“I’ve been thinking about you.”
“I started to leave you a note. It’s my birthday tomorrow. I’ll be thirty-one. I need to celebrate.”
“By running around the park.”
“I like to run around the park.”
“Would you like to come over to my place?”
“Now?”
“Why not?”
“All right, I might. Don’t you have to work?”
“Not for a while. Follow me home.”
“Let me get my car.”
I ran across the grass to where my car was parked on Prytania Street and the tennis player rode his ten-speed bike along beside me. It never occurred to me not to go over to his house and fuck him. It almost made up for Abby’s Frenchman, but not quite.
That night my little girl had to play in a basketball game at the Jewish Community Center. After supper my husband and my little girl, Molly, and I drove down Saint Charles Avenue and parked a block away and walked to the center holding hands. The tennis player came riding his bicycle down the center of the streetcar track. He waved at me. I waved back. It was a coincidence that kept occurring. Three times after I had fucked him in the afternoon I had run into him later that afternoon or night somewhere in uptown New Orleans. He thought it was only because we lived so near each other. That was one thing wrong with the tennis player. He didn’t believe in attraction or cosmic awareness or anything really good to talk about.
“Is Abby coming to my game?” Molly asked.
“She can’t. She has a Frenchman coming over tonight to meet her.”
“A Frenchman?” my husband said. “That’s all she needs. Where did she find a Frenchman?”
“Her brother met him at Tulane. He plays Rugby. I have to go over there after the game and meet him. She wants me to see what I think of him.” As I said it I knew it was true. There was no way I was letting Abby keep that Frenchman to herself. If it wasn’t for me she’d be too fat for a Frenchman and so on and so forth.
Chapter two. We lost the game by twenty points. The other team had fourteen players and we only had five players. None of our bench showed up. “Benchless,” my husband proclaimed. “We will have to go out and recruit again.”
“Take Molly home,” I said. “I have to go see about this Frenchman.” My husband was glad to have his little girl to himself so he could lecture her about getting rebounds and not being discouraged when things didn’t go her way. He kissed me on the cheek and said he’d come get me when I called. Abby’s house was only a block from the center. I walked along in the lovely warm evening air thinking about the tennis player and whether or not it would be worth getting a divorce from someone as nice as my husband just so I could sleep with him at night. I decided against it. It put me in a sad mood to decide not to get a divorce and I looked at my watch and saw it was only fifteen after eight. It was too soon to go to Abby’s house and meet the Frenchman. It would be better to go somewhere and get a drink and then go to Abby’s house. After all, I hadn’t had a drink in twelve days. Surely I had stopped being an alcoholic by now. Just one little drinkie-poo. Just one little vodka martini and then I’d quit for the night. A double. Just one little double vodka martini or maybe just a glass of wine.
But where to go? I could go by my cousin Ingersol’s house, but that was ten blocks away and I didn’t have a car. I could go to a pay phone and call him and tell him to come get me, but then I’d have to take him with me to Abby’s house. I could walk back to Saint Charles Avenue and catch the streetcar to the Pontchartrain Hotel. I could go in the elegant bar and sit on a bar stool and pretend I was in Paris, France, and have a glass of French wine or maybe a nice little double vodka martini in a squat frosted glass with three olives, or maybe four.
What a night! Gorgeous stars above the live oak trees, soft sweet air, one day from my fabulous, wonderful birthday. I had hated being thirty but I loved being thirty-one already and it was still four hours away. Yes. I would catch the streetcar and go to the Pontchartrain Hotel and order a bottle of French Champagne and charge it to my husband. Maybe I would get another one and take it over to Abby’s. Maybe I would call Ingersol after all and let him drive me around all night. After all, Ingersol was crazy about me. He was my favorite cousin in New Orleans and he could always be counted on to rescue me or take me somewhere.
I was running now in the direction of the streetcar stop at the corner of Jefferson and Saint Charles. It was wonderful that I was a practiced runner. Wonderful to think of myself showing up at the Pontchartrain Hotel wearing my running shoes. It would add to my legend. Alone at the bar drinking French Champagne and then being rescued by my gorgeous, extravagantly wealthy cousin, Ingersol Manning.
I arrived at the streetcar stop just as the streetcar was screeching to a stop. It was empty. No one rode the streetcars at eight o’clock at night. “Take me to the Pontchartrain Hotel,” I told the driver. “It’s three and a half hours to my birthday.”
“That’ll be fifty cents,” the driver said, and I put a streetcar token in the slot and went back to the middle of the car and took a seat by the window. This is a night to love New Orleans, I decided. Tommy and Molly at home doing Molly’s homework, probably thinking of something to buy me or wrapping up something they already bought for me. Mother calling from Laurel and me not there to answer the phone and all her stupid questions. Ingersol sitting at his house bored to death waiting to come rescue me. Abby and the Frenchman and Abby’s brother probably talking about something boring. They’ll be glad when I get there with French Champagne to liven up the party. “Way down yonder in New Orleans,” I started singing sweet and low to the breeze coming in the window, “In the land of dreamy dreams. There’s a garden of Eden, that’s what I mean.”
The streetcar arrived at the corner of Jackson Avenue and I thanked the driver and got down and walked to the hotel. I went into the lobby and through the wooden doors into the Bayou Room and walked up to the wide bar and ordered a martini. “And a bottle of French Champagne to go,” I added. “The best one you have. It’s almost my birthday. Is there a phone I can use?”
The bartender handed me a phone and I called Ingersol. Of course he was waiting for me. “My darling, darling,” I said into the phone. “It’s almost my birthday. Come get me at the Pontchartrain bar. I’ve got a plan.”
“As soon as I get dressed,” he answered. “I was half asleep.”
“Abby’s got a Frenchman,” I told him. “We’re going to crash the party.”
The bartender was not impressed. He seemed unhappy. His white jacket could use some bleach. He was tall and gangly and his fingernails were dirty. It was not turning out to be a good idea to be in the deserted Bayou Room in my running shoes. There was no one in the bar but a trashy-looking couple in a corner holding hands. The bartender put the drink down in front of me and I started not to even drink it. Alcohol turns into formic acid and formaldehyde in the brain, I could hear my psychiatrist saying. It puts holes in your liver. It gets you confused and sad. Why would you do something that stupid to yourself?
“Never mind it,” I said to the bartender. “It’s the nineties. I think this is an idea whose time has passed.” I shoved the drink and a ten-dollar bill in his direction and got down off the bar stool.
“What about the Champagne?” he said. “Do you still want that?”
“I don’t think so. I’m going outside and wait for my cousin.” I left the Bayou Room and walked out through the lobby and stood on the comer by the newspaper stands waiting for my cousin to come and get me. THOUSANDS DEAD IN BOSNIA, the headlines read. HOUSE CUTS WELFARE PROGRAMS. NEW ORLEANS NUMBER ONE IN MURDERS.
What a night, I started humming. Sweet confusion under the moonlight. Maybe I should get into politics, or maybe adopt some abandoned children. Or study biochemistry or go to medical school. I’m only thirty-one. I could still go to medical school if I wanted to.
I leaned against a lamppost. I pulled one leg up and began to stretch my hamstrings. I saw
Ingersol’s Porsche coming down the street. The top was down and Ingersol’s thin blond hair was flying all around. “Cousin Baby Sister,” he said, when he had come to a stop beside me. “Get in the car. What are you doing out here all alone in the murder capital of the world? And what is this about a Frenchman? Have you had anything to eat? Let’s go somewhere and pick up some crayfish.” He got out of the car and took my arm and put me in the passenger seat and pulled out my seat belt and handed it to me.
“I almost had a drink but I stopped myself,” I said. “Can you believe it, Ingersol? I haven’t had a drink for almost thirteen days. Take me to my house. I want to see my husband and my child. There’s tons to eat at my house. There’s everything we need.” I touched him on the arm and he turned the Porsche around and started driving to my house.
“I decided not to get a divorce from Tommy,” I announced. “I’m going to stop fucking around on him and be a wife.”
“Jesus Christ, cousin. You are having a birthday epiphany, aren’t you now?”
“We’re wasting our lives, Ingersol. How old are you now?”
“Thirty-eight. I’m not wasting mine.”
“You ought to quit racing sailboats all the time and use your brain. You ought to quit dating half-wits.”
“I’m going to Aspen next week. You want to go along?”
“The slopes are too crowded. I don’t like it anymore.”
We drove in silence for a while, down the long tunnel of live oak trees, past the mansions, past the yards where we had been to parties every day of our lives, past the streets that turned off to our schools, past a thousand lovers and boyfriends and girlfriends and walks and bicycle rides. “I love this town,” I said at last. “I love my birthday. I love my life.”
We turned off onto State Street and went down a block and came to a stop in front of the three-story blue house Tommy’s mother had given us. Molly’s bike was on the steps. The lights were on in every window. Music was pouring out the doors. There were cars lining the driveway. Ingersol started laughing. “Get out,” he said. “It’s a party. We thought we lost you for a while but we knew you’d call one of us if we waited.”
I got out of the car and walked around Molly’s bicycle and into my house, which was full of everyone I knew. My parents were there and my cousins were there and my neighbors were there and half the girls in my exercise class and Abby and her brother and the Frenchman, who turned out to be a dismal chain-smoking academic searching for a living. The cake was monstrous. A huge half-chocolate, half-lemon doberge tart with thirty-one candles in roseate holders. Molly had put on her best pink and blue flowered party dress and she lit them while my friends began to sing. WE LOVE YOU, GARLAND, it said on the cake, and the voice of my tribe bellowed out HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU and I hugged my child and my mother and my husband and blew those fuckers out.
“What did you wish?” Molly asked. She has her father’s retentive mind.
“World peace,” I answered. “You have to wish for that or all else fails.”
“You could wish for more wishes,” she suggested. “That’s what I always do.”
Later, after the guests and the caterers had left, I went into the kitchen and had a second piece of cake with my child and we lit some candles and collected a few more wishes.
“You took a big chance having this party after your ball game,” I said. “Weren’t you worried when I went off to meet the Frenchman?”
“We knew you’d call Ingersol if you were walking,” Molly said. “We made him go over to his house and wait.”
“What made you think I’d call him?”
“Because you always do. Daddy bet Abby’s brother twenty dollars you’d call Ingersol before nine o’clock.”
“In the future I may be less predictable,” I said, and hugged her. “Now that I’ve quit drinking wine and become a serious thirty-one-year-old person. Well, it happens to be past eleven o’clock and you have to go to school in the morning. If you can’t get up, it will be my fault.”
“May I sleep with you tonight?”
“No. I am sleeping with your father. But I’ll tuck you in. Go get ready.”
After I got her to sleep I put on my best red nightgown and went into my bedroom to seduce my husband. He was waiting for me, reading a sexy foreign affairs article in the Atlantic Monthly and wearing his tight Brooks Brothers pajamas he has had for the nine years I’ve been married to him.
“I want our marriage to have a new birth of feeling,” I told him. “I want you to take off your clothes and turn off the light and get me pregnant.” It was an inspiration of the moment. Of course, there was no chance he could get me pregnant with my contraband IUD safely tucked up in my uterus but he was much too excited to remember that. He worked on pumping me full of sperm and I worked on pretending there really was a Frenchman and he was in the bed and all in all being thirty-one was turning out to be right on the money as far as good times were concerned.
Also by Ellen Gilchrist
The Age of Miracles
The Anabasis
The Anna Papers
The Annunciation
The Cabal and Other Stories
The Courts of Love
Drunk With Love
Falling Through Space
Flights of Angels
I Cannot Get You Close Enough
In the Land of Dreamy Dreams
Light Can Be Both Wave and Particle
Net of Jewels
Rhoda: A Life in Stories
Sarah Conley
Starcarbon
Victory Over Japan
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