We got the last of the balloons and flowers all loaded that Donette insisted on bringing home with us, even if they were already looking pretty sorry, like they were withering and starting to die. It was a hot day for a wedding. So I got in and started the car and ran the AC a while before Donette got in with the baby. I’ve been in here so long it’s gone to blowing only warm air. Donette will have something to say about that.
I don’t know how many years I’ve sat round, waiting on Donette. I reckon I must have spent a third of my life sitting round, waiting. I’ve gotten real good at sitting. There were decades I thought barking would help move things along, but after a few more decades turned over I learned there weren’t nothing more to do but sit round and wait. There’s God’s time and Donette’s time. Ain’t no time in between.
“How come there’s no cold air?” she says on opening the door, moving the box of candles on the floor so she can scoot the ice chest closer up toward the fan. She’s holding Baby Henry in one arm and the ice chest in another. “Put it down on cold.”
“It was on cold, but a car insists on moving if it wants to keep on blowing cold air.”
“Well then let’s get on the road. I told Val and Jeff we’d send photos of Henry asleep in the crib before they land.”
With Val and Jeff on their way to the honeymoon, we’re looking after the baby. When I was her age I thought I was living the high life, going to Florida and staying at a friend of a friend’s. These days kids ain’t ever content unless there’s a celebrity’s been there or unless they can take a million photographs to post all over the internet.
We’re almost at Houma and she’s still going on about stuff we brought back from the wedding, the baby fussing, wanting his mama, sounding like a squeaky door creaking closed.
“You remember for Kate’s we saved the top layer and then it melted right away? Well I talked to Liz and Liz told me she learned a good little trick where you wrap the cake up in saran wrap—you have to be okay with the icing not being so pretty when you open it up after defrosting everything—and then rather than put it directly on top the ice where the cake’ll get all melty, you set a layer of packing peanuts in between, and that way it stays cool and won’t get melted on the ride home. Isn’t that something? Hey,” she starts, looking over. “How come you always munching? Always got that munching look going on?”
“Can’t help it. It’s something of a tic.”
“Well cut that out. You look mad and a little bit touched. Doing that through the wedding. Lord have mercy, I hope you weren’t making them funny faces through the photographer.”
When we pull up into the driveway, Baby Henry is sound asleep, and Donette goes in to lay him in the crib while I unload the stuff for now in the kitchen.
“Here,” she says, a bright light under my chin.
“What’s that?”
“That’s the ocean in Costa Rica. Val says the turbulence on the airplane gave her a migraine, but she took a few aspirins, and Jeff had to carry her down to the beach.”
“That old Jeff is sure gonna have his hands full from now on. He’ll have to start feeding himself with his feet.”
“Oh you just hush yourself, mister,” she says. Soon she hollers out from the kitchen: “What you wanting for dinner? You feel like grilling some of this steak?”
“Honey,” I says, “I just drove … drove … drove … drove …” The word keeps sticking against my tongue.
“All right, I’ll go and fix it myself!”
Over dinner we’re keep on interrupted by the news in Costa Rica.
“Look, that’s them with coconut daiquiris. What’s that you think on top, whip cream? Val says that’s coconut-flavored ice cream. She says Jeff just had one sip and decided to order a beer.”
“Uh huh.” She fixes me with that stare that says it wants more than the minimum tribute. “Cute.”
“‘Cute’ ain’t the word for what that there is. That’s what they call real romance. She says it’s hot and Jeff’s worn out and is wanting to go to bed, but Val won’t let him. She’s making them go to the fireworks show.”
“I thought she had a migraine?”
“I guess she must be over that.”
We’re sitting around, the dishes rinsed, the balloons and flowers everywhere all over the kitchen, the cake put away in the freezer, Donette in her modal pj’s, now and then hmphing over the phone, my ears still ringing with that accordion, the news on for just some old noise, and I’ve got me a bundle of Little Debbies I’m working my way through, when Donette says, unlooking up, “What you think about going on vacation over to Florida?”
“Say what? You mean right now?”
“We took the whole week off to be with Henry. When else we going some place until two years, once after you’re retired? It’s October and prices’ll be real cheap. We’ll leave first thing in the morning.”
“There ain’t—”
“I ain’t asking you, Claude. Think, when’s the last time we spent real time together romancing?”
“There ain’t no room for any romancing with a baby crying every two minutes and diaper-changing by the side of the pool. Besides, you can’t drive no baby ten hours to Florida.”
“Don’t talk drivel. It don’t make no difference to him if he’s in a car or in a playpen. Let’s go. Let’s take a honeymoon for ourselves, for old time’s sake. Let’s go to St. Petersburg like we used to. For old time’s sake. Let’s go.”
Most days I have to sort of remind myself I pretty much take for a fact that Donette is a better person than me. She’s got her eye out on living life like a good person—and not just regarding herself but looking out in most ways for all the rest of us. There’d be nights where I’d come home dog-tired from building all day and running around, and she’d force me into doing some board game or into some outing, which at the time I fought against wanting to do but now see the why and how come of it, why she done what she did, and I’m most grateful for it. She knows what she’s doing. She always did.
“Well, if I do go, I’m set on bringing my golf clubs.” Because after all I got to have me a little vacation if I’m on vacation.
“You just be careful you don’t go hurting yourself. You ain’t as young and fit as you used to be.”
We left before dawn, only us awake and the frogs and crickets. The last thing we brought from the house was the baby, whining that he be left alone. I’d been up all night myself trying to get me some sleep. I can’t remember the last time I got a good eight hours of solid night’s sleep, nor what that done to me physically. I suppose it’s like being in good health—you don’t know what it was you lost until you don’t have it no more. Now being awake all the time is just one of those things you do, like taking a stool softener four times a day.
In Mobile the rain starts coming down, big, thick, loud drops of it, so big I can hardly squint to make out the stripes down the road. “Didn’t you bother checking the forecast?”
And soon enough the shower is pouring down on us, lightning every which way and corner. Baby Henry must sense our nerves are up and won’t hush despite Donette’s sweet-talking. So much rain there is everywhere swimming across the windows; it reminds me of one of them visual aids you see of all the sperms swimming off toward the egg. But as soon as we pass through the tunnel and are up out over the bay the rain tapers off, and we pull over for Donette to change the diaper and for us to eat some breakfast up on the fort.
Back on the road, the baby is wide awake and done fed up; he wants his mama, nothing else.
“Feed him a bottle.”
“He just was fed a bottle, Claude.”
“Well then try feeding him another.”
But nothing will calm him down, keep him from squeaming, so Donette turns on the radio, searching for some music that may help to get him to hush.
Well, she’s my first wife (first wife!)
Yeah, she’s pretty good, but she ain’t no second
First wife (first wife!)
But all it is is just a bunch of old noise, noise in organization.
Finally we decide on the AM Bible show, Donette bouncing Henry upon her knee while the preacher in a low, deep tone reads out Scripture, talking about angels coming down from heaven with seven big bowls they gonna pour all over the face of the earth and wash away the sin like they done in the time of Noah, each of us listening, even Henry, who seems to understand all them words. I guess you could say I do and I don’t. Now and then a fellow gets himself to thinking, which, I think, is a good thing. I believe He wrote the Good Book for a reason, and there weren’t no reason to lie about none of it, but cut my corn if He didn’t take such simple-sounding words and fill them up until He makes them so durn complicated … and yet with the way folks get to talking like they were filling up a shaker of salt with salt or a shaker of pepper with pepper … I spent years working on some of them words like cracking some kind of nut and still can’t get to the flesh of them, words like good, bad, evil, wicked. Time and again you see folks speeding past, only eyes to get down that road, eager to tend to business, and you know there ain’t nothing there at the end, that they’re only gearing up to turn back around. I don’t mean to question His wisdom, but in my sixty years on this earth I seen both good folks being evil and evil folks being good, and I’m mighty curious to know how the Lord determines in between. Most days I reckon it’s just better to throw away them words like tools for a different trade—even sometimes love and faith—and do the best you can with the leftovers.
“You making that munching face again, Claude.”
“I told you I’m just thinking.”
When we’re reaching close to St. Petersburg, we’re greeted by a gridlock of honking and so many highrises angling for a view you’d never know a beach lay around the corner if it weren’t for the salt on the wind. Donette this whole time has been telling Baby Henry what’s out the window he can’t see: “There’s the rain clouds we passed under.” “We’re coming out Pensacola.” “That boat’s washing up on the sand.” When Donette and me first came here there weren’t nothing around but sandtraps and a handful of bungalows. Now it’s all rich folks moving down from the city, building condos where they can hibernate for the winter, hogging the view and raising the prices up on the rest of us. For years we were going to this place the Gulfside Inn, but once the girls were all grown up we quit coming. Most trips these days are spent on seeing family.
“Ooooo, big old stretch!”
For the life of me my fingers won’t quit jerking where I took the keys from out the ignition. About everything looks the same. Even though new highrises are popping up everywhere, it’s nice to know the Gulfside hasn’t changed except the fresh coat of paint since I last seen it some fifteen, twenty years ago. Donette sets me down with Henry, and I’m doing the best I can to catch the door from closing, but that boy is pure dead weight.
“Hello,” she says to the gal at the reception, both of them ticking their nails on the desk, in different places. Her hair’s done up like a beehive on the flat side of her head and is the color of honey dripping down toast, and she don’t pretend to wear the bare minimum amount of makeup. “We don’t have us a reservation, but we’re hoping to rent a room for six or so nights. Is Mr. Angus in?”
“Who?” says the little old gal.
“Why that would be Allen Angus. He was the general manager during the several years Claude and I have been coming here. This was probably before your time.”
“Oh, yes, Allen Angus. No,” says the girl. “I knew I heard of him, but I actually don’t know him. I believe I remember hearing someone say he died some time ago of a stroke. That was at least four years ago. Did you all know him?”
“I see,” says Donette, “I see.”
“Would you like a one-bedroom room or a two?”
Inside the condo everything smells the same, looks the same, feels the same. You’d think I’d forgot, but I guess I didn’t. They got these big glass bowls on the table filled up beyond the brim with seashells they found on the beach—I remember one time Kate stole one of them sand dollars that we found out about only once we got home and Donette made her mail it on back—and on the walls petrified starfish framing the mirrors. The whole place smells bright and clean and faintly of the ocean; that thick carpet everywhere reminds me of the kind Donette put on the rim of the toilet seat to make sure I keep on lifting it. I see to it that all the bags are brought in while she’s still sitting on the sofa, bouncing Henry. “Now you the one that’s scowling. What’s eating on you?”
“I believe I’m getting a migraine. I believe I may go lay down for a while.”
“Well I was wanting some food.”
“You go get you some food. Just do me the favor of bringing the baby along with you.”
Well, if that weren’t for a woman! Drive me twelve hours across the country, she insists, and when she’s there it’s something else. She ain’t had one of her sick headaches in fifteen-odd years, but what can a fellow do? It’s like them boxers that get whupped upside the head so hard they can’t do nothing no more but laugh.
So I take Henry with me to the grocery store; it’s in the same place that it used to be, only the name’s been completely changed—it used to be a Blair’s or Bell’s or something’s—now it’s a new ValueSave, and while me and Henry are scrounging for food, I can’t help but think to recall about Daddy. Come this May it’ll be forty-two years since he passed—that’s two years older than me. Lord knows He didn’t make it easy. Hollering and gibbering with that touched speech like a man gone out his wits. That year in bed. Spouting all kinds of nonsense like some obscene kind of baby. And screaming. Lord, that terrible screaming that kept us wide awake. Pouring his meals ground up between his teeth, hoping a little bit might take. Poor Daddy. What’d that fellow think it was—Huntington’s disease? Whatever the name, that don’t make suffering that kind of pain easier. For, as they say, band-aids don’t patch bullet holes. Poor old Daddy.
Donette’s still laying in bed when we come home with the groceries. Laying there like something that’s been washed up onto the sand.
“I fixed you a sandwich. Potato chips on ham.” Only there in the dark she waves the plate good away.
After the crib is fixed up and Henry sound asleep and I relieve my sweet tooth with a helping of oatmeal pies, I go in there myself, not kidding myself I’ll be able to sleep a wink but just doing it out of practice, hoping that the motions might mean maybe the same thing as effect. She’s changed into her pj’s, Donette has; her eyes are closed, but I can tell by the way she’s breathing she’s still awake, though only a fool would try and engage her and hope to back away unscathed. That long body rising and falling, getting bigger under the covers, then a little less big. There’s something about another body lying round to make it known a man’s alone. It’s like that echo that comes from far off. You wouldn’t have thought to even think about that echo if it hadn’t echoed at you in the first place. And hers once just like Val’s, and me once just like Jeff, just itching to get my hands all over it. She was fifteen when Donette first gave her the talk.
“And what about Daddy? He don’t have one thing on his mind. Or else he couldn’t do nothing.”
“He did have one thing on his mind, at one point, yes, your daddy did. Your daddy’s just like all men.”
“Then how’d you know…?”
“Then how’d I know then that he was the one? I guess I just kinda knew.”
And them hardly caring one way or the other until they run it out of us and then us the same as them.
At one point in the night Baby Henry is up and crying, and I don’t need the wrath of my beloved to go telling me twice he’s awake. We go out into the den, then out onto the balcony, where I bounce him against my chest and say to him, “Now, now; now, now, little man,” hoping that that sliding door is sound proof enough not to wake Donette. He’s crying because he wants his mama: his diaper ain’t wet. Then after a while he’s only sniffling. He’s just confused like all the rest of us. I feed him his bottle while we’re sitting out on the chair, feeling the warmth of the salt sea breeze and hearing the surf and the cars not too far off. After I get through with burping him, he gives me this sleepy-eyed look. Sleepy but also alert, like the look of a captive animal. Who of us’ll be the first to break his stare? It’s enough to shake me to the core. Those pale little blue eyes, thin and also alert, nervous but know what they’re saying, not stammering but insisting, insisting on their questions. I can read them in his eyes. It’s as if he’s saying, asking me: What am I to you, old man? Are you all that I have left? And I can’t help but wonder whether a part of him will maybe remember this when he’s an old man too.
Next morning we went out alone, Baby Henry and me.
“I don’t guess you’re feeling much better,” I says, saying it from the looks of her.
“Take Henry with you when you go,” she says just long enough to fix me with that stare that means nothing but only one thing. “And turn the air down, would you.” Then she rolls back over, squeezes a pillow over her face.
I scratched my nose. Another night not sleeping a wink.
“Say what? You can’t bring no baby with you on no golf course. They got rules and regulations. And spend five hours in the boiling sun where—”
From underneath the pillow: “You only playing nine holes these days anyway, Claude!”
She’s got sharp eyes out, Donette. I swear I could have brought the fellow who invented the sport, as God as my witness, and Donette would have told him point-blank to his face he’d gotten it all wrong: “We’re playing it now with a bat and wiffleball,” and by golly he’d have to listen.
“You want what?” says the teller there at the clubhouse.
“The stroller, it’s got a cover that comes down,” I go, “see, so he won’t be hurt by no stray balls or burnt by too much sun. It ain’t my idea but you-can-guess-whose.”
And them old boys in the lounge there grinning and snickering.
“Your tee time’s in a quarter of an hour.” He hands me the receipt. “Feel free to have a beer while you wait or an apple juice.”
Sure enough, once we’re out on the course, we’re catching some funny looks.
“Y’all play through, play through,” I wave them, everybody, on. “I got to change me a dirty diaper. A bowl of old monkey sausage.”
“Are you improving your lie,” says a fellow, “or just making matters worse on yourself?”
“Hawdy haw haw. Y’all boys have a nice day.”
There was a time when I was close to hitting par. I even got invited to a few nice tournaments. I remember going out with these boys we were doing business with out to Pelican Point and hitting a hole-in-one onto the fifteenth green. Not an easy feat, if I do say so myself. And all them boys just standing around, slack-jawed. Then going and doing it again on the sixteenth. It was like I was Jesus walking on water. None of them boys could believe it, looked at me like I done that sort of thing every day of the week, like brushing my teeth. But golf ain’t no blink-of-an-eye game, and there was always some work to be done around the house, some errand to run with the girls, and I suppose it just made sense not sticking with it the way I might have wanted.
Lining up on the fourth fairway, I suddenly feel myself sort of besotted and let go the iron, finding myself sitting over it spraddle-legged. My left foot twitching and jerking. Ain’t nobody around to see or call the ambulance, which is lucky for me since it saves the whirlwind of trouble of explaining how to handle the kid and them working up Donette to take away my car keys and not liking herself to drive, but within about a minute I’m back up on my feet, only my left foot still is jerking, and of course a few minutes later I duff the shot.
When two years ago I had the accident the doctor prescribed a bottle of oxycodone to take the sting out of my leg. I saved me most of that bottle, and it was then at that point I told myself, If you ever know for a fact you’re going down the same road as him, if it’s ever there right as rain round the corner, you take these right away. Don’t you hesitate even a minute; nothing ain’t worth that. There ain’t no amount of days of living on this earth worth going through that kind of pain, and putting other folks through that kind of pain too. And they been hid in my drawer ever since.
“You taking him next to see the Dalí Museum?” says one fellow at the clubhouse. “Seems like you’re endowing him with rather sophisticated tastes from a young age.”
Back home Donette’s still laid up in bed and fiddling over her phone. Even in the dark I can see where the tears have stained the pillow.
“How you been with that migraine, boo? Looks like you been up and about.”
“I took me some Advil,” and now she rolls over under the covers, “but I’m still under the weather. I just prefer to keep here in the dark and you and Henry use the living room. Val and Jeff’ve been texting all day. She says they’re commencing to get heavy rains coming up toward Panama. They’re keeping a close eye on everything. They’re starting to close up the shops and stores.”
“Panama’s a long way over from Florida. Everyone can just cool it and hold their horses. The governor’ll send word it’s time to ev—”
“They ain’t in Florida, Claude; they’re in Costa Rica, don’t you remember? They’re on their honeymoon, Val and Jeff. And Val’s the one who’s wanting to stay; it’s Jeff’s the one who’s been texting me about all the trouble. Who you think we’re talking about? You gotta keep up with what’s going on.”
It is my firm belief that a fellow should always marry a gal who’s head and shoulders smarter than he is, that way he knows he’ll never be having to worry about having to worry about nothing.
We spent the rest of the evening not doing much different than usual, Donette fooling around on her phone and me scrubbing the dirt from off my shoes with a sheet of newspaper and during the news fixing myself a healthy proportion of honey buns. Ain’t no way I could get her down to the beach or even go for a walk, so I just fixed us a sandwich and let the TV jaw on until it was time for going to bed. If I had any dream it was a dream about being awake.
Next morning I put Henry into the car because I’m taking him to see the dolly museum.
“What like Dolly Parton?” says Donette, always skeptical.
“No, like GI Joe and figurines.”
“What you mean like baby dolls and Hummels? Precious Moment stuff sort of thing?”
“Some of them boys on the course recommended it to us yesterday when we were out horsing around.”
“I don’t think Jeff will approve of you making his boy into a sissy,” she goes, thumbing the screen on her phone, “but you go on and be my guest.”
“He ain’t no sissy so long as he stays with me.”
“Just don’t come back with no Barbie dolls, Claude. Jeff will not be amused.”
Turns out we was both wrong. There ain’t no dolls; there ain’t no tribute to the lady of “My Old Tennessee Home.” Turns out it’s all just a bunch of junk. Strange stuff in a building made of … very suggestive glass blobs. A sort of funhouse, I suppose, for uppity smart people, and bad paintings filled with melting clocks and deserts and half-naked ladies and oddball gizmos, strange stuff made by a mad man to make a man mad. Baby Henry didn’t care for it one bit. The only one I might hang up somewhere in my garage—and I’m not claiming it’s even worth paying money for—I’m talking like if maybe you gave it to me as a present—was this one they had a whole chorus of angels of and in the middle of them they got this fellow pulling a boat. That I can understand. I understand you got to bring a boat ashore. That idea makes sense. Everything else was just money flushed down the commode, but I reckon I’d be more steamed up if I’d been charged a second price of admission for Baby Henry, who they let come in for free.
“Boudreaux, isn’t it?” says the gal at the reception right as we’re coming in. The sparkle in her eyes making me wish I was running round, forty years ahead of the wind. “I was thinking this might be of interest.” She passes over a book and points with her bright red fingernail to a line there on the page.
“Am I supposed to know this?”
“That’s the guest book from ninety-three. I’ve been typing names onto a spreadsheet all morning, and I came across this entry. I remembered you saying you used to come here way back when. Right there,” she taps her nail. And sure enough unhidden there on the page is the handwriting of my wife’s cursive:
Dear Allen,
Thanks for the time of a life!
xxoo
Claude and Netty Boudreaux
“Think that might be y’all two?”
“That’s us all right.” I hand her back the guestbook. “There’s sure been a lot of water drawn under the bridge since that there writing was done.”
“I just thought you’d like to see.”
“Yup. Thank you, doll.”
Back in the condo, Donette’s changed out of her pj’s and done her hair and makeup and is lounging in front of the television, where she’s got the volume jacked to the max. The louder it is the more she can get all worked up about everything and the more what’s happening sounds all dramatic.
“Shut the door, Claude,” she says, sipping a ginger ale packed with ice cubes. “There’s a hurricane coming this way, and Jeff and Valencia are fixing to come over. Everything’s been evacuated. Everything’s under red alert.”
“Well then we gotta pack our bags and get a move on if—”
“No, a red alert in Costa Rica, Claude. Val and Jeff had to evacuate this morning, so they’re flying right now to Tampa. They should be in by three o’clock.”
“Why would—”
“Just hush and listen.”
She’s right. There’s a big old storm coming their way, already hit Panama and dumped a buttload of rain on the Caribbean, and they’re not sure where it’ll go or how far it will move up the Gulf, but already a dozen people have drowned and it’s looking like it’ll hang around Costa Rica for a period of several days, which means Val and Jeff are coming, getting clear out of her way. Which is just what in fact they do. Bags and luggage and everything. Fighting with the noise over the TV, Val and Donette, as to who can make the most of it. I told Donette we ought to spring for their own room, but she insisted we’d done enough, on camping us all together, with me on the trundle and her out on the couch and all of us sharing a bathroom and only one dresser. Baby Henry was happy to see his mama, but it didn’t take long for him to find himself something to cry about. Jeff has already settled himself a space on the far side of the couch.
“So how bout them Tigers?”
He’s always struck me as a good kid. Like somebody with friends. He started a job earlier this year fixing up his own concession stand out there on the lake that he’s hoping is going to expand. Lord, I’d tell him he’s likely to go off on one thing now as another, no better than a toddler bearing off a bucket of seashells.
“You got any money on Saturday’s homecoming game?”
He starts up from his phone.
“Oh you know me, Mr. Bou … Claude. I keep the irons in a few different fires.”
“Jeff said we could go to Paris next year so long as we use half our gifts to pay down some of his credit cards,” says Val.
“Claude, when we going to Paris? You know he ain’t ever talked to me about taking no trip to Paris. Jeff, you coming strong out the stalls, setting the bar up mighty fast, boy.”
Jeff casts up and nods and goes back to the stuff on his phone.
“Val, honey, how come—”
“Hey, what we eating for dinner?” says Val. “Ooo, I know! Let’s go out for ichiban! Jeff and I lately’ve been getting into ichiban. We just love us some Japanese.”
“Jeff, that right? You getting into Japanese?” says Donette.
“Oh, you know. It don’t make no difference to me, whatever winds up in my gut.”
“Somebody turn down the air,” says Val.
“It is turned down. All the way to the max.”
With everyone coming and going and opening all the doors, the condo is stuffy and hot.
I like to think God invented air conditions to keep women happy, but where exactly all her wants come from, where all those tastes and whims and needs, if it ain’t like looking at a high-watt light bulb sometimes: you can see the brightness; you can feel the heat; but you can’t look directly right at the filament … that is, unless, I suppose, you wear sunglasses.
Well, the next day they say twenty-four folks have perished in Costa Rica due to that storm, and now the weathermen’s not sure where it could be going to next—some think round Gulf Shores, others to around New Orleans, so that the lot of us figures the best course of action is just to stay right where we’re at and see what happens next. And everyone seems okay with that. Jeff has his seat staked out in the corner; Val and Donette are happy making all kinds of plans for Henry for when they get back and when he grows up that they don’t mind me bumming around, watching reruns of Moesha. They brought back a refrigerator magnet for Donette and tried bringing me a stash of Little Debbies, but all they had over there in the grocery store, says Val, was Hostess.
“Hey, Claude, wake up!”
I must have been fast asleep.
“Wake up, Claude! You was grinding your teeth again. I’m gonna make you an appointment when we get home with Dr. Gortzman. Maybe he’ll have something to say about you making them funny faces all the time.”
“Papaw’s been making funny faces?” says Val. Val’s bouncing the baby on her knee, making funny faces at him herself. “What kind of funny faces he been doing?”
“Oh, I’m just saying sometimes he goes like this, and sometimes he goes like that! Don’t you, Claude? Show them some of the funny faces you do.” And the three of them have a good laugh. “He says it’s only a little tic.”
“Mr. Bou … I mean Claude, you best not keep them faces up, especially if the winds change. My grandma always said, ‘You make funny faces when the wind change, your face’ll like to stick that way.’”
Sure enough they’re calling for that big storm to head for over the house. Both of us called out work, but it didn’t matter because no one’s going to work anyway if a category-two hurricane is passing right over town. The storm’s a good excuse to sit by and be with family. Even if the group of us has been cooped up longer than we’d want. I do have to say it’s nice just sitting around, being under one roof. Once the kids grow up it’s rare to have so much time together. Family becomes something different, feels sometimes like pretending, like a sort of make-believe of the past. But for the life of me I don’t know what to do with that little message: Thanks for the time of a life! Netty. Ain’t nobody calls her Netty no more except for me and rarely her sister, and she ain’t called herself that since, I believe, she was a twenty-four-year-old girl. It makes a man sit up and wonder, and if he ain’t careful he can allow himself to get somewhat suspicious, but I ain’t never found any of that to be all that helpful. But still a man can’t help but doubt. And you and all those other folks fixing to stay dead a long, long while. And then in all that thinking I can’t help but also recall some things forgot in the past, stuff I forgot from so long ago. For instance, one time we had this gal, this pretty little hen of a secretary working for us with a nice set of curled-up hair. I always thought she might have been giving me the goo-goo eyes, but I didn’t want to assume nothing. Then one day she up and tells me while I go running past, fanning herself:
“Mr. Claude, how come you got to be so darn handsome. You sure make it hard on a gal to get her work seen to.”
“Oh, my apologies, ma’am. My apologies.”
And cut my corn if some crazy ideas didn’t start popping into my head that I felt like a crazy man for not acting on them, running at full speed past her desk. I believe she got married not long after that, that gal, and I don’t guess I should’ve done different.
But that’s old news and long been over.
I believe that door is closed. I believe that ship’s done sailed.
