The Neon Palm of Madame Melancon

by Will Clarke

  It’s when she simply asks, “Are you sleeping at night?” that Christopher loses it.

  “Of course I sleep at night!” he says. “What kind of question is that? Do you sleep at night, my dear? Because I do. I sleep very, very well in fact. Because I am bloody exhausted!”

  I fold my arms to keep myself from jumping in between him and the NPR reporter. There is no teleprompter to feed him a perfectly crafted response, no way to help him bridge this attack and change the line of questioning. Instead, Christopher Shelley does exactly what I told him to do.

  “Just be yourself out there,” I said. “Especially if they start to attack you. You said it best back at the Ritz. Authenticity is all that matters in a time like this. Just trust your heart. It won’t let you down.”

  So Christopher Shelley does just that. He dives into his own narrative and he does the worst thing he can do at a moment like this: He speaks straight from his billionaire heart.

  “Frankly, young lady, there’s no one here today who wants this to be over more than I do,” he says. “But let’s be clear: This spill is not completely my fault, now is it? Sure, it’s easy to blame big, bad Mandala for this crisis. But you know what’s even easier? For you people to drive your big news vans all over the place, and even your goddamn Priuses, full of Mandala petrol, and then blame me and my company like you had nothing to do with this disaster. You want to forget about the petroleum that it takes to get you from here to there—that is until you see it bubbling up from the ocean floor on the BBC. Then you want to blame me. Well, that stops today.

  Look, I am doing everything I can to fix this.

  As you can see behind me, my men are risking their lives cleaning up this bloody mess. We are the people risking our lives every day, in fact, trying to keep up with your insatiable demand for petrol. We are the heroes in this story, not the villains. I provide America with enough gasoline to make this country great. And you want to talk about how I reached out to NASA for help with this Spill. Let me tell you about NASA. How do you honestly think NASA got to the fucking moon? I’ll tell you how: With rocket fuel that came from Mandala wells. Look it up. So how dare you ask me if I can sleep at night? I sleep bloody well, thank you. Because I am tired. I am tired of you people burning all these hydrocarbons and wanting to act like this is my fault. And I am bloody exhausted of being condemned for doing the thankless job of supplying the fuel that keeps this world spinning and this whole goddamn economy going!”

  There’s an audible gasp from the reporters, but I hold my tongue. Christopher’s unrehearsed diatribe goes off like a suicide vest. It’s the kind of public relations dumpster fire that will go down in history. You don’t have to be psychic to know that this rant will change everything. It will be quoted in textbooks, talked about at dinner parties, scoffed at over lattes in Starbucks around the world. This rant is what I promised Constanze and the PR team that I would never let happen. Christopher’s most heartfelt words are more than I could have ever hoped for when I took his teleprompter away.

  * * *

  I spend the rest of the afternoon driving around by myself along the coast, chasing the setting sun. I am done with Mandala—both as a lawyer and as the Seventh Son of Madame Melançon. If this doesn’t “erase the mandala and save the sea of life,” I don’t know what will. Whatever I have done by letting Christopher Shelley speak for himself, I feel right with the world. I am no longer spinning words that I never really believed in. What I did to Mandala might have been crazy, it might have been self-destructive and mad, but it’s as close to doing the right thing as I have ever been in my entire life. I feel free now. The tightness in my chest is gone. My constant craving and anxiety have vanished; the python is dead.

  As I drive home across the twenty-four miles of Lake Pontchartrain, across the causeway, my phone rings.

  It’s Gary.

  Of course, it is. I can’t help but smile. I take the call.

  “Duke!” The phone speaker blares in my ear. “What the fuck is wrong with you?

  “Gary?”

  “Do you realize what you’ve done?”

  “Yeah. I quit.”

  “You had one job! One job to do!”

  “I just resigned, Gary. So, no, I don’t have a job to do,” I say.

  “We are going to sue you!”

  “For what?”

  “Breach of contract!” he shouts.

  “What contract?” I say.

  “You’re going to pay for this, Duke.”

  “Gary, we are all going to pay for this. Trust me.” I hang up and throw my phone onto the passenger seat.

  * * *

  I tiptoe into my sleeping home. I glide into the dark of the bedroom. I step out of my pants and slip out of my shirt. I crawl in next to my sleeping wife. I spoon her and pull her into a tight hug.

  She elbows me to move away. “Not right now.”

  “Honey,” I whisper. “Sweetheart.”

  “What?” she groans.

  “Wake up. I have to talk to you.”

  She turns on her side to face me. She opens her eyes.

  “I saw the press conference,” she says. “I’m sorry.”

  I just look at her.

  “Hey,” I say.

  “Hey,” she echoes, a note sweeter than me.

  I can’t say it just yet. I can’t find the words to tell her that Mama could see the future. I can’t tell her that I just lost my job because of these predictions. So I stare at her, the silhouette of her cheeks and hair.

  “What’s the matter?” she touches my cheek.

  “I did it” is all I can tell her.

  “Did what?”

  “I couldn’t do it anymore,” I say. “I couldn’t keep doing this to people.”

  She nestles close to me.

  “It’s not your fault,” she says.

  “Mama left me these letters. She guided me to do this.”

  “Your mother’s letters predicted this?”

  “More or less.”

  “Duke?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Are you okay?” she asks.

  “Yeah, I think.”

  I pull her closer. She stiffens slightly, but relaxes into me.

  “I’m worried about you,” she says.

  “Don’t. We’re good. I’m good.”

  “You’re lying on my hair.” She nudges me.

  I roll over a little and let her go. We both go to sleep like parallel lines, not touching each other anywhere in the future or the past.

  * * *

  I wake up, and Emily’s side of the bed is empty. I get up, take a leak, and walk to the boys’ room to check on them. But Stewart and Jo-Jo’s beds are just a tangle of SpongeBob sheets. So I go downstairs, but I don’t hear the usual morning clink of Legos and clunk of wooden blocks. No Dora the Explorer trills or Elmo giggles. Just heartbreaking silence. I walk into the kitchen to find the back door to the garage is wide open. I walk out to the garage to find Emily’s Subaru gone.

  I text her: Where r u?

  I stare at the small grease spot where her car used to be. She’s not texting me back. So I call her. Each ring of the phone is longer and more elastic than it should be. Like all this is happening underwater. On the fourth ring: Click.

  I call her again. And at the end of the first ring, she answers.

  “Hello,” she says, like she doesn’t know it’s me calling, like anyone else would be calling her at 9 o’clock in the morning when she’s just up and left the house without leaving a note.

  “Hey, where are ya’ll?” I try to keep the sunshine in my voice.

  “I should have left a note,” she says. “Sorry.”

  “You picking up breakfast?”

  “No, we’re on our way to Houston.”

  “Houston? What the fuck?”

  “Don’t be that way, Duke.”

  “Be what way?”

  “I need a break,” she says.

  “Why are you going to Houston?”

&n
bsp; “I need to see my parents.”

  “So you just woke up and decided you need to see Jules and Tom?”

  “I need my family.”

  “Let me get this straight: You just loaded up our kids and left me in the middle of the night.”

  “It wasn’t the middle of the night.”

  “Okay. Four in the morning then.”

  “You’re scaring me,” she says. “You just up and quit your job.”

  “You hated my job,” I say.

  “You’re acting nuts, Duke. You think your mom is talking to you through some poor lady’s phone bills. I just need some space to figure this out.”

  “You want to talk about nuts?” I lose it. “Let’s talk about nuts! Who the fuck just packs up our kids and takes off and doesn’t even leave a note? Who does that?”

  Silence.

  “Look,” I say. “Just come home, and we can talk about this in person.”

  “I’m pulling into my parents’ driveway,” she says.

  “There’s no way you are already in Houston if you didn’t leave in the middle of the night.”

  “I have to go,” she says.

  “I’m coming to get my kids.”

  “Duke, please.”

  “Why are you doing this to me?”

  “I just need some time.” Her voice softens.

  “How much?”

  “I don’t know.” She hangs up.

  32

  May 29, 2010

  210,000,000 gallons of oil have poured into the Gulf since the explosion

  I am in the shower when I hear the doorbell ring, and then there is this bang-bang-banging at the front door.

  I get out, towel off, and throw on some clothes.

  No one has ever knocked on our front door, much less pounded on it. We have not made those kinds of friends within the Cotton Gin Golf Community. I have not hit the back nine with the dermatologist next door, nor has Emily arranged playdates with his wife and their perpetually screaming daughters. We’ve been a little too busy to put down those kind of roots. So when I hear the beating on my front door, and the compulsive ringing of the doorbell, I immediately think it’s the two frat boys, the ones with the shiny guns, back for more.

  So I run downstairs. I grab a golf club. My heart is racing. I look out the peephole, and there in all his fish-eye glory is Gary. He’s sweaty and anxious, standing on my front porch with a sheriff’s deputy by his side.

  I drop the five iron, and I open the door.

  “Get out,” he says.

  “Good to see you too, Gary.”

  “Get all of your stuff and get out,” he says.

  “As I am sure your friend from law enforcement can tell you, you can’t just evict someone without notice. There’s a tiny thing called tenant’s rights.”

  “You’re not a tenant,” Gary says. “You were an employee, and you’ve been fired.”

  “Gary, I need at least another day to get my stuff out. Seriously.”

  “This house is Mandala property, and you’re trespassing,” he says.

  And as if this day couldn’t get any worse, it just did: Gary Dubois is, for once in his life, correct.

  He raises his hand over his head, and a team of Mandala workers files out of a truck parked out by the curb. They push past me into the house. The sheriff’s deputy just stands here with his Ray-Bans on, acting like this is no big deal.

  “This is not okay,” I say to the cop. “How is this okay?”

  He doesn’t answer. Instead, we both just watch the workers take my coffee table and deposit it on the curb, then our recently replaced sofa, the flat screen TV, our seven-thousand dollar-dining room table, and the Eames chairs that Emily took weeks deliberating on and years to pay off.

  “I really can’t believe you,” I say to Gary. I then walk over to the piles of my stuff.

  I pull out my phone and Google “movers.”

  I call every listing I can find, but no one has trucks available at this exact moment. Most can’t help me until next week. One guy kindly offers to rent me his El Camino to move myself, but he can’t get that to me until tonight. I text Yanko. I call Stevo. But neither respond. So I stand with my phone in my hand, in the beating Louisiana heat while I watch everything I worked so hard to acquire just thrown out into the grass.

  I am struck with a sudden panic, not for the Eames chairs or our dining room table that are upturned on our driveway. I am panicked about my boys’ stuff. All I can think about are their toy trains. The boys are obsessed with them, can’t go to bed without them. They will be devastated if these guys have lost Thomas or Oliver or Henry.

  I run back into the house to gather up Stewart and Jo-Jo’s train sets and Legos, past all these men carrying my family’s belongings out to the curb. I run up to the boys’ room. I throw open the door, and it’s empty: Their Thomas the Tank Engine toys are no longer scattered on the carpet.

  Their bunk beds are not here.

  Even the faint smells of poo and graham crackers are gone.

  I run back down the stairs, where I find Gary yelling at the movers to hurry up.

  “What the fuck did you do with my kids’ stuff?” I say.

  Gary looks at me like I am crazy.

  “My kids’ stuff.” I want to whomp him on the head. “Where is it?”

  Gary points to the front door. “I’m sure it’s outside with the rest of your shit.”

  I run into the yard, past the couches on their sides, past my upturned king-size mattress, past our big screen TV in the grass, and the boy’s bedroom stuff is nowhere to be found.

  Stewart and Jo-Jo’s belongings, like my mother, has just evaporated.

  “What did you do with it?” I grab one of the movers by the shoulders.

  “Hey, get off me, man!” He pushes me away.

  “Where are the bunk beds? The trains?” I say. “Where are my kids’ trains?”

  “What the hell you mean bunk beds?” the mover says. “I ain’t touched no bunk beds.”

  I search the piles of stuff on the front lawn. I sift through the grass. My entire life is out here in the sun. Stewart and Jo-Jo are going to be heartbroken. I have upturned the couch. I have flipped my mattress. I have looked under every painting and framed print. Where did an entire room of stuff go? I try to calm myself. I can feel an incoming panic attack about to land right on top of me, and then I realize that Emily must have taken the trains. Of course, she took the trains. The boys wouldn’t have left without them.

  But where the fuck are their bunk beds? They were cheap Ikea beds and easily replaced, but still…

  My cell phone rings. It’s the last moving company I called. They have a truck.

  So I read them the numbers on my credit card as slowly and precisely as a magic spell, and I breathe.

  * * *

  Driving back from the storage units that now contain what is left of my life, I turn on the radio. I turn it up louder and louder until I can’t hear myself think. I sing along to REM’s “Losing My Religion.” I sing along so I can’t hear all the regrets I have about Mark Babineaux’s death, so I can stop obsessing over Emily leaving me, about being kicked out of our house. But then an ad for the Ragin’ Cajun Bar and Grill comes on and the guilty thoughts creep back in. I think about Mark and his Cajun pride—so much like my dad’s. I wonder what I could have done to help him. I have to change the station and land on that Better Than Ezra song that goes on and on about how it was good.

  That old song brings me right back to brighter days with Emily.

  “How did Kurt Cobain not sue those guys?” I’d always have to say when “Good” came on the radio.

  “That riff sounds more like the Pixies to me,” she’d say.

  “The Pixies inspired Nirvana.”

  “How do you know Better Than Ezra wasn’t inspired by the Pixies then?” She’d give me a look.

  “Don’t start,” I’d say. “You know what I am talking about.”

  “Stop talking. You’re ruin
ing this for me.” She’d then start to sing along to how it was “good, so good.”

  We did this play-fight thing when this Better Than Ezra song came on the radio, and I’d act more annoyed than I really was, and she would always sing loudly and out of key. It was an inside joke that we always had with each other. It was weird. When that old song came on the radio, it was more than a song; it was this feeling that we even loved the things that annoyed us about each other. It sounds stupid, but it’s impossible to describe. Whatever it was, it was ours.

  I turn off the radio, and I call Emily.

  She picks up on one ring.

  “I’m driving in today,” I say.

  “Don’t,” she sighs into the phone.

  “I want to see my kids.”

  “Duke, I’m not ready.”

  “What did I do?”

  “You didn’t… This isn’t about you.”

  “Is there someone else?”

  “No.”

  “Is there?”

  “I don’t even have time to go to the bathroom by myself, Duke.”

  “Then what is this? Why are you doing this now?”

  Silence.

  “I don’t want to do this,” she says.

  “Then don’t. Come home.”

  “Duke.”

  “What about the boys? What have you told the boys?”

  “They haven’t asked. They think we’re just visiting Mimsy and Pops.”

  “You don’t have to do this.”

  I can hear her exhaling.

  “What about therapy?” I say.

  “I’m not happy.”

  “You’re depressed. Postpartum. You had postpartum with Stewart. Maybe that’s what this is. You’re just depressed.”

  “I’m not depressed,” she says.

  “You don’t want this.”

  “Don’t tell me what I want. You don’t know me. You don’t know anything about me.”

  She hangs up the phone.

  * * *

  When I get back to The House of the Neon Palm, La La can tell that I am not right. My heart is broken like a bone. Why have I been so compelled to chase this thing, to chase my mother into the cat-filled night? To chase The Unseen Hand? I have no idea what I am doing. I am just fueled by fear and the shadowy threat of my mother’s underworld consuming my family and me. And because of this, I have been doing things that make no sense to anyone, especially Emily. I am reading letters on old phone bills. I am throwing my career away because my mother’s soothsaying told me to do so. I have lost everything that I knew to be true and good in this world. I have been trying to save the world from Mandala, and I can’t even save my marriage.