Since the girl came, Lane felt the pressure Ava exerted, her quiet, pleading need and her concern. It radiated from the costume room, came in swells from wherever the girl was. How could anyone get work done? Lane went for a drive, she had to get away, the girl’s sorrow saturated the house. What a joke for them both, to be shoved together. She pitied the child, but what could Lane do? They were strangers to each other, Louise had seen to that.
Anger flared in Lane’s chest. At Louise for leaving, Louise for judging, for keeping herself apart. Didn’t she realize Lane would need her one day? Louise, Miss Know-It-All, had managed to overlook this possibility. She stayed away, kept to herself, and then died. Lane didn’t even have a clue where her daughter was buried, no one had told her. They probably set her straight in the ground, where she would rot and turn to dirt. It wasn’t right. She ought to be here, in the family crypt. Housed.
Lane turned onto North Rampart, parked in the pay lot, and crossed the street to the entrance of St. Louis Cemetery Number One. A tour group filed past the guard at the gate sweating under his umbrella, and Lane joined them at the rear. She had brought with her a bouquet of broad leaves from the elephant ear begonia growing in the backyard. It was plain, tropical. She could have bought flowers somewhere, but these leaves seemed more fitting. About twenty years ago Bert had suggested to her that she let the elephant ear take over, instead of fighting it to make room for her bulbs. She’d quit planting, she’d let the beds get overgrown. She liked the way the leaves slid against one another in the breeze, a smooth rustle, like friendly companions speaking in a hush.
Bert knew her better than anyone, that was the thing. He knew what she needed and he gave it to her. Or gave her permission to take it for herself. Bertrand’s own yard won those neighborhood awards. His wife amended the soil to turn her hydrangeas unnatural colors, she clipped her hedges, planted her beds with hundreds of purple pansies. Lane had cruised by once or twice—she wasn’t above that, necessarily. Roses, lupines, azaleas, always something flowering.
Lane had not attended Bertrand’s funeral. She wasn’t interested in any kind of scandal, had no desire to see his widow, his family, his colleagues. They’d go on and on about his legacy as a city councilman, his service to his community. None of that mattered to her.
She waited until the next day to go to the cemetery, to press her hand to the wall of the crypt sealed with his body inside. She’d had to bribe the guard to let her in, since she hadn’t called ahead, did not have permission from the archdiocese. Why would you want to be buried in a place like that? She’d always hated this cemetery, here on the edge of the Quarter. Cracked and broken, nothing but plastered brick and narrow aisles and centuries of sadness. No trees, no green anywhere except stifled little ferns growing horizontally out of cracks in the tomb walls. Tourists crowded against the tombs to stay in the shade, sweating while the tour guide fast-talked about Marie Laveau.
Lane hated the things people said about death and loss. The clichés did not come close to describing the bleak depth of it, the loneliness that never, ever ends. If it weren’t for Oliver she might have let herself starve. She owed that to him, keeping her going, but she couldn’t help but resent him for it, too. The only thing left to her when she emerged from that acute phase of grief was her painting, and she shoved herself into it like logs in a fire. Fine with her if she didn’t make it out.
Lane recognized she wasn’t the same as before. Her mind had aged, it forgot things. Maybe she had a brain tumor or something. The world felt more and more like a hostile place full of malevolent strangers. Bertrand had known her and loved her. Both those things together were so unlikely to coincide. Now Louise was gone, too.
A couple of goth teens skulked past the tombs on the next path. Lane eyed their fishnet tights worn under cutoff shorts, their band T-shirts and black boots. One carried a camera, an old Pentax. Any photos they took would end up overexposed, too much contrast in this harsh light. Lane propped her bouquet on the side of Bertrand’s tomb. She was glad her family crypt was in a smaller cemetery, with old trees and fewer tourists. She passed another tour group on her way out, a gaggle of sweaty miserable people in ugly sneakers huddled together in the shade. She entered the Quarter and stepped into a bar, ordered a fruity rum cocktail in a plastic cup. She needed the sugar; she’d been prone to light-headedness lately.
As she walked back to the car, she sipped the drink, resentful of her aging body. Lane hated any weakness in herself. She tossed the cup in a can at the parking lot’s entrance. In the car she turned on the air and let it run for a bit, cooling off. She drank from a water bottle, hot and tasting of plastic. Her body, the things it needed—food, water, rest—had always been an inconvenience, but lately it was worse than ever. She shouldn’t have come out in the heat of the day, she sensed a headache coming on.
Lane was prone to migraines, especially when there was weather moving up from the Gulf. She drove home and closed her curtains on the shifting pressure and gray light of the impending thunderstorm, trying to breathe into the pain, trying to sleep. She drugged herself with coffee, aspirin, marijuana, ice packs on the back of her neck. She tried to treat the headache as a meditation, to inhabit it and accept it.
She hadn’t caught this one early enough, deceived by the euphoria that preceded the pain. She’d awakened that morning feeling like she was floating through the house, distant from the dishes, the balls of dust along the floorboards, the trim that needed repainting. She saw everything from a slightly new perspective, and she didn’t care about any of it. The not-caring was a profound solace, a delight. A dose of Excedrin would prevent the headache but it would knock out the euphoria, and in that altered state it was hard to recognize the aura for what it was.
She didn’t have to ask Ava for silence. The girl appeared to know by reflex to leave Lane alone. Lane heard her whispering to Oliver and then the sounds ceased. Her vision blurred but her hearing in this state was unbearably sharp.
At the sound of the telephone Lane nearly wept. It rang twice, each sound taking up space behind her eyes and lingering there, surging into the throb. The two rings pulsed, overlapping each other, even after the sound had ended. When the ringing began again she thought: Bertrand. It was their old code: ring twice, hang up, call back. She heard Louise answer and resigned herself to whatever might happen next.
“Hello,” Louise said—whispered, to protect Lane who had one of her headaches. Louise understood how sound pierced walls and split her mother’s mind into pieces.
“Hello?” Louise said again, but he would have hung up—he knew better than to talk to Louise.
Some amount of time passed. It was dark out, from night or the storm, Lane couldn’t tell. She started to feel better when the rain finally started. The phone again: two rings, a pause, then ringing. Lane answered, spoke to Bertrand, told him to come.
The rain on the windows continued, hypnotic and loud. Lane waited until Louise had gone to bed, then got up to wait for him in the kitchen.
In his late forties, Bert was still strong and fit. His graying temples suited him, and he’d always worn his clothes well, especially now that he had money to spend. He wore a handsome suit, collar unbuttoned, tie rolled up in his pocket. He left his umbrella on the kitchen balcony and removed his shoes when he entered. The path from the back alley and the steps up to the kitchen she kept maintained just for him, for privacy. He worried about his car being recognized on the street.
He kissed her hello on the corner of her mouth. Lane was glad to see Bert, though she wasn’t at her best. She’d smoked too much, which finally put her headache to rest but left her hazy, unable to think. She regretted the lost hours of work.
“Who was that, this morning, who answered the phone?” he asked.
“The kid, who else,” she said.
“She sounded so grown-up,” he said. “Does she know anything, do you think?”
Lane shrugged. “Could be. She’s smart. She doesn’t speak to me.”
Bertrand frowned but changed the subject. “You don’t look well,” he said. “Did you eat today?”
Lane shook her head. “Headache,” she said.
“It’s gone now?”
“More or less.”
“Sit down, I’ll fix you something.”
She took a seat at the table and watched him move around her kitchen, comfortable in her space.
Their agreement suited Lane. He did not come by unannounced. He did not discuss his wife or children. She spoke of him to no one. They’d started as lovers, before either of them had married. When he met his wife, Lane was glad that some other woman would shoulder the burden of his official public persona. His place on the council, his social engagements, his children at the best schools. Marriage hadn’t agreed with Lane, though she’d been faithful to Thomas while he was alive. Once he was gone, she saw no reason not to pick back up with Bert. She had missed him. She was grateful to be loved by him and not have to take care of him. It bothered her that he loved his wife, too, but she would not have traded places with that woman, even if it meant giving him up.
Lane needed her own space, time alone, independence. She liked privacy, she liked secrets. Lane could not offer constancy, support, dinner on the table. Taking care of a child was bad enough, but a man, too? Their love would have shrunk under the strain.
She found the secret exciting when they were young. The intrigue, the sense they were getting away with something. The risks they took, the anxiety that they might be discovered. The prospect of that ruin endowed their meetings with romance, a delirium it may not have otherwise had.
These days Lane valued the secrecy, but for the opposite reason: it made her feel safe. She did not have to compromise or explain or suffer awkward encounters. She could take other lovers, if she chose, though it had been years since she’d bothered with anything like that. She had no interest in other men, or in most people. There was Louise, and Bert, and her painting, and she liked to keep them separate.
She picked at the omelet he set before her.
“Sorry, love. I wish I was more with it today,” she said.
“You’re alright, just eat. This weather always gets to you.”
He brought her a glass of water. The food tasted like sand, but she swallowed a few bites. After the meal they talked about his job. He was trying to push an ordinance through the city council, a school funding bill that could affect the primacy of charter schools, but he wasn’t making any headway. Bert cared about public service, and he understood the corruption that made everything run. The network of favors and manipulations suited him. He had that kind of mind.
He risked plenty, coming to her. He trusted her, he gave her so much power. She could destroy his family and his career with a single phone call. She could probably send him to jail with what she knew. Lane wondered how often he considered that. Sometimes she thought the potential for destruction was a measure of his love.
He tucked her into bed, turned off the light, and left the way he’d come, through the kitchen and down the balcony steps, to his car in the alley. He still takes the risk, I still keep his secrets, she thought. The more successful he was as a public figure, the more years of marriage, the children—each year he had more to lose, and yet he kept coming to her. He never questioned her loyalty, not that she could tell. She thought for the millionth time how absurd men were. How needy and stupid. On the other hand, he was right. She’d never, ever betray him.