by Sandra Hill
“Give that to me. Right now,” she demanded.
“Are you usin’ one of those Internet datin’ services?”
“Something like that,” she said, grabbing her list back.
“Dar-lin’!” Bernie gave her his hangdog look. “You don’t hafta go to no matchmaker. I’m right here.”
“Thanks but no thanks.” Their divorce had been amicable, but that didn’t mean she wanted him back in her life. Not one bit.
He didn’t look as wounded as he might have at one time.
“Why are you here, Bernie?”
“Is it wrong for me ta worry about you? You live alone in a city. Anything could happen ta you. Just because I check up on you doesn’t make me a bad person.” He batted his eyelashes at her in an exaggerated fashion.
“I can take care of myself, and I never said you were a bad person.”
“Then why—”
She raised a hand, cutting him off. “We are not going to discuss our marriage and divorce again.” Every time he showed up, their conversation degenerated into the same old subject. “How’s business? Are you ready for Mardi Gras?”
Bernie owned a pyrotechnics factory, producing all kinds of fireworks for putting on light shows typical of the Fourth of July, and here in Louisiana, Mardi Gras. Everything from retail sparklers and Roman candles to elaborate choreographed sky events. His professionals traveled all over the world and were renowned for the spectacular shows they put on.
“Actually, chère, that’s why I stopped by t’day.”
Okay, here it comes. Every time he calls me chère, he wants something.
“Do you mind if I park a vehicle or two in yer drive under the porte cochere during Mardi Gras? Ya’ll know what a bitch parking kin be.”
And costly. Truth was, Bernie was a world-class skinflint. In fact, she’d once heard a friend say he could squeeze a quarter so tight the eagle would scream.
“How many vehicles?”
“Uh, four.”
“No way! You’ll be all the way back here to the courtyard, crushing my flowers.”
“Three, then.”
“No! Two, and they better not be trucks or huge vans with your commercial signs on the side. And one day only.”
He flashed his hangdog look at her again. Did it ever work for him? “Okay.” He smiled. It was probably all he’d ever expected to begin with. “You’re the best!”
Yeah. More like sucker of the year. “Bernie, you need to find a girlfriend. Get married again.” And stay away from me.
He wasn’t a bad-looking man. He was what they would have called a nerd when she was in school. A computer geek now. If he’d get himself some contact lens, instead of those thick bifocals that never seemed to fit—he was always pushing the frame up his nose—he could pass for handsome. Maybe work out in the gym to get some better muscle definition. And have someone help him shop for something other than khakis and loafers.
Luckily she wouldn’t be the one doing all that.
“Maybe I could join that same dating agency as you.” He pointed to the sheet of paper she’d slipped under the Sunday edition of the Times-Picayune.
Her lips twitched with suppressed laughter. “I don’t think so.”
He rose to his feet and was about to leave when he tossed a bomb at her… the nonexplosive but equally deadly kind.
“Hey, Em, have you heard the latest gossip?” he asked. “Guess who’s coming back to the bayou?”
She did not like the glint in Bernie’s eyes; nor did she like gossip about anyone on Bayou Black. Not knowing was the only way she’d been able to survive for a long time. “I can’t imagine.”
“My cousin. His grandma’s sick, and he’s come ta visit.”
“Which cousin?” Bernie had at least a dozen in his big family.
“Justin Le-freakin’-Blanc.”
Without realizing what she was doing, Emelie tugged her list out from under the newspaper and crushed it into a tight ball.
You can go home again, but it’s damn hard…
Cage drove his rental car onto the crushed shell driveway at the side of his grandmother’s house, turned off the ignition, and just sat, taking it all in. Seventeen years, and everything looked the same!
The house was built in the quaint bayou stilt fashion. Being raised up high made sense when you considered the high water table in Southern Louisiana, where no homes could have basements lest they wanted rustic indoor swimming pools, not to mention the proximity to the water, which occasionally rose to almost the first floor. Every tornado or hurricane that hit the Gulf Coast managed to change the course of the bayous in one way or another, eliminating some altogether and other times creating new ones. In fact, this house, when it was originally built about a hundred years ago by his trapper ancestors, had perched on stilts in the swamp water, and could only be reached by pirogue, a type of Cajun boat.
He’d tried to explain the concept once to a SEAL buddy, who just couldn’t fathom it. “Why not just build farther away from the stream on a higher incline?” JAM had asked. “Or build one of those flood-control-type houses that were put up in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina?” In other words, a glorified box. For some reason, his explanation of, “Because that’s the way it’s always been,” didn’t cut it. But then, Yankees were sometimes so dumb they needed a cue card to say “Duh?”
In front of him in the driveway was his grandfather’s old 1985 Pontiac Gran Prix, which he’d affectionately nicknamed Priscilla in honor of the “King,” of whom he’d been a huge fan. He wondered if the old gal still worked. The car probably hadn’t been driven since PawPaw died six years ago.
He had to smile when he recalled how proud PawPaw had been the day he brought Priscilla home, her red paint brighter than a hooker’s cheeks at Sunday mass—his grandfather’s exact words. Cage had been only six at the time, and one of his jobs had been to keep Priscilla sparkling clean. As a reward, PawPaw would pile him and MawMaw into Priscilla every Saturday night and head off to the Dairy Queen.
Later, his memories of Priscilla and Saturday nights were even sweeter. They involved the bench backseat and Emelie Gaudet. Lordy, Lordy! He could almost taste her strawberry lip gloss. And to this day he had an affection for day-of-the-week panties. Wednesday was especially memorable. For a long time, he hadn’t been able to think about Em without wild bursts of anger and, yeah, hurt. Funny how he didn’t feel even a twinge now. Okay, maybe a twinge, but that was all. Time really did heal, he supposed.
He sighed and resumed a scan of his surroundings. It was a SEAL habit. Always secure your perimeter, wherever you are.
No danger in that live oak tree down there by the bayou. He remembered when an old tire hung from one of its lower limbs. Many a hot summer day he’d cooled off by swinging out over the bayou waters, despite the threat of gators and snakes. Sometimes PawPaw would even take a dip with him. And later, MawMaw would have a pitcher of sweet tea and a plate of homemade beignets waiting to hold them off until dinner, which usually consisted of gumbo, or jambalaya, or red beans and rice.
If anyone had asked him yesterday, while he was still in Coronado, if he had any good memories of his bayou homeland, he would have said no. He would have been wrong.
When had everything started to go to hell? And why?
He shook his head like a shaggy dog. What-ifs were a waste of time and a road he didn’t want to travel today… if ever. Getting out of his rented vehicle, he started to walk toward the back of the house, and that was when he began to notice the differences.
First of all, there were animals everywhere. A dog the size of a small horse with pure white fur and two different-colored eyes. A Great Pyrenees, he guessed. The wildly barking animal came bounding toward him like a hopped-up polar bear, then came to a skidding halt at his feet, where it sat on its rump and gazed up at Cage with its tongue lolling and a silly grin on its face that said, Like me, like me, like me.
And speaking of small horses, there was a small horse tied up
in the lean-to where they used to store the lawn mower, which was now out in the yard, rusting away. No wonder the grass was about a foot high.
There were also two or three other dogs, a half-dozen cats, and a pot-bellied pig lazing about the yard. Not to mention about a zillion chickens, none of which were in the old chicken coop, where he could see that the wire fencing had long ago rotted away.
Two flamingos stood near the edge of the stream, and they weren’t artificial ones either.
In the midst of all this craziness, a three-foot-tall St. Jude statue held court in a little grotto. Tante Lulu had been in the building, so to speak. Apparently St. Jude was the patron saint of hopeless cases, and a notorious favorite of hers.
He had to watch where he walked as he began to make his way to the steep steps, moving slowly to accommodate his bum knee. Announcing his arrival were a cacophony of squawks, yips and yaps, meows, oinks, and neighs. And from inside the house, it sounded like birds. For chrissake, his grandmother had a regular zoo going on here.
And then it happened.
He was almost to the top of the steps, where a removable, expandable gate, like those used to protect small kids, kept the yard animals from coming up onto the porch. After he opened and closed the gate, he glanced over and saw his grandmother, wearing a flowered housedress, step through the wooden screen door, alerted by all the noise. At first, she just cocked her head to the side before whispering, loud enough for him to hear, “Justin?”
“Who else would it be, MawMaw?” he asked in a suddenly raspy voice. He hadn’t expected to be so touched. “Didn’t you always say that bad pennies had a way of comin’ back?” Being careful to school his features to hide his shock, he limped over and grabbed his grandmother into a big hug that lifted her slippered feet off the porch floor. She didn’t weigh any more than a bag of Spanish moss.
And her hair! His grandmother had always been so proud of her thick, straight, black hair, which she’d never cut as far as he knew, even when it had turned gray. She’d worn it in a single braid down her back, or twisted into a knot atop her head with Great-Grandma Jeannette’s ivory combs on special occasions.
Once when he was about ten years old, he recalled waking in the middle of the night to hear his grandfather and grandmother on the other side of his bedroom wall. His grandfather had been murmuring something soft and mushy about what his grandmother’s hair did to him. At the time, he’d been mortified.
Now her hair was short. Very short. Pure white, not gray. And curly. The chemo, he realized immediately, and braced himself. He had thought he’d prepared himself, but apparently he hadn’t.
As he held her, he could feel a wetness on the curve of his neck where her face was nestled. She was sobbing softly.
Deep shame overwhelmed him. Despite all his reasons for staying away, none of them were worth a hill of beans if he’d hurt this precious old lady like this.
He set her down and away from him to look her over. “Lookin’ beautiful as ever, chère.” And she was, to him.
“Oh, you!” she said and put her hands nervously to her head. He could tell she was embarrassed and, yes, still a little vain. Good for her!
“It’ll grow out, MawMaw. It ain’t worth frettin’ over. Isn’t that what you always say? Besides, my hair is short, too.” He rubbed his white walls to demonstrate. “Everyone will think it’s the latest fashion. Grandmother and grandson matching do’s.”
She smiled… at least she still had all her teeth… and linked her arm in his, tugging him toward the house. “I have gumbo on the stove. Mus’ be my guardian angel was whisperin’ in my ear that I would be gettin’ company.”
Cage had stopped believing in guardian angels a long time ago. Hard to accept the concept of God, or angels, when you’ve witnessed a kid strapped with explosives going up in a pink mist after a suicide bombing in Iraq. And not just once.
“I’m not company,” he said. “I’m family.”
“Thass jist what Tante Lulu said last week,” she remarked as she seated him at the kitchen table and proceeded to put enough food for an army in front of him. “Do ya remember her?”
How could I forget? Walking through an airport with the geriatric firecracker, stopping every five minutes so she could pee, or more likely, check out the restrooms for cleanliness and then file a report, was a memory that Cage would keep for a lifetime. And the airline attendant! Had Tante Lulu really told the woman her butt was too big for the skirt she was wearing and she ought to consider two sizes larger? Or check out Charmaine’s beauty spa? Then she gave half the people on the plane little St. Jude statues, scaring them half to death because they thought she had inside info on an impending crash.
But Cage didn’t want his grandmother to know just yet that it had taken the bayou busybody to get his ass home. So all he said was, “Yeah, I remember her. Louise Rivard, right?”
“Yep, but everyone calls her Tante Lulu.”
While they were eating—him three platefuls, her only picking at one small one—he asked, “What’s with all the animals?” Aside from the menagerie outside, there were three birdcages in the living room, one holding canaries or parakeets, or whatever… small birds. Then the other two held brightly colored tropical birds… toucans or macaws or whatever you called those big-ass birds. They were all squawking or chirping at his unwelcome presence.
At least the ginormous lizard in a glass tank wasn’t making any noise.
“Yer grandfather and me took in some animals after Hurricane Katrina. I thought I tol’ you that in one of my letters.”
“You did, but you never mentioned how many, or all the different kinds. I thought you meant a dog or two. Maybe a few cats.”
She shrugged. “There weren’t so many in the beginning, but then folks that didn’t want their pets anymore started droppin’ them off in the driveway in the middle of the night. What could we do?”
“Find them homes?”
“We tried, and we did get homes for lots of them, but more kept comin’.”
“Isn’t it hard for you to take care of all of them?”
“It dint usta be, but lately…” Her voice trailed off. But then she straightened and said, “Remy LeDeux’s boy came over yestiddy to help out, but it was raining so hard, I tol’ him ta go home.”
That was just great. She was having to rely on one of Tante Lulu’s relations, not wanting to bother her own irresponsible grandson.
Neither of them had yet mentioned the portable oxygen tank sitting on the floor next to her chair, not even when she’d matter-of-factly inserted the nasal cannula. Apparently, she didn’t need it all the time.
“Mebbe you could help find them good homes, if you have the time while yer here,” she suggested tentatively as if she didn’t want to ask too much of him.
“I’ll make time,” he said and reached over to squeeze her bony hand. “But only if you eat everything on your plate.” Shit! I’m talking to her like she’s a child. She’s sick, not senile.
“Oh, you!” his grandmother said, not at all offended, and she did eat everything in front of her, including the two beignets he forced on her. Afterward, he talked her into letting the dishes go ’til later, and they went out on the porch with their coffee, the thick, strong chicory kind you could only get in Louisiana. An Elvis song, “Love Me Tender,” provided a soft background through an open window. Probably from the old stereo console his PawPaw had bought for MawMaw on one of her birthdays.
She sank down onto a musty-smelling couch—was it only Louisiana where folks put upholstered sofas on an open porch? It about killed him to see her wheel the oxygen tank with her. It didn’t escape his notice that there was an ashtray and a package of cigarettes—coffin nails, for sure—on a TV tray beside her. If he weren’t here, she’d probably be lighting up.
Meanwhile, about two dozen animals were lined up on the steps before the gate, waiting to be fed.
“Should I feed them?” he asked.
“If you don’t mind, sweetie
.” She pointed toward a large wood chest at the other end of the porch that presumably held the various pet foods. Water and feed bowls were scattered all over the porch floor.
If I don’t mind? he scoffed inwardly. No wonder she hadn’t contacted him about her illness if she thought this little chore was a hardship.
When he was done, and a couple of the dogs, including the polar bear, lay on the floor surrounding his grandmother, he went down and scooped some oats into the pony’s feed trough, or whatever the hell you called it. He didn’t know what to give the flamingos, so he just scattered an extra amount of chicken feed. The pig got leftover crawfish étouffée. On the way back, he gathered a dozen eggs in his shirttails. The eggs were everywhere around the yard. He’d come back later with a basket. What the hell did MawMaw do with all these eggs? And the chickens, for that matter? He hoped he wouldn’t be expected to kill and pluck one of them for Sunday dinner.
His coffee was lukewarm by the time he returned to the porch, but it was still good. He sat on the swing, taking in the ambience. Even with all the animals, there was nothing like dusk on the bayou. It was mid-January, but the temperature today had been in the high sixties. Balmy. In this humid, sub-tropical climate, the flowers grew profusely and they were almost too fragrant. In truth, all the senses seemed heightened here in the bayou. The colors, the scents, the sounds, the textures.
He hadn’t realized until this moment how much he’d missed his bayou home. But all that was beside the point.
“How bad is it?” he blurted out.
To her credit, she didn’t lie or attempt to softsoap things.
“Bad. ‘Terminal’ is the word the sawbones use.”
No! I will not accept that. “When’s your next doctor’s appointment? I’ll go with you. I’m gonna call the doctor back at the base. Maybe he can recommend the best specialist for your kind of… of… cancer. Hell, science is moving forward every day. There might be a treatment your doctor doesn’t know about.”
She put up a hand and shook her head. “No. I’ve put this old body through too much already.”
