Bayou, Whispers from the Past: A Novel Page 2

  “I just feel like the worst cliché ever.”

  “He’s the cliché.”

  “Maybe I’ll just stick with single-celled organisms for a while.”

  I leaned back in the swing, feeling tipsy. “I never really liked him anyway. He winked too much, like a car salesman.”

  “Enza Parker!” she said, tossing her lime at me. “You said you liked him.”

  “You’re practically my sister. What did you expect me to say?”

  She was quiet for a long moment, then fixed me with a hard stare. “Did you know what he was doing?”

  I sat up straight. “Of course not. Why would you ask me that?”

  She studied me, as if calculating something, then looked away.

  “Hey,” I said. “Look at me.”

  She did.

  “I didn’t know,” I said. “I wouldn’t keep his cheating a secret.”

  “But you lied about liking him.”

  “Kate,” I said, resting my hand on her arm. “It was only important that you liked him.”

  She turned away, staring out into the field. Although the humidity lingered, the air was starting to turn chilly.

  “My mother used to tell me I should never get married,” Kate said. “She told me I had expectations of loyalty that no man could live up to. Maybe I should take her advice.”

  “Mothers don’t always have the answers,” I said, but part of me thought I shouldn’t get married either. My parents’ marriage had ended in disaster.

  She gazed out over the field, sipping her drink. It was impossible to read her mind. Her face never revealed her thoughts. My head was fuzzy from the vodka, and I wondered if hers was too.

  “Do you ever wonder?” she said at last. “Do you ever want to find her?”

  I’d told her about the letters, the journals I’d found in my grandmother’s closet. When I was younger, I’d imagined meeting my mother again someday, considered what we might say to each other. But at Vergie’s funeral, when it had occurred to me that I might see her there, lurking like a phantom, I’d panicked and run out of the church and into a raging thunderstorm.

  “Sometimes,” I said. The truth was, I wished I didn’t want to find her. I wanted to not care any more, to not wonder where she was, why she left, what she was like. But as hard as I tried to bury those thoughts, they still gnawed at me, down deep where I couldn’t always reach. I wished I could rip them from my head, like weeding a garden, but it didn’t work that way.

  “Maybe you should find her,” Kate said. “Just get it over with, and then you’d no longer wonder.”

  “Some things might be better left unknown.”

  “Imagine my marriage with Benjamin if I hadn’t found out he was cheating on me. The unknown never helped anybody. Trust me on that. I’m a scientist.”

  ~~~~

  Later, when Kate was sound asleep in the guest room upstairs, I slipped into my own bedroom downstairs, where Jack lay with his back toward me. I stripped out of my clothes and settled into bed next to him. He rolled over and draped his arm around my waist, pulling me against him.

  No matter how quiet I was, I always woke him.

  “You two have a nice chat?” he mumbled, half asleep.

  “Yeah.”

  “Figured I should make myself scarce, given the circumstances with her fiancé.”

  I scoffed, my head still buzzing from the alcohol. “She’s hardly going to take it out on you. You’ll like her.”

  “I don’t doubt that. I just figure right about now she’s wishing there were four billion less of us fellas around.”

  I slipped my hand over his. “She liked you from the get-go, remember?”

  He muttered something I couldn’t quite make out. He was drifting off again.

  For a while I lay there thinking about what Kate had said. Why had I been so afraid of bumping into my mother at Vergie’s funeral? For a ghost, she occupied an awful lot of real estate in my mind. My memories may have been fragmented, but it was shocking how being down here brought back so many of them. Now that Kate was here, I kept thinking back to the funeral, the way the little gray-haired lady had said I looked just like my mother, how she said she hadn’t seen her in a while. It made me wonder where she’d seen her last and how long ago. She might not be as far away as I thought.

  My stomach clenched, and everything inside me seemed to squeeze tighter.

  “Jack,” I whispered. “You still awake?”

  “Hmm,” he muttered, slipping his feet over mine as his arm tightened around my hips.

  “Do you remember when you told me about the man Vergie was seeing before she died?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “George.”

  “Do you know his last name?”

  “Don’t remember off-hand. Might have it written down somewhere.”

  “Didn’t you say he worked at the jazz museum?”

  He kissed my neck. “Go to sleep, cher. Let’s talk in the morning.”

  “I could go down there and look for him. That might be better than a phone call anyway. If you went with me, would you recognize him?”

  “Sure,” he said. “But why do you want to see George?”

  Through the window, the moonlight sliced through the room, so intense I could see the pattern of the lace curtains on the floorboards, blue and black. My chest tightened, and I felt wide awake.

  “I want to ask him if Vergie ever told him about my mother.”

  Chapter 2

  What Jack called the “jazz museum” was actually the New Orleans Jazz National Historic Park. Situated by Jackson Square, it was in the heart of the French Quarter, just as it should be. It looked like a typical museum—pale gray, Romanesque columns with carved stone reliefs along the roofline—but what caught my eye was the bright turquoise of the doors and windows. It gave the building an almost tropical feel, like houses in the Florida Keys. Folklore down here said if you painted windows and doorframes blue, it would keep bad spirits away.

  Jack and I walked inside. A Louis Armstrong song played softly in the background. The wall by the door was full of vintage club posters. Several of my favorite musicians were pictured up by the ticket desk—Sonny Boy Williamson, Big Mama Thornton, Dizzy Gillespie—as well as dozens I hadn’t heard of.

  “How about we wait to take a tour until after we find George?” I said.

  “Sure,” Jack said, grabbing my hand and leading me to the information desk.

  A young woman with reddish hair pulled back in a tight bun smiled at us in greeting.

  “Hi there,” Jack said. “Does a man named George happen to work here?”

  “Yep! He’s finishing up a tour, but he should be back in a little while.”

  While we waited in the main room, I started feeling dizzy again, the way I’d felt at Vergie’s funeral. I tried to shake it off—come on, Enza, this is just a conversation with a friend of your grandmother’s—but that pinched feeling in my stomach wouldn’t go away.

  Jack slid his hand over mine. “You’re awful quiet. You OK?”

  “Is this crazy?” I whispered. “Is this a terrible mistake?”

  “He’s a nice guy. He’ll understand.”

  I sighed, leaning back on the bench, listening to Louis Armstrong repeat for the third time.

  After what felt like hours, a gray-haired park ranger came through the main door and marched to the information desk. A lady in a huge floppy pink hat followed him, chattering about one of the afternoon tours. Kate would have said that shade of pink was way too bright for winter, but the typical laws of fashion didn’t apply in New Orleans.

  Jack said, “That’s him. Hardly recognized him in the uniform.”

  After George finished talking with the pink-hatted lady, the young woman at the information desk pointed him toward us. He smoothed his sparse tufts of hair before moving in our direction.

  George smiled, reaching out to shake Jack’s hand. “Hey, Jack,” he said. “Haven’t seen you in a while.” He was shorter than J
ack and slim with wiry arms.

  Jack placed his hand at the small of my back, and I realized I’d been trembling.

  “George, this is Enza,” Jack said. “She’s Vergie’s granddaughter.”

  “Oh my goodness.” He shook my hand slowly and said, “She told me so many stories about you.”

  And that’s when the tears came, the sneaky kind that you think will just blur your vision for a minute, but instead make you feel like you’re going to choke.

  ~~~~

  Outside, George and I sat in a sunny part of the courtyard, next to a bronze statue of a trombone player. To give us privacy, Jack found another bench across the courtyard.

  “Could we meet one day for coffee?” I asked. “Maybe on your lunch break or after work one day?”

  George smiled. “Of course.”

  “Does this seem strange? I don’t want you to feel weird about talking to me.”

  “It’s not strange.” His smile seemed sad now. “It’s nice to tell people about Vergie. Keeps her in the front of my mind.”

  “I didn’t see her for so long,” I said. “There’s so much I wish I knew about the last years of her life.”

  He took his glasses off and wiped them with a cloth he’d pulled from his pocket. He had deep wrinkles, the kind that record years of laughter and frowns. “I have some things of hers I think you should have,” he said.

  I was so surprised I didn’t know how to respond. I’d been thinking of the house—my house—as a kind of time capsule that held the last remaining traces of my grandmother. It hadn’t occurred to me other items of hers might be floating around, but why not? She’d lived with George. For a year or more, according to what Jack had told me. Of course Vergie had left things with George. I began picturing what those things were, and what they might reveal about her.

  “Thank you,” I finally said. “That would mean a lot to me.”

  He glanced at his watch.

  “I should go,” I said, even though I didn’t want to—I wanted him to tell me more about Vergie. “I’m taking too much of your time.”

  “It’s OK,” he said. “I have a little while until the next tour.”

  “What are you doing tomorrow? Could we meet when you’re off work?”

  He chuckled. “Sure, tomorrow’s fine.”

  “Great. You pick the place. It’s my treat.” I scribbled my name and phone number on a scrap of paper and handed it to him. “Let me know if anything comes up. Otherwise, I’ll see you here at four.”

  “Perfect,” he said.

  “Thank you, George.”

  He started toward the museum and then turned. “You know she didn’t blame you for anything,” he said. “Right?”

  I felt my breath catch in my throat.

  “She had nothing but happy memories of you, dear.” He waved and said, “See you tomorrow, Enza.”

  ~~~~

  As Jack and I turned onto the gravel lane that led to the house, I was startled to see blue lights flashing by the porch.

  “Jack,” I said, feeling my chest tighten.

  His brow furrowed as he slowed the truck.

  “Is that Andre’s truck too?” I asked.

  He nodded. Jack’s best friend, Andre, was the sheriff, but he hadn’t come in his patrol car. His red pickup truck was parked under the big oak tree. A police cruiser was parked several yards from it, the driver’s door open.

  “Wait here,” Jack said.

  I felt sick to my stomach. “No way. We’re not getting out until we know what’s going on.”

  Jack pointed toward the back of the house, where another officer held his arm up in greeting as he approached us. Jack waved out the window in response. “Sit tight,” Jack said. “That’s Frankie.” He climbed out and walked up to the porch before I could protest again.

  When Jack shook the man’s hand and smiled, I got out of the truck and walked over to them.

  “So much for you waiting in the car,” Jack said to me with a smile. “Enza, this is Frankie.”

  Frankie looked about twenty-five, but he also looked like he could body slam Batman. The sleeves of his uniform shirt stretched tight across his biceps.

  “Nice to meet you, Enza,” he said, shaking my hand a bit too hard. “Sorry if we alarmed you. There was just a little misunderstanding. Everybody else is inside.”

  I bolted up the porch steps and into the house, Jack following close behind.

  “Kate!” I yelled. “What happened?”

  I ran into the living room, but it was empty. I hollered for her again, running though the hall and into the kitchen. By the sink, Andre was standing with a towel pressed to his forehead. A trickle of blood ran down his jaw. A drop of red splashed onto the white porcelain of the sink, and I felt my stomach twist into a knot, thinking of the last time there had been blood on that porcelain, filling the grooves of the old built-in counter top.

  “Andre,” I said, taking a step toward him. “What happened? Where’s Kate?”

  He chuckled, his teeth bright white against his tan skin. He pulled the dishcloth away from his head to reveal a small cut at his hairline, the blood dappling his copper-colored hair. “She’s fine,” he said. “She locked herself in the bathroom after she tried to kill me.”

  From behind me, Jack asked, “What’s going on?”

  Andre ran some water on the cloth and wiped the side of his face, cringing when he saw the blood. “I was coming over to ask if I could borrow your fishing gear, and you weren’t here,” he said. “It looked like nobody else was either, so I let myself in.”

  “Oh boy,” Jack said. He pulled a chair out from the table and sat.

  “When I went upstairs to get the gear, I quickly surmised that the house was not, in fact, empty,” Andre said, as dryly as ever. “Your friend walked out of the bathroom, um, not in her Sunday finest.”

  “Oh no,” I said.

  “I tried to explain I was a friend of yours, but she threw her hair dryer at me and then locked herself in the bathroom and called 911. Which is why Frankie’s here.”

  Jack ran his hands through his hair, muttering something that was half French. It was an endearing habit, though it meant he was annoyed. He rested his elbows on the dark wood of the table. “And?”

  “I called dispatch on my cell and gave them my badge number,” Andre said, “but they sent him over anyway. Strict policy.” He sighed, folding the cloth neatly and placing it on the edge of the basin. “It’s better for her they sent him over. I was having difficulty convincing her I wasn’t an intruder.”

  Outside, the siren made one clipped sound, and the car door slammed. Tires crunched on the gravel as Frankie drove away.

  “Your friend has excellent aim,” Andre said to me. “A good arm too.”

  I went upstairs and knocked on the bathroom door. “Kate, are you in there?”

  “Are you alone?” she asked.

  “Yeah, just me.”

  She unlocked the door and pushed it partway open so I could slip inside. Behind her, the curtain in the open window rippled in the breeze.

  Kate sat on the edge of the clawfoot tub, now wearing a silk bathrobe. One foot was planted on the blue and white tiles while she swung the other like a pendulum. Her lean arms were crossed tightly over her chest.

  “Oh, honey,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

  “That guy’s really a friend of yours?”

  “Andre,” I said. “Jack’s best friend. He’s a good guy.”

  “He’s an asshat. He barged in here and scared the shit out of me.”

  “I’m sure he didn’t mean to. He said he came to borrow Jack’s fishing gear.”

  “So he just walked right in without knocking?”

  “He has a key. He thought we were gone.”

  She glared at me.

  “Nice aim though.”

  She snorted. “Did he leave yet?”

  “He’s still tending to his wounds.”

  “Serves him right.” She relaxed then, resting her
hands on the edge of the tub.

  “Why don’t you get dressed and come meet him. You’ll see, he’s not a bad guy.”

  “No way,” she said, cinching the robe tighter. “Forget it.”

  “Also, he’s the sheriff.”

  She groaned.

  “You’ll be seeing him again if you’re staying with us,” I said, biting my lip. “He and Jack are getting together for poker night in a couple of days.”

  “Then I’ll just make myself scarce whenever he comes over.”

  I went over to the door and said, “Come on. Get dressed, and come downstairs. This’ll be funny after a beer or two.”

  “Easy for you to say. He didn’t see you buck naked.”

  ~~~~

  When I walked back into the kitchen, Andre was still leaning against the cabinets, one hand resting on the expanse of white counter, as if he were holding himself up.

  Jack, still sitting at the dining table, said to Andre, “I’d offer you a beer, but it’d probably just make you bleed faster.”

  “Maybe later,” Andre said.

  I took a couple of tiny butterfly bandages over to him and ordered him to sit down.

  Outside, a cloud floated away from the sun, and the room instantly filled with light. Jack and I had repainted it white with yellow cabinets, thinking it would brighten things up and compensate for having only one window by the table. Now he teased me, saying, “Every time I go to make my morning coffee, I expect to hear angels’ trumpets and see Saint Peter frying up some beignets.”

  I secretly hoped the bright light would make me more of a morning person. So far, it had not.

  Andre sat in one of the old wooden chairs across the table from Jack and let me dab peroxide on his wound. It didn’t look like it needed stitches, and the bleeding had nearly stopped. I sat on the edge of the sturdy oak table, tilting his head toward the light. He flinched when the peroxide touched the cut.

  “Sorry about all this,” he said. “I didn’t know you had company. I should go up and apologize now that she knows I’m not a criminal.”

  “Give her a few minutes,” I said, putting the bandages on. I wiped the rest of the blood from his cheek and frowned at the cloth. “You owe me a new tea towel.”