A Twisted Ladder

by Rhodi Hawk

  Daddy’s deterioration had begun long before she could remember, intensifying just before her mother walked out and never looked back when Maddy and her brother were about nine and ten years old. Not long after, Daddy started disappearing and reappearing at odd intervals, and when he came home Marc and Madeleine clung to him for some sense of stability. But he was often out of his mind, and sometimes prone to violence, and his children began to regard his visits with both longing and dread.

  So many things needed to be discarded: Marc’s reading glasses; his favorite baseball cap; his cell phone. Madeleine wondered if it even worked. She found the charger and plugged it in.

  When they’d come of age, Maddy and her brother had learned of the living trust their father had formed. After growing up in poverty in Houma, they could barely comprehend what seemed like unlimited wealth, not to mention ownership of the grand old house in the Quarter and the warehouse on Magazine. Madeleine had moved into the mansion and enrolled at the university, and had taken to city life like a bee to clover. Marc, however, had been suspicious. He was comfortable with the safe life they’d built out on the bayou. He took an apprenticeship as an electrician, not wanting to touch the family money. Soon he became a journeyman, and then a master, and finally had started his own modest electrical contracting business. He’d led a simple life; a satisfied life. Until the accident.

  He had been on a commercial job with a journeyman who worked for him. A miscommunication, a careless error; a small explosion. His employee had been electrocuted—burned so badly that his cell phone had fused to his hip—and he was no longer able to father children. Marc blamed himself.

  But Madeleine sensed that it wasn’t just guilt that had led to Marc’s suicide, that she was still missing something important about her brother. She and Chloe had both resolved to find out what had gone wrong with Marc, and Madeleine felt the strange occurrences of late had something to do with it. How, though, she wasn’t sure. Everything seemed murky and oblique, like having glimpsed movement just below the surface of the bayou, and straining to see whether it was a fish or a turtle or even the tip of something larger, like an alligator. The only way to tell for certain was to wait quietly and see what it would do. Or dive in after it. It was the possibility of the alligator that kept her from diving.

  THEY’D BEEN CLEANING FOR hours. Madeleine watched her father as he discarded relics from a lifetime, setting Marc’s things in sacks or boxes depending on whether each item should be dumped or salvaged. They had decided to hold off going through any paperwork until tomorrow. Madeleine wondered why and how Marc had unearthed all these documents.

  She dragged another Santa sack of garbage to the living room, then opened the front door, and gave a start. At the bottom of the steps, hand on cane and elbow supported by the pale, yellow-haired Oran, stood Chloe LeBlanc. Her black Mercedes sat next to Madeleine’s truck in the driveway.

  Madeleine stepped out onto the porch. “Chloe. Hi.”

  “Have you found something in there? Something to know about Marc Gilbert?”

  Madeleine sighed, hand to hip. She looked back at her father who was peering at Chloe through the window. He made a wave of disgust and shook his head, then shrank back toward the hall.

  Madeleine turned back to face them. “Hello, Oran.”

  He nodded.

  Madeleine said, “Won’t you both please come inside?”

  “You found something?” Chloe asked.

  “No, Chloe. Heaven’s sake. A lot of old documents. But from the looks of things, Marc was just plain depressed. That’s why he killed himself. End of story.”

  The old woman frowned and turned away from the door. “Then I have no need to go back in there. I found nothing of substance either.”

  Madeleine glanced over her shoulder again, and then returned her gaze to Chloe. “Go back? You . . . you’ve been inside the house?”

  Chloe gripped the cane and looked toward the great oak tree near the bayou, where the family had always hidden the key.

  Madeleine felt invaded. She hadn’t lived in the little house in years, but she didn’t like the idea of Chloe breaking in and rummaging through Marc’s things.

  “Chloe, you need to tell me when you want to come to the house. Otherwise it’s trespassing.”

  Chloe harrumphed, her voice creaking as she took a step down from the porch. “Banned from it, am I? Your grandmother wouldn’t let me in either! And what for? Nothing in there I haven’t seen already! Nothing new to know!”

  Oran still held Chloe by the elbow, and Madeleine stepped down and took the free one. The last thing she needed was for Chloe LeBlanc to pitch a fit on her doorstep and break her hip.

  “Nobody’s banning you, Chloe. There’s no need for dramatics. All I ask is that you notify me when you want to come. And before I forget, is Severin with you?”

  Chloe’s eyes pinched into a dour sulk, and Oran watched Madeleine’s face as if he feared what she might say next.

  “Never you mind about that now, Madeleine. Never you mind.”

  “I want to help that poor girl, Chloe. It’s important.”

  Chloe puffed an expulsion of breath, and if Madeleine could believe the old woman capable of laughter, this might have been it. “You can see it any time you like!”

  It? A sour ripple shifted inside Madeleine’s stomach at Chloe’s choice of words. She thought quickly. “Tuesday then?”

  Chloe flicked her gaze from Madeleine to the porch swing, and gave the slightest nod.

  “Is that a yes, Chloe? I’ll see her on Tuesday?”

  Annoyance on Chloe’s face. “As you like.”

  Chloe panned the lawn and gestured her cane toward the dock. “Take me to the water now. Just Madeleine.”

  Maddy gritted her teeth. Oran immediately fled to the car, sliding behind the driver’s seat before Madeleine could even answer, leaving Chloe swaying under Madeleine’s grip. It almost seemed as though Oran feared Madeleine. Skittish thing.

  “All right then, Chloe,” Madeleine said. “Let’s go.”

  Chloe shuffled, her cane pounding dimples into the delta soil between patches of St. Augustine. Madeleine was surprised at the strength in the old woman’s arm. Her bone density and balance might require her to use a cane or a wheelchair, but other than that Chloe was healthy as a spring grackle.

  “If you don’t want to come inside the house, Chloe, why are you in Houma?”

  “Oran said you left a message that you were coming. I thought I might check in on my great-granddaughter face-to-face.”

  Madeleine raised a brow at the old woman’s companionable demeanor.

  Chloe scowled. “You look at me with sass.”

  “Just seems like a sudden change. I didn’t know you were looking for that kind of connection with me.”

  “I am a human, eh?”

  Chloe coughed, working her cane with measured steps. “A very long time ago when I was still a girl, almost grown, I was all alone. I had nothing. There was a woman who took me in. She was good to me. But there was a flood and she was persuaded to drink poisoned water, and she died.”

  Madeleine frowned. “That’s terrible. Who would persuade someone to do a thing like that?

  “Her choice to listen. When she died, I knew I had to be harsh to survive.”

  Madeleine was trying to follow, unsure what Chloe was driving at or why she was telling her these things. But she wondered if perhaps a softer person lived underneath that hardwood exterior after all.

  Chloe said, “You are going back to the university?”

  “Yes,” Madeleine replied.

  “What is this, cognitive schizophrenia you talk of?”

  “It’s not really widely recognized in the scientific community yet.”

  “Tell me,” Chloe said. “This is like your father’s devil, yanh?”

  Madeleine sighed. “It’s not a devil, Chloe. It’s a form of schizophrenia where the subjects don’t exhibit the rambling, disordered thought patterns of typic
al schizophrenics. They can clearly describe their hallucinations. And they’re not as nervous. More to it than that, but that’s it in a nutshell.”

  “You are leading this research, then?”

  Madeleine nodded. “As long as I can. Funding is tough to get. I’ve only seen a handful of patients who were affected this way. I suspect there are lots of others out there who are undiagnosed. I want to see that they all get the treatment they need.”

  Chloe sneered. “Is that so? What is it that they need?”

  Madeleine was taken aback. “They need special therapy and medications.”

  “You look through a microscope glass, you see creatures. I look around and I see no creatures, so I say you are crazy. But with your microscope, you know they’re there. You know they will still be there even if you pretend not to look. Senses don’t need treatment, Madeleine.” The old woman crooked her finger as she shuffled toward the banks. “You hear, and if you don’t like what you hear, do you choose to go through life with stoppers in your ears? The madness comes because the river devils are jealous and they demand attention. To see them is not sickness. It is a gift.”

  Madeleine regarded her from the corner of her eye. “You use the word ‘devils’ and then you call it a gift.”

  “If you could see the unwelcome guests that live in your house, the termites, ants, toads, mice. Would you pretend not to see them? Does that make them go away? Listen to me, p’tite. Maybe you take notice and you learn what you can do with them. A clever person can take the venom from the throat of a poison toad and use it for other purposes.”

  Madeleine said, “You mean like making medicines?”

  “That is one small way.”

  “I hear you, Chloe. But sometimes people see things that just aren’t there. It’s confusing and upsetting for them. Those are the people I’m trying to comfort.”

  Jasmine trotted out to the end of the dock and stretched in the sun. The thin banks were aflutter with dragonflies and a single blue heron.

  “Chloe, did you and my great-grandfather live outside Hahnville? Because Daddy and I came across a plat map for a plantation called Terrefleurs.”

  “Stay away from that place.” Chloe’s words were firm, but they came in a drift as if she were merely thinking aloud. “Dangerous to you, in that place.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Chloe’s nostrils flared as she panned the bayou, almost as though she was sniffing the air like a bloodhound. Her gaze rested back on the old house.

  “You have much work. I will send someone to assist you.”

  “What?” The proclamation startled Madeleine in more ways than one. “No, Chloe, do not send anyone over to help. It’s late and we’re done for today anyway. And certainly don’t ever send Zenon Lansky over again.”

  Chloe eyed Madeleine. “He is able. A better match for you than you might think.”

  Madeleine gaped. For one nerve-sparking moment, the memory of being ensnared by Zenon flashed through her mind.

  “Out of the question, Chloe. If you deliberately sent him to the flower shop in some kind of matchmaker attempt the other night, that was a mistake. I don’t want him near me. So don’t send him my way, not now and not ever.”

  twenty-three

  BAYOU BLACK, 2009

  AFTER EVERYONE LEFT, MADELEINE and her father continued to work until the daylight hours faded to night. Marc, Chloe, Zenon, Ethan, Daddy—they all haunted Madeleine’s heart with their own sweetness or sting, or both. But the physical labor helped scrub her thoughts. Madeleine let herself go to what she now thought of as the fascinations; everything around her beamed with a strange kind of life force. The wood floor seemed to respond to her care the way resurrection moss blooms to life after a rainstorm. Even the house seemed kinder, tidy and comfortable and clean, the way she’d remembered it growing up.

  Madeleine retrieved Marc’s cell phone, now fully charged, and powered it up. She looked into the “recent call” log and found her own phone number. The last person he’d called before he died. She scrolled through the menu options and opened the photo app. Two pictures in there: One of Daddy and Madeleine on the porch swing, and the other, to her surprise, was a picture of Marc smiling, his arm around an old friend from school. Madeleine tried to recall her name. Millie? Lily? She peered at the image, the girl’s sharp chin and bright eyes smiling next to Marc. About ten years older than the last time Madeleine had seen her, and a few pounds plumper. Emily. Emily Hammond. Madeleine remembered now. And she even remembered Marc mentioning her. But Emily had moved to Nova Scotia. She probably came back to visit family from time to time—her parents lived not too far away in Houma. Madeleine wondered if she and Marc had gone on a date or something.

  She turned off Marc’s cell phone and slipped it into her bag. She thought about checking in on the Hammonds, and then thought of Chloe, of how she’d said she’d been in the old house and had found nothing new. Chloe would have been wading through all those papers and photographs. She probably never powered up Marc’s cell phone, nor did she likely know anything about Emily Hammond.

  “Look at this,” Daddy said.

  He was standing at the closet by the front door. Inside, one of the walls was gaping, with very old lengths of wire running along the studs.

  “Marc was going to update the wiring,” Madeleine said.

  “It’d have been the first time since the old place was built. Look, it’s the old knob and tube.”

  Madeleine knew nothing about knob and tube wiring. Marc was the electrician of the family. She looked at the black, rubbery-looking ropes that crumbled out when Daddy brushed them with his thumb.

  She grabbed his arm. “Don’t do that! You could get shocked.”

  “If we wind up selling this place, we’ll have to disclose that it’s got old wiring. Funny Marc never got around to updating it.”

  “I guess it’s like the cobbler with no shoes. He was the electrician with ancient wiring.”

  Madeleine looked around the little house with satisfaction. They’d completed most of the sorting, and tomorrow’s tasks would demand less emotional energy and more of the physical, things like cleaning and moving. Praise be!

  She and her father rewarded themselves by sitting out on the porch swing eating buttermilk biscuits and fried chicken from Thibby’s, though Madeleine could do little more than pick. Now that her physical labor had subsided, she had Ethan on her mind. The more time that passed since their conversation, the more empty she felt. He’d become a significant part of her life without her truly realizing. And his talk of future and children—Madeleine rarely dared to think of such things. Pretty little family units in pretty little houses were the stuff of dreamscapes. Something for normal, privileged people.

  The sky was flooded with stars, the scent of elderberry greens enriched the humid night air, and the nocturnal beasts of the bayou sang lullabies.

  “You doin all right, kitten?” Daddy said.

  “Sure. I’m fine.”

  He sighed, listening to the night sounds. “Got everything under control, don’t you.” He regarded her. “Sometimes I wonder what you’d do with yourself if you didn’t have us driving you crazy.” He paused. “Well, me driving you crazy.”

  She shook her head. “Stop it. You know I love you.”

  “Ever put a star to sleep?”

  “To sleep? What do you mean?”

  “You turn’m off, like turning out the lights.”

  “I remember this game when we were really little.” She recalled Marc mentioning this to her on the phone.

  He pointed a chicken bone toward the sky, then wiped his hands. “Pick a star. Any one of them up there.”

  She smiled up at the heavens and selected a single pinpoint of light.

  “Now.” He leaned back, chin tilted upward. “Focus on just that one. Keep your eyes on it. Now tell it to go to sleep.”

  She gazed at her star, speaking to it in her mind, telling it that it was time to rest.

&nb
sp; Sleep for now, little star. You’ve done your job.

  The pinpoint burned a moment longer, and as Madeleine watched, it glimmered and winked, then disappeared.

  Immediately, Madeleine’s mind churned out explanations: an atmospheric waver, heat gas, a distant cloud.

  But then she decided to let it go, and let her mental log state that she did indeed put a star to sleep.

  She laid her head on her father’s shoulder, glad that she had taken that sabbatical, and not just because of the research. A cool breeze stirred from the bayou, and Daddy closed his warm hand over hers.

  Despite what had happened, despite the circumstances and a lingering thread of sadness, Madeleine knew of no better place at this moment than sitting on the porch swing of Bayou Black with her father. After all, this was her childhood home.

  DADDY GOT HIS WAY. And Madeleine got her way. After spending the morning sorting and packing things that had survived yesterday’s culling, Madeleine mollified her father by hiring someone to do the rest of the cleaning. But in exchange, she talked him into driving out to Hahnville with her so they could find the old plantation house. He’d been reluctant, but when Madeleine mentioned that Chloe had warned her to stay away from the place, Daddy grew indignant and suddenly insisted they go.

  A continuous earthen levee ran high along the north side of the road, blocking any view of the Mississippi River. Most of the houses they passed were old and modest. Natural gas companies owned a good share of the land here, and sprawling industrial plants replaced the plantations that once stood along River Road. They drove under bundles of large pipes that stretched overhead, connecting to the great river beyond.

  Though the old plat map hailed from the 1850s, she was confident it would provide enough clues to help them find the Terrefleurs site. The curves of River Road and the Mississippi were the same now as they had been a hundred and fifty years ago. Madeleine kept an eye out for a distinct stretch of high ground above a bend in the river.

  Daddy pointed out Esperanza Plantation as they passed, still intact though not open to the public. Some, like Oak Alley and Evergreen Plantations, had been fully restored to their original grandeur. The chances of Terrefleurs having survived the years were slim, and even if it had, it would be in someone else’s possession. But she couldn’t wait to see it.