“See what you’ve done to me!” I yelled at Brando, at my breaking point. “You refuse to get me pregnant, but the entire town thinks you have! Now I’m the one left to ward off roaming hands and a ton of effing advice.”
In my defense, the day was scalding, and my sister kept pestering me about her daughter, Rachel, and if I thought she had the potential to be a ballerina.
The child hadn’t even been fitted for her first pair of real shoes yet. And I was not our grandmother. I refused to shove her into a life that she might or might not want because her mother had ambitions that she never saw into fruition.
Of course, turning her down had caused her to whine and attempt to start a million fights with me. For the most part, I ignored her. I had gotten good at that over the years. But the heat seemed to be rubbing me a bit raw.
Even Brando’s temper had been close to its limits. I caught the cautious look on his face when Charlotte entered into the kitchen, where I was in the process of making watermelon lemonade.
If Charlotte wanted something, the only person to ever stop her from getting it was Maja. Charlotte would shove you into a corner and keep beating you until you calleduncle(in a metaphorical sense).
This time I was determined that she’d callaunt. I wasn’t budging, and if she kept it up, she’d find herself doused in watermelon juice.
Lord, give me strength.
“I know we’ve never had a good relationship,” she said, using her nail to pick at a piece of watermelon flesh that had fallen to the counter. “But it’s terribly unfair for you to take it out on Rachel. She’s just a baby!”
“Exactly,” I said, setting the lid on the food processor. “She has plenty of time.”
Charlotte went to argue, but I pressed thegobutton and drowned out the sound of her voice. She went to pressstopand I flicked her hand away.
Before either of us knew it, we were being hauled away from each other, watermelon juice staining our clothes and chunks of it stuck in our hair.
I had just given her the keys to my car, and she drove us both over the cliff, so to speak. I hated the fact that she could grate on me like she could. Over the years I had grown tougher, matured to the point that I could compliment her, even try to have a civilized conversation, but I had to wonder whenshewould grow up.
I was angrier with myself, though, for giving in and not walking away.
Brando watched me strip down to my bra and underwear in the bathroom mirror. He plucked a black seed from my neck. “Tomorrow,” he said. “We’re getting out of here.”
“Where?”
“Eva and Gabriel are having a party at their place on Bayou Teche.”
I could tell he needed an escape too, and not wanting to have another discussion about returning to the house on Snow, I jumped at the chance to disappear for the day.
* * *
St. Martinville was a tiny existence of a city, set along the boggy waters of Bayou Teche, only about a two-hour drive from Natchitoches.
Brando drove the Range Rover, leading a long caravan following us into the swampy terrain of Louisiana. Guido and Lou rode with us, and since she had never traveled out of New York before Guido, she was intrigued by all of the sights along the way.
Hauling out my camera, I took quick shots here and there.
I forgot how magical Louisiana could be, seeing it through Lou’s virgin eyes. It didn’t have the towering mountains or the ravaging coastline of California, nor did it have the nightlife of New York with all of its restaurants and museums, but it had a mysterious something that still enchanted.
Hundred-year-old oak trees, roots that had absorbed hurricanes and blood, azaleas that lit up the night with their never-ending colors, gardenias that perfumed the air, and magnolias that bloomed like southern stars, they all proudly stated,This is the south.Welcome, darlin’.
Bayous twisted and turned like veins, yet they were as still as a body with no heart, no circulation, no current. Somehow it was still fecund, breeding creatures to be feared and producing sustenance for centuries—crawfish on the table, and fish sizzling in the pan.
History was so thick that it was as heavy as the moisture in the air, meandering in the sticky heat—Catholic intercessions and black magic, pirates and voodoo queens, swirling hoop skirts and flowered aprons, pirogues and fishing hands—a gumbo pot of cultures, the flesh, bone, and blood of the place. It was a living, wild heartbeat that continued to thump, thump,thump, and a spirit that forever overcame and danced in the tropical rain, thunder pounding and lightning streaking, to the blues or the two-step.
Boom, I thought,this is home. I raised my camera to my face and took a picture of my husband’s perfect profile.
Brando loved the water, and Louisiana had an abundance of that—a fisherman’s paradise. I could tell he was eager to get there, and he had stowed his fishing apparatus in the trunk of the car. Though it was hotter than Hades outside, and held more moisture than a swollen sponge, I looked forward to going out on the water with him, floppy sunhat on my head.
We were close to arrival when Longfellow’s poetic hand reached us. Evangeline’s Oak Tree and plaque, along with her statue, sat as a testament to his everlasting words in St. Martinville.
I didn’t even need to ask why. I could feel the reason Gabriel and his Evangeline had decided to create a home here, even if it was only a temporary respite from their busy lives in Nashville.
