The Neon Palm of Madame Melancon

by Will Clarke

  “Nope, just a bookmark.” He slides the peach paper into a Flannery O’Connor book and reshelves it. “Mama used her old tickets as bookmarks.”

  I flip the switch.

  “Hey, turn that shit back on,” Stevo says.

  “What are you looking for now?” I ask.

  “That book of Lord Byron poems to read to Cactus before we get tantric.”

  “I don’t need to know that.”

  “Well, you asked.”

  Daddy’s clarinet drifts up the stairs and into the awkward pauses between my brother and me. The minor notes crawl into my ears: They scatter into the saddest, most defeated parts of me. Daddy is practicing “Strange Fruit,” and even when he’s messing around like this, he sounds better than most of the musicians performing at Snug Harbor or Sweet Lorraine’s. As soon as I round the corner into the parlor, there he is, tooting that thing, with his leg off and his glass eye glistening on the coffee table, a magnifying glass on top of the scattered sheet music. Daddy plays his clarinet. Meanwhile, Uncle Father sits next to him and lights up a bowl.

  I glare at the old pothead.

  “It’s for my glaucoma.” Uncle Father takes a long drag and then exhales gracefully.

  Daddy puts his piece down. “You need sumptin’, T’boy?”

  “Nah, just wanted to hear you play,” I say.

  I step aside, and Daddy puts the clarinet back to his mouth. The room swells with the mournful sounds of “Strange Fruit” and the fog of Uncle Father’s skunky medical-grade marijuana smoke.

  “I have a box of her prophecies out in my car,” I say to Stevo. “Like the one I just showed you.”

  “Where’d you get them?”

  “Old client of Mama’s. I need you to read them. See if you can make sense of it all.”

  “Sure,” Stevo says. “Give me your keys.”

  “They’re in a Nike shoebox in the trunk.”

  Daddy stops playing and holds his black mouthpiece just below his chin. He glares at us.

  “You going to shut up and listen?” he says.

  “Sorry,” I say.

  Stevo runs out to my car to grab Jean Babineaux’s overdue bills, and Daddy starts playing “Basin Street Blues.”

  26

  May 18, 2010

  Over 10 million gallons of oil have now spilled into the Gulf

  I am typing as fast as I can. My fingers are cramping. I can’t get press releases approved fast enough. And the more panicked everyone is getting, the more radical and careless they are with their language and our communications. This feels like the end times for this company, and Jesus is not on our side. Most people in my department have stopped watching the news. Never mind the fact that the deadlines everyone is giving me are ridiculous, and I don’t think there’s any way humanly possible to catch all the mistakes we are making now. There needs to be three or four of me at this point.

  I’ve told Gary this, but he’s too busy counting ceiling tiles and popping Xanax to listen. Everyone at Mandala is losing their minds. We are so close to figuring out how to kill this well, and yet at the same time, the media is crucifying us for lying about the 100,000 barrels a day that have been leaking since the explosion. Talking heads like Rush Limbaugh and Pauline Sarin keep trying to come to our defense, but they only make things worse when they do this. Meanwhile, Lady Gaga and Coldplay are supposedly teaming up to write a song against us. We are the constant punch line on every late night show: Letterman, Leno, Conan, Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel, The Daily Show. We’re not an environmental disaster to the media. We’re a freaking gold mine.

  I spent last night and into this early morning rewriting the press releases from our agency to make them work with Christopher’s stupid downplay strategy. But now I have to put that aside and respond to the shrill announcements Governor Robby Wendall is making on every channel: CNN, CNBC, FOX News, MSNBC.

  “These are not tar balls, this is not sheen, this is heavy oil,” says Robby Wendall. He’s wearing his long, solemn face today along with this black nylon safety vest. This photo op has him standing in an air boat and holding up a plastic bag full of brown goop. “What we are seeing yesterday and today is this heavy oil coming into our wetlands.”

  To counter these unfortunately true statements, we have our COO Dan Wilkers responding at a separate news conference, explaining the performance of the insertion tube that is now sucking crude from the Sub-Ocean Brightside and into a surface vessel. This is a big deal, but no one in the media seems to want to talk about what a heroic feat of technology we just pulled off to save the same Gulf that we love just as much as the next person.

  Things aren’t completely painted black, I guess. One of the press releases I just got off my desk details how we are testing six centrifuge machines that separate the oil from the water. If they work, we plan to buy thirty-six of them and put them to work cleaning the Gulf. They were invented thanks to Kevin Costner. He financed them to be built back in 1995, the same year he filmed Waterworld.

  There’s something disquieting about this particular coincidence. Not sure if it’s because these centrifuge machines actually work or if it’s that Mr. Waterworld himself spent so much time in the ocean making that cinematic disaster that it somehow inspired him to spend twenty-four million dollars of his own money to solve this real-life disaster. Costner’s team calls the centrifuges, “Ocean Therapy Solutions.” Frankly, “Ocean Therapy” as woo-woo as it sounds, still sounds a lot less ridiculous than stopping the Spill with millions of tennis balls, and considerably less worrisome than the nuclear bombing plans that were being floated around in recent weeks.

  It’s the most hopeful thing we have to put into the news cycle right now. Best of all, Costner’s going to testify in front of Congress soon so that should take the media spotlight off of Christopher Shelley for a least a minute, and give us all time to define our reactions to this disaster a little more skillfully than we have been, i.e., someone needs to tell Christopher how to shut up. We are all still spinning and spitting, messaging and re-messaging because Christopher told the media: “I think I have said all along that the company will not be judged by an accident that, you know, frankly was not our accident.”

  Every time, Christopher Shelley opens his mouth, there’s a shit show on Facebook and Twitter, and nobody can figure out how to make the avalanche of negative posts and articles stop. It’s exhausting and hopeless. How are we supposed to protect Mandala Worldwide’s brand when Christopher keeps saying stuff like this? He’s a smart guy. What is he doing?

  My phone rings for the one hundred and eleventh time today. I pick it up praying it’s not Constanze Bellingham, yelling at me, wanting to know when Christopher Shelley’s new remarks will be ready. I don’t know why she keeps calling me. He never follows the script.

  “Duke Melançon, External Affairs.”

  “Yeah, so we’re gonna do it.”

  “Mark?” I say.

  “You got a check for me?” Mark Babineaux says. “Jean says you got a check for me.”

  “Yeah, I can have a check for you in like five minutes,” I say. “But I thought you wanted cash.”

  “I’ll take a check. When can I pick it up?”

  “We’re here all day.”

  “We’re leaving right now.” He hangs up.

  I put my phone back in its cradle. I smile so hard my face almost cramps.

  “Gary!” I shout.

  “What?” he shouts back.

  “The Babineauxes!” I laugh, “They’re back in!”

  He doesn’t say anything.

  “Gary?” I shout.

  He walks into my office, slow-clapping.

  * * *

  “So where do I sign?” Mark asks without smiling.

  This is so weird. Jean is beaming and acting like Mark never left her for the single mother who works at The Home Depot, like I never chastised her over fried fish and bourbon, like she’s never given me her crazy phone bills, like my mama didn’t warn her not to do this
.

  “No, seriously where do we sign?” Mark says. “Let’s get this show on the road.”

  “I’m re-printing the contracts now. 150 pages. It will just be a couple of seconds.”

  “We’re burning daylight. How long’s it gonna take?” Mark bites his bottom lip and exhales through flared nostrils like he’s holding back a volcano behind his thin, tight lips. Makes me wonder if this is how he always is or if I’ve somehow pissed him off.

  The burden of the unspoken weighs on me, but before I can shake it off with a comment about the Tigers or the Saints, Gary walks into my office.

  “Duke, you mind?”

  “Sure. But, wait, Gary. Meet Mandala Worldwide’s new Gulf Coast spokesperson, Sergeant Mark Babineaux.”

  Mark Babineaux goes to shake Gary’s hand, “Mark Babineaux. This is my wife, Jean.”

  “Hi, nice to meet you,” Gary shakes Mark’s hand, but pulls away a little too soon, and then crosses his arms. “Duke, I need to talk to you in my office.”

  “Sure.” I look at Mark Babineaux and smile. “I’ll be right back.”

  “We’re not going anywhere,” he says.

  I follow Gary back to his office. He shuts the door. His face and neck have exploded with red splotches.

  “Get rid of them.” Gary is consciously breathing now.

  “I’m reprinting the contracts.”

  “Houston just called.” He lets out one of his long and annoying yoga breaths.

  “Gary, we’re not doing this.”

  “You got to get rid of them.” He can’t look me in the eye. “Houston put a bullet in them. The deal is dead. They’re too late.”

  “Nice metaphor, Gary.”

  “You know what I mean. We have an internal candidate for the commercials now. This directive came from Christopher Shelley himself. Look.” He holds up his phone to me. “Read the text yourself.”

  “You just told me we have a check for the guy,” I say.

  “That’s before I got the text.”

  “Can we at least pay them the first half as a kill fee? They need the money.”

  “That wife of his was refusing to do this less than a day ago,” Gary says.

  “I thought you said he’s a war hero and you wanted to help them.”

  “I never said that.”

  “Well, you can be the one to go in there and tell them we don’t need them. I’m not doing that.”

  “This is business, Duke. Even without this deal, that guy out there hit the freaking lottery with the Spill. I am sure he’s going to file a seven-figure claim.”

  “You don’t know that,” I say.

  “And you know what? I shouldn’t have to. Not my problem. He’s yours. Go out there and tell them the deal is off.”

  I snatch the box of Kleenex off Gary’s desk and slam the door behind me.

  * * *

  “I wish there was something I could do, but Houston has decided to cancel the commercial,” I tell them. “It’s out of my hands.”

  “Then why did you have us come all the way out here?” Jean begins to cry. “To play with us? We need this money.”

  Mark is silent as a tomb.

  “They literally just called Gary to tell him this.” I try to hand Jean a tissue.

  She refuses the Kleenex. “I brought my own.” Which is good because she can’t stop crying. She can’t stop calling me a liar. She can’t breathe. She just can’t believe it. Mark Babineaux with his Purple Heart and his Cajun pride, sits silently next to his wife, not touching her, not comforting her, not speaking, not reacting. He just sits in the chair across from my desk, staring past my head, looking out the office window behind me.

  “I’m really sorry about this, ” I keep saying.

  “No, you’re not,” Mark finally speaks.

  He rises from his chair.

  “Let’s go.” He gathers up Jean. She folds into him.

  Sgt. Mark Babineaux pulls his wife to his shoulder and carries her away from me and all my broken promises.

  27

  Back in the McMansion

  May 22, 2010

  The crime scene clean-up crew that Emily hired to the tune of five grand is finally finished removing all those rotting and splattered raccoons from our corporate housing. The crew had to replace the blood and feces-stained carpets downstairs. They had to repaint the kitchen and dining room. However, with the exception of one couch, most of our furniture survived the attack. It’s amazing the stains they can get out of furniture these days. Smells are however another thing. Even after replacing the carpets and scrubbing the floors and walls with bleach, there is still a rotting animal smell in the house.

  Emily bought a small arsenal of scented candles and reed diffusers and put them in every room. Part of me is relieved to get Emily and the boys away from The House of the Neon Palm, away from the lumpy bunk beds, away from La La’s knife-holding grudges and Daddy’s one-legged tirades, but the other half of me feels like I am giving up—that I am giving up on ever finding Mama. There is a part of me that enjoyed being stuck with my family, enjoyed the old dysfunction and chaos. It surprises me how much my family comforted me. The seafood gumbos and the shrimp Creoles. Daddy and Uncle Father’s crazy rants about the NSA, Stevo’s lame jokes, La La’s ridiculous costumes, and Yanko’s constant singing.

  Even in the midst of all this turmoil, watching my boys and their cousins playing trains and running with sticks, watching La La and Daddy teach Emily how to make a proper étouffée while Uncle Father shared his weed with me over an iced coffee is a warm, dry space in this disaster of a city.

  Even though it’s been weeks since the raccoon attack and my kidnapping, Emily and I still have a hard time falling asleep at night. So we each took two chewable Ambien tabs last night and woke up with pillow creases all over our faces and drool-soaked pillows. This morning, when we get up, we check on the boys, and they are surprisingly still hard asleep. So we stumble downstairs to the kitchen to enjoy this rare morning alone.

  “Make me breakfast,” Emily hugs me and kisses me on the cheek.

  “Sure,” I kiss her on the forehead. Neither one of us has brushed our teeth yet.

  She’s silent. I’m groggy, too tired to form sentences about what I have done to the Babineauxes, too half-asleep to explain that I basically work for the devil’s dumber little brother.

  “How about an omelet?” I pull the carton of eggs out of the fridge.

  “Sure.” She pours herself a glass of iced coffee.

  “Spinach?” I hold up the bag.

  “Yeah. Do we have any cheese?” she yawns.

  “We have some chèvre.” I hold up a log of goat cheese.

  She smiles and sips her coffee.

  “I want to go to Ikea this weekend,” she says.

  “In Houston?” I dump the omelet ingredients onto a cutting board next to the stove, and I pour myself a tall glass of iced coffee. Emily stands next to me while I chop up the spinach.

  Lingering, brushing up against me.

  “Yes, Houston.” She grabs a peach out of the fruit bowl and takes a knife to it. “I want to check on the house. Maybe go to Ikea. Pick up a new rug for the boys’ room and some shelves for the playroom.”

  “What if they find my mother?” I want to tell her about Gary, about Jean and Mark, about what I have done to them but I don’t.

  “Then we will turn back around.” She pops a peach slice in her mouth and sucks her fingers clean with a slight kiss.

  “I have a job,” I say.

  “There are Mandala offices in Houston, Duke. You deserve some family time.”

  “Ikea is not family time.”

  “Duke. It’s my birthday.” She handles the knife like a chef, each slice coming off the peach, precise and juicy. Beautiful.

  “Who wants to spend their birthday in an Ikea?” I say.

  “I do.” She holds a slice to me and puts it in my mouth. It’s sweet and wet and fuzzy. It tastes like summer and hope and everything that
is missing from our lives right now.

  My phone buzzes and pulls me away from her fingertips.

  It’s Yanko:

  *at tipitinas*

  *loup garou*

  *coming to my show*

  *putting u on the list*

  Emily drops the knife on the counter.

  “Who is it?” she asks.

  “Yanko. Wants me to come to his show.”

  Emily folds her arms. So I place my phone facedown on the kitchen counter. “Okay, Ikea. I’m cool with that. If that’s what you want.”

  “Try not to hide your enthusiasm,” she says.

  “It will be fun.” I go in for a hug, and she pulls away.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Everything,” she says.

  I pull her back to me, and she relaxes into the hug. I try to kiss her. Instead, she gives me her cheek.

  “I thought he might have news,” I say.

  “I’m tired,” she says.

  Instead of answering her, I kiss her. Her lips taste like peaches.

  She kisses me back.

  We kiss, the first real kiss we’ve shared in months, the kind of long sloppy kiss that used to make us late to dinner parties, for work, the kind of kissing that led to that one fearful moment of saying I love you, to an aching right knee and a diamond ring that I couldn’t afford, to those green labor coach scrubs and purple screaming baby boys, the kind of kissing that made our mouths tingle for hours afterward, the kind of kissing that kept us tangled up for days, before we dove headlong into the feeding schedules of those screaming baby boys, the constant dings of our iPhones, before the Spill, before my mother’s evaporation took away all certainty.

  We kiss to forget. We kiss and kiss and kiss, and today, here in the dapples of sunlight, this kissing is the kind of kissing that leads to bra straps fumbled open, boxers stepped out of and left on the floor. It’s sex on the kitchen table while the boys are still asleep kind of kissing.

  “Mommy!” Jo-Jo walks into the kitchen, dragging his blanky behind him.