Pacific Avenue (17 page)

My shock about what he’d
said was followed by another shock at my own attitude.
If I don’t have even
a little bit of racism myself, why did I think they’d be glad to have me in
their family? Mom may not be as far away as I thought. Maybe some of her is
right here in my head.

QUEEN (to KAY): Why are you
afraid?
(embraces KAY and kisses him)

KAY: Why is it so cold? My
heart is a lump of ice! Am I dying?
(pause)
But wait! Now I’m not cold anymore.
(touches SNOW QUEEN’S face)
You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.

Kathy was nervous about handling the office by herself.
“What if there’s a bid?” she asked.

“I’m only going for a week,” I said. “There isn’t
anything right now, and if something does come up, they’ll be doing the
estimating on it for days. Don’t worry about it.”

“Where are you and Willis going?”

“New Orleans. We decided to go to Mardi Gras.” I didn’t
mention that I was planning to see her friends.

Just the same, she looked startled. She opened her
mouth and then shut it again without a word. After an awkward couple of
seconds, she excused herself and went to the restroom. When she got back, I
pretended I hadn’t noticed a thing.

The day before I left, she crawfished around the
subject again. “I thought you didn’t like Carnival?”

“I don’t. I usually spend most of the time with my
aunt. That and making sure Antoine’s and Brennan’s haven’t slipped in the past
year. This time, it’s our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, so Willis is
calling it a second honeymoon.”

Since Willis had brought up the issue of lying and sneaking,
I was trying to be more aware of cutting corners. I hadn’t exactly reformed
overnight, though. If anything, I was mastering the art of truthful lying, for
want of a better term. Using the literal facts to misrepresent the situation,
like I was doing now. In my book, that was even worse.

Kathy relaxed a little. She even tried to cheer me up.
“Oh, a second honeymoon! Neat! Did you get some pretty clothes?”

“Yeah—a glamorous new umbrella and some sexy galoshes,”
I said, pretending a sour attitude. Actually, I
had
bought a few things. If Willis wanted a second
honeymoon, I was ready to be the bride.

“Lacey?”

“Uh-huh?” I came back from my daydreams about what
Willis would say when he saw me in my new things.

“Well, I don’t mean to be too personal or anything
. . . .” She didn’t finish.

“But?” Her expression was so troubled, I just wanted to
hug her like a little girl.

“Lacey, how do you make a marriage work out right?” Her
voice was low, so no one would overhear.

I sighed. “Kathy, there has been more BS talked about
that one subject than any other I know. Lately, seems like everyone thinks you
have to not hold in your feelings. So, what you read is that the right way to
do a marriage is to yell every time you get mad. And then, guess what? It
doesn’t work.”

“What would you do if the other person had a lot of
problems?”

“Get him to get help.”

“What if he wouldn’t?”

“You’d probably have to leave him. No way a woman can
do a relationship on her own. A man either, but it’s the women who think they
ought to.”

She nodded without saying anything.

“You can’t stay with someone who’s not good to you,
Kathy,” I told her. “You’re sure to have your differences, but you both should
be happy most of the time. And any man who raises his hand to you, well, he’s
not much of a man.”

The phone rang. “Giannini Construction, good afternoon,”
I said brightly, my eyes on Kathy.

She looked like she was close to tears. I wondered what
kind of problems this Richard Johnson had. Enough to put him in Angola, anyway.
And I wondered where Kathy’s mother had been while Kathy was finding out about
him the hard way.

“So, what’s this one about?” asked Sam, turning the Snow
Queen puppet over in his hands. I had done a good job on her. The “diamond” on
her cloak was right over her heart. I planned to pick it up with a blue
spotlight as she rose from the sleigh. I hoped it would make a cold flash.

“It’s from
The Snow Queen,
a Hans Christian Andersen story,” I told him.
“There’s a mirror that shows everything as evil. It breaks, and pieces fly all
over the world. People who touch a piece of it see only the distortions the
mirror shows them.”

Sam laughed. “Sounds like my morning paper.”

I went on. “The main characters are a boy named Kay and
a girl named Gerda. A piece of the mirror gets in Kay’s eye, and another piece
in his heart. He starts mistreating Gerda, then goes off with the beautiful
Snow Queen.

“The queen imprisons Kay in her snow palace and turns
his heart to ice, but Gerda follows him to the ends of the earth—that’s how the
story reads. And her tears wash the sliver out of his eye so he can see things
again as they are. And she kisses him, and his heart melts and he comes back to
life,” I told him.

“Sounds like Snow White, except the gender roles are reversed.”

“I guess it is, a little.”

“Well, it’s always comforting to know someone will go
to the ends of the earth for you,” Sharon said.

The visit was going well—Sam and Sharon were fascinated
with the puppets. Since they were staying in a hotel, they had no idea about
Richard’s nightmares or the mornings when he seemed to have a piece of the Snow
Queen’s mirror in
his
eye. With Sam and
Sharon, he was charming, and part of the time I was sure he was acting.
Good
thing he can act well enough to pull this off. Wonder if his acting is going to
make problems between us in the long run.
I
put it out of my mind.

“What’s this one?” Sam picked up a marionette in the
dress of the early nineteenth century.

“That’s Jean Lafitte,” Richard told him. “You know, the
pirate. Lafitte’s blacksmith shop, and all that. He’s part of the Louisiana
History segment.”

Sam raised his eyebrows. “A pirate? Isn’t this supposed
to be about peace?” He investigated the puppet’s drooping mustache and elegant
clothes, careful not to mess it up.

“Oh, it is,” said Richard. “Because Lafitte was a complicated
fellow. First of all, he didn’t do anything violent himself.”

“Just paid someone else to do it?” Sharon asked.

Richard nodded. “It wasn’t only him and his
pirates—lots of the merchants of New Orleans made big profits from his crimes.
We’re trying to show that violence can be indirect. It’s an important point.”

Sam took the controls and tried to make the puppet
walk, but he didn’t know how. Jean Lafitte staggered with his arms splayed and
his butt in the air. “What else did he do?” Sam asked.

“At one point, Governor Claiborne offered a $500 reward
for his capture. Lafitte turned around and offered $2,500 for Claiborne.”

Sam snorted. “Impudent bastard.” Jean Lafitte flailed
around, flopping like a duck.

“That he was,” Richard said. “But in the end, he was
one of the heroes of the Battle of New Orleans. And he was pardoned by the
president.”

“So, why would a pirate run a blacksmith shop?” Sam
asked. Jean waved a hand. Sam was starting to understand how the controls
worked.

“It was a front,” Richard said, nodding at Sam’s
progress as a puppeteer. “Lafitte pretended to run the blacksmith shop, and
customers came in and made purchases, but what they were buying wasn’t iron
grillwork. It was ‘black ivory,’ smuggled slaves.”

Sharon frowned. “Is that something you really want to
show kids?”

“That’s bothered me, too,” I said. “Martin and I are working
out how to get it into the script. Or whether we
should
get it in.”

“Did Lafitte reform after he was pardoned?” asked
Sharon.

“Not for long,” I admitted. “Maybe we’ll end with the
pardon, though. Show that a person who’s done wrong can make up for it.”

“Isn’t that bending the facts a bit?” Sam asked.

Richard thought for a moment. “This isn’t a full biography
of Jean Lafitte. The point
is
an honest
one, though, because people
can
reform.”

Sam set Jean Lafitte back into the box. “Do you ever do
anything but puppets?”

“Let’s do something else right now,” I said. “Let’s go
to the Quarter and get lemon ices at Brocato’s.”

“I’d rather have spumone,” said Sam.

We called Thu and Martin, but they didn’t want to drive
over to New Orleans. Martin asked us to bring back some ice cream. They were
having a dinner for us four and the rest of the Motley family that evening, so
I volunteered to go by Eddie’s stand and pick up vegetables.

“Are all the shows as serious as the Snow Queen one and
the Jean Lafitte?” asked Sam as we walked down Royal Street.

“Oh, no,” said Richard. “There’s the Nasruddin one.
He’s sometimes a fool and sometimes a trickster. And the shadow puppets include
Hacivat and Karagöz—they’re funny, too. The story behind them is political,
because the sultan had them killed for joking too much. Then he missed them, so
a dervish made puppets to tell their jokes.”

“Do you go looking for this sort of stuff?” Sam sounded
frustrated. I glanced sharply at him—it wasn’t like Sam to make a fuss over
something unless it was important to him. I couldn’t imagine why the puppets
would be.

“What do you mean?” asked Richard.

“Well . . . negative. Slavery, and tyranny,
and the mirror that makes you see everything twisted. It’s all so
grim.
”

“Someone has to face the way things are and try to
change them,” Richard said.

“Maybe, but you’ll never do it by scolding.” Sam
stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, as if he could make his point better if
he didn’t have to walk at the same time. Sharon took his hand and pulled him
back into step with us.

“What do you suggest?” Richard asked.

“Well, hell, I’m not a puppeteer. Maybe you know best.
But if I went to a puppet show, I’d be hoping the show would have a magical
feeling. The stories you’re telling, it’s almost like you’re going out looking
for misery.”

“Don’t have to,” Richard told him. “It’s everywhere.”

“Story of our times?” asked Sam.

“Story of our species,” Richard said. “Don’t blame me.
I didn’t make the world.”

Our species was on its good behavior that afternoon in
the Quarter. Whoever made the world, it didn’t look so awful. Cheerful crowds
meandered and window-shopped and stared into the ferny courtyards through
antique wrought-iron gates.
Did any of those gates come from Jean Lafitte’s
blacksmith shop?

I shuddered as we passed the corner of Royal and Governor
Nicholls, the Lalaurie house trimmed with its own edging of iron lace. No one
in early New Orleans suspected—but when a fire broke out, the firemen found
slaves in prison cells. And a torture room. The owners fled, and black ghosts
had haunted the place ever since. As I researched Louisiana history for the
theater, though, I’d learned that a charitable group had used the house during
the Depression. For years, they fed and cared for anyone who asked for help. No
one remembered that. I sighed. Maybe Sam had a point.

Richard broke into my thoughts. “Getting tired, sweetheart?”

“I guess so. Let’s go on to Eddie’s and then take the
ferry home.”

Later, on the boat, we got out of the car to watch the
brown water of the river slide past. Richard told Sam and Sharon more about the
theater.

“We’re putting together a set of the Nasruddin stories
for some comic relief. A few of them are funny, almost like jokes. In one, he’s
told he has to pay for truth. When he protests, the seller reminds him that the
price of a thing is set by its scarcity.”

Richard chuckled. “In another, he goes to get a drink
of water and his friend asks him to bring a cup back. He comes back without it,
and tells the friend, ‘After I got my own drink, I found you weren’t thirsty
anymore.’

“But my favorite so far is the one where he’s asked
what fate is. He answers that fate is like a weaving, the visible threads
intertwined with invisible ones. He points to a man going off to be hanged. ‘Is
it his fate to be hanged because one man saw him commit the crime, or because
another gave him the money to buy a knife? Or is it because of all the good
folk who didn’t stop him?’”

“Too dark,” objected Sam. “That one will never do for
comic relief. You need to lighten up! You know, it’s like in my profession.
It’s awful to lose a kid to cancer. People think doctors are so detached, but
that’s not so for me. But I can’t let it stop me. Because there’s always
someone else I
can
help. You can get
sidetracked on the negative stuff and never see anything else. And then, I’m
sorry, but you’re worthless to anyone, including yourself.”
He sounds
angry. Almost, anyway.

We scrambled back into the car as the west bank of the
river approached, and then drove off the ferry into the streets of Algiers, our
next-door town. I thought about Sam’s words as I drove.

He was right. I worried about everything—Richard, the
baby, my parents. I worried almost constantly. But Thu and Martin had worse
problems than we did, and they’d both survived terrible losses. And they seemed
much less burdened than Richard and me.
What about that? Why am I working
for peace when I haven’t made peace with myself?

When Martin opened the door that evening, the smell of
good food tumbled out to meet us. Thu had cooked a rice dish, spicy and almost
familiar. Sharon and I went back to the kitchen to help her.

“What is this?” I asked, stealing a before-dinner taste
from a copper pot.

“It’s called
Com Chien Thap Cam.
Of course, I couldn’t get Vietnamese rice.”

“What difference would that make?” Sharon asked.

Thu looked surprised. “Oh, it makes an enormous difference.
Rice of each area has its own flavor. When people move away from their own
village, they miss the taste of their own rice almost more than anything else.”

I lifted the lid of a big saucepan. “What’s this?”

Thu, rinsing vegetables at the sink, turned to see what
I was looking at. “Oh, it’s
pho.
You’d
call it beef noodle soup.”

Eddie and Francine came into the kitchen. “Hey, dirty
rice!” Eddie exclaimed.

Thu flew to her pot and surveyed the contents. “Where?”

“Right there in the pot—dirty rice.”

“It’s not dirty! What are you talking about, Eddie?”
Thu’s face was set in a deep scowl, an expression I’d never seen from her
before.

“Oh, no, I didn’t mean it was
dirty,
Thu. I’m sorry—I meant it was ‘dirty rice.’ It’s a
Creole dish.”

“That’s the name of a
dish
?” She was still suspicious. “What is it?”

“Oh, rice with stuff in it. Vegetables and onions and
giblets, maybe shrimp or crawdads. Or maybe that’s a pilau. Mama never taught
me how to cook. I call them all ‘dirty rice.’”

“Giblets? Crawdads? Pilau?” Thu was floundering in new
words.

Francine laughed. “Tell you later, honey. He said
it—his mama didn’t teach him
nothin’
about
cooking. I’ll show you. This
Com
whatever-you-call-it, it
is
a lot
like pilau.
Dirty rice.
” She shot
Eddie a look of mock disgust. “Bet you don’t even know how to get you a cup of
coffee.”

“Of course I do,” Eddie said, with injured dignity.

“Oh? How?” Francine put her fists on her ample hips and
surveyed Eddie like he was a little kid trying to get away with something.

“Go to the Café Du Monde and tell the waiter, ‘One cup
of café au lait, please.’”

Thu laughed, her hurt feelings forgotten. She brought
the food to the table and the Motleys gathered around. The boys sat on chairs
stacked with thick books.

All of us bowed our heads, and Martin said, “Bless us,
O Lord, and these Thy gifts which we are about to receive from Thy bounty
through Christ our Lord.”

“Amen.”

Hot braided bread and a tangy salad went around. The
rice dish had shrimp, sausage, mushrooms, and buttery scallions. It was
delicious.

“What do you two do?” asked Martin.

“I’m an accountant and Sam’s a doctor,” Sharon answered.

“What kind of doctor?” Francine asked Sam.

“I’m a pediatric oncologist. I specialize in cancer and
leukemia in children.” Judging from Francine’s expression, she wished she
hadn’t asked.

“I hope you like seafood.” Thu, gesturing toward the
rice dish, changed the subject gracefully.

“Lord, yes. Delicious. What kind of dish is it?” asked
Sam.

“Vietnamese.”

“You’re from Vietnam?”

“I am—Martin’s Australian.”

“I think they can tell, honey,” Martin said. He’d
worked on his accent so it wouldn’t distract from the puppet performances, but
a little of it was still left.

“Actually, yes.” Sam smiled. “How did you meet each
other?”

“I was a journalist over there until 1968.”

“And then?”

“We lived in Hue,” Martin said. “It’s in central
Vietnam, the old Imperial City. It’s a university town as well, a sort of
cultural and historic center. It had been quiet up until ’68, almost as if the
war couldn’t come there. Thu was running her family’s marionette theater, and I
was doing freelance writing and learning the puppets. When Tet came, the war
roared in.”