Today Will Be Different

by Maria Semple

  There was an odd hesitation before Ivy spoke. Was it Bucky? Whispering?

  “It was an insult to Bucky,” Ivy said. “It was an insult to his parents, and, worse, it was an insult to Taffy.”

  “Taffy?” Eleanor said. “I was trying to help Taffy.”

  “That’s just it,” Ivy said. “Taffy doesn’t need your help.”

  “I’m sure she didn’t take it as an insult.”

  “Bucky did and I did.”

  Joe was awake now and shaking his head.

  “Put Bucky on the phone,” Eleanor said, tears coming down in sheets. “I’ll apologize.”

  “He doesn’t want to get on the phone.”

  “I’ll apologize in person, at breakfast.”

  Another weird pause. “It’s been a long night around here, waiting for the Times-Picayune to be delivered. Anyway, it’s the type of thing that should be done in writing. You can leave a letter with the concierge.”

  Eleanor flew to the desk and clawed at the sliver of a drawer, wild for stationery. Joe had his running shoes on.

  “It didn’t work for Neville Chamberlain,” he said. And then he headed out.

  John Tyler, a Virginia legislator, was added to William Henry Harrison’s Whig ticket solely to deliver the Southern vote. When Harrison was sworn in on a freezing 1841 day, Tyler attended the inauguration. That evening, he returned to his plantation in Virginia, expecting few vice-presidential duties. A month later, a hand-delivered letter informed him that Harrison had died of pneumonia, making John Tyler the tenth president of the United States. Tyler, nicknamed “His Accidency,” governed without distinction. He chose not to run for reelection and, when his term was over, returned to the family plantation, Sherwood Forest. Because he accomplished so little in office, John Tyler is known in history books mainly for being the president who fathered the most children, fifteen. Because he was later elected to the Confederate congress, Tyler is also known for being the only president upon whose death the nation’s flag did not fly at half-mast.

  Sherwood Forest is open to the public, although few tourists find reason to take the trip down Route 5, the John Tyler Highway, to the tidewater of Charles City County, Virginia. Astonishingly, John Tyler’s grandson is still alive and resides there with his wife. Sherwood Forest’s house, at three hundred feet, is the longest frame house in the country. It includes a seventy-foot-by-twelve-foot ballroom designed for the Virginia reel, Tyler’s favorite dance. Sherwood Forest’s sixteen hundred acres are dotted with former smokehouses, stables, and slave quarters. The twenty-five acres of terraced gardens include hundred-foot magnolias and maples as well as the first Gingko biloba tree planted in the United States, a gift to Tyler from Commodore Perry. Over the years, the Tyler family have received countless requests to rent Sherwood Forest for private parties. They’ve always declined.

  Which was why, when Bucky Fanning phoned the Tylers with a request to get married at Sherwood Forest and was refused, once, twice, and three times, after which he got on a plane to Atlanta and drove the seven hours to Charles City County to make a personal appeal and the Tylers said yes, every toast at the rehearsal dinner mentioned this as quintessential Bucky.

  “Either run with the big dogs or stay on the porch,” someone said.

  Bucky. You really did have to love him.

  Khaos’s party planner oversaw the June wedding. She spent the day itself welcoming a fleet of vans to Sherwood Forest carrying straight–from–New Orleans oysters, crawfish, milk rolls, and the full Jimmy Maxwell Orchestra. She was also tasked with navigating the delicate challenge of having a hundred and sixty-four guests on the groom’s side and two on the bride’s.

  The afternoon of the nuptials, Ivy and Eleanor lolled in Richmond Inn robes, Joe having just returned from a day trip to Monticello. In two hours, the bridal shuttle would ferry them to Sherwood Forest.

  Ivy, always the chameleon, spoke with a Southern lilt.

  “I was lying in bed one morning. You know my favorite thing in creation is an after-breakfast nap…”

  Ivy took center stage on the vast expanse of beige carpet. Her eyes danced with wicked amusement. Had she learned it from Eleanor, the ability to turn any event into a story?

  “I swear to you, the wallpaper started moving. I got out of bed and put my hand on the spot and it was warm! I found a pucker in the seam and pulled. Underneath were mud tubes, like veins crawling up the wall. I screamed like the star of a teen horror movie. ‘Termites!’”

  Ivy’s endless leg peeked through the high slit in her bathrobe, an effect so sexy it might have been staged; for Ivy, these alluring moments happened of themselves.

  “Not a week later I went to mail a letter and the mailbox fell off its post. Right into the street! A group of tourists were standing around reading that old plaque and I just about died of embarrassment.”

  Joe grabbed a video camera to capture this, Ivy at her best. There had been bad times but there were good ones too.

  “The next day, the termites swarmed the carriage house, thousands of them in a cloud you couldn’t see through. That’s how they mate, in flight! Poor Taffy had to stand there with a vacuum sucking them out of the air. They got in her eyes and her ears and her nostrils! She was spitting them out of her mouth! You know what else? After termites mate, their wings drop off. So for the rest of the year, wings in my cereal, wings in my slippers. Once I squirted sunblock in my hand and there were wings in it! The craziest part? You mention termites to anyone in New Orleans and they’re in utter denial. ‘What termites?’ We had to call the Terminix guy because they’d gotten into the two-by-four things that hold up the roof. Bucky made him park around the corner. But when the neighbor came home and saw the Terminix truck in front of his house, he marched over, and he and Bucky had it out on the front lawn. Even after that, you mention termites and Bucky will say, ‘What termites?’”

  Ivy sat on Joe’s lap and threw her arms around his neck. “Oh, Joe.” They fell back on the bed. “You’ve always been there for me. I’ve been such a disaster. The good news is after tonight, I’ll be Bucky’s problem.”

  Bucky had entered. It was unclear how much he’d heard.

  He stiffly addressed Eleanor. “As you know, in keeping with Tyler tradition, my first dance with your sister will be the Virginia reel.” He set a piece of paper on a bureau near the door. “Here are your places for it.”

  The door clicked shut. A choking silence filled the suite. Eleanor spoke first.

  “Okay, Joe, your turn to bust out the hotel stationery.”

  “That’s not funny.” Ivy sat up and swung her legs around the side of the bed, darkness rising.

  Joe pointed to the suitcase. Eleanor nodded, went to it, took out a present.

  “From me to you!” Eleanor said, and sat next to Ivy. She turned to Joe. “Honey, cover your ears.” She took Ivy’s hand. “Men will come and go. But we’ll always be sisters.”

  From the weight of the box, Ivy’s face exploded into a smile.

  “I know what this is!” Ivy sang. “John Tyler’s derringers! Bucky bet me a nickel!”

  “Actually, no. It’s not the derringers.”

  Eleanor had thought it right for the new couple to have at least one scrapbook devoted to Ivy’s family. As their father kept no photos from their childhood, Eleanor had hand-drawn some of her own, as well as a map of Aspen.

  It had taken all her spare time for months. Eleanor was still feeling the physical toll: the frozen right shoulder, the aching eyes, the stomach lining eaten by coffee and ibuprofen.

  As a final touch, Eleanor had ordered the leather scrapbook from a stationery shop in the French Quarter. For its spine she had a small silver plaque engraved, in Fanning-family font: THE FLOOD GIRLS.

  “This is good too,” Ivy said.

  “I have just the person you should meet!” said Quentin.

  Eleanor was back in New Orleans, in Bucky and Ivy’s carriage house. They’d been married a year. Quentin was a rumpled gent
leman with a full-on Southern drawl who took impish delight in every word Eleanor spoke. She’d just told him she was Ivy’s sister, an animator from New York.

  Quentin scurried off to find a pen and paper, leaving Eleanor standing in the living room facing the window treatments. Valance, curtains, swag, Roman shade, and blackout roller. Five separate things. Six, if you counted the silk tassels.

  Bucky came by sipping a screwdriver and joined Eleanor at the window.

  “Maroon and ivory is my favorite color story,” he explained.

  “Color story?” Eleanor said, snapping out of her trance.

  “One is a color,” Bucky said. “Two or more is a color story. Surely you know that.” And he left.

  A dozen family and friends were gathered around the derringers, newly mounted on the wall above a plaque boasting their provenance. After Bucky and Ivy had named their baby John-Tyler, Eleanor felt she had no option but to give them the pair of guns. Joe, sitting in a low chair in the corner of the antique-choked living room, had a different opinion.

  Quentin returned with a cocktail napkin.

  “If you’re in animation, there’s a fellow you should meet,” Quentin said. “Bucky’s dear friend from Vandy. He draws that show we all love with the girls on the ponies.”

  He handed Eleanor a cocktail napkin with a name in Sharpie. Lester Lewis.

  “Lester Lewis?” Eleanor said. “Lester works for me. Hang on a second. Bucky told you his friend Lester works on Looper Wash but failed to mention I’m his boss?”

  “Ooh, it looks like I stepped in something,” Quentin said, and tiptoed off.

  There were no books in the house, only a shelf of scrapbooks. Eleanor scanned the spines. LE DÉBUT DES JEUNES FILLES 1998; COURT OF KHAOS 1998; SHERWOOD FOREST 2004; BIRTH OF JOHN-TYLER 2005—

  “The priest is waiting!” It was Ivy. “We have a very short window.” Tiny, pink John-Tyler slept in her arms, his antique lace christening gown so long, a uniformed nurse had to carry the train.

  St. Louis Cathedral, “the cathedral” to locals, is the oldest in North America. It’s a favorite spot for tourists to cool off; the church remains open to the public even during weddings, christenings, and funerals.

  Inside, thirty family members stood in the front with hymnals; Joe, the atheist holdout, waited outside.

  During the ceremony, it was a challenge to hear Father Bowman’s blessings of John-Tyler Barnaby Fortune Gammill Charbonneau Fanning over the competing bands in Jackson Square. Every time the church door opened, the family got a blast of the ubiquitous “When the Saints Go Marching In.” The proceedings had to be paused after a chicken was spotted in the nave and tourists surged in to take photos. One knocked over Granny Charbonneau’s cane. During the lull, Eleanor found herself next to Bucky needing something to say.

  “You’re really going all in with this John Tyler connection.”

  It was the tone of Eleanor’s voice that caught the ears of the family. Bucky stared at her, perfectly composed, his eyes daring her to continue.

  “It’s too bad he was the worst president,” Eleanor said. “Did you know his death was the only time the Capitol didn’t fly the flag at half-mast for a president?”

  Now even tourists were straining to hear. Eleanor thought she’d throw in something extra, a lagniappe, they call it in New Orleans.

  “With fifteen children,” Eleanor said, “the question isn’t who is a direct descendant of John Tyler. The question is, who isn’t. I mean, half the people here.” She lazily gestured to the tourists in their tank tops.

  Bucky’s face reddened. No further eye contact was made.

  Out on the steps, Eleanor found Joe leaning on a column in the stifling heat.

  “You made the right decision,” she said with a kiss.

  Ivy flitted out and squeezed their arms.

  “Listen, y’all. J.T. hasn’t been sleeping through the night. I think we’re going to go home, just the three of us.”

  Bleary-eyed tourists shuffled down Bourbon Street carrying daiquiris in giant bong-like things. The stench of last night’s vomit lingered despite that morning’s convoy of water-spraying trucks followed by a foot brigade of men with push brooms, scrubbing. Three kids in shorts and porkpie hats meandered; at their sides dangled a slide trombone, trumpet, and white bucket that rattled with a pair of drumsticks. Waiters in tuxedos and cooks in whites leaned against the fronts of restaurants, smoking or just taking in the lazy river of humanity. There were no alleys in the French Quarter, so waiters, cooks, and shopkeepers took their breaks on the sidewalks. On one side of the street a kid had attached tops of soda cans to the soles of his unlaced Air Jordans. He tapped in a loose-limbed burst and then stood there. His friend across the street answered back. Neither seemed particularly committed. A man rode slowly by on a too-small bicycle, knees out like chicken wings, one hand on the handlebars, the other gripping a tangle of fishing rods. Three plastic milk crates were parked in the street, unclaimed. The kids with the instruments shrugged and sat down on them. The heat was getting to everyone.

  Joe and Eleanor walked along trying to find Preservation Hall, the venerable home of New Orleans jazz. Joe didn’t care for New Orleans jazz—he found it hokey and good-timey—but was determined to salvage the trip by seeing something of historic value. Eleanor followed, her feet sinking into the hot asphalt with every step.

  “You think Bucky would have married her if she weren’t descended from a president? Remember at the wedding when everyone was congratulating me on the Emmy nominations? I was watching Bucky. He couldn’t stand it! He’s never once acknowledged what I do. But of course he’ll boast about his friend Lester from Vanderbilt. And what is Vanderbilt? I’ve barely even heard of it.”

  “Before you met the guy, all you heard was that he was an asshole,” Joe said. “His cousin warned us he was an asshole. At his wedding, every toast alluded to him being an asshole. And now you’re surprised he’s an asshole?”

  “I wish I’d never given them those derringers,” she said.

  “I can’t talk about the derringers.”

  They arrived on the corner of Bourbon and St. Peter under a sign, MAISON BOURBON FOR THE PRESERVATION OF JAZZ. Eleanor started inside.

  “This isn’t it,” Joe said.

  “It says ‘Preservation’—” Eleanor said.

  “It’s not Preservation Hall.”

  “But there’s a band—”

  “Preservation Hall wouldn’t have neon frozen daiquiris with names like Irish Car Bomb. And its band wouldn’t be playing ‘Sara Smile.’”

  “You don’t have to yell at me.”

  Joe’s jaw was going.

  “I’m going to find Preservation Hall,” he said. “Come with me or don’t. But of all the things that odious buffoon has gotten away with, I won’t let him add to the list causing me to fight with my wife in the middle of Bourbon Street!” He stalked off.

  Eleanor might have gone after Joe, but she spotted Lorraine and her two boys crossing Bourbon Street a block away. Eleanor couldn’t tell if Lorraine had made eye contact under her hat.

  A moment later, Eleanor saw an older woman in a long Pucci dress headed down the same side street. She remembered the dress from the church.

  Strange. Eleanor walked to the corner. Both women were gone. Perhaps they’d slipped into a place called Antoine’s.

  Under the restaurant sign, a door led to a cavernous dining room with mirrored walls, tile floors, and tables for ten with white tablecloths. It was empty but for waiters in black bow ties and waistcoats sitting in one corner folding napkins. In the opposite corner, a door with yellow glass. Behind it, the movement of people. Eleanor’s steps echoed as she clacked toward the door. The waiters looked up and continued folding.

  Deeper in was an even larger dining room with a carved wooden ceiling, this one pulsing with patrons, the clang of dishes, and good cheer. Celebrity photos in dusty frames covered every inch of the red pillars and walls. Waiters with aprons down to
their shins carried trays with one hand and blotted their brows with the other.

  Eleanor’s eyes raced from table to table. No Lorraine, no woman in Pucci.

  Behind her, a white glass globe, lit from within. On it, the silhouette of a woman with high-piled hair. FEMMES.

  Inside the ladies’ lounge, Eleanor slumped into a tired velvet chair and closed her eyes. She wasn’t thinking straight. The fight with Joe. The scrum with Bucky. The goddamned heat.

  She opened her eyes.

  A woman in a wrap dress washed her hands. The counter was so worn that a puddle had collected across its expanse. The woman dried her hands and dropped the paper towel on an overflowing trash can. In the mirror, her plastic tiara. On it, in fake jewels, the reverse letters J.T.

  There was no way.

  The door shut.

  Eleanor went after her. The tiara’d woman was halfway across the noisy dining room. Before Eleanor could catch up, she vanished into a wall of newspaper clippings. A jib door. Eleanor pushed it open.

  She found herself in a dim hallway even denser with photos and made narrow by display cases on either side. The floors were shellacked brick, the walls dark wood. Doors made of thick red glass and elaborate wrought iron. To her left, a photo of Pope John Paul II standing in the kitchen with Antoine himself. On display, the plate the Pope had eaten from.

  The woman had disappeared again, this time into the shadow at the end of the hall. Eleanor felt herself pulled toward voices. Above the doors on her left and right, plaques reading REX and PROTEUS. One room was green, the other purple. Eleanor could make out gilded displays of queens’ costumes: ermine capes, crowns, and scepters. Even in the dark, their jewels threw off glints of light.

  Around the corner, at the end of the hall, a cracked door. Above it, in ghostly white letters, KHAOS.

  News of Eleanor’s presence had preceded her. Ivy appeared in the doorway, blocking Eleanor’s view of the sheer number of people in attendance, many more than at the christening.

  “You said—” Eleanor stammered. “I thought the three of you were going home.”