The one we have, anyway. Late and soon, getting and spending, laying waste our powers. All that.
"Boys need a refill?" a waitress asked.
"No thanks." One cup and I already had a buzz on.
"I'll have half a cup more if you don't mind, ma'am."
She poured and walked away, shoes slapping at the floor. House slippers with the backs caved in, no doubt, latest fashion in American footwear.
"I live four blocks from here," my companion said, "over by the river, in this tiny little house made out of cypress and set up on cement blocks. Onion plants growing from behind the switchplates and electric outlets. Least bit of wind, windows rattle like dry peas in a pod. Every morning I get up and come see my kids. Come back every afternoon, again at night. Maybe they know I'm here, like Daniel did. Maybe that way they know someone cares, at least."
I remembered what he'd said about the nurse, Sandy. "Kind of a hero yourself."
"Nah. I've seen heroes."
He was quiet for a while.
"You wanta walk?"
We did. Back out into the lobby, onto Prytania. I heard the sound of heavy traffic from St. Charles a block away, smelled garlic from a restaurant across the street. A delivery truck of some kind pulled in hard, brakes groaning. Snatches of conversation again-
"Man does that to my girl, he ain't safe nowhere!"
"Hell of a day."
"He love you, honey?"
– as we walked.
"Back in Korea?" Skinner said.
I nodded. Waited.
"There was a… Well, they still called it a powder-house. All the stuff we never used was stored there, all this junk the army kept on sending, God knows why, had contracts for it, I guess. Things we had absolutely no need for, never would have a need for, crates of sponges, cases of Sterno. Sterno, for godsake! Pencils in boxes the size of yachts."
I sensed he'd come to a stop beside me.
"You getting tired? Want to head back?"
Reluctandy I nodded. Freedom sounded wonderful in theory, but like some third-world countries I could only handle so much of it. Have to ease my way in.
We walked back through what seemed identical snatches of conversation. As we approached the front entrance Skinner said, "Whenever we got shelled? I'd go to the powderhouse, hide in there till it was over."
That year will also be remembered as The Year Mother Came to Visit. Red-letter in every way.
"Lewis. Came to help out till you recover," she said when I opened the door.
In my mind's eye I saw her clearly: cheap red dress, plastic shoes, processed hair and her usual clenched expression, face set to keep the world out or herself in, you were never sure which.
Back sometime when I was a teenager, Mother gave up on life. She walled herself in, began making her way so rigidly through her days that one became indistinguishable from another. Got up the same time every morning, drank the same two cups of coffee, had the same half-lunch and half-dinner, and when she talked, said pretty much the same things over and over again, modular conversation, giving what she said as little thought as she'd given those two cups of morning coffee.
Any change, any variance from routine, could bring oceans of night crashing down on us all.
My old man struggled awhile then gave up himself. He'd come home, have dinner with us, spend the rest of the night up to bedtime out in his workshop. Guess that's some measure of how much he loved her.
Later in my own life I'd realize she was probably schizophrenic. No one in the family ever talked about it, though. And whenever I said anything to sister Francy, she'd just shrug.
All of which is to say that finding Mom there, three hundred miles from home, its failsafes and barricades-she having in addition flown, as I soon discovered-astonished me. She might just as well have crossed Ethiopia on camelback.
"You never gave me your new address, Robert."
I was reasonably sure I hadn't given her my old one, either.
"But then I remembered Miss Adams sending me a thank-you card, last year, maybe the one before. Same return address as that sweet note she wrote me when your father died, so I reckoned she must have some kind of roots here."
Stopping suddenly:
"You don't look so good, Robert. Lewis, I mean."
"I'm fine, Ma."
"Sure you don't need to sit down? Have something to eat, maybe? I could make you a cup of coffee."
"I'm okay. Really I am. How'd youfind out?"
Met with silence, I pushed against it. "Come on, Mom, it's not a difficult question."
"I'm trying to recall…"
"Bullshit."
After a moment she said: "Guess a boy turns man, goes off to the city, he commences to talking like that."
It was the closest thing to emotion I'd heard in her voice for years.
"I called her, Lew," LaVerne said, stepping in from the kitchen. "I thought she should know. Welcome home, soldier."
"It's okay," I said. "It's okay." I guess to both of them.
"You're hungry, I have a meatloaf back there that just came out of the oven," Verne said. "Potatoes and turnip greens almost done."
You could probably see it in Mother's eyes: Dinner at six in the morning?
"We're not on the same schedule as most folks," I said. "Doesn't mean we're much, different from them." But of course it did.
LaVerne stepped closer to Mother, probably touched her lighdy.
"I hope you'll join us, Mrs. Griffin."
Ignoring me the same way she ignored that we, Mother turned to LaVerne.
"I'd be pleased to, thank you. Nothing I like better in the world than a mess of freshgreens."
They started off together towards the kitchen, me trailing behind. Incredible smells. LaVerne had set the table (I soon discovered) with cloth napkins, wineglasses for water, her best dishes.
LaVerne went to the stove to take things up. Moments later she set down a platter with meadoaf, ceramic bowls of roast potatoes and turnip greens cooked with fatback, plate of sliced onions, mason jar of chow-chow.
I pulled Mom's chair out and she sat. Then I went around to hold LaVerne's.
"Good to see some of how we brought you up has stuck," Mother said.
"You just call me Mildred from now on, dear," she told LaVerne.
4
Having Mother around, I suppose, was no more difficult than learning to swim with cannonballs tied to each extremity. And there was something comforting about hearing again (and again and again) the mantras with which I'd grown up.
Why is it you have to do everything the hard way, Lewis?
Stubborn as your father was, I swear. Won't ever be half the man he was, though.
Like we always told you, not that you were ever one to listen: Get your education first. Just look at you-don't even have your own place to live.
Mother was someone who never allowed herself anger, never expressed her bottomless disappointment with life. You asked her, everything was alwaysfine. So the pain and despair had to squeeze its way out, and it did: everywhere.
It was a long time before I admitted to myself how much I was like her.
We broke the news about my not having an apartment gendy (You take the bedroom, we'll sleep out here, perfecdy good couch that makes into a bed) and had her installed with the door shut before she had time to object eidier that she couldn't put us out or that she wasn't about to sleep away this good day the Lord gave us.