Looking Over Jordan

LADY Margaret Sarpie felt terrible. The city of New Orleans was covered by a mile of clouds. The bathroom scales said 134. Her cousin, Devoie, had decided to stay another week. And the phone kept ringing. It had been ringing all morning. First it would ring. Then Lady Margaret would answer it. Then nothing.

“Hello,” Lady Margaret would say. “Hello. Hello. Who’s there? Who is it? Why are you calling me? Why are you doing this to me?”

Lady Margaret’s father had been a brigadier general in the army. People weren’t supposed to call Lady Margaret and hang up. They weren’t even supposed to look at her unless she told them to.

She got a dial tone and called her mother to see if she could borrow the house in Mandeville for a few days. “It’s that Anna Hand that’s doing it. Or some of her friends. Her friends could be anybody. She could know gangsters.”

“Then what did you write about her for? If you lie down with dogs you get up with fleas, Lady Margaret. I’ve told you that. Those people at the newspaper only want to use your name. They don’t care what happens next.”

“I didn’t write about her. I reviewed her book. It could be the beginning of big things for me, Momma. When they called and asked me to do it I was bowled over. You could have knocked me over with a broomstick.”

“And now these gangsters are calling you up and you have to go and hide in Mandeville? Well, we reap what we sow.”

“Can I have the house or not? Devoie’s here. She’s going with me.”

“Armand’s there. You can’t go until he leaves.”

“Why did you let Armand go? He sold his half. Every time I want to go Armand’s there. I mean, what’s wrong with Armand getting his own summer house now that he sold out of ours. Every single time I want to go Armand’s there. You might remember I’m your daughter. You might give that some thought…you might act like…” But Mrs. Sarpie had hung up. That was how the Sarpies ended their conversations with each other. Whoever got fed up, hung up.

Lady Margaret put the phone down on its receiver and began to pace up and down the living room, feeling the grainy surface of the oriental rug beneath her feet. The rug was very old and wrinkled in the center. The texture of the rug came up through the soles of Lady Margaret’s feet, moved into her bloodstream, arrived at her tongue. Her mouth felt dry, grainy and dry. Some terrible memory of the desert assailed her. The desert, and captive women weaving in the sun, spitting out the threads, weaving and spitting, spitting and weaving.

I could catch anything from this rug, she thought. God knows where this rug’s been.

It was hot in the room. The air pressed against her arms. A ceiling fan turned slowly above her head. The air was thick and close, thick and tight. Lady Margaret could hardly breathe. She lay her fingers against her throat, searching for the pulse. She closed her eyes and imagined air-conditioning. Being poor wasn’t working out. Being poor and living in a shotgun apartment wasn’t working out. It was terrible. It wasn’t working out. Nothing was working out.

I need some Homer, she decided. I’ll listen to Homer. Homer’ll fix me up. She took a Homer Davis album out of its cover and set it down on the turntable. She looked down at the cover, at the black face with the wild teeth and the terrible patch over one eye. The patch was black with a star in the center where the eye used to be. One night when she was drunk Lady Margaret had sat beside Homer on a piano bench at Tipitina’s. She had put a twenty-dollar bill into the tip jar and sat beside him while he played, her hip almost touching his hip. He had gone on playing as if she wasn’t even there. The song was called “Parchman Farm.” When it was over he lifted his hands from the keys and turned to her. He reached up and removed the patch from his eye. Lady Margaret had stared into the darkness of the scar. She could not stop looking. She could not pull her eyes away.

“What you want to hear now, white lady?” Homer had said. “What you want Homer Davis to play for you?”

The music started. The strange deadly voice filled the room. “Am I getting through to you…that’s what I want to know…am I getting through to you…that’s what I’m wondering about….” Lady Margaret moved through the house, swaying to the music. Through the dining room and into the bedroom where her cousin, Devoie Denery, was passed out on the bed, the pale blue sheets wrapped around her legs, her blond crotch wild and exposed, her breasts fallen against her arm. Devoie was an actress. Even in sleep she posed. What is she dreaming? Lady Margaret wondered. What outrageous performance is she watching on the screen of her mind? Devoie sighed and pursed out her lips, sinking further into the pillow. “Wake up,” Lady Margaret said. “It’s eleven o’clock in the morning. I promised Settle we’d go with him to the races. Don’t you remember, Devoie? You said you’d go.”

“I thought we were going to Mandeville. You said you were getting the house.”

“We are going. After the races. Armand’s over there. Mother gave Armand the house. First she buys his half for God knows how much, then she lets him go over all the time. Well, we’ll just crowd in on top of him.”

“Who’s he got with him?”

“I don’t know. Someone to fuck, I imagine. He always has someone to fuck.”

***

“Oh, your love washes on me like moonlight on the Lacassine.” Homer was singing. “Oh, your love washes on me like rain on a dead man’s shoes…” Lady Margaret moved on into the kitchen, humming along with the music. “Oh, your love washes on me…your love make my car run funny…like sugar in the gas tank make my carburetor skip…” She opened a cabinet, took down a box of vanilla wafers and began to stuff them into her mouth. She put water on to boil for tea. She opened the door of the old refrigerator and surveyed its contents. She pulled a piece of yellow ice off the coils of the freezer and stuck it into her mouth shivering at the forbidden gaseous taste. When she was a child Lady Margaret had longed for the ice on the coils of her grandmother’s refrigerator but the maid always caught her and took it away. “Why you want to go and do yourself that way,” Maeleen would say. “That ice all full of poison gas. That ice gonna make a hole in your stomach. You the craziest little girl in the world, Lady Margaret. You the craziest child I ever did see.”

Lady Margaret took a carton of yogurt down from a shelf and tasted it, hoping to diffuse the poison gas. She walked over to the kitchen table carrying the yogurt and set it down beside the newspaper, which was opened to her review.

“Writer Attacks Crescent City,” the headline said.

The Assumption, by Anna Hand

Ms. Hand’s new book abounds in clichés, crude language, and uses real names of places in New Orleans in a way that can only be called name-dropping. Her sketchy characterizations leave the reader wondering if a woman like Lelia Clark can be called a heroine. Lelia thinks only of herself as we see her living a debauched life in New Orleans, then running away to join a bunch of hippies in Montana. There, Ms. Hand would have us believe, she finds love and a sense of social consciousness by working with delinquent boys.

The cover, a copy of a painting by El Greco, is a tasteless use of a religious painter’s work to decorate what can only be called a book written by an atheist.

Last year Ms. Hand shocked the city by publishing a book of stories based on real-life tragedies in the Crescent City. Many people went out and bought the book anyway. Well, this time New Orleans is not going to pay to be attacked. Especially by a heroine who is supposed to be good at languages (she is teaching French to the delinquents) but can only express herself in the sort of expressions better left in late night bars.

The back cover of the book is a photograph of Ms. Hand wearing a big grin and a plantation hat with long streamers. The picture is doubly shocking considering the things inside.

Margaret Lanier Sarpie

Lady Margaret dropped the newspaper on the floor and picked up the box of papers beside it. She thumbed through the pages, pulled one out, began to read. It was a novel she had been writing for several years. “When Sherry got home from her luncheon with her aunt there was a note on a silver salver by the door. The salver, in a pattern called Fleur-de-lis, was part of a set of silver left to Sherry by her great-grandmother. The note was from Doug Hamilton again. Would he never leave her alone? This time he was more persistent than ever. ‘We simply can’t do without you. No one else in the state has the voice and personality to sing that part. We know you are in mourning and we honor your sorrow. But we beg you to join us in saving the opera house. That opera house is important, Miss Claverie. It is the heart of the city’s cultural life. Won’t you reconsider your decision? Won’t you give it your deepest, truest thought?’

“Sherry looked up the long curving marble stairway made of pink Georgia marble to the landing where John had stood the last time she ever saw him. She had been wearing a floor-length silver and blue gown of satinade worked with lace insets at the hem and sleeves. Every time she walked up the stairs he was still there. Would they never understand she would never sing again?”

“Oh, your love washes on me, like heroin on a drunk man,” Homer was singing. “Oh, your love washes on me, like cocaine on the schoolground.” Lady Margaret dropped the page into the box. She let her fingers wander across her stomach and on down to her secret garden. Her fingernails found the little pump, moving it softly from side to side. A line of sweat rolled down her breast and landed on her leg. A bluejay called outside the window, then called again. Richard Gere walked down the garden path between the oleanders and the poppies. He came to rest on a marble bench beside the roses. He held out his hands to her. Come to me, he whispered. I always wanted to know a woman who was smarter than me. Come here. Don’t be afraid. What a beautiful place you live in, Lady Margaret. What a wonderful, wonderful place to be.

“All right,” Devoie said. “I’m up.” She was standing in the door of the kitchen with the sheet wrapped around her. “But I’m not staying up unless I get some coffee. Goddamn Settle for getting us drunk. He’s such a barbarian. I ought to know better than to get mixed up with him. What are you doing, Lady Margaret? Are you asleep in the chair?”

“No, I’m just thinking about something. Are we going to the races or not?”

“I’m not going anywhere with Settle Westfelt today. That’s that. I’ll go to Mandeville with you and lie on the beach. Armand’s there? You said Armand’s there?”

“He took his boat.”

“Well, make some coffee and let’s go on over. It’s too hot in this house to live. Let’s go lie on the beach. If we feel better we’ll get Armand to take us out in his boat.”

“Go turn that Homer Davis album over, will you? Play the other side.”

Across the lake in Mandeville, in a bedroom painted the color of cream, Anna Hand knelt beside a man she was trying without much success to like. She had been in New Orleans for five days, a publicity tour for a new book, a tedious, wearing experience. At the very last autograph party a man she remembered from when she lived in the city, but barely knew, didn’t really know at all, had hung around for hours while she wrote on books. He had been helpful and smiling, attentive and kind, bringing her glasses of water, standing by her side. “Come with me to the country,” he wrote on a piece of paper and handed to her. “Let me take you away. You will sleep like a baby. You will eat like a queen.”

The strange lassitude of New Orleans in summer, the wine at the party, the tiredness in her bones. Why not, she thought. I’ll be gone tomorrow. Get drunk, eat sugar, get laid by a native, be here.

When the last book was signed she took him up on his offer. “As long as I’m on that plane tomorrow afternoon,” she said. “You have to see to that.”

Now she smiled down into his silly spoiled face, trying not to blame him for anything at all. She reached down and touched his hair. After all, he had kept his promise. He had made her sleep. “I’m starving, Armand,” she said. “You promised to make waffles for breakfast.”

“Let’s do it some more. Let’s do it one more time.”

“After we eat. I’m tired of it now. You’re too wild for me. I can’t keep up with you.”

“It was great in the swing. All my life I dreamed of doing it in a swing.”

“The swing broke. Don’t you remember? We barely escaped with our lives.”

“I’ll have to fix it today. Aunt Helen will never forgive me if I leave it like that.”

“First breakfast. First that waffle you promised me. I have to leave by one. I have to go by the hotel and get the rest of my things.”

“I know,” he said. “Don’t worry. I’ll take care of it. I’ll get you there.”

Lady Margaret and Devoie threw their beach bags into the back of Lady Margaret’s Audi and headed on out for Mandeville. The sun was beginning to shine.

The front that had covered the city for days was breaking up. They rolled up the windows of the car, turned on the air-conditioner and found a Sunday morning radio station that was playing classical music. “Pavane for a Dead Princess” filled the car.

“I love that piece,” Devoie said. “It always reminds me of playing bridge at the Myersons’ down in Rolling Fork. Gee Myerson used to love it so much. He would play it over and over. That and Yma Sumac. He worshipped Yma Sumac.”

“It really isn’t about a dead princess. Did you know that? He named it that a long time after he wrote it. Look, you want to stop at the Morning Call and get some beignets? It’s by the causeway now. They had to move.”

“Sure. I’ll stop if you want to.” They turned off the highway into a shopping mall and came to a stop before the Morning Call, a famous old French Quarter coffeehouse that had been run off Chartres Street by rising rents. It had moved, lock, stock, and barrel, including its mirrored walls and old-fashioned stools, right out to Metairie. It was doing great business. A line of customers was all the way out the door and waiting on the sidewalk. A middle-aged couple greeted them as they joined the line. They were people who had moved to New Orleans from the North. Lady Margaret couldn’t stand them. They were the very worst of Yankees who moved to New Orleans and started trying to get right into everything. They had even bought an antebellum house and restored it.

“We saw your little piece in the paper this morning,” the woman said.

“Good for you,” the man added. “That Hand woman is really just too much. You gave her what she deserved, Lady Margaret. You really nailed the bitch. You did us all a favor.”

“I only reviewed the book. Why, have you read it?”

“I sort of liked it,” the woman said. “It made me want to move out to Montana. She made it sound so nice out there.”

“Allenne,” the man said. “I don’t believe you said that.”

“Well, it did. She made it sound so civilized.”

“Let’s don’t talk about it here,” he said. “Lady Margaret, how’s your mother? I haven’t seen her around lately. Has she been out of town?”

Lady Margaret was saved a reply. They had arrived at the takeout window where a white-coated Vietnamese waiter was dispensing beignets and café au lait. Through the window Lady Margaret could see the bakers rolling out the dough, cutting and frying and dipping the hot sweet little squares of flour. The room was covered with flour. White walls, white tables, white uniforms, white baker’s hats, all dusted with flour. Near the window were pitchers of hot sweet milk, piles of golden doughnuts, cartons of chocolate milk. It was all just as it had been when Lady Margaret was a child and her father would take her to the Quarter on summer nights to pick up the last edition of the paper and sit beside the levee dipping beignets into coffee while he discussed the state of the world with friends he met there. If she asked, he would hold her up so she could see into the kitchen to watch the bakers. A foghorn would sound on the river, mosquitoes would buzz. It was all as it had been. Except the General was dead and the Morning Call had moved to Metairie and the bakers were not black anymore. Now the bakers were yellow. Still, the beignets were the same. Plaisir, plaisir, she thought. Joy to the world, sugar is come. Sugar, sugar, sugar. Pale green cane blowing in the fields near Lafayette. It had made her family rich and her mother fat. Win some, lose some, she thought. Her mouth watered as she watched the Vietnamese shake powdered sugar over the beignets in her little white sack.

“Come by for a drink sometime,” the doctor said. Lady Margaret shrugged him off with a mumbled excuse and she and Devoie took their beignets and made their escape. They started back on their way. “You’re getting famous,” Devoie said. “Getting your name in the paper.”

“Oh, shut up,” Lady Margaret said. She lifted a beignet from the sack and sank her teeth into its sweetness. “I adore these goddamn things. I just have to have them.”

“Yeah, beignets. The heart of the swamp. When I get lonesome for New Orleans I just go down to the grocery and get a box of powdered sugar and pour it on my hands and lick it off.”

“It’s not that bad.”

“Highest cancer rate in the country, give or take New Jersey. Our friends lost a total of seven breasts last year. That ought to tell you something.”

“Why do you keep coming down here to visit if you don’t like it?”

“I didn’t say I didn’t like it. I’m just telling the truth. Telling the truth isn’t disliking anything. It’s just telling the truth.”

“Well, a lot of people don’t understand things you say. You really hurt Church’s feelings last night. Do you know that? She was almost in tears.”

“Which one was Church? The crazy girl that threw the butter plate at me?”

“She can’t help it if she’s crazy. Her chemistry’s mixed up.”

“Chemistry my ass. That girl adores being crazy. She’s a crazy specialist. She threw the plate at me because I wouldn’t act like it was interesting that she’s crazy. Crazy doesn’t fool me, Lady Margaret. Not after living in this family. Do you want another beignet or not?”

“Half of one. Break one in two. Look, Devoie, out on the lake. There’s a regatta. Can you see what flags they’re flying? Oh, damn, it’s too far away.” They were on the causeway now, the long concrete bridge that connects New Orleans with the little fishing villages across the lake. Mandeville, old live oaks along the seawall, old houses mildewing in the moist thick air. Evangeline, the moss-covered trees seem to call. Tragedies, mosquitoes, malaria, yellow fever, priests and nuns and crazy people.

The Audi was moving cheerfully along the bridge, its tires bumping against the span connectors. Small neat signs marked off the miles. Ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, until they reached twenty-five and the car moved out onto the highway.

“Whatever happened to Redmond, that sailor you were going with?” Devoie was saying. “The one that was trying to get on an Olympic team.”

“He went back to his wife. I didn’t like him much anyway. He was always reading the labels on wine out loud. It drove me crazy.”

“I wish Armand would have some interesting men with him.”

“He won’t have. Armand never has men. I don’t think he has a single male friend.”

“What is this?” Anna Hand said. She had picked up a photograph that was facedown on a dresser. She dusted it off on her sleeve. It was a photograph of two men standing together by a rock wall with the Swiss Alps in the background. They had their arms around each other’s waists and they were smiling.

“That’s Uncle Robert. He’s the black sheep. He used to stay here when he had to be in town. That’s Switzerland. It’s the only place he liked to be.”

“Who’s that with him? He looks familiar.”

“That’s Stravinsky. They were friends. They used to meet in Vienna to hear music.”

“How wonderful. If this was mine it would be hanging on a wall. Why don’t you hang it on the wall?”

“Oh, Aunt Helen wouldn’t want to be reminded of him. He disappeared. No one in the family’s seen or heard from him in years. Well, never mind our skeletons. Come have the waffles.”

“What was his name? Your uncle’s name?”

“His name was Robert. I told you that. Now, please come on. The waffles are getting cold.” Anna replaced the photograph on the dresser, laying it down beside a catalog and a bill for repairing the screens. She opened a dresser drawer. A Scrabble set was there, a half-finished double-crostic, a jar of suppositories, a silver doubloon, a comb. The mysterious drawers of summer houses, she thought, secrets no real house would hoard or remember.

“Come on,” Armand called. “Or I’m throwing your waffles to the birds.”

“I want to get a paper on the way to the airport,” she said, going into the breakfast room. “I want to see if the paper reviewed my book. God only knows who they’ll give it to. They gave the last one to a Jesuit. Can you believe it? He said I made unjustified attacks on the Church. Unjustified. Isn’t that wonderful?”

Lady Margaret and Devoie came off the highway and down a narrow road between pine trees. The trees looked wet. The earth looked wet. The buzzards circling the trees looked wet. Even the modern road could not make the swamp look like anything but a swamp. On the outskirts of the town small businesses and restaurants began to appear, grimy and tacky, wet and forlorn. Fried Chicken, a sign said. Fried Catfish, said another. Thibodeaux Insures You, Lakefront Rentals, Golden Acres, Lots.

At a corner Cajun women were selling shrimp from a truck. Beside a fruit stand piles of melons rotted in the sun. It was getting hotter. A high wind had chased the clouds away without stirring a single leaf on the ground.

“We’ll be able to sunbathe,” Lady Margaret said. “Thank God for that.” They crossed a bridge, turned at a light, entered a driveway, and came to a stop before the house. It was set in the middle of a yard lush with live oaks and catalpa and eucalyptus and pine. A beautiful yard leading down to the largest private beach on the river. The yard was a park, was everything a yard should be.

But there was something wrong with the house. It disturbed the eye. From any angle it disturbed the eye. There was something wrong, something badly wrong, something disproportionate and Procrustean and wrong.

Once the house had been a proud resort hotel. It had been three stories high. Couples came over on the ferry from New Orleans to spend the weekend and dance in the bathhouse and play in the small brown river. That was when the property had been a public beach. During the Depression the city of Mandeville had sold all its public beaches. Lady Margaret’s grandfather had bought the place for a song and left it to his children.

As soon as Lady Margaret’s mother inherited it she bought out her sisters and went to work to improve the property. She conceived the idea of lowering the house a floor to save on electricity. All one summer she labored with carpenters and a house-moving man. Every day she drove across the old railroad bridge to oversee the modernization project. Then she called in the painters.

The result was a squat green hulk surrounded by porches. It looked like a fat lady seated on a stool with her skirts spread out around her. “Crayfish,” the house seemed to say. “Come and get your crayfish. Crayfish for sale. Fresh crayfish waiting for the pot.”

“Here’s the house,” Lady Margaret said. “And there’s Armand’s car. So he’s still here.”

“We should have called. There’s no telling what’s going on in there.”

“Oh, my God, Devoie. It’s a big house. He can’t be doing it in every room. Well, I’m going in and put on my suit. I’m white as snow. I haven’t been in the sun in days.”

“You go in. I’m changing in the beach house. I’ll wait for you down there.” Devoie started down the path to the river. Lady Margaret pulled her bag out of the back seat and walked up the steps and onto the porch.

The swing was lying on the floor with a wineglass beside it. A hat was sitting on the arm of the swing. An outrageous hat with long yellow streamers. I know that hat, Lady Margaret thought. I’ve seen that hat somewhere. She picked it up. The streamers fell across her arms. They made goosebumps on her arms. She laid the hat back down on the swing and walked over to the door and took hold of the handle. Through the glass panels she could see a woman coming down the hall carrying a cup of coffee. Lady Margaret opened the door and stepped into the hall. “I’m Margaret Sarpie,” she said. “I’m Armand’s cousin. I own this house.”

“Well, it’s a very nice house. I’m Anna Hand, from Washington. We came over last night. Your cousin’s been trying to get me fat.” She smiled a wonderful smile at Lady Margaret, standing very still with the cup in her hands. Steam was rising from the cup. It was only a few feet away.

“What did you say? What did you say your name was?”

“Anna Hand. I’m a visitor. Only at the moment I’m trying to catch a plane. Is something wrong? Are you all right?”

“I didn’t know anyone was going to be here. Is Armand around? I mean, where is he?” She didn’t hear me, Lady Margaret thought. She didn’t hear my name.

“He’s gone to get chain for the swing. Tell me your name again. I’m getting so bad about names. I think I must be going deaf. Heather, is that it? Was it Heather?”

“I don’t know,” Lady Margaret said. “I don’t know what to say.”

“I’m sorry about your swing. Armand was singing spirituals. He was singing ‘Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.’ Then the swing fell. It’s a wonder we weren’t killed. You should have seen our faces. Oh, God, it really was very funny.” She was laughing. “Anyway, I am sorry about the swing.”

“Oh, the swing is nothing. The swing doesn’t matter.” Lady Margaret was stepping back, moving away from the cup of coffee. But the woman was following her. Lady Margaret would step back. Each time the woman followed. She will throw it on me now, Lady Margaret thought. She will throw it in my face. It will all be over, two thousand years of history, two thousand years of law. “What was he singing?” she said. “What was Armand singing?”

“ ‘Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.’ You know, that old spiritual. Coming for to carry me home. Then the swing broke. It scared us to death. Well, I wish he’d get back. I’m frantic about catching this plane. There won’t be another one until late tonight.” She laid the cup of coffee down on the hall table.

She knows, Lady Margaret thought, I think she knows. This is some joke of Armand’s. Maybe it isn’t even true. Maybe it’s just a joke he’s playing on me.

Armand came hurrying up the stairs, carrying a package of swing chain. “Oh, hello, Lady Margaret. I thought that was your car. Did you see who was here? Did you introduce yourself? This is Anna Hand, the writer. This famous lady spent the night in your house, sitting at your table, sleeping in your bed.”

“Drinking your wine,” the woman said. “Breaking your swing. Armand, we really need to be leaving. I’m getting worried about the time. I have to go by the hotel.”

“The traffic’s heavy on the bridge,” Lady Margaret said. “You had better go on and leave if you’re in a hurry.” Armand disappeared down the hall for their bags and left the women alone again. “I’m sorry I don’t have time to thank you properly for letting me visit,” the woman said. “I seem to be spending my life lately apologizing for not having time to be polite.”

“I know about your work,” Lady Margaret said. “I’ve read about it.”

“Well, now you know me instead. And I know you. The world is really quite astonishing, all the people you can meet. Don’t you find it so?”

“I don’t know,” Lady Margaret said. “I don’t think I do. Not really. Well, maybe I do. I don’t know if I do or not.” Armand reappeared. He was hurrying now. Lady Margaret walked them outside and stood watching as Armand’s Triumph disappeared into the trees.

A moon was in the sky, a frazzled, gibbous moon, a bad moon, a bad luck moon. Lady Margaret watched a cloud go past the moon. The world is full of danger, she thought. Anything can happen to anyone at any time. Anything at all. She turned toward the beach. Devoie was coming up the path with a towel wrapped around her head like a turban. “Who was that with Armand?” she said. “I saw him spiriting her away. Was it someone married? Someone we know?”

“It wasn’t anything like that. It was someone from out of town. She had to catch a plane. They were in a hurry.”

“Well, who was it then? What was her name?”

“I don’t know. I don’t remember.”

“Are you all right? You look funny.”

“Yes, I’m all right. I’m perfectly all right.”

“Are we going to sunbathe then? Are you coming down?”

“In a minute. As soon as I change.”

“I want to go to the Station and eat lunch in a while.”

“Fine. Whatever you want to do.” Devoie shook her head and started back down to the beach. Lady Margaret walked up the stairs and across the porch and into the house. It was quiet in the hall, musty and dark and cool. Light was coming in the open door, cutting the hall into diagonal halves. Half of it is light, Lady Margaret thought. And half is dark, like Homer’s patch. Does the dark cover the light? Or the light invade the dark? Maybe both things are true. Yes, that’s it. Everything is true. Or nothing. Maybe nothing really happens. Maybe I just make it all up.

The cup of coffee was still on the table. Lady Margaret lifted it from its saucer and held it out in front of her, raising it like a chalice. Then, very slowly, as if in a pantomine, she lowered it to her lips and drank, slowly at first, in tiny sips, then in larger sips. I looked over Jordan and what did I see, coming for to carry me home. A band of angels coming after me. She shivered. It was cold in the hall. The air conditioner was running full blast. They must have used up twenty dollars’ worth of electricity. Lady Margaret set the cup back down on the table. Well, to hell with it, she decided. I didn’t do anything wrong. I just wrote what I thought. She pushed the thermostat up to eighty-five, slammed out of the house and started down the flagstone path to the beach, her sandals slapping against the stones, her hands curled into fists and pushing against the pockets of her shorts. She walked by a garter snake curled up in the roots of a tree, past a pair of grasshoppers mating on a leaf, beneath a mourning dove and the nest of a sleeping owl. What difference does it make? She won’t even see it until she gets on the plane and if Armand tells anyone about it I’ll tell Momma never to let him have the house again. To hell with it. To hell with all of them. Swing low, sweet chariot. I’m going to quit thinking about it. I’m going to put it out of my mind and get to work on my tan. Oh, God, what a Sunday.

Oh, your love washes on me like waiting for the paint to dry. Oh, your love washes on me like the muffler falling off. Coming for to carry me home. Hello, little old dried up white lady, what you want Homer Davis to play for you?

Shut up. I can’t. Try. I’m trying.