The House on Coliseum Street Read online

  They drove through the heavy evening traffic until they got to the narrow bumpy road that led to the lake. He was very quiet; he seemed to be concentrating on his driving. As they were passing along the lake canal with its little protecting levees, she said finally, for want of anything else: “My grandfather built that.”

  He turned and looked at her. “Built what?”

  “The canal.”

  “I thought soldiers built it during the Civil War.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Are you?”

  The talk seemed so stupid to her suddenly that she wished she had kept quiet. “It’s just a story they tell in my family,” she said flatly. “That’s all.”

  It was called Ruby’s Place and it was built the way all Pontchartrain fishing camps were built—perched on thin tarred stilts over the shallow lake. A narrow white painted gangway led to the main building some hundred feet offshore. Joan and Michael walked along it slowly, squinting in the glare, listening to the steady gentle sucking of water beneath them, noticing how the creosoted pilings left thick layers of tar smell hanging in the air.

  The camp was simply a platform with a roof, wrapped around with screening. It held a single large room, filled with tables; the walls of a small kitchen cut across one corner. The floor boards banged and creaked uncertainly under their steps as they crossed to the west side to see the beginning of sunset.

  “It’s going to be a lovely one,” Joan said.

  From this side of the camp another walk (without railings this time and just three boards wide) extended another hundred feet into the lake to a second platform set just above the water. This one was unscreened and empty, except for a clutter of wooden chairs and a few tables.

  “Oh, let’s see out there,” Joan said.

  There was a strong fish odor to the platform, and the unpainted wood had been bleached and grained and warped by the sun.

  “It’s a swell place to catch crabs,” Michael said. “Or neck.”

  “What would people do without the lake,” she mocked gaily. He smiled back at her and she saw that this time she had got just exactly the right tone in her voice.

  So that’s how it’s done, she thought; well, I can do that as well as anyone else. And his eyes crinkle up when he smiles.

  “It would be easy to go in,” she said.

  “It’s happened.”

  “To you?”

  “Yes,” he said. “I fell in once.”

  “What on earth were you doing?”

  “Little lady,” he said, “don’t you go prying into my secret life.”

  She shrugged with elaborate carelessness. “Okay, man of mystery, buy me a beer.”

  They went back the narrow walk into the restaurant. Joan looked down at her feet following one another along the splintered boards. I could fall in too, she thought, but I won’t let myself.

  The room was almost empty. Only one group—three couples—sat laughing at a corner table. A shirt-sleeved waiter was tearing yesterday’s date from the calendar that hung on the kitchen wall.

  Michael steered her to the farthest table, one on the lake side, right at the edge. There was no railing there at all. The screen was simply tacked under the floor. They could look down directly into the muddy shivering water.

  “Makes you think you’re sitting right in it,” Joan said. “Doesn’t it?”

  They had a beer or two and looked out across the empty expanse of lake. Once a boy went past in a battered skiff with a sputtering outboard on the stern. The ripples from his wake slapped against the pilings, briefly.

  The sun went down in a yellow haze. “They must be burning prairie,” she said.

  “How can you tell?”

  “Just looks like it.”

  The water turned a deep dusty orange. The camp was a growing black shadow on the little smooth waves. They pressed their noses against the screen, watching it lengthen and shift.

  “I guess you know a lot about the city,” he said.

  “No, I don’t.”

  “You’re from here.”

  “Oh sure.”

  “Then you know… Will you show me around some day?”

  She felt a pleasurable jolt. “It would be fun.”

  “We’ll do it.”

  The crabs came, red from boiling and brown-streaked with the seasoning spices and heaped on a chipped black Falstaff-beer tray. He pulled one out, flipped it over, brushed off the bits of ice and handed it to her.

  “Here,” he said. “A present.”

  “Thanks.”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Is it special?”

  “It’s a female.”

  She wondered if that was a joke of some sort. But she only said, “They taste alike.”

  “The roe, or the eggs or whatever you call it in crabs.”

  “You eat it?”

  “Terrific—you never heard of that?”

  She shook her head.

  “Maybe you don’t know too much about the city after all.”

  “I didn’t say I did. That was your idea.”

  He took the crab back.

  “And if you want a guide,” she said huffily, “go down in the French Quarter and hire one.”

  He whistled through a crab leg. “What a temper!”

  She didn’t know what to think. And all of a sudden she remembered Fred and wondered if she would have to tell him that she had gone out with somebody else. And if she should tell him that it hadn’t been any fun and that she had wondered about him and wished she were home…

  And him, he was laughing across the table. With the crabs and their dead black eyes staring at her.

  He had said something to her—she had not heard it.

  She folded her hands in her lap and said formally: “You think it is all very funny, but I am very sorry I came.”

  He tossed the shell down into a pail on the floor and took a swallow of beer. “How come?”

  “I am mostly sorry because I don’t know what to tell my fiancé.”

  “Look,” he said, “I’ve never raped anybody in my life.”

  “You don’t understand at all. I want to go home.”

  He studied her levelly. She wondered if her voice did not carry a note of conviction.

  “Don’t sound like a very silly schoolgirl.” He grinned at her, a wonderful wide grin that made his eyes crinkle and his ears move.

  She found herself smiling back, a little shyly at first. And then they were both laughing. Her purse slipped from her lap and into the shell pail. He got down on his hands and knees and pulled it out, stained and with little pepper seeds sticking to it.

  He scrubbed at it with his napkin, then went back into the kitchen and worked at it with soap and water.

  It was dark when they left. She stumbled, her heel caught in one of the uneven boards. He took her arm, steadying her.

  “Watch,” he said. “We can’t ruin the dress too.”

  He held her arm tightly, his knuckles just grazing her breast. His hand stayed there until they got to the road. Then he dropped it and walked a few steps ahead to open the car door. He did not touch her again and she decided that it had been an accident.

  He did not ask if she wanted to go home. He seemed to have forgotten that she had said it.

  “Do you like jazz?” he asked.

  “Grew up on it,” she said gaily, thankful for the dark. She never lied well. Aurelie had considered jazz something for the kitchen and the tourist-filled stretches of Bourbon Street. Her girls were brought up on Tchaikovsky and Ravel.

  “I thought we’d try the Red House over in Gretna.”

  “Sure.” She had heard of that, of course. Doris had told her all about it.

  “Dick Wilson is there.”

  She knew that name too, again from Doris. Why, she wondered, have I never gone there?

  “I think that would be fun.”

  Perhaps something in her tone made him wonder. “You been there often before?”

/>   “Not very often.”

  “It’s nice,” he said.

  “I know that.”

  It was a big barn of a place, crowded even on weekday nights. They had to park two blocks away, at the edge of a deep drainage canal.

  “I bet the kids catch crawfish there in the spring,” Joan said.

  “I don’t know,” Michael said. “I hate crawfish… Look like roaches to me.”

  “Oh,” Joan said, “sorry.”

  The closer they got to the building, the thicker the tangle of cars. Sometimes they had to retrace their steps because their way was blocked by cars bumper to bumper. Next to a white Mercury two men were having a violent argument over hooked fenders. As they passed, Michael whispered to her, “Can you understand a word?”

  “Yes,” Joan said. The staccato nasal speech was pleasant and familiar.

  “For God’s sake.”

  “Just Cajun French.”

  “Oh sure,” Michael said. “I forgot about your mother.”

  “So did I,” Joan said softly.

  The people at the door seemed to know him, and Joan caught the little sidelong glances that were directed at her. They are comparing me to the other girls he’s brought in here, she thought.

  “You come in here a lot, don’t you?”

  “Not a lot,” he said, “but a little.”

  They pushed their way inside to a table. Very soon Joan’s ears began to sting from the unaccustomed blare. The music was very loud and almost continuous.

  Every fifteen minutes—regular as a metronome—the band stopped. They got up, stretched and scratched, mopped their foreheads and shouldered their instruments. The second band was already climbing up. There was a brief silence while they arranged themselves.

  In the interval Joan and Michael exchanged a few crisp, disjointed words, hastily.

  “Watch the piano,” Michael told her once, “he’s terrific.”

  And every now and then, while the band belted out a piece, he would lean over and tap her arm, calling her attention to some particular aspect of the performance. She always nodded back, trying to look knowing, actually having not the slightest idea what he was telling her.

  They said very little. During the brief intermissions Michael usually dashed off to get more bottles of beer. While the band played, he sat hunched over the table, frowning with the effort of concentration. The music was far too loud to talk over anyhow.

  “I used to play like that,” he told her almost an hour later. “Want another beer?”

  She shook her head. He did not get one for himself. He seemed to have had enough; he seemed to have stopped drinking abruptly.

  “You know,” he smiled a crooked little smile, “all through high school and college I was crazy to play with a band.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  He shook his head. She noticed that there was a little white trace of beer foam on his lip. “I don’t know why,” he said. “I wish I had, but there’s no living in that.”

  “They seem to be making a living.” She nodded toward the band.

  “They all have other jobs in the daytime,” he said. “Work like dogs.”

  “Oh,” she said.

  “I couldn’t do that, so I didn’t try… Just sometimes I wish I had.”

  The band began again, and he slumped forward into his listening crouch.

  Joan was wondering if she should suggest going somewhere else—and wondering how she could do that—when he said abruptly, in one of the brief spells of quiet: “Let’s go.”

  I’ve not had a chance to talk to him at all, she thought. But he didn’t seem to want to say anything.

  She chattered on the way home, gaily, as Aurelie had trained her to do. He took her to the front steps—up the brick walk and past the tile fountain—and through the open windows she heard the little porcelain clock on the hall mantel striking eleven. Then she understood.

  She held out her hand. “Thank you very much,” she said, mechanically, “it was a very pleasant evening.”

  “And you’ll take me sight-seeing one day?”

  “Not now, anyhow,” she said; “you haven’t got time. After all, it’s eleven, and you can’t be too late, even to a late date.”

  Her back was to the light, and the soft glow, filtered through the lead glass, showed his face distinctly. So that she saw the quick nicker of surprise, the little start of guilt.

  She laughed out loud. A few feet away the little fountain seemed to echo her. “Dear boy,” she said in a clear imitation of Aurelie, “you didn’t think I didn’t know, did you?”

  The flicker was gone. He covered himself quickly. “You’re a witch,” he said gently.

  “Do have a splendid time, dear boy…”

  And she slipped inside the door, closing it firmly behind her.

  THE HALL LOOKED THE way it always did at night. The mahogany table and the two carved lion’s-head chairs were black and massive in the small yellow light from the bronze lamp with the fringed shade. That lamp was so hideous—she had always hated it. It had had bead fringe once, and one rainy afternoon when she was a small girl—five or six or so—she had carefully worked away at it until the tiny glass beads were all pulled off and scattered to the corners of the room. When Aurelie saw it, she shrieked and clutched at her breast so that the little Joan began to laugh hysterically. Until Aurelie had taken her to the kitchen and spanked her—hard—with the fly swatter. (It wasn’t a new one either, she remembered; there were still some black squashed flies imbedded in the screen wire.) Then Aurelie dragged her back into the hall and made her watch while she got a brush and pan and went over the room on hands and knees, carefully collecting the beads. When she had done, and all the beads that were possibly there had been gathered up, she looked down at the small pile, mixed with dust in the pan, and shook her head sadly. There weren’t nearly enough.

  “You impossible child!” For a minute Joan clutched her rear, thinking that they were going back for the fly swatter. Then the anger in Aurelie’s face changed slowly to horror. “You ate them,” she said softly. “You must have.” With a movement so fast that Joan was caught off balance, Aurelie grabbed her arm and carried her back to the kitchen. She forced her to swallow great hunks of soft white bread and drink glass after glass of water.

  There had been a doctor too, Joan remembered, but not very vividly. Funny, she thought, the things she remembered best always had something to do with her mother…

  She went over and stood looking at the lamp closely. I still hate it, she said to herself, and wouldn’t Aurelie be surprised if I pulled off the fringe…

  They were becoming fashionable again, she had to admit. Like the horrible iridescent Tiffany bud vase that stood on Aurelie’s dressing table…

  The good things are all down here or in Aurelie’s room, she thought. But I wouldn’t have them in mine… As soon as I can spare the money I’ll do my room all over in blond wood and mirrors and black lacquer tables.

  And I wonder who he is having the late date with…

  Because it was an old habit, she went to the kitchen to see what was left in the icebox.

  There was only one light on. It was enough for her to make out Doris and a boy leaning head to head across the little kitchen table under the window.

  They did not move when she came in, but she felt their eyes roll toward her. “Excuse me,” Joan said, “but I was going to the icebox.”

  The heads separated. “Hi, old duck,” Doris said in a vague voice. A tall thin blond boy stood up: “Good evening.”

  “You remember Charles, don’t you,” Doris said.

  “Sure,” she said, though she did not.

  “This is my rich sister,” Doris said.

  “I’ll just check the icebox and be right out,” Joan said.

  “We were fixing supper,” Charles said. He sounded embarrassed.

  Joan found a piece of cheese and the heel of a loaf of French bread. She got an orange from the bowl on the window and dump
ed them all together in a single plate.

  “Did you have a fun time?” Doris asked in her softest most southern voice.

  “No I didn’t.” Joan was surprised to find herself telling the truth. So she went on. “I see what you mean—he is a creep.”

  Doris’s giggle followed her upstairs.

  Aurelie was reading a magazine in the tiny study at the head of the stairs. She had done her hair up high on her head and tied it with a green ribbon, and she wore a taffeta housecoat that rustled with each breath she took. The wallpaper of patterned green roses, the Victorian chairs of dark mahogany and rosewood were soft and muted and motherly.

  Aurelie looked over the top of her magazine, and the taffeta rustled more loudly. “And how was your stolen tryst?”

  “I wish everybody would just lay off me,” Joan said.

  “My dear child …”

  “Will you please get Doris to stop calling me her rich sister?”

  “My child, my child,” Aurelie said melodramatically, “only two of my girls at home, and they can’t get on.”

  “Oh shit!”

  “I need not tell you what I think of that expression.”

  “I can’t help it,” Joan said, “I get that from my father.”

  “Your father,” Aurelie said, and pulled off her glasses to polish them on her hem, “was extremely quiet and soft spoken.”

  “He was a gambler and a crook,” Joan persisted. “If he hadn’t died right when he did, he’d have gone to Atlanta prison with all those other people.”

  “Such a quiet dull man.” Aurelie was speaking gently to herself. “Who would have thought he’d be such a very terribly dull man.”

  “Tell me one thing,” said Joan. “Did you marry him because he was rich?”

  “Honestly, child …”

  “Why else?”

  “He was a most intriguing man,” Aurelie said, “from a distance.”

  Joan remembered him so clearly she couldn’t believe he’d been dead for ten years. A short chunky man, a blond Italian from Lombardy. A nervous man, a restless man with a heart damaged by rheumatic fever. And his parents, staid respectable shopkeepers, shocked by their son’s emigration. And shocked again by his change of name. During one of the summers Joan had spent with him (long after the divorce; the marriage had lasted only a few months after her birth) he had showed her a letter from them, a letter in fine cramped writing. He had been chuckling, she remembered. “The old people.” he’d told her, “how can you explain to them? Even twenty years later they are worrying about this because they don’t understand—a new country, a new name. Anthony Mitchell sounds good, little one.” That same summer, she remembered, he’d had a playhouse built for her, a tiny perfect house, furnished with tiny furniture and with a stove and an icebox that actually worked. He met her there every afternoon, and they walked up to the main house and had supper together, him watching, whisky in hand, while she ate. Sometimes there would be someone else there too, if he happened to have a friend staying with him… That particular summer Joan thought it had been a tall beautiful woman named Margaret. She had never known her last name, she only called her Margaret. It seemed to her sometimes that Margaret had been around more than the others; maybe he was even going to marry her. But he hadn’t; and a couple of years later he was dead. Then all there was left was in Metairie Cemetery, a fancy marble tomb with two angels and a cross and the name Anthony Mitchell carved across the front of it, in letters a foot high…