The Sunday List of Dreams (16 page)

And then, she says, Burt Reynolds came out of nowhere.

“Christ, Jessica, in the past few days my life has been flipped over and rotated as if I was a car getting an overhaul,” Connie tells her daughter, filling their glasses again. “Coming to find you, having a man tell me I turn him on, kissing like I have not kissed in so long it’s a wonder I didn’t fall off the pier.”

“He kissed you on the pier?”

“For starters.”

“Mother.”

The two women laugh. They acknowledge that coming to this moment has taken more than enough time. The sharing has created a mutual wave of forgiveness that feels like baptism, a beginning, the chance to have what both Jessica and Connie want. And there is the gentle shifting of something felt but not seen, the pages of Connie’s Sunday list of dreams changing course, turning in a new direction, blazing a new trail of unexpected chance, change, and discovery.

“We all think we know things about each other and life and we surely don’t know it all,” Connie tells Jessica. “I sure as hell have a lot to learn, especially about sex toys, dreams, and taking new chances.”

Finally Connie turns back into a mother and tells Jessica that she has been a pain in the ass to be around. Stuffy, too businesslike, afraid to let her heart lean out of the top of her dress—it’s as if she’s missing dessert every frigging day of the year.

“You are the one who should be out on the pier kissing the boys,” Connie suggests. “Honey, maybe you are really not interested in boys. It seems to me that a good portion of the women who come into your store are lesbians. Have you given this idea some thought? Have you ever thought about tracking down Romney?”

“Jesus, Mother, why don’t you just hit me over the head with a bag of rocks?”

“Listen, as long as we are getting crocked and baring it all, I’m just going to say exactly what I want to say.”

“Like that’s something new.”

“Ouch,” Connie mumbles. “Actually, I’ve pretty much bitten a hole in my lip, not just during the past two days, but way before that, if you really want to know the truth.”

For just a second Jessica imagines what it would be like to create a war zone inside the fancy restaurant and slide backwards—again. She would grab one table, tip it over and hide behind it while her mother runs to another table, drops it on its end and then starts hurling glasses and dishes at her, and long rambling insults as well.

Jessica can’t help it: she laughs.

“What the hell is so funny?”

“We are,” Jessica sputters. “We’re talking about sex, lies, shattered dreams, dreams in motion, and I just suddenly want to giggle. We don’t have to fight anymore, Mom. You’re right. I am an uptight, asexual bitch who sometimes hides behind her own sex toys because she is terrified.”

“Terrified? Of what?”

“I’m not even sure. Commitment. Finding out the truth about my own sexual orientation, giving it up to another man who has no idea how to make love to a woman. It’s as if I am on some kind of mission to save all the women of the world and the entire time I’m drowning myself.”

Oh, baby,
Connie thinks.
My poor, poor baby.
Connie forgives Jessica then. She forgives her for being an ass, for not telling her about her dreams, for slipping away to hide behind her business desk, for shadowing the life her mother showed her as Connie waltzed through her own celibate days and nights.

Connie pushes back her chair, stands up, and walks over to put her hands on her daughter’s shoulders.

“Get up and hug me,” she orders.

“Okay, Mom,” Jessica says, surrendering. “My white flag is up. I’m all yours. Save me, please save me.”

And Connie whispers into Jessica’s ear that salvation comes from within. Giddy with delight, with the waves of burning grace from her own salvation, she quietly explains to her oldest daughter that her personal penance surely must now include a
very
wild night in the French Quarter.

Jessica kisses her mother on the lips, finishes her drink, and the penance begins.

Saffine has the premier spot in the read-your-palm, tell-your-fortune section of the French Quarter. He/she has set up shop near St. Louis Cathedral at the edge of a gorgeous wrought-iron fence and just in front of a bar where Connie and her daughter, who is now acting like Boom-Boom Nixon and flirting like mad with men, women, and stray dogs, have purchased a couple of New Orleans Hurricanes to go as they wander throughout the Quarter totally seduced by their dinner conversation, the charm of a city gone wild, and a night that is warm, sultry, and sensuous.

Actually, everything is sensuous to Nurse Nixon and her totally uninhibited companion–daughter who is two drinks from being snookered and having the time of her life.

Before they decide to turn left or right they also decide to be responsible for five minutes and make two quick phone calls. Connie calls O’Brien, who does not answer the phone, and says, “Oh, my gawd, honey. I’m in the French Quarter about to expose my breasts with my daughter. I kissed a man. I’m horny as hell and I may never come home. Call me in the morning when I’m sober and by then I should have about twelve more stories to tell you. Bye-bye, baby.”

Boom-Boom calls Geneva, who does answer and who immediately considers getting on the next plane to Louisiana.

“Geneva, we’re going to flash people in the balconies.”

“Who is this?”

“It’s me. I’ve been drinking since like three o’clock. Oh, I forgot to tell you. Everything is fixed. Dildos coming. Oh, my God. That’s a pun. Isn’t that funny?”

“Jesus, Jessica. Are you okay?”

“Oh, sure. My mom is here. Oh, guess what? She kissed the commissioner and now she has the hots for him and everyone else she sees.”

Geneva laughs. Part of her thinks whatever is happening is very, very good for uptight Jessica and the other part is just a tiny bit worried.

“Are you two all right?”

“We’re getting smashed. Having a ball. We had the most unbelievable conversation. We’ll catch the plane, don’t worry too much. Keep the skip floating. I mean the ship.”

“Don’t forget we have the women’s festival in three weeks, and there is a ton of work to do and we don’t even know yet who is going to handle the booth. So get back here.”

“Oh, Geneva, we are going to have our fortunes told. Got to go. See you tomorrow.”

Jessica lurches towards the edge of the street and scans the crowd until she makes eye contact with a fortune-teller at the very beginning of a line of men and women who have set up tables and chairs and umbrellas and signs and flying flags to try and lure customers. The fortune-tellers, readers, visionaries of the future have a rich history in New Orleans. They jockey for positions along the edge of this city park every single night and day of the year.

“Oh, Mother, Mother, Mother,” Jessica shouts, starting to run down the lovely brick courtyard adjacent to Jackson Square. “She’s the one. Look at her. At least I think it’s a her. This is perfect.”

Connie, not as buzzed as Boom-Boom, catches her arm and says, “Well, this is perfect for you now that you are in this state of hetero–homo limbo. Let’s do this. How fun could this be?”

Lots of fun. More fun than they will even be able to describe the next day, a month later, or next Easter. They sit on rainbow-striped lawn chairs and look into the ravishing blue eyes of Saffine who tells them in two seconds that she’s working hard so she can finish her sex-change operation. Connie and Jessica turn to each other, say “perfect” at the exact same moment, and then put their hands on a deck of well-worn tarot cards and prepare to hear their futures while sipping on their Hurricanes.

Connie holds her breath and whirls herself back to Indiana for a moment behind her closed eyes while Saffine shuffles the cards, crosses her long legs, pulls on the neckline of her off-white t-shirt, and asks them if she can smoke. Jessica talks about the cards, engages Saffine in some pre–fortune-telling conversation, and Connie wonders if she ever imagined this moment.

Did she?

Did she imagine one night, one lovely Sunday night, tucked away in her room, rocking away while she worked on her Sunday list of dreams, that one day she would be three sheets to the wind, sitting in a lawn chair in the very heart of the French Quarter with her drunken daughter who sells whips and feathers so that people can play with each other’s bodies? Did she imagine that she would have confessed her deepest secrets, her abandoned longing for lust and love and passion, to her daughter? Her own daughter? Did she even think of writing this in her list of dreams? Did she, could she have wished herself to this sultry spot, a lingering kiss plastered to her psyche and a longing for something more that started at the tiny spot below her knees and wound its way through her loins, past her stomach, through her heart and lodged itself right in the front part of her brain and made it so she could think of nothing else?

Did she imagine that the discovery of a box hidden among the debris piled in her garage would parachute her into an adventure that seems to be expanding and multiplying every single second of every day?

The travel. The daughter. The man. The expanse of time. The swift turn in a path that she thought she had already paved and planted and then trimmed to fit dreams that had cascaded through her whirling life for all those years. Years and years that often belonged to everyone, so it seemed, but herself.

Connie sets down her drink and leans towards Saffine. Saffine has her legs crossed and is bobbing the top foot up and down so fast somebody will get hurt if she moves it wrong.

“Concentrate, honey,” Saffine urges. “Let your mind race forward a bit and brush your hands across the cards.”

Jessica turns to look at her mother and she too is suddenly wondering if she could ever have dreamed of this moment. Half drunk before 6
P.M
. in the middle of the week. Watching her mother sell Diva products to her customers. Discussing the intricacies of her latent sex life with the woman who used to ground her for banging the old motorcycle against the garbage cans along the side of the garage.

Jessica wants to laugh at the sudden absurdity of her world. She wants to throw herself down on the tiny card table, right on top of the soiled doilies and the Kmart candles and the vividly colored cards, but Saffine turns abruptly and begins shouting at a man who is perched behind her and has leaned over to touch the back of Saffine’s chair.

“Goddamn it!” Saffine snarls, totally disrupting the cosmic flow of her reading. “I told you to stay away from here and not to touch anything! Get the fuck out of here!”

When she finishes she turns back to Connie and Jessica as if nothing has happened and starts fingering the cards, totally oblivious to her bizarre behavior. Connie grabs Jessica’s hand, squeezes it at the same moment Jessica gently kicks her leg under the table. Connie thinks Saffine couldn’t get a good reading if she had a cell phone connection to the future but says, “That’s okay, honey” so Saffine won’t think they are offended by her Tourette’s syndrome–like behavior.

“People hate me,” Saffine declares, launching into her own story instead of getting on with the card-reading. “It’s not my fault I have this gift. People get jealous because everyone wants to come to me.”

If Connie or Jessica were impolite, either one of them would have leaned forward, grabbed back the $30 they had given Saffine that was still sitting on the edge of the table, and said, “What the hell?” But neither one of them wants to miss this moment.

“It just came to me,
whoosh,
like that,” Saffine explains, waving her hand in the air flamboyantly. “My friend Reg was reading me and then all these images and people came into my head and I just knew I had it and that was that.”

“Wow,” Boom-Boom responds with one elbow on the table, imagining what it would be like to live in Saffine’s world. “So now what? What’s up with the sex-change?”

“Oh, honey,” Saffine says while she continues to shuffle the cards and cocks her head sideways to make certain the bad man won’t intrude again on her territory. “My life could be a book. I’ll get to that someday.”

Then, while Connie and Jessica sit back, cross their own legs and let the moment happen, Saffine tells them her life story. Her mama raped her. Her daddy raped her and she fled to the streets of Atlanta to sell herself to the highest bidder. Lost her soul for years to the slavery of drug abuse, lived until recently with a male lover who was helping to pay for the beginnings of the sex-change operation.

“Want to see my titties?” Saffine asks.

Even for nurse Nixon, this is a new one. Without turning to look at Jessica, who has not moved since the beginning of Saffine’s horrific story, Connie says, “Oh, please, that would be nice.”

Saffine lifts her shirt and exposes a very tiny but lovely right breast. It’s as if Saffine has just launched into puberty and has budded out before the final hormone rush that will make her breasts swell and turn into glorious mounds of female flesh.

“They are quite nice,” Jessica manages to say. “When will you be able to finish?”

“Well, I’m working my tush off doing these readings and saving like crazy and as you can tell I surely don’t eat much and sometimes I just live on the street, so I’m hoping soon, sweetie, really soon.”

Oh, baby, Connie thinks. If ever a man was born to be a woman, it is Saffine with her blonde curls and blue eyes and the gestures and heart of someone who has tangoed this far in time on a tiny male shoestring.

And then, finally then, Saffine looks down at the cards and launches into her rendition of the futures of Connie Franklin Nixon and Jessica Franklin Nixon.

“Do you have a control issue?” she asks Connie. “Just let it go, honey. Let it go.”

“And you,” she continues, looking at Jessica. “Honey, you need some lovin’. You really need some lovin’. Can you do it?”

The women are momentarily impressed and then the bad man comes back, lurking in the background, Saffine launches back into her “fuck you” routine, her little rainbow flag dips towards the table and the two women rise and leave Saffine for her next unsuspecting customers.