by Zoey Castile
I flash a smile and a wink as I walk past them, full swagger. One of them whistles at me, and maybe it’s the krewe of cocktails that have paraded down my throat, but I can’t seem to think of a good enough line to say back.
I freeze up. We stare at each other for twenty awkward seconds before they turn around and ignore me.
I keep walking, past the reception desk, the flowers with their cloying scent that threatens memories of things I’d rather forget, the signs that read VOTE CHARLES FOR CHANGE, and a woman dolled up in a red pencil-skirt suit that makes her look like a rose waiting to bloom.
“Watch where you’re going,” she snaps as I nearly walk into her. But I smile and she seems to unfurl, her anger dissipating into thin air. “Here for the fund-raiser?”
I shake my head, rake my fingers through my hair. Maybe Angelique is right. I shouldn’t be alone and sulking. Er, brooding. The night isn’t wasted. Won’t be wasted. Maybe this is the reason I’ve clung to this bar all night. This lady in red. I know I should say something clever, something that will make her laugh at my joke, something that will bring a smile to her face. Her lipstick is drawn on in precise lines, and her eyebrows etched in perfect arcs. She wants to look a certain way, and I, more than most, can identify with that.
But for the second time in so many minutes, I freeze. For the life of me, I can’t even go through the dozens of pickup lines stored in my mind for a rainy day.
“Uhm, I have to pee,” I tell her.
No, no, no, no, I scream internally. That’s not the line. We know better. I’m not here for the fund-raiser, I’m here for your pleasure. Hell, I could have said I was here for turndown service. To wash the fucking windows. Whatever. Anything but talking about my bladder.
“Good luck with that, kid,” she says, and pats my cheek with her scarlet-manicured hand.
Feeling thoroughly shut down, I go to the bathroom to do my businesses. I wash my hands and splash a bit of cold water on my cheeks.
When I look in the mirror, I see the resemblance to someone I’d rather not think about: light-brown eyes, not green enough to be hazel, and a square jawline that took me eighteen years to grow into. So I grab a hand towel and dry my face. Shake off whatever has me clenched and sloppy.
When I stroll past the lobby again, the woman in red is gone and so is the bachelorette party. More than anything, I feel like I’m walking alone through a moment, not part of it. An outsider looking in, though I’ve felt that way for most of my life. Out in the streets there’s a sea of people shouting, music pouring through the air like champagne out of a just-shaken bottle, neon lights flashing every kind of sin and desire you didn’t even know you had. It’s all there, just at my fingertips.
Here I am, alone at a bar, and for the first time in the evening, I know why I’m supposed to be here.
And she is sitting in my seat.
2
Daughter
FAITH
My mother always taught me that if I was going to embarrass her, I might as well stay in my room.
That was when she’d have her fancy fund-raisers at our house and I’d be forced into frilly dresses that itched and made me look like a five-tier cake with meringue frosting. At various points in the night I’d get reprimanded for being too quiet or too loud. For not being enough like the other city council members’ daughters. No matter what I did, I couldn’t seem to make her happy.
Not much has changed since I was thirteen, it seems.
Well, that’s not quite true. I no longer wear the meringue dresses.
Over in a quiet corner of the room, my father is patiently and dutifully smiling at the cameras and reporters asking him all kinds of invasive questions.
How did it feel being a stay-at-home dad?
How does it feel to be married to such an ambitious woman?
Are you prepared to be the First Husband of New Orleans?
Are you proud of your wife’s work? Of your daughter?
And the answers are always the same. My father, Lorenzo Charles the third, comes from one of the oldest families of New Orleans and is used to talking to reporters because of his law firm’s efforts to preserve the wildlife in Louisiana. I should be walking in his footsteps. It’s been two years since I graduated Yale Law and did a year’s clerkship at my dad’s firm, plus grunt work for a nonprofit environmental agency. I know as a Charles I have a job waiting for me. But I want to be able to earn it. I know what people think when they look at me. Daddy’s girl. Rich girl. But I’ve had to work for everything I’ve accomplished, just like my parents did. The next step is taking the bar. I failed once, and while I was studying, I decided to help my mother achieve her greatest dream. Being mayor of New Orleans.
I’ve been studying for two years now.
I hold the clipboard with the guest list. All of that schooling and here I am, checking people’s names off as they enter an overly air-conditioned event space. Every person here has come for a fund-raiser, but there’s an underlying current. The recent speculation has been that my mother was going to drop out of the race after the opponent, Reginald Louis Moreaux, suggested that my father’s decision to stay at home to take care of me was because of some sort of infidelity. God forbid the man wanted to give up his career all those years ago to be a dedicated father and good husband.
My family might be dysfunctional in different ways, but I’d suggest my father was a serial killer before I’d believe he was unfaithful. People in glass houses, but I won’t go down that petty path.
Still, the Moreaux side has played dirty for the duration of the campaign, and there are three weeks left to go. Everything from lies to trying to pry into my mom’s past as a waitress. They even put waitress in air quotes, as if my mother’s beauty suggested something else. As if no one can believe a Black woman from her station in life could achieve the things she has honestly. I don’t know how my parents don’t lose their shit. Always be the better person, my dad used to tell me. Especially when they don’t want you to be.
“Name?” I ask the woman who walks in next. She’s dressed in all red with heels that give her five inches on me, and I’m five nine.
“Betty LePaige,” she says. I match her credentials to the list. The N’awlins Gazette is nothing but gossip, probably trying to dig up something else on my mother. They haven’t come to any of the press conferences or run any coverage on the race, so this new presence sends up a red flag in my head. Perhaps the Moreaux camp tipped them off to be here.... Perhaps people really think there’s something to confess.... Whatever it might be, I should tell my mother.
“You’re all set,” I say and return Betty’s tight smile, then hand over the clipboard to an intern.
Weaving through the crowd of reporters and donors, plus a few friends and family, I feel watched. It’s like having a spotlight on me.
I find my mother giving some sort of rousing talk to three businessmen. Dressed in a fine forest-green suit, my mother cuts a lovely figure. People who don’t know her wouldn’t notice the way she always keeps her hands moving. It’s not because she likes to talk animatedly, but because she’s embarrassed by them. The hands of a woman who had to lift boxes and clean floors and burn herself on plates coming in fresh from the oven in run-down diners. Working hands. But her face hasn’t changed since she was, well, my age. I have an insight into what I might look like in thirty years.
Though I hope not half as wound up, but maybe I’m well on my way. I wave at her a few feet from where she’s in conversation.
My mom notices me, I know she does, but she waits before catching my eye. She excuses herself, leaning in close. “I hope this is important. Those could be very valuable donors.”
Everyone is a very valuable donor, I want to say, but I’ll never be old enough to avoid being smacked on the back of my head. Though now, she’d only ever do it in private.
“There’s someone here from the Gazette, I thought you should know,” I say. “I was thinking the Moreaux campaign might have sent the
m to keep an eye on us.”
My mother shakes her head. Years of council meetings have taught her how to hide her ire, but she’s my mother, and even if she doesn’t think so, I know her better than anyone else. It’s the slightest purse of her lips, giving way to the same dimples I share. Though she’s yet to get a wrinkle on her smooth light-brown skin, her right eyebrow, carefully drawn in, ticks up like a check mark. She is nothing if not observant. Especially when it comes to me.
“Faith, my darling, I didn’t know I hired you on to write fanciful stories.”
I take a deep breath because I can’t make a scene. Not today. “It’s a likely possibility. The Moreaux article is the reason we’re having this event in the first place. One of your last donors pulled out.”
“That might be so, but you should know better than to pull me away when I’m having an important conversation.” My mother smiles her “people are looking at us” smile, and so I turn mine on. A mirror I can’t escape.
I take a deep breath. Everything is important. She’s made that clear since I could walk. “Fine. I’ve told you. Here’s your speech.”
“Watch your tongue, young lady,” she says in a whisper, then takes the folder from me. “Maribelle already gave me a copy. You should spend more time with her, Faith. She’s learned the ropes faster than any intern I’ve ever had.”
Maribelle’s name makes something inside of me snap. She’s fresh out of college with her eye on local government. She’s qualified to do exactly nothing, but my mom seems to think everything she does, from the way she pours coffee to the way she irons her blouses, is perfect. Every day or so, my mom tells me to “spend more time” with Maribelle, but says nothing of what I contribute.
“Then why did you ask me to do it if Maribelle already did it?” I know my voice is too loud, because my mom slings her arm over my shoulder. In her sensible heels, she’s my height—because the one thing I got from my father is his height, if not his patience.
“Lower your voice, please,” she says brightly, but I hear the undercurrent there. I’m in trouble.
Hell, I’m always in trouble. Why should today be different?
“I don’t understand why you’re like this. Nothing I do seems to please you.” I can feel the anxiety in my chest unravel. It’s a snake waiting in the grass. Ready to lift its head and snap. This has been coming for months, years really, and now I know that it’s going to get ugly and I can’t seem to stop it.
“Faith . . .” Her smile is wider.
“Please, don’t patronize me. I’ve busted my ass for the last two years for you.”
“For us. And don’t you give me that back talk. I gave you something to work for while you were doing I-don’t-know-what—Look, I don’t want to fight—”
“No, you can’t afford to fight. There’s a difference.”
Heads swivel in our direction. From the corner of my eye I can see Maribelle, her perfect curls bouncing against her back as she zigzags to rescue my mother from her own kid embarrassing her.
“Faith!” Maribelle says in that perky voice of hers. “Can you help me out with something?”
That’s code for “you’re making a scene.”
“You know what?” I say. “You clearly have all of this under control. I’ll see you at headquarters tomorrow.”
“Why don’t you take the day off?” my mother says.
I know I should take a breath. I know that maybe she’s a little bit right. Maybe I’m the one who’s wrong. But I say, “You know what? I’ll take the week instead.”
And with that, I turn tail and leave. My daddy is trying to catch my eye, but I can’t bear to look at him. I have to focus on making my face into a carefully carved statue. It works for my mother, why doesn’t it work for me?
I take the elevator, squeezing in with partygoers and people ready for a night out in the Quarter. I can’t even remember the last time I went out for something that wasn’t a political function or a party full of stuffy old lawyers.
Something in my chest is wound up so tight, I feel like if it snaps completely, I might explode. I have to cool off.
Thankfully, I know the bartender of this hotel.
I exit the elevator and pass a group of bachelorettes conga-lining out the door, then I turn the corner and sigh with relief at the sight of Angelique Jacobs. Angie and I have been friends since high school, and we both went to undergrad at Loyola. Neither of us really wanted to stray too far from home. But after that first year, she transferred out and switched her major from political science to dance. Her last gig was in Vegas, swinging from trapezes and all kinds of things I can’t even fathom with Cirque du Soleil. I can barely do the warrior two pose in yoga, and she can fold herself like origami. But she fell and hurt her shoulder real bad. So she came home.
It’s been a year, and I think she’s got a bit of stage fright after the incident. Bartending is holding her over, but I can tell she wants more. Or I’m possibly projecting on her because here we are, eleven years after we started college, and we’re right back where we started. New Orleans.
“I take it by the look on your face the party is all peaches?” She slides a coaster in front of me.
There’s a half-drunk hurricane already there, but she moves it aside a bit. Even the look of that drink gives me a toothache.
“Is someone sitting here?” I ask, not ready to talk about my tiny temper tantrum.
“Yeah, but he’s in the bathroom.” Angie has a look in her eye. It’s mischievous and downright conspiratorial.
“What?”
She smiles, her red lip gloss like a candied apple. “Nothing. You want the usual?”
“You’re an angel.”
“Fallen angel, maybe,” and when she says that, I can practically feel her wince. She turns around and grabs a bottle of Woodford Reserve, one fat square ice cube, and pours me a double.
I hold the drink like it’s a potion with the solution to all my problems.
“What did Daria do this time?” Angie mutters.
She and my mother never really got along after Angie decided to change her career for one in the arts. Daria Charles was probably more worried that I’d get the art bug and move to Rome to paint naked folks or some such.
“Nothing this can’t fix for the moment.” I take another sip and try to relax.
“The answer to your problems isn’t at the bottom of that glass,” Angie says.
“That’s not a very good business motto for your line of work,” I sass but swallow my drink easily. It goes down smooth. I think of all the times I watched my daddy come home from work after a long day, before he quit to raise me while Mom started her political career. He’d go into his office and pour himself a glass of what he called medicine. Part of me wonders if I’m too young to be feeling this way. But I think I know the weight that tugged on his shoulders just a little bit.
“I’m just saying. I think your stress comes from multiple places. One of them being that thing you’ve got under lock and key between your legs.”
I nearly spit my drink out. The couple canoodling at the other end of the bar comes up for air to watch me choke on the burn of bourbon in my windpipe.
“Please never refer to my vagina as a treasure chest.” I reach for the water she sets in front of me, her head tilting back in a great big laugh at my expense.
“Look, you know I love you, hon. I can’t stand to see you upset. I know you’re not going to listen to my first suggestion, so I’m giving you another one. In my honest opinion as your best friend, you need to get some. Like yesterday. What’s it been, like, two years since Stuart?”
I hold my hand up. “What’s the first suggestion I’m not going to listen to because you know me so well?”
“Quit your job working for your momma.”
A troubling feeling tugs at my stomach. My mother and I have never had the best relationship. But I keep trying because I know that when I wake up tomorrow, I’m going to want my mother to look at me the way she loo
ks at Maribelle or whatever new assistant is popping up like a weed.
I look into my glass like my reflection will have an answer. It doesn’t.
“You know I can’t do that. How would it look?” I sigh. “Especially now. We’re supposed to be the family you want to be. Maribelle’s probably coming up with a lie about why I stormed out and said I’d take the week off.”
That’s the funny thing about my impulsive decision making. I usually regret it fifteen minutes later.
“Is that really the image you want to give out?”
“It’s the image my mother believes we have. And anyway, once we win this thing, because we will, I’ll find a different job.”
“Hm,” she says.
“Do you have a third suggestion?”
“I like the second one the best. He’s six four, Colombian, too fucking beautiful for his own good. He was a dancer in Vegas, so you know he knows how to swivel them hips.”
“Angie!” I look around. Then it dawns on me. “What kind of dancer?”
She slaps her hands on the gray bar top. “The take-off-all-your-clothes kind. And don’t make that face. He’s been at the hotel for two days and I’ve only ever seen him by himself. He hasn’t taken anyone up with him. I don’t know his deal, but he’s not in town for long. You need to blow off some steam and I think he does, too.”
“Is that your professional opinion?” I say, laughing because her idea is absurd. “The only steam I need to let off I’ll do at a Bikram tomorrow.”
Angie makes a face that is equal parts disappointed and hopeless. “Just remember who you talk to about your frustrations with your mom. It’s time to take action.”
I suppose she’s tired of the same old song. I threatened to quit my nonpaying job on my mother’s staff last year. And a few months before when my mom won city council, and the year before that when my mother had her second successful run at a local office.
I start to stare at myself in the mirror of my whiskey, when Angie’s eyes widen at something behind me.
