My Juliet: A Novel Read online

  “I’m a Beauvais. Wanna take a guess?”

  Confusion colors the young woman’s face. In the end she says, “I wouldn’t know where to begin. You look like a French Quarter B-and-B.”

  “Try the Beauvais Mansion on Esplanade,” Juliet says. “You aren’t originally from here, are you?”

  It is oppressively, stupidly hot this early afternoon, and Juliet drives in heavy traffic through suburban Kenner and Metairie before entering New Orleans proper. A warm Gulf storm is sweeping over the area, lashing rain against her windshield with a force that makes Juliet wonder if she should pull over on the shoulder and wait it out. She almost forgot how shitty the weather can be in southern Louisiana. By the time she pulls in front of the mansion the sky has cleared and the sun is shining. And it comes to her that this is yet another item her memory has obscured: one minute you can be in a giant toilet bowl getting sloshed around and the next in a natural paradise too glorious for words.

  Juliet comes home happy. Just the day before, the family maid phoned her in California with news that her mother was eaten up with cancer and close to death, and so she comes home believing that a large inheritance will soon be hers.

  She is thinking about this fortune when she steps out of the rental car. And she thinks about it as she walks up the macadam path to the front door and lets herself in with a key she’s kept all these years.

  Money is on her mind, in fact, all the way until she sees her mother come charging down the hall.

  Her mother isn’t dying. Her mother is the picture of health. Nobody who moves like that has cancer or any other disease. The damned cleaning woman has tricked her. The tearful story on the phone was nothing but a ruse to get her to come home.

  “Why aren’t you dying?” Juliet says.

  “I’m too much a woman to die,” her mother replies.

  Juliet’s eyes seek out the maid on the other side of the room. “Anna Huey, you lied to me.”

  “Oh, sugar, we’re all dying.”

  The house is haunted, or so Juliet often told Sonny. Some time in the 1920s it appeared on a widely circulated picture postcard depicting New Orleans as an exotic, unexpected paradise, and in the image one seemed able to make out the silhouette of a man hanging by a rope in a window upstairs, the noose tight on his neck. In all likelihood the silhouette was just a part in the curtains, but Juliet, who first showed Sonny the postcard, claimed that one of her ancestors had lynched a rival there. “What kind of rival?” Sonny said. “And how’d he get in the house?”

  “What do you mean, what kind of rival?” She obviously was stalling for time.

  “Why were they rivals, Julie? What were they at odds about?”

  He knew she was having fun at his expense; he could see the mischief in her eyes as she tried to come up with a response. “How serious you are,” she said. “That’s very appealing, you know? When you’re serious your temples throb and your eyebrows bunch together. They’re like a caterpillar, those eyebrows, and just as fuzzy. Do you believe everything I tell you, Sonny?”

  “I just want to know about this rival.”

  “Oh, you. Shut up and kiss me.”

  During the Civil War the house served as a hospital for Union soldiers wounded in battle, and this was how Juliet explained the many apparitions that allegedly resided there. They were Yankee boys who died on the grounds and whose spirits had not returned home. They showed up suddenly in doorways, then as suddenly vanished. At night they cried in empty rooms, and their wanderings were loud on the wood floors and stairway. One night Juliet woke to find a being in her room. (That, Sonny recalled, was how she referred to the ghosts, as “beings.”) His uniform was stained with blood and his saber dragged the floor as he moved toward her in the bed. He didn’t want sex, she explained. He was pleading to be set free.

  “Free from what? Free from you?”

  She didn’t answer and Sonny said, “You’re trying to tell me that you dream about other boys.”

  “Oh, but he wasn’t that kind of ghost,” she protested. When she raised her mouth up to his face he could see past the top of her blouse and her breasts loosely bound in a thin white brassiere.

  “I don’t believe in ghosts anyway,” he murmured, staring.

  “Tell me that when I’m gone and return to haunt you,” she whispered, then kissed him so softly that it was a long time before he was able to open his eyes again.

  Haunted or not, the house by any measure is a mansion, and Sonny has always heard it referred to as such. The Beauvais, people call it, pronouncing the word “Boo-vay” as the family likes to. Once a showplace in an affluent area, and the finest example of French Colonial plantation architecture in the southern United States, the house today backs up to a corridor where illegal drugs are sold and murder is commonplace. And yet Juliet’s mother has continued to live there as if the neighborhood doesn’t recommend burglar bars on every window and a team of Dobermans in the yard.

  “Miss Marcelle, you think you’ll ever move out to the suburbs?” Sonny asks her today. “Get yourself a town house maybe with all the modern conveniences?”

  She stares at him, as if waiting for the punch line. “Not unless Anna Huey makes me,” she answers at last in all apparent seriousness, then allows a dark trickle of laughter.

  Sonny knows Miss Marcelle to be a hermit, as one too tired and dispirited to have much to do with the world, and as one too smart to trust a stranger. For years he has made a point of visiting her on those days when he’s on a painting expedition in the neighborhood or out shooting reference photos for later use. He and Miss Marcelle sit in the parlor and, careful as to the scope of their conversation, talk for hours about subjects that hold little interest for either of them.

  “Ever try Funyons, ma’am?”

  “No, Sonny, I haven’t. What are Funyons?”

  “They’re this food, somewhere between potato chips and Styrofoam. Don’t be put off by their appearance. They’re actually pretty good. You should try them.”

  Today instead of tea Anna Huey has served a substitute, a fruit brandy with a high alcohol content, and inside of an hour Miss Marcelle and Sonny are working on a second bottle.

  “My favorite is still barbecue corn chips,” he continues. “I like a bag at lunch with my ham and cheese sandwich. Sometimes I eat two ham and cheese sandwiches.”

  “Corn chips were popular even in my time, if you can believe.”

  “What time was that, Miss Marcelle?”

  She looks at him as if he’s just asked the most personal question a man can ask a woman. “When I speak of my time I mean the days when I first met Juliet’s father, when I was young and in love. A person’s time is always the time when he or she was happiest.”

  “Would you please tell me about Juliet’s father, Miss Marcelle? I didn’t get to know him too well.”

  “I met Johnny Beauvais in 1953 when he came to Opelousas to judge the Miss Yambilee beauty pageant, in which I was a contestant. Apparently he was a last-minute selection; the first choice, a radio personality for KSLO, our hometown station, took sick with gout and his doctor confined him to bed. Johnny happened to be visiting Saint Landry Parish with one of his fraternity brothers from Tulane. How he was recruited to judge us beauties I never really knew, but there suddenly he stood at the foot of the stage in the old World War Two Quonset hut where the event was being held. Girls swooned for him, and not a few boys. He selected me Miss Yambilee. Toward the end, when we fought, he still called me that.”

  “Miss Yambilee?”

  “Yes. And Miss Sweet Potato Pie. He thought he was so funny.”

  “What else can you tell me?”

  “He never really cared for me. In the beginning he responded to my looks, my naïveté. But that didn’t last long. Johnny was searching for someone to bear his children. He didn’t want a wife.” She hesitates, the brandy at her lips. “Johnny was a Beauvais to the very last, Sonny. I could tell you more, but that would still be the best description I could co
me up with.”

  “He used to wear white suits.”

  “Yes. And white bucks with them. Even his socks were white.”

  “He drowned in Lake Pontchartrain. Fell out of a boat.”

  “Fell, did you say?”

  “Yes, fell and drowned.”

  “Fell and drowned,” repeats Miss Marcelle, in a way to suggest that she herself isn’t quite sure about the facts connected to the incident.

  Sonny admires Miss Marcelle’s carefully made-up face and hairdo, and how she always seems to dress even though she has no plan to leave the house. She is lovely for a woman her age, which Sonny puts at about sixty-five. When he lets himself, as he does now, he can see past the paint and the wrinkles and find the face of Juliet. And he understands that this, and not companionship, is the real reason why he continues to visit the mansion.

  “Miss Marcelle?” he seems to hear himself ask this day. “Miss Marcelle, do you think Julie loved me? If she loved me,” and he still can’t believe he’s hearing it, “how could she leave like she did? How could she do it, Miss Marcelle?”

  Sonny has barely spoken when he realizes that, looped or not, he’s made a terrible mistake. Miss Marcelle shifts in her chair. “Sonny, you’ve had too much to drink.”

  “Please, Miss Marcelle, I’m tired of the mystery.”

  “But not tired enough, obviously, to let it go. For your own good you need to do that.”

  “I can’t. I’ve tried and it’s no use. She told me she would come back and haunt me. She’s doing it. She might still be alive somewhere but I’m living with the ghost.”

  “Your ghost is not well. Juliet today is a deeply troubled girl. At the risk of disillusioning you more let me just say that she’s not the person you keep in your heart. Sonny, you’re a fine young man and you need to forget about Juliet. Meet someone who shares your values and wants what you want and raise a family together. Start a life, in other words.”

  “I’ve got a life. I’m an artist and I date plenty and I even got engaged once. That’s having a life.”

  Sonny reaches for the bottle but, finding it empty, settles on a cookie. He finishes it before saying anything more. “You like Oreos after they’ve been in the freezer, Miss Marcelle?”

  “Yes, they’re good frozen.”

  “I think I’ll freeze some Funyons and try them that way.”

  “Sonny, I think I’ll have Anna Huey drive you home now. You can come for your truck later.” Sonny stands. As he starts to leave the room Miss Marcelle says, “Don’t come back again, Sonny. Don’t ever come back. You won’t find what you need in this house.”

  Her mother runs off screaming, and Juliet picks up one of the many greeting cards displayed in the parlor. It shows her name and so, too, does the next one she inspects. Juliet, they both say in a clean, composed script, not at all similar to her copperplate.

  All told there must be a hundred such cards in the room, most of them standard-issue Hallmark with sentimental inscriptions and pictures of flowers, birds and unicorns.

  “Anna Huey, what are these cards?”

  Anna Huey, who for some reason has always gone by her full married name, places a hand on Juliet’s shoulder and attempts to guide her out of the room. “Sugar, why don’t you surprise us all and be a dear for a change. If you can’t be a dear at least lower your voice.”

  “I’ll show you a dear,” Juliet shouts.

  “Sugar, I don’t want your mother any more riled than she already is.”

  Juliet swings her arm and knocks Anna Huey’s hand away. “What are these cards, I said. And why is my name in them?”

  “Sweetie? Please don’t get—”

  “I demand to know who sent them. Tell me.”

  “Anthony,” comes the whispered reply.

  Disgust darkens Juliet’s expression as she flashes to Anthony Arceneaux, Anna Huey’s kid brother. She sees the boy at her father’s funeral, approaching the coffin in an ill-fitting, hand-me-down suit that smells rudely of mothballs, the rose boutonniere at his lapel wilting in the heat. Anthony speaking gibberish to her father’s corpse, his voice lifting above all others in the great parlor at the Jacob Schoen & Son Funeral Home, then the wild cries from the mourners as Anthony presses his mouth against Johnny Beauvais’s mouth. “Anthony,” Juliet said to him later, “kiss my daddy again and I kill you.”

  “Sweetie, I send Anthony a little money each month and in exchange he sends the cards. I tell him it’s his job, along with some other things. Anthony lives in California, too. I guess you know that. He tells me it’s more expensive out there than New Orleans and he’s always looking for anything extra to get by. Did you know he was still in Los Angeles, sugar? I always hoped the two of you would run into each other and sit down and talk. Anthony could really use that. And I always thought you could too.”

  “Anthony, run downstairs and answer the door, son. I’m going to time you. Run, now, Anthony . . .” And turning to Juliet, his pocket watch in hand: “Oh, you. Oh, darling. What’s wrong? Why the long face? You’re not . . . ? My heavens, Juliet. Anthony? Juliet, Anthony’s thirteen years old. Please, darling . . .”

  “Your mother believed them at first,” Anna Huey says. “She actually thought it was you writing. She knew the time when the mailman made his delivery and she waited by the door to open it as soon as he came up the steps. Does a mother who doesn’t love her daughter do this?”

  “Goddamn Anthony,” Juliet says.

  “Don’t be mad at Anthony. Anthony was just a boy then, Juliet. A baby.”

  Juliet starts up the stairs to the second floor, one hand on the banister, the other extended way out to touch the red felt wallpaper crowded with portraits of her Beauvais forebears. When she reaches the painting of Johnny Beauvais she can barely hold his eyes with her own and she feels all the old shame and sadness and the steps are harder to climb.

  She makes it to her bedroom and nudges the door open, and here is a piece of time cut free of the present. The collection of Louisiana plantation furniture is just as she remembered it: the four-poster bed and armoire and commodes, the secretary with its panes of wavy glass, its shelves crowded with Newcomb and Shearwater pottery. Offering a weird juxtaposition to the antiques are posters of rock and TV stars, souvenirs from Sacred Heart socials and Mardi Gras balls, and a plastic book unit overcrowded with mementos. Even the bedspread is as she remembers it: a net of spidery lace stained with thin, roiling clouds.

  Have fifteen years passed everywhere on earth but in this room? Juliet stands at the window gazing out at Esplanade Avenue, the old tree-lined boulevard that stretches southeast to the Mississippi River and northwest to Bayou Saint John and City Park. Children in school uniforms play hopscotch on the sidewalk, just as she did long ago. Once after a night out together—it was her spring formal, she recalls now; they were dressed in evening clothes—Juliet and a boyfriend played the game on a diagram left in magenta chalk on the cement. High above, a full moon shone and from the river came a breeze. The boy held her with his back against the fence and they kissed in a stubborn, determined way as a passing police car slowed and stopped by the curb and splashed them with light. A man emerged from the car. “I’m a Beauvais,” Juliet yelled, pointing to the house. “Imagine that,” he said, then left without another word.

  “What’s it like to be you?” she recalls the boy asking.

  “Tonight it feels slippery. I’ve had too much champagne.”

  The boy’s name was Sonny LaMott, and he watched as she hopped from square to square and back again. “That’s not what I mean, Julie, and you know it. I want to know how it feels.”

  “It feels dangerous and it feels dreamy. It feels like it feels for any girl who’s seventeen and in love with a boy.”

  Her shoes dangled from the fence’s iron pickets, framing his handsome face. She loved his face, its perfectly carved features and pale, unblemished skin; she even loved its regrettable tendency to pout.

  She also loved how at the dan
ce earlier Adelaide Valentine, who herself could date practically any boy she wanted, pulled her aside and said, “I am so jealous.”

  She loved as well how this boy kept his hands in the pockets of his rented tuxedo trousers, puffing them out, in a futile attempt to hide his excitement.

  “What I mean is,” he was saying now, “I wonder how it must feel when you’re alone in your room late at night and your room is in a mansion and the mansion has the same name as your name and all you have to do is say that name and people know the place and know you? ‘I’m a Beauvais,’ and the cop gets in his car and drives away.”

  She couldn’t tell if he honestly expected an answer. Did Dickie Boudreau, when they were a couple, ask what it felt like to be who she was? Of course he didn’t. Dickie lived in a giant wedding cake of a house on Saint Charles Avenue. Dickie drove a Jaguar. Dickie was going to be a Deke at Tulane, then a partner in his father’s oil exploration business. The only thing Dickie Boudreau ever seemed to ask was whether she was on her period. That and if she wanted to get a room somewhere.