Mermaids in the Basement

by Michael Lee West

  By the time we reached Fairhope, with its year-round white Christmas lights and red verbena baskets, I’d finished my champagne and was feeling quite cheerful. The same gnarled oaks dotted the road, and I even thought I recognized the people standing on the community pier, waiting for sunset. Behind them, gulls wheeled over the rippled, bronzed water, and farther out, a barge puttered toward Mobile, its engines leaving a wide, foamy wake.

  The Bentley sped down the road, past the boutiques and art galleries. Through openings in the trees, I caught glimpses of dark, verdant streets with azaleas poking through wrought-iron fences. If we turned down any of those roads and kept on driving, within minutes we’d be engulfed by wild tangles of kudzu. Just outside this civilized southern town, with its church spires and Dollar Generals, the bayous twisted off like spilled cane syrup, and the thick, moss-choked woods formed a canopy over poisonous snakes and man-eating alligators.

  I looked off into the distance and saw the large sign outside Honora’s favorite restaurant, Fisherman’s Wharf. But the sign read: “GOOD LUCK, RENATA & FERGUSON.” Now that’s odd, I thought. Odd and disturbing. I couldn’t believe that anyone still remembered me, much less had followed my disintegrating romance in the National Enquirer et al. My cheeks burned, and I bit down a sharp comment about meddling grandmothers. It was just like Honora to misinform the local gossips, telling them that I was freshly engaged and coming to town with my boyfriend. Then she’d admonish them not to spy on us, because we would be in seclusion at her bayside estate.

  Honora gunned the Bentley around the restaurant, and I saw that I had misread the sign. “GOOD LUCK, REGGIE & FERN ANN,” it really said. My anger segued into embarrassment as I leaned against the leather seat and wondered if the universe, along with Fisherman’s Wharf, was trying to tell me something. Could the sign be a sign? Or maybe I just needed glasses. More likely I had lived in Hollywood too long, and I’d become like everyone else: I was always on my mind.

  Honora was chatting about her garden when the Bentley rolled up to fourteen-foot-high black iron gates. The ironwork was intricate, featuring a hairless donkey and the words chauve and ane—a motif Honora had devised to counteract her ancestor-worshipping in-laws, who’d insisted they had descended from French royalty.

  “These gates get more decrepit each year, but I’ll never part with them.” She laughed. “They are perfectly over-the-top, and utterly define Chateau DeChavannes, don’t you agree?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said, remembering that the house had been named by her social-climbing mother-in-law, Solange DeChavannes, who had clawed her way into the old-money set on the Eastern Shore. All these decades later, Solange’s touches remained. I rolled down my window as the Bentley cruised past the sun-spattered green lawn, past hundreds of azaleas. The estate was grandiose and excessive, dwarfing the quieter, more laid-back houses that were visible through the loblolly pines. Tall statues were ensconced in high boxwood niches. The surrounding gardens were French and formal. They had been patterned after Versailles but on a much smaller scale, of course; in the old days, the upkeep had required five full-time gardeners. Several cast-stone fountains had been shipped to Alabama from the Loire Valley, including a statue of Circe that spilled water from her bowl, into a koi pond.

  Honora turned up the oyster-shell drive, and I saw the house, beige stucco with green shutters. It wasn’t my grandmother’s taste. Over the decades, she had tried to obliterate the formality of the old manse. One year she’d added striped awnings, and another she’d planted messy cutting gardens. All renovations had been done under the watchful eye of her old friend, Sister DeBenedetto, a New Orleans interior designer. But no matter what they did, a pretentious aura hovered.

  We got out of the Bentley, and I followed her down the walkway, curving around to the stone terrace. The smell of coastal Alabama blew all around me. It was the scent of my childhood—pine needles, sunlight, and sour, brackish water. I took a deep breath, feeling mildly disoriented. After coming from the Outer Banks, Honora’s waterfront estate seemed tame and structured, but just the least bit naughty. It wasn’t the sort of place where you could start a bonfire and burn your Life’s Work, even if it was a shoddy Life’s Work. It was the sort of place where you sat in white wicker or Adirondack chairs and got politely (and just barely) drunk on French wine and talked about gardening and hummingbird feeders and the recent Bay Cotillion Club meeting and who wore what and who was sleeping with the tennis pro and who was spending too much time with Jim Beam.

  When I started up the terrace steps, I caught my first glimpse of Mobile Bay. The sun almost touched the water, turning it brassy and gold. These shallow waters were at the mercy of every weather system that traipsed through the Gulf of Mexico, but the sight of it could just about break my heart. “Three weeks ago it got down to twenty-eight degrees,” Honora was saying. “Gladys and I scrambled to cover up the daffodils, and still, we lost a few.”

  There, at the end of the terrace, I saw Gladys Boudreaux standing on the pier, tossing French bread up to the gulls. As long as I could remember this dock had been patrolled by the birds. They would materialize during meals, hovering from a discreet distance, waiting for us to toss up a biscuit or hunk of corn bread. Honora’s neurotic Yorkie walked on his hind legs, snapping at the gulls. When he saw me, he let out a howl and ducked between Gladys’s legs. She tossed a handful of bread into the air, and the gulls descended. It could have been a scene straight out of a Hitchcock film. Gladys threw up more bread, and her yellow floral dress rippled around her knees. Her hair was dark and undyed, and it fell stick-straight in the same short pageboy she’d worn for the last twenty years. No one really knew Gladys’s age, but she’d once admitted to being older than my grandmother.

  She opened her arms, and I ran down the pier. Zap barked and ran in circles. Gladys tugged the brim of my black hat, then rubbed her rough hands over my shoulders.

  “It’s so good to see you, baby,” she said.

  Honora came up the dock, and the little dog lowered his head and sped over to her, a black-and-tan streak across the grass. The wind sucked up my hat, and it cartwheeled along the terrace, into the yard. Zap leaped into the thick St. Augustine grass, and snatched up the hat and shook it.

  Honora’s eyes rounded as she watched me run my fingers through my hair.

  “What got hold of you?” Gladys reached out to touch my hair, then drew back.

  “A freak accident,” I said, and told them about the scissor-happy clerk at Nags Head, followed by my lost cell phone, the midnight bonfire, and the mixed-up FedEx envelopes.

  “Don’t you fret,” said Honora. “Andy and Shelby left you comfortable. You won’t have to write any more screenplays.”

  “Well, I’m going to.” I tried to smooth back my hair. “If I remember how.”

  “You’ll remember.” Honora whistled to the Yorkie. His ears perked up, then he dragged the hat over to her. She bent down and straightened his topknot. “Give it to Renata, that’s right, good Zapper.”

  “He don’t understand a word you’re saying,” Gladys scoffed.

  “Au contraire,” said Honora. The Yorkie stepped toward me, then glanced back at my grandmother. She nodded, and he trotted over, dropping the hat at my feet. I wiped off the spittle, then jammed the hat over my head.

  “Much better,” said Honora. “And the extra weight suits you.”

  “Speaking of which, I made your favorite supper,” said Gladys. “Shrimp creole and rice and garlic French bread.”

  I put my arms around them, happy to be home, where food obsessions and animal worship seemed normal. They cooked the way they lived, with abandon, verve, and a bit of mystery. No telling what these women might serve—shrimp, scandals, long-lost secrets. I was ready for anything.

  Chapter 7

  A PRETTY FACE

  I stepped into the kitchen and smelled contrasting aromas: lemon, garlic, shellfish, and browning bread, all of it floating in a cloud of well-seasoned tomato sauce. Hono
ra had remodeled the room two years ago, after Hurricane Georges sent a tree crashing through the roof. I ran my hand along the weathered, celery-washed kitchen cabinets. Fashioned to resemble old armoires and chests, the cabinet doors were fitted with heavy bronze hardware. They had been made in England, banged up with chains to give the “aged” look, then shipped across the water. For a week they were accidentally quarantined, but everyone agreed the cabinets had been worth the wait.

  While Honora slipped a Cole Porter CD into the player, I followed Gladys into the dining room, helping her light candles. She had set out the Limoges and the Francis First silver. “I have missed you so much, baby.” Gladys blew out the match, then pulled me into a hug. “Did Honora tell you that we burned that damn gossip magazine? The one with your honey in it?”

  I laughed. “So did I.”

  “That fool boy.” Gladys bristled. “Well, you’re home now, and it’s best you just put him right out of your mind. We won’t even say his name. Let’s get Honora in here before she feeds all the shrimps to that damn dog.”

  After supper, Honora set out a carton of Ben and Jerry’s vanilla bean ice cream. While it softened, she poured espresso beans into a grinder.

  “Before I leave Point Clear, I’ll weigh a thousand pounds,” I said.

  “Already talking about leaving, and you just got here.” Honora chuckled. “Your mother loved this dessert. She used to serve it at dinner parties. It’s not low-calorie, but it’s simple yet elegant.”

  She piled the ice cream into three crystal bowls and sprinkled the espresso powder over the top. Then she licked the spoon, leaving a white streak on her tongue. “When Shelby was pregnant with you, she craved ice cream and fried okra. Not together, of course. Your daddy kept her well supplied. Now that man has no favorite foods. I swear, Louie will eat and drink anything. Did you know that he’s learned how to make pepper jelly in his old age?”

  I shrugged. I hadn’t heard from him in months.

  “I shouldn’t be surprised,” said Honora. “He always loved to cook. When you were little and got a cold, he’d make a huge pot of chicken soup. He’d chop the garlic and onion real fine, so you wouldn’t make a fuss. You just hated vegetables!”

  After dessert, Gladys couldn’t stop yawning, so she kissed us good night and went upstairs. Honora poured Courvoisier into crystal balloons, and I followed her into the mahogany-paneled library, the dog’s toenails snicking on the wood. This room had been added by my great-grandmother in 1942, the year my father was born. It was dark and forbidding, even with lamps burning. I sank down on the green chintz sofa, tucking my bare foot beneath my hips. Then I hunched my shoulders, waiting for her to start quizzing me about my troubles with Ferg. I had been expecting her to pounce ever since she’d picked me up at the airport. Zap jumped onto the sofa and flopped his head onto my knee, his brown eyes gazing out from tufts of tan-and-silver fur.

  Hoping to distract my grandmother, I rubbed the dog’s ears, then said, “When I was little, this room horrified me.”

  “It had the same effect on your father.” Honora touched the glass to her lips. Then she walked over to the carved Jacobean table where silver-framed photographs were artfully arranged on the polished wood. She leaned over, staring down at the pictures with the same intensity I’d seen her give cantaloupes at the A&P.

  “Gladys and I were cleaning the old wine cellar, and we found a box of pictures,” she said. “Water had ruined some, but I was able to restore most of them.” She lifted a small, ornate frame and brought it over to me. “Have you seen this one? Your father was two days old when it was taken. My mother-in-law hired a portrait photographer from Mobile. That was vintage Solange, excessive in every way. It was against the hospital rules for anyone to get near the newborns. Solange just bribed the nurses. But the picture didn’t turn out, so she must have hidden it.”

  She sat down on the edge of the sofa, and I leaned over to study the photograph. My two-day-old father glared back at me with puffy eyes. One dark eyebrow stretched across the elongated forehead. His tiny fists were pressed against his ears, as if trying to shut out a disgusting conversation. Thick black hair stuck out in tufts all over his head, and his tongue protruded from swollen lips.

  “Wow,” I said, “are you sure this is my daddy?”

  “Positive,” said Honora.

  “He looks absolutely—” I broke off, searching for the right word.

  “Ratlike?” Honora lifted one eyebrow.

  “No, I was going to say furious.”

  “I loved him the minute I saw him, but Chaz cried. My sister-in-law thought the nurses had mixed up the babies.”

  “Aunt Na-Na would think that,” I said.

  “It was those strong DeChavannes genes.” She set down her brandy, then slid off the sofa and walked to the bookcase. Opening a cabinet, she reached into a crevice and pulled out a white leather album. “Our Baby” was written on the front in gold letters. She carried it over to the sofa and sat down next to Zap. The leather spine cracked when she turned a page. Baby Louie’s milestones were documented in Honora’s spidery handwriting, augmented with black-and-white snapshots.

  “I haven’t looked at this album in years.” She stared down at a picture, then quickly turned the page. I caught glimpses of Honora’s entries—“First Solid Food—Gerber strained peaches, December 12, 1942, 7:30 A.M.” Immunizations were listed, dated, and annotated. “Cried all night and ran 100.2 temperature!”

  “It’s so detailed,” I said. “Like a documentary.”

  “Louie hated it. I kept it hidden, or he would have thrown it into Mobile Bay.”

  “Seriously?”

  “He didn’t see it as a doting mother’s memory book. He saw it as the record of an ugly-duckling childhood.”

  “Daddy wasn’t ugly. That old baby picture doesn’t count.”

  “He was an intense-looking baby, fierce and Gallic.” She flipped to the middle of the album and pointed to a dark, thin boy-child kneeling in front of a Christmas tree.

  “That’s Daddy?” I asked.

  “He was three years old and still quite strange looking. Those dark eyebrows dominated his face. Nowadays they call it a unibrow.”

  She turned a page and rubbed her finger over a picture of an older Louie posing next to a bicycle. “When he was four years old, he fell off this bicycle. The training wheels got caught in a hole, and flipped him over. He landed on his forehead. It knocked him out. Chaz and I rushed him to the hospital. They x-rayed every inch of that child’s body. The skull wasn’t broken, but he’d suffered a concussion. A week later he was running around like nothing had happened, except for one thing—he stuttered. The accident had somehow hurt his brain, and he stuttered for the next sixteen years, even with the best speech therapists. Chaz said it was an injury to the frontal lobe.”

  “I’ve never heard so much as a blip in his speech,” I said.

  “No, he conquered it by singing his words. Now, when he’s tired, he’ll stutter a little. If you didn’t know better, you’d think he was drunk.”

  I pointed to a photograph of a dark, skinny teenage boy. “This doesn’t even look like my father,” I said.

  “It’s the strangest thing,” said Honora. “When Louie went through puberty, his face changed daily. The teardrop nose dwarfed the rest of his features. Or it was dotted with blackheads. One summer he grew five inches, and it was all in his legs. The stuttering reached a crescendo. And of course, he couldn’t even talk on the phone. He still doesn’t like talking on it. Girls didn’t like him. But he did manage to get a date for the senior prom. Then the girl came down with mononucleosis and couldn’t go. Louie went by himself. A lot of boys would have stayed home, but not Louie.

  “Everything came together when he turned twenty-one. Nothing magic about that age, by the way, it was just his time to be gorgeous. The funny-looking child had vanished. Louie had my father’s aristocratic cheekbones mixed in with the DeChavannes Frenchness. His dark looks juxtaposed against
his white uniform was striking. It was more than the average woman could bear. Yet it was more than looks. The old manners of his childhood were perfected. Opening doors, pulling out chairs, ladies first. The women went wild, phoning him all hours of the night, waiting outside the hospital. Begging him to have a drink, even offering to have his baby.”

  “Daddy had groupies?” I smiled.

  “Did he ever. Especially after New Orleans Life put him on the cover of their magazine. The caption read, ‘Crescent City’s Heart Throb: Dr. Louie DeChavannes Is More Than a Pretty Face.’ When the article came out, he acted like it didn’t exist. Everybody thought he was humble and gracious, but I knew the real story. When he looked in the mirror, he’d frown, as if he saw nothing but eyebrows.”

  “I had no idea,” I said.

  “Most people don’t.” She turned the page, then bent closer to a faded color photograph of four women. She slid her fingernail down the sides of the picture, loosening the glue, then pulled it up and handed it to me.

  “I don’t know how this got in here,” she said. “It’s me, your mother, Gladys, and Isabella.”

  “Y’all look so young.” I turned over the picture, and someone had written, “Beached Mermaids, 1977.” Each woman sat on a different color beach towel—three blondes, with Gladys the lone brunette. Behind the beach, Chateau DeChavannes rose up, resembling a giant sand castle. The women smiled straight into the camera. I couldn’t remember them sunbathing, but I did know how they acted when they were together. They talked nonstop, their voices distinct as thumbprints.