Lilly was waiting outside in the rain when we drove up. She threw herself into my arms and started crying. I hugged her so tightly that she gasped. We were drenched by the time we walked into Marianne's kitchen, and she stopped crying long enough for me to hear her explain how she thought I'd been in a wreck because the weather was so bad. "Or hit by lightning, or hit a deer, or maybe a car slid off the road and hit you…"
"Baby, I'm fine. We were very careful." I tried to soothe her, but it was obvious that it would be a long time before she didn't feel utter fear when she was away from me. She was deathly afraid to lose me and, frankly, I couldn't imagine losing her. That would certainly put me over the edge.
As time progressed I would find myself in periods where I didn't grieve or remember Josh for a few hours, sometimes an entire day; then, of course, it would hit me that he was gone and I'd hit bottom again. During those times when I’d forget him, I’d find myself thinking about Rodney and I’d question myself—did I really love Josh? Was I really happy with him? It seemed that, as his memory faded, memories of Rodney rose.
That made me feel so guilty that I couldn’t stand myself.
*
August was coming to a close and we had to get back to New York so Lilly could start seventh grade. Anna and Chrissy made a case for how we should live in Jean Ville and that Lilly could go to school with them. Marianne and Tootsie tried to convince me I should consider staying because we were so much happier in Jean Ville and… anyway, they missed us.
I had read that you should not make any major decisions—move out of your home, start a new relationship, quit a job—anything drastic until at least one year after a tragic event like the loss of a spouse. I explained to Marianne that Lilly and I had to face our ghosts and deal with them, that we couldn't run away. Convincing Lilly was not as easy, though.
"We have to go back to New York," I told her that night when we were snuggled up in the pull-out bed in Marianne's sitting room.
"It's too hard being in that house without Josh." She said she was afraid to return to Brooklyn Heights.
"That's where our life is. That's where your dad is, and your mom. We have to go back." I tried to hug her but she pulled away from me. "Look, I promise we'll come back at Christmas. You'll have almost a month off from school and it'll be cold and snowy up north and warmer here."
"You promise?" She sat up in the middle of the bed and looked at me.
"Of course I promise. We'll buy our airline tickets tomorrow before we fly home." My heart broke for her, but I knew I had to be the voice of reason, the adult in the room.
"Okay, that's less than four months. I think I can do it." She lay back down and let me put my arm under her shoulder.
"That's my girl. We'll be fine, and Christmas will be here before you know it."
*
We weren't fine. The house was like a mausoleum. Josh was everywhere and we moped around most days. To break the horrible grief into smaller, more palatable pieces, we'd go to restaurants at night and shop in the city on weekends. We started staying at a hotel on Saturday nights, saying it was easier than going back to Brooklyn, but really, we were like different people when we weren't in Josh's house.
I knew I should sell it and move, but I wanted to stick to the one-year plan. I hoped I would see things more clearly 365 days after I first heard of Josh's death and my life became what would be an everlasting legacy—before Josh and after Josh. The definition of Susie Burton Ryan.
I remembered feeling the same after I'd lost Rodney; that my life was defined in those terms—before and after Rodney—yet I'd survived and thrived. I hung onto the hope that I would heal from losing Josh just as I had after I'd lost Rodney; because, as I'd learned, hope is the only thing that makes life worth living.
The lilies kept arriving every couple of days in New York and the house was always filled with the fresh scent, the fullness of spring in winter, and the hope of Easter, of rising and new life. Unfortunately, Lilly and I didn't feel the positive energy the lilies represented. It was much later that I realized how the sight of those beautiful, white, silky, velvet-like petals with green leaves and thick stems and the smell of flowering springtime kept the taste of hope alive in our spirits even while we didn't know it in our hearts.
I wonder today if those lilies weren't the healing balm that kept Lilly and me from going off the deep end.
Jean Ville was a good diversion for us that Christmas. It was the first time I was excited to be back in Louisiana in years and the word "home" caught in my throat when I mentioned to Lilly that we'd be in Jean Ville soon. Home had been New York for me since I was seventeen and for Lilly all of her life, yet we both felt more alive and at peace in the Quarters than we did in New York.
Sissy went Christmas shopping with me, Lilly, Chrissy, and Anna in Alexandria. We returned to Marianne's house with our rental car full of packages, unwrapped gifts, wrapping paper, ribbons, and bows. We even had a Christmas tree tied to the roof of the car. It was obvious there wasn't enough room in the three-room cabin for everything we'd brought from New York, plus all the gifts and the tree, as well all of us. In fact, when Lucy came over there was virtually no room to walk.
I told Sissy that Lilly and I would really like to get a hotel room, but there still were no hotels in Jean Ville, and staying in Alexandria defeated the purpose of us being there.
Sissy suggested that, instead, we try to find a rental house nearby, so we drove to town to meet with the only real estate agent, Mitchell Dunlap.
Dunlap said there was a two-bedroom frame house on Gravier Road, only a couple blocks from the Quarters, but it was for sale, not rent. I told Mr. Dunlap I wasn't interested in purchasing a house, I just wanted to rent for one month, but he said there was nothing available on the south side where I wanted to be. He had one listing for a clapboard house with a falling down porch on an acre of land, take it or leave it.
He led the way through the overgrown grass and weeds to rickety steps, and I was afraid to walk on the porch for fear it would give way under us. He turned the key in the lock, swung the door open, and the smell of a dead mouse or snake and the mustiness of a closed-in place hit us in the face. I didn't want to go inside but Lilly and Anna were running through the place as if it was a playhouse they'd just discovered. Once I was accustomed to the odor, I took a tour of the living room, dining room, and kitchen; each room led to the next like a shotgun house, except with huge openings between them, and no doors. Off the kitchen was a large back porch that was in a little better shape than the front porch and a huge yard that stretched for an acre to a tree line.
Back in the living room, a doorway to the right led to a hall with three doors. Two of the doors opened to bedrooms and the center door to an out-dated bathroom with rust stains in the lavatory and tub. The smell of backed-up sewage slapped me in the face and I quickly closed the door.
"I'll have to get a carpenter and plumber to come look at this place before I can make a decision. A lot would have to be done to make it livable." I made a face and headed for the front door to get some air. Mr. Dunlap was hot on my trail.
Lilly, Anna, and Chrissy were running through the tall grass in the back field and I knew they'd have chigger bites if they didn't get back on solid ground, so I yelled for them to come back to the car.
We left the gifts and other purchases in the rental car when we got back to the Quarters because there was no place to put the items inside. We definitely needed more room, but the house on Gravier was deplorable. When Sam got home from work that evening, I walked over to his house and sat in one of the chairs on the porch with him and his wife, Josie.
"I found a house to stay in when Lilly and I are in Jean Ville, but it's a mess. Do you know of anyone who can look at it for me? A carpenter, a plumber, maybe an electrician?" I was helping Josie shuck corn that she said she was going to make into maque choux, a dish of corn, corn milk, onions, celery, and sweet peppers smothered to the consiste
ncy of lumpy grits.
"I can look at it for you, Susie," Sam was smoking a pipe, rocking back and forth, staring at the pecan trees whose leaves were almost all on the ground. "That's what I do for Mr. Ducote. I'm his assistant and we build and repair houses."
"This one has something dead in it." I scrunched my nose and my eyes turned to slivers. Sam and Josie laughed.
"Probably a dead mouse in one of the walls or floorboards. I'll find it." The next evening Sam and Tom followed me to the house on Gravier Road and Mr. Dunlap was waiting in the driveway. He didn't shake hands with Marianne's uncles and it made me angry because I knew it was because they weren't white. Mr. Dunlap apparently was one of the holdovers from Jim Crow.
The Massey boys went through the house with flashlights and hammers and declared it sound.
"It has good bones," Sam said. "Me and Tom and a few of our friends can get this fixed up over the weekend." I hadn't asked Mr. Dunlap the price so when he said $15,000 I thought I misheard him. A house and over an acre of land for fifteen grand? That was the price of three months' rent on Josh's condo in Manhattan! My friends in New York would hoot when I told them. I wrote him a check on the spot and he said he'd get the deed to me the next day, and handed me the keys.
The next day was Saturday and everyone who lived in the Quarters and lots of their friends from other quarters were at the house on Gravier Road at sunrise. I gave Sam my credit card to buy supplies and he drove up the driveway with his truck loaded to the hilt at about 9:00 AM.
By the time Sam returned, the front yard had piles of debris from things the men had torn out of the house. At least ten pickups were coming and going, bringing stuff and taking trash away. Someone appeared with a couple of lawn mowers and an array of yard tools, and a group of teenage boys got to work on the yard, mowing grass, pulling weeds, shoveling mulch, planting shrubs.
It was like watching a movie on fast speed. By sundown, when Marianne drove up with an ice chest filled with beer and bags of chips and salsa, the place was transformed. The porch was standing straight and all the missing boards had been replaced, as were the boards on the outside of the house and the back porch.
An army of teenagers and young men painted the entire outside of the house white and the porch floors dark gray. Someone drove up with two rocking chairs and a porch swing, hung the swing and set the chairs, then painted them black, like the new shutters on the two front windows and the new, black, front door.
Inside, all of the wood floors had been repaired and stained. They were still wet, so I couldn't walk through the house to see what it looked like until the next day. I'd seen a new toilet, tub, and lavatory arrive, a new kitchen sink, boxes with faucets and a shower head, and new appliances. I wouldn't have known where to find those things but Sam and my credit card seemed to have no problem.
Lilly and I went to early Mass at St. Alphonse's the next morning while Tootsie and her family were at Bethel Baptist. We got to the house on Gravier Road before the others. Lilly and I walked through with our mouths open. It smelled of fresh paint, wax, and Lysol. The hardwood floors throughout the house were a chestnut stain and had a shiny finish. The sheetrock on the walls looked brand new and had been painted a cool grayish color in the living and dining rooms, and kitchen.
Lilly's bedroom was light pink and mine was a minty green. The bathroom was beige, like the hall, and looked like a picture from Decor Magazine with its chintz shades on the window and matching shower curtain. The kitchen was modern for 1980 standards—a farm sink and stainless fixtures, a white refrigerator with the freezer on top, and an electric range with an oven. The cabinets had been totally replaced with pre-made cabinetry that Sam said Mr. Ducote kept in stock. Everything worked, everything was plumb, the drawers pulled out with ease.
Lilly and I walked through the house holding hands, not saying a word, but we heard each other's gasps and sighs as we went from room to room. When we walked out on the back porch she caught my arm with two hands and yelled. "Oh my God! Susie. Look."
The guys had manicured the lawn and it looked like a football field before a Friday night game, but that wasn't the best part. A few yards off the back porch was a huge area where they'd removed an oval of grass and built a big fire pit for roasting pigs and grilling meats outside. Four Adirondack chairs surrounded the area, and there was a swing set frame on the side with a three-person swing hanging from it. A hammock was strung between two of the half-dozen pecan trees and the shade from the oak trees screened the blazing sun from the entire area. Beyond the cleared area and the fire pit was a miniature building that looked like a tiny barn. Along the fence rows were azaleas, camellia bushes, and hydrangeas.
Already, a huge stone urn on the porch was filled with fresh, white lilies.
I inhaled the familiar Easter scent as Lilly and I stood on the back porch trying to take everything in when I heard a car pull in the driveway, then another, then it sounded like several trucks. Lilly and I didn't move. We listened to the sounds of doors slamming and people talking and laughing and squeezed each other's hands.
"What y'all doing out here?" Marianne rounded the corner of the house pulling a wagon filled with bags. Tom, Sam, Jesse, Tootsie and their families came through the house and before long everyone from the Quarters was moving around, busy doing something.
I went inside and watched Tom and Sam and their boys carry beds to the bedrooms and place a sectional sofa in the living room. Before I could ask where everything came from, a table and six chairs appeared in the dining room and a round table with four chairs in the kitchen. Marianne walked up behind me as I stood, flabbergasted, in the middle of the living room and watched the men haul stuff into the house.
"I hope you don't mind. Sissy and I picked out everything. I kept the receipts in case you want to make exchanges." She smiled, and before I could answer her, the front door slammed and Sissy walked in with huge bags hanging from her arms.
"Come help me get these beds made up." Sissy tilted her chin in the air and pointed it towards the hallway and Marianne followed her. Lilly's cousins arrived and they went into her room and helped Sissy make up her bed and hang pink curtains on the windows. I walked into the back bedroom and Marianne was putting a beautiful, gray silk coverlet on the bed and fluffing the four matching pillows. There was a chest of drawers between the two windows on the side of the house and a dresser with a huge mirror on the wall between the bedroom and the bathroom. An upholstered chair and ottoman sat in the far corner and two smart tables with lamps were on either side of the bed.
"Where? When?" I stuttered and stammered and stared at my brown sister, and felt so much love for her I could have burst.
Mari asked, "Did I get it right? Your taste? I saw what you have in New York and I thought…"
"It's beautiful. I really can't believe it." Neither of us spoke as I walked slowly around the room, running my hand over the surfaces of the furniture and the bedding, turning the lamps on and off, pulling the shades up then lowering them, drawing the draperies closed, then opening them. "I'm… I don't… well…" I couldn't find concrete words.
Marianne started laughing and I started laughing at her laughing. We became semi-hysterical and Sissy came to see what all the fuss was about and joined us; we stood there and laughed until we cried.
"I think Marianne wants you out of her house!" Sissy punched me in the side and I laughed harder.
"She won't get rid of me that easily. I'll be there tonight!"
"Oh, no you won't. I have plans." Marianne was laughing so hard she was bent forward holding her belly and it reminded me of the way Catfish would laugh when he got tickled—from the bottom of his toes to the top of his kinky head—and the thought of him made me sad, and I thought about his death, which made me think about Emalene, which made me think about Josh, and soon my laughter turned to tears. My sisters wrapped me in their arms and held me until I caught my breath.
I finally sat in my new chair and admired the smal
l, beautiful, simple, elegant bedroom. It was so unlike the lavish Brooklyn Heights master suite, but so right for me.
Lilly loved the house and the fact that she could walk to the Quarters less than two blocks away.
Christmas in Jean Ville was better than I expected our first Christmas without Josh would be. We had our Frasier flocked to remind us of white Christmases in New York. We decorated it with white lights and new Christmas ornaments we'd bought in Alexandria. There were no memories tied to the decorations, we were building new ones and it felt good. We were still breathing when 1982 rolled in.
Every day or so, the florist arrived with a white box.
Before we went back to New York, I visited my dad. Sissy was with me when I walked into his study, the little room he'd added to the master bedroom years before that we called, "The Lion's Den.".
"Hi, Daddy. How're you feeling?" I patted his shoulder. He was sitting at his desk facing the wall on the far side of the room, his back to me. He bent over some papers and had a pencil, which he stuck behind his ear and heaved a heavy sigh.
"What are you doing here?" He didn't turn around to look at me. Sissy and I glared at each other and she shrugged her shoulders.
"I've been in town a few days and I'm leaving tomorrow. I wanted to come by to see you before I returned to New York."
"You've been here almost a month and you bought a house and had Christmas and you're just now coming to see me?" He still didn't turn around. "Don't do me any favors, girl." He pulled the pencil from behind his ear and started to scratch on the paper in front of him.
“You’re right, Daddy.” I started to walk out of the room with Sissy behind me, but turned around when I got to the door to the hall. “I’m sorry. I’ve been caught up in my own stuff.” We walked into the hall and I turned to hug Sissy.
"I should have come during Christmas. I guess I was so busy I forgot all about Daddy." We walked up the hall, through the front door, and down the steps to the yard.
"You've had a lot, Susie." Sissy put her hand on my shoulder and stopped me. I turned and she hugged me. "Don't blame yourself because he's a self-absorbed ass. He didn't say anything about you losing Josh, and he knows. It's all about him. Always has been."
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