Out of the Easy (34 page)

“You’ll work it off. Every dime of it. Thankfully, you’re not an ingrate like your mother, even if you don’t wear the watch I gave you.”

I started to lie about the watch. That’s how easy the lies had become. But I stopped myself. I had to tell Willie about her watch and also Forrest Hearne’s watch. She stood next to the bed, still reading the headlines.

“I don’t wear the watch, Willie, because Mother and Cincinnati stole it.”

Willie slowly looked at me over the paper.

I nodded. “They broke into my room and stole the watch and my pistol. And . . . I hadn’t told you about this, but Cokie gave me two thousand dollars out of his gambling winnings so I could go to college. They took that too.”

I wished I hadn’t told her, that I could take it all back. Livid was an understatement. The look on her face defied description. Expressions of fury and pain blazed across her face simultaneously. Her eyes blinked rapidly.

“Willie?”

She reached out for the bed to steady herself and slid down, knocking a vase off the bedside table on the way. Her knees hit the floor.

“Willie!” I ran to grab her. Her eyes were round and protruding, and a stuttering sound came from her windpipe. She reached up and grabbed my shoulder. I screamed for Sadie.

“I’m going to call Dr. Sully. Okay, Willie?”

She motioned to the shuttered window. I understood.

“I won’t let the cop in here, Willie. I promise.” I screamed again for Sadie, this time louder. She came running and threw her hands to her face when she saw Willie.

“I don’t know what happened. She just fell over. Let’s lift her up onto the bed. Hurry, Sadie, I have to call Dr. Sully.”

Willie’s body was too heavy. We couldn’t lift her by ourselves. Evangeline peered around the bedroom door.

“Evangeline, help us!” I shrieked. She shook her head and backed away in fear.

I wanted to beat her. “You selfish witch. Get over here and help us, or I swear I will shoot you myself. Now!”

Evangeline obeyed. She took Willie’s feet, and together the three of us were able to lift her onto the bed.

“Prop her head up,” I told Sadie. “She’s barely breathing.” I ran to the hall phone. Sweety was on the landing. Evangeline pushed by her, ran up the stairs, and slammed her door.

“Jo, what is it?” asked Sweety.

“It’s Willie. I’m calling Dr. Sully. Lock all the doors. There’s a cop outside in a black car.”

I sat with Willie, propped up between the pillows. She was sweating and got sick over the side of the bed.

“The vultures will come. Don’t let them in,” she wheezed.

“Stop it, Willie. You’re going to be okay. Do you hear me?”

“Don’t let them in. Never let them in,” she breathed.

Willie was indestructible, steel tough. Seeing her like this terrified me.

She had helped me, protected me for so much of my life, and I was useless, unable to do anything for her. I held her in my arms. Her tremors calmed. She laid her head on my chest. I hummed “Buttons and Bows” and stroked her hair. The strewn newspapers on the floor and the untouched coffee tray at the foot of her bed stared at me, commanding me to do something more.

Willie gripped my hand. “Salted peanuts,” she whispered.

Dr. Sully finally arrived and ran into the room. I looked up, tears streaming down my face.

It was too late.

FIFTY-FIVE

Cokie sat in the parlor, his face buried in his cap. His sobs pulled with a pain so deep and sorrowful it scared me. Sadie knelt at his feet with her hand on his knees. He looked up as I left Willie’s room with Dr. Sully. His body quaked with sadness as he spoke.

“Is she really gone, Jo?”

I nodded. “Do you want to see her?”

“No,” he protested through his tears. “I don’t want to see no dead body. Willie ain’t in there. She put her walkin’ shoes on. She gone to see the Lord.”

“Perhaps we can step into the kitchen,” said Dr. Sully. “There are arrangements that have to be made.”

We gathered in the kitchen, everyone except Evangeline. She wouldn’t speak to anyone or open her door. Dora was inconsolable, wailing facedown on the kitchen table while Sweety rubbed her back.

“Word’s gonna get out,” said Sweety. “I think it’s best we be organized. Willie would want that.”

“Yes, she would,” said Dr. Sully, whose face registered complete shock. “Jo, I assume you have Willie’s papers?”

“Papers? No, she never mentioned anything,” I said.

“Well, I know she has an attorney,” said Dr. Sully. “I’ll check with him. In the meantime, you’d best write a death notice and make funeral arrangements.”

Dora sat up, her makeup from the night prior melted across her wet face. “It has to be somethin’ special. Willie Woodley’s gotta go out in style. She’d want that. If I have to, I’ll turn tricks in the street to pay for it.” She sobbed, pulling tissue after tissue out of her bosom.

“Now, Dora, Willie wouldn’t want you in the street,” reprimanded Cokie.

“Willie always said the Laudumiey funeral home was nice. We should have it there,” said Sweety.

I had to state the obvious. “Willie would not want people coming to the house after the funeral,” I said quietly. Everyone was in agreement.

“Let’s have a party after the funeral, a real swank affair,” said Dora. “The fellas at Galatoire’s loved Willie. And the johns can just say that they’re eating at Galatoire’s. Oh, Willie loved their shrimp rémoulade.” This small remembrance sent Dora back into a fit of sobs.

Dora was right. Willie was involved with so many people. Shopkeepers, restaurant owners, liquor suppliers, musicians, accountants, businessmen, and government officials. There was a vast array of people who would want to pay their respects but couldn’t be openly associated with Willie’s house. An event at a local restaurant would celebrate Willie as a member of the community, not just a brothel madam.

“I can’t tell you what a very sad day this is for me,” said Dr. Sully, his voice breaking up. “I’ve known Willie since we were children. The Quarter won’t be the same without her.” He cleared his throat, trying to shake off the emotion. “It sounds like we’ve got a plan. Josie, you’ll be responsible for coordinating?”

“Me?” I said. “Why me?”

“Oh, sugar, you know it’s what Willie would want,” said Dora. “And y’all, I am officially in mournin’.”

“I’ll help you, Josie girl.” Cokie sniffed. “Best I can, that is.” Sadie nodded. Sweety said she would arrange for Walter Sutherland to pay for the event at Galatoire’s.

• • • 

Cokie got a black wreath for the door. Word flew through the Quarter. Sadie stood at the front door, Sweety at the side. Flowers began arriving. Sal brought food from the restaurant.

I sat next to Willie’s bed, looking at her, hands folded across her chest. The room felt hot and airless, darkly thick. We were alone.

It was my fault. I looked at Willie’s empty eyes and knew that my selfishness had made her ill. I had seen her swollen hands and ankles, noticed her fatigue, but I was too busy with my own plans to help her. Or maybe it was a desire to prove her wrong. She always warned me, predicted exactly how things would unfold, but every time life lied to me, I tried to rationalize the situation, hanging off some upside-down promise, like Forrest Hearne.

I told Willie all about Mr. Hearne, how he made me feel, and why I held on to his watch. “So I buried it out at Shady Grove,” I told her. “I know he’s not my father, Willie, but why can’t I dream that he is? Aren’t I good enough to believe that the other half of me is something wonderful, that I could be David Copperfield? If the thought that I’m part of something respectable gives me hope, why can’t I hold on to that? He assumed I was in college, Willie. A fancy, smart man like that assumed I was in college, and you know what? It made me want to live up to the vision he had of me. He gave me hope. The dream is still alive in the watch.”

I wanted her to swear at me, call me an idiot, something. But I didn’t have to command her to speak. I could hear her voice, knew exactly what she would say and how she would say it.

“Yes, Willie, but what sort of cruel twist of fate is it that the man I dream to be my father is killed by my mother? It’s almost Shakespearean.”

The undertaker arrived. He seemed disturbed by my casual conversation with Willie’s corpse.

“I know, Willie. I know.” I turned to the undertaker. “She wants us to put the black kimono on her instead. And fresh lipstick.” Sadie and I made sure everything was in the safe. All valuables were put in Willie’s room, and the door was locked.

“I’m not worried about the others,” I told Sadie. “Just Evangeline. She seems outside herself right now.” Sadie nodded.

I walked down Conti toward Royal, not sure how my feet were even moving. My life was encased in a box and someone had picked it up, shaken it violently, and thrown it back down. Everything was in pieces, displaced, and would never fit back together. I wouldn’t make the early morning walk to Willie’s each day, push through her door with her tray of coffee, explain what I’d discovered in the rooms during my cleaning. We’d never go to Shady Grove together, never shoot cans off the fence or laugh about Ray and Frieda driving from their demons at night. I’d never hear her musky voice, full of tar and gasoline, reprimanding me for being too early or too late. Willie was gone, and the gaping hole left behind was so big I felt sure I would drown in it.

By the time I approached the bookshop, I was sobbing. My face was swollen, awash with tears. The light from the streetlamp glowed, revealing Jesse sitting with his back against the door of the shop, one knee pulled up to his chest. I reached the door. He said nothing, just pulled me down into his lap and wrapped his arms around me.

FIFTY-SIX

Cokie picked me up in his cab for the funeral.

“Every time I think I’m done cried out, it comes at me all again,” said Cokie. “No one ever showed me respect like Willie, ’cept you and my momma. And it scares me, Jo. Willie was stronger than a tin roof, and if she go that easily, what’s that mean for the rest of us? I can’t put my head around it. One day she here, and we’re worried about Mr. Charlie cuttin’ himself with scissors, some rich man from Tennessee dyin’ in the Quarter, worried ’bout your momma and that no-good Cincinnati. Next it’s all done. Gone quiet. What we all gonna do without Willie? Never gonna be the same.” Cokie reached up and wiped his eyes. “Call this place ‘The Big Easy,’ shoot, ain’t nothin’ easy about it.”

The funeral turnout was enormous. Bankers sat next to bootleggers. Cops conversed with prostitutes. Frankie, Cornbread, Sal, Elmo, Randolph, and Sonny all contributed to the patchwork that created the quilt of Willie’s funeral. Walter Sutherland wore an ill-fitting gabardine suit covered in dandruff. Evangeline wore her hair in two braids with big black bows and an inappropriately short skirt. Jesse watched me from across the room, smiling whenever our eyes met. I had never seen him in a suit. He looked gorgeous.

Willie wanted to be cremated, but Dora insisted she first be laid out in a black coffin lined with red satin, to match Mariah. The funeral director assured us it was the Cadillac of coffins. Dora, and her bazooms, convinced him to rent it to us for the day. The sprays of flowers were enormous, including one from Carlos Marcello. Sweety sang an a cappella version of “Amazing Grace” that broke us all to pieces. Cokie wept openly and without shame, displaying the same love and respect that Willie had always shown him.

The funeral director read some sterile passages that didn’t resonate to Willie. He called her Miss Woodley, which made everyone bristle. Cokie started shaking his head.

“Stop.” Dora stood up and marched to the front of the funeral parlor in her forest green dress, matching glove hoisted in the air.

“Y’all, the Lord has put something on my heart, and I have to speak. First, I once stole twenty dollars from Willie and hid it in my toilet. There, I sinned against Willie that one time, and I had to cleanse myself of that. Now, Willie would not have the readin’ of these depressin’ psalms or passages. There was no ‘Miss Woodley.’ There was Willie. Willie was about life, and she grabbed it by the balls. Y’all know that. She loved a stiff drink, a stiff hundred, and she loved her business. And she didn’t judge nobody. She loved everyone equal—accountants, queers, musicians, she welcomed us all, said we were all idiots just the same.”