My Juliet (11 page)

“You saw somebody hit your mother? Why would they do that?”

Juliet leans closer until their mouths are almost touching. “They did it because, like me, they wanted what is right. They did it to avenge what she did to your friend, Leonard, and to my father. They did it because the indictment and jail and bull dykes aren't enough. Why else would they do it?”

Leonard takes on a puzzled expression, his face squeezing into a fist. Juliet understands that she's lost him. “I better get back on stage,” he says.

“Epiphanies,” she says again.

“I'll have to remember that,” Leonard replies. “But you better make it something different than an oar. I don't swim, for one. You won't never catch me in no boat.”

Sonny nods off after a time. It isn't a deep sleep because he can hear things: the mournful clarinet, pigeons murmuring in the eaves of the Pontalba Building, transit buses on Decatur.

He also hears footsteps on the flagstones, coming toward him.

The beat of the steps mesmerizes, and eventually Sonny hears nothing else. Slightly in advance of the steps comes a smell, and the smell is familiar. Maybe he's dreaming. Sonny hopes he's dreaming. But at last a voice fills the darkness.

“This old plantation house I know,” she says. “Come to think of it, I grew up there.”

For half a minute Sonny doesn't move.

“You forgot to put the dead guy in the window, the one hanging from the rope? That's my only criticism.”

He sits up and opens his eyes and there she stands. She's studying his painting of the Beauvais with a hand delicately placed against her chin, in the thoughtful manner of a seasoned art observer. She's wearing a short skirt and a pair of blocky shoes that look big on her feet. Her peekaboo hair catches the moonlight and shines a new bottled yellow, pretty if you go for that.

Sonny lifts himself out of the chair. He can feel his heart hammering in his chest, and the sudden swelling of the veins in his neck, and a hollow ache down deep in his gut.

“Well if it ain't Juliet Beauvais,” he says.

She curtsies and holds a hand out, which he accepts with too limp a shake.

“Sonny,” she says, edging closer, “I was afraid you'd gone and forgotten me after all these years, especially now that you're world famous and all.”

The line sounds rehearsed, and it's poorly delivered. But Sonny forgives her that when she comes to her toes and presses her mouth flush against his. He doesn't want to respond, doesn't want to like it. But that was always his problem when it came to Juliet. It never really mattered what he wanted.

2

THEY WALK TO DECATUR STREET AND sit at a table in the fan-blown shade of Café du Monde. Juliet orders beignets and café au lait and Sonny a black coffee.

Sonny can't seem to make himself speak. A fist has seized his larynx and holds it tight. His brain has gone to mush.

The silence, at first uncomfortable, quickly gains a more complex dimension, that of suffocating embarrassment.

“This is hard,” she tells him.

“You're right.”

“Harder than I ever dreamed it would be.”

“Yeah? For me too.”

Unable to bear looking at her any longer, Sonny seeks comfort in the familiarity of their surroundings: the old neon sign at Tujague's Restaurant, a fire-eater on the sidewalk, sightseeing mules wearing straw hats crowned with plastic flowers. Lifting a hand, he attracts the attention of a busboy. “Ice water, please.”

“You gonna be all right?” asks Juliet.

“I guess I'm hot.”

He wishes he were still at the fence, alone in the dark, watching the trees blow in the sky. It's too hard loving anyone. Too hard having to look at them again.

“You know what just came to me?” Juliet says. “Give us each a puka shell necklace and put us in platform shoes and polyester and it'd be like old times.”

“Was that 1971? I thought those things came later.”

She inhales cigarette smoke, then noisily blows it out. “Yeah, maybe you're right.”

Their order arrives and Juliet folds one of the beignets and dunks it in the coffee and eats with her head tilted close to the marble-top table, her hair dragging the surface and picking up traces of confectioners' sugar. “I'd nearly forgotten,” she says with a satisfied groan.

“Not bad, huh?”

She holds up the beignet, what remains of it. “This little piece of fried dough is the most incredible thing I've ever put in my mouth.”

Against his will a smile comes to Sonny's face. He knows exactly what she's getting at. “I can place another order,” he says.

Juliet shakes her head, her mouth still white with sugar, cheeks fat and lumpy. “No. I'd better save room for the oysters.”

“Oh? Are you having oysters too?”

“We both are,” she says. “Oysters at Acme then a Lucky Dog on Bourbon Street then hurricanes in the courtyard at Pat O'Brien's. After that we'll stop by the little Takee Outee stand for egg rolls and beef-on-a-stick.”

“I'm not sure the Takee Outee is even there anymore, Julie. You might want to consider something else.”

“Fine. Then I'll just have you.”

A surge of heat inflames Sonny's face. He resists an urge to jump to his feet and topple the table over and storm away. “You're being a little presumptuous, aren't you? Forgive me for bringing up anything unpleasant, Julie, but you must take me for a fool. I saw one of your movies. Is that what you call them, by the way? Are they movies?”

Juliet puts the half-eaten beignet back down on her plate. “You're going to hurt my feelings, aren't you? Yes, I think you are.”

“You've got some explaining to do, Julie. You can't just waltz back home and pick me up for beignets and not expect to answer questions about where you've been for the last fifteen years.”

“There's a picture in my head, Sonny. A picture of Mama sticking a cassette in the VCR, returning to her chair and punching the Play button on her remote control. Does that explain it?”

Sonny stares into her eyes but he can't tell whether she means it. “That's pretty damned sick. I hope to God you're not serious.”

She wets the tip of her finger and dunks it in the drifts of sugar on her plate. When she brings the finger up to her mouth it leaves a mark on her upper lip. “There weren't but a handful of movies,” she says, “all of them for the same production company. It was such a bush-league outfit I never really thought anyone would see them. Before agreeing to appear on camera, I signed a contract saying that I work with one actor only, and that was my boyfriend—now my ex-boyfriend, of course.” Juliet nods to emphasize how important this is. How Sonny should pay attention. “Believe it or not, I did it because I wanted to eat, and because I had rent to pay, and because I was stupid. It was the worst mistake I ever made in all my life. I don't think you'd want to be judged by every mistake you made in the past. The difference between your mistakes and my mistakes is that mine are on videotape. It was a long time ago anyway. I can't believe we're talking about it now.”

Sonny can feel himself cooling off. And it seems he's breathing better. He can hold her eyes with his eyes without much effort. “Exactly how long ago was it?” he says.

“Oh, a year, year and a half.” From the way she sounds it could be a lifetime.

They finish and walk parallel with the river on Decatur, passing cafés and souvenir and praline shops, squeezing past tourists who, mesmerized by competing jazz combos stationed every few hundred feet, crowd the sidewalks and make the going slow.

In time they come to the French Market, an area that Juliet has always identified with home even though it now seems less designed to serve the shopping needs of neighborhood residents than to satisfy the whims of tourists looking for an authentic Creole experience. At this hour the place is nearly deserted, as most of the vendors have gone home for the evening. Juliet stops to observe garlands of garlic hanging from the rafters, too far to reach, and no doubt placed there to ward off evil spirits. On the tables balsa-wood crates for produce stand empty.

Where, she wonders, are the salesmen in porkpie hats popping open paper bags and dickering loudly over prices with customers? Where are the ancient French Quarter dowagers determined to cook fresh or not at all?

Juliet pouts to show her disappointment.

“If ever I lose my Beauvais family legacy this is where I hope to end up,” she says. “Selling okra and acorn squash and lima beans and homemade fig preserves.”

“Remember years ago how crazy the market used to get every spring when the first batch of Creole tomatoes came in from Plaquemines Parish? I remember the fistfights, people practically killing each other to get to them.”

“Yes,” she says. “And that's how they'll be for my squash and okra.”

As they stroll from one end of the cool, dark pavilion to the other, Juliet describes how it felt to be in the Beauvais earlier today, to see the rooms and smell the smells. All the same old ghosts were hiding in the shadows, and she wonders if Sonny noticed them on his visits there. Her father and her father's father. The father of her father's father. They whispered to her when she went upstairs to her bedroom. They begged her to return and bring the house back to its former glory. Put simply, they didn't want a Lavergne and a cleaning woman living among them any longer.

“You're joking, right?”

She shakes her head.

“You'd think ghosts would have better things to do than haunt a house,” Sonny says. “And then to concern themselves with nice people like your mother and Anna Huey. . . .”

“Maybe they know something you don't.”

“Think so? Like what?”

“I could give you a list, Sonny. Show you the proof. Would that help?” Before he can answer she says, “My feet are tired. Listen, why don't we go back to my room and lie down.”

They start on their way again, silent now as they head uptown. Juliet takes his hand in hers and studies each of his fingers. Blips of oil paint stain the skin and his nails are cracked and dirty, palms padded with calluses.

“I was going to be a writer,” she says. “Remember that?”

“You were always scribbling something.”

“And you were going to illustrate the dust jackets for my books.”

“That was a long time ago, Julie.”

She brings his fingertips to her mouth and presses them against her lips. “Only half a lifetime,” she says, a wash of tears coming to her eyes.

They enter the hotel at Bourbon Street and cross the lobby and Juliet feels a bump of fear anticipating another visit from management. To her relief, however, the coast is clear but for the usual guests studying maps and arguing about which is the greater priority, taking a cemetery tour or a riverboat cruise. Juliet and Sonny board an elevator and she turns to face his reflection in the great brass doors. “I never stopped thinking about you,” she says. “Some nights I'd wake up and want to call and ask you to come get me and take me home but I never could. I was too ashamed.” She looks away from the doors and he is staring at her. She reaches for his hand again. “I'm not asking you to forgive me. That would be wrong. You should never forgive what I've done.”

“I do anyway, Julie.”

“You can't.”

“Yes, I can. And I do. I forgive you, Julie.”

She begins to cry and Sonny offers a handkerchief from his pocket, as colorful with paint stains as the rest of him.