Southern Ruby

by Belinda Alexandra

  Once I became accustomed to the dazzling atmosphere, I noticed other items: a pair of Venetian blackamoor side tables; a porcelain Cavalier King Charles spaniel in a glass box; a Steinway grand piano. I approached a pair of silver gilt grotto armchairs and spotted the price tag: $34,000. Wow!

  The store was crowded and yet everything worked sumptuously together. There was no musty smell or a speck of dust anywhere. How did the owner manage it?

  ‘I think I’ve died and gone to heaven,’ I said.

  Although I had a passion for antiques, I didn’t own any. The shabby-chic vintage furniture that was often passed off as antique had never appealed to me. It was the real deal or nothing. Of course I couldn’t afford the real deal, so I satisfied myself with the pictures in Antiques Collector magazine. A slim black man in his late thirties, wearing a blue blazer, polka-dot cravat and oxford shoes, came down the stairs from the first floor and flounced towards us. ‘Madame Ruby!’ he cried. ‘What a beautiful surprise!’

  ‘Blaine, you handsome devil!’ replied Grandma Ruby, accepting a kiss on each cheek from him. ‘I’ve brought Amandine to see you. She loves history and beautiful objects too.’ Turning to me, she said, ‘Amandine, this is Blaine Galafate. The Galafate family has a long history of friendship with the Lalandes.’

  Blaine reached for my hand and brought it to his lips. ‘Enchanté, Mademoiselle Amandine.’

  His manner was highly affected and very camp. I liked him immediately. He was as theatrical as Grandma Ruby.

  ‘Amandine arrived yesterday,’ Grandma Ruby told him. ‘From Australia.’

  Blaine’s eyebrows shot up as if it had suddenly occurred to him who I was.

  ‘Well,’ he said, bringing his palms to his cheeks, ‘I think that calls for a celebration, don’t you, Madame Ruby? I’ve got some champagne in the fridge.’

  ‘Good idea, Oscar,’ she exclaimed.

  He disappeared out the back and I turned to Grandma Ruby. ‘Oscar? Didn’t you say his name was Blaine?’

  ‘Oh,’ she said, waving her hand, ‘that’s a New Orleans custom. We give our close friends pet names. Mine’s always been Ruby. Louise’s friends call her Lucy. Even New Orleans has a few different names: The Big Easy; The Crescent City; The City That Care Forgot.’ She grinned at me. ‘You can have a special name too. What would you like to be called?’

  I shook my head. ‘I’m still getting used to Amandine.’

  After Blaine had returned with a bottle of Bollinger and proposed a toast to my visit, I asked him about the store. ‘Where do you obtain these pieces? They’re exquisite.’

  He sat down at a sales desk and invited me and Grandma Ruby to take the seats opposite. ‘I travel to France and Italy five or six times a year to attend the fairs and private estate sales.’

  My eyes fell to a pair of Famille Rose peacocks on his desk. There were many elegant homes in the Garden District, and I imagined there would be more in other affluent areas of New Orleans, but if the other two floors of the shop were anything like the ground floor, Blaine must have a few million dollars worth of merchandise. Surely the locals in New Orleans and the wealthy tourists wouldn’t be enough to keep him in business?

  ‘Who are your customers?’ I asked.

  He nodded towards the desktop computer. ‘These days I sell mainly over the internet. Americans have a passion for European antiques, but my other big markets are France and Italy.’

  Firstly, I was surprised that anyone would buy an antique online. Surely you’d want to see the object for yourself, to touch it, to admire its lines, to fall in love with it before investing in it? But then I remembered that there were people in the world with more money than I could ever imagine possessing, and for them buying an eighteenth- or nineteenth-century antique over the internet was no different from me shopping on eBay for a pair of earrings. But the second part of what Blaine had said bamboozled me.

  ‘You mean you buy these items in France and Italy, ship them here, and then sell them back to customers in France and Italy?’

  He smiled wryly. ‘It takes time to develop a good eye for what is not only beautiful but will hold its value too. If inexperienced people go to fairs, it’s very likely they’ll buy things that are overpriced and not genuine. I’ve gotten to know my clientele well over the years and they trust me to make good decisions. I never buy anything I wouldn’t be happy to live with myself.’

  ‘I knew you two would get along like a house on fire,’ said Grandma Ruby. ‘Now, Blaine, you have to promise me that you’ll take Amandine out to all the exciting places in New Orleans. You know I don’t do much of that any more.’

  ‘It will be my pleasure. There’s always something happening in New Orleans and Amandine will be charming company.’

  The shop’s telephone rang and Grandma Ruby told him to answer it, indicating that we were going back home.

  Outside on the street, she took my arm. ‘I want you to fall in love with New Orleans, Amandine. I don’t want you to ever leave again. I’ll marry you off to Blaine if I have to.’

  I leaned towards her and said in a conspiratorial whisper, ‘I don’t think Blaine is the marrying type.’

  ‘No?’ she answered, raising her eyebrows mockingly. ‘But you two have so much in common — and your children would be beautiful!’

  After a late lunch of cornbread with tomatoes, black-eyed peas and green peppers, Grandma Ruby and I took a nap before Aunt Louise arrived in her Toyota Prius to pick us up. On the way to her house in Lake Terrace we passed City Park and I marvelled at its avenues of live oaks draped with Spanish moss.

  ‘It used to be the favoured place to have duels,’ Grandma Ruby told me. ‘An activity of which Creole men were particularly fond. I lost a few ancestors that way.’ Then she pointed to the long body of water running parallel to the park. ‘The Bayou St John is the reason New Orleans exists. The French sought a shorter route from the Gulf of Mexico to the Mississippi River and the Choctaw Indians led them to this waterway. It was once lined with plantations, and the free women of colour would hold voodoo ceremonies on the banks, which scared the hell out of the Europeans.’

  The Spanish and the French Creoles were gone now, as were the free people of colour and the African slaves, and yet something of their essence remained in the languid atmosphere, I thought, as the essence of the Lalande family remained in the house in the Garden District. It was as if the divide between the dead and the living was very thin in New Orleans.

  That impression dissipated the closer we got to the newer suburbs near Lake Pontchartrain. The original houses in the area were 1950s ranch-style bungalows, while the newer ones replacing them were contemporary takes on Georgian, Acadian and Cape Cod styles. The area was open and set out in a modern garden city plan, with arterial roads circling it and the interior streets ending in cul-de-sacs. Street trees were in abundance, but the gardens were mostly lawns with a few shrubs. I remembered Grandma Ruby’s comment that when you rode on the streetcar you knew you were part of something, but on a bus you could be anywhere. This area was pleasant but it wasn’t quintessentially New Orleans. We could have been driving through any suburb in America. We could even have been somewhere in Sydney.

  Aunt Louise turned the car into a street of prestige homes and then into the driveway of one with a steeply pitched roof and dove-grey stucco exterior walls. The parapet mouldings and the keystones were French provincial style but the tall multi-paned windows, devoid of blinds or curtains, were a modern touch. She pushed the remote door opener and drove the car into the triple garage.

  ‘Welcome to our home,’ she said, ushering us from the car into a hallway that led to a spacious kitchen. It was an impressive room with a chef’s stove and ornamental carvings on the kitchen island and cabinets. A chandelier dangling above added to the glamorous ambience.

  ‘Wow!’ I said, admiring the granite benchtops and the white porcelain double sink. We followed Aunt Louise out into a family room with a natural stone floor and a view over a g
arden of clipped hedges and topiary rose bushes.

  To an architect’s eye, the home was opulent with a well-thought-out flow between the rooms. Most people would be ecstatic to live in a beautiful home like this, but it was too glitzy for me. I preferred the house in the Garden District with its associations with the past. Then I smiled when I recalled what Grandma Ruby had told me about old houses freaking Uncle Jonathan out. At least in this house, which looked to be only two or three years old, he could be sure nobody had died within its walls.

  Uncle Jonathan appeared from the garden with a bunch of fresh thyme and handed it to Aunt Louise.

  ‘Well, hello!’ he said, grinning from ear to ear. ‘It’s lovely to see you again, Amandine.’ He kissed me on the cheek and greeted Grandma Ruby the same way. ‘While Louise is starting on dinner, let me show you around the house.’

  From my experience of styling houses in Mosman, most owners of French-inspired homes decorated them with gilt mirrors, cupid statues and reproductions of Monet’s paintings in distressed white frames. As Uncle Jonathan led us through a formal lounge my eye was taken by an oil painting of a slave cabin covered in snakes and an Andy Warhol–like pop art painting of Louis Armstrong. It was an interesting juxtaposition of styles. He took us to the entertaining area, which was decorated in South-Western style with glazed plastered walls and exposed ceiling beams. ‘This is amazing!’ I said, examining a feathered headdress perched on top of a life–sized driftwood sculpture of a Native American chief. Next to it, a glass cabinet housed a collection of arrowheads and antler pipes.

  ‘Ever since he was a boy, Johnny has been fascinated by Native American culture,’ said Grandma Ruby, guiding me to a couch covered in a Navajo rug. ‘I think it was because his father used to read him stories about the Old West. But as Judge Barial was famous for his empathy for the underdog, he must have taught Johnny to root for the Indians instead of the cowboys!’

  Uncle Jonathan laughed. ‘Louise became interested in Native American culture too when we married but her approach is more academic than mine. In our library upstairs one wall is taken up with law books and the other three with her books on Native American history and culture.’

  ‘They’re going to a Mojave Indian Ranch for their anniversary next week,’ Grandma Ruby added with a wink. ‘Then they’re going to trek out into the desert. How romantic is that?’

  Uncle Jonathan cleared his throat. ‘Maybe not,’ he said.

  ‘Why not?’ asked Grandma Ruby, looking surprised. ‘You’ve been talking about it for months!’

  Uncle Jonathan shifted on his feet. ‘Well, we have our niece here now and we want to spend time with her.’

  It was my turn to feel embarrassed. I had come to New Orleans on short notice. ‘Oh, please don’t cancel because of me,’ I pleaded. ‘I’m planning to be here a while.’

  Uncle Jonathan nodded but didn’t answer me. He moved behind the bar. ‘We need to welcome you properly with a traditional New Orleans cocktail,’ he said, taking out three rocks glasses and filling them with ice and chilled water. Then he filled another three glasses with a sugar cube each, before smothering the cubes with bitters, crushing them and mixing them with water, and adding a measure of whiskey.

  ‘Johnny makes a Sazerac the way it’s supposed to be made,’ Grandma Ruby said. ‘None of this syrup stuff. Though originally the French Creoles used cognac instead of rye whiskey, which was more elegant, and the liquor was absinthe.’

  ‘Absinthe was banned in 1915 because it was thought to be a dangerous hallucinogen,’ Uncle Jonathan explained. ‘So we use an anise-flavoured liquor called Herbsaint instead.’ He held up the bottle and pointed to the label. ‘It’s an anagram of “absinthe” except for the “r”.’

  Uncle Jonathan emptied the glasses filled with ice, swished some Herbsaint in each of them, then tossed them individually into the air before catching them and shouting ‘Sazerac!’ He then strained the mixture into the chilled glasses, and added a piece of lemon peel to each before serving them.

  ‘Santé!’ he and Grandma Ruby said in unison as we clinked glasses.

  The cocktail was both spicy and sweet — and very potent! We had toasted to our health, but I was beginning to wonder about my liver. I was only an occasional drinker in Australia; perhaps one glass of wine if I was out for dinner with friends. Was the New Orleans lifestyle of champagne at breakfast, mint juleps in the afternoon and cocktails in the evening going to turn me into a lush?

  ‘By the way,’ said Uncle Jonathan, taking a sip of his drink, ‘I should explain that “Creole” has quite a different meaning to most people these days than it did when Ruby was a young woman. Originally “Creole” referred only to the descendants of Spanish and French colonial settlers. “Creoles of colour” referred to those who had some African blood due to racial intermarriage. But nowadays, “Creole” almost always implies someone with mixed heritage. So if you are going to say that your grandmother is a Creole, you are going to have to explain that she is of French Caucasian ancestry.’

  Dinner was served out on the patio. The outdoor table and chairs were rustic ironwork, and the surrounding garden was mainly topiary plants in terracotta urns. The water fountain caught my eye: instead of the ubiquitous lion’s head you saw in French provincial-style homes, the water flowed into the pond from an upturned tuba.

  Aunt Louise noticed me looking at it. ‘Johnny and I like to blend things,’ she explained. ‘Just like New Orleans is a blend: highbrow and crass; religious and rowdy; exotic and homespun; equally obsessed with living and death. We enjoy having the unexpected among the everyday items.’

  ‘The ethnic, linguistic and cultural mix is what makes New Orleans distinctive from the rest of the United States,’ added Uncle Jonathan. ‘First there were the Choctaw Indians, then the French colonised the area before it became a Spanish territory. It reverted to the French again for a brief time, but Napoleon sold it off to the young American Union which saw the value in its port. Canadians fleeing the British settled here, and both whites and free people of colour arrived from Cuba and Santo Domingo, and of course there were slaves to work on the plantations.’

  ‘Not to mention the people of all the other nationalities who migrated here, including Germans, Irish and Italians,’ chimed in Aunt Louise. ‘We are the most diverse city in the South and certainly the most interesting.’

  ‘Diversity does not always make for tolerance,’ Grandma Ruby said quietly. ‘That was the mistake we made when we thought school integration would go smoothly in New Orleans.’

  I was fascinated that Grandma Ruby had played a role in the Civil Rights Movement. Apart from a documentary I’d seen about Martin Luther King Junior and Malcolm X, I knew little about it. But she didn’t elaborate on her comment, and Aunt Louise quickly filled in the silence.

  ‘Well, speaking of blending,’ she said, taking the lid off a tureen, ‘I present to you my okra gumbo with chickpeas and kidney beans.’

  Uncle Jonathan passed around the rice while Aunt Louise served the thick stew. The air became fragrant with the aromas of paprika, thyme and bay leaves. The gumbo was tangy and I savoured every mouthful.

  ‘This is delicious,’ I told Aunt Louise. ‘Will you teach me how to make it?’

  ‘I would love to,’ she said, offering me more rice. ‘It’s a favourite of Momma’s, although these days I go easy on the okra because of her medication.’

  Dessert was crème brûlée, silky and heady with vanilla and served alongside a glass of sherry.

  Uncle Jonathan pointed to the tuba fountain and said to me, ‘New Orleans has a tradition of parades. Some say it’s because of the Latin heritage and the plethora of brass instruments left behind by marching bands after the Civil War. When I was a young boy I fancied myself as a trumpet player, but in my first parade I stepped in a pothole and split my lip. That was the end of my musical career.’

  We all laughed. It was clear that Uncle Jonathan loved New Orleans and its history; he just had a diffe
rent way of expressing it from Grandma Ruby.

  ‘I wanted to play the harp,’ Aunt Louise said with a giggle. ‘Momma got me one and arranged for lessons with New Orleans’ finest teacher, but at the first sign of calluses I gave up.’ She smiled at me. ‘I didn’t have your father’s talent for music, Amandine. Dale was a natural, but he was persistent too, which is why he was successful so young. Daddy used to take him to see the big names play, and Dale would find some way to get himself on stage while they took a rest. Eventually people were paying to come see him.’

  ‘Dale had passion,’ agreed Grandma Ruby. ‘And passion makes all the difference. Yes, he was naturally talented, but he perfected his talent by practising for hours until he produced the most beautiful tone on whatever instrument he was playing — and there wasn’t an instrument that he couldn’t master.’

  Hearing Aunt Louise and Grandma Ruby talk about my father was a soothing balm to my soul. Whatever his faults, he’d had admirable qualities too and I was finally learning about them. Perhaps if he’d lived, my father might have been someone I looked up to, and someone who would have encouraged me. I was a good musician, but maybe I could have been a great one if I’d had the discipline to practise for hours.

  When it was time to go, and Grandma Ruby had gone to the bathroom while Aunt Louise brought the car out the front, I asked Uncle Jonathan something that had been on my mind ever since I’d arrived in New Orleans.

  ‘I’d like to see where my parents are buried,’ I told him. ‘But I’m uncomfortable asking Grandma Ruby or Aunt Louise. I don’t want to upset them.’

  An expression of sympathy formed on his face. He squeezed my arm. ‘The family tomb is in Saint Louis Cemetery. Louise goes often but Ruby never does, not even on All Saints Day. It upsets her too much. Louise will take you.’

  After Aunt Louise had helped Grandma Ruby into the front seat of the car, Uncle Jonathan told her what I’d requested.