"How do you stand it?"
"Somehow he's kinder to me. He's never spoken to me like he speaks to you. I think it would break my heart."
"He's never liked me. And if I'm honest, I don't like him, either. But I love him. He's my dad—and like Emalene would say, 'You only get one’."
"I wish I had known Emalene, before."
"I wish you had, too."
*
That night Sissy and I went to dinner at Sylvia and Ken Michaud's home. Sylvia had grown up next door to us on South Jefferson and we'd been like sisters through high school, although she was a year younger than me. We used to have to drag Sissy with us when we drove around Jean Ville looking for boys and stopping at Dickey’s, a local hamburger drive-up, where everyone hung out. Now Sissy was twenty-one and seemed so much closer to our age.
Sylvia had three children; the oldest was ten. Sylvia was a teller at the Confederate Bank, Ken worked at the local car dealership, and they lived in a white wood-frame house on Monroe Street, only a couple of blocks from the town square. We girls sat on their back patio sipping wine, talking about old times, watching the children swing on the swing set while Ken grilled chickens on the pit in the yard.
"What's it like living in New York City?" Sylvia put a platter of fried onion rings on the coffee table in front of us.
"I live in Brooklyn, really, across the river from Manhattan. I like it."
"It must be so different, the big city and all."
"Not really. Everyone lives in a pie slice. I mean, we all live in neighborhoods with grocery stores and churches and schools. It's like every neighborhood is a small town like Jean Ville." I could tell Sylvia wanted to ask me personal questions but didn't know how to approach the subject with Sissy and Ken around. When we were younger we talked about everything; everything, that is, except my relationship with Rodney, which wasn't really a relationship until I went off to college and Sylvia and I grew apart.
She asked me to help her bring some things from the kitchen to the picnic table outside. When we were alone inside the house, she turned abruptly towards me, her nose almost touching mine. Her face was red.
"What's this I heard about you and a Negro?"
"Sylvia. I just lost my husband. What's your point?" Every time I realized I'd lost Josh something hit me in the gut and took my breath away. I couldn't believe my friend would accost me about something that happened years ago when I'd recently experienced such a tragic loss.
"Look, I'm sorry about your husband, but it's hard for me to relate. I never knew him. You never brought him home."
"I brought him home, but that's not the point."
"I want to know about Rodney Thibault. And I understand you've been seen with a little girl who is half-colored."
"I'm not feeling well. I'm going home."
"Home? Home to that house near the Quarters? The one that all those colored people helped you fix up. What happened to your white friends? When did you become such a nigga-lover?"
"If my white friends are all like you, I probably made the right choice." I turned and walked out of her front door, down the street and was a block from Sylvia's house when I realized I was on the other side of town, about a mile from my house on Gravier Road. I didn't care. The fresh air would do me good and eventually Sissy would realize I was gone and come looking for me in the car.
I walked through town as the sun began to set on the other side of the courthouse. The sky was orange with pink stripes that made it look like a painting. I breathed in the cool December air and walked briskly towards the sunset and thought that if I could reach it, and touch the sunset, I might feel Josh and know he was in heaven, and know there was a heaven.
When I got to the front of the courthouse, I sat on a bench and cried. About fifteen minutes later I took off walking towards Gravier Road. It was almost dark when I heard a car behind me, and Sissy pulled up, stopped, and I got in without a word.
*
Lilly didn't want to go back to New York and, frankly, neither did I, but we had to. So we parked our rental car in the return-lot in Baton Rouge and boarded Delta Airlines for Kennedy International. We knew we'd return to Jean Ville soon. After all, we owned a home on Gravier Road that Sissy would tend and probably live in most of the time we were in New York. She was almost twenty-two and needed some independence from Daddy.
The best part about being back in Brooklyn Heights was Ruby. It was almost like having Tootsie with us every day. She sang songs and hummed and whistled tunes and kept us sane. She cooked our favorite meals and cleaned the house spotless. But she couldn't make the spirit of Josh go away and Lilly and I cried on and off every day. Ruby said no flowers came while we were gone, but we hadn't been back two days when the lilies began arriving again. It started to bother me.
Who would know when I was in New York and when I was in Jean Ville? And when I was in Jean Ville, who would know when I was staying with Marianne and when I bought the house and started staying on Gravier Road? It felt spooky, although when I talked to Marianne about it she told me I was blowing it out of proportion, that it was probably Joe, or Josh's sister, or my friends at work. So I tried to stop worrying about it.
I worried about what had happened with Sylvia and how my other white friends would treat me when I was home. I didn't want any part of the white community if Sylvia was an indication of its bigotry.
When I talked to Sissy about it she assured me that I had nothing to worry about. She had lots of friends and no one held what I did as a teenager against me. I didn't admit to anything, but I thought if they only knew the whole truth, I'd really be ostracized.
Lilly and I flew to Jean Ville for Easter break. We left on Friday as soon as she got out of school and landed in Baton Rouge late. We rented a car and drove the 86 miles to Jean Ville and let ourselves into the house on Gravier Road at about midnight. When I flicked on the lights, the first thing I saw was a bouquet of white, long-stemmed Easter lilies in the center of the dining room table. How'd they get here? I wondered, but was too tired to think about it.
I was awakened the next morning by someone knocking on the window of my bedroom saying, "Susie, get up and let me in." I peeked through the blinds and saw Marianne standing on the back porch. I walked into the kitchen and opened the door. She rushed in and hugged me, then started bringing bags into the house. I watched her stock my refrigerator and cabinets with food and drinks and all of Lilly's favorite things.
"You are an amazing aunt and sister." I hugged her as she slipped out the back door again.
"I know," she called over her shoulder. She laughed at me standing there with sleep in my eyes, barefoot, in crumpled pajamas, and my hair sticking out everywhere. When she came back inside she filled the coffee pot and turned it on. She got out two mugs and put sugar and cream on the table. Then she opened a bag that had hot biscuits with ham and sausage that she bought at the corner gas station—one of the benefits of a Cajun town—locally owned gas stations have great home-cooked food.
Lilly stumbled in, joined us, and had orange juice with her biscuit. We were both quiet while Marianne talked nonstop about her work at the hospital and about Lucy and how excited everyone was that we'd be here for Easter. When she stopped to take a sip of coffee I looked at her and grinned.
"Do you know how that bouquet of Easter lilies got into this house?"
"What bouquet?" She looked innocent and Marianne was so honest I could always tell when she was trying to hide something.
"The one on the dining room table." I tilted my head towards the adjoining room and nodded towards the flowers. "It's not like you can't smell them as soon as you walk in the door."
"Oh, that wonderful smell. I thought it was your perfume, Mrs. Ryan." She often teased me about being married to a doctor and even though I never told anyone how much money Josh left me, she knew I was financially secure, and she picked at me about how I could afford things like Haviland China coffee cups.
"Really, Susie, I don't know anything about those flowers. I didn't know where they came from when they arrived at my house, either. Maybe you should ask Sissy. She stays here a lot."
I asked Sissy, but she said the florist just delivered them the day before I arrived and there was no card. I forgot about it, except for that glorious fragrance that filled the house with sweetness and beauty and made my spirits rise.
You could almost taste hope when you walked in the door.
Chapter Nineteen
***
The Book
Lilly and I went back to New York after a wonderful Easter week, and there was a package in the mail. I ripped it open and a proof copy of The Catfish Stories, published by Shilling Publishers fell into my lap. I had almost forgotten that it was in the works and held the copy as if it were a newborn baby—MY newborn baby.
Lilly sat next to me on the sofa and we read through the 300-page paperback book with a picture of Catfish on the cover. I felt tears stream down my face as I re-read the stories Catfish had told me through the years, and which had finally become his legacy.
My life took off at the clip of a racehorse once I took the proof copy to my old workplace and handed it to Mr. Mobley, complete with red marks to indicate changes that had to be made. He ushered me into his office and I sat in one of the two leather chairs in front of his desk while we discussed a book tour he wanted the marketing department to set up for me.
"Are you up for it?" He sipped his coffee and looked at me over the top of his cup.
"I suppose I need to get myself up for it, whether I want to or not." I felt reluctant, but excited.
"This will be good for you, Susie. It'll get your mind off your sadness, give you something positive to focus on."
"What about Lilly?" I was concerned about leaving her for any length of time.
"Let's plan the tour over the summer and she can go with you." He was smiling and I could tell he was proud of the book, of me, of the company for publishing something so out of the ordinary.
The marketing people at Shilling thought it would be appropriate to launch the book in Jean Ville, where Catfish lived and was buried. Lilly and I agreed but we wanted to wait until after the anniversary of Josh's death because Father George was celebrating a special Catholic mass in his memory in late June.
*
A few weeks before the anniversary of Josh's death, my lawyer had called to tell me that the people who were leasing the Manhattan condominium were moving out. He wanted to know whether I'd like him to find another tenant. I told him I wanted to see the apartment before I decided. Lilly and I hailed a cab and I gave the driver the address Mr. Milton sent to me: 375 Park Avenue. When the taxi stopped in front of a black-glass skyscraper, I thought we were at the wrong address.
"Are we between 52nd and 53rd streets in Midtown?" I bent forward and put both hands on the top of the front seat and looked at the cabbie who smelled of stale smoke and Cheetos.
"Yes, ma'am. This is 375 Park Avenue."
I paid the fare, and Lilly and I slid out of the cab and onto the curb in front of a tall building with white stone steps across the entire front. The building was set back from Park Avenue by a large, open, granite plaza with huge fountains. Two sets of glass doors flanked a revolving entrance under a three-story portico. Lilly and I stood like Mary Tyler Moore at the opening of her television show and stared at the building, bending our necks back as far as we could, but still unable to see the top.
Lilly skipped up the stone steps and waited for me in front of the revolving doors; she got a big kick out of this and insisted on going around twice before it finally poured us into the impressive lobby of the Seagram Building.
Josh hadn't told me his condo was in the Seagram Building designed by German-American architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. I'd studied his works, specifically this building completed in 1958, in an art history class in graduate school. It was thirty-eight stories high with businesses on many of the lower floors. We got on the elevator and I looked at the apartment number once again: 3618.
The lobby was lavish by any standards and the building had two very stylish restaurants, The Four Seasons and the Brasserie, both designed by Phillip Johnson. When we unlocked the door to the condominium, we were greeted by the same expensive bronze, travertine, and marble on the floors, countertops, and hardware. Even the shower head was brass, and the furniture, which I presumed was part of the rental package, was glass and bronze and pure luxury. I couldn't imagine Josh living in this fancy place.
"Oh my God!" Lilly was looking out of the floor to ceiling windows that spanned the entire apartment. "People look like ants from up here." We sat on the plush, velvet sectional sofa and I clicked a remote. Music came out of the ceiling and walls and we felt we were surrounded by Pachelbel's Canon in D. Lilly jumped and gasped, then burst out laughing.
We walked from room to room, commenting on how we would change things to make the condo more comfortable, less formal, and we agreed that our own furniture would be out of place but we certainly could do better than the cold-feeling brass and glass stuff the original decorator had chosen.
We ate at the Brasserie and left Manhattan as darkness filtered in. In the cab, Lilly and I talked about what we might do once we reached the one-year mark of Josh's death, but decided we would wait to make any life-changing decisions until then.
*
A warm noon sun blazed as we entered the chapel at St. John's and knelt in the first row. I remembered how I had thought my life was over after I'd lost Rodney. Then I'd found Josh and learned to love again, deeply and without restraint. Maybe the memory of the pain I'd endured over losing Rodney was God's way of telling me I could survive losing Josh, too.
Joe was with us at the memorial mass and the three of us went to Josh's grave and the nursing home to visit Emalene afterwards. I yearned to have Josh back, but knew that was a dream. I felt I had started a new life over the past year, although it didn’t seem real to me, yet.
We went to Marco’s for lunch. Joe told us he was getting married, which was not a surprise. He'd been dating a girl named Bridgette for two years, and Lilly liked her fine. Bridgette had two children from a previous marriage and Joe had taken over being their dad. He seemed happy and satisfied with his new life. Lilly hugged his neck and told him she was happy for him, and she meant it.
"Have you told her?" Joe looked at me over top of Lilly's head.
"Told me what?" Lilly looked from me to Joe and then glared at me, steady and unwavering. "What, Susie? Tell me. I'm almost thirteen years old. I have a right to know whatever it is you two are not telling me." She had tears filling the whites of her eyes and I could see her trying to hold them back. It broke my heart when her feelings were hurt, especially if I had something to do with it. I wanted to kill Joe but, just maybe, it was time.
"You know you were adopted, right?" I was afraid Joe would spill the truth right there in the pizzeria. I kicked him under the table and he flinched.
"I was chosen." Lilly looked defiant. I had to change my strategy because she was mature for her age, having experienced the loss of basically, two parents. What she didn't know was that she still had three—me, Joe, and Rodney.
"Okay. Fair enough. How do I say this… uhm… well… Lilly, well, I'm the one who chose for you to be chosen." My heart was beating so fast I thought it would burst from my chest. We were all very quiet as Lilly tried to absorb what I'd said, while I listened to the murmur of other customers and the clink of spoons hitting the sides of glasses.
"You are the one who did what?"
"I am the one who chose your parents so they could choose you."
"You're my… you gave me away?"
"No! I gave you life, a good life, loving parents. I loved you too much not to give you the best of everything, even if it meant you couldn't be with me. I had nothing to give you."
"Why? Why not?" Her chair scratched the floor when she stood and sounded as if
it ripped the linoleum. She stormed out of the restaurant. I shouted at Joe to go after her. It was like watching a movie through the floor-to-ceiling windows. Joe caught her and hugged her to him while she tried to pull away and beat her fists on his chest. She walked away, he grabbed her, she twisted out of his grip, and they moved down the sidewalk towards Utopia Park, Joe's arm over her shoulder, Lilly trying to shake it off, walking quickly until they were out of view.
I sat in that restaurant for two hours, not knowing what to do. I finally paid the bill and walked into the sunshine and strolled, without purpose, in the direction of the park. I automatically sat on the bench where Josh and I always went, where he fed the black-backed gulls and where we watched Lilly chase the birds. Back then we were carefree and unaware of the kind of pain that awaited us.
I'm not sure how long I sat there. I didn't have anything to feed the birds, so they didn't come close to the bench. I was saying to myself, Don't feel. Don't think. I tried not to think I might have lost Lilly, not to feel the emptiness that would be mine if she chose to hate me for what I'd done.
It started to get dark, and I could hear the diesel motors and air brakes of buses as they picked up and dropped off passengers near the park. The birds began to fly into the trees to roost for the night, and the temperature dropped. I walked out of the park to the street corner, rubbing my exposed arms to warm myself, and waited for a cab to come by.
Then, suddenly, I heard a high-pitched shout that sounded like my name and saw Lilly running towards me on the sidewalk, yelling, "Susie, Susie. Wait!" I ran towards her and she jumped into my arms and wrapped her legs around my waist as she had done when she was four or five years old.
"I'm so sorry. I thought I'd lost you. We went back to Marco's…"
Lilly Page 27
