Victory Over Japan (9 page)

“I thought we were going to Mandeville. You said you were getting the house.”

“We are going. After the races. Armand's over there. Mother gave Armand the house. First she buys his half for God knows how much, then she lets him go over all the time. Well, we'll just crowd in on top of him.”

“Who's he got with him?”

“I don't know. Someone to fuck, I imagine. He always has someone to fuck.”

***

“Oh, your love washes on me like moonlight on the Lacassine.” Homer was singing. “Oh, your love washes on me like rain on a dead man's shoes…” Lady Margaret moved on into the kitchen, humming along with the music. “Oh, your love washes on me…your love make my car run funny…like sugar in the gas tank make my carburetor skip…” She opened a cabinet, took down a box of vanilla wafers and began to stuff them into her mouth. She put water on to boil for tea. She opened the door of the old refrigerator and surveyed its contents. She pulled a piece of yellow ice off the coils of the freezer and stuck it into her mouth shivering at the forbidden gaseous taste. When she was a child Lady Margaret had longed for the ice on the coils of her grandmother's refrigerator but the maid always caught her and took it away. “Why you want to go and do yourself that way,” Maeleen would say. “That ice all full of poison gas. That ice gonna make a hole in your stomach. You the craziest little girl in the world, Lady Margaret. You the craziest child I ever did see.”

Lady Margaret took a carton of yogurt down from a shelf and tasted it, hoping to diffuse the poison gas. She walked over to the kitchen table carrying the yogurt and set it down beside the newspaper, which was opened to her review.

“Writer Attacks Crescent City,” the headline said.

The Assumption, by Anna Hand

Ms. Hand's new book abounds in clichés, crude language, and uses real names of places in New Orleans in a way that can only be called name-dropping. Her sketchy characterizations leave the reader wondering if a woman like Lelia Clark can be called a heroine. Lelia thinks only of herself as we see her living a debauched life in New Orleans, then running away to join a bunch of hippies in Montana. There, Ms. Hand would have us believe, she finds love and a sense of social consciousness by working with delinquent boys.

The cover, a copy of a painting by El Greco, is a tasteless use of a religious painter's work to decorate what can only be called a book written by an atheist.

Last year Ms. Hand shocked the city by publishing a book of stories based on real-life tragedies in the Crescent City. Many people went out and bought the book anyway. Well, this time New Orleans is not going to pay to be attacked. Especially by a heroine who is supposed to be good at languages (she is teaching French to the delinquents) but can only express herself in the sort of expressions better left in late night bars.

The back cover of the book is a photograph of Ms. Hand wearing a big grin and a plantation hat with long streamers. The picture is doubly shocking considering the things inside.

Margaret Lanier Sarpie

Lady Margaret dropped the newspaper on the floor and picked up the box of papers beside it. She thumbed through the pages, pulled one out, began to read. It was a novel she had been writing for several years. “When Sherry got home from her luncheon with her aunt there was a note on a silver salver by the door. The salver, in a pattern called Fleur-de-lis, was part of a set of silver left to Sherry by her great-grandmother. The note was from Doug Hamilton again. Would he never leave her alone? This time he was more persistent than ever. ‘We simply can't do without you. No one else in the state has the voice and personality to sing that part. We know you are in mourning and we honor your sorrow. But we beg you to join us in saving the opera house. That opera house is important, Miss Claverie. It is the heart of the city's cultural life. Won't you reconsider your decision? Won't you give it your deepest, truest thought?'

“Sherry looked up the long curving marble stairway made of pink Georgia marble to the landing where John had stood the last time she ever saw him. She had been wearing a floor-length silver and blue gown of satinade worked with lace insets at the hem and sleeves. Every time she walked up the stairs he was still there. Would they never understand she would never sing again?”

“Oh, your love washes on me, like heroin on a drunk man,” Homer was singing. “Oh, your love washes on me, like cocaine on the schoolground.” Lady Margaret dropped the page into the box. She let her fingers wander across her stomach and on down to her secret garden. Her fingernails found the little pump, moving it softly from side to side. A line of sweat rolled down her breast and landed on her leg. A bluejay called outside the window, then called again. Richard Gere walked down the garden path between the oleanders and the poppies. He came to rest on a marble bench beside the roses. He held out his hands to her. Come to me, he whispered. I always wanted to know a woman who was smarter than me. Come here. Don't be afraid. What a beautiful place you live in, Lady Margaret. What a wonderful, wonderful place to be.

“All right,” Devoie said. “I'm up.” She was standing in the door of the kitchen with the sheet wrapped around her. “But I'm not staying up unless I get some coffee. Goddamn Settle for getting us drunk. He's such a barbarian. I ought to know better than to get mixed up with him. What are you doing, Lady Margaret? Are you asleep in the chair?”

“No, I'm just thinking about something. Are we going to the races or not?”

“I'm not going anywhere with Settle Westfelt today. That's that. I'll go to Mandeville with you and lie on the beach. Armand's there? You said Armand's there?”

“He took his boat.”

“Well, make some coffee and let's go on over. It's too hot in this house to live. Let's go lie on the beach. If we feel better we'll get Armand to take us out in his boat.”

“Go turn that Homer Davis album over, will you? Play the other side.”

Across the lake in Mandeville, in a bedroom painted the color of cream, Anna Hand knelt beside a man she was trying without much success to like. She had been in New Orleans for five days, a publicity tour for a new book, a tedious, wearing experience. At the very last autograph party a man she remembered from when she lived in the city, but barely knew, didn't really know at all, had hung around for hours while she wrote on books. He had been helpful and smiling, attentive and kind, bringing her glasses of water, standing by her side. “Come with me to the country,” he wrote on a piece of paper and handed to her. “Let me take you away. You will sleep like a baby. You will eat like a queen.”

The strange lassitude of New Orleans in summer, the wine at the party, the tiredness in her bones. Why not, she thought. I'll be gone tomorrow. Get drunk, eat sugar, get laid by a native,
be here
.

When the last book was signed she took him up on his offer. “As long as I'm on that plane tomorrow afternoon,” she said. “You have to see to that.”

Now she smiled down into his silly spoiled face, trying not to blame him for anything at all. She reached down and touched his hair. After all, he had kept his promise. He had made her sleep. “I'm starving, Armand,” she said. “You promised to make waffles for breakfast.”

“Let's do it some more. Let's do it one more time.”

“After we eat. I'm tired of it now. You're too wild for me. I can't keep up with you.”

“It was great in the swing. All my life I dreamed of doing it in a swing.”

“The swing broke. Don't you remember? We barely escaped with our lives.”

“I'll have to fix it today. Aunt Helen will never forgive me if I leave it like that.”

“First breakfast. First that waffle you promised me. I have to leave by one. I have to go by the hotel and get the rest of my things.”

“I know,” he said. “Don't worry. I'll take care of it. I'll get you there.”

Lady Margaret and Devoie threw their beach bags into the back of Lady Margaret's Audi and headed on out for Mandeville. The sun was beginning to shine.

The front that had covered the city for days was breaking up. They rolled up the windows of the car, turned on the air-conditioner and found a Sunday morning radio station that was playing classical music. “Pavane for a Dead Princess” filled the car.

“I love that piece,” Devoie said. “It always reminds me of playing bridge at the Myersons' down in Rolling Fork. Gee Myerson used to love it so much. He would play it over and over. That and Yma Sumac. He worshipped Yma Sumac.”

“It really isn't about a dead princess. Did you know that? He named it that a long time after he wrote it. Look, you want to stop at the Morning Call and get some beignets? It's by the causeway now. They had to move.”

“Sure. I'll stop if you want to.” They turned off the highway into a shopping mall and came to a stop before the Morning Call, a famous old French Quarter coffeehouse that had been run off Chartres Street by rising rents. It had moved, lock, stock, and barrel, including its mirrored walls and old-fashioned stools, right out to Metairie. It was doing great business. A line of customers was all the way out the door and waiting on the sidewalk. A middle-aged couple greeted them as they joined the line. They were people who had moved to New Orleans from the North. Lady Margaret couldn't stand them. They were the very worst of Yankees who moved to New Orleans and started trying to get right into everything. They had even bought an antebellum house and restored it.

“We saw your little piece in the paper this morning,” the woman said.

“Good for you,” the man added. “That Hand woman is really just too much. You gave her what she deserved, Lady Margaret. You really nailed the bitch. You did us all a favor.”

“I only reviewed the book. Why, have you read it?”

“I sort of liked it,” the woman said. “It made me want to move out to Montana. She made it sound so nice out there.”

“Allenne,” the man said. “I don't believe you said that.”

“Well, it did. She made it sound so civilized.”

“Let's don't talk about it here,” he said. “Lady Margaret, how's your mother? I haven't seen her around lately. Has she been out of town?”

Lady Margaret was saved a reply. They had arrived at the takeout window where a white-coated Vietnamese waiter was dispensing beignets and café au lait. Through the window Lady Margaret could see the bakers rolling out the dough, cutting and frying and dipping the hot sweet little squares of flour. The room was covered with flour. White walls, white tables, white uniforms, white baker's hats, all dusted with flour. Near the window were pitchers of hot sweet milk, piles of golden doughnuts, cartons of chocolate milk. It was all just as it had been when Lady Margaret was a child and her father would take her to the Quarter on summer nights to pick up the last edition of the paper and sit beside the levee dipping beignets into coffee while he discussed the state of the world with friends he met there. If she asked, he would hold her up so she could see into the kitchen to watch the bakers. A foghorn would sound on the river, mosquitoes would buzz. It was all as it had been. Except the General was dead and the Morning Call had moved to Metairie and the bakers were not black anymore. Now the bakers were yellow. Still, the beignets were the same. Plaisir, plaisir, she thought. Joy to the world, sugar is come. Sugar, sugar, sugar. Pale green cane blowing in the fields near Lafayette. It had made her family rich and her mother fat. Win some, lose some, she thought. Her mouth watered as she watched the Vietnamese shake powdered sugar over the beignets in her little white sack.

“Come by for a drink sometime,” the doctor said. Lady Margaret shrugged him off with a mumbled excuse and she and Devoie took their beignets and made their escape. They started back on their way. “You're getting famous,” Devoie said. “Getting your name in the paper.”

“Oh, shut up,” Lady Margaret said. She lifted a beignet from the sack and sank her teeth into its sweetness. “I adore these goddamn things. I just have to have them.”

“Yeah, beignets. The heart of the swamp. When I get lonesome for New Orleans I just go down to the grocery and get a box of powdered sugar and pour it on my hands and lick it off.”

“It's not that bad.”

“Highest cancer rate in the country, give or take New Jersey. Our friends lost a total of seven breasts last year. That ought to tell you something.”

“Why do you keep coming down here to visit if you don't like it?”

“I didn't say I didn't like it. I'm just telling the truth. Telling the truth isn't disliking anything. It's just telling the truth.”

“Well, a lot of people don't understand things you say. You really hurt Church's feelings last night. Do you know that? She was almost in tears.”

“Which one was Church? The crazy girl that threw the butter plate at me?”

“She can't help it if she's crazy. Her chemistry's mixed up.”

“Chemistry my ass. That girl adores being crazy. She's a crazy specialist. She threw the plate at me because I wouldn't act like it was interesting that she's crazy. Crazy doesn't fool me, Lady Margaret. Not after living in this family. Do you want another beignet or not?”

“Half of one. Break one in two. Look, Devoie, out on the lake. There's a regatta. Can you see what flags they're flying? Oh, damn, it's too far away.” They were on the causeway now, the long concrete bridge that connects New Orleans with the little fishing villages across the lake. Mandeville, old live oaks along the seawall, old houses mildewing in the moist thick air. Evangeline, the moss-covered trees seem to call. Tragedies, mosquitoes, malaria, yellow fever, priests and nuns and crazy people.

The Audi was moving cheerfully along the bridge, its tires bumping against the span connectors. Small neat signs marked off the miles. Ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, until they reached twenty-five and the car moved out onto the highway.