That night at home, I felt wary, cut off from Richard. Don’t hint anymore about an abortion. I want you to marry me. To want to marry me, not just a shotgun wedding. I want children.
Even when I was little, baby dolls were my favorites, and everyone thought that was fine. Now, it’s all changed. It’s not cool anymore to want a husband and baby. But that’s what I want. It’s not fair.
But he didn’t start up again, only asked if Eddie had anything to say after he’d seen us together.
“He said Dad probably wants to make sure I’m okay, that he’s not really against us.”
I pushed aside the window curtain and looked at the row of cottages across the street. Their windows were lit. Every house, every apartment, was complete in itself, cut off from the others. Like spaceships, headed for different stars. I dropped the curtain and turned back to Richard.
He’d picked up the book he’d left on the bed that morning. Looking up, he marked his place with one finger. “I never thought your dad was against us,” he said. “You’re not twenty-one—he could have stopped you from coming down here.”
“How? I’m over eighteen. I can live where I want.”
“Well, I knew one guy whose girlfriend was going to move in with him. Her parents committed her to the state mental hospital in Mandeville. They can do that until you’re twenty-one.”
“Good God. Because they didn’t like him?”
“Yeah, it wasn’t race. They just didn’t like him. Your dad didn’t try to stop you, only said he thought you were making a mistake. He even gave you money.”
“The baby would change his mind. He wouldn’t think his grandchild was a mistake.”
“Maybe not, but your mom’s another story—sometimes she looks at me like I’m a roach she’s found in her soup.”
“She’s found two roaches. I’m the other one, in case you haven’t noticed.”
“Oh, I noticed. What the hell’s her problem, anyway?”
You’re asking me for an answer to that one? “I don’t know,” I said. “By the time I came along, she already had a daughter. The position was taken. I got closer to Aunt Ruth.”
“But you’re not close anymore, huh? Well, at least you have your dad. But I don’t think anyone in your family, including him, would have a problem if you decided on an abortion.”
* * *
Early, cold, St. Valentine’s Day morning. I pulled myself out of bed sighing. Wednesday: Eddie’s day to go to the Wholesale Market. Which meant I had to get over to the stand and take care of things. Getting ready, I tiptoed. Richard was sleeping, finally—he’d been thrashing and crying out for most of the night. I eased the door shut as I left the room. I had to feel my way along the stairs—the light was out in the hall again. Outside, a chilling fog turned everything to shades of gray. The row of cottages across Bourbon was like a huddle of shivering stray cats.
I zipped my jacket to the top and burrowed my hands into its pockets. Just time for a cup of coffee at the French Market. The front yard of the Ursuline Convent was a dark hole on the Chartres Street sidewalk. I heard teasing music, damped and tinny.
On the corner, a newsboy stood in a patch of swirling mist, light as angel hair. A tiny transistor radio at his feet tinkled downriver banjo, joined by Dixieland—“Washington Square.” An oldie that made my mind go back to the sixties. And beyond: All the banjos and trumpets that must have been played in the Quarter, going back a century or more. It hasn’t changed much, not in this block, not this morning. Maybe I should buy a paper, just to see what date would be on it.
Time meant nothing in the Café Du Monde either. Dawn was silvering, but day or night made no difference there. They never closed, and they only served coffee and doughnuts—if I closed my eyes, I could imagine any time at all. Frying oil, the raw scent of powdered sugar, black-roasted coffee and steaming milk. Scrape of chairs, crash of dishes, and blurred foghorns out on the river. It’s always been like this and it always will be.
The awning dripped, and I pulled my chair closer in. I shook off my eerie mood. Whatever year it was, it was morning.
I had to get over to the stand, and I wanted to find a present for Richard today, too. Something for Valentine’s Day, something beautiful for almost no money. I sighed. Antiques and jewelry glittered in the windows of Royal Street, but those shops were no use to me. I finished my coffee and stood up, flicking back worries as I flicked back my hair.
As I walked down Chartres to the stand, I saw Eddie’s truck parked at the curb. He finished stacking wood crates on the sidewalk, waved quickly, and pulled away. I got started putting out stock. If February tomatoes were no good, neither was much else at that time of year. We had apples, navel oranges, winter squash, onions, and peanuts in the shell. We were starting to get some spring asparagus, but it was expensive. The hot, bittersweet smells of tomatoes and eggplants and Italian parsley were still to come.
I could see my breath in the cold. September seemed so far away. But everything will be different then. We’ll have a house with a tree, and a garden like Dad’s. An orange kitten lapping a saucer of milk by the back door and chasing its tail. I’ll be a real mother, not like Mom. I’ll go to the yard and pick good things to eat, fresh from the garden. My little girl will run to me, and I’ll hug her.
My foot slipped on an onion skin on the market cobblestones. It was almost time to open. I set a weight on my stack of paper bags in case the wind came up, and arranged mirlitons, carrots, and red onions in an eye-catching design. Estelle was sure to want asparagus, so I put aside the best bunch for her.
There wasn’t much business that morning, not as cold as it was. I tidied up the stand and made more patterns with apples and oranges. Eddie came back just before ten, swearing under his breath about underripe tomatoes and imported strawberries.
“Hey, the way you got all those vegetables—that looks good!”
I could feel my face turn red. “Oh, well, I got to fooling with them, you know, things were slow—”
“I’m serious, it’s pretty. Makes us stand out. Looks high class or something, maybe. Like those ‘great restaurants’ books.”
“Well, thanks. Oh, and I put asparagus aside for Estelle. You know she won’t turn up until noon, but then she’ll want a good bunch. What was good at the market?”
“Not much.”
“Then I guess there’s not much to unload.”
“You guess wrong. We gotta have something to sell, even if it’s awful.”
Eddie was exaggerating. He had some good spring vegetables, shallots, and some baby lettuce, and a few more fruits than last week. You could chart the seasons inch by inch, working for Eddie.
We finished a few minutes before noon. By then, the day had warmed up enough for me to eat my sack lunch in Jackson Square.
As I ate, fat beggar pigeons flocked around my feet. They scattered when I brushed crumbs off my lap, but mobbed their way back, pushing and squabbling. Thinking of pigeons as “squab-ling” made me smile as I stood and started across the square.
I had no clear destination, just window-shopping in hopes of finding something good for Richard’s gift. Street artists had their pitches all along Pirates’ Alley, their work hanging from the wrought-iron fence of the St. Louis Cathedral. I loafed along, looking at the pictures. One of the artists was doing a portrait, with people standing behind him, looking over his shoulder.
Another was sitting idle in a canvas captain’s chair. I looked at his pictures. Can I afford a little one?
The artist smiled at me. “Draw your portrait for ten dollars.”
I didn’t have ten dollars. “Oh, no,” I said, embarrassed.
He leaned over to whisper. “I’ll do it for free, if you want.”
Is he coming on to me? “Oh, no thanks.”
He looked at me sharply. He knows what I thought. “That way, people will watch, and I’ll get some business. And you get a free portrait,” he explained, still whispering. He nodded towards the next pitch, where
one of the onlookers was taking the model’s chair.
“Okay,” I agreed. I sure made a fool of myself there. This would solve the problem of Richard’s present, if it was any good. And if it wasn’t, I hadn’t lost anything but time.
I sat in his other canvas chair and tried to look casual for the picture. He started talking right away.
“I’m Tex,” he announced. “What’s your name?”
“Kathy.” I looked more closely at his drawings hanging along the fence. Mostly portraits, and they looked better than a lot of the artwork in Pirates’ Alley, more like real people. A few courtyard scenes and moss-draped plantations for the tourists. At least there was nothing on black velvet.
“Where you from?”
“Here. I live over on Bourbon Street.”
“Where on Bourbon?” Does he think I’m a stripper? One of those women who do bumps and grinds out on the sidewalk? Maybe he is coming on to me.
“Up by Esplanade.” The opposite end from the clubs.
He picked up his charcoal and started a sketch. “Quiet up there.”
“That’s why we chose it.”
“We?” He glanced back and forth from me to the paper. His hand never stopped.
“My boyfriend and I. We wanted a place where people would leave us alone.”
“I’d say you have it. What do you do? Have I seen you around?”
“I work for Eddie Graziano, over in the French Market. I don’t think I’ve seen you.”
“I don’t know him. I never shop in the Market.”
“I don’t either, except what Eddie gives me. Too expensive.”
“Tourist trap, that’s what it is. You ever do any modeling?”
Modeling? Do you mean nude? “Oh, no,” I said, in the same nervous way as when he’d asked if I wanted a free portrait.
“Just for portraits.” He guessed what I was thinking again. “I have a class, well, several classes I teach at night. I live over on Dumaine. You interested?”
I hesitated. Maybe he was paying a little. On the other hand, I liked to be with Richard at night. Still, if he was paying . . . .
“Five bucks and dinner, if you want to try it.”
He finished the picture and sprayed it with fixative from a can. As he showed it to me with a flourish, two women came up to admire his work. The portrait looked like me, and looked like he had somehow caught me about to say something, too. The face in the picture almost moved. One of the women sat down in the model’s chair as soon as I got up.
He rolled the picture, taped it lightly, and handed it to me with a card that said “Tex Smallman, Artist.”
“Thanks,” I said. “It’s great.” I wondered when a person got to put “artist” on their card. Did someone official give them permission, or did they decide one day, “Hey, I’m an artist,” and call up the print shop and order them?
He looked up as he started on the woman’s picture. “Nice meeting you, Kathy. Let me know about the modeling. I’m here every day. Or you can call me.”
I took the roll of paper back to the rooming house and found a red ribbon to wrap around it to make it look like a present.
Richard wouldn’t be home for a while, so I had some time to tidy the room. We had a tiny closet, bulgy with hangers and pegs, and a chest of drawers with a double row of books on top. Our table had a single-burner hot plate and stacks of dishes and packaged food. I opened a box of instant macaroni and cheese for dinner and fetched some water from the bathroom down the hall to cook it in.
Richard came in as I got back to the room. He looked tired and closed-in, hands crammed into his pockets and shoulders hunched. He sat on the bed and watched me stir the cheese powder into the saucepan.
“Take off your coat and stay a while,” I offered, trying to lighten things up.
He didn’t answer, only stared blankly at the steam coming off the pan.
“I got you a present.” I handed him the rolled-up picture, with its red ribbon. He opened it slowly.
“Oh, sweetheart, it’s beautiful.” He focused on the paper for a couple of seconds, then looked blank again.
“The artist did it for free,” I said. “He wants me to model for his portrait class.”
“I can see he would.” His face twisted up.
“What’s wrong?”
“Oh, God, Kathy, you’re so beautiful, but over there . . . .” He means Vietnam. “They loved their people too, and I destroyed them.”
“Is that what you were having nightmares about last night?”
“I was dreaming faces I saw there, little kids . . . little brown faces, Montagnards.” He turned away, but I knew he was crying.
“Montagnards?”
“Hill people. We went through a village one day—they didn’t beg like the other kids, only stood by the side of the road, stood in the pits and craters from our shells and watched us go by.”
I waited for more. He said nothing. “Richard?”
“They had dark faces and curly hair, oh, God, they looked like my cousins. I couldn’t pretend anymore that it wasn’t people I was killing.”
He went to the window and looked down onto the quiet street, still holding the picture carefully, as if it were his picture of the past. He’s seeing that mountain road in Vietnam. “I think about shells, my shells, falling on those kids. When I close my eyes, I see theirs looking at me.”
The macaroni was starting to sizzle and burn. I took the pot off the hot plate.
“You didn’t do anything you didn’t have to do.”
“That’s not true. I could have been a CO.”
“Yes, and gone to prison. Isn’t that what happened to most of the conscientious objectors?”
“I could have gone to Canada. I should have done something, anything but go over there and kill people . . . women and kids. . . . I can’t believe I wanted to impress my father that much.” He set the picture gently on the chest of drawers.
Oh, damn. Me and my present—it’s like the presents I used to make at school for Mom when I was little. She hid them. And the next time the art teacher gave us a project, I’d make her something else. They were never good enough. And I never stopped trying.
Is there anything I can give him to make him happy? To make him want me?
I put my arms around him. “Richard, you did the best you knew. If you’d known different, you’d have done different. That’s all anyone has. It’s not your fault there was a war.”
“That’s the thing about turning into someone you hate. It usually isn’t your fault. Except it is.”
He shoved me away and scrambled out of the room. The door banged behind him. I sat on the bed a few minutes, and then spooned some of the macaroni into a bowl and tried to eat. But I didn’t feel hungry anymore, and the burned flavor had seeped all the way through and ruined the whole thing.
~ 13 ~
January 1975
San Pedro
Lacey
California’s January drizzle had washed away all the holiday glitter by the time I finally got a call about Kathy. It wasn’t Sharon. It was a man who’d gotten my number from her.
“Hello, my name is Eddie Graziano,” he began. “You don’t know me, but I’m a friend of Kathy Woodbridge. She used to work for me in New Orleans. Her sister Sharon gave me your number.”
Not a southern accent. Almost like Brooklyn. In New Orleans, they call it “Irish Channel,” that accent. When I’d stayed with Tante Eloise, I’d met plenty of people who talked like that. White, blue-collar, family lived in New Orleans since Noah was a kid.
“Nice to talk to you. How’s Sharon doing?” Trying to find out what he wanted without seeming too inquisitive.
“She’s fine. Except that she’s worried about Kathy.”
Well, that made at least three of us.
“I was sorry to hear that their dad passed away,” I said. I was careful not to tip my hand that Sharon hadn’t confided in me and neither had Kathy.
“Sharon told me you’d call
ed her, and we decided to talk to you. We’re both worried about Kathy. In fact, all her friends are worried.”
“I’ll be happy to help any way I can.”
He hesitated. “I’m not sure what you could do. Before I called Sharon, I had no idea where Kathy was. I guess I just wanted to check up. Kathy’s been on my mind a lot.”
“You didn’t know where she went?”
“No, she bolted. We didn’t know what to think. She ran off from Sharon’s house in Baton Rouge after her father’s funeral. She left a note to say she was going, but she didn’t say where. Sharon thought she’d just gone home. But when she didn’t hear anything for a while, she called down here and found out we hadn’t seen Kathy, either. Kathy’s stuff is still here—I guess she never came back.”
“When was her father’s funeral?” I asked.
“First week of December.”
“That’s about when she turned up here. How did Sharon find out where she is?”
“Kathy sent a postcard. Nothing on it but her address. Before that, her sister had no idea she’d gone to California.”
“I guess Kathy just picked up and hitchhiked, the way kids do.”
“Oh, lord. I hope she didn’t hitchhike. How is she?”
“She’s not real happy, but she’s getting by. She has an apartment here in San Pedro. Didn’t Sharon tell you all this?”
“More or less, but I wanted to talk to you direct. You see her every day.”
“Well, she’s not too good, not too bad.”
“Listen, could I give you a call from time to time, stay in touch, you know? And give you my number in case something comes up? Her dad’s gone now, and her mom . . . . Well, I don’t think she’d be much help if Kathy needed anything. And Sharon’s good, but she isn’t a whole lot older than Kathy.”
“That’s fine. Actually, my husband and I are planning to be in New Orleans for Mardi Gras. We could get together, if you’d like. Have a cup of coffee or something.”
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