City of Refuge Page 6

  “Not like this.”

  Craig stopped speaking, with his eyebrows raised, and after a moment Alice said, “I’m sorry.”

  Craig went on. “Yes, we have to evacuate occasionally, but it doesn’t take all that much, we have a nice two-day vacation in Oxford, and then we’re back. We have a life here. I’m trying to figure out what it is you really want, realistically. We’ve had this conversation at least a dozen times…”

  “A dozen?”

  “…and I never know where it leaves us,” Craig went on, letting the interruption pass. “We’ve had good times here, haven’t we?”

  “Of course,” Alice said after a brief hesitation. “We…”

  “Then—bottom line, then I’m finished—I need to know what it is you want, what you really want. Otherwise this is just like picking at a scab. If we’re going to be here I want to be here.”

  They sat there, practically knee-to-knee, and the thing that was really at issue, the unnameable thing that neither of them could see clearly or focus on because it was too big and too close and too nameless, rotated above their heads like a mirrored ball over an empty dance floor. The argument was never really about logistics but about each one’s desire for the other to feel what they felt. How had they gotten so dug into their positions?

  Alice looked at Craig evenly and seriously and said, “I want you to acknowledge that this is a scary, backward, inconvenient place to live, and that we are putting our children at risk by living here.”

  “So—bottom line—you want to move. Right? Where do you want to live? That’s what I asked you before.”

  “I’ll repeat what I said, Craig: What I want is for you to acknowledge…”

  “Right, right—that New Orleans is a horrible place and we should go back to Ann Arbor.”

  “No,” she almost screamed. What she wanted was for him to acknowledge that her fears had some basis in the reality of the situation. At least that way, if they were going to stay, they could face the fears together, instead of her feelings being negated because there was no immediate practical solution. She wanted them to be on the same page; that in itself would have relieved much of the pressure that fueled her anger.

  That is what she thought, when she could think quietly about it, although there was another element, harder to admit. She was, at heart, jangled by the city. It was garish, loud, full of abrupt and, to her, inharmonious contrasts. Yes, it was fun to visit, fun as a spice, as a side dish. But as she had gotten older she found herself, to her surprise, wanting something closer to what she had never wanted for herself growing up. Muted colors, tasteful room arrangements, recognizable social and cultural activities with literate, educated friends…All the things she had grown up wanting to escape, the overtones of class anxiety that drove her crazy in her parents, she was discovering to her own intense discomfort were embedded in her. And in her hopes for Annie and Malcolm. She wished that Craig could have shouldered some of that desire, let it rest less completely on her shoulders. She had married someone who reflected her need to distance herself from her upbringing, and now because of that she had been left alone to defend the part of her that was still stuck back there with those values.

  And for Craig’s part, Alice had been the person who completed his adventure, the perfect companion to his love for the city and the life that he had sought out for himself. Alice had been the one who combed the newspaper looking for new restaurants to try out, and who bought the guide books and found romantic bed-and-breakfast getaways in plantation houses half an hour out of town. Craig had found nothing less than himself in New Orleans, and then he had found Alice, and the picture of his life seemed complete. And now part of that picture was shifting out of recognition, for reasons he didn’t understand, and the loss was stabbing him in the heart. He wished that she could at least have admitted a sense of loss for her youthful embrace of the city; that might have let them share the experience more. But instead he felt as if she were, simply, attacking this place and the life that they had loved and shared together. As if she had become a different person.

  They both felt the sense of loss. And as they sat there, some angle, some look caught unguarded, some ghost of memory passed over them because at almost the same moment they both began to speak, then they both chuckled at the collision. Craig let Alice speak first.

  “Can we please have a conversation—not now, but sometime—about other options? Just talking about it at least will feel like I’m not…I don’t know—trapped in someone else’s movie.”

  Craig breathed from his stomach. “Why don’t we plan a meeting. Let’s set a time and a time limit, and agree that whatever we are thinking about will get an airing.”

  They took each others’ hands, looked in each others’ eyes.

  “Can we go have fun now?” Alice said with a crooked, almost apologetic smile.

  “Are we okay?” Craig said. “Do we need to talk some more?”

  “No,” Alice said. “We’re okay. Thank you.”

  Holding her gaze, Craig said, “Thank you.”

  The conversations were necessary, and exhausting. They ended them feeling closer, feeling relieved; it did not escape their notice that a fundamental difference had been left unresolved, but at least they could go on with their day.

  That Friday afternoon, Craig opened the backyard shed and dragged out the big, high wooden table that they used only for crawfish boils, spread it with layers of overlapping newspaper which he secured to the legs with duct tape. Then he got out their six tiki lamps on poles and drove them into the ground at strategic points around the yard. He hung strings of small paper lanterns from tree to tree to drainpipe. Alice was in charge of picking up some of the food; guests would be bringing other dishes potluck style. Around two o’clock Craig went to Gumbo for an hour and a half to oversee a few last-minute changes in the issue that was closing. And, at Alice’s urging, he called the Lamplighter Hotel in Oxford, Mississippi, and made reservations for three nights starting the next night, just in case the storm started heading for New Orleans and they decided to evacuate. There was an escalating amount of talk on television and radio during the day about the storm’s possible path.

  Around five o’clock Doug Worth brought over his crawfish rig, a fifteen-gallon pot with a cage that fit snugly within it and would contain the crawfish, which were lowered, live and writhing, into water that was heated to boiling by a low portable gas stove. They set it up in the dirt driveway around the side of the house. Doug, raised in Mid-City, was a New Orleans institution. Thin, short, with long blond hair and mutton-chop sideburns, always dressed in a plaid Western shirt, he was the lead guitarist and singer for The Combustibles (he also played in spinoff bands like Desire Street, the Crescents, The Goombahs, Candy and the Canes…), one of the great bar bands in the history of New Orleans. They could play anything, it often seemed, as long as the song had been recorded before 1970. Their specialty was obscure New Orleans rhythm and blues, things that felt new because nobody knew them but specialists, like “Loud Mouth Annie” by Big Boy Myles, or “Every Time I Hear That Mellow Saxophone” by Roy Montrell. The Combustibles had a standing gig at Rock ’N Bowl on Carrollton Avenue every other Friday, a bowling alley where the band set up on the mezzanine level while people bowled away next to them, and danced in front of them, and they played at high school proms, corner bars and restaurant openings, debutante balls and biker parties. They had a dedicated local following and they put out records every two years or so on their own label, Making Groceries, which the drummer’s wife sold at a table during their gigs. Doug was an unofficial music historian, who could tell you anything about Guitar Slim or Lazy Lester or Barbara George or Dave Bartholomew or Smiley Lewis.

  Doug lived with his wife, Connie, two blocks from Craig and Alice and was the most popular father of all the kids in their tight group in that neighborhood. Since he didn’t have a regular day job, he had a degree of surplus energy for toting his own two kids and their playmates around the block o
n his old Union Pacific train service cart—down Plum Street to the corner of Burdette to the snowball stand, then back along tree-shaded Willow Street. Every other Saturday he would get out his guitar and invite all the kids and their parents for an informal sing-along in his backyard, where he would lead them in “There’s a Hole in the Bottom of the Sea,” or “The Green Grass Grows All Around,” or “John Jacob Jingle-heimer Schmidt.” Sometimes the other members of the Combustibles would drop in and help out. He had a way of bobbing his head when he spoke to people and looking up at their face from underneath; he would come up to someone as if he had a great secret and, looking around, put his hand to their ear, draw near and whisper “I’m going to get another beer.” Back when Craig was still new in town he had interviewed Doug for Gumbo, and Doug had said, “Man, sometimes I feel like I’m just a hologram, like I’m here because there’s all this great music and food. Like all I want to do is just express that stuff, you know?” Craig loved the image—a person who was entirely a function of the community around him. Craig and Doug were warm neighborhood friends, not late-night secret sharers, but Doug represented to Craig a lot of things he thought he might have liked to be had the road curved differently and he had been a musician instead of an editor.

  As the time approached for the party, Doug left to go out to Metairie and pick up two sacks of crawfish. The guests started arriving around six p.m., setting down presents inside on the picnic table and beer and wine on the kitchen counter where Alice was still chopping ingredients for salsa. Mike and Jane brought over the birthday cake. Craig’s best friend Bobby and his girlfriend Jen arrived. The two ad sales reps from Gumbo came together. Arthur Borofsky, Gumbo’s publisher, arrived, with a large and elaborately wrapped gift. The guests made their way out into the backyard under the big tree, Christmas lights were strung up over the big wooden table, and around the fence several hooked strings of lights in the shape of red chili peppers. Scott, the managing editor, arrived; Chris and Lisa from down the block with their daughter Bonnie and their five-year-old Nick, Fred and Tanya with Walker and Justine and Jenny. Craig had hooked up the speakers in the backyard and had his iTunes run of Huey Piano Smith and the Clowns doing all their New Orleans hits like “Rockin’ Pneumonia” and “Don’t You Know, Jockamo” and “Well, I’ll Be John Brown,” which the kids loved because of all the funny voices the singers used. Eventually the house and yard were filled with forty adults, maybe more, and at least twenty-five kids, half of them prekindergarten. Some of the men gathered around the television in the living room to watch that night’s preseason Saints game against Baltimore.

  Craig ran around attending to details, small emergencies, transport of food and emptying of garbage bags. Few things made him happier than this, having his friends in his house, with the music he loved playing and his children happy with other children, Derek standing in the kitchen joking with Chris. The men were wearing Hawaiian shirts or other relaxed clothes, and shorts, and the children drew with crayons and Magic Markers on big sheets of butcher paper on the picnic table in the dining room. Later they would clear it off for the birthday cake and all of that. “You got me rockin’ when I ought to be rollin’,” Craig sang along with The Clowns, icing down a six-pack of beer someone had brought. “Don’t you just know it?…” Ben, the cook from Siesta Restaurant, leaned over and whispered a quick joke in Craig’s ear, and he was gone before Craig could straighten up and answer.

  When he was able to take a break, Craig stepped outside and found Bobby, Jen and Doug, standing in a cluster. Doug had put on giant rubber Halloween monster feet. (Someone pointed at them and said, “Where’d you get those?” And Bobby said, “Those are his own feet.”)

  “So are we going to see Rickles in Biloxi or what?” Craig opened with. The comedian was coming to one of the Gulf Coast casinos in late September, and Craig was going to use his Gumbo credentials to try and get a break on some tickets.

  “Absolutely,” Bobby said. “Let’s get a limo.” This was light irony; they were a scruffy-looking gang in shorts and Hawaiian shirts; Bobby and Doug both wore two-day beards.

  “Hey, I’m in for fifty bucks.” Craig said.

  Someone nearby mentioned something about the storm in the Gulf and they all involuntarily listened for a moment; someone else in the other group said they had heard on the news that it was veering east and was supposed to hit around Biloxi. That’s what the storms always seemed to do. There, or somewhere around Pensacola.

  “I’m sick of these fucking hurricanes,” Jen said, with her hand halfway down the back of Bobby’s jeans. “It’s like sex with Bobby. They make a lot of noise and act like they’re going to blow the walls out and then they go someplace else and leave you sitting there just kind of damp and let down.” Craig raised his eyebrows and laughed in shock, while Bobby stood there with a look of amusement, unflappable.

  “Listen to this,” Doug said. “Sam Fucking Butera is going to be at Rock ’N Bowl.”

  “No way,” Craig said.

  “That’s what John Blancher told me. Some time in October. Hey—Olivia…” Doug said, his attention caught by one of his children leading three other kids in a run through the backyard, “no running, baby.” She listened, and slowed down.

  “With the Witnesses?” Craig asked.

  “Can’t have Sam Butera without the Witnesses.”

  “If a Butera plays without a Witness,” Bobby said, “does he make a sound?”

  “Does he get any reviews?” Jen said.

  “Does he get union scale?” Doug said. “What,” he said over his shoulder. “Okay…” turning back to the group, he said, “Time to drop the bugs. Call and ask Blancher if you don’t believe me.” He walked away toward where the pot was boiling, next to the mesh sacks full of trapped, struggling crawfish.

  “I thought Sam Butera was dead,” Bobby said. He pulled out a pocket notebook and a pen and made himself a note.

  Craig had met Bobby on his first visit to the city, at the Maple Leaf Bar on Oak Street, during Jazzfest. Craig was waiting for a beer at the bar in back, and he noticed a man roughly his age, dressed in a Hawaiian shirt and shorts, standing nearby, also waiting for a beer. He was short and chunky, with sandy hair and round steel-rimmed glasses, and his face was set in an expression of ongoing amusement. He got his beer, noticed Craig looking at him, pointed to the beer and said, “Got a problem with this?”

  Even though the sentence could have been taken as confrontational, the fellow had one eyebrow raised, archly, and Craig understood it as a lampoon of the kind of sudden weirdness one might encounter in most bars. Poker-faced, Craig answered, “Maybe I do.”

  The fellow laughed, turned away and surveyed the room.

  Since the guy seemed in no hurry to continue speaking, Craig began to introduce himself. Before he could get two words out the fellow said, “Chicago?”

  Impressed, Craig said, “Minneapolis, actually. That’s pretty good.”

  “First time, right?”

  Now Craig couldn’t help registering his surprise, as well as a mild irritation. “What, is it written all over me?”

  “Basically.” The guy looked down pointedly at Craig’s feet, which were clad in penny loafers and no socks.

  Craig looked down, too, and said, “What’s wrong with that?”

  “Nothing,” the guy said. “You play pool?”

  As Craig racked up the balls a short, dark-haired woman with black plastic-framed glasses from the 1950s and a ponytail appeared and spoke to the other fellow, whose name was Bobby. Indicating Craig, Bobby said to her, “He’s from Minneapolis.”

  “Who gives a fuck?” she said, staring at Craig unsmilingly. Craig laughed out loud.

  “He’s allright,” she said, frowning. “How long is it going to take you to destroy him at pool?”

  “Five minutes, maybe less,” Bobby said, cheerfully.

  “Hurry up,” she said. “This band is giving me a headache.”

  They didn’t talk about much personal
that first night; just music they had seen at the Fairgrounds, checking each other out. Craig gleaned a few things about Bobby and the woman, whose name was Jen. Bobby had grown up in New Orleans in Mid-City, went to Catholic school and then Loyola, wrote articles about music here and there. Jen came back half an hour later and insisted on leaving.

  “You here for the week?” Bobby asked Craig. “Come by—we’re having a crawfish boil tomorrow. It’s by Coliseum Square. You got wheels? You know where that is?”

  “I can find it.”

  “You know where Race Street is?”

  “I can find it.”

  Shaking his head, Bobby wrote down the address and phone number on a napkin. “Call me when you get lost and I’ll talk you in. It’ll be the house with the Sugar Boy records playing.”

  “You know about Sugar Boy?” Craig said.

  Bobby frowned, affronted. “My uncle had a bar on Rampart Street…” he began.

  “Oh fuck, here we go,” Jen said. “Don’t get him started on Uncle Snake. Come on; let’s go home and screw.”

  Smiling and shrugging at Craig, Bobby let Jen drag him away.

  The next night, Craig found his way to Bobby’s backyard, full of people standing around laughing and talking under Christmas lights strung from tree to tree. Jen walked immediately up to him and said, “I’m glad you lost the loafers. Bobby’s inside slicing something in the kitchen. I don’t cook because I don’t want to be a slave to some fat fuck who spends his days in an office and then expects me to be his whore when he gets home. You got a problem with that?”

  “I could make it my problem,” Craig answered.

  “Rumble!” she yelled, turning only one or two heads. “The kitchen door is over there.” She left his side, heading for a group of people in the far corner of the yard. That night Craig met half a dozen of the people who were still his closest friends, including Doug. Through Bobby, Craig had been able to step into the aquifer of New Orleans life—not just the music and streets and restaurants, but the home life—Bobby’s mom, who lived in Mid-City just off of Orleans Avenue near City Park, loved to cook big Italian meals and invite Bobby’s friends. Craig spent his first New Orleans Thanksgiving at Bobby’s mom’s house.