“That would be great! Where are you staying in New Orleans?”
“My husband made the reservations, so I’m not sure. I’ll have to get back to you.”
I took his number and got off the phone.
That conversation worried me. Eddie’s story hung together as far as it went, but it didn’t quite make sense. I could see a girl maybe running away after her father’s funeral, especially if she didn’t get along with her mother. But she was still here, apparently planning to stay. She hadn’t even gotten in touch with her friends. And there was the matter of Richard Johnson.
I didn’t ask Eddie about that. Best let him tell me in his own time.
~ 14 ~
March 1973
New Orleans
Kathy
By the last week of February, New Orleans was getting crazy. Mardi Gras Day was March 6 that year, and the city was filling up with revelers. I’d seen the parades many times as a child and didn’t care about going again. Maybe to a night parade, I’d never gotten to see one of those—drums and flambeaux and the Quarter all lit up. But Richard couldn’t stand crowds, and I tried not to imagine what the torches would remind him of. It was better to pretend none of it was happening.
Living with Richard was showing me things about him that I hadn’t expected. He had nightmares, not every night, but several times a week. That was bad enough, but his outburst on Valentine’s Day hung on in my mind.
It seemed to stay with him, too. He had come back to the room late that night, long after I’d gone to bed. Next morning, neither of us said anything about it. I didn’t know what to do. I kept pretending things were normal, but it wasn’t easy. As the days wore on, he rarely spoke, and his body in bed at night felt cold and different.
Dragging home on the Friday before Mardi Gras, I worried how we were even going to get through the weekend. We couldn’t go away. Even if we had somewhere to go, the traffic was terrible, blocked by parade routes in every direction. Crowds swirled around all the streets now, even our secluded corner. Eddie had asked me to work a few hours on Saturday and I’d agreed, mostly to get out of our room.
On the downstairs hall table was a letter for me—Sharon’s handwriting. I grabbed it as I passed by and tore the envelope open on my way up the stairs.
Hi, Li’l Sis!
How are you doing in the Big Easy? I bet Mardi Gras is really something if you’re right on the spot. What parades did you go to? Save me a doubloon if you get an extra—Sam and I have been too busy to get down there.
I’m going to make some time after Carnival, though. I miss you. Sam and I could visit some weekend. We’ll stay at a hotel—I know you don’t have guest space yet. Would you have time? What weekend would work for you?
Give our best to Richard. See you soon.
Love,
Sharon
Well, hell. That was all I needed. I missed Sharon, but I didn’t want her to see the way things were now. I wondered how long I could put her off.
But when I opened the door to our room, Richard was making dinner. He looks like himself again. I tried a smile.
He smiled back thinly, nodding toward the envelope in my hand. “Letter?”
“From Sharon. She says they’re too busy to come down right away, but maybe later.”
“Probably the best choice anyway—avoid the Carnival craziness.”
Oh, what about our own little spell of craziness, the last couple of weeks? We’re just pretending it never happened? Let’s brush it under the carpet, except we don’t have a carpet. I glowered at the rose-patterned linoleum. It was kind of obvious I wasn’t about to find any answer down there.
Richard went back to making spaghetti. We spent the evening reading. I’ll hide behind Sylvia Plath and you hide behind T. S. Eliot. The book I gave you for Christmas.
Next morning I left the room before he woke. I didn’t have to be at the stand until late afternoon, but I wanted to be alone. Not that “alone” was going to be easy, the Saturday before Carnival. I could hear bands from a couple of different directions.
I walked toward Esplanade, away from the noise. It was one of my favorite walks. I loved the Quarter, but sometimes got tired of its hard surfaces—pavement and wrought iron and brick, the narrow, medieval feeling that the tourists came for. Esplanade was a wide street, with big trees and a grassy median that the locals called the “neutral ground.”
Walking toward the river, I felt the swing of my steps apply a soothing rhythm to my jumpy thoughts. Maybe if I kept walking, I could think of something.
I can’t live this way—not for long.
I don’t want to leave him. What about the baby?
I love him. Except when he’s someone else. I don’t love that other Richard.
I don’t know what to do. I’m scared.
Step and step again. Crack in the sidewalk, tree root.
The war was supposed to be over when they signed the cease-fire, wasn’t it? Why isn’t it over for Richard?
Dogwood flowering pink and white over on the median. Pretty.
I want us to be a family. Why is he hanging on to this evil stuff? Richard, reading about sharecroppers, trying to understand. He can’t possibly want to think about the war.
End of Esplanade, no sidewalk left. I looked at the face of the Old Mint, closed since forever. It didn’t tell me anything. I turned back the way I’d come.
Maybe he doesn’t want to think about the war. Maybe he can’t stop. Maybe he can’t help it.
Dixie cup on the sidewalk. I picked it up and put it into the next trash can.
Why does he feel so guilty about Vietnam? What did he do that he can’t just forget?
I walked on for a while without thinking of anything. Then the worries came back.
What if nothing else could ever seem more important? If the bad thing is too big to forget? Well, Mom has a point—in that case, you talk to a psychologist. But no way Richard’s going to do that.
Stop at the corner, let the car turn in front of me. Now I could cross.
Well, I’m not a psychologist! If he’s too ashamed to talk to someone who could handle it, he can’t turn around and dump it all on me. Also, what about the baby? Is it going to grow up with a father who acts like some crazy person?
I looked up, realizing that I’d walked farther than I intended. The expressway was right in front of me. I turned south and sat on a bench in the Municipal Auditorium Park, looking toward the walls of the old St. Louis Cemeteries, where legend said the Voodoo Queen was buried.
I’d only been there a few minutes when a tall woman in a long black dress staggered up. Still drunk from the night before—that was Mardi Gras for you. She plopped down on my bench. Just what I needed. But I’ll look mean if I get up and walk off.
“Bobby’s over there,” she said.
She pointed over toward the old St. Louis cemetery. I don’t know who Bobby is, but if he turns up, I really will leave. Screw it. I can’t deal with two of them.
I didn’t see anyone coming. “Bobby?” I asked.
She laughed harshly. “Don’t look for Bobby. He’d be six feet under if he wasn’t buried aboveground. Don’t go looking for Bobby no more.” The last word came out as a sob.
I was confused. “I thought this was a just a historic cemetery,” I said.
“People never stop dying, you know? But if it wasn’t this one, it was one exactly like it. What difference does it make which cemetery, anyway? They’re all the same. Everyone in them is dead.” Her voice was loud and angry.
I looked her over carefully. She must have been well-dressed last night or the night before, whenever she started drinking. She sure is bizarre now.
A long-sleeved evening gown draped from a high turtleneck scarf to her spike-heeled shoes. Above the scarf, and now streaked all over it, was heavy pancake makeup. Her eyes were raccooned with mascara, and one of her false eyelash strips was coming loose. A teased cone of black hair was sprinkled with glitter. Probably supposed to look
like stars. Radioactive dandruff is more like it.
Real-looking diamonds flashed from her heavy clip-back earrings. In this neighborhood, stones like that would get a drunk woman mugged for sure.
“Did you know we had him a jazz funeral?” she asked, suddenly sociable. “His mama and sister nearly died of embarrassment. They aren’t jazz types at all. But Bobby was a musician. It was right.” She frowned again. “They played ‘In the Sweet Bye and Bye’ on the way to the cemetery. I don’t see anything sweet about rotting in a cement box.”
I had heard of jazz funerals, but I’d never seen one. She obviously wasn’t the person to ask, not right now, anyway. “Maybe you ought to go up to Canal Street, where it’s safer,” I suggested.
“Maybe I should.” She stood up, weaving to balance on those stiletto heels. I wondered what I should do if she passed out on the sidewalk.
“On the way back, they played ‘Didn’t He Ramble?’” she said. “They most always play that at a jazz funeral. They play happy-sounding stuff on the way back. When I asked why, they said, ‘We done all we could for him. Couldn’t do no more.’”
She wavered for a second. “But you know what? I didn’t do all I could for Bobby. I wasn’t there at the last, when I could maybe have stopped him. I didn’t even say anything afterwards. But what could I have done? He didn’t want them to know about us, either.”
Her hand reached out to me as she started singing, “Didn’t he ramble, didn’t he ramble?” The singing voice was a deep bass. And that hand is much too big for a woman’s. My God.
The voice switched back to falsetto to say, “Those guys who play that on their saxes, if they think it’s a happy song, they must not know the words.” Another switch to bass melody—“He rambled till the butchers cut him down.”
He lurched toward Canal Street. It was a good thing his back was to me. My mouth was open wide enough to catch flies. As he disappeared around a corner, I imagined Bobby slipping from his mausoleum and through the gates of the cemetery, following him.
I got out of there. I headed uptown, looking for streets with a few more people, trying to shake the feeling that Bobby was around the next corner. I have enough trouble as it is.
I walked north on Tulane Avenue, past the Greyhound depot, where an old black man was sitting on a camp stool on the sidewalk, playing a Dobro and singing to nobody.
“Angel got two wings to veil my face, angel got two wings to fly away.”
It seemed to mean something, but I wasn’t sure what. I didn’t have any spare money to drop into the open case at his feet. I tried to smile at him, but his white-glazed eyes told me he didn’t see.
I turned away and scrambled along Tulane Avenue, past Charity Hospital, past the prosthetics stores and all-night coffee shops clustered near it. Past the bail bond places around the courthouse. I wondered if people could get bailed out of the hospital, out of illness. Maybe you could buy a bail bond from Death. Angel got two wings . . . . This is nuts. With an effort, I pulled myself together and kept going. There were lots of pedestrians on the sidewalks of Tulane Avenue, but I felt like the only person in the world.
Through the Civic Center, past the library, and then I remembered I had to work at the stand that afternoon. Better head back—it was a long walk.
The sidewalk started to get crowded, everyone heading the same way I was. I realized I must have blundered into a parade crowd.
But I wasn’t sure where the parade was, so I didn’t know how to get away. I kept walking, east and south toward the Quarter. A nightmare mob of people in costumes was in my way now. I brushed against an eight-foot-high chicken carrying a tall drink, a man wearing a G-string and a Sioux headdress, and a Dracula. Which are the masks—the faces they have now, or the ones they wear the rest of the year? I was going to be late.
Six streakers pelted past me kicking aside beer cans, with everyone getting out of their way. I dodged a couple in blackface and pushed through a group of laughing purple tarantulas. A passed-out Tinkerbell lay on the sidewalk beside a pool of hot-pink vomit. Man or woman? I was near panic. I kept pushing past.
Distant yelling and drums told me the parade was coming my way. I had to get across Canal Street before the floats reached me, or I’d be held up for hours. A cop blew his whistle at me as I slipped through the barrier and ran across Canal. The crowds thinned as I got into the Quarter, but I was panting as I headed up Decatur toward Eddie and safety.
He waved happily when he saw me coming, then his face pulled into worry lines when I got closer.
“What’s the matter, doll?”
“Carnival crowd. Like a nightmare.”
“Nightmare?” Eddie frowned.
“There was a drunk man in the Municipal Auditorium Park. Only I thought it was a woman.” Somehow, this didn’t sound as scary as it had been. I tried to explain. “He had on a sort of covered-up gown. I really fell for it.”
“Some of those guys are real good,” said Eddie. “No way you could tell, especially at Carnival.” He shook his head. “What’s the matter, doll? You’ve seen men in drag before, I’m sure.”
“Well, yes, but not that convincing.” I had been to a gay bar on Halloween with my friend Jimmy. Some of the guys were more or less in drag, but they didn’t come close to looking like women. Especially when they pulled the beanbags out of their bras and threw them at each other. “Mostly, it’s what she . . . he . . . said. He said he hadn’t done everything he could for Bobby.”
“Who’s Bobby?”
“His lover, I think. He said Bobby was in the cemetery. I think he committed suicide.”
Eddie looked up sharply. “So?”
“Richard’s upset about the war,” I admitted. I wasn’t sure I was making sense, but Eddie seemed to get the gist of it, at least.
“You afraid he might do something?”
“I don’t know.”
Two customers came up, bought strawberries, and took their change. Eddie turned back to me. “He ever hit you?”
“No. He doesn’t do anything, doesn’t even talk. But he has nightmares.”
“You talk to your mother and dad about it?”
“I don’t want to.”
Eddie rubbed his eyes. He watched a couple of women check out the satsumas, ready to answer questions, but they moved on down the arcade. “Why stay with him, doll?” he asked. “You don’t have to put up with that. Girl like you, you could have almost any fellow in town.”
“I don’t want to. Anyway, I’m pregnant.”
“Oh, lord.”
A middle-aged man with a Midwestern accent interrupted to ask where to buy “real New Orleans coffee.” Eddie waved him over to the Morning Call. “So, Richard’s going through some kind of shell shock, you’re scared, and you don’t know what to do. And you got a baby on the way.”
“That’s it.” He understands. Thank God someone does.
“When’s it due?”
“September.”
“We have a little time, then. I have a neighbor was in the war. Australian fellow. He’s sure to know more than you and me. Let me see what he says.”
“Richard won’t go to a psychologist. I asked.”
“Martin’s not one. But he’ll know something. Meantime, keep cool. Don’t tell Richard we talked. I mean it.”
When I got home that night, Richard was asleep. I took off my coat and slipped into bed beside him. He reached out and held me, and I went to sleep too against his warmth. We woke early and made love for the first time in a long time. He’s Richard again. I want to stay with him no matter what.
Our Sunday was quiet, with a backdrop of distant, irrelevant parades. We made love again and read aloud to each other, talked about Sharon and Sam’s visit. We still didn’t say anything about our problems, but I felt easier now that Eddie had something up his sleeve. Eddie’s smart, he knows everybody. If Eddie’s on my side, something good will happen.
He didn’t let me down. When I showed up for work Monday morning, he wa
s jubilant. “This is gonna work out good, doll,” he said. “I told you about my neighbor Martin that was in the war. Martin Yates. Well, he’s got some kind of grant now—he’s setting up a puppet theater. And he’s looking for people to work for him.”
“Richard has a job.”
“What is it, counting screws or something? He’ll take this in a minute. Also”—he gave me a sidelong look—“I think you should go work for Martin too. I mean, it’s not that I don’t want you, but I think you and Richard ought to do something together. Of course, you could still work for me sometimes,” he added. “And if this doesn’t pan out for some reason, you can come back anytime.”
I’d worried for a moment that Eddie wanted to get rid of me, but I could feel it wasn’t that at all. “Where is it?”
“Out in Gretna. You might want to think about getting a place out there. Easy to come in if you want, and the rents would be a lot cheaper.”
“What about the neighborhood? I mean, Richard and I—”
“Gretna? No one in that area will care.”
“What about the baby?”
“Martin’s got twins. He won’t have a problem. Quit worrying, Kathy! It’ll be okay.”
I was still doubtful. “What would we be doing? Neither of us knows a thing about puppets.”
“That’s the beauty part. Some of this grant is for education, and it helps that Richard’s a veteran. And black. Give it a try—it’ll be fun. Also, I told him about Richard and the war stuff, and he’s going to do what he can to help. Quiet-like, but I think he knows what he’s talking about.”
When I told Richard about Eddie’s idea that night, he hesitated about two seconds before he decided he wanted to try it. We called Martin from the pay phone in the hall, and he invited us to come and talk to him.
Eddie looked pleased when I told him next day. “I’ll be sad to see you go, doll, I really will. But it’s the best thing for both of you. And I live right in the neighborhood—I’ll still be seeing you around. Take the day off tomorrow, go talk to Martin. If it works out, maybe even find yourself a place to stay.”
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