It was Christmas morning. A bright clear day. Almost cool. The city of New Orleans lay in peace. Sleeeeep in heavenly peeeace. Sleep in heavenly peace. Strains of hymns from midnight mass echoed in the ears of the faithful. For unto us a child is born. Unto us a son is given. The smell of lilies and candles. Morning. Children were waking. Cats prowled the marble floors of the mansions of the Garden District and the lesser mansions of the Lower Garden District and the Victorian houses of the university section.
Barrett Clare had slept like a baby on two Valiums and a Seconal, safe in the high bedroom of the biggest whitest house on State Street. She had fought for that house. If it had been up to him, Charlie Clare would have settled for the old Phipps place, that tacky brick box.
She opened her eyes. The sun was slanting in the wooden shutters, casting bright demarcations over everything on the floor, her red wool dress, her De Liso Debs, her satin, hand-embroidered slip, her underpants, her bra. She had slept alone in the walnut bed. I have always been alone, she thought, and rose from the bed, shaking off the fuzzy feeling of the drugs, worrying that Charles was already awake, looking for her. Her baby, her one and only love, her boy. Damn, she thought, and shook her head again. The Seconal was too much. That was going too far. Still, it was better than not sleeping. It was better than dreams.
She picked up the slacks she had been wearing the day before and squeezed them in her hand. She had been wearing them when the tall blond boy came with his terrible message. That nightmare. Only it was true. He had come out of nowhere at eleven o’clock in the morning on Christmas Eve to tell her where her mother was. Her real mother, the one that had borne her into the world and given her away. She never touched me, Barrett had told Gustave over and over. No, I know she didn’t. I would remember if she had. No one can remember that far back, he would say, and move around ever so gradually in his old brown chair. An enormous response from Gustave. She never touched me, Barrett would insist. I know. I would know. They got me from the home when I was five days old. I weighed eight pounds. I was a huge baby. I was alone when I was born and I have been alone ever since. She had me and then she never even looked at me. Gustave would move again in his chair. When she talked of it at least he listened. Well, he always listened. He was a wonderful doctor. A member of the Academy. He was the best. The very best. The best that money could buy.
Where was he now that she needed him? Where had he gone to? How dare he leave town at Christmas. Why couldn’t they find him? They could find him if they really wanted to. She sat down on the bed and rang his answering service.
“You know you can find him. You must tell him it’s an emergency. Tell him it’s Barrett, Barrett Clare. You must reach him for me. All right, I’ll be waiting. Yes, please try.” She hung up. Who do they think they are? Those answering-service people.
Amanda McCamey is my mother. I’ll call her on the phone. The thought was like an arrow. It flew across the room and disappeared. No, it’s her place to call me. If she knows where I am. Your mother is named Amanda McCamey and she is up in Arkansas and she is going to have a baby any day now. That is what the blond boy said. I am going there now. I will tell her that I told you.
I’ll go too, she had answered. I will go and talk to her. You can’t go, he said. She is going to have a baby. She doesn’t know you know. She doesn’t know I’m here.
I want to tell someone, Barrett thought. I need to tell someone who my mother is. She is so beautiful. Didn’t I touch her? That day at Loyola? When Brummette introduced us. I think I touched her. I think I shook her hand. She called me Shelley. She thought my name was Shelley. Why hasn’t she called me if she knows who I am? Here is your mother, the blond boy said. And now I am taking her away.
A rush of fuzziness passed across her brain. She shook her head. She picked up Charlie’s coat from the chair and started going through the pockets looking for a cigarette. He had come in from Vail at three or four. He had tried to get in bed with her. “It was a snowstorm, baby. They closed the airport. I couldn’t help it.”
“Get out of here, you bastard. Don’t get near me.”
“Go away, Charlie.”
She went into the dressing room and washed her face and hands. She combed her hair. She looked deep into the mirror, searching her face for the face of her mother. It was there. Yes, anyone could see it. I could go on living, she thought. If it never would be Christmas. If I never had to hang that dead tree in the window. Well, Charles will be waking up. I must act normal. I must act like everything’s okay. It’s Christmas morning. She laughed at that. Suddenly her sadness and self-absorption seemed the silliest thing in all New Orleans.
She went downstairs and found Charles and Charlie in the breakfast room. Charlie still looked drunk. He was reading the paper. Charles had already started opening his presents. “Daddy slept with me,” he said. “In my bed.” He tore open a package containing a white shirt with his initials on the cuffs. He pulled it out of the package and took the pins out and tried it on. He was five years old, a sturdy wild little boy, excitable, hard to control.
The shirt was too big. The cuffs came down and hid his new Rolex watch. “It hides my watch,” he said. “It doesn’t fit. You have to take it back.”
“You aren’t supposed to be opening things yet,” Charlie said. “I told you to wait for her. Is Lorraine coming, Barrett? Are we going to have breakfast?”
“She’ll be here later. She has to cook for her family. I’ll make breakfast. How was Vail?” He didn’t answer. She rolled up the sleeves of her robe and set the table with red placemats and a set of Christmas china Charlie’s sister had given them the year before. In a while she put a breakfast of bacon and eggs on the plates.
“Let’s sit together now,” she said. “Let’s hold hands and say grace. Charles, do you want to say the prayer?” They were holding hands around the table. She could feel the thick wiry hair on Charlie’s hand, tough reddish blond hair. Wire, she thought. Like his mind. A piece of wire. I’ll put that in a poem.
At least there’s Patsy, he was thinking. God love her soft little buns. God love her laughter.
“Lord make us thankful for these and all our many other blessings, for Christ’s sake, amen. Ahh, men. That’s what old maids say, isn’t it, Daddy?”
“You all go on and eat,” Barrett said. “I’m going upstairs for a while.” She reached over and hugged the little boy. “I love you, Sweetie Pie,” she said. “Don’t you ever forget that.” Charlie sighed and put butter on a biscuit. He took a bite and put the other half on Charles’s plate. They were beautiful plates, white porcelain decorated with holly. “I love you too, Charlie,” she said. “No matter what you do.” She gave him a very small kiss on the cheek.
“Don’t you want to see your presents?”
“Not yet,” she said. She unrolled the sleeves of her robe and walked out of the kitchen past the painted porch swing. She was the only woman in town with a porch swing in her kitchen. She walked into the hall and up the stairs past the stained-glass window depicting Saint George slaying the dragon. She walked into Charlie’s room and took a pistol with handmade wooden handles out of a gun case and walked over to the window looking out on the avenue. Now I will pull the trigger and blow my old blue and brown coiled-up brains all over the Pande Camaroon and some will spill on the Andrew Wyeth and, why not, some of them can move out onto the balcony and festoon the iron railings. You know, they will say, those old railings New Orleans is so famous for? Yes, it will make a good story around town. It will make everybody’s day. They’ll forget themselves in the story of my willfulness.
She put the gun in her mouth and sucked the barrel. It was a game she liked to play. It was the only power she knew she had. The phone was ringing, a lovely ring, soft, like bells. Barrett took it down from its hanger on the wall. “Is this Barrett Clare?” the voice said. The voice was tearing into her ears. “This is Amanda McCamey. I am your mother. If this is Mrs. Charles Clare. If you are an adopted child. I am your mother. Oh, forgive me, oh, my God, forgive me. I need you so terribly dreadfully much. Will you talk to me? Will you let me talk to you?”
“This is me,” she said. “I knew you would call me up. I’ve been waiting all day.”
“I’ve been waiting all my life,” the voice said. “Forgive me for calling you instead of coming there. I should have come. But I can’t come for several days, perhaps a week. Will you come to me? Will you come to where I am? Will you bring your little boy? Your father will be here. I will have him here. He’s the one that found you. I’ll send him for you. Oh, yes, that’s what I’ll do.”
“No,” Barrett said. “Don’t do that. I’ll come today. Tell me where to go. Tell me how to get there.” There was a sound on the other end, like sobbing, or something else, something she had never heard. “Don’t cry,” she said to her mother. “I am going to come to where you are as fast as I can get there. And I’m bringing Charles, my little boy. I will stay a long long time . . . I might come and stay forever. I might not ever leave. Can you hear me? I know you. Do you know that? I know who you are.”
“How is that? How do you know?”
“I mean we met. At Loyola. Don Brummette introduced us. I used to read everything you wrote. I guess I had a crush on you that year.”
“What do you look like? How could I not have known? I can’t remember. So many things have happened today. A friend of mine was in a terrible wreck, someone I love. And everything else. Are you really coming here? You will come to me? You will come here?”
“I’m coming as soon as I can pack a bag and leave. I look like you. Yes, I think I look like you. We will look in a mirror. The two of us. We will look at one another. Tell me where you are. How to get there. How to go.”
“Here’s Katie,” Amanda said. “She’s my friend. She’ll tell you what to do.” Then a woman named Katie got on the phone and told Barrett how to get to Fayetteville, Arkansas, from New Orleans, Louisiana. It was not that simple. “I’ll be there this afternoon,” Barrett said. “Tell my mother that I love her. Tell her I’ll be there very soon.” She put the phone back on the wall and picked the gun up off the dresser and walked across the room and put it back into the case and turned the key. Then she took the key and walked out on the balcony and threw it far out into the branches of a Japanese magnolia tree. Then she ran down the stairs to her husband and her child.
Charlie was sitting on the floor in a sea of wrapping paper drinking a brandy and playing with Charles. The great hanging tree for which the Clares were famous on State Street swayed softly above him. “Well,” he said. “You’re going to join us. How charming of you, Barrett.”
“My mother just called me on the phone,” she said. “My real mother. The one who had me. I’m going there today and taking Charles with me. Now get up please and help me. I want you to call and charter us a plane. She lives up in Arkansas. It’s a long way and inaccessible. Do it right now, Charlie. This is not a joke. Something’s happened to her. She needs me.”
“Your mother?”
“Yes, my mother. Please get me a plane right now, Charlie. While I pack. Charles, you are going with me somewhere. We’re going to see your grandmother. Your real grandmother. Someone you’ve never seen.” The child did not move, but her husband, Charlie, got up. He came toward her, reaching out to her. “All right,” he said. “That’s wonderful. What else? What else can I do?”
“What will we wear?” Charles said. “What will we take to wear?”
“It doesn’t matter what we wear,” she said. “We’re going to see my mother. My mother. I’m going to see my mother.” She picked him up off the floor and hugged him fiercely and danced him around the room. I exist, she was singing inside her head. I am here. I am really here. Everything that happens from this day forward will be better. Whatever happens next will be better and better and better. My mother is waiting for me.
A woman named Katie met them at the airport and drove them to a house on top of a small mountain overlooking the university. “It was brave of you to come like this,” Katie said. “What a brave thing to do.”
“Where are we?” Charles said. “I don’t know where we are.”
Then they turned into a driveway and Barrett’s mother was standing in the doorway of a small wooden house. A tall woman with hair that fell like a cascade almost to her waist. She walked out across the yard and took her daughter into her arms.