The Neon Palm of Madame Melancon

by Will Clarke

  “Where you at, bruh?”

  “Who me?”

  “Yeah, where y’at? Who ya been hangin’ out wid? Ya cousin Larry?”

  And all these “Y’ats” have a missing-person story: Katrina this. Attic that. Crazy mémère this. Drunk ex-husband that. Blah blah blah blah blah blah.

  Just put my poster up, I want to say.

  I take my fliers all the way through the Quarter, down Bourbon. I staple them to phone poles. I tape them to streetlights and onto the doors of bars. All the while the tourists are bumping into me, sloshing their big plastic party cups and pissing in the streets, laughing at their own jokes and singing karaoke. Being around all these drunk fucks brings back every bad feeling I ever had as a kid growing up here. Look, I am sure it’s a blast to visit New Orleans and to drink in all this broken beauty, to break all your promises to yourself about your health, your fidelity, and your dignity.

  Obviously, look at all these ass hats.

  But growing up here, watching everything and everyone fall apart day in and day out was an existential beat-down that’s almost beyond words. Living under the neon palm, I saw it all: the heart-breaking misery of the people stuck living here and the teeth-grinding avarice of the tourists who come to exploit it. I grew up ankle deep in the party gravy of an eternal morning after. It was a stain and a stench that was impossible to wash off. What all these stumbling partygoers don’t want to face is the fact that there are actually two New Orleans: the “Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah” city of their Trip Advisor imagination, and then there is the real New Orleans, the belly of the beast that every tourist is terrified their taxi driver might take a wrong turn into.

  This real New Orleans teaches whoever grows up here that good luck is not doled out by a fair and even hand. This simple yet horrible fact haunted me as a child. It overwhelmed me with a hopelessness and fear for the future that still haunt me to this day. But Mama was always much more sanguine about all of this. When I would try to get her to understand how much this weighed on me as a kid, how much it terrified me, she would always spit Shakespeare back to me in Russian, “Это не в звездах, чтобы держать нашу судьбу, но в нас самих,” which means, “It is not in the stars to hold our destiny but in ourselves.”

  So I took Shakespeare’s words to heart. I held my destiny in my own hands, and I took it out of this sinking city. I took my destiny as far away from Madame Melançon’s House of the Neon Palm as I could. However, now that I find myself back here twenty years later, walking through these same streets amongst the lost partiers and slobbering drunkards, I realize it is impossible to hold your destiny in your own hands, to escape your fate. Because I am here once again in New Orleans—despite all my best efforts to never come back, I am here dealing with my mother’s shadowy past—just like I would be if I had never left.

  So, Shakespeare, you were wrong. Destiny is not in our hands. It is held in places far harder to grasp. It is waiting for us in the bottom of OxyContin bottles, in the winds of a hurricane, in the flashing lights of a police car, and for me, in the emails of an imploding oil company.

  By the time I make it to Café Du Monde, I am drenched in sweat and mired in a lifetime of weird guilt and bad feelings. My lower back is killing me. But with the staple gun in my left hand and a box of fliers in my right, I make myself walk into the front door of Francesca’s Famous Pralines.

  Everything smells like melted butter, roasting pecans, and brown sugar. The air conditioning feels better than the cool side of a pillow on a sleepless night.

  “Welcome to Francesca’s! Best dang pralines you ever put in your mouth!”

  I am greeted by a tall woman with bright hazel eyes, a vanilla ice cream complexion sprinkled with orange freckles, and a warm, gap-toothed smile. She has one hand on her hip while the other holds a small silver tray full of praline samples.

  “Want to try one?” She skewers a broken praline with a toothpick and holds it up.

  “Actually I was wondering if you could hang one of these for me.” I hold up a flier.

  “Madame Melançon?” Francesca looks at Mama’s photo and smiles. “She’s my girl.”

  “You a client?”

  “Oh, yeah, she got my boo back for me.”

  “So would you mind putting up a flier? Help us find her?”

  “For sure.” She puts down her tray on a stack of praline boxes and studies Mama’s photo. “What you think happened?”

  “Don’t know,” I say. “Ran out the house chasing a cat and never came back.”

  “Feel sorry for whoever messed with the Lady.” She shakes her head.

  “I appreciate it.” I hold up my roll of tape. “Need any?”

  “Nah, we got tape,” she says. “Hey, let me ask you a question.”

  “Sure.”

  “Your mama really put a curse on Anne Rice?”

  “Where’d you hear that?”

  “That’s what people be saying. Creepy bitch packed up her baby dolls and left New Orleans real fast.”

  “Not so sure that’s exactly true,” I say.

  “Just sayin’. I didn’t like her vampire-ass no way.” Francesca shoves a praline in my face. “Here, eat this.”

  I step back and shake my head, no.

  “Come on now. These my Sugar and Spice.” She touches the praline to my lips. “Got a little cayenne in them. Try it. Ain’t like the sorry whatevers they sell at Praline Perfection. I promise you that.”

  I reluctantly open my lips, and Francesca deposits the brown candy into my mouth. It melts into a sandy-sweet, buttery warmth. The sting of the red pepper and sugar hits the back of my throat. The praline is so sweet it makes my heart race.

  “Good, huh?” she says.

  “Yeah, great,” I say.

  “How many you want?”

  “I’ll take a half-dozen.”

  “Here.” She hands me a small white bag. “A little sumptin’ sumptin’.”

  I pull out my credit card to pay, but Francesca pushes my hand away.

  “Just a little lagniappe,” she says. “You her baby.”

  “Thanks. That’s very sweet of you.”

  “Have faith.” She smiles, pushing her pink tongue through the gap in her teeth. “You gonna find her.”

  * * *

  “Your lifeline is long and strong.” I point to the crease in the middle of this Camellia Grill waitress’ hand. “But you got to watch the smoking.”

  Once the waitress realized that I was Madame Melançon’s son, she demanded that I read her palm if she was going to hang up my fliers. I’m a corporate lawyer. I don’t read palms. But she didn’t want to hear that. She shoved me into a booth and held out her open palm. She wanted her future told by the son of Madame Melançon, the Fortune-Teller Queen of New Orleans.

  “What about my love life?” the waitress asks.

  “That’s complicated,” I say.

  “For real?” she laughs. “That’s what it says on my Facebook. Shit’s complicated.”

  I study the lines in the waitress’ palm like I know what I am doing. While I don’t read palms, I do know what each of the lines mean. You don’t grow up under the roof of HP Blavatsky’s granddaughter and not know what a broken heart line forebodes, or a “Ring of Solomon” augurs.

  “See that line running across your heart line? That’s a new love,” I say.

  “Is that a line you want to cross?” She fingers my hand with little tornados.

  “I’m married,” I say.

  “Too bad.” She withdraws her palm. “You cute. A little nerdy but cute.”

  I don’t know what to say. I am all out of bullshit.

  “You know I’m pretty sure your mama was in here a couple of weeks ago. Maybe three or four weeks ago. Sat over there.” She glances to the table next to us. “Waited on her and this old man.”

  “Why didn’t you say that to begin with? Are you sure you saw her?”

  “Yo’ mama had a cheeseburger. French fries w
ith a side of mayo which is gross, but whatever. The old man ordered the chili but didn’t touch it.”

  “What did he look like?” I say.

  “Well, he was this Big Bird lookin’ old man. Real tall and goofy.”

  “Goofy… What was he wearing?”

  “Shirt and khaki pants. Maybe he got a mustache. Might have been a goatee, though. His clothes looked like he slept in them. Kinda crazy looking.”

  “Crazy looking?”

  “Yeah, look like he drink too much.”

  The waitress has just described 99% of the people in the Quarter.

  “What were they arguing about?” I say.

  “Look, I ain’t trying to get up in other people’s Kool-Aid when I don’t even know what flavor it is. Ya heard me?”

  She just looks at me.

  “Please,” I say.

  “The old man was saying something about your mama getting a cat,” the waitress says. “Your mama was saying she don’t want no cat and he kept saying she was getting one whether she liked it or not.”

  “They were arguing about a cat?”

  “Yeah, I think so. Why you look so worried?”

  “She hates cats. Like really hates cats.”

  “Look, I’m sorry about your mama.” She shrugs. “But that’s all I know. I got to get back to work.”

  “Here,” I hand her my Mandala Worldwide business card. “If you think of anything else, call me.”

  “Oh.” She shakes her head slowly. “My sister’s husband was on that rig. He had three little girls.” She hands my card back to me.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “You got that right. You folks are sorry individuals.” She turns and walks away.

  I want to apologize. To tell her how bad we all feel back at Mandala about her brother-in-law and all the men who died on that rig. That we are all grieving but that this is also part of the danger of what we do. I want to explain this to her, but I don’t.

  Instead, I get up and walk past the restaurant’s TV. CNN is re-running footage of the Sub-Ocean Brightside explosion.

  There’s no getting away from what has happened.

  The Spill has taken over everything. Every TV in every bar. Every ding on every iPhone. Every newspaper in every kitchen. Every birthday cake on every counter.

  Yes, birthday cakes.

  There are Mandala Worldwide Spill birthday cakes covered in black icing that are being sold at the Breaux Mart, down the way from Mama’s house. I know this because Gary is texting me pictures of the stupid cakes.

  *Get them taken down.*

  *People can make whatever birthday cake they want,* I text back.

  *It’s on the front page of Reddit,* he texts. *Cease and desist.*

  *Impossible.*

  *Now.*

  *Do you even know what Reddit is?* I text him back.

  For the past forty-eight hours, Gary has peppered me with over three hundred texts and emails, threatening to fire me while simultaneously begging me to come into the office. Thanks to the Spill—if you believe CNN—the whole world is dying, and I’m wandering the French Quarter, passing out missing-person’s fliers to people too drunk, too hungover, or too stupid to care. If I were superstitious, I’d say I was on the receiving end of a curse.

  7

  My Feet Ache

  I am a thunderstorm of sweat and B.O. I hate New Orleans in the springtime. It’s so humid down here—breathing feels more like drinking. By late afternoon, I have made it all the way to the Orange Food Store on Rampart, and after a clumsy half-hour conversation with the sweet Vietnamese owner-lady, who I think says, “Sure thing, sugar,” when I ask her if she will hang a flier, I order a shrimp po’boy, and like it says on the handmade sign next to the beer case, I “Don’t eat sandwich inside store!”

  I take my food outside, and I wash it down with a Coors Light hidden inside a brown paper bag. It’s a dinner as holy and redemptive as any mass. After I finish, I wipe the sweat and grease off my face with a napkin and toss the white butcher paper and brown bottle into the trash. I then walk across Kerlerec Street to post Mama’s fliers on the boarded-up windows of the abandoned Drop-in Center.

  This dead corner of the neighborhood is manned by a mustachioed homeless-guy-slash-street-artist. He stands on a milk crate with an upturned straw hat at his feet. He reads Slaughterhouse-Five out loud and with great affectation. The old guy in the rumpled suit is pretending to be Kurt Vonnegut, and he’s doing a pretty good job of it—same world-weary face, basset hound eyes, and the broom-bristle mustache. He’s got the happy curmudgeon thing down pat, but there’s something off about this guy. He’s not like most street performers. First off, there are no tourists anywhere near here.

  “You’re doing it wrong!” he shouts at me as I walk past him.

  “I’m doing it wrong?” I point to the Quarter. “Bourbon Street is that way, old man.”

  “You’re not going to find her like that.” He gestures to the fliers in my hands. “Plus you can’t deface my building with those. I’ll have you arrested.”

  “Looks like someone already beat me to it.” I nod to the graffiti.

  He steps down from his milk crate but still looms over me. He’s a tall old man.

  “Stay away from my art. That’s a Banksy.” He points to the life-size little girl rendered in black spray paint on the white wall. She stands under an umbrella, but the umbrella is not keeping her dry; it’s actually the source of the rain. The girl’s face eerily resembles Mama’s in her younger days. If I was as obsessed with synchronicity as the rest of my family, I would say this girl being rained on by her own umbrella is some sort of sign—a symbol for New Orleans’ constant struggle to remain dry, for the oil that both feeds us and ruins us, for Mama’s bad karma that has come tumbling back onto her head. And even though I am not superstitious, the longer I look at the graffiti, the more it feels like God is playing tricks on me, the more a lump kicks in my throat and what feels like a hummingbird darts around inside my chest.

  ©Banksy 2008

  I step back from the wall.

  “Thank you, young man.”

  “Have you seen her?” I hand Vonnegut a flier.

  “Ah, Madame Melançon,” he says. “My dear friend, the Delphic Oracle. The Pythoness herself!”

  And before I can ask the Vonnegut impersonator what the hell he is talking about, the unmistakable horns and illicit drumbeats of a second line explode from around the corner. We both stop talking and just watch the parade as it comes rolling towards us.

  The Big Nine Social Aid and Pleasure Club proclaim their arrival with their satin banners and their big brass band. They booty-bounce and feather shake all over the street. High-stepping men in double-breasted black suits and white ties wave red and white ostrich feathers, grooving and shaking it with their shiny, gray alligator shoes. Women dressed in all-white pantsuits drop it low, low, low. Little boys in tuxedos and red bow ties smile and wave their red feather fans to the beat of a band that is so funky, so badass, so completely dirty that I have to resist the urge to bounce and butt-shake into the parade myself.

  “Now if that’s not proof that God exists, I don’t know what is,” Vonnegut winks at me. “No matter how screwed up this world gets, the music will always be wonderful. Never forget that.”

  “You were saying something about my mother being the Pythoness. What did you mean by that?” I ask.

  “Just one of the Lady’s many names, my boy. Pythoness. It has a menacing ring to it, doesn’t it?” He elbows me. “You know I used to play the licorice stick myself. Seeing those fellows going down the street makes me think I should take up the clarinet again. You think your father could give me lessons?”

  “You know my father?”

  “Know of,” he says. “Quite a musician, according to your mother.”

  “You know my mom…”

  “The question is do you know your mother?”

  “How do you know her?” I ask.

  “Unfair que
stion, I suppose. Do we ever really know a person?” Vonnegut rubs his mustache. “Especially our mothers.”

  “I asked you a question,” I nudge him.

  “Of course I know who Madame Melançon is. She’s the Neon Palm who holds us in place until it’s safe to proceed.” He points to the red hand flashing on the crosswalk sign. “Madame Melançon’s fingerprints are all over this city, all over this world. Those glowing red palms that we encounter at every intersection are hers. The universal symbol for ‘wait, just wait, until it’s safe to proceed’ was conceived by the Lady. She is the one who convinced the New York City traffic engineers in the ’80s to replace those clumsy ‘Don’t Walk’ signs with her glowing red palm. This is just one of the many ways your mother holds us in her care, rewrites our history for our own benefit. She put her glowing handprint on every street corner of this blue marble, so you and I would know that she is holding us in place until it is okay to proceed into our futures.”

  “I just need to post these.” I hold up the fliers. “Okay?”

  “Put them around the way.” He points to the boarded-up window on the other side of the corner. “Just not over the Banksy.”

  “Thanks.” I walk around and put extra tape all around the edges of the fliers.

  “Your mother,” he follows me, “was our first hope against The Great Unseen Hand. You do realize that.”

  I stare at him. I try to look into his eyes to see if he’s just messing with me or if he’s as crazy as the words that are coming out of his mouth. Was this Vonnegut impersonator the Big Bird-looking old man that the Camellia Grill waitress was talking about? Or is he just one of the thousands of mental cases in this city who tremble before my mother because they believe she has magic powers?

  “Ever wonder why you’ve never met a Tralfamadorian?” He shakes his tattered copy of Slaughterhouse-Five at me.