by Anne McClane
Going to Mass would be harder than it already was if he had ever gone with her. She’d always imagined he would join her in church once they had kids.
Children. She tabled any further thoughts about Fox. The ping, Popp Fountain, their never-to-be children. It was still painful to think about. The pain was not as intense anymore, but she was certain she would always carry its shadow with her.
Deacon Gil read the Gospel. His voice was warm and strong. Deacon Gil was probably older than the man who’d done the first reading. But he didn’t carry himself that way. “Christ took away our infirmities and bore our diseases…”
Pay attention, she thought. Christ was a healer. Tonti had said as much after their last dinner.
The incident under the overpass. It felt like a dream. But one of those dreams that was more real than life. Had something supernatural occurred, or had she lapsed into a fugue state?
An answer was there. She felt it in every fiber, but it was unformed.
Please God, she prayed, because she was at Mass and it seemed appropriate, please make me not be crazy.
Something had happened, and it had happened with Nathan. A man she barely knew. The man at Mardi Gras World had been a stranger too, for that matter. But what was it about Nathan that had opened this door?
There was attraction, Lacey thought. There is attraction. There’s nothing wrong with being attracted to a married man. A man married with children. It’s only wrong if something happens.
Something did happen. But not something I have to confess.
What about Jerry at Mardi Gras World? He seemed a nice enough guy, but there was no particular attraction.
Tom and Jerry. Cecil. Cecil knows something. He knew what I was thinking. Maybe he knows what this is. Maybe Cecil knows about traiteurs. She latched on to that thought. She remembered reading about how the traiteur’s healing powers passed from woman to man to woman and so on. Maybe Fox’s mom, whom she had never known, had been a healer, and passed it on to Fox, who had passed it on to her. But that made no sense. Fox had possessed many abilities, but Lacey didn’t think healing had been among them. Traitor, yes; traiteur, probably not.
And what would Cecil know about Fox, anyway? And how would she find him? And would he know why this was happening?
Do I have to know why?
A passing cloud cleared the way for the sun to strike through the stained-glass window, too high above her head to see which saint it featured. A beam of light bathed the empty pew in front of her in shades of crimson and blue.
I don’t have to know why. It would be nice, but not necessary. What I need to know is how to manage it.
Like the hand of God, the thought settled her soul. She needed to know how to manage it, whatever it was. That should be her chief concern. Everything else would fall into place. She hoped.
Pay attention. The answer will come.
Lacey shut down for the remainder of the service. She chased away any errant thoughts. A great fatigue settled into the places they might have occupied. She shuffled, zombie-like, in line to receive the Eucharist. She had missed Mass the weekend prior, and knew she technically shouldn’t receive Communion, but she ignored that thought too.
The stampeding thoughts were replaced by one overarching aim: sleep. Lacey filed out of St. Daniel’s after Mass had ended, hoping she could make the short drive home without falling asleep at the wheel. She gasped when she felt cold, spindly fingers on her shoulder.
“Imagine seeing you again so soon!”
Lacey turned her head and saw the insect mandible of Dotty Trebuchet jawing up and down.
“Oh,” Lacey said. “Hi.” She wanted to say, “I didn’t know you came to St. Daniel’s,” but didn’t.
Parishioners filed around them as they blocked the walkway outside the church. Miss Dotty launched into a minutes-long soliloquy about Matt and his family, how Matt was so much like her husband, her history with Tonti, and then about everything she had to do in the hours ahead. Lacey stopped her when she heard a familiar name.
“Excuse me, did you just say Esther Mae?” Lacey asked.
“Oh, that’s right, I saw you with her at Katie’s. I completely forgot about it when you had that run-in with the cockroach in the bathroom,” Miss Dotty said, giving her the elevator eyes. “Can you believe, she seemed more alive that night than she had in years? I had really questioned whether she would make it, that annual dinner. She was like another grandmother to me, she’s been connected to my family for so long.”
The mixture at the table that night at Katie’s suddenly made sense to Lacey. “I’m sorry, so what happened?” she asked.
“So we had dinner that evening, and she was so animated and lucid. She had a cab pick her up, and we all thought maybe we just might see her again next year. But then, two days later, she died in her sleep.” Miss Dotty shook her head slowly for effect. “I’m so glad I have such a nice final memory of her, though. As I was saying, her funeral is tomorrow, and I have to pick up a ham, and figure out where in heck I’m supposed to deliver it. I’m not really familiar with that part of town.” Miss Dotty waved her hand eastward. Lacey raised her eyebrows but kept silent. She suspected Miss Dotty would say the same thing about any part of town that wasn’t Lakeview or Uptown.
“I’m so sorry to hear that,” Lacey said. “I didn’t know her, she just asked for my help that evening. But her name was unforgettable.”
Miss Dotty was uncharacteristically quiet. They shared an awkward stare for several moments.
“Well, I should run. Too much to do!” Miss Dotty said. “I didn’t know you came to this church,” she added as they parted ways. “I’ll look for you next time!”
Great, Lacey thought. Maybe it’s time I started going to St. Peter’s. She kept her head down on the short walk to her car. An unforeseen encounter with Miss Dotty was enough for the day.
She stopped, paralyzed, at her car door. She gazed blankly over the hood at the spot where she and Dotty Trebuchet had spoken. Miss Esther Mae had been a new woman after Lacey walked her to the restaurant. The flaming paper towel incident had occurred directly afterward.
You idiot, she thought. Miss Esther Mae had been a third recipient of her fugue-healing thing. She hadn’t even counted her in. Angele hadn’t caught it, either. Maybe Lacey hadn’t told her about Miss Esther Mae, only about what had happened in the bathroom.
Miss Esther Mae had been another, and now she was dead.
Lacey locked herself in her car. She remained motionless until the stifling air forced her to start the engine.
17
“Why are you answering your phone this early?” demanded Tonti.
“Tonti, it’s hardly early,” Lacey said, trying to sound light. She thought of saying something about how she had been up, showered, and already been to Mass, but she didn’t have the energy to be clever.
“Did you spend another evening alone last night?” Tonti asked.
Lacey held the phone away and made a face. She cursed herself for answering the call. The only reason she had was her sneaking suspicion that Tonti might divulge a secret or two.
“As a matter of fact, no,” Lacey answered. “I was out last night, and actually talked to new people.”
“Did you make any new friends? Scratch that question. Obviously not, if you’re home alone and sounding so awake this early,” Tonti said.
“Tonti!” Lacey couldn’t help herself. She tried to recover. “Give me some credit for trying to expand my social circle, like you said.”
“I suppose I shouldn’t discourage you. At least you’re trying. And I’m glad you’re awake and sound ready to go.”
“Go?” Lacey asked.
“Yes. You’re going on a field trip with me.”
Lacey thought of her sofa and Ambrose, and her plan to wallow in her thoughts about Miss Esther Mae, the others, and all her burgeoning drama. A “but” was beginning to form, but Tonti cut her off.
“No buts. Be ready in fifteen minutes
. John and I will be by to pick you up.”
“Can I ask where we’re going?”
“To Golden Meadow. John will drop us at the Bay House; he’s got some business or other over in Cut Off, he’ll be back ’round to pick us up when he’s done.”
Lacey’s heart sank. Tonti was one thing, but no part of her felt up for facing Fox’s extended family.
“Relax, child. You’ll thank me when we’re done. I promise.”
Lacey felt like a child, sitting in the backseat of the Cadillac Eldorado with Uncle John in the driver’s seat and Tonti by his side. Tonti chattered away. And like a child, Lacey slept in fits. When she awoke, her mind was a million miles away. She wished her body could accompany it.
Every now and then, Tonti would shoot a question back at Lacey, and each time she replied, “I’m sorry, what were you asking?”
Fox’s family filled her thoughts as they traveled southwest. The Becnels were a warm but potent force when assembled. And the thought of seeing Fox’s father nearly broke her heart.
As if reading her thoughts, Tonti said, “My brother won’t be there; he’s at the fishing camp.”
Lacey snapped out of her fog. “I’m sorry. Which brother?” There were several.
“Big Fox.”
“Oh, that’s a shame. I would have liked to have seen him,” Lacey said. It was only a partial lie.
Fox’s father had always made Lacey feel like a favorite. When he compared her to Fox’s revered and long-deceased mother, Miss Elaine, Lacey couldn’t help but glow. Lacey thought she should ask Tonti about Miss Elaine, something that hinted at her earlier thoughts during Mass. But she couldn’t think of a way to ask “Was Fox’s mom a healer?” without prompting return questions she wasn’t ready to answer.
Lacey was still struggling to form the question when Uncle John pulled into the paved circular drive at the end of a long shell road. The house stood apart from any other, but it couldn’t be called “grand.” Elevated to accommodate tidal surges, and even with its boat dock and neatly manicured lawn, it was not imposing. It always seemed a bit more on the side of the ridiculous, like a circus performer on stilts.
Lacey had long wondered why they called it the Bay House. The boat dock backed into a bayou, with nothing like a bay anywhere in sight.
Lacey had never heard of Golden Meadow, about fifty miles south of Metairie, until she’d met Fox at LSU. It had sounded idyllic. She’d pictured a thick pine forest clearing to a lovely golden meadow, the Gulf in the distance, with a few stately houses dotting it like some exotic wildflowers.
The first time Fox had taken her there, she had wondered if the Bay House would actually be a standing structure. No forests, just a lonely one-lane highway, the occasional cement box with nary a window housing the local bar, and the smell of the encroaching sea. She had spotted a few mobile homes a distance from the highway. As in love as she was with Fox the first time she visited, she hadn’t cared what the Bay House looked like; it must hold some kind of magic if he loved the place so. She had just wanted to experience it with him. Maybe it would be near a beach.
She would quickly discover there were no beaches in Golden Meadow, just bayous and swamps and the great mush that happens when the sea meets alluvial soil. Even so, she was not disappointed the first time she visited to find a standing home instead of a mobile one. The Becnels gathered there on holidays and for several weeks during the summer, most of the caretaking falling to Big Fox and his brother, Uncle. Invariably, each time Lacey visited, someone made a passing comment about the house being in the Becnel family for generations. Which Lacey had never understood, since it appeared to have been built in the 1980s.
Still playing the part of a child, she absently followed Tonti up the drive to the exterior stairwell. Tonti was slow walking up the stairs, exclaiming, “God dammit if my brother doesn’t fix that elevator soon!”
There was no elevator in the Bay House.
Lacey finally looked up as they entered the wraparound porch and peered inside. “Oh! It’s lovely!”
Someone had been busy on the interior since the last time she had seen it. It had a fresh coat of paint; tattered secondhand furnishings had been replaced with simple, brightly upholstered new ones. Dollar store artwork had been replaced with family photos.
“Would you believe we have Big Fox to thank for this?” Tonti said, with a sweep of her arm. “Got a bug up his ass last year, took down everything, handed off anything anybody might want for sentimental reasons—I didn’t want a thing, mind you—and got rid of the rest. Isn’t it nice to see it as part of the twenty-first century?”
“Yes, it is. Really lovely,” Lacey replied. “Where is everybody?”
“Lulu will be around later; she’s out and about.”
A bubble of panic formed in Lacey’s stomach. Why on Earth was she stranded in the middle of Golden Nowhere with just Tonti and nothing to do for the foreseeable future?
“Let’s have a drink and sit out on the porch,” Tonti said.
“Tonti, it’s only ten thirty.”
“Splendid! That’s perfect for a little brunch and hibiscus,” Tonti said, using a code word for one of her favorite libations.
“I’m not quite ready for champagne,” Lacey said.
“Fine. Then go find some cranberry juice and meet me out on the porch.”
Lacey watched Tonti grab two champagne glasses—the old-fashioned kind, shallow and flat like a martini glass—and a bottle of cava, and breeze out of the kitchen. Lacey took her time lingering around. She suspected Tonti wouldn’t wait for cranberry juice.
Lacey strayed from the kitchen, thinking to use the bathroom, but really because she wanted to snoop. The hallway had bedrooms branching off from it, though “bedroom” was a generous term. “Sleeping porch” would be more apropos.
The hall used to be littered with pictures, too many to take in. But the Big Fox makeover had apparently included a streamlining of the photos. Now there was a neat line of pictures, all in the same size frames, four on either side. One for each Becnel sibling.
Each family was represented in birth order: on one side were the older three sisters, Camille, Amelie, and Tonti, with Uncle finishing up that wall; and opposite Uncle was Big Fox, followed by Lulu, Laville, and Esmé.
She glanced at Camille’s picture. She had met her only once, and Lacey saw nothing recognizable in the photo of the young woman before her. Aunt Camille had been in ill health, and had died shortly after she and Fox had started dating.
Lacey turned around to view the youngest Becnel. There was a portrait of an impossibly handsome family, dressed in khakis and loose white oxfords at the beach—Aunt Esmé, the baby of the family, with her husband and children.
Lacey took her time looking at the pictures. The bubble in her stomach tightened into a knot as she wondered what picture Big Fox had chosen to represent his family. There was no standard format. Some had a single photo, some had an artful triptych; Tonti’s was a collage, an explosion of photos crammed into an eight-by-ten-inch space.
She turned slowly to see that Big Fox had chosen three pictures, set in a matte as a diagonal slash. Two of the pictures she had seen before. First, the centerpiece, a color photo of Big Fox standing over Miss Elaine with Fox, just a baby in her arms. He was looking down at the two of them with an expression reserved for first-time fathers—pride tempered by a sense of awe (or perhaps abject fear). At the lower left was a picture of Fox when he was fifteen, standing next to a huge marlin. Fox had called the fish Brando. Big Fox had that same photo on a side table at his house, next to one of Lacey and Fox’s wedding photos. Big Fox loved to joke that she and Brando were the best catches Fox was ever going to see.
But there was no wedding photo completing this portrait. In the upper right was a young boy of about eight, standing with his hands on his hips, facing a woman in a white uniform, her mouth open as if she was scolding him. But there was unquestionable mirth in her look. And the picture quality was extraordinar
ily good for the time period—early ’60s, Lacey guessed. She figured the boy must be Big Fox, but the woman in the white uniform was a mystery.
She appeared to be in her early to mid-thirties. My age, Lacey thought. She was beautiful, too—high cheekbones, a full mouth, and big, dark eyes that held an otherworldliness to them. And something familiar that Lacey could not place.
Worried that Tonti might come looking for her, Lacey cast a quick glance at Lulu and Laville’s pictures and returned to the kitchen. She grabbed two single-serve bottles of cranberry juice cocktail from the pantry and met Tonti out on the porch.
“I’m sorry, Tonti—I meant to use the bathroom and got sucked into the portrait gallery in the hall,” Lacey said.
“Can you believe that was Big Fox’s idea too? Aren’t they gorgeous?” Tonti said. Her glass was nearly empty.
“Yes, they’re great. It forces you to linger, I think. Before, I never knew where to focus, so I don’t think I ever did,” Lacey said.
“Here, child,” Tonti pushed her glass at Lacey. “Mix me up a hibiscus while you set yourself up.”
Lacey made a cava with a splash of cranberry for Tonti, and a cranberry with a splash of cava for herself. Both met with Tonti’s approval.
“So who else is here besides Lulu?” Lacey asked.
“It should just be her and Randy for now. Uncle and Amelie and an assortment of their people are supposed to come ’round tonight, but we’ll be long gone by then.”
Lacey tried to hide her relief.
“How’s Uncle Randy doing, Tonti?” she asked. She remembered the last time she’d seen him, at Fox’s funeral, bald and emaciated from his lymphoma treatment.
“Much better! Thank blessed Father Seelos for that,” Tonti said, making the sign of the cross.
Lacey played along. “Do you think he’s any closer to beatification? Father Seelos, I mean, of course.”
“Well I wouldn’t think you meant Randy!” Tonti said. “Lulu sent a letter to the archbishop about Randy’s remission, so I hope so. At least, she was supposed to. I’ll have to check on that.”
