Today Will Be Different (16 page)

Joe and Eleanor walked along trying to find Preservation Hall, the venerable home of New Orleans jazz. Joe didn’t care for New Orleans jazz—he found it hokey and good-timey—but was determined to salvage the trip by seeing something of historic value. Eleanor followed, her feet sinking into the hot asphalt with every step.

“You think Bucky would have married her if she weren’t descended from a president? Remember at the wedding when everyone was congratulating me on the Emmy nominations? I was watching Bucky. He couldn’t stand it! He’s never once acknowledged what I do. But of course he’ll boast about his friend Lester from Vanderbilt. And what is Vanderbilt? I’ve barely even heard of it.”

“Before you met the guy, all you heard was that he was an asshole,” Joe said. “His cousin warned us he was an asshole. At his wedding, every toast alluded to him being an asshole. And now you’re surprised he’s an asshole?”

“I wish I’d never given them those derringers,” she said.

“I can’t talk about the derringers.”

They arrived on the corner of Bourbon and St. Peter under a sign,
MAISON BOURBON FOR THE PRESERVATION OF JAZZ
. Eleanor started inside.

“This isn’t it,” Joe said.

“It says ‘Preservation’—” Eleanor said.

“It’s not Preservation Hall.”

“But there’s a band—”

“Preservation Hall wouldn’t have neon frozen daiquiris with names like Irish Car Bomb. And its band wouldn’t be playing ‘Sara Smile.’”

“You don’t have to yell at me.”

Joe’s jaw was going.

“I’m going to find Preservation Hall,” he said. “Come with me or don’t. But of all the things that odious buffoon has gotten away with, I won’t let him add to the list causing me to fight with my wife in the middle of Bourbon Street!” He stalked off.

Eleanor might have gone after Joe, but she spotted Lorraine and her two boys crossing Bourbon Street a block away. Eleanor couldn’t tell if Lorraine had made eye contact under her hat.

A moment later, Eleanor saw an older woman in a long Pucci dress headed down the same side street. She remembered the dress from the church.

Strange. Eleanor walked to the corner. Both women were gone. Perhaps they’d slipped into a place called Antoine’s.

Under the restaurant sign, a door led to a cavernous dining room with mirrored walls, tile floors, and tables for ten with white tablecloths. It was empty but for waiters in black bow ties and waistcoats sitting in one corner folding napkins. In the opposite corner, a door with yellow glass. Behind it, the movement of people. Eleanor’s steps echoed as she clacked toward the door. The waiters looked up and continued folding.

Deeper in was an even larger dining room with a carved wooden ceiling, this one pulsing with patrons, the clang of dishes, and good cheer. Celebrity photos in dusty frames covered every inch of the red pillars and walls. Waiters with aprons down to their shins carried trays with one hand and blotted their brows with the other.

Eleanor’s eyes raced from table to table. No Lorraine, no woman in Pucci.

Behind her, a white glass globe, lit from within. On it, the silhouette of a woman with high-piled hair.
FEMMES.

Inside the ladies’ lounge, Eleanor slumped into a tired velvet chair and closed her eyes. She wasn’t thinking straight. The fight with Joe. The scrum with Bucky. The goddamned heat.

She opened her eyes.

A woman in a wrap dress washed her hands. The counter was so worn that a puddle had collected across its expanse. The woman dried her hands and dropped the paper towel on an overflowing trash can. In the mirror, her plastic tiara. On it, in fake jewels, the reverse letters
J.T.

There was no way.

The door shut.

Eleanor went after her. The tiara’d woman was halfway across the noisy dining room. Before Eleanor could catch up, she vanished into a wall of newspaper clippings. A jib door. Eleanor pushed it open.

She found herself in a dim hallway even denser with photos and made narrow by display cases on either side. The floors were shellacked brick, the walls dark wood. Doors made of thick red glass and elaborate wrought iron. To her left, a photo of Pope John Paul II standing in the kitchen with Antoine himself. On display, the plate the Pope had eaten from.

The woman had disappeared again, this time into the shadow at the end of the hall. Eleanor felt herself pulled toward voices. Above the doors on her left and right, plaques reading
REX
and
PROTEUS.
One room was green, the other purple. Eleanor could make out gilded displays of queens’ costumes: ermine capes, crowns, and scepters. Even in the dark, their jewels threw off glints of light.

Around the corner, at the end of the hall, a cracked door. Above it, in ghostly white letters,
KHAOS.

News of Eleanor’s presence had preceded her. Ivy appeared in the doorway, blocking Eleanor’s view of the sheer number of people in attendance, many more than at the christening.

“You said—” Eleanor stammered. “I thought the three of you were going home.”

Through the crowd, Bucky, with Mary Marge tucked in his elbow, offered the hint of a smile and returned to his conversation.

“I didn’t know how to tell you,” Ivy said. “We decided this should be family only.”

Eleanor fled across the street into an aggressively air-conditioned praline shop, minimalist and empty of customers. Her perspiration instantly froze, causing a violent shudder.

“Would you like a sample?” asked an angular woman with flat black hair.

“Sure,” Eleanor said, straining to seem like a normal patron. The woman handed her a frosted pecan. The tears began. Eleanor turned her back and stood too close to a red shelf filled with jars of praline sauce.

The door jingled. Ivy grabbed Eleanor’s arm and spun her around.

“You have no idea how hard it is for me to be caught between you and Bucky,” Ivy said, her face pleading.

“Between me and Bucky?” Eleanor said. “What did I do to him? Fly down here and miss my final animatic of the season? Drag my husband to a christening even though we’re both atheists?”

“It’s not what you’ve done to him,” Ivy said. “It’s what you’ve done to me. You didn’t come down for my birthday.”

Before Eleanor could process this, Ivy backpedaled. “I know, I know—
I
never expected you to. But it’s how Bucky thinks.” She gave a worried sigh, then in a rush, “He’s never gotten over you ruining our engagement party.”

“We’re still on Cachepotgate?” Eleanor said. The praline she’d been clutching had turned to goo in her hot palm.

“It started before,” Ivy said. “When you walked into the party. You saw how people were dressed and you asked where everyone was going.”

“I did not,” Eleanor said, remembering the moment clearly. “I certainly
thought
it because it looked like opening night at the opera. But I know for a fact I didn’t
say
anything.”

“Bucky heard you.”

With that, a line had been drawn. Eleanor drew lines for a living. She knew one when she saw one.

She walked to the register and forced a smile. “May I have a napkin, please?”

The woman reached under the counter and tore off a paper towel. Eleanor scrubbed the sticky sugar off her fingers. She placed the pecan in the towel and handed it back. “Thank you.”

“Oh no!” Ivy came around to see Eleanor’s face. “Are you mad?”

“This might get loud, and that wouldn’t be fair to the praline shop.” With that, Eleanor pushed past her sister and out the door.

“Okay, let’s do this,” Eleanor said to Ivy out on the sidewalk. “Where’s the scrapbook I made you? Where’s my goddamn wedding present?”

“As you know, we expected the derringers.”

“You do realize this isn’t you talking?” Eleanor said.

“They were Mom’s,” Ivy said. “They belong to me as much as they belong to you. They’re the only things left of hers. You just had them lying around your apartment.”

“What was I supposed to do? Ship them to you care of Mestre Mike’s yurt?”

“Bucky and I got married at John Tyler’s house so it should have been obvious,” Ivy said, unshaken.

“You got the derringers!” Eleanor said. “Last time I checked, they were mounted on your wall.”

“We should have gotten them before.” Ivy raised her face in defiance. It was a peculiar gesture for her, one Eleanor had never seen.

“You didn’t answer my question,” Eleanor said. “Where’s
The Flood Girls
?”

“Bucky and I were both offended by
The Flood Girls
.”

“Ivy, I’m warning you: don’t.”

“We don’t know what’s so charming about a bear crashing around a house while children are sleeping—”

“It’s our life, Ivy. It’s us.”

“—or waiting in a car while Ted Bundy is on the loose. And why on earth would you make me relive Parsley being hit by a car? You know how much I loved that dog.”

“I loved Parsley too!” Eleanor said. “Okay, I get it. Bucky feeds on insults and now he’s got you doing the same.”

“I finally found a man who treats me the way I deserve,” Ivy said. “You’re allowed to have that, but I’m not? And where was Joe during the christening?”

“Now Bucky has a problem with Joe?”

“Eleanor,
everybody
noticed Joe wouldn’t come inside.”

“Joe was tormented by nuns as a child and he’s not a fan of the Catholic Church. You know that!”

“You,” Ivy said. “Mocking the namesake of our son in front of tourists. Oh, Eleanor, even I couldn’t defend your sarcasm. I can see it in your eyes, when you’re going in for the kill. You delight in your nastiness and you always take it out on those weaker than you. I’m done with it and so is Bucky.”

“I have a message for that walking joke—”

“Eleanor,” Ivy said. “You’re talking about my husband. Bucky is my husband.”

“Tell him he’s won,” Eleanor said, reddening. “The two of you will have to find someone else to mine for grievances. Because this is the last time you see me. Watch how serious I am.”

Preservation Hall was thirty feet by thirty feet. The walls were water-stained and covered with pegboard; the thick wood planks had survived their share of floods. There was no stage. Only fifty listeners could pack in; those on mangy cushions in the front row tangled feet with the band. Joe was one of the fortunate who’d snagged a chair. He sat against the wall, his body moving like a bag of bones to the jaunty, brass-heavy Dixieland jazz. Eleanor appeared at his feet.

“Promise me,” her lips said through the trumpet solo. “Promise me we’ll never fight again.”

A month later, Katrina hit. Eleanor picked up the phone. Ivy answered. The fight outside Leah’s Pralines was never spoken of again.

The phone calls with Ivy grew more cordial and less frequent. Ivy had gotten a job as a docent at a local museum. After unsuccessful back surgery, Mary Marge was put down. John-Tyler had three birthdays. Eleanor dutifully sent what Ivy instructed.

Late one night, the phone rang, a 504 number. It was Lester, from a New Orleans hotel. He’d spent the day with Bucky and Ivy.

“That night of my party,” Lester said. “In New York. When Ivy went back to his hotel. I knew then it was all over for you.”

“Why are you saying this?” Eleanor asked. “What happened?”

“When was the last time you saw them?”

It had been three years.

“Why?” Eleanor said, panic seizing her chest. “What happened?”

“Don’t you see?” Lester said, drunk and not making sense. “He’s trying to plant your fingerprints on his crime scene.”

Eleanor called Ivy the next day and asked how she was. How she
really
was. Ivy gave an unexpected answer: on pills.

“Drugs?” Eleanor asked.

“Medication,” Ivy corrected. “Eleanor, it changes everything! In the past, something little would happen, like Taffy screwing the lid too tight on the raspberry jam. I’d try tapping it on the counter, running it under hot water and John-Tyler would be asking, ‘Why are you crying, Mama?’ And I’d think,
I can’t even open a jar of jam without my misery rippling out into the world.
But now that I’m on medication, it’s a jar of jam! I’ll eat my toast with cinnamon sugar! What a strange product of the modern age I’ve become. They should make a movie about it. A medicated woman going through her day with normal reactions to ordinary life and at her side is her former self who completely breaks down at the very same things.”

“Gwyneth Paltrow can play both parts,” Eleanor said flatly.

“See, there’s an example,” Ivy said. “The old me would have burst into tears because
I’m
an actress.
I
should play both parts. But the improved me? I think, yes, Gwyneth Paltrow would also be wonderful in the role.”

Matthew Flood died of liver failure at the age of sixty-six. He’d been sober for a decade. The lady from Dallas in whose guesthouse Matty and the girls had lived couldn’t make it to the memorial service. But she’d arranged for a convoy of red Jeeps to meet the mourners at Wagner Park and four-wheel them to the top of Aspen Highlands. There, they’d scatter Matty’s ashes on his favorite run, the Moment of Truth.

A dozen of Matty’s AA friends, joined by Ivy, Eleanor, and Joe, zigzagged their way up the snowcat roads through the spring slush and arrived at the picnic bench that had been there forever. Welcoming them was an orange-and-blue Broncos wreath, barbecue from the Hickory House, and the Bobby Mason Band playing Matty’s favorite song, “Please Come to Boston.” The lady from Dallas had remained mysterious but loyal to the end.

There was champagne for fifty but Ivy was the only one drinking.

To Eleanor, these friends of Matty’s were graciously free of judgment toward the two daughters who never visited. Joe wept upon seeing the canister of ashes on the bed of white Aspen branches sprouting with lime-colored buds; Eleanor felt nothing.

It was the early death of her mother that had taught Eleanor to shut herself off. Deep down Eleanor knew she must have been born a warmer soul. She wasn’t meant to be so self-reliant. One day, Matty had forgotten to pick up the girls at day camp and they’d had to walk the five miles from the T-Lazy-7 Ranch. Matty came home after the bars closed and realized what he’d done. He crawled into Eleanor’s twin bed and cried. “I’m weak,” he said. “You’re so much better than I can ever be.” The snow from Matty’s hiking boots melted dirt on Eleanor’s Life Savers sheets.