Night Swimming (8 page)

Why shouldn’t she be happy? Blossom was so loved, Charlotte could not think of anyone luckier.

She sat there for two hours until someone finally came over and put her arms around her.

“It must be hard,” this total stranger said, trying to comfort Charlotte.

“Oh, it is,” Charlotte said, with unfeigned sincerity.

“Did you know her long?” the woman asked.

“All my life. And you?”

“Only recently, but I sure did like her. Wasn’t a soul that didn’t.”

“Well,” Charlotte said, getting up to leave, “it’s nice to know at the end of her life she had the one thing that no one and nothing can take away. Not even death. She had love, and I envy that.” She looked one last time at Blossom, patted the stranger on the shoulder, and walked back out into life.

CHAPTER 12

N
EW
O
RLEANS IN
O
CTOBER
—Charlotte had never seen anything like it. It was a Tilt-A-Whirl of wonder and whiskey, smoke and seduction, of food, music, saints, sex, devils, and desires. China masks shrouded in hard colors peered out from everywhere; hundreds of porcelain heads culminating in distorted jester hats, an ironic contrast to the silver tear painted on their cold white cheeks. Above their large, clownish collars, sewn from sequins or lace or gold taffeta, loomed a sad, blank stare. It was a simple face with small lips and dead eyes, looking forever inward and outward at nothing at all. It chilled Charlotte. There was something oddly familiar in its lifeless gaze. How was it that glass and fabric and paint could conjure up such a feeling of isolation in her?

“Do you want to buy one, my dear?” the clerk inquired. “They’re very popular.” The clerk looked exactly like one of her dolls, with tight red lips and blank eyes. She lifted the figure up and shook it so that Charlotte could hear the tiny gold bell ring on the top of its hat.

“No,” Charlotte said, “no, thank you,” and she walked on as if she were turning her back on an accident.

Voodoo tours, tarot readings, and visits to Marie Laveau’s grave were posted everywhere. It was as if she had just entered the underworld. Jugglers, street clowns, and mimes insinuated themselves on every corner. Musicians, ladies of the night, and their patrons were just rolling home at nine in the morning. And yet, in spite of its dark underbelly and questionable gods, it was wondrous and bewitching to Charlotte.

The houses resembled cakes trimmed with sugary white icing, while intricate iron braiding encircled the porches like charm bracelets and wedding ribbons. Balcony apartments boasted so many flowers, they looked as if they were defying gravity: lingering in midair, not quite falling down, not quite staying up.

Charlotte decided to stay at the Cornstalk Hotel on Royal Street. A cast-iron fence, known as the cornstalk fence, enclosed the property, and morning glories climbed over it like a chain stitch.

She entered and rang the silver bell on the welcome desk. A middle-aged man came out from the back.

“Do you by chance have any rooms available?” Charlotte inquired.

The man looked her over but avoided eye contact, as though the less he looked into her eyes, the less he knew about her. And that was just fine with Charlotte.

“Yup, got the back room available. It’s very large.”

Large? Was that a slight? Jesus, Charlotte, let it go. “I’ll take it.”

He simply handed Charlotte the key and pointed the way. “Last room on your left.”

She stayed in New Orleans for two weeks, gorging herself on Creole and pastry, po’boys and oysters, blackened catfish, and powdered beignets. She’d wander into seedy establishments to enjoy unknown drinks that had their own swampy aftertastes and left her feeling sluggish and happy and forgetful that she was dying.

Mrs. Sippi was a bar on Tulane Avenue. In Charlotte’s brief visit she took to going there on a regular basis. She’d never been a “regular” anywhere before, let alone at a bar, but she liked the idea of going to a place where they recognized her, where they said, “Good to see you.” Maybe it was because the bartender spoke to everyone equally: the millionaire with his spats and Panama hat, the call girl with the extreme cleavage, the dwarf with his bad jokes. And then, of course, there was Charlotte herself. She wore a proper paisley dress with flats and took up nearly two stools. But he talked to her, too.

One night Charlotte dared to exceed her personal limit. Everything that had been a rule in Gorham, New Hampshire, was broken here in New Orleans. She allowed herself to laugh too loud, live too large, and drink too much. She had chosen to drink mint juleps that night, and they tasted so damn good, she had another, and another.

“Henri, why do you call your bar Mrs. Sippi when you’re in Louisiana?”

“’Cause dats wheres I’m from, darlin’.”

Charlotte paused. “You happy, Henri?”

“Happy enough.”

“What makes you happy?”

“I gots my wife, my chillun, my gran’babies. I gots weekends off, a good fishin’ hole, a friend or two.”

“Is that enough?”

“Plenty for me.”

“What if someone told you you were dying? What would you do then?”

“Then? Well, den I guess I’d take stock.”

“How?”

“I come to ’preciate what I gots more den I do.”

That’s reasonable,
Charlotte thought. “Anything else?” she asked.

“Well, I guess I’d smoke my ganja a little mo den I do.” Henri laughed.

“Ganja?”

“Yeah, you knows... marijuana.”

“Oh,” Charlotte said. She’d never smoked marijuana before.

“You wouldn’t do anything extravagant? Maybe visit a place you’d never been? Buy something expensive?”

“Well, darlin’, seein’ as I don’t have so much money, I think I’d have to content myself with lovin’ up my wife a little mo den usual, spendin’ mo time wit doze gran’babies of mine, an’ sittin’ unda dat big ol’ oak tree I gots an’ enjoyin’ dat sweet, happy ganja of mine.”

“But what if you did have money, Henri? Say two million dollars. Then what would you do?”

The old black man put an ice cube to his forehead. It was hot in the bar. Only a single fan turned around, and reluctantly at that.

“Well, den, pretty lady, after I buy my wife da lovliest dress dis side of da Mississippi, I’d go and sit under dat oak tree wit all my friends and spread da joy an’ good feelin’ around we all gets from dat ganja.”

“That’s all?”

“Actually,” he said, “dere is one mo thing I been wantin’. A brand-new fishin’ pole. I just seen one da other day down at Tyrone’s Fish an’ Bait Shop, an’ it’s a beauty. I’d get dat rod fo sure, Charlotte, an’ go fishin’ dat afternoon.”

“That’s what would make you happy?”

“As I sees it, life is hard, sweet Charlotte. But if you gots dat special thing dat makes you happy, den you gots youself everythin’.”

“Never thought about it that way, Henri, but you’re right about one thing—life is hard. Why does it have to be so damn hard?”

“Da Lord do dat for a reason. If’n it come too easy, den ya don’t know what you gots. You takes it for granted. You might have you-self a diamond, but if’n you comes by it just by luck, how you gonna know its value? No, I thinks da good things gots to come to ya a little harda den dat. Dats da part dat gives ’em dere significants. It’s all about da honey, Charlotte; it’s all about gettin’ dat honey out of da rock.”

“So, Henri, do you think that sadness is good, too?”

“Hell, yes. A little sadness is good for everyone. It’s da only way ya gets to happiness. If you happy all da time, you gots nuttin’ to compare it wit. No, sorrow is a gift, Charlotte. You takes it, you tip your hat to it, an’ den ya moves on. But ya gots to acknowledge it or else it will have ya fo breakfast. Give sadness its due and move on.”

Honey from a rock.
That’s what he said. That’s what she’d remember.

He poured Charlotte another drink and one for himself as well.

“Here’s to you, little lady, wherever life’s fixin’ to take ya.” He lifted his glass. “Gots to click, Charlotte; clickin’ keeps the devil away.” So with both glasses held high, they clicked. He leaned toward her and whispered, “Remember, pain is just the messenger dat happiness is comin’, Miss Charlotte. So beez happy.” He raised his glass again. “One fo da sorrow an’ two fo da road.” And they clicked again. “You can never click too much!” he exclaimed, then threw his bourbon back in one shot and smiled. Charlotte lifted her glass and followed with a toast of her own. “Here’s to getting that honey out of the rock, Henri.” And then she drank her bourbon down as if she were drinking water from a tap, and nearly choked to death.

Henri made sense. She was looking at a happy person, a person who had everything. All he needed was the time to enjoy it. And he would. Charlotte slipped Henri’s tip next to her empty glass. She would be well out of the bar when he cleared it. Five thousand dollars lay folded unassumingly in a napkin. Five thousand dollars because Charlotte believed that sometimes good things
could
just come someone’s way. At least that’s what she wanted to believe: that once in a while, maybe life didn’t have to be that hard. And that was still okay with the Lord, and if not the Lord then at least with Charlotte. She had scrawled something on the napkin just before leaving the bar. Moments later Henri discovered the note hiding all that honey:
Here’s a little something toward that fishing pole.

CHAPTER 13

A
ND SO
C
HARLOTTE CONTINUED
to enjoy New Orleans. She had her tarot cards read, and they promised her a long and healthy life, which she knew, of course, was not true. And when she told the old man that he must be wrong, that she’d had a checkup, he hushed her, indignantly saying that the cards don’t lie and she should get another checkup.

She set her big hips free and rocked to the rhythms of zydeco. She rode a paddleboat up and down the Mississippi, letting the Louisiana sun warm her northern blood. She glutted herself with crawfish until nothing was left but the empty shells of an insatiable hunger.

There was no doubt about it. Charlotte had fallen for the Big Easy and might even have stayed, but the world was waiting. California was waiting. Tom Selleck was waiting. Tony Bennett was waiting. Blossom might be on her way to heaven, but Charlotte was on her way to Hollywood.

Charlotte felt free, going down the highway, her fat cheeks pulling back like a bulldog’s in the wind. She felt inordinately good for someone who was dying.
Attitude,
she thought to herself,
it’s all about attitude.

Who cared if she was fat? She felt good. Hell, Jackie Gleason never worried about it. And wasn’t it Tom Hanks who once fessed up that he thought he had a big ass and fat thighs.
See, nobody’s perfect. The thing is to feel good, and I do. I’m a quarter of the way to Hollywood. So there, MaryAnn.

Her thick, dark ponytail flew back, and facts floated in and out of her head as she wound her way to her final stop.

She and MaryAnn had studied game shows religiously. No one was better at
Jeopardy
or
Wheel of Fortune
than they were. No one could guess as accurately the cost of a dinette set or a Maytag washer or an RV equipped with all the modern conveniences on
The Price Is Right.
And
Hollywood Squares
? Forget it. Both MaryAnn and Charlotte were unstoppable. This, after all, was how they were going to make their first fortunes, as game-show contestants.

“Charlotte, it’s your turn.”

“Famous Hollywood insults for four hundred, Alex.”

“Ding, ding, ding. Charlotte, it’s the Daily Double. Are you ready for this?” “Yes, Alex.” “How much are you willing to wager?” “Everything, Alex. Thirty thousand dollars.” “Did you hear that? Thirty thousand dollars. Okay, Charlotte...

Who said, ‘Not since Attila the Hun swept across Europe, leaving five hundred years of total blackness, has there been a man like Lee Marvin’?”

“Who is Josh Logan? He directed Lee Marvin in
Paint Your Wagon
in 1969.”

“You are right. And you walk away a very rich lady once again.”

Charlotte imagined the prizes she’d win as she sped down the highway toward her new life. But her fantasies ended abruptly with the realization that she couldn’t risk being recognized on TV now. To her surprise, she wasn’t really disappointed. Come to think of it, she didn’t even want to watch game shows anymore. Or soaps. Just overhearing the TV from another room drained her and made her feel lonely, like a light left on in the afternoon. There were just some things, she decided, she would never do again.

She drove as night settled over the lifeless landscape until she eventually found herself at the King of Hearts Motel. It looked like an oasis blinking on the distant right. It struck Charlotte as somewhat odd that in the middle of a red-dirt road, beneath a flat, starless sky, stood this tacky tribute to neon. There was a naked woman curled up inside a martini glass, her legs wrapped around a flashing cherry. And lastly, there was the king of hearts himself, rocking back and forth in a light southern wind. Except for one other car, Charlotte seemed to be the only guest.

“Got a room?” she asked. A middle-aged man with teeth like a broken fence, and tattoos climbing out of his blue collar, studied his log. Every room was empty. What the hell was there to figure out? Yet he studied his book as if he were stuck on a word in a crossword puzzle.

“We got room thirteen available,” he finally said as if he remembered that Charlotte was still standing there waiting for an answer.

“Thirteen? There’s no twelve or eleven or nine or six ... just thirteen?”

“What’s wrong with thirteen?”

“Well, it’s not the luckiest number in the world, is it? I mean, it doesn’t look like anyone else is here.... I’d think you could give me another room.”

“Superstitious?” the manager asked, scanning his book again with a grin that was so tightly locked it was as if a key had been turned one too many times and thrown away. He waited a minute or two before looking up.