The Neon Palm of Madame Melancon

by Will Clarke

  “Snowball! Snowball! Snowball!” Jo-Jo begins to chant and pump his fist into the air.

  Gay André licks his bright orange snowball and holds out his fat knuckles to Jo-Jo and gives him a fist bump. Jo-Jo pulls his hand away into tiny finger explosions while making Pow-Pow noises.

  “Funny little fucker, ain’t he?” Gay André says.

  Jo-Jo can’t stop laughing, and I can’t remember no matter how hard I try why I ever thought Gay André was dead.

  24

  "Mandala Shortcuts Led To Spill"

  THE NEW YORK TIMES Headline: May 17, 2010

  “You guys didn’t listen to me. Christopher didn’t listen to a Goddamn word I said.” I bust into Gary’s office without knocking.

  “The PR agency sold him a downplay strategy.” Gary looks up from his laptop but continues typing.

  “Downplay strategy? Are you kidding me?” I say. “What happened to Christopher wanting to talk straight from his heart?”

  “Apologizing would make the Spill look like it was our fault, Duke. I think you said that yourself.”

  “I said we should not offer guarantees. To be careful with the words we choose when Christopher does apologize. I said he shouldn’t use certain words. And he managed to not only use the word ‘guarantee,’ yesterday in the press conference, but he also pissed everyone off in the process.”

  “Let me say this again: We’re following the downplay strategy until further notice. It’s PR 101.”

  “65,000 barrels a day.” I hold up my most recent press release to him. “Ops is now reporting that it’s more than 100,000 barrels. That’s not a downplay strategy. That’s a lie.”

  “Our agency will have the social sentiment report to me within the hour,” Gary says.

  “I can tell you what the sentiment is,” I say. “Shelley sounds like some rich douche who has no idea what’s going on. ”

  “Settle down, Duke.” Gary looks around the office at our co-workers who are shuffling around, trying to act like they don’t hear this fight.

  “Obama is saying we are idiots!” I point to the White House press conference now playing on Gary’s flat-screen TV. “There’s your data,” I say.

  “Fuck that terrorist.” Gary picks up the remote and turns off the TV.

  “People are pissed. I’m pissed.”

  “You don’t think I know that?”

  “Then you might want to stop with all this bullshit about how this is not that big of a deal. And show some leadership and help me fix this. Because the spill is huge and people can see that, and the more we say it’s not a big deal, the worse everything is going to get for everyone.”

  “What has gotten into you?”

  “I’m just trying to do my job.”

  “Yeah, well. Stop being such a cunt about it,” Gary says.

  “You guys didn’t listen to me.”

  “Duke, this isn’t Montessori T-ball, not everybody gets a trophy, and not all your ideas are going to be executed.”

  I have to look away.

  “Look, this is getting to all of us.” He pulls out a pill bottle from his desk. “Xanax. Take one.”

  I put the pill on my tongue, gather up the spit in my mouth, and swallow it. I sit down across from Gary’s desk and start answering the deluge of emails on my laptop.

  The Xanax helps. I unclench. I now give just a few less fucks about everything—the end of the world, the oil-covered pelicans, my angry wife, and my missing mother. I can sit here and gladly watch Gary type on his laptop.

  Clickety clack clickety clack.

  His typing is oddly comforting, and my tangled mind unspools into a simple, steady stream of logical, linear thoughts, thoughts about Mandala Worldwide and the world and how all this does and doesn’t fit together.

  “Hey!” Gary nudges me. “You awake?”

  “What?” I say.

  “So where are we on the Babineauxes?”

  “It’s not going to happen.” I yawn. “Sorry, I tried.”

  “We need the Babineauxes in that commercial, Duke. Mark Babineaux is a goddamn war hero.”

  “He said no.”

  “Your one and only job today is to get him to sign that contract and cash that check.”

  “I thought we had another family lined up,” I say.

  “They’re not war heroes, Duke.”

  “He won’t return my calls.”

  “Then go to his house,” Gary says. “Do I have to do everything around here?”

  * * *

  I peel off my bright orange “Mandala Worldwide Cares” polo in the parking lot of my office. I put on a few extra swipes of deodorant and button up the plaid shirt that I keep hanging in the backseat of my car. After I rid myself of the Mandala dreamcatcher—a logo that is now referred to by most New Orleanians as the “Satanic Sunflower”—I drive to Chalmette. I drive past row after row of FEMA trailers abandoned in front yards, of busted refrigerators and washing machines rusting on the curbs. Google Maps kindly directs me past all of this, to a stretch of neighborhood where rotting plywood no longer covers the windows and doors, where everything has been rebuilt or repainted, and the yards are green and mowed, to the Babineauxes’ small white house.

  Their home is small but impressively well maintained. It’s freshly painted in a bright and defiant white. Purple and yellow pansies fill the tiny flowerbeds. The stars and stripes sway next to a black and gold “Who Dat?” flag. An LSU garden gnome stands on point, smiling beneath a purple gazing ball, a plastic hummingbird feeder above an empty birdbath. It’s as if the Babineauxes have erected all this yard art to tell the next hurricane and the rest of the world to piss off because they are protected by a sunny, unsinkable hope. Their door sign with the hand-painted raccoon flashing his pink asshole says it all: “Coonass and proud. Welcome to the Babineauxes.”

  I knock and wait. The aroma of deep-fried catfish fills my nostrils.

  Jean Babineaux answers the door.

  “Well, well, look what the cat drug in.” She holds a “Geaux Tigers” plastic tumbler in her left hand. The smell of Southern Comfort is so strong it burns my eyes.

  “You got a few minutes?”

  “Come on in. Just cooking dinner.” She pulls me into her house and guides me past the small dining room, which is overflowing with pink, feathery gift baskets glistening with iridescent cellophane.

  “Excuse the mess,” she says. “I run my business out the house.”

  “You make gift baskets?”

  “Kind of. I’m a ‘Surprise Lady.’” She chuckles. “You know, like an Avon Lady, except a hell of a lot more fun if you know what I mean. Sort of behind on sending out my hostess gifts.”

  “Surprise parties?” I look down at the purple chew toy on the floor. It’s covered with dog hair, but it’s not a chew toy.

  “You like coleslaw?” she asks.

  “So is Mark around?” I try not to act uncomfortable; I am standing in a dining room packed full of vibrators, butt-plugs, and “sensual heating” gels. There’s a giant purple dong just sitting in the middle of the carpet. It’s hard to know where to look or what to say.

  “You want a Comfort and Coke or a beer?” She walks into the tiny kitchen.

  “Comfort and Coke sounds good,” I call out. “So is Mark around?”I can’t help but stare at the hot pink marital aids pressing against the cellophane.

  “I can give you his new address!” Jean shouts back.

  “He moved?”

  “He left me,” she says.

  “Wow. I’m sorry…. I didn’t know.”

  “Don’t be.” She walks back into the dining room holding two plates full of fried catfish, hushpuppies, and coleslaw. “She’s forty-five. Six kids. Works at freakin’ Home Depot.”

  She holds the plates over the table.

  “Move those gift baskets out the way so we can eat like civilized people,” she says.

  I hesitate.

  “They don’t bite,” she says.

  I lift t
he baskets off the table and onto the carpet, next to a large cardboard box labeled “200 Bottles Cranberry Extract.”

  “You always make this much food?” I ask.

  “Had to fry up the catfish or toss them. Freezer in the garage went out. Couldn’t fit everything inside.”

  I take a bite. It’s quite good. I wash it down with the Comfort and Coke, and I try not to fake-smile too much.

  “So let’s talk about why you’re really here.” She puts her fork down and wipes her mouth with her paper napkin.

  “I need you and Mark to be in this commercial.”

  “That’s not why your mama sent you here.” She shakes her head and smiles.

  “Jean, my boss sent me.”

  “That might be how it looks to you, but your mama said this is exactly how this would play out.” She grabs a ratty stack of papers sitting next to one of the gift baskets and holds them up to me. “I have it in my notes. Right here in black and white.”

  “My mom makes things look real when they aren’t. It’s the Barnum Effect. It’s sleight of hand. A magic trick.”

  “She said you would say that.” Jean rifles through her stack. She hands me an old electricity bill overwritten with the sentence, “I shall be accused of slender hands.”

  “That’s not even a thing. She says weird stuff like that, and it sounds like it means something, but it doesn’t.”

  “It’s just so sad. You had all that magic and love around you, and you could never see it.”

  “It’s not magic, Jean. It’s not.”

  “She said I would get through this and I believe her. She said on the other side of this nightmare was my dream. She said that I’d start a fishing therapy camp for wounded warriors out on the Tickfaw River. I’m gonna have these cabins with their own piers and boats, and we are gonna fish all day and cook up big messes of catfish and hushpuppies at night. You know, just be at peace with the river and heal.”

  “Why didn’t she tell you and Mark to move out of the Gulf before all this happened? Before he ran off with another woman?”

  “Your mother can only tell me the parts of the future that I can change.”

  “She doesn’t see the future, Jean.”

  “She saved my life when Mark and I found out we couldn’t have children. I’ve seen what she can do.”

  “But what she told you wasn’t the truth. It felt good, but it wasn’t the truth.”

  Jean flips through her papers. She wells up.

  “Sorry,” I say.

  “The bank wants to foreclose,” Jean whispers, “on the boat and the house.”

  “And you’re still not going to do the commercial?”

  There’s a long awkward silence. She just stares at me.

  “I think you need to leave,” she finally says.

  “Look, I’m sorry. I just…”

  “Just what? Just want to make me feel like shit? Is that what you’re sorry for?”

  “I didn’t come here to upset you.”

  Jean gets up from the table and walks into the back of the house. She returns with an orange Nike shoebox.

  “Your mother’s prophecies.” She drops the box on the table in front of me. “Take ’em.”

  I open the box. It’s crammed full of busted envelopes, and past-due notices—all of them scribbled over with Mama’s rants and poems.

  “Why did you write this on your phone bills and credit card statements?” I inspect the rat’s nest of notes.

  “Your mama wanted to make sure you saw the dates printed on the bills. To know she was predicting the future for real.”

  “You could have saved the statements and just written them later,” I say.

  “Your mama told me you were going to be an asshole. But she didn’t prepare me for this.”

  “Look.”

  “Just take the box and get the hell out of my house.”

  * * *

  I am pretty sure Jean snapped long before the spill ever happened. Between having to deal with her husband’s PTSD, Katrina, and the uncertainty of the shrimping life, she snapped like we would all snap when God or luck, or whatever you want to call it, puts too much on our backs. And I don’t believe that God doesn’t give us more than we can bear. That’s a bullshit platitude that we tell ourselves when we are face to face with another person who proves that it is entirely possible that we too could lose our baby to bone cancer or that we too could sink under the weight of OxyContin addiction; that something completely unspeakable is at some point coming our way—we just don’t know when.

  Whether or not Jean has lost her mind, she seems like a good person who, like everyone who makes their living in the Gulf, doesn’t deserve the hand she’s been dealt. And maybe I was too hard on her, but I did it for her own good. She’s so tangled up in my mother’s fantasies that she can’t look out for her own best interests here. I had to kick the crutch out from under her.

  But even now, as I flip through all these scribbled-over bills in her driveway, I can see how Jean was able to read so much into what my mother said. The Language of the Birds is so green with possibility, and therefore it can speak to whatever circumstance you find yourself in. For example, the transcription scribbled all over Jean’s past-due electric bill seems to speak to the lost necklace in the tree and even to my search for The Loup Garou. It seems to be speaking to me from the great beyond.

  25

  Turn to Page 5 of Dracula!

  May 17, 2010

  I drive back to New Orleans, over the I-10 exchange past the Superdome, past that eternal symbol of Katrina’s devastation, and I start to feel this Superdome-level hopelessness sinking in myself. The Xanax is obviously wearing off, and my fucking conscience is now wide awake and screaming, so I can either pull into a bar to shut it up and continue my descent into pathetic drunkenness, or I can turn the corner to Mama’s block, and I can walk into the dark embrace of The House of the Neon Palm. I decide to do the later, and I find Stevo and Daddy in the parlor on the couch watching Christopher Shelley on CNN speak the exact words I crafted for him earlier today.

  “I need you to come upstairs with me,” I hold up the letter from Jean Babineaux.

  I stop to catch my breath.

  “Not right now. The news is on,” Daddy says.

  “The news is always on, Daddy,” I say.

  “I’ll be right back, Pops.” Stevo pats Daddy’s good leg and follows me into the next room.

  “Why are you out of breath?” my brother asks.

  I hand Jean Babineaux’s electricity bill to him. The one that’s addressed to me. The one that Jean transcribed from Mama in some manic rush of fortune-telling glee.

  He reads it and follows me up the stairs to our parents’ bedroom.

  “Bram Stoker?” Stevo asks. “She even own that book?”

  “That’s what it says.”

  Stevo opens the bedroom door, and we walk in.

  Mama and Daddy’s room is as much a library as it is a bedroom. Mama read palms during the day. At night, she read her books. She was obsessed with owning signed copies of great thinkers like Anaïs Nin and Simone De Beauvoir. First editions were a drug for her. The Garden District Book Shop and Octavia Books were her dealers.

  Mama’s bibliomania forced Daddy to build her floor-to-ceiling bookshelves out of the cypress wood he had cut down in the swamps. Mama spent the next forty years cramming them full of first edition, signed books by great writers from Camus to Toni Morrison.

  She, of course, loved the Russians: Chekhov, Tolstoy, and Nabokov.

  Almost as much as she hated T. S. Eliot.

  “April is the cruelest month, my foot. He is anti-Semite. Hater of women. Two poems he wrote against my name! The coward would never have inked such things if he truly knew the length of my shadow!”

  Mama bought every copy of The Waste Land off the shelves whenever she would go into a bookstore.

  “Eliot is burning in hell and so should his words,” she’d say to the sales clerk, and then she�
�d spit a big loogie on the page that referenced Madame Blavatsky right there in the store. Once she got home, she’d tear the book into fives and set a match to it in the fireplace. When it came to certain writers, she had love affairs and blood grudges—relationships that would have only been normal had she maybe known these long dead authors, and only then if they had betrayed or loved her in some profound or terrible way.

  Stevo grabs the stepladder and manages to find a copy of Dracula tucked away on the shelf closest to the ceiling. He pulls down the yellow cloth book with red type, and he turns to page five as Mama’s poem instructed us to do. There, on that page, a passage is underlined. Stevo clears his throat and reads it aloud:

  “It is the eve of St. George’s Day. Do you not know that tonight, when the clock strikes midnight, all the evil things in the world will have full sway?”

  We both stand here among the swirling towers of books.

  Mama disappeared on the eve of St. George’s Day—Mama’s favorite Albanian holiday, a day when all water is holy water—and here we hold a book that appears to foretell her disappearance on the eve of this very day.

  “This! This is some kind of sign!” Stevo hops in place.

  “What do you think it means?” I say.

  “She’s trying to warn us about something,” Stevo says. “This passage is a sign, Duke.”

  “But what does it mean?”

  “It means we’re on the right track. It’s her talking to us from across space and time.”

  “For Christ’s sake. You’re worse than La La. Give me that.” I take the old yellow book from Stevo and slam it shut. I readjust two Hemingway novels on the lower shelf and cram Dracula beside them, causing Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast to fall to the floor. A peach-colored piece of paper flutters out of the book.

  “What is that?” Stevo points at the peach square of paper.

  I pick it up. “It’s a lottery ticket.” I turn it over and look at the date. “From 1999.”

  “Let me see.” Stevo takes it from me and inspects it.

  “So I suppose that’s a sign as well,” I say.