The House on Coliseum Street Read online

  She jumped in her chair, as if somebody had touched her, and looked very guilty.

  Aurelie chuckled. Lay back her large head and laughed aloud, a robust laugh that clashed sharply with her tinkling speech.

  Joan blushed, feeling very silly. “I’ve been alone a lot this summer,” she said, “and I suppose I got in the habit of talking to myself.”

  “We were just teasing,” Fred said.

  “My dear, you looked so silly,” Aurelie said.

  Then Joan was furious with herself for trying to explain. It’s none of their business, she said fiercely and silently. And I don’t have to explain anything at all. Not one thing.

  She stood up and this time she said aloud: “I suppose I am tired. I really should lie down awhile.”

  She was at the door before she realized that Fred was talking to her. “What?”

  “I thought we were going to dinner—or would you rather not?”

  Why so patient? Why was he always so kind?

  “Mother will go with you,” Joan said, deliberately using a word Aurelie disliked. “I’m fine right here.”

  Fred shrugged. (How Cajun he looks when he does that, Joan thought.) “I had hoped …”

  “Silly boy,” Joan said, “Mother would love to go. And I promise not to be a bit jealous.”

  She turned up the stairs, grabbing the little train case as she went, hurrying so she would not be tempted to look at Aurelie’s face.

  HER ROOM HAD NOT changed. The same mahogany furniture with the cracked dull finish, the result of years of careful oiling and long hot summers. The windows were closed, the whole bank of windows that faced east and dribbled light into her eyes every single morning of the world. Of her world.

  Nice old room, she found herself thinking. But that wasn’t possible. Ever since she was little she had wanted to get away. And the times she had actually been away—at camp or on a holiday—she had not missed it at all. Now, as she went about opening the windows and opening the screens and blowing the accumulation of gnats and moths out of the window sill, and shaking a faint film of dust off the organdy curtains, there was an ache in her chest that was an actual pain.

  How funny, she thought. How very funny.

  She turned back the covers on the bed and sniffed the musty odor of the sheets. No one had changed them. The room wasn’t touched.

  She slipped off her dress and loosened her bra and stretched out on the bed.

  She listened to the late afternoon sounds, sounds she had been hearing ever since she was an infant. The yelling of children playing Devil on the Banquette in the shade of the thick old camphor trees across the street… They said the trees were planted as a protection against fever, that if you had a camphor tree outside your house and wore some of the aromatic berries in a little cloth bag around your neck along with a little voodoo skin bag, you didn’t get yellow fever. But just in case you did, you planted a sweet olive tree by the front gate. So that people coming in for funerals could break off a sprig of the waxy heavy sweet flowers—the tree was always in bloom—and carry it into the parlor where the corpse was… It must have come in handy on the long hot summer days, she thought… The sweet olive by the front gate of the house on Coliseum Street was enormous, and it must have been very old because it grew so very slowly. Dead man’s bush. Aurelie hated it, but she didn’t do anything about it.

  I’d hire me a couple of Negroes with an ax and a saw, Joan thought, and get it cut down. None of this waiting around and putting off and sitting back and saying you’re going to do something. Me, I’d go right ahead and get it done.

  Even as she said that to herself, she didn’t believe it. The slow windless dusk was getting to her, seeping in until the sharp decisive lines were gone, and nothing was really too important.

  She got up and took off her slip and bra and panties and lay down naked and felt the soft warmth all around her, the air that was heavy and thick and soft as water. The children stopped playing and went home to rest before supper. An old-clothes man passed by with his wagon and clanking bell that shook out flat sounds into the evening.

  I shouldn’t have come back. I should have found a way to go off somewhere. But I didn’t. I wonder why I didn’t.

  I’m back and caught just where I was four months ago. Where I said I wouldn’t ever be again. I came back, I came back. Whatever happens, I did it.

  Something else came out of the soft bright dusk, a lonesome twitching that wasn’t so much physical as it was emotional.

  And it’s worse. Because I didn’t love Michael then, but I love him now. And how did that happen? I didn’t love him last June. Not even the day we went hunting for the stuffed owls. …

  Last June. That was when it started. Way back. Four months ago. On a close hot morning last June.

  I. JUNE

  COLISEUM STREET WAS QUIET. There was no traffic, there never was. The houses always looked closed and deserted, their galleries dusty and empty. No one ever walked by. The sidewalks—the banquettes, people on Coliseum Street still called them—had been cracked and broken by the roots of the oaks and camphors and magnolias that shaded the street and turned its surface into a slippery sludge when it rained. Only occasionally a wino or a mainliner would come stumbling along, straying from the slums a dozen blocks or so away, over by the levees that guarded the river. And then, routinely, one of the householders would telephone the police.

  The police came quickly too, not because the people along the street had very much money (they didn’t; the houses were slightly shabby and always a couple of seasons behind in their paint) but because they were persistent and noisy and had large families of cousins and aunts and uncles who were vaguely connected with the city government. And because generations past, the owners of the houses had been rich. The memory of wealth is still a kind of power in New Orleans.

  That particular morning, a Tuesday, the second of June, one of the strays entered the street. He stood for awhile at the corner, squinting into the leafy corridor. He moved down into it for half a block, stopping again to squint up at the trees, taking off his old felt hat and wiping his face with it.

  The street closed up on itself, like a doodlebug rolling into a ball. The houseboy who had been hosing down the front walk at the Forstalls left his hose, pausing only to turn off the water, and disappeared around the back. The Edwards’ maid, a tall skinny black woman who had spent most of the morning sweeping and cleaning the front porch so that she could see who was entertaining for lunch, flicked back into the door with only a switch of her yellow uniform. A nurse came and got the Villere girl who was playing in her swing in the side yard of the corner house. She yanked her out of the swing without a word and carried her off screaming and kicking.

  All down the street the windows that looked out on the front porches (the windows that were nearly always kept open for a cross breeze) were closing. There was a little flutter all along Coliseum Street, as if a wind was blowing. But of course it wasn’t. There was never a wind in the middle of a June morning.

  The man had put his hat back on his head now, and he moved along. The uneven sidewalks with their sharp angles seemed to bother him. He stumbled and swayed once and steadied himself with a hand to the trunk of an oak tree. He went a bit farther, then fell over the broken pavement. He did not seem to try to get up.

  He was then directly in front of the Caillet house. His outflung hand was a few inches away from the wrought-iron pillar that supported the iron gate.

  Inside the house, people were watching. No one had told them to, no one had to. They had simply happened to look out.

  Joan Mitchell stood in the upstairs front hall—she had opened one of the shutters—and watched. She squinted and craned her neck forward. It was very hard to see from this angle. Through the twisting crooked limbs of the camphor tree, the figure seemed putty colored, seemed to fade into the concrete walk.

  The still sunny minutes passed. You could almost hear them clacking by like a metronome. Mockingbirds in
the big oak began to screech and fight.

  “For heaven’s sake, child!”

  Joan jumped and turned guiltily. Her mother had come up behind her.

  “Close the window, you silly child!” Aurelie was wearing a robe of silky purple-flowered print. She never got dressed before ten. “Close the window, child,” she repeated. “Don’t be so silly.”

  “Not way up here.”

  “Honestly, there are times when I just don’t know what to think of you.”

  “I’m twenty feet up,” Joan said.

  “Really, now …”

  “I was listening. He was saying something.”

  “Don’t listen to him.”

  “I think he’s saying water. Or something like that.”

  Aurelie folded her arms. It was a gesture she used only when she was extremely angry. “My dear girl,” she said, “if you would stop being such an obstinate silly little ass, you would not resemble your father so much.”

  Joan shrugged and went back to her watching.

  “As a man,” Aurelie said, “he was entitled to do silly things if he wished. Perhaps.”

  Her arm reached around Joan and closed the window.

  “Behave like six, get treated like six.” The arms folded. “I’ll stay right here until the police come.”

  “What do you suppose they do with them?” Joan asked.

  “How on earth should I know?”

  “You hear about the way they handle them.”

  “Don’t be such a silly child.”

  Joan pushed her nose against the shirred curtain that covered the glass and tried to see. But the glass in the window was old and wavy and the image was distorted beyond recognition. Still, with her mother there, she had to stay. They waited in silence, Joan breathing in the softly fragrant dust of the cloth. It seemed a very, very long time.

  When the police had gone, and the windows all along Coliseum Street had opened up again, Joan went out the front door and looked down at the broken spot of banquette where the man had been. She almost expected to find something. A shadow left behind. But there was nothing. Only the greyish cement with its pebbly underside showing through the widest cracks. She stood awhile, waiting. But nothing happened. The Villere girl twisted the swing up tightly, then sat and whirled with it, was dizzy, and vomited in the dusty azalea bed.

  He called that same morning. Joan did not recognize his voice. “It’s Michael Kern,” he said.

  “Oh,” she said, “oh goodness yes.” She had seen him only a half dozen times, the last when he had come to the house on Coliseum Street to date her sister Doris, who at eighteen was not quite two years younger.

  “Will you go out with me tonight?” he asked abruptly.

  “I’m not Doris,” she said. “She’s gone out somewhere.”

  “To hell with Doris,” he said. “I’m asking you if you have a date tonight.”

  It was Tuesday and Fred Aleman, her steady, always went to the Athletic Club to play handball on Tuesday nights. So he would not be coming by.

  “Don’t get angry,” he said, “I just thought that when I met you at your house, I just thought you might want to go out with me.”

  It wasn’t much of an invitation, Joan thought. It wasn’t anything of an invitation.

  She still hadn’t said anything. “Well,” he said finally, puzzled by the silence, “you can’t shoot a man for trying. And if you weren’t doing anything I thought it might be fun to go out to the lake for crabs and beer.”

  “The lake?”

  “You don’t expect the Blue Room on my salary?”

  “No,” she said, “no, of course not.” Talk about money always embarrassed her.

  He laughed. “I guess the whole thing does sound kind of funny.”

  She would read that evening, on the back porch, and watch mosquitoes bump and buzz into the screen, and watch the big moths that came out every night for the moonflowers. If she got tired of that she could walk over to St. Charles Avenue and catch a streetcar and ride around the belt, making a big circle and getting off at her own stop forty minutes later. (It never occurred to her to call up any of the girls she knew—she did not particularly like them. She had never been too popular with men since Fred was so obviously courting her, she got almost no calls for dates any more.)

  “As a matter of fact,” she said, “I’m not busy tonight.”

  She went straight from the phone to the bathroom and got out the special shampoo with the extra nice scent, the one she had been saving for the past two months. She rinsed her hair with vinegar to bring out the red lights, then shampooed and set it very carefully. She went out in the back yard and sat in the sun to wait for it to dry.

  She had been there an hour or so when her half-sister Doris came out. Joan shut her eyes and pretended she was asleep.

  Doris came over and stood in front of her. “Come on. Quit pretending.”

  Joan opened her eyes and yawned. “I didn’t hear you.”

  “The hell you didn’t.”

  Doris was wearing a sweat-stained T shirt and a pair of dirty white shorts. They were as short as were allowed on the courts at Audubon Park.

  She was taller than Joan and more slightly built. (They looked a good deal alike—more like full sisters than half-sisters—but then all the girls of the family favored their mother.) Joan was pretty in a conventional way: brown hair, blue eyes, fair skin that freckled in the sun. Doris was beautiful. She was blond, her short cropped hair bleached whitish by the sun and an occasional application of peroxide. Her face was rounder than her half-sister’s, she had a cleft chin, and her nose was a smaller version of the sharp pinched Creole beak of her mother and sister.

  She did not bother with make-up or lipstick in the mornings. Her tanned skin gleamed with sweat; it was flawless, not a blemish or a mark. Her eyes were heavily lashed and naturally shadowed. They were great lustrous brown eyes—just about the only things she had from her father, Raul Bringier. He had been a very handsome Cuban, and he had left Aurelie one day, saying simply that he was tired of speaking English all the time.

  Joan thought with a twinge: she’s golden and shiny, like a Christmas tree ornament.

  “Come off it, old duck,” Doris said.

  “Make sense, will you.”

  “I hear you’re going out with the great Michael Kern.”

  “He called,” Joan said. “How did you know?”

  “A little bird.”

  “Aurelie?”

  “Sure.”

  She often listened on the upstairs extension. Joan had complained and screamed and ranted, but Aurelie had paid no attention. “It’s an old habit, dear,” she said simply. “From the time when I was married to Doris’s father. I couldn’t possibly get over it at my age now.”

  “She shouldn’t have told you.”

  “Maybe she doesn’t like date-stealers either.”

  “But he said he wasn’t going with you any more,” Joan lied. “He said you had a fight.”

  “I wouldn’t be caught dead with that bastard.”

  “So what’s the fuss?”

  “Why do you think he called you?” Doris said. “Why the hell do you think he did that?”

  Joan polished her nails with a calmness she did not feel. “Why does anybody call anybody?”

  “He’s doing it to show me,” Doris said. “He wouldn’t even look at you otherwise.”

  “Honestly,” Joan said.

  “You sneaky little bitch …” Doris’s dark eyes slanted down. “If you wanted him you wouldn’t get him.”

  “Don’t be so dramatic, little sister.”

  For one moment she thought Doris would swing at her with the tennis racket she held in her left hand. But that moment passed, and Doris only gave a short vicious chop at a wasp that was drowsing on the top of the waxy white butterfly lilies. Then she stamped into the house.

  HE WAS ON TIME, almost to the minute. Joan was standing at the head of the stairs—she had been standing there motionles
s for at least five minutes—waiting for the bell. She went down slowly, setting her feet firmly, telling herself not to hurry or be flustered. And as she went, she realized that she didn’t really remember what he looked like.

  And if I don’t even recognize him … I’ll just die, she thought. That’s all there is to it.

  She stopped dead still on the bottom step. Her knees felt strange and she sat down.

  And I just ironed the dress…

  The doorbell rang again. She got up and walked toward the door, her glance trailing along the floor. She noticed that where the polished boards met the wall there was a little layer of fluffy dust. Aurelie would have a fit if she saw that, she thought. It’s strange that she didn’t. She must be getting old…

  She recognized him at once. She would have known him anywhere. He was tall, but not very, and slight and small boned. He had black hair and fair skin and a very pronounced bluish beardline.

  “Hi,” she said, “you’re the promptest man I’ve ever known.”

  “Can’t help that.”

  “Come on in.”

  He hesitated, his hand on the door. “Why don’t we go right on?”

  Is it Doris he’s thinking of? she wondered. Because he doesn’t want to meet her? Or because he does and is afraid to?

  But she only said: “I left my purse upstairs. I’ll get it and be right back.”

  She went as quickly as she could in her heels on the polished floors. She gave her nose one dab with a puff, checked to be sure there was no lipstick on her teeth, then clattered down again.

  He was stubbing out a cigarette in a standing pot of maidenhair fern.

  He saw her glance. “The nicotine’s good for them—I hope.”

  “I’m sure it is.”

  He had a Ford convertible, a few years old. “You want the top up?”

  “No,” she said, though she would have preferred it.

  “That makes you a most unusual gal,” he said, grinning. “Most would be screaming for it up before they stepped out of the house.”

  “I can comb my hair.”