The Crowning Glory of Calla Lily Ponder (22 page)

“I did. Ricky wanted me to cook up some red beans and rice and bring it over.”

Joining us, Ricky said, “Yeah. My cousin is a master of red beans and rice, especially.”

“Hey, don’t brag too much. Calla hasn’t tasted mine yet.”

“Oh, I bet I’ll like them a lot,” I said.
I like any man who cooks.
“I come from a family where men cook good, and I appreciate it.”
Oh, brother! Everything I say seems to come out wrong.

Ricky picked up on my nervousness. “Calla, have a gin and tonic. I think that’s what the doctor ordered.”

“I think you’re right.”

He made one for me. I drank it a little quicker than usual, and it did help me feel less self-conscious. But whenever I got near the stove where Sweet was stirring the red beans and rice, my insides started fluttering like the ruffles on my dress.

“What’ve you been up to?” he asked me. “How’s the hair business?”

“It’s great. I’m so excited about the salon opening,” I told him.

“Well, Ricky sure is lucky to have you coming with him into the shop.”

I laughed. “Well, I don’t know about that!”

I went out to see how Ricky and Steve had decorated the yard for the party. Then Sweet did the dearest thing. He brought out a little piece of French bread with warm crab dip, one of Steve’s specialties.

“Just thought you might want a little bite with that gin and tonic,” he said, and popped it in my mouth. “But I have a hard time just spreading this dip on a cracker. I want to dig into it with a spoon.”

“I feel the same way,” I said, swallowing the delicious dip. “I swear, I could swim in it. I’m a real swimmer, and I ride horses too—although not here in New Orleans, of course.”
Oh God, is there anything more idiotic I could say?

“I wondered how you got such strong arm and back muscles,” Sweet said.

I reached behind me and felt my muscled swimmer’s back, then I told him, “And here I meant to look feminine in a ‘soft cocktail kind of way.’”

“You do,” he said. “But you look strong too, and that’s beautiful to me.”

I started blushing, so it was a good thing Ricky called me just then to help arrange the hors d’oeuvres.

On the way back in, I showed Sweet the walkway with everyone’s china embedded. Somehow, remembering all that hammering made me bold.

I said, “Sweet, I’ve been thinking about you, and I was wondering—”
Oh my God! My mind went blank!

Sweet didn’t seem to notice.

“I’ve been thinking about you, too,” he said. “I would have called, but I work long stretches sometimes, you know, piloting the guys out to the rig. I know it’s only been two weeks since I met you, but I find myself thinking of you at the oddest times. Like when I’m shaving. Isn’t that crazy?!”

“Oh,
no
,” I told him. “That’s not crazy at all. When I wake up in the morning and make coffee, I’ll be pouring water into the coffeepot—you know the way it sounds, water going over the coffee grounds—and that makes me think of you. Now
that’s
weird, huh?”

“No, it’s not weird.”

We looked at each other. Sweet’s eyes were such a deep, dark blue. His lower lip was just a little fuller than the top.

“Sweet,” I said. “Boy, that’s a name.”

“I know, the girls started to call me that in school, and the name stuck. It’s a name to live up to. I’m not always sweet, but I try. Now Calla Lily, there’s a name with a story, I bet.”

“Yeah, but I’m not what you think of when you think of a flower.”

“But you really are. You’re not a rose or a super-sweet gardenia. You’re like, oh, like the note of a song on the stem of a flower.”

That gave me butterflies inside.

“I’d better go help Ricky with the hors d’oeuvres,” I said, trying to keep my voice from trembling.

By this time, guests were streaming into the salon. The stereo was blaring Ricky’s favorite, early Louis Armstrong, though the music was almost drowned out by glasses tinkling and loud squeals of laughter.

Sweet and I pretty much stuck together for the rest of the night, with the party swirling all around us. At sunset, we wound up back in the garden, where I could smell lemon blossoms and see the magenta glow of bougainvillea in the changing light. A young man dressed in a sailor suit with short pants, carrying a tray of champagne flutes, stopped to offer us two. We toasted each other, and then Sweet was holding my hand. I felt that we were alone on a little boat, out there among sparkling lights and garden torches, a little boat adrift in the sea of people.

Then I heard, “Calla, babeeee!” and the sound of glass shattering on the china walkway. “’Scuse me, getoutamywayou, would ya, babe? And oooh—love the look.”

It was Sukey, and she was making her way over to us.

At that moment it seemed the fountain stopped gurgling, the music stopped playing, the people stopped laughing.

I got a bad tingling feeling in my hair. The little boat that Sweet and I made was rocking on wild waves.

“Hey you darlin’ thing,” Sukey was saying to a man whose arm was draped lightly over the woman next to him. “Hey you darlin’ thing. I bet I got something you want.”

Oh, no. No, Sukey. No!

I wanted to pull Sweet through the crowd and flee from Sukey. What would he think? He barely knew me. I didn’t want him to think that I was like her. But Sweet saved me by taking my hand. “Let’s go inside for a while, see what Rick and Steve are up to,” he said.

“I’m here. Sukey is here. La
Suke
is ready for action.” She was shouting now, slurring her words. And I realized just how drunk she was.

“Who is that?” Sweet asked.

“Uh, I think that’s my best friend Sukey,” I told him, biting my lipstick off as I felt my heart beat faster.

“Are you okay?” Sweet said.

“Yeah, I’m fine.”

“Callll-lah! Baby!” I heard Sukey yell, “It’s Sukey, it’s Su-
kay
!” Then it was like she had some kind of radar. She came straight at me.

“Oooh,” she said to Sweet, as soon as she noticed him, “who—are—you?”

And then she just flung her arms around his neck and wrapped her legs around his waist.

“Baby, you are something else!” she said, planting a big, wet kiss on Sweet’s cheek. Then she let go of him, and I thought, Oh, God—thank you, thank you. Let her back away, just back away.

But Sukey was just gearing up.

“Yes, you
are
what I want! You
are
! C’mon, baby, let’s strip!”

And then she actually started to unzip the back of her dress, let it drop, and was standing there in her tiny bra and panties. I was about to cry
.

“Sukey!” I said, “get out of here! Don’t even put your dress on. Just pick it up and
drag your drunken ass out of here
! I’ve had it with your drinking! Now,
get out
!”

“Oh, Calla!” she slurred, “don’t be such a goody-goody! That’s all you’ve ever been—a goody-goody.”

“Don’t you dare talk to me like that!” I said. “I’ve known you since we were little girls.” I was sobbing.
“Now get out!”

The next thing I knew, Ricky was there, and he had his arm around Sukey.

“Suke, I think it’s time for you to go home.”

She tried to shove him away, saying, “When I leave is not up to you!”

Steve stepped up and said firmly, “I think it is. It’s our party.”

I wanted to reach out, grab Sukey myself, and throw her out the door. Steve must have seen the look on my face, because he came over to me and whispered, “Calla, it’s okay.”

Ricky had hold of Sukey and was walking her out, half carrying her naked little self. I closed my eyes, unable to look at Sweet.

“I’m so sorry,” I told him. “I’m just so sorry. I told you that I’m not always a flower. Sometimes I’m not pretty at all!”

Sweet pulled me to him and said, “I don’t know anybody who could have continued to be a flower at the sight of her best friend plastered and jumping all over me.”

He laughed, and then he held my hand and kissed me really lightly on the lips. Again, it seemed like the party faded, leaving only the tinkling of the fountain, the sparkly lights, and Sweet Chalon holding me in his arms.

That was the opening night party for Ricky’s, and the opening night of my love for Sweet.

S
ukey laid low for a while. Ricky guessed that she was embarrassed to death, which I was sure was true. But I missed her, so I decided to break the ice and just go out and have fun with her. I asked Ricky and Steve to come with us.

“Let’s make it coffee,” Steve suggested. “I think we’ll be more likely to see Sukey at her best in the daytime.”

So I called Sukey and asked her to meet us at the Café du Monde, down by the river. I rode the streetcar down St. Charles and then walked along Chartres Street, thinking about my friend and her drinking. Sukey and I arrived at the same time, and the boys already had a table. She apologized for her behavior at the party, admitting that she couldn’t remember much.

“All I know is that you were mad at me, Calla, and that Ricky and Steve kicked me out. I want to tell you why I was so out of control that night. I’d lost my job. Bunny Mother Trixie fired me.”

“Why?” Ricky asked.

“Well, I don’t know,” she said. “It was something about how she didn’t like the way I was, quote,
behaving
in the club. Like I would do anything wrong! I mean, I was the best in my Bunny training class. Even Bunny Mother Trixie said so. But she said over the past year or so I’d slipped and no longer met the club’s high standards. That is just bull. You want to know the real reason? It was jealousy. Bunny Mother Trixie and some of the girls hate the fact that all the key holders love me. I was the best!”

None of us could say anything. So we all just sat there eating hot beignets, waiting for Sukey to go on.

“I even told that to Bunny Mother Trixie,” Sukey said. “I said, ‘You know, I can’t help it if the men like me more than the other girls. How is that my fault? Isn’t entertaining the key holders the whole point of the Playboy Club?’ But she didn’t even answer. She told me I could no longer represent the Playboy Bunnies. She took away my outfit. And”—Sukey started sobbing—“she even took away my little bunny tail!”

I began to think about when I’d talked to Sukey in the evenings. She usually went to work around seven and came home after three in the morning. But there were times when she’d called me at ten or eleven, and it would be hard to understand her because she’d be slurring her words. “Aren’t you at work?” I’d ask.

“No,” she’d say. “It was a slow night, so they sent some of us home.” Or she’d say, “You know how I get bad cramps at that time of the month, so I told the Bunny Mother I had to get in bed with the heating pad.”

Then there were the times when Sukey came to visit and just cleaned out all the beer in my refrigerator. I
always
had a six-pack in the refrigerator—you don’t live in New Orleans without that—and when Sukey left, it would always be gone.

I realized I had been very worried about my dear girlfriend.

Sukey was crying hard now, and Ricky and Steve were soothing her. Suddenly, she stood up and said, “I’ve got to go.”

She took off so fast that she forgot her purse, a big burlap bag from India with ivory handles and an elephant on it.

The three of us sat there in silence for a while, just drinking thick coffee out of our heavy, ivory-colored mugs with people swirling around us, boats going by on the river tooting their horns, and the sounds of a saxophone coming from somewhere.

Finally, we all looked at each other. “Poor Sukey,” I began. “She loved that job.”

“I don’t blame her for being upset,” Ricky said. “But do I blame her for blaming other people when she screwed up.”

“Do you think she did screw up?” I asked, knowing the answer in my heart.

“Well, it seems possible,” he told me.

Steve was the one who said it. “Our Sukey is a drunk.”

I had to jump to her defense. “Don’t say that, Steve! Sukey’s always been high-spirited. She likes to be outrageous. And if she got fired, I can understand why she’d drink too much.”

Ricky was silent, so I turned to him and said, “Ricky, can’t you please tell Steve not to talk about Sukey like that?”

He didn’t answer and just looked away.

“Come on, Ricky! We all love Sukey. She’s our dear friend,” I said.

“Calla Lily.” Ricky looked back and gently told me, “I can’t ask him to take it back.”

“Well, fine,” I said, “Y’all just go ahead and think what you want.” Then I picked up Sukey’s purse and left. I didn’t even say good-bye.

When I got home, I put on a Curtis Mayfield album. He always made me feel better with his wonderful, kind, falsetto voice singing to the soul, “Everybody knows that it’s all right, whoa, it’s all right.” And I danced like M’Dear taught me to, because really, dancing was the way I prayed. After a while, I gathered the nerve to open Sukey’s purse. Inside was a pint of Smirnoff vodka. She must have bought it before meeting us.
Oh, Suke!
I thought.
Oh, baby. Oh, Suke
.

But I wasn’t about to give up on my best friend. I made a date for just the two of us to go listen to jazz at Preservation Hall. It started out late at night with slow music and good blues and then built up to Dixieland.

Sukey was late picking me up. I waited fifteen minutes—no big deal. I waited half an hour. With Sukey, that was nothing special. But then two hours went by, and she didn’t show up. I called her. No answer. I kept calling and calling, and still there was no answer.

Something could have happened to her. Anything can happen to you in New Orleans. Anything can happen to you anywhere.

Another hour went by, and I was worried sick, so I called Ricky and Steve. They were already asleep.

“Look,” I said, “I’m sorry to wake y’all, but it’s late and Sukey hasn’t shown up. Will you give me a hand? I mean, can we go look for her?”

“Okay,” Ricky said, “just give us a half an hour to get there.”

I sat down, and I thought about the times that I went over to Sukey’s house. The times I thought she was sleeping really sound because she worked those wild hours. I’d gone over and tried to wake her up. “Hey, Sukey!” I said, “Get up! C’mon, let’s have a Coke and go walking outside. There’s some nice air—a little breeze is going—and it’s not too hot.”

I remembered her not waking, not even stirring. And I realized she wasn’t sleeping—she was passed out. It was starting to seem like Sukey had a private life, and that her private life was all about drinking.

We drove Steve’s VW bug over to Sukey’s favorite bar over on Esplanade. I’d never been there, but Ricky and Steve seemed to know it.

In New Orleans, bars are allowed to stay open all night, and this place was jumping. The Hook, Line & Sinker was a small place, only a couple of tables, but every seat at the bar, which had a blue light shining up through it, was filled.

Ricky and Steve walked up to the bar, and I followed. The bar was glass—a big aquarium with real live fish swimming in it, back and forth like snakes. I couldn’t help but wonder how those poor fish could breathe, being sealed in that way, and how it was to have drinkers staring down at them all night.

Ricky asked the bartender, “Hey, have you seen my friend Sukey?”

“Yeah, Sukey, the one that likes her vodka. Uh-huh, that Sukey can throw it down! We’ve got to pick that gal’s head up off the bar at least a couple times a week.”

“We don’t want to hear about it,” Steve said. “We just want to know if you’ve seen her tonight.”

“Yeah, I’ve seen her tonight,” the bartender said. “She took off with some guy. Look, I run a good bar here. I don’t like young girls laying their head up on my bar. I’ve told her before, ‘I don’t like the way you drink, and I don’t like serving you.’”

“Do you have any idea where Sukey and this guy went?” Steve asked.

“You might try that bar over by the river, where all the French sailors go. It’s called Simmy’s.”

“Thank you.” Steve slipped the bartender a five-dollar bill.

The bartender said, “I hope you find your friend, and I hope you can dry her out. I really don’t need her business.”

So we went back out into the night, and we found Simmy’s
.
Inside, the music was playing loud, and there were sailors everywhere, and sure enough, there was Sukey at a table with three sailors. But she wasn’t really with them. Her face was flat down on the table, and the sailors were ignoring her. They just kept on talking to two other women.

Meanwhile, Sukey’s glass had fallen over, and her face was just lying in bourbon.

“Calla,” Ricky said, “why don’t you wait outside? This is ugly. You don’t need to see it.”

“It’s Sukey,” I told him, “so I’m going to help.”

Ricky and Steve got Sukey up. They were right—there wasn’t a whole lot I could do. It’s not easy to carry anybody—even little Sukey—who has passed out. They dragged her out to the car and laid her down on the back seat. We drove her back to Steve and Ricky’s place, where they sat her up, put on a pot of coffee, and got her to drink one cup after another. Finally, she came fully awake, looked at us, and started to vomit.

“Jesus Christ!” Ricky said, picking Sukey up and rushing her to the bathroom.

“Help me,” he called out. “Steve, can you help me get Sukey under the shower?”

I said, “No, Steve, let me go in there. I’ll do it.”

I rinsed all the vomit off her, then I soaped her up and I washed her hair. I imagined that rain water was falling down over her, washing her clean. I massaged her head with shampoo and saw all the darkness flow into the La Luna River. “Let it flow into the river,” I heard M’Dear saying. “The river can handle it. The river can wash it all away.” And I could see that Sukey’s life had to change. No way could we go through this again.

I dried her off and helped her into bed. She stirred for a moment, her eyes looking terrified. “You’ll make it. Remember: you’re a La Lunette,” I whispered.

When I came out, Ricky said, “This is not the first time—you need to know that, Calla. Sukey has called us to come get her when she can’t even tell us where she is, just crying and begging to be rescued. Then, when we get there, she’s passed out. Sometimes she fights us.”

“Why didn’t y’all tell me?” I demanded.

“Because this is New Orleans, so people act up. And because, unlike a lot of people we know, Sukey wasn’t doing drugs. She was just hitting the bottle too hard. We thought it would end. We’d talked to Sukey, and she promised that she’d get a hold of herself. But she kept going back to that Hook, Line & Sinker.”

I said, “Oh, the fish, the fish in that horrible bar—” And that’s when I started to cry. “We ought to do something, shouldn’t we?”

Steve said, “No, we don’t have to do anything. It’s really Sukey who does.”

Ricky and I both stared at him.

“Hear me now. We all love Sukey, but I’ve had situations like this before, at home, with my family. You have to love enough to let it be hard. If you love Sukey, then you’ll let her hit
rock bottom
and
crawl
up as best she can. Don’t throw a lifeline. She’ll just go back and drink. You have to let her crash.”

“Oh, God!” I said. “Steve, you’re not saying that we’re just going to sit here and watch our Sukey hurt herself?”

Steve said, “Right now, all we can do is let her play this out and be there for her when she wants to straighten up.”

We talked and talked all night, Steve, Ricky, and me. We put Sukey to sleep wrapped in a nice duvet on the floor, where she wouldn’t do too much damage if she vomited. It must have been close to dawn when I stepped out onto the sleeping porch off Ricky’s bedroom. The fingernail moon still hung in the sky.

“Moon Lady,” I prayed. “I’m going to put this in your hands. Sukey’s like the sister I never had, and I love her so much. Please hold her in your care and guide us about what to do.”

I sat there on the porch for a while, smelling the scent of sweet olive in the air. Sukey loved that smell, so intense and pure. It was strange, sometimes, how you could smell it stronger thirty feet away from the tree than right up next to it. Sukey used to put those flowers in little-bitty Gerber baby food jars and put them around her bed so she could breathe in their scent all night.

Then I thought,
Sukey doesn’t do that anymore. She probably doesn’t even recognize that sweet olive smell
.
She wakes up in the morning, and she doesn’t remember how the person in her bed got there!
Then I thought
, The La Luna is a powerful river, but you have to want to clean up before the water really reaches you.

I cried and wiped my tears, then I went back inside and said, “Okay, here’s my vote. We go ahead and we do hard love. We just let Sukey hit rock bottom.”

Ricky gave me a hug and said, “That’s my decision, too.”

Steve said, “Without Sukey, we’re only a trio now. We’re not a quartet, but we will be again.”

“We will be again,” I said.