Pacific Avenue (10 page)

By the last week of February, New Orleans was getting crazy.
Mardi Gras Day was March 6 that year, and the city was filling up with
revelers. I’d seen the parades many times as a child and didn’t care about
going again. Maybe to a night parade, I’d never gotten to see one of
those—drums and flambeaux and the Quarter all lit up. But Richard couldn’t
stand crowds, and I tried not to imagine what the torches would remind him of.
It was better to pretend none of it was happening.

Living with Richard was showing me things about him
that I hadn’t expected. He had nightmares, not every night, but several times a
week. That was bad enough, but his outburst on Valentine’s Day hung on in my
mind.

It seemed to stay with him, too. He had come back to
the room late that night, long after I’d gone to bed. Next morning, neither of
us said anything about it. I didn’t know what to do. I kept pretending things
were normal, but it wasn’t easy. As the days wore on, he rarely spoke, and his
body in bed at night felt cold and different.

Dragging home on the Friday before Mardi Gras, I worried
how we were even going to get through the weekend. We couldn’t go away. Even if
we had somewhere to go, the traffic was terrible, blocked by parade routes in
every direction. Crowds swirled around all the streets now, even our secluded
corner. Eddie had asked me to work a few hours on Saturday and I’d agreed,
mostly to get out of our room.

On the downstairs hall
table was a letter for me—Sharon’s handwriting. I grabbed it as I passed by and
tore the envelope open on my way up the stairs.

Hi, Li’l Sis!

How are you doing in the Big Easy? I bet Mardi Gras is
really something if you’re right on the spot. What parades did you go to? Save
me a doubloon if you get an extra—Sam and I have been too busy to get down
there.

I’m going to make some time after Carnival, though. I miss
you. Sam and I could visit some weekend. We’ll stay at a hotel—I know you don’t
have guest space yet. Would you have time? What weekend would work for you?

Give our best to Richard. See
you soon.

Love,

Sharon

Well, hell. That was all I needed. I missed Sharon, but
I didn’t want her to see the way things were now. I wondered how long I could
put her off.

But when I opened the door to our room, Richard was
making dinner.
He looks like himself again.
I tried a smile.

He smiled back thinly, nodding toward the envelope in
my hand. “Letter?”

“From Sharon. She says they’re too busy to come down
right away, but maybe later.”

“Probably the best choice anyway—avoid the Carnival
craziness.”

Richard went back to making spaghetti. We spent the
evening reading.
I’ll hide behind Sylvia Plath and you hide behind T. S.
Eliot. The book I gave you for Christmas.

Next morning I left the room before he woke. I didn’t
have to be at the stand until late afternoon, but I wanted to be alone. Not
that “alone” was going to be easy, the Saturday before Carnival. I could hear
bands from a couple of different directions.

I walked toward Esplanade, away from the noise. It was
one of my favorite walks. I loved the Quarter, but sometimes got tired of its
hard surfaces—pavement and wrought iron and brick, the narrow, medieval feeling
that the tourists came for. Esplanade was a wide street, with big trees and a
grassy median that the locals called the “neutral ground.”

Walking toward the river, I felt the swing of my steps
apply a soothing rhythm to my jumpy thoughts. Maybe if I kept walking, I could
think of something.

Step and step again. Crack in the sidewalk, tree root.

Dogwood flowering pink and white over on the median.
Pretty.

End of Esplanade, no sidewalk left. I looked at the
face of the Old Mint, closed since forever. It didn’t tell me anything. I
turned back the way I’d come.

Dixie cup on the sidewalk. I picked it up and put it
into the next trash can.

I walked on for a while without thinking of anything.
Then the worries came back.

Stop at the corner, let the car turn in front of me.
Now I could cross.

I looked up, realizing that I’d walked farther than I intended.
The expressway was right in front of me. I turned south and sat on a bench in
the Municipal Auditorium Park, looking toward the walls of the old St. Louis
Cemeteries, where legend said the Voodoo Queen was buried.

I’d only been there a few minutes when a tall woman in
a long black dress staggered up. Still drunk from the night before—that was
Mardi Gras for you. She plopped down on my bench. Just what I needed.
But
I’ll look mean if I get up and walk off.

“Bobby’s over there,” she said.

She pointed over toward the old St. Louis cemetery.
I
don’t know who Bobby is, but if he turns up, I really will leave. Screw it. I
can’t deal with two of them.

I didn’t see anyone coming. “Bobby?” I asked.

She laughed harshly. “Don’t look for Bobby. He’d be six
feet under if he wasn’t buried aboveground. Don’t go looking for Bobby no
more.” The last word came out as a sob.

I was confused. “I thought this was a just a historic
cemetery,” I said.

“People never stop dying, you know? But if it wasn’t
this one, it was one exactly like it. What difference does it make which
cemetery, anyway? They’re all the same. Everyone in them is dead.” Her voice
was loud and angry.

I looked her over carefully.
She must have been
well-dressed last night or the night before, whenever she started drinking. She
sure is bizarre now.

A long-sleeved evening gown draped from a high turtleneck
scarf to her spike-heeled shoes. Above the scarf, and now streaked all over it,
was heavy pancake makeup. Her eyes were raccooned with mascara, and one of her
false eyelash strips was coming loose. A teased cone of black hair was
sprinkled with glitter.
Probably supposed to look like stars. Radioactive
dandruff is more like it.

Real-looking diamonds flashed from her heavy clip-back
earrings. In this neighborhood, stones like that would get a drunk woman mugged
for sure.

“Did you know we had him a jazz funeral?” she asked,
suddenly sociable. “His mama and sister nearly died of embarrassment.
They
aren’t jazz types at all. But Bobby was a
musician.
It was right.” She frowned again.
“They played ‘In the Sweet Bye and Bye’ on the way to the cemetery. I don’t see
anything sweet about rotting in a cement box.”

I had heard of jazz funerals, but I’d never seen one.
She obviously wasn’t the person to ask, not right now, anyway. “Maybe you ought
to go up to Canal Street, where it’s safer,” I suggested.

“Maybe I should.” She stood up, weaving to balance on
those stiletto heels. I wondered what I should do if she passed out on the
sidewalk.

“On the way back, they played ‘Didn’t He Ramble?’” she
said. “They most always play that at a jazz funeral. They play happy-sounding
stuff on the way back. When I asked why, they said, ‘We done all we could for
him. Couldn’t do no more.’”

She wavered for a second. “But you know what?
I
didn’t do all I could for Bobby.
I
wasn’t there at the last, when I could maybe have
stopped him. I didn’t even say anything afterwards. But what could I have done?
He
didn’t want them to know about
us, either.”

Her hand reached out to me as she started singing,
“Didn’t he ramble, didn’t he ramble?” The singing voice was a deep bass.
And
that hand is much too big for a woman’s. My God.

The voice switched back to falsetto to say, “Those guys
who play that on their saxes, if they think it’s a happy song, they must not
know the words.” Another switch to bass melody—“He rambled till the butchers
cut him down.”

He lurched toward Canal Street. It was a good thing his
back was to me. My mouth was open wide enough to catch flies. As he disappeared
around a corner, I imagined Bobby slipping from his mausoleum and through the
gates of the cemetery, following him.

I got out of there. I headed uptown, looking for
streets with a few more people, trying to shake the feeling that Bobby was
around the next corner.
I have enough trouble as it is.

I walked north on Tulane Avenue, past the Greyhound
depot, where an old black man was sitting on a camp stool on the sidewalk,
playing a Dobro and singing to nobody.

“Angel got two wings to veil my face, angel got two
wings to fly away.”

It seemed to mean something, but I wasn’t sure what. I
didn’t have any spare money to drop into the open case at his feet. I tried to
smile at him, but his white-glazed eyes told me he didn’t see.

I turned away and scrambled along Tulane Avenue, past
Charity Hospital, past the prosthetics stores and all-night coffee shops
clustered near it. Past the bail bond places around the courthouse. I wondered
if people could get bailed out of the hospital, out of illness. Maybe you could
buy a bail bond from Death.
Angel got two wings . . . . This
is nuts.
With an effort, I pulled myself
together and kept going. There were lots of pedestrians on the sidewalks of
Tulane Avenue, but I felt like the only person in the world.

Through the Civic Center, past the library, and then I
remembered I had to work at the stand that afternoon. Better head back—it was a
long walk.

The sidewalk started to get crowded, everyone heading
the same way I was. I realized I must have blundered into a parade crowd.

But I wasn’t sure where the parade was, so I didn’t
know how to get away. I kept walking, east and south toward the Quarter. A
nightmare mob of people in costumes was in my way now. I brushed against an
eight-foot-high chicken carrying a tall drink, a man wearing a G-string and a
Sioux headdress, and a Dracula.
Which are the masks—the faces they have now,
or the ones they wear the rest of the year?
I was going to be late.

Six streakers pelted past me kicking aside beer cans,
with everyone getting out of their way. I dodged a couple in blackface and
pushed through a group of laughing purple tarantulas. A passed-out Tinkerbell
lay on the sidewalk beside a pool of hot-pink vomit.
Man or woman?
I was near panic. I kept pushing past.

Distant yelling and drums told me the parade was coming
my way. I had to get across Canal Street before the floats reached me, or I’d
be held up for hours. A cop blew his whistle at me as I slipped through the
barrier and ran across Canal. The crowds thinned as I got into the Quarter, but
I was panting as I headed up Decatur toward Eddie and safety.

He waved happily when he saw me coming, then his face
pulled into worry lines when I got closer.

“What’s the matter, doll?”

“Carnival crowd. Like a nightmare.”

“Nightmare?” Eddie frowned.

“There was a drunk man in the Municipal Auditorium
Park. Only I thought it was a woman.” Somehow, this didn’t sound as scary as it
had been. I tried to explain. “He had on a sort of covered-up gown. I really
fell for it.”

“Some of those guys are real good,” said Eddie. “No way
you could tell, especially at Carnival.” He shook his head. “What’s the matter,
doll? You’ve seen men in drag before, I’m sure.”

“Well, yes, but not that convincing.” I had been to a
gay bar on Halloween with my friend Jimmy. Some of the guys were more or less
in drag, but they didn’t come close to looking like women. Especially when they
pulled the beanbags out of their bras and threw them at each other. “Mostly,
it’s what she . . . he . . . said. He said he hadn’t done
everything he could for Bobby.”

“Who’s Bobby?”

“His lover, I think. He said Bobby was in the cemetery.
I think he committed suicide.”

Eddie looked up sharply. “So?”

“Richard’s upset about the war,” I admitted. I wasn’t
sure I was making sense, but Eddie seemed to get the gist of it, at least.