Chapter Twenty-One

Mardi Gras obsessed the town. For the entire week before the event, the Ste. Jeanne Parish Library was devoid of business. The staff, white and black, could talk of nothing else over coffee. They took the grandeur of past costumes, the beauty of former queens, five, ten, twenty years ago, out of storage for the sake of conversation over the last crumbs of King Cake. Laura’s piece of the coffee cake, gaudy with its yellow, green and purple icing, held the little plastic baby doll representing the Christ child.

“That means you bring the cake start of next year, or maybe you have a baby of your own by then.” The staff chuckled and elbowed each other. Laura strongly suspected her piece of cake had been rigged, but she laughed with good humor and threatened, “If you want to eat what I can bake, you’ve got a deal.”

Laura did not attend any of the satellite parties revolving around the great galaxy of the Mardi Gras ball, but she would attend the main event. Her trustee Jules Picard had seen to that. Oozing bonhomie, J.P. dropped by the library and thrust a ticket on his new librarian, implying that to purchase one was a civic duty. His being president of the Mardi Gras Association had nothing to do with it at all. In fact, buying two tickets would show even more community support. Laura assured J.P. that she needed only one ticket.

Though Picard came on like an ignorant country Cajun for the sake of his appliance business, Laura soon realized he was one of her most astute board members, more politically minded than even the regal lawyer, Arthur DeVille, uncle to Denise, and related to many by that name. Jules tuned into public attitudes even more than the Reverend Ramsey Polk, her black representative who seldom spoke at meetings, but nodded in dignified agreement or withheld his vote in silence. The appliance king had a more realistic view about business than either the doctor or the undertaker.

“None of our Cajun boys after a nice young lady like you? Well, that’s mighty slow of them. Being a widow don’t matter. Just means they don’t have to break you in—like a good used appliance.” He squeezed Laura with one plump hand. “Just teasing you, sugar. I hear you got other interests.”

“Not really.” Laura took the embrace and the comment as they were meant, all part of Jules Picard’s style.

“Now, Arthur tells me his niece has been throwing little pink fits over you living out at the LeBlanc place. She says it’s immoral and all, but we just don’t listen to that. Besides, if something immoral is going on, I’m sure you’ll get married one of these days, heh?”

He leered at Laura and pinched her arm. Knowing Jules, this could be a warning clothed in comedy or simply another of his jokes. Hard to tell.

Laura gave an evasive answer. “Believe me, with Miss Lilliane under the same roof, we are well chaperoned.”

“See you at the ball for sure now.” Picard hurried away in his usual state of hyperanimation, as if he were always in the midst of filming a thirty second television commercial for slightly dented washing machines at Big, Big Savings. He left Laura unsure whether he meant his last statement as a casual remark or an order.

****

Stores, schools, banks and all forms of local government, except the police department, closed on Mardi Gras day. Religion had nothing to do with it. Baptists lined the streets for the big parade, along with Catholics and those who had fallen by the wayside. Mardi Gras was the biggest party of the year, and no one, not bank teller or store clerk, teacher or student, wanted to be left out.

Laura selected a place to watch the parade on the curb near Dot’s Antiques and Used Furniture, far enough from the church green and the ruins of Domengeaux’s store not to stir unpleasant memories. She stood alone among the revelers, some masked, some half drunk, all wading in street gutters half-filled with beer cans. Angelle and Robert would ride the floats. Pearl, like everyone else, had the day off. Miss Lilliane stayed home under doctor’s orders but vowed she would go to the ball that evening with or without his permission.

Clearing the streets with his siren, Police Chief LeDoux in his black and white patrol car led the parade. Following in the fire truck, bulky Chief Fontenot blasted the siren every few feet while his lean assistant waved intermittently at the crowds. A troop of small children, probably little Fontenots, clung to the ladders and threw sparse handfuls of peppermint candies to the less fortunate youth. Either they were gauging the length of the parade or were hopeful of keeping whatever they had left afterwards. A few teenagers booed as one peppermint arced into a crowd of twenty people. Chief Fontenot drowned them out with a prolonged, ear-splitting shriek from his horn. Laura made a mental note to enter the bookmobile in next year’s parade with a more lavish supply of candy—if she stayed in Chapelle.

A National Guard unit came next bearing the flag, followed by two cheerleaders holding a banner telling everyone in ignorance this was the Mardi Gras Parade. The Chapelle High School band, the Swinging Saints, came after them, heavy on the drums and tubas. Black musicians stepped high and fancy in their worn maroon and gold uniforms. The sun refracted crazily off their dented instruments.

A group of merry Shriners, red-fezzed and red-faced, rode tiny motorcycles in small circles to please the children and keep the way clear for the small pages bearing Queen Marie Antoinette’s banner. The queen’s float rose, a mountain of white capped by a gilded throne, over the throngs. The queen’s cape laid spread down the mountain, its intricate pattern of gold fleur-de-lis and seed pearls on display. Tiny purple-clad trainbearers sat on either side of the heavy cloth. The costumed girls waved daintily, as their mothers had shown them, from their nests of finery, while the small boys kept their plume-capped heads down and their tight-covered legs tucked beneath them in mortal fear of being seen and recognized by their peers in jeans and T-shirts along the way.

The magnificent queen’s gown was a hand-me-down, altered from year to year to fit the reigning queen because of its great expense. Laura had to admit Denise Deville filled the dress as if it were made for her alone. The low, square-cut bodice encrusted with golden beads showed just enough of the queen’s small white breasts to be tantalizing. Though Denise had the dark brown eyes of the French, she had somehow achieved honey-colored hair that frothed around her shoulders like the meringue topping on a delectable slice of lemon pie. Her crown of rhinestones nestled lightly in the golden fluff without displacing a hair. Envy seized Laura whose ordinary dark brown strands snarled in the mild February breeze. She had never been a beauty, never been a queen, and was beginning to feel as if she had never been as young as Denise DeVille.

Queen Marie Antoinette waved regally and smiled artificially down upon her subjects. Now and again, her wave grew more vigorous and her smile more genuine as she sighted friends in the mob. Laura fancied for a moment when their eyes met the queen ceased to smile and wave altogether, but the float moved on, and she would never be sure.

After the formality of the queen’s float passed, the real business of Mardi Gras began. The krewe floats came interspersed between the more formal ones holding the courts of Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter. The krewe members using the summer theme strutted on an artificial beach. They’d chosen as their attire Victorian swimming gear in gaudy stripes topped by clown masks and red wigs. The clowns slung sand pails full of cheap plastic beads and Mardi Gras doubloons out at the crowd. Adults reached and grabbed, plucking necklaces and fake coins from the air. Urchins scrambled in the gutters, tussling over fallen treasure. Now and again, a foot stomped heavily on a rolling coin, or occasionally on a rival hand. One clown wearing a frilly woman’s swimsuit stuffed with huge balloon breasts targeted Laura for a rain of bright purple, green and yellow beads. Though buffeted by the crowd, she seized her share and waved an armful at the obscenely funny krewe member she recognized as Jules Picard. She would save her bounty for Angelle who, riding on the float with the winter court, would be unable to gather her own lucre.

The winter krewe rode dressed as Pierrots with white-faced masks and conical caps. They cavorted in confetti snowdrifts and threw Styrofoam snowballs as well as the usual necklaces and doubloons. One Pierrot, his broad shoulders filling out the baggy costume, launched a fake snowball directly at Laura. The Styrofoam bounced harmlessly off her forehead and into her hands. A nearby child, beringed by a collar of necklaces worthy of a Ubangi, whined because he had not gotten a snowball, too.

The Court of Winter float approached. Angelle rode near the front, her thin arms covered with silver gloves to the elbow where they met the puffed sleeves of her white and silver gown. One arm waved eagerly in Laura’s direction. She returned the wave with the hand clutching the snowball, a little gift from Robert, thrown as an icy symbol of frustration or, maybe, simply with the wry humor she loved in him. There were getting to be too many eithers, ors, and ifs in her life, entirely too many.

The appearance of the king’s float signaled an end to the parade. Dr. Bourgeois, supposedly disguised by a black beard and wearing a cape of red velvet and gold embroidery every bit as elaborate as the queen’s train, winked one eye at his librarian and tilted his scepter imperially in her direction. She returned the recognition with a mock curtsy.

“Gee, lady, do you know that dude?” said the same small boy who coveted her snowball.

“Yes, and a few clowns, too,” replied Laura, suddenly feeling good about being part of Chapelle on Mardi Gras day. She tossed her snowball into the air and let the little boy catch it, then moved through the dispersing crowd to her car.