One Heart (26 page)

She paid the money to park and came into the airport. We were almost two hours early. I never had been in an airport. I didn't tell Doreen. She would've enjoyed that fact too much. She'd been in plenty of times and acted like my personal tour guide as it was. But I was glad she distracted me from the place. Personally I found it a terrible zoo. I don't like so many rushy rushy types around me. And I don't like the boy who bumped right into me. “Excuse me!” I said. “Kiss my ass!” he said. What the hell was that all about, I wanted to know. “The world's just falling apart,” Doreen said. “That's all.”

When I said good-bye to Doreen she got tears in her eyes. This is one woman who likes dramatics.

I said, “Manchester, I'm only going down there for four days!”

She said, “I know! I just hate good-byes! All good-byes! They remind me of other good-byes! They remind me of death! I hate good-byes and I always will.”

“Well, good-bye,” I said, walking away, and she laughed. She can always laugh.

So I fly to New Orleans. I wasn't too glad to be up in that plane. I'm not a natural flyer. I'm not the sort who kicks back and looks down at the majesty of Earth. I mainly sat with dripping palms and thought how in the goddamn hell do they keep this goddamn plane up in the air? Yes, I had a whiskey sour. No, I didn't chitchat with the gentleman to my left. They didn't have stewardesses on that plane. In fact they had boys. Stewards, I guess they call them. Two nice stewards with curly hair. Flying was normal to them. It's amazing what gets to be normal.

So James is there waiting for me at Gate 11. He's dressed nice in a green long-sleeve cotton shirt. He looks older. Still good, with ruddy cheeks, but older. His hair was silver and white, and his face thinned out. He didn't see me. Why is it sad when you see someone and they don't know you're seeing them? Because they can't protect themselves. They can't dress themselves up in their personality. They look naked and alone, and you're sorry you're seeing them that way.

A man you know all your life standing alone and looking for you in an airport makes your heart pound. I thought I might have a heart attack before I reached him.

He stood tall and thin with his chin lowered in that old way of his. His eyes moving to find me. Then he finds me. His face lights up. He walks over and takes my bag. He still basically had his same walk. Not jittery like some old men. I notice he notices my dress. I bought it new. Doreen dragged me to Divine's Lounge Wear in town, a store that for the past twenty years everyone thought would go out of business. The merchandise never rotates. Everything's in plastic bags. And Mrs. Peggy Divine's a three-hundred-year-old hunchback with asthma. You want to tell her, “Go ahead and die, Peggy.”

The last dress I got there was for Wendell's funeral. I just wanted to get out of there, away from the mothball smell. “Fine,” I said, “I'll take this dress.” Off-white with miniature maroon roses. Fancy. I got out my black heels from another lifetime. I wore the whole outfit to that airport. And earrings. Doreen said, “Well don't you look like you're worth your weight in wildcats.” “What the hell that's supposed to mean,” I said. She laughed.

So James noticed the outfit. Looked me right up and down. I was glad he did. And he took my suitcase and said, “You travel light.” And I said, “Always.” He smiled down at me. And then we walked side by side through that airport. Anyone looking would see an old pair. And I felt old. Everyone I know, they say they look in the mirror and can't believe the old dame looking back at them is
them
. Well, for me it was an opposite story. The old woman I see now, she looks like me. Almost exactly. That young thing, she was the stranger.

James drove us to his house. It was a shotgun little house in a long row of other shotguns. That's what they call them down there in New Orleans. The rooms are lined up all in a row, so if someone wants to they can shoot a gun right through the house. Don't ask me.

James kept his house perfect. It was painted white with dark gray shutters. Trim green bushes out front. In the back, a garden in the moonlight. It was a James kind of garden, not too neat, and not too overgrown. Inside the rooms were painted white and the doors to the rooms were blue. It was night, and the light was dim, but I knew the place was clean. It had a watery smell to it. And another smell, which was like clean flannel shirts.

“Not a bad place,” James said, “but I don't like the layout of a shotgun much. I don't like a house on one floor. It's too easy to keep it in good shape. Not enough to fix.”

“I don't think it's so bad,” I said. I didn't. It appealed to me. The clarity. But I didn't have to live there.

Next thing I knew he had two cold Budweisers and two glasses. We sat side by side on his couch. We set the beers on the table in front of us. Then he stood up and turned on a strange little antique mermaid lamp, came back and sat down and stretched his long legs out.

Then I surprised him. I took my glass and said, “Here's to your seventy-first birthday, old man.”

He smiled, looking straight ahead. He didn't look surprised that I remembered. He looked over at me for a second with his distant eyes. In one second the distance in his eyes was gone, then back again, then gone, then back. He was that way even back in the beginning. I laughed because he was so much himself.

“Happy Birthday to you, happy birthday to you,” I sang. He smiled.

But a kind of heaviness was creeping into the room. Call it the heaviness of our lives. A kind of uneasiness I didn't count on. And since I wasn't used to traveling, I wasn't settled in myself. Last time I'd traveled was with Raelene and Hambone. Hadn't heard from Raelene in a long time except for Christmas cards. Have to say I missed her down there in New Orleans. I missed her because I felt like a traveler, and she was the one who got me traveling all those years ago. The second day I was there, I got a postcard and sent it to her. I said I was having a good time in New Or'luns, as James calls it. I said, “Wish you were here” and meant it.

James had a lot planned for us. He wanted me to see his whole life, all the places he went and all the friends he had. I was unsure why he wanted this. But he did. One night I met two men he'd worked with for years on a shrimp boat. The men lived in an old-timer boardinghouse. JFK was framed on the wall in the hallway. The men were brothers named Yuri and Big. We went out and had what they call beignets. A kind of donut. And good black coffee. Yuri and Big were both recovered alcoholics, so we sat in a bright restaurant open twenty-four hours and drank coffee until we shook. Yuri would talk and Big would sit way back in his chair, and twist his mouth to the side of his face. I could see he was one of those people divided. One part of them doesn't want to listen to much of anything, but the other part's dying to hear it all. So he had to twist his mouth that way. Because Yuri was telling me his life story. He said he was in New Orleans because he was a jailbird at heart, and the original population of the city was jailbirds. Did I know that? No, I said. Oh yes, jailbirds, debtors, smugglers, and wayward Parisian ladies. That's the history of this place. “So I knew it was for me, because I came from a town in Texas that was filled up with God fearers. And they tried to beat the fear into me with splintery wood till I ran away when I was fifteen years of age. I was already on the bottle then. . . . ” I noticed James looking at his friend with affection. I could tell these friends weren't really friends. They were people he listened to. They were two men James could sit and listen to.

“So, Gladys, it was lovely meetin' your acquaintance. Tell your boy here he oughta come see us more often,” Yuri said. “Yeah,” said Big. As it turned out, James hadn't seen them in a year or so.

The next day I met his next-door neighbors, Donny and Betty Fortunato, and we went out to eat Creole food together that night. They were nice enough people. Donny was a wiry man who talked fast and choppy. Betty had a smoker's voice and small blue eyes with drawn-on eyebrows. Both had dyed black hair and were about sixty-five. I got them onto the subject of grandchildren because I didn't want to have to be the talker. I wanted to sit back side by side with James, like I did with Yuri. Well, turns out the Fortunatos' oldest grandson's a juvenile delinquent named Ronny. Betty went on and on about him in her old smoker's voice. You'd think a story about a juvenile delinquent would be interesting table talk. Well, think again. Betty was one of these people who tell you all the details that don't matter. Like “So I went down to the store because I wanted to take Ronny some candy when I visited him. Let's see, that was about noon. No, that was more like one o'clock. Or was it noon? And so anyhow, I bought candy and I also bought baked beans and chicken. No, pork. I bought pork, that's right, it was Thursday and Thursday it's almost always pork.” You got the feeling Betty Fortunato was talking to herself, just trying to keep her ducks in line. After that dinner James and me were relieved to be just me and him.

We walked around in the warm New Orleans November night. I could smell the Mississippi. I could feel the marshiness of the air. Between us was an old sense of ease.

“I just wanted you to see my life down here, Gladys. It's a good life. I feel at home here. I do. I feel this is a kind of home for me.”

Now, I know this man well. Well enough to hear any falseness in his words. And I heard some. I looked over at him and knew he really didn't feel this was his home at all. But he kept talking that way.

“The weather's nice and warm. I don't know about you, Gladys, but I understand why older people go south now.”

I didn't say anything to that. I didn't tell him how I bundle up and chop my own wood in the snow. How my arms and back ache for days afterward, which I like. I didn't tell him I loved snow more than when I was young. That I owned a man's navy blue parka that came down to my feet. That cost a hundred bucks. I put on my man's parka and Wellingtons and walk in the woods.

Maybe when I was seventy-one I'd understand.

“And it's not like other cities in the country, Gladys. Other cities are all alike now. Homogenized. Not this place. This place has character you can't even describe when you're right in front of it.”

“Yes, it certainly does.”

We kept on walking. We were in a different neighborhood now. The shotguns were gone and now the houses were big pink things with iron balconies. Music was coming out of half the windows. I'd say mostly jazz. James went on and talked about all the good music in the city. And then he's onto some sandwich you can get called a mufaletto. Then all the sudden something falls quietly out of his mouth.

“So Gladys, I was wondering what you'd think about moving down here. Down to New Or'luns.”

I should've seen the question coming, but it shocked me to the point where I stopped walking. And my heart sped up. Not because the question excited me.

“James, you took me off guard there.”

“I know, I know. Let me explain.”

“No, don't.”

“Let me.”

We kept walking. He mentioned something about getting a drink in a corner café. Okay, fine. We walked a few blocks perfectly quiet. Then we get to the café. It's out on the sidewalk. We sit down at a table too small for us, and too many people are crowded around us. James was used to that. Not me. But there we sat.

“I think you'd enjoy this town, Gladys,” James said. “Unless you've changed completely, I think you'd like it a lot.”

“I do like the town, James.”

“And I figure we could be a good friend for each other. As we get old. Allies.”

A young woman next to me burst out laughing, then said, “No, no, I never said that!”

“I can't have this talk with all these strangers sitting on my lap,” I said.

So we got up and walked on.

“It's that I don't know anyone like I know you,” James said. I looked over at him. I looked at the side of his face as we walked. For a minute I felt his age, and the weight of his loneliness.

“If you're still you, that is,” he added.

I didn't say anything to that.

We walked until we were back to his house. We went inside and laid down on his bed. We had all our clothes on. We just laid on our backs.

“You're different, Gladys.”

“I am. I'm doing better.”

“I know.”

“I'm not doing so bad, either.”

I reached for his hand. Now we were holding hands. My hand didn't remember his. It was brand-new. I thought that was strange. But I lay there thinking how I was glad to be there. For now I was glad to be there in the dark with him beside me.

After a while he asks me, “Do you believe there's any kind of life after death, Gladys?”

I didn't expect a talk like this. I didn't particularly want to go in that direction. But there he was, with an urgent voice, and holding my hand.

“I used to,” I said. “You know that.” And I lay there for a while remembering how I used to during the hardest years. “Not heaven. But I used to feel Ann out there in eternity. It was like she had hands and was pulling on my heart from eternity. I'd feel she was all alone out there. That's part of what killed me.”

It was the first time I said Ann's name without hesitating at all. I did it on purpose, to prove something to myself, and to James. But it didn't necessarily feel good. Not bad, but not good, either. It was what it was.

He waited a few moments. Then he said, “And now you don't believe there's anything beyond this world?”

“I don't have conclusions. I think there might be something. Some kind of place for your spirit. But I don't know. Maybe the spirit's just as homeless in the afterworld as it is in this one.”

I didn't even know what I meant by that. I prefer not to talk about this kind of thing because I start coming out with things I don't necessarily believe.