The Neon Palm of Madame Melancon

by Will Clarke

  “Hell, that’s what I went to college for in the first place. But I wasn’t some kind of communist. So if I had to go, I had to go.”

  While war has been known to turn boys into men, my father loves to tell whoever will listen, “It just makes you old.”

  “But weren’t you happy to be back? To have survived?”

  “At that point, my life had been too long already. So I figure I’d just put myself out of my misery. But then I got this idea to go see a fortune-teller.”

  “Why a fortune-teller?”

  “Wanted to make sure I wasn’t gonna miss nothing.”

  So my father, who at the tender age of twenty-two was already a very old man, crutched it down to Jackson Square, where the artists sold their wares in front of St. Louis Cathedral. Daddy’s government-issued leg didn’t fit him right—rubbed a sore on him, so he left it at home and hopped around the Square on his crutches, with his left pants leg safety-pinned to his hip. To this day, he says he can get around faster that way.

  “You know the Square wasn’t like it is now. Back when I went down there, it was all these artists and painters. Famous ones and poor ones. There were only one or two fortune-tellers even allowed on the Square. They were the real deal. Not the kooks they got down there now. You know what I mean? You seen those crazy assholes down there with their turbans and their shitty costumes?”

  The Jackson Square of today is full of “Nawlins” bullshit. There are dueling Bone Ladies dressed in red robes with white skulls painted over their faces. There are fake descendants of Marie Laveau and fat jazz guys in spangled purple pants juggling rubber chickens and fire batons.

  “They all clowns!” my father would say. “Stupid clowns.”

  However, on that spring morning in 1967, before the idiots and amateurs had taken over the Square, my father came to the table of the real deal: Helena Petrofina Blavatsky’s very own granddaughter. A woman of the world in the full bloom of her thirties.

  “She had big green eyes and long braids, and big lips—sweet, juicy lips like plums.” Daddy smiled. “Back then, ya Mama called herself Sister Reverend Evangeline.”

  Like all higher initiates of The Theosophical Society, Mama has a name for outsiders, and a real name, her secret name. I cannot and will not tell you her secret name. However, I can tell you that she can read your fortune for five dollars; tell you your secret enemies for six; remove a curse for seven; bring back a lost love for twenty, just like she did that day for my father.

  “She said, ‘Alo, Vinny. I’ve been vaiting for you.’ Your mama talked like Dracula back then. My ears perked up when she called me by name. I could definitely understand that. This pretty lady acted like she had known me all my life. Then she told me that if she spelled my name to God, she could tell me my whole life story from beginning to end. I told her, spell it!

  So she did. Her eyes fluttered, you know how she likes to do, and she began to speak real fast. She told me that I had eight brothers and three sisters and that I was the seventh. She even told me their names. She told me about my buddies over in Nam and that our platoon leader, Lieutenant McTaggert, would be killed on his next tour of duty, and not that I wished anything bad on anyone, but I was glad to know that that bastard was checking out. So I took a seat and let her read my palm.

  She told me that I would father eight kids myself and that I too would have a seventh son, a son who would do wonders for the world and for his family. That’s when I told her she was wrong. I told her after her reading that I was going home to kill myself. I had already bought the bullets. She put her hand in my open palm.

  She looked me straight in the eye and shook her head no. Then she took me out back behind the cathedral, to this courtyard with all this bougainvillea and sweet olive everywhere, and we made your brother Roman right there in broad daylight. I scratched the hell out of my backside on that bougainvillea, I tell ya.”

  “Ugh. Dad.”

  “It’s the truth. Your mother was a very sexual woman.”

  “Seriously, I don’t need to know that.”

  “Well, all I’m saying, Duke, is you don’t sire eight kids by marrying a nun. You need to marry a woman who likes it.”

  “Change the subject. Please.”

  10

  “Duke!”

  My brother Stevo runs to me with his arms outstretched; the black hair under his armpits is almost as long and matted as his black beard. He hugs me tighter and longer than I want.

  “I thought we had lost you forever!” He pulls me closer, squeezing me. He smells like raw onions and pumpkin pie. He feels thin like he has the bones of a bird. When he lets me go, his wife, Cactus (yes, Cactus), also hugs me tighter and longer than I want.

  “Blessings, my brother,” she whispers hot in my ear.

  She feels even more fragile, more bird-boned; she smells like cat pee and patchouli.

  Stevo is in full-on hippie mode: pirate-black beard, long hair tied into a bun on top of his head, cut-off army fatigues, and Vedic tattoos all over his skinny torso. There are two naked toddlers at his ankles, and Cactus stands behind him, her dreads pulled back in a red bandana. She’s wearing the flowy peasant garb of a flower child.

  “That’s your Uncle Duke, boys!” Stevo smiles and deep crow’s feet crinkle around his eyes, revealing how harsh life has been since I last saw him. “Duke, these are your nephews, Paint and Brag.”

  Since I graduated law school, I haven’t talked to Stevo. He hasn’t called me. Emailed me. Facebooked. Done shit. Stevo, along with the rest of my brothers, expected me to do what they were doing—be dutiful to our mother’s prophecies and con jobs. And because I wasn’t, because I was willful and faithless, they shunned me. To be honest, I was fine with it.

  If the only way not to spend my life tricking people out of their money with threats of demonology and long lists of secret enemies was to lose my brothers and sister, so be it. That was a price I gladly paid to live in a world that wasn’t ruled by tarot cards and Aleister Crowley’s incantations.

  “Are they twins?” I ask.

  “Ten months apart.” Cactus smiles and looks down at the ground. She grabs Stevo’s hand as if what she just told me made her oddly bashful.

  Stevo and Cactus and their boys are beautiful—beautiful in the way that all wild things are beautiful. Stevo and Cactus are true nomads. They live on the road, roving from state park to state park, reading tarot with the Red Hawk Family—a pack of hippies who like to spread peace and love and herpes by gathering in groups of about 30,000. They like to have these big-ass campouts so they can sit around in drum circles, eat mushrooms, and swap old ladies. Mom arranged Stevo’s marriage with Cactus when he was sixteen.

  Cactus is more “Hey! Wow!” hippie than a serious student of the occult. Cactus’s father, while he is technically a 33rd-degree Freemason, turned out to be some kind of “channeler” who pretends to be a Native American spirit guide and calls himself Chief Red Hawk. The Red Hawk Family travel from state park to state park, but their life is so intertwined with the mundane, you could hardly call them practicing members of the Theosophy, at least not in a way that would ever make Mama happy. So much for my mother’s “peeks behind the veil” and astrological matchmaking.

  “Dad!” Stevo makes his way over to our father and hugs him even tighter than he hugged me. Cactus gives Uncle Father a chaste handshake while Paint and Brag continue to untie my shoes.

  “When do we eat?” Stevo stares at the pot of boiling rice.

  My phone buzzes in my pocket. It’s another text from Gary:

  *Christopher’s flying in on the 13th.*

  *I need you in the office.*

  *Answer the goddamn phone!!!*

  “You need to tell your sister to calm down.” Emily comes out to the front porch, carrying a stack of red party cups full of plastic forks and paper napkins.

  “She’s on edge. Stevo’s here.” I take the napkins and forks from her, and tilt my head in the direction of my long-lost brother a
nd his bird-boned wife who are now tumbling and laughing with their naked kids in the tall grass of my mama’s backyard.

  “Wow. He looks just like a homeless version of you.”

  “No, he doesn’t.”

  “Oh, yes he does.” She nudges me in the ribs and then shouts at my dad, “Those are some strong genes you got there, Mr. Melançon!”

  “What?” Daddy shouts back from behind the pot of jambalaya.

  “I said: You-Have-Some-Strong-Genes!”

  “What?” He cups his ear.

  “Never mind!” I yell at him.

  “You have to speak up. He’s deaf, ya know!” Uncle Father shouts at us as he pours the Louisiana Hot Sauce into a measuring cup.

  Daddy holds up his wooden spoon and points to his head. “I’m deaf!”

  “Don’t worry about it!” I wave him off, and Daddy goes back to seasoning the jambalaya with my uncle. “Where are the boys?”

  “Watching Dora in the parlor.” Emily sets the forks onto the folding table, the same folding table I grew up eating off of, the one my dad always uses to spread out boiled crawfish, shrimp, and crabs.

  “I’ll run up and get them,” I say.

  “Well, aren’t you going to introduce me first?” Emily tugs on my belt loop.

  “Time to eat!” Daddy proclaims.

  Before I can introduce Stevo and Cactus to Emily, those two start shoveling gobs of jambalaya into their mouths and their kids’ mouths with their bare hands. Stevo and his family are hungry like I have rarely ever seen.

  “Hi.” My sweet wife holds her hand out to shake Cactus’s. “I’m Emily.”

  After a few awkward seconds of watching Cactus and Stevo grunt and lick their fingers, Emily puts her hand down and slides over next to me.

  “Are they on something?” she whispers.

  * * *

  We all sit down at the table in the backyard, covered with old Times-Picayunes that Daddy saves in tall stacks out on the back porch. Cactus has one of her naked sons in her lap, and she is now feeding him the jambalaya with a spoon. The other boy is running around, hitting things and giggling. Meanwhile, Stevo is on his fourth plate, and Uncle Father is on his fortieth beer, and Daddy has turned off his hearing aids.

  Emily sits next to me, quietly eating and observing my strange family, while our boys sit on Mama’s back steps flicking rice and sausage slices to the ants. La La eventually calms down and comes outside. She sits as far away from Emily as possible, and she looks only at Daddy and Uncle Father as she eats.

  Daddy’s chicken and sausage jambalaya is good, better than anything I’ve eaten in weeks. It brings a comfort and warmth that only this kind of food can, and as much as I hate to admit it, eating jambalaya on a paper plate with everyone I love and hate brings a settled feeling that I haven’t felt in a long time. It makes me less shaky on the inside, less worried that something unspeakable has happened like maybe there is some hope left and that Mama will trundle up the walkway to the backyard, laughing and shaking her head and saying cryptic things like she always does.

  “When you are given, eat. When you are beaten, run!” she would probably say.

  And this would be about all Mama would say to explain herself if she were to walk up right now, but of course, she doesn’t walk up because she is missing and no one at this table has a fucking clue what happened to her. So we all act like this isn’t freaking us out. We eat and talk too loud and interrupt each other and speculate. We pass the French bread and butter. We pass more beer and hot sauce.

  “So when are the rest of you boys getting here?” Uncle Father asks.

  “I don’t know. Stevo, have you talked to anyone?” I say.

  “Texted Roman,” he says. “Big hail storm in Baton Rouge yesterday. Lot of body work.”

  “That fat ass can’t take an hour out of his day to come down here?” La La shakes her head and dashes hot sauce onto her jambalaya.

  “Big money right now fixing all those dents,” Stevo says.

  “What about Yanko?”

  “He’s got a gig at House of Blues tonight,” La La answers.

  “Louis? Vlad? Timur?”

  “Still in Florida,” Stevo reports. “Their septic tank broke.”

  “Their wives are keeping them away,” La La interrupts. “Stasia and Tina think they’re too good for this family. So does that Tamber bitch. They’re Spiritualists. That’s how they roll.”

  “It’s not just them,” Uncle Father adds. “Everyone’s saying it’s La Cosa Nostra.”

  “The mob?” Emily nudges me.

  “Your mother-in-law was tied up with some bad people.” Uncle Father shakes his head. “Always has been.”

  “Word is it was The Unseen Hand,” Stevo says as he keeps eating.

  “The street artist I met passing out the fliers, he was talking about that,” I say.

  “The Great Unseen Hand,” Uncle Father says. “Been terrorizing New Orleans since before you was born.”

  “Stop saying that name!” La La says. “That is a demon that should never be summoned.”

  “All I know is people are saying that The Hand finally got her.” Stevo holds up his beer and takes a swig. “That’s all I’m saying.”

  “Stop manifesting it!” La La’s screws up her face and looks like she is about to cry. “She is still alive! The Bee Maidens would have warned me if she was not.”

  “La La, weren’t you the one carrying on about The Unseen Hand the other night?” I sop up the rest of my rice with some hot sauce and buttered French bread. “We should be able to talk about what happened to Mama without worrying about summoning demons.”

  “Why are you here?” La La smolders.

  “The Archangel Gabriel brought Duke back to us.” Cactus smiles and sucks the grease off her fingers. “I asked my angel cards.”

  La La holds her dinner knife in her fist just over the table, like she might—just might—stab a bitch.

  I close my eyes and take some deep breaths. I don’t need this right now. Christopher Shelley is flying in next week. I glance over at Emily in hopes her eyes will give me strength, but instead of giving me the loving smile I am looking for, Emily nudges me to look out past my warring siblings, out to the back gate: There are two men dressed in black short sleeves standing on the back drive way, two men with crescent moons eating silver stars on their chests, two men with black guns and handcuffs on their heavy belts, two men with news about my mother hiding inside their bulldog cheeks.

  * * *

  I always thought that the police asking the family to identify a loved one’s body was a bunch of CSI : Miami bullshit that made for bad TV, but as it turns out, this is exactly what the police do when they find your loved one’s body. They send two officers to your house. Two officers who stand in your backyard, sucking in their guts, wearing their purple Oakley sunglasses.

  “They found the body in Audubon Park, right by the Tree of Life,” the shorter of the two says.

  I look over at my sister. She covers her mouth and shakes her head. Stevo holds her. Uncle Father walks Daddy inside the house, to sit down on the couch, while Cactus tries to convince him that yes, yes, yes, Mama is dead.

  * * *

  The Orleans Parish Coroner’s Office is freezing. The contrast between the wet heat outside and the cold, sharp air inside makes me shiver. The old building has that weird municipal library smell that permeates every government building—some combination of Pine-Sol and 409, cabbage, and crayons.

  The two cops take off their sunglasses and guide us down the hall. They open an unmarked door into a room with floor to ceiling mint green tiles. The body is under a white sheet on a large, dented metal table in the middle of the room. La La shuts her eyes and covers her nose. Stevo keeps his hand over his mouth and nose as well.

  “You never want to smell someone else’s foul luck. It can get inside you and grow like snakes,” Mama’d threaten us when we’d pass a bad smell and didn’t cover our noses.

  “Gonna li
ft the sheet,” the coroner says. “Look at her face. If you can identify her from there, we won’t have to go any further down.”

  “I do not need to see my mother naked.” Stevo covers his nose.

  The coroner holds the edge of the sheet.

  La La opens her eyes and nods her head.

  “Please, no touching. Still collecting evidence.” The coroner folds down the sheet, revealing a head full of dyed-black hair parted into long braids. The flowery blouse and coin necklace around this woman’s neck are just like my mother’s. The face is not decayed, just slightly blue. She looks asleep, peaceful, at rest here on the slab.

  I am staring at my mother’s dead face and then I am not. This is some other woman. A woman who doesn’t even remotely resemble my mother.

  “Oh thank God,” La La says.

  Stevo begins to smile from behind his hand. “That’s not her.”

  The coroner holds my mama’s missing person’s flier next to the dead lady’s face.

  “You sure?” he asks.

  “That’s so not her,” Stevo says.

  “Are you sure?” The coroner is almost pissed.

  “That poor woman.” La La crosses herself and whispers a prayer.

  “Do you have the name of your mother’s dentist?” he asks.

  “That’s not our mother,” I say.

  I blink my eyes to make sure they are seeing what I am seeing.

  “Yeah, that’s not her,” I say.

  11

  "Why?"

  She always asks

  When Emily and I first got married, she used to get onto me about never talking to my mother. “Your family is my family. Why do you do this?” she’d ask every time we’d spiral into a fight about it.

  I wouldn’t even know how to answer her. I’d just walk out of the room.

  After all, nothing could have been further from the truth. My family is not Emily’s family.

  Emily’s family is not a bunch of con men and crystal-rubbing psychics. They’re Texans. Her dad is a former Aggie football star, and a successful Sugar Land insurance mogul. Her mom’s some sort of Houston socialite, all proper forks, and tight-lipped smiles. Emily’s brother, Rod, is a neurosurgeon, and as one might expect, he’s also kind of a jerkface.