A Ghost of a Chance Read online

  TB gives me a blank stare, the kind children do when they realize they have done something wrong but haven’t a clue why. I walk to the door and open it and of course it’s Henry on the other side.

  “How are you feeling?” he asks. “Alicia told me all about it.”

  I haven’t a moment to answer when TB comes up from behind and opens the door wider. “You hurt yourself, Vi?”

  I pause and close my eyes for an instant, trying to tame the angry beast inside my head, then slip into the hallway and close the door on TB. “Henry, I’m so sorry. He just showed up. I didn’t invite him and we’re separated and he really didn’t know that guests aren’t allowed on press trips….”

  Henry holds up a hand. “No worries, Viola. We have a journalist stuck in Atlanta due to storms and I was just going to invite Bubba to the dinner tonight since the meals are already planned and paid for.”

  These are the kinds of things that get journalists kicked off the list. You don’t break the rules. And you certainly don’t do anything to upset the tour without letting Henry know first. I know Henry’s being polite, but this could mean me never being asked again.

  “It’s fine, Henry. I appreciate the thought, but TB is out of line here and I’m well aware of the rules….”

  “Viola,” Henry says, touching my arm, “it’s the least we can do. Two days on a rooftop? I had no idea.”

  Oh shit, oh shit. I will kill him for sure. “TB told you about that?”

  “He was sitting in the lobby when we arrived and we got to talking. What an ordeal you all went through.”

  “Yeah, well….” Oh please don’t make me talk about it.

  “And you had that nasty bump today. How are you feeling?”

  Henry moves to my side and takes a good look at my head. He’s starting to pale like Charlene and I wonder if he thinks I will demand health care, a settlement or something. As if. I just want to stay on the list.

  That and a hot bath, oh please Jesus.

  “It’s fine.” I offer a smile that doesn’t come without pain. “Nothing a martini won’t cure.”

  Relief washes over Henry, but he’s still frowning a bit. “We’ll get you one, then, but if you need a doctor or medicine….”

  I wave my hand to halt this line of thought. “I’m fine, really. It wasn’t that big of a deal.”

  “Well, let me know. The hotel manager said he has Tylenol and a few other things, that all you have to do is call to the desk and they will take care of you.” Henry hands me a business card with the manager’s name on it, but I’m still focused on staying on the list.

  “Again, Henry, I’m really sorry about….”

  “Bring your husband to dinner.”

  “He’s not my husband.”

  “In fact, if he wants to stay….”

  “He doesn’t.”

  “Sounds like he could use a nice bed for a while. The stories he said about your house were pretty awful.”

  That old guilt returns and threatens to consume me. I had barely stepped two feet inside that house before announcing I wanted no more to do with it and now TB is living there, on the second floor above the water line, the mold and the stench.

  I hang my head in shame. Damn that man. “Of course.”

  Henry backs up, ready to bolt, as if he senses some ugly history here and doesn’t want to learn more. “It’s up to you, naturally, but I wanted to make sure you know he’s welcome.”

  I look up and force a smile. “Thanks. We appreciate that.”

  Henry nods. “See you at dinner, then.”

  I enter the room and find my ex sprawled out on the bed, his gaze cloudy and returned to some basketball game. He may have lost me to silence after Lillye died, or so he always claims, but the TV took his ass to never-never land the moment he was born.

  I say nothing, gather up some clean clothes, retrieve my ditty bag and head to the bath. I fill up the tub, utilizing what’s left of the bath products, which is plenty, really. I shouldn’t have been so critical, I think with a heavy heart as I slip into the steaming hot bath. As the water surrounds me, that old black hole follows suit like an old friend. I close my eyes and the New Orleans night looms in front of us, the day we drove back for the first time.

  “I don’t understand what we are doing here,” TB said and I fought the urge to punch him silly, even though he made perfect sense. What were we doing there?

  “I told you, already. They said to get here early to wait in line.”

  “What line?”

  I might have agreed with him on that point, but we couldn’t see anything in front of us so, for all we knew, a line of cars existed right around the next bend. I had been sure people were desperate to get back home the moment they opened Orleans Parish and the interstate would have been clogged with traffic, but at that moment I got it. Home to what? It was like a blanket had descended upon my town, replacing New Orleans with something akin to wet, moldy cardboard. If you could see it.

  I say darkness and that’s not quite true. We followed the headlights of our car into Orleans Parish once we crossed over from Metairie, the Jefferson Parish suburb showing signs of life due to it being on the unbreached end of the broken levees. Once inside the city limits we slowly watched every foot of pavement in the shadow of our headlights, searching for debris, potholes or even things as large as abandoned boats (we spotted two right away). I finally opened the side window and shined my flashlight alongside the car hoping to spot a street sign, but even those were blown or washed away.

  Because Robert E. Lee is such a massive thoroughfare, with a giant open median — what we call neutral grounds in New Orleans, — we drove to the lakefront without too much guesswork. Following the side streets to our house was another story. After an hour of creeping along, dark ghosts of buildings looming alongside us the smell of which turned our stomachs, we finally found our block. Exhausted from the search and craning our necks to the windshield, we parked at what looked like the cleanest stretch of street with no piercing objects to pop a tire. TB insisted on turning off the car — anything to save gas; he was scared we would run out and never leave the city, hunted down by zombies and werewolves, no lie! But once the key turned, we were immediately engulfed into the black abyss.

  It was the roof all over again, sans the incredible array of stars, and we kept bickering at each other, hoping our anger would keep the sick anxiety of that memory from consuming us.

  “No one is coming here today,” TB said, a frightened edge creeping through his voice. “Who in their right mind would?”

  “Us,” I reminded him.

  “It’s too early.”

  “This was your stupid idea.”

  “I wanted to know what our house looks like.”

  I considered reminding him that we saw what it looked like the day they rescued us from the roof, but thought it best not to mention, especially since I was the reason we didn’t evacuate. “It’s flooded, it probably stinks and everything is lost.”

  The one thing I vowed to stuff tightly inside my brain started leaking through and my breath caught. My heart raced and I prayed that the donuts we ate in Baton Rouge would stay put because I didn’t want to barf on my front lawn smelling the stench of Katrina.

  If only I had brought the photos with me.

  “It might be okay. You are always so negative.”

  “Shut up,” I managed to say between threats of rising bile. “Just please shut up.”

  Something in the world shifted for TB turned silent and our environment developed outlines. I could make out what looked like a flooded car in front of us and our neighbor’s fence. Instinctively, both TB and I gazed toward where our house was located, squinting to see the two-story frame of a home still standing.

  “I’m going in,” TB announced.

  “Have fun.”

  “You’re not coming?”

  I gave him a look that said it all — at least to most people — but he only sat there, waiting, clueless. Not want
ing to explain, I simply said, “I’ll meet you in.”

  While TB took off for the house, I managed to calm the rush of nausea and anxiety. My baby’s pictures were in that house, placed high in the hall closet wrapped in plastic just in case. Only I never dreamed the levees would actually break and flood the city. Who did? It was all I had left in the world of Lillye and now I had lost that too.

  I hated my life. I despised my husband and my pitiful excuse of a job. The house we were so concerned about was an anchor wrapped tightly around our necks, always taking what precious little income we managed to save, replacing vacations that might have rescued our marriage with new water heaters and plumbing mishaps. The kitchen alone pissed me off every time I came home, gazing at me with its cheap ugly cabinetry and broken linoleum, things we could never afford to replace. Even the car was a lemon. Absolutely nothing in my life mattered to me at that moment. Nothing.

  Except those photos. And with them gone, I didn’t give a rat’s ass about anything.

  And yet something inside urged me to go look. I left the car and gingerly made my way through the yard, trying not to breathe the mildew stench passing over me in a cloud like the smell of a paper factory you pass on the interstate. The ground cracked beneath my feet as if the grass has been sprinkled with water before a freeze, only the air hung dank and hot around me; it’s October in South Louisiana, after all. With the dawn approaching I could see where I was stepping, helpful after three weeks of flood waters covered everything and left behind all sorts of creepy items and critters. It seemed like forever until I made it to the door, which TB had propped open with one of our waterlogged chairs. With a closer look I could see it was part of my mother’s dinette set given as a wedding present, antiques that could easily be saved. I wanted to yell how stupid that action was, but I was too busy sidestepping a dead rat.

  “It’s not so bad,” TB yelled from the kitchen area, as the image of the house came into closer focus.

  Not so bad? The moldy watermark — or bathtub ring as our local newspaper columnist liked to call it — made a nice wall accent, about a foot or two below the ceiling. For a moment, before logic kicked in, I thought it was wallpaper, the kind Maw Maws prefer, with the tiny little rose pattern. The entertainment center we bought at Walmart consisting of that lovely particle board had literally melted with the TV lying cracked in the middle of the puddle. TB’s Lazy-Boy was a soggy monstrosity spewing forth an ungodly smell and the pine floors, the only positive aspect of this trashy house TB’s family had given us when we married, was buckled in several places.

  “You need to see upstairs,” TB said, pulling something black and nasty from the bottom of the kitchen sink. “I think we can save our clothes.”

  The image of wearing anything belonging to this house pushed me over the edge and I barfed on a pile of roof shingles, all the while wondering how the hell they made it into my living room. The heaving was harsh and relentless and I couldn’t catch my breath in between, making me believe that I had escaped death in Katrina only to perish anyway in this moldy house I despised.

  I felt TB’s arms around my shoulders pushing me out the door, and even though the stench greeted me at the threshold, the air felt lighter and I got control of myself. He continued leading me to the car, where he opened the door and forced me to sit down. For a moment, before my mind interceded, I took comfort in my husband’s embrace.

  TB placed something in my hands but said nothing, just turned and walked back toward the house. When I gazed into my lap I discovered Lillye’s angelic face staring back. Somehow the plastic I had wrapped them in, the proximity in the closet, it all helped to keep them safe. Somehow, Katrina, that bitch, never found my baby’s photos.

  I closed the door so no one would hear me — as if! — and I started a crying jag that lasted until TB returned and we crossed the Mississippi River Bridge outside of Baton Rouge. When I finally got a handle on my sanity, before we made it back to Lafayette, I decided there was only one recourse left to me. I’d leave New Orleans. I’d divorce my husband. And my crazy family could go to hell.

  I feel a gentle touch on my elbow and open my eyes to find TB stroking my hair. I realize I’ve been sitting in now cold water, lost in the old familiar grief. There’s a martini perched on the edge of the pedestal sink and once TB acknowledges I am conscious of him being there, he brings it to me.

  “Henry had it brought up. I didn’t order it, I swear.”

  I sit up and grab a nearby towel. “It’s fine,” I whisper, gratefully taking the drink and practically gulping it down.

  “Do you want me to leave?” TB asks, and I’m not sure if he means my side at the tub or Eureka Springs. I still long for peace, quiet and solitude, but how can I send the man I was married to for years, of which I shared the most precious child in the world, back into that hell hole?

  I shake my head and TB looks only slightly relieved. He still wants so much more than I’m able to give.

  “I’ll stay out of your way. I won’t eat anything and I’ll go home in the morning.”

  “Henry wants you to join us for dinner.”

  I should have said I wanted him to join us as well, but the truth remains, I don’t. Guilt returns and tears are poised, ready to pour out like marathon runners.

  “Okay,” TB says softly. “I’ll take a shower when you’re finished.”

  I touch the top of my head that is still caked in blood. “I’ll only be a minute. Need to wash my hair.”

  TB silently and sadly leaves the bathroom, closing the door behind him. I quickly shampoo my hair, feeling better despite the anchor attached to my heart, and step out of the tub. I grab the lush bathrobe on the back of the door and slip inside its comfort, but the ever-present pain won’t let me relax.

  It was like this when Lillye died, the endless crying, the dark hole of depression. I could never understand how human beings don’t dehydrate from the amount of water we exude through grief.

  I gasp for breath, then exhale, ready to steady my emotions and face the world when I see her in the mirror, faintly, the line of her figure like a shadow marked by a Sharpie. She wears the schoolgirl outfit of the blond in the cave, but her hair combed back into a bun is a muddy red, the unfashionable color, not the one everyone emulates through Clairol. She stares at me sadly through pin-prick eyes above an unremarkable nose. Plain Jane is what comes to me in a flash. And although this apparition, if that’s what I’m seeing, isn’t offering emotion of any kind, I feel her pain. Loneliness, heartbreak and something much more acute.

  The loss of a child.

  Chapter Seven

  You’d think after experiencing two hallucinations in one day a person would call 9-1-1 and head for somewhere with padded walls and blunt objects. I stand naked save for a towel before my tiny suitcase in this unusual alcove with no door that doubles for a closet, dripping on the lush Victorian carpet.

  Frankly, I’m stunned. On one hand, I’m vindicated that Charlene saw the blonde in the cave. But how does one explain Plain Jane and the Opera Singer?

  “What time is dinner?” TB asks, and for once I’m grateful for his incessant questions. My mind rushes back and I turn off the doubts, focus at what I need to do now. I’m not ready to be labeled bonkers yet.

  “Drinks at six in the Baker Bar is what’s on the itinerary. Then dinner in the ballroom.”

  “Wow, fancy smancy.”

  Suddenly, a thought flies through my head with lightning speed. I turn and settle my gaze on TB’s backpack on the floor.

  “I have something to wear,” he says defensively. He averts my gaze, heading toward the bathroom to shower. “You never give me credit for anything,” he mumbles on the way.

  “I wonder why,” I mumble to his back and pull on something comfortable but dressy.

  When I rebuilt my wardrobe, I bought two pairs of black pants and two black shirts, then a series of jackets and long-sleeved tops to wear over. All pieces can be rolled and squeezed into a suitcase and w
ill not wrinkle when traveling, the perfect collection for someone like me. Plus, I don’t have to think much, exchange the outer layer every evening and add new accessories.

  I throw on my black shell topped by a flowery, gauzy top, accented by ornate earrings and a necklace that’s filled with filigree — pieces discovered in the sales rack of the Blue Moon Bayou Antique Mall back home. I’m feeling Victorian tonight.

  To my surprise, TB steps out of the bathroom dressed in new jeans and a smart button-down shirt, his thick head of hair nicely combed back. He appears like a model in a photo shoot, steam escaping to his back to frame his toned body sculptured from working years in construction and always tanned. I’m waiting for him to throw a sweater over his shoulder and credit a deodorant. Despite my best intentions, my heart pulsates — along with a few other bodily parts. Did I mention TB’s not hard on the eyes? His six-pack and adorable tight butt are what got me where I am. Before I could ignore my straight-out-of-college primal hormonal instincts and gauge his IQ, I was pregnant and headed down the aisle.

  “Ready?” he asks.

  I nod and we silently walk down the hall to the Baker Bar, a swanky spot on the fourth floor overlooking Eureka Springs that’s more a throwback to the 1930s with a pressed tin ceiling and Art Deco-esque surroundings. There’s a bar to the left and I quickly survey the offerings, so wishing for a repeat of that delicious martini, and a balcony straight ahead where several people are watching the sunset.

  Everyone is there, save Winnie, huddled in a group off to one side with Henry and Alicia discussing PR things at the bar, cell phones in hand. It’s good Henry’s not demanding attention for the rest have a million questions about my incident in the cave. As I’m explaining what happened, sans the ghostly apparition that caused my downfall, TB slips back, looking sheepish and lost. He’s still reeling from our argument — hell, from our separation — and I can’t get those images of him living in our moldy, waterlogged house out of my head. I pause in my explanations, take his hand and lead him into the group. For tonight, at least, I vow to be civil and understanding, take my feelings about our marriage out of the equation. List or no list.