A neighbor found them. She had heard the music and begun to worry. April is the cruellest month, the neighbor said to herself, for she was an English teacher. Breeding lilacs out of the dead land.
“Oh, honey,” the neighbor said, holding the weeping child. “I'm so sorry. So very sorry.”
“I can't live with my mother,” Nora Jane said. “I can't do it. Where will I live?”
“Maybe you can,” the neighbor said. “We all have to do things we don't want to do.” She tried to lift the child, to make her stand up.
Nora Jane lay back down upon her grandmother's body. The sirens were making their way down Henry Clay. The noise of the sirens filled the air.
Later that afternoon they came to take the body away. Two men in a station wagon wrapped the grandmother's body in a sheet of canvas and carried her out of the living room and down the stairs and put her into the back of a wood-paneled Oldsmobile station wagon and drove off down Henry Clay as if they were going to a ball game. So that's it, Nora Jane thought, pulling a morning glory pod off the vine and tearing it to pieces with her fingers. That's all there is to it, just like I knew it would be. She's gone and this will be gone too.
She tore some more buds off the vine and squeezed them in her hand and wouldn't let anyone talk to her and went out into the backyard and stood by the mirliton arbor wondering what part of the opera was playing when her grandmother died. I could go in there and find the record and put it on but they probably wouldn't let me, she thought. She climbed the stile that led over her grandmother's back fence into Mr. Edison Angelo's yard and went out that way and over to the Loyola University library and checked out the phonograph record and went into a booth to play it for herself. It was a very old and scratchy record from the collection of Mr. Irvine Isaacs, Junior. Leontyne Price with the Rome Opera House Orchestra under the direction of Oliviero Fabritiis, the same recording Nora Jane had learned to sing the opera from. She sat in the booth and sang the opera with Miss Price and cried as she sang. Nora Jane had inherited her grandmother's voice. People acted so funny when they heard her voice that Nora Jane had decided long ago to keep it to herself. It was a promise she managed to keep most of her life. For almost all of her life she only sang to people she loved or people she wanted to solace or amuse. For nearly all the years of her life she managed to keep her voice to herself.
II
Of course, now everything had to change. After the funeral, after the grievers and the mourners were gone, after the sisters left and her mother was still sober, had been sober for four days, had sworn to Sister Katherine to stop drinking if she wanted Nora Jane to stay. Had settled for a bottle of pills instead, had agreed to put away the bottle if she could have the pills and was in her bedroom now, like a zombie against her pillows with the radio on low, playing jazz. After all of that Nora Jane looked around the house to see what she could do. I could clean it up, she decided. I could call that damn Francine and make her get over here. Nora Jane searched in her mother's address book, found the number and got Francine on the phone.
“I'm sorry about your grandmother,” Francine began. “The Lord gives and the Lord taketh away.”
“Forget that, Francine. I need you to come and help me clean this place up. I can't live in this mess. Bring your husband's truck. We're going to throw some things away.”
“Right now?”
“Right now. I will pay you three dollars an hour if you bring the truck. Can you come? I'll get somebody else if you won't.” Nora Jane sniffed, waited, began to get mad. If there was anybody who made her madder than her mother, it was Francine. “I don't care if you do or not. Say if you will.”
“I'll be there. Soon as I can get on a uniform.”
“Bring the truck.”
“If I can get hold of Norris.”
By the time Francine got there Nora Jane had emptied the kitchen cabinets of rotten potatoes and empty bottles and half damp grocery sacks. She had filled the grocery sacks with broken cups and half-used boxes of cereal. She had reamed out the kitchen of her mother's house. And called the Orkin man. “I have money to pay you with,” she told him. “If you come right now and spray us with everything you've got.”
By the time her mother woke up the dining room rug was on the truck and a broken chair and stacks of magazines. The living room rug was rolled up on the porch to go to the cleaners and Francine was mopping the wooden floors with Spic and Span. “What's going on?” her mother asked, coming out into the living room, still wearing the dress she had worn to the funeral. “What's going on? My God, Francine, what are you doing?”
“We're cleaning up this house,” Nora Jane said. “Go back to sleep. I won't live in a pigpen. The Orkin people are coming in a minute.”
“Where's the rug?”
“We're throwing the dining-room rug away. I won't live in a house with a rug like that. And this one's going to the cleaners. Francine's going to take it on the truck.”
Nora Jane's mother sat down in a chair. Her little navy blue and white print dress hung in waves around her legs, her collar was awry. The Valium was in charge. She was powerless in the face of Nora Jane's rage. Powerless in the face of anything. She pulled her legs up onto the chair. “Am I in the way?” she asked. “Do you mind if I sit here?”
Â
Later, in the late afternoon, after Nora Jane had paid Francine her wages and the kitchen and dining room and Nora Jane's bedroom had been cleaned to her satisfaction and the Orkin man had come and sprayed so much Diazinon and Maxforce and Orthene around the house that even with the windows open it was hard to breathe, Nora Jane and her mother dressed in cotton dresses and walked down the street to eat oyster loaves for supper at Narcisse Marsoudet. “It looks wonderful,” her mother said. “I can't believe you did all that in one day. I can't believe she's gone. Now you are the only one, Nora Jane. The last of the Whittingtons.”
“Don't talk about it,” Nora Jane said. “I don't want to think about it anymore.”
“I'm not going to drink, my darling honey. I'm going tomorrow to the meetings that they have. I won't ever drink again, you can depend on that.”
“I want to get an air conditioner,” Nora Jane said. “Mr. Biggs said there would be enough money when they sold her house. They said I could have enough for anything I'd need. And a new refrigerator. I can't stand to have that old thing anymore.” They passed Perlis' Department Store and turned down Magazine to the café.
“I won't drink anymore, honey. You can depend on that.” Her mother caught sight of herself in the store window. How pale she seemed, how slight beside her striding daughter. It seemed impossible, the day, the world, the store window and its terrible reflection. The huge old liveoak tree beside them and its roots. Her terrible mean teenage daughter, the death of Lydia and the sisters saying terrible things to her, the gaping hole in the earth and Lydia lowered into it, only six, seven, eight hours before, her dining room rug from Persia thrown away and nothing to take its place, poison everywhere.
“You might not,” Nora Jane said, continuing to look straight ahead. “I'll believe it when I see it.”
No sooner were they in the restaurant than it began. A white-coated waiter with a towel over his arm came to take their orders. “I'd like a Seven-Up,” Nora Jane said. “And a glass of water.”
“A glass of white wine,” her mother added. “A Chablis. But anything will do. Your house wine will be fine.”
“Just a glass. One little glass.” She looked at Nora Jane. “One little glass with dinner.”
“No, you don't,” Nora Jane said. “Don't do this to me.”
“Would you like a little while?” the waiter asked. He stepped back. He'd been through this plenty of times before and he wasn't in the mood to go through it again. My God, between a mother and a child. This girl doing it to her mother. What little beasts they were. The waiter knew he would never do that to himself. Load himself down with parasites, little beasts and bitches like this frowning child. Jesus, the waiter thought. I can't believe people do that to themselves.
“Just bring our drinks,” the mother said. “We'll order later.”
“I won't order,” Nora Jane said. “I won't stay here and watch you get drunk. I'm leaving.”
“It's only one drink. Only a glass of wine.”
“No. I won't stay.” Nora Jane got up, pushed her chair back into the table. The waiter backed up further. Nora Jane picked up a handful of crackers from the table and put them in her pocket. She was furious and she was starving. She had been so busy cleaning up the house she had forgotten to eat. She took a second handful of crackers and turned to leave.
“Don't you do this,” her mother said, and rose to her feet. “If you do this you will be sorry. I won't put up with this.” The waiter came back with a tray, took the glass of wine and set it before her. Put the Seven-Up at Nora Jane's empty place. Nora Jane picked it up, drank it greedily, put the glass back down.
“Sit down,” her mother said. “I order you to sit back down.” Nora Jane turned and walked out of the restaurant.
“Have your wine?” the waiter said. “I don't know where they come from, these modern kids. I mean, who do they think they are, anyway? Drink your wine and I'll get a menu. You go on and enjoy your dinner and don't worry about her.”
He had noticed the nice diamonds on Mrs. Whittington's hands, the nice legs, the scared gentle face. Probably a lonely divorcee. He might end up with a really big tip if he played his cards right. He leaned over the mother and straightened her silverware. “I'll get you more crackers,” he said. “Don't worry about the kid. They all act like that nowadays.”
Six blocks away Chef Roland was making crawfish étouffée. His brother Maurice was coming that afternoon. Maurice who had given his life to God. “He knows nothing of the real world,” Chef Roland said. His wife Betty was listening, leaning against the sink drinking coffee and watching her husband cook. She loved to watch him cook, loved to be in bed with him on top of her, she loved him. Anything he believed she tried to believe, anything he said she agreed with. They had a happy marriage. No one believed it, but it was true. Roland and Betty Dupre had a happy marriage and had always had. At night they got into the bed and touched each other from head to toe and cuddled up like bears. In the daytime they worried about their children and cooked and ate. It was a good life, a happy life and neither of them were ever sick.
“Martin's gone to his baseball game,” Betty said. “I hope they win.”
“They'll win, or they will not. Life is hard, Betty, don't let them forget that.”
“If you say so.”
“Maurice doesn't know it. How could he. He never pays taxes. He doesn't have to watch the world going to pot around him, he doesn't see the wholesale prices I'm paying for fish this week. What does Maurice know? He doesn't know the real world. He's lost touch with reality.”
“When does he get here?”
“His plane gets in at seven-forty. We'll take the twins and go.”
“What about Martin?”
“Leave the food on the stove. He'll get home.”
“Can I taste it?”
“Sure you can. Come over here.” She put the coffeecup down and went to stand beside him at the stove. He held out a spoon, blew on it to cool it down. Waited. She raised her lips to the spoon, tasted, almost swooned. It was perfect. Anything Roland did was perfect. He was a perfect man, the best chef in all New Orleans and he still found time to cook a meal for his family. “Oh, oh,” Betty said. “Oh, oh, oh.”
Chef Roland pushed the pot to the back of the stove, turned off the burner, and took his wife in his arms, ran his hands up and down her back, caressed her. He was still caressing her when the twins came in, two boys as alike as blossoms on a stem, Matthew and Mark, they were eleven years old, awkward and gangly and tall for their age, very funny, very skinny, very crazy and brave. They rode trick bicycles around the neighborhood, put the seats of the bikes on stilts, built ramps and ran the bicycles off of them. They were always getting cuts, breaking bones, having to be hurried to the emergency room. Roland and Betty adored them, thought they were wonderful.
“It's time to go to the airport,” the twins said, coming in and beginning to eat homemade cake, cutting slices and eating it with their fingers as their parents embraced. “We better go or we'll be late. Martin's not going is he? He's at a game.”
“Come along then.” Chef Roland released his wife and removed his apron. He doted a moment upon his identical gangly sons. Largess, the great bounty of the earth which had supplied him with a life of adventure and good work and a gentle wife and three daughters and four sons. “Get a fork,” he said. “What will people think if they see you eating with your fingers?”
“There's no one here,” the twins said, and laughed their secret identical laugh.
“You're right.” Chef Roland gathered his family and began to march out through the rooms of his huge Victorian house, past the dining room with its beautiful unbleached domestic drapes his wife had made to save him money, down the hall past the polished stairs, into the parlor and out of the double doors with the broken lock.
Nora Jane was coming up the sidewalk, tears running down her face and her fists clenched in rage. “Can I stay with you?” she asked. “Momma's drinking wine. She's at the restaurant drinking wine so I left. I'm never going back.”
The family curled around her. Chef Roland took her into his arms, the twins patted her. She was their baby-sitter when their sister was away at school.
“Don't cry,” they all said. “You can stay. Come on, we're going to the airport to get Father Maurice. You want to go with us to the airport? There's room. There's lots of room.”