A Summons to New Orleans (9 page)

“What constitutes the absence of dread?” Nora asked.

“Well, Kierkegaard thought . . .”

“Fuck Kierkegaard,” Nora said suddenly. “What do
you
think?”

“I think, as he did, that dread comes from the horrible
specter of freedom. It’s no coincidence that the freest country in the world is the most violent. And that’s really what I think.”

“Are you free?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said, “I am. And that’s why I drink so much.”

Nora noticed that the room was swirling around her. And’ she knew she was in a foreign city with a virtual stranger, knew perfectly well that she wouldn’t see him again, so she felt at liberty to ask an inappropriate question.

“Is that why you took the money? Because you were free?”

His eyes narrowed as he looked at her. “What money?”

“From Poppy’s father.”

His face grew stall, and he stared once again at the burning tip of his cigarette.

“I didn’t take any money,” he said.

“Poppy says you did.”

“Is that what she thinks?”

“I don’t know. It’s what she told me.”

A thought germinated in Nora’s brain. Maybe this had all been a matter of miscommunication. Leo had not taken any money. They had parted for all the wrong reasons. And in her inebriated state, she thought herself to be powerful enough to bring them back together. She would do that, and this act would make up for all the selfish acts she had committed in the last few days and months, maybe in her life. She had originally sought out Leo with the notion of a careless affair. But now she was confronted with the possibility of doing a remarkably good deed. Which meant that she must be ethical. Underneath it all, she had good intentions. Like the heroine of a Jane Austen novel.

“I can’t believe Poppy told you about that,” he said, his face turning solemn.

“She didn’t tell me any details. Just that her father gave you
money to leave her alone. She’d had some drinks when she told me.”

“He offered,” Leo said. “I didn’t take it. She knows I didn’t take it. I told her about that. I told her her father was a bastard. I begged her to go away with me, but her connection to him was too strong. And I know why, too. Goddamn her. Now she’s found Jesus and she’s defending her father? That’s enough to make you stop believing in God or ethics or anything. We were both screwed up at the time. But I came out of it and she didn’t. Goddamn her.”

“How were you screwed up?”

“It’s a long story,” he said. “But she didn’t tell you about the baby?”

Nora looked at him, at a loss for words. Finally, she shook her head.

Leo shook his head and sipped his drink again. His cigarette had burned down to the filter.

“There was a baby?” Nora asked.

“No, no baby. That’s part of her fantasy.”

Nora squirmed in her seat, moving the slightest distance away from him. He was bent over toward his drink, and now the fluorescent lights behind the bar settled on his face, making him look surreal.

“Did you love her?” Nora asked.

He turned his face toward her. It was bathed in bright pinks and greens. His eyes were stern and solid, and only the muscles around his mouth moved.

He said, “Of course I loved her. What else could explain it? You asked if I believed in evil. Indeed, I do. I think love is evil. This kind of love, between a man and a woman, devoid of spirituality, anchored in nothing but a kind of recognition of ourselves in another person. It makes you a stranger to yourself. It makes you lie and cheat and steal, and keeps you
awake thinking of more ways to lie and cheat and steal. It makes you examine the limits of your behavior, and if you are far gone enough, then you act on them. God, why did you get me started on this?”

He drained half of his new martini and lit another cigarette. Nora felt frightened. She wanted to go home.

She cleared her throat and said, “So murder is ethical but love isn’t? That’s what you believe?”

He turned his face away from her and said, “I’ve told you. I don’t believe.”

Leo didn’t talk for a long time, and Nora respected his silence. She sipped her martini and listened to the music on the jukebox—Smokey Robinson singing “You Really Got a Hold on Me”—and when Jess came around with the check, she picked it up. By the time she had finished paying, Leo was willing to look at her again.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m in a bad mood.”

“Well, okay,” she said with false cheer. “Moods are allowed.”

“I’m drunk,” he said.

“So am I. I’ll go home now.”

“I’m going to walk you.”

“No, I’m fine.”

He shook his head. “It’s dangerous here. I’m going with you.”

As Nora headed out of the bar with him, she wondered where the danger was—with or without her companion.

The streets were empty, the tourists finally having retreated. Leo walked her the four blocks to her hotel. She thought of his defense of serial killers and wondered if he had ever considered such a calling for himself. That was probably ridiculous, she decided, as she moved through the soft, damp night, the song of the crickets guiding her home. As she approached
the wrought-iron gate of her hotel, Leo stopped, keeping a respectable distance. He hadn’t said a word during the journey.

She couldn’t help thinking about Simone, being thrust against a wall by her rapist, her airway cut off by a single, strong hand, and all the moments of her life leaking away from her, heading toward some kind of cosmic drain, where all life choices go to swirl around and die, none of it amounting to much in that moment between knowing and not knowing, between the stirrup and the ground.

“Well, it was nice talking to you,” Leo said, swaying on his feet.

“You’re not going to drive home, are you?”

He shook his head. “I’ve got a friend a few blocks from here.”

“What about your daughter?”

“She’s taken care of.”

Suddenly he smiled, and his face changed entirely.

“I feel good,” he said. “It’s been ages since I had a talk like that. I used to talk that way with Poppy.”

“Well, I guess those days are over.”

“I guess so,” he said.

“I mean, she’s found Jesus now.”

Leo smiled. “She used to think of me that way.”

“Like Jesus?”

“Yeah.”

She waited for him to elaborate, but he didn’t.

“Well, that’s something,” Nora said. She wanted to sleep.

Leo moved toward her and said, “How long since you’ve been kissed?”

“Not that long,” she lied.

“I’d like to kiss you anyway.”

“Why?”

“Because you listened to me talk about Kierkegaard. Not a lot of people will do that.”

“Well, I didn’t enjoy it all that much.”

He leaned forward and kissed her, calmly and politely, on the lips. Something in her stirred. She felt suddenly desperate. She felt afraid of how much it made her feel, how all these sparks attacked her, these repressed memories of being alive in her body, doing what the body wanted to do. She had been ignoring it for a long time.

“Yeah,” he said, when it was over. “That is what I miss.”

“Good night, Leo.”

She took out her key. He said, “Strange, isn’t it? You live all this time. You have sex and you have babies and you get old. And what you miss is the simple stuff. When I was a teenager, kissing was just a pain in the ass, the thing you had to do to get a woman to sleep with you. But now, it’s a mysterious thing.”

“I guess so,” she said.

“Sleep well,” he instructed her, and he squeezed her arm and walked away.

She went into her cool hotel room, and she felt pleasantly drunk and ready to talk. She called her mother’s number. Boo answered in a gravelly voice.

“Mom? It’s me. I know it’s late. How are the kids?”

“Insufferable,” Boo said. “I don’t know what you think you’re doing with them, but Annette has a smart answer for everything, and Michael won’t even leave the house.”

“Why do you want him to leave the house?”

“I asked him to mow the lawn. Know what he said to me? He doesn’t know how. The boy is thirteen years old and he’s never mowed a lawn? I had to go out and do it myself. Honestly, Nora, what kind of children are you raising?”

Nora was contemplating an answer when there was an obvious scuffle on the other end. She heard her mother negotiating with someone else. A high-pitched voice broke through, and then Annette was on the line.

“Mommy,” she said. “Mommy, is that you?”

“Yes, honey. It’s me. How are you?”

“Terrible,” Annette said. “She hit me.”

Nora’s blood ran cold. She remembered being hit by her mother. Hit on the legs with the fly swatter, hit on the butt with a spoon, hit in the face with her mother’s bare hand. Her own children had never been hit by an adult. Only by their peers, in nursery school.

“What do you mean, honey?” Nora asked, her hands starting to tremble.

“I didn’t want to go to bed after
Rugrats,
and she said I had to, and when I asked her why, she hit me in the face. Mommy, she hit me!”

“Let me talk to your grandmother.”

“Violence is wrong,” Annette reminded her.

“Yes, it is. Let me talk to your grandmother.”

Annette said, “But also, we saw some fireflies. It was cool. When are you coming home?”

“Soon, honey. Let me talk to your grandmother.”

“Love you to pieces, Little Meeses,” Annette said. It was part of a rhyme she and Nora said every night.

“Love you back, Cracker Jack.”

“Love you more, Corner Store.”

“Let me talk to your grandmother.”

Annette went away and then Boo came back on.

“Mother,” Nora said, “did you hit my daughter?”

“I swatted at her. They are too spoiled, Nora.”

“You do not hit my children.”

“I tapped her.”

“You don’t tap my children. My children are not tapped.”

“Then, why don’t you come home and raise them yourself?”

“I’m needed here,” Nora said authoritatively, because she was still a little drunk and her real purpose for being there was secreted away, safe to her.

“Well, you do what you have to do, and I’ll do what I have to do,” Boo said.

“Don’t hit my children. That’s not okay.”

“Fine, whatever you say.”

At this point Boo turned the phone over, and to Nora’s surprise it was Michael’s voice that came on.

“Mommy,” he said, “I tried calling Daddy, but he doesn’t want me. He says it will be too complicated to have me. What’s going on?”

“I’m coming home soon,” Nora said, “and I will take you and your sister to play miniature golf.”

“Daddy says things are just too complicated.”

“And maybe they are,” Nora said. “Michael, you and I did not leave on good terms. But I want you to stay with me. I love you, sweetheart.”

“Mom,” Michael said, “let’s try to get this worked out ‘cause I want to be with Dad this summer.”

“You’re not going to be with your father. He can’t support you. I don’t know if he even has a job down there.”

“He does, too! He’s managing three restaurants.” “That’s what he says,” Nora said, wondering if there was any truth to it. Knowing Cliff, there probably was.

“What, you think he’s lying? You never had any faith in him.”

“Watch your mouth,” Nora cautioned. “You don’t know anything about your father and me. I mean, our lives together.”

“Oh, no. I only lived with you my whole life.”

“Then, tell me why he left.”

“Because he loved June Ann more than you.”

Nora felt like being sick. Of course he knew that. Either Cliff had told him or he’d figured it out. Maybe she had even blurted out that fact in his presence. She couldn’t stand it that her son had so much information. She thought she had sheltered him.
But how dim you are, Nora,
she said to herself.
You have sheltered them from nothing.

“Listen, Michael. When I get home, we’re going to have a long talk.”

“Great. I’ll put it on my calendar.”

“You want to have your Sony PlayStation taken away?”

“I don’t give a shit about that,” he said.

“Michael Braxton . . .”

“Mom, Grandma Boo is crazy. You were raised by her? I can’t believe you can chew your food and drive and vote and stuff. She’s a lunatic.”

“We will talk about this later. Don’t let her hit your sister.”

“I really want to live with Dad, but he doesn’t want me.”

“So why do you want to live with him, Michael? I want you. Live with me.”

“You’re not a guy.”

“I’ll try harder, okay?”

“You’re such a goof,” Michael said, and she actually heard a laugh.

Then there was a dial tone, and Nora sat on her bed for a long time, listening to it, wondering where the hell her life was going. Was she out of control, or was she finally figuring out how to live?

She drew a bath and crawled into bed and slept very well. Nothing disturbed her until it was morning and she could hear people talking out in the courtyard, discussing the heat, which had predictably returned.

7

M
argaret Marquez-Pratt was the assistant district attorney in charge of Simone’s case. She was their age, but seemed younger. She walked with that plodding, athletic gait of someone on the intramural field hockey team. Nora could imagine her playing quarters at a college bar. Her suit made her look like someone who was pretending to be a grown-up. Black, with a leopard-skin print blouse, thick stockings, black pumps, no jewelry, no makeup.

She scared them. Nora, Simone and Poppy followed her back to her office without speaking. Even Simone, who never met anyone she couldn’t charm, made no attempt to chat with her.

The office was bare and depressing. It had a metal desk, a bulletin board, no photos, nothing decorative. On Margaret’s
desk sat an old push-button–style phone, which she immediately disconnected and said, “It’s the only way to do business, to cut off the line. Have a seat. Y’all want water or anything?”

“No, thanks,” Simone said.

Simone sat in a stiff-backed metal chair. There were no chairs for Nora and Poppy, and Margaret made no attempt to find any for them. She sat behind her desk in a black leather swivel chair, her arms crossed, a curious smile focused on them.

“Usually I do the interview in private,” she said.

“I want my friends here,” Simone said.

Margaret raised her hands in a gesture of surrender. “Whatever.”

Margaret took out a pack of cigarettes and said, “Now, I’m going to smoke. Is that okay with everybody?”

“Fine,” they all said in unison.

Margaret took a moment to flip through the file.

“The
People
versus
Quentin Johnson.
Forcible rape. You understand the charge, or do you want me to read it to you?”

“I think I get it,” Simone said.

“It means he forced you, even though he didn’t have a weapon.”

“His hands around my throat were pretty impressive,” Simone said.

“I understand, but what we’re talking about is a gun, knife, lead pipe. That would be aggravated rape. Now, this charge carries a responsive verdict, which means the jury can find him guilty as charged, guilty of attempted forcible, guilty of simple, or guilty of attempted simple rape. Or not guilty.”

No one said anything to this. Suddenly Nora found herself speaking.

“What the hell is a simple rape?” she demanded.

Margaret looked at her, her smile still in place.

“Where the victim was drugged. I don’t think Simone was drugged. Were you?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“But what does simple rape mean?” Nora continued, surprised at the amount of anger she felt, and at her willingness to express it. “It was easy to accomplish? It was less complicated than all that pesky life-threatening stuff?”

Margaret finally lost her smile and said, “It’s just terminology.”

“It’s lousy terminology.”

Simone reached back for Nora’s hand and said, “It’s okay, sweetie.”

“No, it isn’t.”

“Let’s not rediscover America here, all right? I just want to get this over with,” Simone said.

Nora felt embarrassed, having been admonished by her friend when she really meant to help. She avoided looking at Margaret, and looked at Poppy instead, certain that she would understand her anger. But Poppy was staring out the window, as if she had not heard any of this.

Margaret looked back at the files, then up at Simone. “You had a lot to drink that night.”

Nora bristled but kept her mouth shut.

Simone said, “No, I didn’t. Not before the rape. I drank a lot after it.”

“The doctor said he smelled alcohol on your breath.”

“Yes, I drank after I got back to the hotel. I was a wreck. The hotel clerk kept giving me wine. It took the cops at least an hour to arrive.”

“Two hours,” Margaret said.

“Whatever,” Simone said.

“And the cops took you back to the crime scene and you couldn’t identify it.”

“I was drunk,” Simone said. “And upset.”

“Okay.”

Nora glanced at Poppy again, with no success, and then a sudden, disturbing thought swept over her and she wondered if Poppy knew about her and Leo. Had she seen them in front of the hotel? There wasn’t much to see. It was just a kiss. But was the whole thing a bad idea? Was it somehow hostile to seek out the company of Poppy’s high-school boyfriend? Nora felt she had no moral barometer anymore.

Margaret said, “So you talked to this guy in the club?”

Nora was surprised to hear Simone say, “Yes, we spoke briefly.”

“So you knew the guy?” Margaret asked.

“No. We exchanged small talk.”

Simone shifted nervously in her seat. Poppy tore her eyes away from the window and looked at her friend, as if this detail had finally caught her attention.

Nora didn’t know what to think. She had assumed the man had been a total stranger, someone who had sneaked up behind her in the alley. She was sure it didn’t matter. It was just different, that was all.

Margaret stared at the file in front of her for a long time, then said, “I want to do this without your friends. If that’s okay.”

“It’s not,” Simone said. “I need them here.”

Margaret leaned over her desk and said, “I know you need moral support. But here’s the thing. Whether you mean to or not, you alter your story according to who’s listening. You leave out a fact here, a detail there, because you’re afraid of being embarrassed. You might not even feel yourself doing it,
but it happens. Okay? The goal is to get this guy put away. That’s what I’m here to help you do. And it would all go much faster if you’d just take my advice.”

Simone gave a slight nod, and Nora felt angry all over again.

She said, “Look, it’s Simone’s case, and she should handle it however she wants to.”

“No,” Margaret was quick to say, “it’s the people’s case. We chose it. We are prosecuting, not Simone. She’s a witness. She’s the victim. It’s our job to get the conviction, and that’s what I’m trying to do.”

“But still . . .”

Simone said, “I am not a victim. Don’t refer to me that way.”

Margaret took a deep breath and said, “Look, Ms. Gray. I am a feminist from way back. I have been in my share of marches. I am not deluded about the way the system works, about the way women are mistreated or misrepresented. I did not write these rape laws, and I do not like them. I don’t approve of how the jury system works either, but it’s what we have. Now, you might not want to be a victim. You might want to be a survivor, and that’s admirable. But that’s not what the jury’s going to want to see. They don’t want to see you dry-eyed, composed, a year’s worth of counseling and you’re back together. They want you crying, trembling, passing out from grief and shame. That’s what they’re going to understand. I’m not saying you have to do that. I’m just saying that for the next few days, you are a victim and you need to start thinking of yourself that way and give your best performance. Then, when we get this guy convicted, you can go home and be a survivor and a feminist. You can be a goddamned honorary man, if you want, but not now. Not here.”

Nora felt her throat constrict, so much anger was flooding her
at once, and she thought of her husband and his waitress, and how she had probably been thinking of herself as a victim all this time, and that she had been figuratively raped (maybe, sort of), and that she wanted to be a survivor, too. It was a different way to go, and it infuriated her that Margaret was taking away her friend’s dignity. As if it were an easy thing to replace.

She waited for Simone to argue, but she didn’t. Instead she gave a slow nod and said, “You’re right. You’re right.”

Margaret looked at Nora and Poppy. It took them a second to realize they had been dismissed.

“There’s a café right next door,” Margaret said.

They didn’t speak as they walked down the steps of the court
building and onto the sidewalk, turning in the direction of the café. They had nothing to say, and the din of the traffic and some distant construction would have drowned out their voices anyway. This was the real thing, where people tried to live real lives. This was not the tourist version; here there were bail-bondsmen offices across the street, and the police station around the corner, and boarded-up restaurants, and gas stations that looked ready to be robbed. Nora felt afraid, even in daylight. She was happy when they finally arrived at the Justice Café.

“They must be kidding,” Poppy said after reading the sign.

“I guess they have a sense of humor about the criminal justice system.”

“I guess you’d have to,” Poppy agreed, “to survive.”

They went into the café, which was empty except for a painfully thin man wearing a flannel shirt (despite the heat) and a Saints baseball cap. He seemed overjoyed to see them.

“What can I get you ladies?” he asked.

“Just coffee,” Poppy answered for both of them, eliminating the possibility of eating anything in there.

The tables were wobbly and had red-and-white-checked vinyl tablecloths with a history of food stains and cigarette burns on them. There was golf on the TV, and after serving them, the thin man went back to watching it. Nora wondered if he had had a recent illness or was in the throes of one. Perhaps he was dying, and this was how he intended to spend his final days, sitting in a café and imagining himself teeing off with Tiger and the other guys. It was too sad to consider.

Poppy said, “Simone is not telling us the whole story.”

Nora looked at her. This was what had been on Poppy’s mind as she stared out the window.

“What do you mean?” Nora asked.

“You heard. She was drinking. She knew the guy.”

“She just spoke to him.”

“She never told us that.”

“Does it make any difference? She was still raped. She could have been on a date with him. It wouldn’t matter.”

Poppy said, “I agree, but the point is, she’s lying.”

“Maybe she was embarrassed.”

“You don’t understand, Nora. You always had your head up your ass about people.”

Nora flinched, as if she had been struck. She was too surprised by Poppy’s words to respond.

Poppy said, “In college it made me insane, your naïveté. It’s how you ended up married to Clifford Braxton, the biggest liar on the planet. You couldn’t catch him at it, so you didn’t suspect him. You think he wasn’t sleeping around on you all through school? Everybody knew it.”

Nora felt her neck muscles tighten. She wanted to scream, the way she did in a nightmare, where her mouth opened and no sound came out and her chest ached.

“You were that way with Simone, too. Simone always lied to you. She made fun of you, the way you trailed around after
her, like a lap dog. You were so obviously ashamed of your background, and you were so eager to escape it, even though you denied it. You studied hard and you dated the handsome guy and you focused on how your life would look after college. Not on what you wanted. Not on what you believed or who you were. That’s how you ended up here, stranded, looking for an identity. You don’t know who the hell you are without Simone or Cliff or someone to emulate. I hate having to tell you this, Nora, but I can’t stand to see you getting sucked in again.”

Nora sat still for a long time, her head thick with shock and sorrow, as if someone had just told her her entire life had never happened. That she had dreamed it. Like she had really been in a coma all this time, a vegetable on a respirator. She had contributed nothing. She had done nothing except breathe and ingest.

Nora said, “Why don’t you just snap my spinal cord while you’re at it?”

Poppy actually laughed. “Okay, I’ll give you that. You were funny sometimes.”

“Thank God I was something.”

“I get frustrated with you because you won’t see things. I want you to be a whole person.”

Nora said, “Look at you, Poppy. Are you a whole person? All this God and Jesus crap. That’s your identity? At least I don’t run and hide behind mysticism and dogma.”

“It’s the opposite of that. I have come out of hiding. I used to hide behind sin.”

“Please.”

“You don’t understand where I’ve been, Nora. You don’t know what I have to apologize for.”

“You stood for something once. You hated your father, you hated New Orleans, you were going to be an artist, you were
going to reinvent yourself. And what did you do? You came back here and started over from scratch. You don’t even paint.”

“Painting is an act of vanity.”

“That’s crazy.”

“I have committed a mortal sin!” Poppy said, loud enough to make the man look away from the golf game. “And I have to atone for it. That is what I am doing. It’s a lifelong process.”

“What sin, Poppy?”

Poppy’s face had turned red now, and a strand of hair had fallen away from its perfect configuration, and that single dark strand drifting over one eye made her look suddenly loose and crazy. She said, “My father . . . my father . . .” And then she said, “Leo . . .”

Nora looked up at her, afraid that her face had suddenly flushed, too, and that her guilt was surrounding her like an aura.

You did nothing,
she reminded herself.
You kissed a man, that’s all.

“What sin?” Nora asked again.

“My father’s dead,” she said, “and Leo has made his peace, but I am the only one left. I have to finish the job.”

“What job?”

Poppy began to cry. She grabbed some napkins and held them against her eyes for a long time, and when she took them away, there were mascara stains under her eyes. Nora leaned across the table and wiped them away.

“I’m sorry,” Poppy said. “I didn’t mean to attack you. It’s all so much to bear.”

“We’ll get through it,” Nora said, with no evidence at all to support her belief, except that she had gotten through everything else in her life, and she did not feel diminished.

♦♦♦

When they got back to the criminal courts building, Simone
was standing in the lobby with Margaret. They were chatting as if they were old friends, holding Styrofoam cups of coffee and laughing. The lobby was full of heavyset black women and police officers and white girls who looked young enough to still be in school. Nora and Poppy caught a few stares as they walked through. Nora wasn’t sure what it was about them that made them stand out. Maybe it was how uncomfortable they looked, how obvious it was that they did not belong here.