I’ve never seen a city as colorful as New Orleans. I made a wish when we crossed the Louisiana border, like I did at the Alabama and Mississippi borders. I make the same wish every time, and the brightness of New Orleans almost feels like the universe working to make my wish come true. Neon signs flash in the shop windows. Orange buildings are window-draped with hanging green plants, and white carriages with red roofs pull families of tourists. We pass buildings painted yellow and blue, and cafés with pink banners flapping. We drive through a street of redbrick apartments and pear-colored palm bushes.
There are going to be lots of chances for Something New pictures here; we’ve driven past lots of murals already, and lots of spray-painted and chalked art along the walls and sides of buildings. Shouldn’t be hard at all to find the name of the city sprayed in big, bold letters somewhere, right? A Something New sign just like last time, only New Orleans style. It doesn’t even have to be the same kind of jumping picture, just a picture of Ruth standing under a new New, similar enough that when Ruth sees it, she’ll remember.
And it’s okay that Ruth’s not making a new playlist, because I remember the songs, even if she doesn’t have them downloaded.
The first thing we’re doing (Ellie has had this planned for weeks) is going to Café du Monde for beignets. Not the very first thing, I guess, since before we do that, we have to fit the RV into its slot among hundreds of other RVs on the asphalt plateau by the river. The forest of motor homes is almost beautiful.
I take some pictures of it, of course. No good photos of street art here, though.
We walk to the edge of this mobile city and call an Uber. The driver is a bald man with a friendly gap between his front teeth. I have to pay attention to understand what he’s saying, because his Louisiana drawl is so thick. He’s trying to tell us about a better place for beignets, but it doesn’t matter because Ellie is determined to get the specific Café du Monde experience.
And so we pull up to the café. The noise of the crowd erupts as we open the car doors, but we get out and the driver flashes his gap grin and drives off.
The café is a short pale building, but its main feature is a large green-and-white-striped awning jutting out like a circus tent. The awning is rimmed with glowing bulbs that make me think of vintage movie theaters. The air is thick with the kind of sugary, buttery smell you close your eyes for.
My camera is out and up almost instinctually. I take wide-frame shots of the whole café, then try zooming in close on the awning and the glowing yellow bulbs. The crowd outside is a rainbow of motion.
It’s not new street art, but Café du Monde is still new for us, right? Something here could work, maybe. I’ll keep my photographer’s eye open.
I follow Ellie inside to what appears to be the back of the line. When we stop, she slides her hand into her husband’s and they look at each other like they know each other so well they don’t even have to try hard to know what the other is thinking.
For a quick moment, I wish Mom and Dad were here. They’d both love this place. Dad would have loved the art on the walls, the whole vibe. Mom would have loved the history.
We step forward in line and Ellie leans toward me. “Hey, show me the pictures you just took.”
My camera is already out, and I click to the shots I took outside, of the awning and round light bulbs. I’m getting more used to showing her and Eddie my pictures without feeling so awkward about it.
“Oh my goodness, that’s gorgeous!” she says. “I’m so glad you’re documenting all this.”
Eddie leans in too. “Hey, that’s awesome! I love the cool shadows you got.”
“Thanks,” I say. There’s still part of me that feels squirmy about getting their compliments, but honestly it feels really good to show them pictures I’m proud of.
We are surrounded by clattering and chattering and bursts of deep, full laughter. Eddie and Ellie read a plaque about the history of the café and bask in the glow of vintage bulbs and well-fed people. Ruth is on her phone, maybe checking her e-mail or Instagram.
I take a few deep breaths. Time for some interior shots, and I could do with more practice with this camera to figure out how to do one of those cool dim-light motion-blur crowd shots that would be awesome in a place like this. But then I think to myself, that would be an obvious shot. Look for the not obvious. The unique. The mundane that’s not really mundane at all.
The new.
The line moves forward faster than I expect, and soon we are at the counter by the arched windows. Ellie orders two big plates of beignets and we wriggle through the crowd toward the edge of the awning. Eddie sees a group of people getting ready to leave and pounces on the empty table.
We have to find an unused chair, but soon we are all seated. My back is against the gate, a perfect vantage point for crowd watching.
After a short wait, a girl brings two platters piled high with steaming brown beignets. They are hot enough to warm cold hands and piled so high with powdered sugar I don’t know where to pick them up. It seems like we’re all having the same hesitation, but in a moment we all—even Ruth—reach for the plates and take a pastry, causing powdered sugar to sprinkle over all of us like snow. Before I’ve taken my first bite, I’ve got a sprinkling of white on my collar and Eddie has to wipe sugar dust from his glasses.
We all take a bite of the perfectly shaped, perfectly fried beignets and I see Ellie close her eyes and smile like a kid.
“So worth it,” she says.
Eddie leans toward me so I can hear. He gestures at Ellie. “That happy face is worth however many hours of driving,” he says.
I look over at Ruth and catch her almost smiling, the angry furrow gone from her brow, and I think I know what Eddie’s talking about. I’d fly to China for dumplings if it would get that smile.
Maybe beignets are a good sign. Maybe there really is such a thing as magic, only now we call it baking. Ruth’s iPod is in her pocket and her hand is cupped under her chin, trying to catch powdered-sugar avalanches before they tumble into her lap. I hurry and wipe my fingers on my pants and aim my camera lens at Ruth and click while she’s got a sticky hand raised in the air and is trying to lick sugar off the tip of her nose. I don’t think she even notices. A perfect photo for the “Sisters” folder.
Ruth looks around and mumbles something about napkins. There are none.
All of us are dusted somewhere with sugar. Ruth is licking white off her fingertips and Ellie brushes crumbs off Eddie’s chin. I wipe my palms on my jeans again and try to dust the sugar from the front of my shirt.
Maybe it’s the sugar, but I have a weird idea. I wipe my hands clean the best I can and, while the others seem distracted by their own messy fingers, duck under the table with my camera.
“Whatcha doing down there?” Ellie asks.
So much for trying to be subtle.
“Nothing,” I say. But it’s too late. Ruth’s face pops under the rim of the table, one eyebrow raised in annoyance.
“Get up,” she says. “You’re being embarrassing.”
I’m about to zip up my camera bag and crawl back into my chair, but then I stop. I want this picture, even if it’s weird. Maybe I can best capture my experience of this place from under the table, and if so, it’s worth being a little strange. Photography is about looking at things from different angles, isn’t it? I think about what Eddie said about Vincent van Gogh. It’s already too late to stop Ruth from rolling her eyes at me, but maybe she’ll see the picture on my Instagram and see what I was going for. See how fun this shot could be. Maybe.
So I clear my throat and hold tight to the leather strap of my camera bag. “I will in a second,” I say.
Ruth groans and goes back to her beignet.
I match my camera’s settings to the dim café light. Then I spin around, looking at all the shoes and feet jostling and tapping in the crowd around me.
Ruth’s shoes are the closest to me. They’re an old pair of black Converse, thrashed, a tear in one side, and they’re dusted with a sprinkling of powdered sugar across the toes. It’s a test of my camera’s focus features, but I aim it at that sprinkling of powdered sugar. There are red sandals and blue tennis shoes and fifty other colors in the background, and the lights above reflect in the shine of the floor. The focus works, and I kind of love the framing.
Click.
The shoes are not new. The floor isn’t, the place isn’t, not really. But something going through my mind feels new and it takes me a moment to pin it down. Ruth got frustrated with me, snipped at me a little bit, and I did my own thing anyway. That? That’s pretty new.
I look at the screen, at the picture I just took. It’s weird and I love it. I love it, outside of what anyone else might say or think. If nothing else, when people scroll through the Café du Monde geotag on Instagram, mine won’t be at all what they’re expecting.
I’ll call it “Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes,” Paul Simon, 1986.