Pacific Avenue (12 page)

I parked on Martin’s street, and we trailed single file
up the stairs to his house like a couple of strangers who’d just happened to
arrive at the same time. The door was answered by a toddler who ran away to get
a grown-up, leaving us on the porch. Martin let us in.

“Hi, there,” he greeted us. “Meet Dominic.” The little
boy peek-a-booed from behind Martin’s chair. “He has a twin brother, Joss.
They’re identical, but you’ll learn to tell them apart before long. Go get
Mommy, please, Dom.”

Martin held his hand out to Richard. “Martin Yates,” he
offered. “I’m glad to meet you.”

“Richard Johnson.” Richard shook Martin’s hand, but his
voice sounded perfunctory. “Martin, I need—”

He broke off as Thu came into the room, both children
tagging after. She was thin and dark, about my height. She must have been
cooking—a blue denim chef’s apron was wrapped around her, tied in a half-bow at
the front. Her long black hair was pulled back into a ponytail at the nape of
her neck. She smiled at us, preoccupied by the children dancing behind her.

“Thu, I’d like you to meet Kathy and Richard—they’re
going to work with us on the puppets,” Martin said.

Richard turned to Thu and extended his hand politely.
“I’m happy to meet you, Thu.”

She looked down. After a second’s hesitation, she shook
his hand. Richard looked like he’d been slapped.

“Come on out the back way,” Martin broke in. “We’re
going to see Francine’s house, honey. Back in a few.”

He led us out through the kitchen, down a ramp to the
driveway. “Couldn’t stand to mess up the house with a ramp in front,” he said.
“So, now the kitchen door has turned
into
the front.”

We followed him down the drive to the street.

“I can’t do this, Martin,” Richard burst out as soon as
we were a few steps from the house. “How could I work with Thu? She didn’t even
want to shake my hand. Not that I blame her.”

Martin rolled on a moment without speaking. Camphor
trees leaned over the sidewalk, their roots making the pavement crooked and
pitched. In the summer, they would be a shade tunnel—now they were black
sticks.

“My wife doesn’t even know you were a soldier,” Martin
said. “I haven’t discussed it with her yet. All she knows about you is that
you’re going to help us with the puppets.”

“What do you mean, she doesn’t know? She wouldn’t even
look me in the eye!”

Martin laughed. “It’s not the custom in Vietnam to look
people directly in the eye. Shaking hands isn’t the custom either, especially
for women. Of course, Thu knows it’s what we do here, but it’s not second
nature to her yet. ’Scuse me.” His chair darted down a driveway, crossed the
street in the intersection, and returned to the sidewalk on the other side.

We scrambled to catch up with him. “This is a bummer,”
he grumbled, waving back at the too-high curb. “The funny thing is, people are
so uncomfortable talking about it that it’s hard to get anything done. I get a
double whammy ’cause I was injured in the war and no one wants to hear about
that either.”

Richard winced. “You’re a veteran?”

“Not me. I was a journalist until the Tet Offensive.”

“At Tet, huh? Where were you?”

“Hue,” Martin said. “I was wounded by ‘friendly fire,’
they called it. Didn’t feel too damn friendly, tell you the truth.”

“At least you weren’t in the army. That’s why I’m
worried about Thu. How could anyone forgive that?”

Martin looked up at Richard. “In the army or out, nobody’s
innocent. War does things to people, even the ones who never get near the
fighting. Maybe my project can teach a few people to enjoy different cultures
rather than fear them.

“Anyway, I hope you won’t let us down. We need help,
and Eddie said you’d be perfect. And Thu wouldn’t think you were an enemy. You
ought to talk to her sometime.”

He turned toward a Victorian cottage, where a dumpy little
woman was silhouetted against the porch light. “Hi, Francine. Richard and Kathy
are here.”

“Hey there,” she called, clinging to the gingerbread
railing as she picked her way down the steps. Up close, she looked like a
grandmother in a children’s book—gray hair worn in a scraggly bun, sweet brown
eyes.
Is she black, or what?
She was
neatly dressed in dark, old-lady clothes, except her shoes were four-inch red
heels. She walked in them with teetery caution as she led us up the driveway to
a house in the backyard.

“Now, this isn’t fancy at all. I don’t know if you’d
want it or not. My Tante Beatrice lived here for years when my parents had the
place. You two go on in and take a look. I want to talk to Martin.”

The little house was two steps above the yard, with a
porch running all along the front. The door opened into a big room with a small
kitchen in one corner. That was it, except for the bathroom and a big closet.
The furniture was sparse and dowdy—a bed with a chenille bedspread and a
doily-covered chest of drawers. No sofa or armchairs, and no space for them,
either—not if we put in a crib and a bookcase.

But it was bigger than our room in the Quarter, and it
had lots of windows and a yard for the baby. I looked at Richard and he
shrugged and then smiled and put his arms around me. We hurried out into the
yard where Martin and Francine were waiting.

“It’s perfect,” I told them.

Francine bent down and pulled a weed. When she
straightened up, she laughed, a little awkwardly. “Doggone weeds. They spring
up overnight, I swear.” She dusted off her hands. “I never rented this before,
you know. Would seventy-five a month be too much?”

Seventy-five a month was cheap. I could have hugged her
for being so kind. My voice wouldn’t work for a minute, so it was Richard who
said, “That’s fine, Mrs. . . . .”

“Call me Francine,” she told him. “But make out the
check to Francine Boudreaux.”

Richard pulled out his checkbook and started writing.
“How do you spell
Boudreaux
?”

“
B, o, u, d, r, e, a, u, x.
You mean, you’re not Creole?”

“No, we’ve been living in Baton Rouge, but my family’s
Army. I grew up all over the country. Why?”

“Oh. I thought you looked sort of Creole. Never mind.
When do you want to move in?”

“Would tomorrow evening be too soon?” I asked.

“I’ll get it cleaned for you.” She handed me a key.

“See you then. Good night,” I called as we headed down
the drive, ambling alongside Martin’s chair. Francine was working on the weeds
again. No doubt they’d come back the next time it rained, but at least for now,
they had met their match.

I was knitting a Fair Isle afghan that winter, working on it
in the evenings while Willis sat in his recliner and watched TV. I had to lay
the colors out along the couch to keep from getting tangled like a fly in a
spiderweb.

We usually talked for a while before we put the TV
on—told how it went that day, that kind of thing. Sometimes I’d tell Willis
about the office, and he’d get a good laugh out of George’s dumb antics. But
when I told him about Eddie’s phone call, he didn’t think it was funny.

“I don’t understand what you’re doing at all, honey,”
he complained, pulling his hand back from the television knob. Its blank screen
reflected us, as if we were the entertainment that evening. “What is it, you
going through the change or something?”

This was not the way to get on my good side. “What’s
that supposed to mean?”

“It’s supposed to mean I think you’ve lost your mind.
Phone calls to Louisiana—you some kind of investigator now? Sneaking off to The
Mystic Eye, pumping Marilu Collins for whatever she might know. Which is what,
exactly? You think this girl pals with her nutty landlady?”

I knitted a little faster. “I got Kathy’s old address
in Gretna,” I said. “And her sister’s address and phone number in Baton Rouge.”

“Yes, and then got five bucks added to the damn phone
bill. For what? None of this is any of your business.”

“Just walk by on the other side, is that what we’re supposed
to do?” I finished with the white, picked up the green, and started again.

“It’s not your
business,
Lacey. Ever since Angela went up to Berkeley—no, ever since she
said
she was going—you’ve been acting like a crazy
woman. You’re just messing around with Kathy as a replacement for mothering
Angie. Maybe you’re even mad at Angela, getting back at her for moving out. I
think you ought to see a doctor or something. This empty-nest stuff is getting
out of hand. Angela was floored when she came home and found she’d been kicked
out of her room.”

Tears rushed to my eyes. “She wasn’t kicked out. She
moved
out.
I
was the one who got pushed out.”

Willis sat back in his recliner and closed his eyes. He
was quiet for a couple of minutes. I’m sure he counted at least to ten, and
maybe he got in a quick prayer for patience after that. Maybe not, though.
Willis always said that every time he prayed for patience, the Lord sent him a
bunch of trials to help him develop some.

“What do you mean?” Willis sounded more worried than
angry now.

“You don’t know what it’s like—you have your work. How
do you think you’d feel if you had to retire? My job doesn’t mean a lot to me,
but raising Angela did, and now it’s all done. She doesn’t need me anymore.”

“First place,
I
need you. What do you think I have the business
for
? It’s for us. Second place, what makes you think
Angela doesn’t need you?”

“Well, she could hardly wait to move out.” When I
checked my knitting, I saw it was much too tight. I was going to have to pick
out everything I’d done. I laid it in my lap. Better do it later.

“So what?” said Willis. “It’s her time to do that.
Doesn’t mean she doesn’t need you. She needs you to show her how to be a grown
woman. Later on, she’ll need you to help her pick a husband. Then to show her
how to be a mother herself.”

“She doesn’t need me for that. She’s seen all that,
just growing up.”

Willis leaned forward in his chair. “You haven’t shown
her how to let go of an almost-grown daughter yet. Bet she’ll need to know
that
someday. How to grow old. Way I see it,
honey, we’re a step ahead of her. Everything in life, she’ll see us get there
first.”

Willis could always make me feel better when I was
down. I even managed a little smile. “I guess I’m still her mother,” I said.
“Brought her into the world, and someday, I’ll teach her how to leave it, I
guess. Guess I wouldn’t have it any different.”

He sat back, looking relieved but still wary. “So, now
this waif comes along, and you want to fix all her problems. Maybe you ought to
join the Big Sisters or something.”

“If I did that, I’d be doing the same thing I’m doing
for Kathy. What’s the difference?”

Willis rubbed the heels of his hands across his
eyelids, the way he did when he hadn’t gotten enough sleep. “The difference is
that you wouldn’t have to sneak around. And it wouldn’t have to be on Pacific
Avenue, either. My shop is about two blocks from Marilu’s. I’d a lot rather you
didn’t mess with my neighbors.”

I hadn’t thought of that. He did have a point. “I’m
sorry, honey. I wasn’t thinking,” I admitted. “I didn’t mean to embarrass you.
All the same, I think it’s only right for me to help if I can. And it does get
my mind off my ‘empty nest’ for now.”

“Well, okay. You want to see if you can help Kathy,
fair enough. But that’ll be over before long, you know. You’ll fix Kathy’s
problems, she’ll say thanks, and then she’ll want to live her own life, same as
Angela.”

That hadn’t occurred to me, either. “So, what do I do,
Willis? Surely it’s not crazy to want to help other people.”

“Like I said, I think you ought to volunteer for the
Big Sisters. Or even go to work for them. Better yet, why don’t you go back to
school?”

“Go back to school? You mean, apply to college?”

“Sure, why not? If you want to do this kind of stuff,
get a degree in social work or something. You’re wasted at Giannini’s.” He got
up and came over to the couch. “Got room for me?”

I set the afghan tangle aside. Willis sat next to me
and put his arm around my shoulders. I squeezed his hand.

“I bet
I
can
distract you,” said Willis. “Let’s make this year’s trip to the Mardi Gras into
a second honeymoon.” He put on a comic-sexy look—wiggled his eyebrows and did
his best to leer. I laughed.

“I sort of set it up to get together with Kathy’s
friends while we’re there,” I said.

His expression changed to eye-rolling resignation. “You
want me to spend my vacation doing that?”

“Not for long, I promise. I’ll trade you. If you’ll
come along on this, I’ll go to the parades with you.”

“
You’ll
go to
the parades? Sounds to me like a piecrust promise—made to be broken. Believe
that
one when I see it.”

“I’ll do it if you’ll help me with Kathy’s friends,” I
said.

“Okay, you got a deal.”

Now I was going to have to go to the damned
parades—couldn’t say I hadn’t gotten myself into that one, me and my big mouth.
I could see us standing in the rain on Canal Street while the floats sailed by,
yelling, “Throw me somethin’, mister!” at the top of our lungs. And then saying
the same thing silently to Eddie Graziano in Gretna, trying to figure out what
was going on.

Some second honeymoon.