“Don't cry,” Chef Roland said. “Come get in the car. We're going out to Moissant to get my brother.”
Maurice was no more in the car than the argument began. Nora Jane was sitting in the back of the station wagon with the twins. Betty and Chef Roland and Maurice were in the front.
“Well, your buddies have certainly done it down in South America,” Chef Roland began. “I guess you're proud of that?”
“In what way?”
“You know goddamn well what way. In the birth control way. No solving it now. Let âem starve. Right, Maurice?”
“You think you can solve the problems of South America by killing babies.”
“Killing babies! Jesus, Maurice, you sound like a born-again Baptist. Killing babies, I'm hearing killing babies. Jesus, Betty, did you hear that?”
“I didn't see you killing any of yours,” Maurice said.
“Yeah, but I stopped having them.”
“I stopped having them,” Betty put in.
“We stopped having them. I didn't kill my wife. I didn't have a bunch of kids I couldn't feed or house. They're all born addicted now in Peru. Half of them are born addicted to cocaine. You call that Christianity, Maurice? You think that's what He wanted you to do?”
“Oh, Roland, don't do this to me. I've looked forward to this so much. I can't tell you how I've missed all of you.”
“You don't miss shit, Maurice. You guys sit up there and lay down edicts. You went to Rome last month, didn't you? Weren't you the personal envoy of the bishop? And what did you do? Did you speak up or did you get drunk and kiss ass?”
“Watch out,” Betty said. “You almost hit that car.”
“It's his brother?” Nora Jane asked the nearest twin.
“Yeah.” The twins giggled. “Isn't it wonderful?”
“Right here in New Orleans,” Chef Roland went on. “We got kids being born to thirteen-, fourteen-year-old girls. We got poor little girls with no homes having babies. You want me to kill you, Maurice? I'm thinking of killing people if it doesn't stop. The Church has to join the modern world. The Church has to help, not this anti-birth control crap. I've had it. I don't go anymore. We don't go, do we, Betty? We don't send the kids.”
“I'm so sorry,” Maurice said. “I can't tell you how that saddens me.”
“Are you going to spend the night?” Matthew asked Nora Jane. “Are you going to live with us now? You can have our room. We'll let her stay in our room, won't we, Mark?”
“Her grandmother just died,” Chef Roland explained to his brother. “She's got a bad situation at home.”
“It isn't bad,” Nora Jane spoke up. “My mother drinks because my dad died. It's not too bad. I just don't like it when she drinks. She quit for six weeks.”
“I'll go over there tonight,” Chef Roland said. “We'll get it straightened out. Meanwhile, you stay with us. There's plenty of room. You can have a room with Margaret Anne. You don't have to stay with them.” He swerved to avoid a city bus, turned onto Webster Street and resumed his argument. “Life is short, Maurice, the life of the planet may be short. We can't let people suffer. People suffer because of your bullshit. You're too smart to keep on buying all that crap. I'm ashamed of you. You had a good mind before the Jesuits got hold of you.”
“Oh, Roland, we need to have a long talk. I can't believe I find you so full of venom. Sadness and venom. What do you have to be sad about? We will go for a walk together. It has been so long since I've seen the park.”
“I go to the park all the time,” Nora Jane said. “I never miss a Saturday. There's a grove of trees that is sacred to Apollo. My grandmother knew the man who planted them.”
“She's Lydia Whittington's granddaughter,” Chef Roland explained. “Remember that time Momma took us to hear her sing?”
“I heard your grandmother sing Madame Butterfly,” Maurice said. “A long time ago when New Orleans was a center of the arts.”
“We have a boomerang,” Matthew said to Nora Jane. “We can go throw it in the park tomorrow. You want to throw our boomerang?”
“I don't know,” Nora Jane said. Her sadness had lessened in the presence of Chef Roland and his family. Her sadness was turning back into rage. She remembered the real world. She was Lydia Whittington's granddaughter. She had a reputation to maintain. “I better go on home and see about Momma,” she added.
“You stay with us,” Chef Roland said. He turned the station wagon into the driveway and parked by the old garage. The twins got out and took off running into the house, planning on getting in a few minutes of worthless trashy television before someone turned it off. Betty went to look for her son Martin, who was on the baseball team but didn't get to play very much. She was always thinking about him when a game was going on, praying that he got to play, wondering if anyone had called him Four Eyes or hated him for striking out.
“I think I'll go on home,” Nora Jane said, getting out. “Thanks for letting me go to the airport with you. It was nice to meet you, Father Maurice. I hope I'll see you again while you're here.”
“Let me go talk to her,” Chef Roland said. “Your mother likes me. I can talk to her.”
“She'll be okay. She'll be asleep by the time I get home. I'm okay. I'll call you if I need any help. Thanks again for letting me go with you. I had a nice time.” Nora Jane was moving away.
“Let me walk you home,” Father Maurice said. “Let me go home with you.”
“No, it's okay. I shouldn't have come over here. It's all right. It really is. I'll be okay.” She had gained the sidewalk now. The man looked after her, not knowing what to do, not knowing where the lines were drawn in the problem of Nora Jane.
“I'm okay,” she called back. “I really am.” She waved again and hurried off down Webster Street. I am okay, she decided. It's all inside of me, heaven and hell and everything. I don't have to pay any attention to her. All I have to do is go to school and wait to get out of here. I'll get out sooner or later. That's for sure. At least I don't have a bunch of brothers and sisters to argue with. Their house is as bad as Momma's is.
She stopped on the corner and looked down the long green tunnel of Henry Clay. Past the houses where the rich satisfied people lived. “I'll get rich someday,” she said out loud. “Whatever you want you get. Well, it's true.” I'll be leaving here before too long. I'll have a job and a boyfriend and the things I need. Remember what I read in that poem. “Oh, world, world, I cannot get thee close enough.” Remember that and forget the rest.
Love at the Center
A
N
INTERESTING story was developing down at the Washington Regional Medical Center for Exercise. The boy who runs the machines was falling in love with a black-haired nurse. Black-eyed and black-haired, olive-skinned, muscular, vivacious. She is in here every afternoon putting in forty-five minutes on the StairMaster, then working out on the weight machines. Most of the habitués are older people, recovering from heart surgery and strokes, overweight housewives, retired college professors, or the doctors from the hospital themselves, always running on tight schedules and looking at their watches and being beeped.
So it was a light and vibrant thing to have this flirtation going on. I'm one of the housewives, but I wasn't always this way. I used to be a reporter for the
Times-Picayune
in New Orleans. And a lesbian. Then I gave it up for a stockbroker and moved up here with him. It's okay. Sometimes I miss the city and my women friends. Then I drive down there and stay a few days and maybe get high and lie around someone's French Quarter apartment flirting with young women and feeling evil. Bobby doesn't care. He's not that sure of his sexual orientation either. You can bank on that. That's his favorite expression. You can bank on that.
Well, I'm fifty-four and my trips to the South happen less often. I'm into health. One hundred and forty pounds, five feet six. It looks better than it sounds. I have this muscular physique. I never appreciated it until I started working out with weights. You wouldn't believe how I muscle up.
Well, back to the love affair that was about to happen. It hadn't happened yet. Nothing had happened except that every time the nurse came in the door this beautiful young man would brighten up. Shine, beam, shimmer. It was spring in the Ozark Mountains and, except for the pollen in the air, it was paradise. Daffodils and black-eyed Susans, dogwood, violets, apple trees in bloom, all the dogs barking, mourning doves walking the yards in pairs, rainy afternoons and brilliant sunsets. Who wouldn't fall in love if they needed to?
Andy Buchanan was the boy's name and he wasn't a boy. He must have been at least twenty-five. The black-haired nurse was named Athena, if you can believe that. Athena Magni. On the day things heated up I was on a treadmill at the back of the room. There are three treadmills in a row facing a large window that looks out on the street and two more in the back of the room. Usually I get one by the window and watch people coming in and wave at children who stop and look into the center as if they had never seen old people exercising before. But this day the treadmills by the window were taken and I was on one of the ones at the back.
The retired head of the English Department was on the one beside me. We were discussingJohn Fowles when I saw Athena come in and sign in on the sign-in sheet. Andy came out of the office and stood beside her, very close in the narrow space between the sign-in desk and the office door. His face was lit from within. She laughed and tossed her coal-black hair and then she went into the dressing room to change into her leotards. Andy stood smiling after her. I turned and met the English teacher's eyes and we started giggling. He is sixty-seven years old and he only has one leg. We got to laughing so hard his good leg almost slipped off the moving belt. He had to grab the handrails to keep from falling.
“Hero and Leander?”
“Romeo and Juliet. With a name like that she's Greek or Italian. If he's Baptist and she's a Roman Catholic, we've got problems.”
“Come live with me and be my love.”
“But at my back I always hear time's winged chariot drawing near, et cetera. What role do you want?”
“The chorus, or the soldiers on the watchtower.” He moved the good leg to a new position and slowed the treadmill down. His name is Doctor Wheeler and he always exercises in his coat and tie, which completely cheers me up even on the bleakest day.
A few minutes later Athena came out and climbed on a StairMaster. As soon as she was sweating, Andy walked over and handed her a cup of water. They weren't four feet away. I could hear every word they were saying.
“You haven't been in lately,” he said. “Where have you been?”
“My married sister was in town. She lives in Little Rock.”
“I dreamed about you last night.”
“You did? What did you dream?”
“I was going along a line of girls and talking to each one. You were at the end.”
“At the end?”
“Yeah.”
“What did I say?”
“You just held out your hands. Like you wanted to be friends.”
“No one ever dreamed about me before.”
“I bet they did.”
“They didn't tell me.”
Long, long pause. Doctor Wheeler coughed, then coughed again. I didn't look at him.
“I'm trying to get up to forty-five minutes at level six.”
“That's too high. Do it longer at a slower speed.”
“Longer than forty-five minutes?”
“No, that's plenty long. You ought to try the new Exercycle. It's a real workout.”
“This is all I have time for. I don't have time for this.”
“You been busy at the hospital?”
“Have we ever. You know night before last when the moon was so full?”
“It was beautiful, wasn't it?”
“It was the closest the moon has been to the earth in a hundred years. We had twenty-one babies born that night. We had to put beds in the hall and the surgical ward. The whole place was crazy. It was the strangest thing. All afternoon we barely had a patient. There was one girl in labor. Then, about five-thirty, they started coming in. We had interns delivering babies. You should have seen it when it was through. There were twenty-one babies in the nursery. People were taking pictures of it. There was a story in the paper. Did you read it?”
“No. I'm sorry I missed that.”
“I'll bring you mine and let you see it. God, this is getting harder.” She was pumping her legs up and down. Her black hair was flying. Her black eyes were flashing. Andy stood beside her holding the cup of water. She reached down and took the cup and drank from it. She smiled a smile to light up heaven. I turned to look at Doctor Wheeler. He was shaking his head, his good foot moving on the treadmill, his artificial foot resting on the side. “I have a friend whose daddy is eighty-eight years old,” I said. “He's going out with a girl who's thirty-seven. You tell me what is going on in the world and I'll stop being mean. I'll never have another vindictive thought. I'll be for letting the Haitians in. You name it.”
“Vast metaphors all around. Fields being sewn. Lilies springing up. Fin de siècle. End of a world. Or else, it's all just funny.”
“It's funny all right. It's hilarious.”
“What do you do when you aren't in here, Virginia? If I might ask.”
“Nothing. I'm married to a broker at Merrill Lynch.”
“I'm explicating the cantos.” He laughed again and got down off the treadmill and straightened up his tie. Then he went off to the dressing room.
Two weeks went by and Athena didn't return to the center. Andy was asking about her. He asked me several times. “Why don't you call and ask her where she is?” I suggested.
“Oh, I couldn't do that. I don't know her number.”