The hostile sun charged across Ophelia’s face as she stepped into her backyard. Her iced coffee glass was sweating as profusely as she was. Grumbling to herself, she quickly walked across the lawn to her studio, flipping on the air conditioning unit the moment she stepped inside.
Her home office and sanctuary. An eight-by-eleven room with a deep sink in its back corner, one large window that allowed Ophelia to see the side of her yard, and one smaller window for the A/C unit.
The back wall of the studio was covered with funky blue-green-patterned wallpaper that, upon further examination, was repeated drawings of two dogs humping, a design her best friend, Jade, thought was hysterical and insisted she put it in at least one spot in her house. In the corner of the room was an oversized feathered pillow that appeared to be a pet bed, but fit Ophelia quite well on afternoons when she needed to lie down and think. Mounds of handcrafted pillows covered it, and above it dangled a mobile she’d made of her favorite things: a gemstone she didn’t know the name of (which allegedly held healing properties, according to Jade), a bundle of dried lavender, a crystal ornament in the shape of a snowflake, and a picture of herself and her younger sisters.
Everything in her studio was simply there because she liked it. Because it made her happy. In her cottage, everything was practical and made sense. Here in her office, nothing made sense—it was simply a smattering of happy things.
She moved to her desk, which was sourced from a warehouse consignment store off Jefferson Highway. The wood had been significantly beat up when she brought it home, and Jolie helped her restore it by designing a stunning onyx marble top that feltlike leather. Ophelia often found herself stroking the marble like it was a pet or a lover. She had the intense urge to rub her face along its cool, smooth surface to soothe her encroaching headache.
So she did. When one lived alone and worked from home, they were allowed to act unconventionally without judgment. She could eat pickles for breakfast and work from the toilet, and no one would be the wiser. However, Ophelia was a creature of habit and thrived on routine, so her penchant for peculiar behavior was minimal, but she liked the idea that shecouldif she wanted.
Even so, she often pretended someone was watching her, forcing her to “act” normally. It was likely an idea formed from childhood, like God with a capital G was always watching you. She hated the idea, but it stuck.
Ophelia glanced at the clock on her computer. It was nine a.m., and she had yet to do any work, so she turned her focus to the job at hand. She refreshed her email and watched a flood of spam and work emails appear in her inbox.
Ophelia ran a non-profit called Healing Artists that provided mental healthcare to local artists. She had launched Healing Artists a year ago, right after she moved back to New Orleans. In fact, the job was the catalyst for her move. The board of directors offered her the executive director role based on her extensive business and financial skills from her time working in wealth management, as well as her degrees in finance and social work. The offer came at the perfect time when she was already seriously considering moving back to New Orleans.
Ophelia was the classic eldest daughter who strived for perfection. And, to her, perfection meant having an impressive, well-paying job that could sustain her, accrue savings, and make her parents proud. She could have stayed and worked in Louisiana at a private wealth management firm, but that wasn’t enough. It was like the school grading system followed her into adult life, and it wasn’t enough just to make an A. She needed tobethebest inthebest city, so she left for New York after graduation and began her wealth management career.
She quickly realized real life was nothing like school. There were no grades or accolades. Just long, grueling nights of work, bad office coffee, and not enough time to make friends. But she stayed…For seven years. Seven fucking years. It wasn’t all bad, but it wasn’t all good either.
A couple years into living in Manhattan, she did eventually learn how to have a work/life balance that she found fulfilling. She volunteered, she made friends, she attempted a couple relationships, but mainly had many hot and occasionally bizarre sexual escapades. She needed to blow off steam from working so much, after all. She even joined a weekend running club to maintain her fitness and friendships. Two birds, one stone.
But something happened as she continued to climb through the ranks at work. By the sixth year, she could not be bothered to give a damn about the management and growth of a corporate company’s assets. She began to have hysterically intrusive thoughts about investing her high-end clients’ assets in comical places like portable toilet stock. One day, she woke up and realized the life she had wasn’t satisfying in the ways she wanted it to be.
She had been feeling the sterility of her life for a while. Work, run, sleep, repeat. But she had convinced herself that was what she was supposed to do. That the life she had was good and right, and what adults did. It wasn’t supposed to be fun. It was being an adult. Fun was for when you were a kid.
Nothing in particular happened to change Ophelia’s mind about her life. It was a gradual change, created by seemingly minor decisions. She stopped buying clothes exclusively from Ann Taylor and found herself picking up unique pieces at vintage shops on the Lower East Side. She bought a journal and actually wrote in it. She booked more trips back home to New Orleans. She left work at five p.m. every day, and she found herself looking at social work jobs on job sites. Even the food she ate changed. She was so tired of chopped salads delivered to herdoor and opted to frequent the Union Square farmers’ market for recipe inspiration.
Ophelia felt more like herself with each decision. She had been stuck, and she slowly became unstuck until she was fully free and barreling toward her new life, which happened to include a beautiful cottage on Panola St. in New Orleans, minutes away from Jolie and Jade. This new life was good.
CHAPTER TWO
Later that morning, Ophelia allowed herself a fifteen-minute iced coffee break before diving into her next task. When she returned to her studio, she checked her weekend work schedule. It looked like she was working a full day on Sunday. In addition to running Healing Artists, Ophelia worked a couple shifts every week at Prytania Botanica, a one-stop shop for all spiritual curiosities and organic tonics.
Her neighbor and now close friend, Avery Dumas, owned the two-year-old shop. Avery and his grandmother, Delphine, lived in the blue, double-shotgun next door. Delphine was an older woman with stunning gray-blue hair who was always outside on her rocker, willing to chat. Ophelia grew to know her quite well during her first year back home. Back in the day, Delphine—or Madame Delphine as she was known—ran a popular Voodoo shop in the Quarter until she sold it a decade or so ago. Her shop was the inspiration for Avery’s more modern take on the classic Voodoo emporium. Through their chats, they discovered that Delphine actually knew Ophelia’s grandmother from their youth. Ophelia loved the connection between Delphine and Mawmaw and thought it was sweet that she ended up living next door to her grandmother’s friend.
Her grandmother, Mawmaw Ophelia, Ophelia’s namesake,was a Catholic healer or a Traiteur, as the local Cajuns called it. From the French wordtraiter, to treat, she was a Traiteuse, but no one used the female noun that Ophelia knew of. When her Mawmaw lived in New Orleans in her twenties, she and Delphine formed a friendship over different healing practices.
Mawmaw was the matriarch of the family and Ophelia’s favorite person in the entire world. She felt a twinge of guilt at not visiting her more since she’d moved back to New Orleans. Oakdale, where she currently resided, was a little over a three-hour drive from her house, and she’d been so busy starting up the non-profit and working at Prytania Botanica. She made a promise to herself to make more time for Mawmaw. She missed the Pine House, Mawmaw’s home, named for the hundreds of densely packed pine trees on the property.
Ophelia recalled playing outside with her sisters and their cousin Jack, building forts from fallen branches and running in the creek. Ophelia and Jack were the oldest of the bunch, and they were fascinated by Mawmaw’s work. Mawmaw would occasionally let them watch her treat some patients, only small things like warts or croup. They would concoct plans to purposefully injure themselves so Mawmaw would treat them. Just a scrape here or a bruise there. Mawmaw eventually caught on and said if they did it again, their punishment would be picking up all the pine needles around the perimeter of the Pine House.
While it was easy for Ophelia to befriend Delphine, Avery was much harder to track down as he was incredibly busy with his shop. She’d see his tall, round frame hustling in and out of his side of the double shotgun. He always threw her a smile and that head nod you only see in the South, where they nod up as if to say, “I see you.”
Ophelia knew from her social work studies that establishing a strong community was essential to happiness, and she took moving to New Orleans as serious as any other endeavor. Determined to succeed, she visited Avery’s shop one day.
It was the most magical place she had ever seen. A faded emerald awning topped the windows, which were covered ingold lettering spelling out Prytania Botanica. A warm light emanated from within, and beyond the store window, she could see lush greenery, stacks of books, and rows of candles.
Beyond the painted blue door was a world of magic. A feeling of warmth, excitement, and wonder filled Ophelia the moment she stepped inside. The shop was bursting with local art, books, plants, candles, jewelry, trinkets, oils, too many things for her to take in at once. And there was Avery, towering over the wooden counter, ringing up a customer. The whole place looked like a cross between a magical farmers’ market and an old-world bookstore. Ophelia inhaled deeply, relishing in the scent of fresh fruit and vegetables mixed with deep incense notes, decaying paper, and cinnamon. Scents had always affected her, and Prytania Botanica smelled like wonder.
“Well, well, fancy seeing you here,” said Avery with a flourish of his hand. They knew each other enough by sight, but this was their first formal introduction. Avery was a larger-than-life man with smooth espresso-colored skin, a wide smile, and style like she had never seen before. He was wearing an emerald silk button-down with a banana leaf-printed apron.
“I just can’t get over this place. There’s so much to look at. I’m gonna be here a minute,” she told him.
“You better. Take ya time and make sure to check out the smudge sticks. You need to cleanse that new home of yours. Perhaps a cleansing oil and candle, too.”
“Oooh, yes,” Ophelia agreed. “Great idea. Your grandmother must be so proud.”
