After Katrina, New Orleans was a city without children. Schools had been shut down, the students evacuated, enrolled in schools miles-and sometimes states-away. During the last months of 2005, the adults who came back would meet in the rubble-filled streets, mops and shovels in hand, cheering one another with the phrase, “Come January.” January was the date the schools were to reopen and, like those left bereft by the Pied Piper, they waited for the children to return and save New Orleans.
Where children were, parents were: living, working, buying, selling, renovating, recreating the cycle of supply and demand the city needed to recover. Images of New Orleanians rebuilding morphed into images of Marshall Marchand re-creating the city’s historic homes, then to his sudden rare smile. Surreptitiously and undoubtedly with the same sneaky look her students wore when they pulled a similar stunt, Polly eased her cell phone out of her purse and checked to see if she had any calls. Four: one from Marshall Marchand.
Feeling like an idiot, she slipped out of the classroom. In the faculty lounge she checked her messages.
“What are you giggling about?” Mr. Andrews, the eternally sour teacher of American history, had come into the lounge.
“Hot date,” Polly drawled and batted her eyes.
He grunted.
“I wanted to show you my neighborhood,” Marshall said as they parked on a side street beneath three tall pine trees. “If you’d be more comfortable in a public place, I’d be glad to take you out for dinner.”
Polly enjoyed Marshall ’s old-world manners. She reached across the console and touched his hand lightly. “I’ll just keep my cell phone on 911.”
A look akin to pain flashed in his eyes. It was gone so quickly she scarcely noticed the spark of alarm it triggered in her.
He walked around the car to open her door. It was rather grand to sit quietly and compose one’s self while a man did manly things.
Because he was a restoration architect Polly assumed he would live in a monument to old money on St. Charles or in a classic home in an undamaged area of Metairie. But his house was in a pioneer neighborhood. The front yard of the duplex where Marshall and his brother lived contrasted starkly with the weed-filled yard of their neighbor. In the Marchands’ yard was a mosaic of brick and moss framed by elephant ears and surrounded by a wrought iron fence, the bottom brown with rust from the floodwaters.
They stopped on the sidewalk outside the garden gate as if Marshall was reticent about taking her inside. “I’ve got the top two floors; Danny lives downstairs. Below him is an aboveground basement. When the levees broke, we got twenty-six inches of water but cleaning out the cellar is a whole lot easier than gutting the front room,” Marshall told her.
A man, Danny of course, came out the front door of the lower unit and leaned on the porch rail at the top of the stairs. There was a strong family resemblance. Danny looked younger and had a less somber cast to his face; the lines of strain that fanned out from the corners of Marshall ’s eyes were missing from his brother’s and, when Danny smiled, there was a playfulness Marshall lacked.
“Who’s the lady, Marsh?” he called.
Marshall had not mentioned her to his brother. Not a good sign, Polly thought and was annoyed that she was looking for signs.
Marshall made the introductions from where they stood, outside the fence. Only when Danny invited them in for a drink before dinner did he reach for the gate. Because this was New Orleans, and Anne Rice had educated the world on the habits and manners of the undead, it crossed Polly’s mind that vampires cannot enter unless invited. A B-movie shiver passed down her spine. It wasn’t altogether unpleasant.
Danny’s home was beautifully appointed in stark, modern blacks and whites and impeccably kept. A framed magazine cover picturing him cutting a ribbon at the opening of the first Le Cure explained his wealth. He owned a chain of high-end boutique drugstores.
“I keep Marsh out of trouble,” Danny said, as he handed Polly a glass of white wine without asking what she preferred. He winked, “And you look like trouble to me.”
“I have never given anyone a moment’s difficulty,” she drawled. “Not even as a very small child.”
Danny poured a meager whiskey for himself, neat, and sat on the end of the sofa. The leather was soft and matte black, stark to look at, but luxurious to sit on. “So, how did my brother lure you into his clutches?” he said.
“He invited me to tea,” Polly said and smiled at Marshall.
“Ah, the old tea gambit,” Danny said. “ Marshall lives on the edge.”
The brothers shared an inner communion Polly had occasionally noted in the twins she had taught. Having no family-or, as she said in her archer moments, none to speak of-she held familial ties in high regard. Whoever married one brother would have to be aware that there was sacred ground between them and tread lightly.
Whoever married. She was doing it again.
Dinner was as much a surprise as Marshall ’s home had been. While she leaned on the counter in a kitchen better furnished than her own and sipped wine, Marshall made iced asparagus and seasoned sautéed goat cheese on toast. He felt her eyes on him and looked up from his work. “I cook,” he said. Apparently he’d read her mind. “I’ve also mastered the art of free-range grazing. In this town, a guy can pretty much live on the spread at special events. Kind of like a dog knocking over garbage cans but with a tux and a caterer.”
After dinner they walked. Knowledge that another hurricane season was soon to begin lent a sense of preciousness to those who had survived the last. People sat on their front porches or stoops drinking beer and talking with neighbors.
“I came here to invest,” Marshall said. “I had a notion of gentrifying, pocketing the money, and moving to a good neighborhood. Turns out this is a good neighborhood.”
He took Polly’s hand. His was warm, and dry, and callused like a working man’s. Most of the men she’d dated had hands as manicured as her own.
The neighbors were mostly black or Hispanic, and Polly remembered Ma Danko. She hadn’t thought of the old woman in years. Ma had been kind to her. To remember something good about the trailer park startled her, and anger she’d not known she harbored eased, loosening the muscles across her back.
Marshall pointed out schools, showed her homes being renovated, told her which businesses were up and running north, south, east, and west and how this ephemeral box of progress would bring the neighborhood up. The talk was dry and serious, and Polly wondered what he was afraid he would say if he didn’t talk about urban renewal.
“Did you lure me all the way out here to sell me a house?” she asked to upset whatever applecart he was pushing.
He stopped walking and looked at her. The setting sun dyed his hair red and limned the strong line of his jaw. “In a way,” he said quietly.
12
Marshall handed Polly out of his vintage truck, highly cognizant of the pressure of her hand, the way she swung her legs, ankles neatly together. He walked with her to the door but did not kiss her goodnight.
She shook his hand-just the ends of her fingers in his-not the hard pumping as of a well handle that women had adopted from their male counterparts. “I had a splendid evening, Mr. Marchand. You are a darling man.” With a glance up at him through her lashes, she turned and disappeared inside.
For a moment, long enough to savor the last whisper of her perfume but not so long as to seem a stalker, Marshall remained on the steps. He could not remember when he’d wanted to kiss a woman as much as he did Polly. Never, he expected. The strength of his desire was why he hadn’t. He’d been afraid he’d step over the line-or swoon and make a fool of himself.