by Julie Smith
“I mean it, Mama,” Patty said. “How are you?”
“Well, I get the spasms a lot.”
Patty cocked her head like a parakeet.
“Most times I can’t feel a thing in my legs—haven’t for years, but when the spasms come, it hurts me so bad I holler; Des has to bring warm towels in to make it stop. You know how you can scratch an old dog’s chest and his hind foot’ll jump around? Tha’s what the spasms are like—jus’ like a dog’s hind leg. We’re runnin’ out of towels too—ours are so threadbare you can almost see through ‘em.”
“Oh, Mama! I’ll get you some towels. You know you don’t have to want for anything if you’ll just tell me what you need. I want to get you a house so bad! You suffer so much, you and Frannie. Wouldn’t you like to have a bigger place, something with some nice big windows and ceiling fans?”
Her mother made a sound that was somewhere between a cough and a snort, something like “harrumph,” but more explosive. “You couldn’t buy us anything like that.”
“Well, George could. You know he could, and he’d be glad to. He wants to, Mama. You know that.”
“I know y’all are talking through your hats,” said Frannie. “You’re not gon’ do anything of the kind. You’ve been sayin’ you would for years and you’re not gon’ do it.”
“But Mama always says she won’t move!”
“I’m not takin’ any your ill-gotten gains, Miss Patty Big Shot. I know why you married George Brocato, and it sure wasn’t for love. You can just forget it if you think I’m touching one floorboard of any house that man buys for me.”
The room went out of focus. Patty felt her head tilt, spinning, out of her control. She always offered the house, they always refused. But this was new.
“Mama!” said Martin.
Des said quickly, “She’s overtired.” Hustling Patty out, tiptoeing, she whispered, “The medicine does her this way. Sometimes, anymore, she just isn’t herself.”
Patty’s throat had closed. Patty and George had supported the Fournots from the beginning of their marriage; George had insisted. A hammer thudded in the back of Patty’s head. The tears wanted to come out, but she couldn’t let them, couldn’t drive home if she got started.
George had been on a similar errand, had looked for Melody at the homes of his brothers and nieces and nephews, even the ones who’d been so nasty earlier that day. Nasty was a way of life with the Brocatos; you lived with it.
He’d never noticed it that much before. But today, with the weight of his son’s death heavy on him, he couldn’t stand it, felt as if walls were closing on him. His brother Phil and Phil’s wife, Nan, didn’t even ask him in, just kept him standing at the door, Phil saying, “Hell, no, she’s not here, why the hell would she come here?”
Nan had said, “Be nice to your brother,” and Phil said, “Why should I be nice to him?”
“Because he’s your brother.”
“Hell, you’re my wife, I’m not going to start being nice to you—why should I be nice to him?”
Phil thought he was funny, and usually George would have forced a smile, might have been genuinely amused; he really couldn’t remember the man he’d been two days before, when he’d had his children, when he hadn’t felt so lacerated and naked.
“Bicker, bicker, bicker,” he said. “Nobody in the whole damn family even knows how to be nice!”
His brother had said, “You and Patty do it too—come on, admit it, George, you wouldn’t be a Brocato if you didn’t.”
And before he thought, he didn’t even know what he was saying, George retorted, “We don’t care enough to bother.”
Phil said nastily, “Well, why not, George?”
He had no idea what his brother meant by that. He walked away, furious, huffing, but as he got in his car, the words echoed.
Well, why not, George?
Phil had said them so accusingly.
Why not what? Why didn’t he and Patty care? Patty cared. She was like a leech. Why didn’t George care? Care enough to bother bickering with his wife?
He shook his head, clearing it, wondering if he was short of air—he was sitting in the car, letting it warm up, even though it was eighty-two outside.
It wasn’t about bickering. But his brother had asked a question that had been nibbling at the edge of his consciousness lately: Why didn’t he care?
Patty’s who there is to love—why not love her?
That was the question, wasn’t it? With Ham gone, with Melody gone, missing—she was only missing—with the underbrush cleared out, so to speak, he was feeling closer to Patty, needing her almost.
This morning he’d almost forgotten what he didn’t like about her. He thought about it. There was nothing wrong with Patty. She was pretty. She was a good mother. She must be a good wife, she did everything wives were supposed to. She wasn’t Dorothy, of course …
How could you miss a woman who’d been dead for seventeen years?
He wasn’t exactly sure how a shrink would put it, but he thought he knew the answer, sort of—if you had half a brain, you wouldn’t. You’d get over it.
Like a man.
He was humiliated. Was he really in love with a dead woman? But he thought it couldn’t be—he hadn’t been that crazy about her when she was alive.
He put the car in drive and drove away far too fast.
Well, if I didn’t love Dorothy because she got pregnant and I got stuck with her, and then I never loved Patty because she wasn’t Dorothy, what the hell’s wrong with me?
He’d never had a thought like that in his life.
It’s the damn assholes! The Brocato assholes.
Looking at them, listening to them, turned his stomach—there must be other ways to live.
Phil lived near Audubon Park, and to George’s surprise, he found himself going there, heading for the zoo. He had a weird feeling Melody would be there—an overpowering feeling. He was as sure as he was of her name that she was there now, that he’d find her in the next few minutes. Where else would she be? It was her favorite place.
Yet, once inside, wandering among the moms and kids, the sudden elation left him. It wasn’t such a brilliant deduction he’d made. It was the final fuck-up of a man whose whole life was a fuck-up. Not his whole life. Not his business life. Just this sleepwalking—or whatever it was—involving Dorothy and Melody and Patty.
And Ham. Maybe Ham most of all.
What the fuck’s wrong with me?
I hate myself.
The zoo wasn’t Melody’s favorite place. Melody was a young woman. He didn’t know the young woman. The zoo had been the child’s favorite. He didn’t know when she had gotten away from him.
Or when Ham had.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
George found Patty at home staring out the window, apparently as depressed by her efforts as he was by his. He felt a tenderness for her, an odd identification. “Baby, I know what you’re going through.”
She looked at him in surprise. He had put his hand on her shoulder. She almost jumped.
“Listen, I know a guy. A private detective.”
“You mean the one Johnny Dupre got to spy on his wife?”
“How’d you know about that?”
“The man’s pond scum. I don’t want him anywhere near our daughter.”
He took her hands and tried not to notice the surprise in her eyes. He felt the energy running from her body to his; it was strangely exhilarating. “Patty, I thought we agreed we were going to work together to find her.”
“I thought we did too.”
“Did you think I’d go back on that?”
“But I thought you just said—”
He interrupted her. “Trust me. Would you trust me, please? I’m just going to ask the guy for advice.”
He dropped her hands and strode to the phone, not waiting for an answer. He said it was an emergency and waited for the guy to call back. Patty went upstairs to wash her face.
When she came bac
k, he said, “Let’s go to the Quarter.”
“But she’s been there. She told Andy Fike she was leaving town.”
“She’ll be there.” He spoke more grimly than he meant to, teeth clenched, jaw muscles working.
“You’re so damned arrogant.”
Could that be Patty speaking? She never spoke to him like that. It was as if Ham’s death had changed her, changed him, changed them all forever.
He could have tried to mollify her, but he didn’t, he was too impatient. He said, “She’ll be there, Patty. Come on. They all end up there. That’s what the guy told me. There’s a whole scene down there.”
“Scene?”
He thought he could see fear in her eyes, hear it in her voice. The guy, the detective, had told him things he didn’t want to hear, didn’t want Patty to know about. He hustled her out the door. “A runaway scene,” he said, trying to keep his voice neutral. “He said to try a place called Covenant House—a shelter for homeless kids.”
Patty looked puzzled. “Melody’s not homeless.”
“Come on, dammit, Patty. Listen, it’s a nice place, the guy said. They call it the Hilton for the Homeless.”
“Where is it?”
“North Rampart.”
She said nothing, merely opened the car door and sank down, looking out the window.
He might as well have said they were going to the Desire Project; no mother wanted to think of her kid on North Rampart, the street that divided the French Quarter from Treme. Right now it was one of the roughest neighborhoods in New Orleans. Still, the Cov was a nice place, the man had said; if Melody were there, she’d be fine.
It looked okay, he thought. He could see hope in Patty’s eyes as she took in the neat brick building, the large, carpeted, pleasant reception room—well, technically not a reception room, perhaps. The sign called it a Crisis Center.
“We’re looking for someone,” he told the young woman at the desk. “We don’t even know if she’s here.”
“A kid?”
“Yes, a kid. I thought that’s what you have here.”
A young black woman came into the room, carrying a baby and holding a toddler’s hand. She looked about nineteen.
The receptionist was looking at them as if they’d just arrived from Mars. “Are you her parents?” She sounded unbelieving, even accusing.
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry. We offer sanctuary. We can’t really tell you if someone’s here.”
“She’s sixteen, for God’s sake.”
“We can keep underage kids for seventy-two hours before we’re required to notify their parents.”
“Bullshit!”
Patty said, “George!” and he realized he’d bellowed. The receptionist was nearly the color of a frying pan, one of the blackest people George had ever seen, yet he had the sense she’d turned pale. She stood and backed away, her eyes jumpy, like a rabbit’s.
“Ms. Ohlmeyer,” she said. “Could you come talk to these people?”
In a nearby glass-fronted office, an older woman, perhaps fifty, looked over the rims of her glasses. She was black also, and dressed in a black dress, one that looked comfortable to George, suitable for moving fast if she had to. It had a white band down the front, with buttons on it. The woman was overweight and, though her face looked serious, even stern at first, she had a maternal quality that George picked up immediately, that he associated with overweight women, and liked; that made him feel comfortable. She wore no jewelry except a wedding band and a pair of gold hoop earrings. She looked bored, but she came out of her office and stood politely. “Yes?”
“We’re looking for our daughter.”
“Come in.” Her voice was rich as meuniere sauce.
Like the receptionist, she rather pointedly didn’t ask their daughter’s name.
“We don’t get many parents,” she said. “You took Johanda by surprise. A lot of our kids aren’t really runaways—some of them are, sure, but a lot of them are what we call ‘push-outs.’” She shrugged. “Their parents don’t want them.”
“Don’t want them?” George could see Patty struggling with the concept. “Why wouldn’t their parents want them?”
“They can’t afford them. Say the mother gets a new boyfriend and her daughter’s sixteen—well, she’s a threat two different ways. Sexually and economically. The boyfriend’s a meal ticket— the mom doesn’t want to lose it.”
“But that’s terrible.”
“Or some of the parents are crack addicts.”
“Not white people!” Patty blurted, and George could have kicked her.
But Ohlmeyer smiled. “You’d be surprised.”
George struggled for control. “Look, Ms. Ohlmeyer. We didn’t push our daughter out—she ran away.”
Ohlmeyer’s face took on a wary, purposefully cheerful, but slightly phony look, the look people get when they’re about to tell you bad news. “You know, kids usually don’t run to something; they don’t call them runaways for nothing. They leave because they can’t handle conditions at home. Our kids are here for four reasons: neglect, emotional abuse, sexual abuse, or other physical abuse. Ninety percent of our kids have been abused.”
She leaned back in her chair, letting them take it in.
Patty said, “You don’t understand. This isn’t anything like that.”
If he didn’t shut her up, she’d probably say, “Melody goes to Country Day. She takes music lessons.” He realized that he was on the verge of saying it himself.
Ohlmeyer said, “She must have had a reason for running away.”
“Look, this isn’t your average runaway case—”
Patty interrupted him. “Do we look like most of the parents you get in here?”
“We don’t get that many parents. But look, I think I can reassure you on one thing—we do offer the kids sanctuary, but if a kid isn’t being abused, home is where she belongs. We encourage all our kids who can to go home.”
“But you won’t tell us if our daughter’s here?”
Ohlmeyer stared at them, assessing. “I’ve got a funny feeling. Look, I’m about to go out on a limb—are you the Brocatos by any chance?”
George saw Patty’s eyes close with relief.
“Yes,” he said, and Patty said, “She’s here.”
“Well, no, she’s not here. I just recognized you from the papers. You have all my sympathy, Mr. and Mrs. Brocato.” She clucked like a hen. “Mmmmm mmm, you surely do. You’re right, this isn’t your average runaway situation. I’ve been thinking about Melody a lot; we all have—that poor child.”
Patty looked as if she might cry. George said, “We won’t take up any more of your time.”
But Ohlmeyer said, “You’re serious about trying to find her?”
“We’re her parents!”
Ohlmeyer shrugged. “We’ve got kids in here who came home one day and found their parents had moved. But look, Melody’s out there somewhere—” She stopped. “Pray God.” She looked seriously at both the Brocatos.
George said, “We know she is. She’s been seen.”
“Well, probably what she’ll do is what they all do—she’ll try to meet other kids. That’s how they get along here. They help each other; live off each other. They get jobs as waitresses or, uh, dancers. Your best shot at finding her is to go where the kids go.” She started writing things down. “Go to Decatur Street—here’s the names of some bars they like. Go to Jackson Square. If you think she’s dancing, Bourbon Street.”
“Dancing?” said Patty.
It was preposterous. Melody dancing on Bourbon Street?
Ohlmeyer shrugged. “Go sit on a balcony. Watch the crowds go by—you might get lucky.”
“That’s your best advice? Go sit on a balcony?”
“At least there they can’t see you. If you go in the bars, you’ll stick out.”
After the initial shock, George had rethought the dancing idea. Melody was too young to get a legal job, and probably not desperate eno
ugh—he fervently hoped—to turn tricks or deal drugs. Dancing might seem an adventure to her. “Which clubs hire underage dancers?” he said.
Ohlmeyer looked almost pleased. “Bayou Babies gets most of them,” she said. “The one with the ugly sign.”
They all had ugly signs. Bayou Babies, in fact, looked less offensive than most.
It was only afternoon, but a near-naked young woman gyrated on a stage clearly visible from the door. Or visible until a man blocked the doorway, a man who’d been wearing the same wilted clothes for a while and had splashed cologne over stale sweat. He stood so close George felt himself start to gag.
“I’ll have to ask you to—”
“We’re coming in!” George snapped, handing him a folded bill to get him out of nostril range.
The dancing girl wasn’t Melody, and his first thought was to leave, never mind the two-drink minimum, until he saw the girl on the bar. She was lying there on her side, her feet got up in some kind of mermaid’s tail, but the rest of her stark naked except for the two-by-two-inch G-string they all wore. She rested her head on her right hand and had her left arm folded over her breasts, so that the effect wasn’t erotic, merely shocking. Shocking because she was a teenager with a pageboy, a kid about Melody’s age, looking as if she was lying by a swimming pool. Shocking because her face was a baby’s face, the face of a child whose worst problem ought to be algebra. She wasn’t even wearing makeup.
He was staring at her, trying not to gasp, not to change expression, when he heard Patty say, “Oh my God.”
He turned toward her—toward the center of the club—and saw what she saw: a short-haired girl with walnut-sized breasts, brand new, just sprouting, barely budded little things. She was standing on a chair, pulled up to a table, pumping her pelvis. The girl was thin, like Melody, wearing only the ubiquitous G-string and a pair of knee-length boots. Her crotch was about six inches from the face of the man sitting at the table.
