Ghost of a Flea (18 page)

IN MY MEMORY she’s always there at the edge of things, sipping half cups of coffee, shuffling about in slippers: a small, ill-defined woman, face closed like a fist about—what? Pain? Her disaffection and disappointment with life, I suppose. Only in photographs, old photographs, did I ever see her smile. I don’t know what made her go on. She had no passions that I know of. There was nothing she loved, nothing was ever as it should be, nothing was good enough. As years went on she faded ever further from life, her days held together by meager threads of routine. I recognize so much of her in myself, so much of myself in her.

“SELF-DEFENSE.”

“What?”

“How I learned to cook. When I was a kid, we ate all this wonderful stuff, what people started calling soul food in the Sixties, corn bread, greens, pig tails, black-eyed peas, grits, salt meat. My parents were depression people, country folk. But then as urbanization kicked in full force, as the country grew more prosperous and all those wonderful progressive products hit the stores, little by little that wonderful food stopped showing up on the table. Canned peas and ground meat now. Biscuits out of cardboard tubes. You wouldn’t think they could, but things got even worse when my mother went to work—she’d waited till I was in junior high. She was getting sicker by then, too, steadily falling away from the world. Food had never mattered to her. Now she’d bring home this stuff from the grocery store where she worked, TV dinners, mixes, prepackaged foods of all sorts, and that’s what would show up on the table. When she did cook, she fried—a true Southerner. Or laid things out in a pressure cooker and turned them into something unrecognizable to sight or taste.”

Mrs. Molino’s hand, putting down her cup, continued across the table to my own. Nothing sexual in this for all her attractiveness, despite the physicality vibrating the very air around her. Simple human warmth, rather. She was one of those to whom connections came easy.

“I spent a lot of time later on, after I left home, reading cookbooks, just trying to puzzle my way through the basics. Wore a groove in kitchen tiles going back and forth from cookbooks to counter or stove.”

Since we’d missed the reservation at Commander’s, at my suggestion we’d gone instead to Jessie’s, a neighborhood bar and grill of the sort that abounds here and almost nowhere else. There was a huge, wraparound old bar and only five or six small tables in the back for food service, but far more people came here to eat than to drink. The door rarely closed all the way: one customer caught it coming in as another, toting sacks, went out. Weekends, people lined up two or three deep at the bar having a Jax, bourbon or rum and coke as they waited. Jessie was a twig-thin albino with knobby joints, six-foot-four and 120 pounds tops, hair clipped short and so colorless it disappeared under lights, maroon eyes. His catfish po-boys, dressed with shredded lettuce, homemade pickle and his own remoulade, were the stuff of legend. I’d seen children in high chairs being fed pinches of these sandwiches by their parents. They’d probably grow up, move to Texas or Iowa, and need to be weaned. Decompressed, like deep-sea divers.

The coffee was almost as good. This, in a city that takes its coffee seriously. Local legend had it that Jessie added a spoonful of graveyard dirt to each pot. Things like that made you consider how essentially pagan New Orleans could be. Citizens here still keep track of solstices, favor Halloween and All Saints’ Day over Christmas.

“You and Deborah’ve been together awhile.”

I nodded.

“Is this it, do you think?”

“I suspect so. She’s never been one to make arbitrary or tentative moves.”

“Then I’m sorry, Lewis.”

I was about to say more when Don stepped through the doorway, glanced around, and walked towards us, followed in short order by Rick Garces.

“I’m going to assume you’re looking for me, and didn’t just stop by for a catfish fix.”

“Nah. Roast beef’s better, anyway.”

“So how’d you find me?”

“You mentioned you were meeting with Dr. Guidry—”

I was fairly certain I hadn’t, but let it pass.

“—so I swung by. Mrs. Molino here—”

“Catherine: Don Walsh, Rick Garces. Both old friends.”

“—left her destination with the housekeeper, in case she was needed.”

“Good to see you, Rick.” We shook hands. “Been some time. Why do I remember you as smaller?”

“Probably because I was. And it’s all your fault. You took me to that Cuban restaurant the first time, now I can’t stay out of there. José has a Cuban coffee working, sandwich soaking up grease on the grill, before I’m through the door. Then afterwards the damn fool brings me flan on the house. And I’m damn fool enough to eat it.”

As we spoke, Catherine had discreetly gone off and borrowed chairs for them both from other tables. Embarrassed, as much from not noticing as from her ministry, they sat.

“And what does Eugene think of that?” I asked. Eugene had enlarged, cropped and framed my favorite photo of LaVerne, a snapshot Rick took just before she died, when she’d stuck her head in his door at the Foucher’s Women Shelter where they both worked to ask Rick about a client.

“More of you to love, is what he says.”

“Good man.”

“You bet he is.”

I went back to the window behind the bar to tell Jessie we needed four coffees when he had the chance. Steam from the grill wreathed his face. “Ever think about getting some help in here?”

“You volunteering?”

“I could get the coffees.”

“You do that. And while you’re at it, see who else needs a refill. Pot must be scraping bottom ’long about now too, so maybe you could pour in some water, drop in a filter. Then fill the sucker up—to the top—with French Market.”

“Sure, just tell me where you keep the dirt.”

“Come again?”

“Forget it.”

I did what he asked, pulled a battered ancient Coke tray out from under the counter and used it to carry four cups of fresh coffee back to our table. Santa with a squat bottle tilted into his beard, sixty dollars or more at any flea market. Catherine, Don and Rick were in spirited conversation.

“You can set up systems to provide basic needs. Service, employment, housing. No problem there. But what do you do about incentive? Much as we’d like it to, Maslow’s hierarchy doesn’t just kick in like an afterburner.”

“Same dilemma as at the heart of socialist and communist forms of government.”

“Right.”  

“Whereas capitalism tends inevitably to monopolies and centralization of wealth,” Don said.

I stared at him.

He shrugged. “Lots of spare time these days. I’ve been reading some.”

“Because motivation has to come from within,” Catherine said.

“Does it? There’s no greater motivator, for some, than wealth accumulation. Status. Both of those are external counters. Meanwhile, what seems an evergrowing percentage of our population
has
no motivation.”

I sat listening, watching the steady exchange of customers through the door. When finally the tiniest hairline of a break opened in the conversation, I said, “God I hope the bell rings soon.”

“Anyone know who this man’s with?” Rick asked.

“So what are you guys doing here?”

Don’s eyes met mine. Again I thought: lands and grooves of my own life, my own years, on someone else’s face. “Rick and I were having lunch last week—”

“At Casa Verde.”

“Right.”

“Sandwich, coffee.”

“Three coffees, maybe four.”

“Four coffees?”

“Hey. Small cups.”

“And flan,” Rick said.

“Of course.”

“He wanted to know how you and Alouette were doing, how the baby was. Somewhere along the way—”

“Third napkin, as I recall.”

“
Good
grease.”

“Absolutely.”

“—I mentioned the letters she’s been getting.”

“He also mentioned the unexpected contact you’d had with Alouette’s father. I went home and the more I thought about that, the odder it seemed to me. What did he want?”

“To find someone, he said.”

“But then he didn’t want that anymore. And why you? With his means, he could hire a battery of folks to do a search.”

“Even people who actually find who they’re looking for,” Don put in.

“Very funny. I assumed it was his roundabout way of trying to make contact with Alouette.”

“Maybe …”

Jessie materialized beside the table, carrying a platter. Enough food on there to feed everyone in the Desire projects.

“We’ve gone to finger-food heaven,” Catherine said.

“Anyone works here gets fed free. Gator tails,” pointing. “Catfish. Meatballs in my own marinara. Pickles—I make them, too. Slices of chicken breast marinated in barbeque sauce and grilled.”

“Good, Jessie,” I said. “This makes an awful lot of sense. I put in six minutes, tops, helping out, and that mainly because we need coffee, so you spend twice that putting this platter together.”

He shrugged and went back to his kitchen, only place he ever felt right.

“Have to admit it’s one hell of a coincidence,” Garces went on. “Dickensian. But life’s never story-shaped. I kept thinking: Whatever’s being said here, it’s not what’s being said.”

There were, along with gator tails, catfish, meatballs, chicken and sliced vegetables, small pots of ranch dressing, mustard with hot peppers chopped into it, a dish of fresh cilantro and mint. We all tucked in. Don went off towards the kitchen to confer with Jessie, then to the bar, and brought back beers.

“Now
you
work here,” I said, “and he’s gonna bring more.”

“No end to it.”  

“We’ll never get out of here.”

“I go home and start poking about, using this loose network that’s developed over the years.”

“One you used to find Alouette.”

“The same. Social workers like myself, psychiatric nurses, aides, people from support groups, family members, expatients. Not too many of those at first. Lots more these past few years. Whole thing’s fishing, drop in tackle and flies, hope for strikes. Nothing jumps right out, maybe for a while, maybe never. But that’s what I do.

“Then one night I can’t get to sleep, finally give up on fighting the bedclothes—it’s so bad that ditties from
Carmen
and old Randy Newman songs are running loose in my head, rattling around in there like marbles. And the bedclothes are definitely winning, they’ve pinned me eight times out of ten. So after an hour of watching bad movies on TV, women warriors whose acting consists of contorting their mouths, male leads so stupid you wonder how they ever managed to find the dryer and hair spray, I settled down in front of the computer and tossed out a few new lines. Most of them just went spinning on out and didn’t catch anywhere, as usual. But one or two snagged, got responses that brought up new queries, suggested some direction or flight path I hadn’t thought of before. I started feeling my way carefully, like crossing a muddy field on stepping-stones. Around four that morning I found myself talking to a bus driver who’d spent nineteen months in a clinic up near Fort Worth. Bus driver now, but back before the breakdown he’d been a pilot. Not only was his insurance good but his family had money, so he wound up there, one of those got-it-covered private asylums, instead of across the river at Mandeville.

“His name’s Tony Sinclair. Once he started getting better, he asked if there was anything he could do to help out. Always been a hard worker and couldn’t stand the inactivity anymore, feeling so useless, he told me. So he started out doing this and that, not much of anything at all at first, really. Reading to other patients, walking with them out on the grounds, helping them get dressed or write letters home, that kind of thing. But gradually he took on more and more. Before long he’d worked his way into the back wards and was helping take care of the really sick ones. Got to know some of them pretty well, that last year.”

A face appeared in the window beside us, in the scant space left at one edge of the ancient lettering, J E S S E ’S, above placards pitching gospel shows and revivals. The man’s breath fogged the glass, which partially cleared then fogged again with another breath and another, so that, frost building by increments, bit by bit his face disappeared. He wore three or four shirts, a hunter’s cap with earflaps, shiny wool trousers held up by suspenders, one side of which had been replaced by hemp twine.

“Sinclair’s the kind of guy you instinctively trust and want to talk to. He wasn’t, no way I’d be up hitting keys back and forth to him at four or five in the morning.”

“People like that make good investigators,” Don said.

“They make great social workers and therapists, too. Only problem is, they tend to burn out…. Anyhow, some of these guys on back wards started talking to him, guys who hadn’t said anything to anyone, some of them, for years. Not that there’s any kind of dialogue or conversation going on, understand. But things would just jump out there from time to time.

“Early one morning Sinclair’s attending this young man, he’s in his thirties, name given as Danny Eskew. White skin, straight dark hair, negroid features. According to records he’s not only mentally ill—schizophrenia—but also severely retarded. Anoxic insult, they figured. Sinclair’s not so sure. He’s noticed Eskew’s eyes following him around the room, wondering who he is maybe, what he’s doing here. Blinds are open, Sinclair’s shaving him, and just as he lifts the razor, a shaft of sunlight catches on it, gets thrown, blindingly, up onto the wall.

“‘Sharp,’ Eskew blurts out as his eyes find it.

“‘Razor’s too sharp?’ Maybe he was hurting him.

“‘Light.’

“He waited, but that was it. Week or so later, he was reading to this guy,
The Count of Monte Cristo
, only thing he could find in the hospital library that looked interesting, when Eskew spoke up again.

“‘No … story,’ he said.

“‘What do you mean?’ Then: ‘Danny?’

“A long time went by, Sinclair said, before Eskew said anymore. Then he said: ‘Me.’

 “Hackles rose when I heard that. Hair standing up on my neck, what the Russians call chicken skin. Sinclair’d had much the same response, which is why he passed it along to me. That was it, though: the last thing he ever heard from Danny Eskew. ‘Maybe I’m reading too much into it. Maybe I’ve been doing that all along,’ he said.

“I didn’t think so. But it was definitely time for me to surface, flip things over to official sites. So I logged on and started raking records for psychiatric facilities and private clinics in or around Fort Worth. Dredged up lots of nothing at first—not that I expected much else. I called in to work to let them know I’d be late, might not even make it at all, and kept going.”