My Juliet: A Novel

by John Ed Bradley

  “There was a boy on the stairs who said my name,” Sonny says.

  She looks at him expectantly, as if waiting for the rest.

  “I thought maybe he was coming from your room.”

  “A boy was coming from my room? What boy would that be, Sonny?”

  “He had a tattoo on his arm.”

  “What kind of tattoo?”

  “Barbed wire, looked like.”

  “Oh, no, that one wouldn’t have been coming from my room. The guy coming from my room had a tattoo of a big, red heart with his mother’s name plastered across it.”

  Sonny steps past her. The room, though far from elegant, isn’t the pit that Sonny imagined. The bed doesn’t take coins and vibrate, in any case. And the hotel has provided a TV set. A black-and-white model, but a TV no less. “Look,” Juliet says, throwing a door open, “I even have a bathroom.”

  “I’m impressed.”

  “It’s cozy,” she says. “Fifteen bucks a night, you can’t beat it.”

  “Not for fifteen you can’t,” Sonny says. “But think of what sixteen will get you.”

  His attempt at sarcasm doesn’t seem to register. “Sonny, I was just watching this episode of The Andy Griffith Show that reminds me of us. Do you like Andy?”

  “Andy’s all right.”

  “Andy has his high school reunion coming up, and his old girlfriend is going to be there. She’s gone off and made a big life for herself in Raleigh or someplace. Well, they get together at the reunion dance, and everything is like before. They’re happy as can be, and Andy’s wondering what broke them apart. They go outside and sit on a bench under the stars and they get to talking. And before you know it they’re arguing over some little nothing. She’s upset and so is he, and Andy’s screaming and she is screaming. Then all of a sudden it comes to them why they didn’t make it together way back when.”

  Sonny has never seen that particular show, but his recollection of events that broke Juliet and him apart differs dramatically from those she just described. “Why didn’t they make it?”

  “They were different people. Different people like that never last. One wants Mayberry, the other Raleigh. If not for their differences they wouldn’t have anything.”

  Sonny walks over to the window and looks down on the avenue. Streetcar rails lie in silver ribbons against the blacktop. “Did that girlfriend of Andy’s ever ask him to kill her mother?” he says.

  “What did you say?”

  He doesn’t answer and she makes a noise meant to imitate a buzzer going off; it takes Sonny a few seconds to understand that this is the sound of a game show contestant giving the wrong response to a question. “Sonny, listen to me, sweetheart. I’m going to say something now and say it once and that’s it; you won’t hear it again. Sonny, the other night in the wild heat of an argument I said some terrible things—things I didn’t mean of course and would gladly take back if only you let me. First and foremost were my comments about your work. Just for the record—and you must know this; you have to . . . Sonny, I think you’re a genius, an absolute genius.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Your paintings smack of immortality. I mean this.”

  “Yes. They smack, all right.”

  “What’s the point of my being nice if you can’t take a compliment?”

  “They smack butt, that’s all they smack. Forget about my work, Julie. It’s what you said about your mother that I can’t stop thinking about.”

  “Sonny, what I said about my mother isn’t true. Happy now?” When he doesn’t answer, she says, “Happy? I need to know you’re happy. If you’re happy, I’m happy.”

  “I’m happy,” Sonny says.

  “Good. Now let’s get out of here.”

  He follows her into the hallway then down the stairs. He wonders about Andy pining away for the same girl for so many years, and whether his love was anything like Sonny’s. Did Andy ever bump into a boy leaving her hotel room? If so, how did Andy feel about it? Did he feel like throwing up? Did he feel like taking his fist and slamming it into the wall?

  “Can we go riding in your truck? I could use the air.”

  “Sure, Julie.”

  “Riding like we used to ride.”

  “However you want.”

  “Remember the levee? We always went there, didn’t we?”

  “Yes, we did go there.”

  “Remember that blanket you used to keep behind the seat? God, whatever happened to that thing? It belongs in the Smithsonian.”

  “That’s funny, Julie. That’s very funny.”

  Sonny also wonders what Andy did after the reunion dance, when it was clear he’d wasted so many years of his life on dumb, empty longing. Did Andy mute his telephone and run a box fan in his living room and play the radio too loud and take his meals from the can? Did he sit in the dark and the quiet of his porch and weep into big, open hands? Or did Andy take a more assertive approach and plot ways to win his girlfriend back, to prove that he was worth another try? Andy never seemed the type of guy to quit on anything. Why quit on the only girl he ever loved just because they had a small disagreement after a dance?

  Juliet stops at the door to the lobby. “Bye, Leroy,” she says to the clerk at the desk.

  “Bye, sweet thing,” he replies, smiling a mouth gone red from candy.

  “Bye, Leroy,” Sonny tells the clerk.

  But the man doesn’t answer.

  They circumnavigate Lee Circle in another loud silence, Sonny following the troughs of the streetcar tracks, the tires of his pickup popping against the iron rails. After half a dozen turns he veers onto Saint Charles Avenue and the road straightens. New Orleans is Sonny’s home, the only one he’s ever known, but it occurs to Juliet that half the time he seems lost and in need of directions, worse off than a tourist.

  “Where are we going?” he says.

  She slides over and waits until he looks at her. “Sonny, are you upset with me?”

  “I just want to know where we’re going.”

  “Be honest with me, baby. Is it over Mother and Daddy and Lake Pontchartrain or is it the boy you met on the stairs? Sonny, don’t be mad.”

  “You want someplace in particular,” he says, “or someplace in general? If you want someplace in particular you’d better speak up.”

  “Particular or general,” she replies, falling back against the door. “Today it looks like one is as bad as the other.”

  And so they go everywhere and nowhere, both at once. They drive along Magazine Street passing block after block of Victorian and Greek Revival buildings that now house secondhand and antique stores, then head to Prytania Street and the Garden District where leafy mansions and luxury apartment buildings rush by one after another. After doubling back and driving several blocks to the north they tour a blighted but historically significant area called Central City, where urban renewal has been kicked hard in the crotch by urban decay and it seems the old, mistreated homes stand but for the grace of Formosan termites.

  “Sometimes I can’t decide if New Orleans is the most beautiful city I’ve ever seen or the ugliest,” Juliet says.

  They explore Canal Street up to the cemeteries then take City Park Avenue to Moss Street and Bayou Saint John for a long loop and finally they’re driving down Esplanade Avenue headed to the Mississippi River and the Beauvais.

  “I want to take back some of what I took back earlier,” Juliet says, watching the great house approach through a dense blur of trees. “That business about Mama killing Daddy? I wasn’t making it up. Sonny, I meant every word.”

  She doesn’t think she can take more of his whining, but some things need to be said. That is just one. Now comes another: “Stop the truck, Sonny. Stop it now.”

  He pulls over and parks directly across the street from the house. His hands are gripping the steering wheel, arms extended, elbows locked.

  “Sonny, I have a favor to ask. It isn’t a big one but it’s important.”

  “What is it, Jul
ie?”

  “Sonny, my mother owes me some money. I’d go to the house and get the check myself but she and I had a terrible argument the other day and I just refuse to let her treat me that way again. Sonny, the favor I need to ask—”

  “You want me to get it.”

  “That’s right. I do, I do want you to get it. If it’s not too big an imposition, of course. I hope you understand, Sonny, I’m trying to avoid another argument.”

  “Walk up to the door, Julie. You don’t have to go in. Just walk up and have Mrs. Huey—”

  “Trust me, Sonny. Mother will be there, and we’ll only fight again.”

  “It’s too embarrassing,” he says. “I won’t do it.”

  “Please, Sonny. Help me with this. Is it really so big a deal?”

  “You honestly expect me to walk up there and tell your mother I came for your check?”

  “I honestly do.”

  “Jesus,” then, no real surprise to Juliet, he gets his act together and steps outside.

  The eternal path through the crape myrtles, the columns as big around as he is, the Boston ferns pinwheeling in the breeze. As always, Sonny runs a hand through his hair to make sure he’s proper. Then he uses the knocker.

  “Well, I’ll be,” says Anna Huey, pulling the door open wide to let him in. “I thought they’d gone and kidnapped you. Where’ve you been hiding, sugar?”

  Sonny steps inside but doesn’t go past the foyer, which for some reason is the limit he’s posted in his head. What’s not right about the hallway? What has been changed? At last he discovers it: the grandfather clock is missing. Now in its place there is a plant stand holding a ceramic jardiniere.

  “Why don’t you come in and have a seat, Sonny. I can run and get Miss Marcelle.”

  “Thanks, Mrs. Huey. But I don’t have time. Juliet’s waiting out in the truck.”

  “Don’t tell me. You came for her check.” Anna Huey studies him over her reading glasses with a tired, dissatisfied expression. “Sonny, don’t you want to say hello to Miss Marcelle first?”

  “I can’t now, Mrs. Huey.” After a moment he adds, “You know how Juliet is.”

  She starts for the rear of the house but then thinks better of it and turns back around. “Listen, sugar, I know you mean well. But why don’t you let Juliet come for the money herself? While she’s here she can talk to Miss Marcelle. Miss Marcelle has something to tell her.”

  “Mrs. Huey, obviously this is none of my business but can’t Miss Marcelle talk to Juliet later? Juliet’s been staying downtown at the Lé Dale Hotel. You can have Miss Marcelle call her there.”

  “Sugar, I can’t believe this.”

  “I can’t either,” he says. “It’s ridiculous.”

  Anna Huey looks past him in the direction of the avenue. “Sonny, I may be overstepping my bounds by saying this but I really think you need to be careful running around with that girl.”

  “I haven’t exactly been running around with her,” he says.

  “Sonny, you should know what Juliet’s all about by now.”

  “Probably better than anyone. And that’s why I’m here today, Mrs. Huey. I’m only trying to prevent another fight between her and her mother.”

  “That girl thrives on chaos. She’s dangerous, sugar.”

  Now it’s his turn to look back at the truck. “Are you going to get the check, Mrs. Huey?”

  “No, I’m not.” Anna Huey’s look of fatigue gives way to one of warmth and she reaches out and places a hand on Sonny’s cheek. “Sonny, be careful.”

  Sonny is walking back to the truck when Juliet appears on the path up ahead, striding toward him with her arms swinging wildly, a look of mad determination on her face. She bumps past him without a word.

  “Juliet, where the hell are you going? Juliet! Juliet, don’t do this . . .”

  “Anna Huey! Anna Huey, why don’t you make yourself useful for a change and go get my goddamn money.” She’s standing at the open door now, hands wrapped around her mouth. “It’s the Beauvais Mansion, Mother. The Beauvais, do you hear?”

  Sonny grabs her by the arm and tries to pull her away but Juliet gives him a shove and breaks free. “I’m tired of being intimidated by these people,” she says.

  “I think you’ve got that turned around, Julie.”

  From the rear of the house Miss Marcelle comes stalking toward them, moving with such urgency that the color has drained from her face.

  “You’re a Lavergne,” Juliet says in a plain voice. “Admit to me you’re a Lavergne.”

  “That I’m a Lavergne?”

  “Say to me you’re a Lavergne. Say it, Mother.”

  “I’m a Lavergne,” answers Miss Marcelle. “But you need to remember something, darling: you’re a Lavergne, too. Or half of one.”

  “I’m no Lavergne,” Juliet says.

  “You’re equal parts Lavergne and Beauvais. And I’m equal parts Lavergne and Doucet. My people weren’t fancy, I admit this. But some Lavergnes are. The de la Vergnes in town like to think of themselves as important. I guess that little de in the front of their name is what does it. Wish I’d have grown up with that. Give me that de and my only child might halfway respect me. Might love me, even.” Miss Marcelle steps up closer, moving past Anna Huey to within a few feet of Juliet. “Hello, Sonny. And how are you, baby?”

  “Hello, Miss Marcelle. I’m fine, thank you. But I have to tell you, I’m really sorry about this. I feel like it’s partly my fault. We shouldn’t be here.”

  “Sonny, what are you?”

  “Ma’am?”

  “What is LaMott? That’s a French name, isn’t it?”

  Sonny has to think about it. “I’m almost certain it’s French. But to be honest I never got around to finding out for sure. I think la means the, but it’s anybody’s guess what a mott is.”

  “And you!” Juliet is talking to her mother. “Shall I tell everyone who you are?”

  “Please do,” answers Miss Marcelle, seeming truly interested.

  “Only two months into her marriage,” Juliet begins, “some of Mother’s people were threatening to leave their tractors in the fields and hitchhike to the big city for Carnival. Mother pulled my father aside and asked him—and pleaded with him, I should say—not to say anything about being a Creole, as Daddy was known to be quite proud. When he asked why, she said she was afraid they’d think she’d married a Negro.”

  “Now, Juliet, that isn’t how it—”

  “Don’t even try to deny it, Mother. Daddy told me the whole story. You didn’t even know what a Creole was.”

  Miss Marcelle brings a finger to her chin, as if trying to come up with a definition.

  “How could you have told him that?”

  “All right, Julie,” Sonny says. “Enough.”

  Miss Marcelle seems to be trying to understand something. “Where I come from,” she says, “the Creoles were colored people. I’m sorry if that sounds racist to you, but they were all like Anna Huey here. They were light-skinned blacks and they had French names. Huey is a French name, isn’t it, Anna Huey?”

  “Yes, it is, Miss Marcelle. So is Arceneaux, my maiden name. They’re both French—as French as Beauvais, as a matter of fact.”

  “Not that French,” Juliet says.

  “In 1953 when Johnny and I were married,” Miss Marcelle continues, “people tolerated race-mixing far less than they do today. I loved the man, and I didn’t care if he was a white Creole, a black Creole or a polka-dot Creole. I just didn’t want my family asking questions that might offend him. I was trying to spare him that, not myself.”

  “Spare him that,” Juliet repeats. “Spare him that just like you spared him that drowning in Lake Pontchartrain, right, Mother?”

  “What did you say?” Miss Marcelle steps out onto the welcome mat.

  “What do you think I’m saying? You killed him—you killed my daddy!”

  From Anna Huey comes a rough gasp, and Sonny adds another as he steps up and grabs Juliet
by the arm. But Miss Marcelle hardly seems bothered. She shakes her head and waits until Juliet looks at her. “You’re mistaken, darling. That isn’t how it happened at all.”

  “You killed him, Mother.”

  “Juliet, your father drowned. You know this.”

  “Killed him.”