep a little bit of history of an old house when it can’t be saved. It’s a way of preserving Louisiana’s history, too. Whenever I need so much as a hinge for our house, this is the first place I come.
Ann and I shop here regularly. George owns an interior design company and even though Ann doesn’t work for him, she likes to shop for him. She enjoys finding interesting pieces of history he can incorporate into old and new homes. She also buys items for herself for her art. You never know what you’ll find at Ricca’s; our garden water fountain came from here.
Today Ann’s looking for drawer pulls and doorknobs to create a piece of artwork for a restaurant, using a door as her canvas. Apparently she’s going to attach all these old pieces of hardware onto a massive paneled door she bought here a few weeks ago. I’m having a difficult time imagining this piece of artwork, but I’m always game for a trip to Ricca’s. And I’m a little down in the dumps, as I always am around Mardi Gras. I’m hoping our outing will lift my spirits.
Ann studies the drawer pull I’m holding up for her through a pair of wild-looking readers that have faux jewels glued on them. Another piece of her artwork. “Put it in the maybe pile,” she instructs.
I go back to digging in the wooden box across from hers. “Jojo texted me as soon as they arrived at the campground last night. Then again this morning. It sounds as if she’s having a good time. She actually thanked me for making her take her hoodie.”
“Makayla talked to her briefly last night. She said the same thing.” Ann glances at me over the top of her wacky glasses. “Olivia’s a nice girl. Nice family. You did good, sweetie.”
I groan. “I can’t believe after the stink Jojo made over not going on vacation, on wanting to go to a parade, she just sashayed out of town.” I gesture with a cut-glass doorknob I’m adding to the definitely pile.
Ann laughs. “She’s fourteen. I’d expect no less of her.” She holds up a tiny knob that looks like some kind of bird. “Too weird?”
“Yes.”
She laughs and adds it to the definitely pile. “But Remy and Lilla are still going.”
I frown, looking at her. “Et tu, Brute?”
She meets my gaze. “She wants to be called Lilla.”
“I named her Georgina,” I counter firmly.
“You need to decide how important this is to you, sweetie. Because. . .” She holds up a pretty white glass doorknob and then adds it to the pile of yeses on top of an upended cardboard box. “I think you might get a lot of mileage giving in on this one. Couldn’t you just pretend it’s her nickname? I mean, I’m sure George’s mom doesn’t particularly like Skeeter, but that’s what everyone has always called him.”
“I should call Georgina by the name her abductor gave her?” I ask, knowing I shouldn’t be annoyed with her, but annoyed anyway.
She sighs and keeps digging. We’re both wearing disposable blue gloves I brought from the office. We’ll still feel like we need a shower when we get home. While the warehouse certainly isn’t dirty, it seems as if there’s a thin layer of dust and time over everything. The place has that distinct antique store smell, too. “I suppose I’m saying I think you should pick your battles.”
“And I have,” I say stubbornly. I hold up a drawer pull, reject it, and dig in again.
“Need any help, ladies?” a young woman asks, walking by us. She’s wearing a Ricca’s T-shirt.
“No thanks,” I say cheerfully.
“Holler if you do,” she sings, waving her hand over her head.
“So while we’re on the subject of Sharon Kohen,” I tell Ann when the employee’s gone, “listen to this. Georgina wants to go to the prison and see her.”
Ann looks up. “You’re kidding.”
I shake my head. “Indeed not.”
“You going to take her?”
I look at her as if she’s lost her mind. Which she has. “No!” I don’t mean to shout it, but it comes out that way.
A young woman considering a pair of shutters behind us looks at me; she has a tattoo of a python wrapped around her left leg. I force a smile. She walks on without returning the gesture.
“No,” I say more quietly. “I’m not taking her to see that woman. That woman is never going to see my daughter again. She’s never going to get her hands on her. She’s never going to—”
“You’re right about that,” Ann interrupts. She leans against a glass display case with a sign taped to it reading, Please do not lean against glass. “She’s never going to get her hands on her because she’s not even eligible for parole for what? Twenty? Thirty years?”
I suddenly feel tired. And old. I feel as if everyone thinks I’m crazy. Remy certainly does. My girls do. And I guess Ann, too. But I’m not crazy. It’s not crazy to want to use the name you gave your child at birth. It’s not crazy to want to keep her from the monster that kidnapped her.
“She hasn’t been sentenced yet.”
“What’s Remy say?”
I toss the pull in my hand back into the wooden bin and go to stand beside her. I decide to be a rebel and lean against the glass case. “I haven’t talked to him about it,” I admit. “I’m sure he’ll be all in for it, though.” I shouldn’t be sarcastic, but I can’t help myself. I’m irritated with him. Angry with him. He hasn’t been himself and I think, deep down, I’m scared. I keep thinking about our conversation on the porch last week. He brought up moving out and I can’t bear to think about the possibility. Not after all we’ve been through. Not now, now when Georgina’s come home to us. I’ve dreamed of this family, the four of us, for all these years, and now we have it and he wants to bail?
“Remy, he’s . . .” I scratch the back of my neck trying to figure out how to express what I’m feeling, which is hard because I’m not sure. Ann knows all about the porch conversation, but she and I haven’t talked in a couple of days, except to check kids’ schedules and make plans for today. Two ships passing in the night. Much like a long-married couple with teenagers. “I can’t figure out what’s going on in his head and he won’t tell me. All of a sudden he seems, I don’t know. Overwhelmed?”
“With work?”
“Yes. No.” I raise my blue latex-gloved hands and let them fall. “With me, with the girls. The house. But this is what worries me”—I turn to look at her—“things are better with us. With him and I. Since Georgina came home. Things are good. I’m good. I’m the one who made him nuts all these years and now I’m better. I’m so much better. I let Jojo go out of town with a girlfriend. Me.”
“You are better,” Ann agrees.
“I think about all the things Remy had to put up with all these years,” I go on. “How many times he got me through a holiday . . . or just an ordinary day.” I gesture with both hands, pleading. “How can he be overwhelmed now?”
She’s quiet for a moment, then she says softly, “Do you think he’s seeing someone?”
I cross my arms over my chest. I stare at a beautiful stained-glass window hanging from wire from the ceiling. It’s a bargain at $325. “He said he isn’t.”
“Do you think he’s seeing someone?” she repeats.
“No.” I shake my head slowly. “I don’t.” I give a halfhearted laugh. “He couldn’t possibly have time between work and home and now we’re doing this family counseling thing and . . .” I sigh.
Ann steps back up to the bin she was looking through. She’s quiet. Which worries me.
I move to stand across the wood box from her. “Do you kn
ow something I don’t?”
She shakes her head.
“Ann?” It’s a plea.
She looks up. “I don’t know anything about what Remy is doing or not doing.”
“But you guys are close.”
“Not like we used to be,” she says thoughtfully. “Certainly not since Georgina came home. We had pizza together that one night when you guys came over, but I haven’t really seen him.”
“I suppose we haven’t really seen much of each other, have we? As a family. Not like we used to.” I think about it for a moment. “I suppose we’ve just been busier—you know, having Georgina home. Increasing our family by twenty-five percent.”
“Technically, you’ve increased it by fifty percent. Because Remy came home.”
“Right.” I pick up several pieces of hardware and reject them for different reasons. I think about what Remy said about us needing to tell Georgina about the divorce. I agree that we need to tell her, but how do you have that conversation? “Oh, by the way, honey, your dad doesn’t really live here. He and I aren’t really married.”
I find an interesting little knob that’s made of cut glass and add it to the growing pile Ann’s purchasing. “I’m thinking about going back to the church choir.” Before Georgina came back to us, I was singing in the choir. And I liked it. I liked getting out of the house one night a week for practice. Jojo would always go hang out with Makayla. Once in a while she’d have dinner with Remy. “And book club. I skipped book club twice in a row.”
Ann looks up. “That’s a good idea. You need to do things for yourself. You can’t always be about Remy and the girls and work.”
I hold a little metal bar in my hand, not really looking at it. “I have to be there at six, and Remy’s not always home by then, but . . . I’m sure Georgina and Jojo would be okay home alone for a little while. Together.”
“I’m sure they would be,” she says, smiling at me. “You know you’re right. What you said about you being good. Because you are, Harper. You’re great. And . . . with or without Remy, you can parent your girls. You can be a good parent. A great parent.”
I lower my head stubbornly. She and I have had conversations about my faith-related beliefs in marriage, but we’re not always on the same page with that. I try a different tack. “I don’t want to be a single parent, Ann. The girls deserve two parents. Who live together. You’ve seen him with them. He’s a great parent.”
“He is,” she agrees, holding my gaze. “I’m just saying I don’t want you to think again that you can’t do it without him. Because you can.”
I touch my fingertips to the crucifix around my neck and pray it doesn’t come to that.
33
Lilla
“This is the Krewe of Thoth parade,” my dad yells in my ear.
“What?” The band going by is so loud, I can barely hear him. I raise up on my tiptoes to see a bunch of old guys who look like they’re wearing high school band uniforms. Old ones. All in different colors. Which is kind of amazing.
“Krewe of Thoth,” he hollers, cupping his hand to his mouth. He’s wearing this goofy green knit cap with a pompom on top. Green, of course, and it says Tulane across the bottom.
“And a krewe is just like a group of people, an organization that puts on parades for Mardi Gras, right?” I ask. When we first moved here, Sharon and I went to the Mardi Gras Museum in the Quarter, but so much has happened since then that it seems like a million years ago.
“A krewe might sponsor a parade or a ball, or ride on a float in a parade. Sometimes they do social stuff during the year or even charity work. Just depends on the krewe,” Dad says. “Thoth was the Egyptian god of wisdom and inventor of science or art, or something like that. I don’t remember. You’ll have to Google it. The krewe was started in the forties,” he goes on, “by a bunch of men who wanted to have a parade that people could see who were too sick or too disabled to get downtown where all the parades used to be. When they first started, the parade route went by hospitals and institutions—”
“Whoa,” I say as someone bumps hard into me and I almost fall. I grab Dad’s arm to steady myself as the guy goes by, laughing. Drunk. At least he says, “Sorry.”
The crowd is overwhelming and today isn’t even actual Mardi Gras yet. I feel like a sardine in a can. And the sounds are overwhelming, too. Everything is so loud. Music is blasting from floats and band after band marches by and people are shouting and singing and blowing whistles and crap. I was so excited about coming here today. I had Mardi Gras so built up in my head. Now that I’m here at an actual parade, I wish I hadn’t made such a fuss. I’m not usually claustrophobic, but I feel short of breath, and even though it’s cold, I’m a little sweaty inside my coat.
I thought it was going to be so much fun, especially after I found out that Jojo was going away and just Dad and I were coming to the parade. I’m so much more relaxed with Dad than Harper Mom. I don’t know why. He’s just so much . . . easier. His expectations of me are less so I don’t feel like a big failure with him. I don’t feel as if I’m always disappointing him.
Now I’m almost wishing we’d stayed home and played Ticket to Ride or streamed a movie. Dad and I are going through classic horror films. Next on our list is Dawn of the Dead. I could be home right now, where it’s warm, eating popcorn and watching a movie about zombies without people pushing on me and shouting in my ears.
I can’t help wondering if my visceral reaction has to do with the last time I attended a Mardi Gras parade. It seems ridiculous. But I keep thinking about what Harper Mom said about the human brain. About why I can’t remember being kidnapped or the fact that I had a different mom before Sharon. Why I don’t remember that I had a different life with a dad and a baby sister and a dog named Sadie. I found a photo of Sadie in one of the family albums; I definitely don’t remember her.
I glance around, feeling uneasy, inside and out. I steady myself against Dad, my shoulder pressed to his arm. I wonder if this awful feeling I have deep in the pit of my stomach has to do with what happened to me when I was little. Will I never be able to go to a Mardi Gras parade without feeling a little sick to my stomach and totally weird in my skin?
We left the house two hours before the parade was supposed to start and walked along the edge of Audubon Park and then cut onto Magazine Street. We’re standing not far from where the parade turns onto Magazine. Dad and I wiggled our way to a spot right on the edge of the sidewalk, but people keep standing in front of us. They’re not supposed to be in the street, so they keep getting pushed back by parade officials.
“You okay?” Dad says in my ear, putting his hand on my back to steady me.
I nod and pull my hat down farther over my ears. It’s been nice for days, but this morning I woke up to gray skies and it was cold enough for me to wear my North Face jacket. I stole a knit hat off the floor of Jojo’s bedroom. I didn’t text her and ask her if it was okay. I figured I’d just throw it back into her room. It’s such a mess, she’ll never know I borrowed it. Besides, that’s what sisters are supposed to do, right? Steal each other’s clothes. It’s what normal sisters do in normal families.
We watch a float turn the corner and come our way behind a band of men in gold uniforms and top hats. There are girls dancing in front of them in booty shorts and sparkly bra tops. I wonder if they’re cold. The band is pretty good, but I’m not into marching band music.
The float is a glittery green, gold, and purple and this gigantic clown with a mouth on the front that’s opening and closing. The thing is terrifying. It’s not a clown, I guess. The face resembles the Mardi Gras masks you see all over town. It looks like it’s about to gobble up the band guys marching in front of it. There are men dressed in emerald-green or purple glitter suits on the float, wearing glitter masks that look like the one on the front of the float. They’re throwing beads. Everyone is throwing beads.
Dad puts his hand up and somehow manages to catch a string of glittery purple ones. Because he’s
so tall. He hands them to me. “Put them on,” he tells me, grinning. He returns his attention to the float going by, swaying to the music. Clearly he’s enjoying the parade. I just stand there, holding the beads on the end of my finger like they’re something gross, like dog drool.
I went to Harper Mom’s office with her one day last week. We both agreed silently that we wouldn’t stop at Perfect Cup where she found me. Probably ever again. She had to run into her office for a minute. She wanted me to come in and say hi to everyone, but I’ve only met the vet she works for and the staff twice. Harper Mom doesn’t get that it feels awkward to go in and say hi to people who don’t really know me. They just know of me. I still feel like an act in a side show from the days where there used to be traveling carnivals. Like I should be Monkey Girl or Snake Woman. An exhibition where everyone stares at me and whispers and wonders if I was sexually abused while in captivity.
So instead of putting myself through that stress, I waited in the car. Doors locked, of course, because it was easier than pointing out the unlikelihood that I’d be kidnapped while Harper Mom went in to check blood work results. While I was waiting, I watched a guy lead his Saint Bernard down the sidewalk and in the front door. The dog had this huge river of drool coming out of his mouth. The beads remind me of that.
I look up and there’s a little girl in a pink coat, with lots of beads around her neck, sitting in a seat on top of a ladder. She’s maybe three; I’m not good with ages with little kids. I don’t know any little kids. Dad told me that people build the ladders and put them along parade routes so they can put their kids on top of them. It’s supposed to keep the kids safer and allow them to see more of the parades, but it doesn’t look all that safe to me.
The little girl is laughing and clapping. I lift up on my tiptoes, being careful not to bump into her ladder because I’m petrified she’ll fall and get run over by the float. Or eaten by it.
I hand her the string of purple beads. She takes them and smiles. “What’s your name?” I have to shout for her to hear me.
Finding Georgina Page 24