Nothing to Declare Page 10

  “Isn’t it rude to jump the daughter of the house without so much as a goodnight to your dad?”

  Emily looks to the kitchen and smiles indulgently. “No, the others won’t miss us; they’ll be swapping lies till past dawn. Now move on upstairs and report for business.”

  Jesse undresses in the bedroom while Emily ducks into the bathroom to put on her cheerleader’s tunic and skirt. Her bed is canopied and made up with lace-bordered linens appliquéd in corn and flowers, the Savonne crest, it seems. The sheets have a rich, loamy smell—of cedar, Jesse decides, picturing a dovetailed chest, hand-carved and in the family for generations. He lies back on the soft percale, swamped in heat, his calves clenched as though he’s still in motion. As though he’s speeding in the Grand Prix, tires bucking on the pavement and the Gulf air scorching diesel on his face.

  For most of a week, Jesse and his friends sweat through the Quarter’s historic sites and oyster bars and three or so after-hours clubs each night. There’s a rabid quality to Marty’s vacation ethic; they’re hardly comfortable in one locale before he packs them off to where he wants them next. “We’ll rest when we get back to California,” he says if anyone pleads for a quieter pace. “Think like sharks, people, like wolves. The only thing that signifies is forward ho.”

  One afternoon, Jesse and Emily leave Marty and Isobel in the Quarter and peel off by themselves. She shows him the shops on Magazine Street, walks him through Audubon Park, takes him to the high school football field where she had her first kiss. Then they hop the Charles Street trolley downtown to the church where her family worshiped, a hundred-twenty-five-year-old cathedral that looks more like a Disney princess palace than a church. The interior reminds Jesse of an ormolu vase he once saw at the MFA, its surfaces of gilt and cream and decoration.

  “I like the smell,” he tells her as they walk past incense censers toward the center aisle leading to the altar. “I feel like I just walked into a party.” Light pours in through stained glass, turning the world into a confection.

  “It’s not how it was when I was little,” she says. “This place would sometimes lift me up and sometimes scare me silly. The day I celebrated First Communion we had to kiss Archbishop Hannan’s ring. Eighty little girls and boys in line, the girls all dressed as brides. Alphabetical, so I was just nearly to the end. The ring was dripping wet with slobber. I ducked my head and faked it. I was petrified of being caught.”

  Emily’s wearing a pale white knee-length dress she found in her closet, a calmer, sweeter version of herself than Jesse’s ever seen. He can picture the eleven-year-old she was, among the faithful.

  “But you believed?”

  “For years, I had nightmares about that ring. My very first sin. But I believed, I did. My hero was the Virgin Mary.”

  “And then?”

  She points him to the vaulted ceiling, then to the filigreed stained-glass windows. “Can’t say when, but a day came when it seemed like a great big fairy story. It was just me and Daddy, then. He understood.”

  “Don’t you miss it? No more rings to kiss. No more Virgin Mary. No more certain path to heaven.”

  She shoots him a darkening look. “We have to grow up, don’t we? Live in the world as it is.”

  Jesse has the sense he’s angered her, though he doesn’t know how. He thinks they should go find Marty and Isabel. “I want some sunlight on my face and a drink in my belly,” he tells her and she nods OK. She leads him through the Quarter looking for their friends.

  At breakfast near the end of the visit, Emily’s father invites Jesse to a round of golf at the Audubon Club. It’s Dewey’s opinion that nothing would bless the day better than playing hooky from the office. The two of them can get to know each other better, enjoy the feel of grass beneath their shoes.

  “And after we pass by the club, we’ll go on over to the Fair Grounds and I’ll buy us a po’ boy at the clubhouse, we’ll watch the fillies run.” Mr. Savonne stands by the table, rubs his large pink hands together at the pleasurable notion. “Tee-off’s in half an hour, son, give you a chance to make yourself pretty before we go.”

  Jesse looks at Marty who sips his coffee and gazes back placidly.

  “Don’t be bashful,” Dewey says to Jesse. “If you’ve got something to say, I’m listening.”

  “The four of us have arrangements to drive out to Tant’ Adele’s, Daddy,” Emily says.

  “We were going to take a boat out on the water,” Jesse says. “Emily promised us some alligator pie.”

  “Don’t let me slow you down,” Dewey says, in a show of Southern graciousness. “Adele’s alligator’s worth the drive. You folks have your day.”

  “What kind of course is Audubon?” Marty wants to know. “Does it run long or short?”

  “Short and snaky,” Dewey answers. “The greens are fast. They’ll humble you if you don’t know what you’re up to.”

  “A course that informs you who you are,” Marty says. “Golf’s a great teacher.”

  Isabel raises her eyes from the leather-bound Baudelaire she shagged from the household library in one of her nightly prowls. “I don’t want to miss the bayous, Marty.”

  He tightens his mouth as though figuring an equation. “Right, babe,” he says. “Whatever the good lady says.”

  It seems to Jesse, Dewey’s impossibly delighted that his offer’s gone awry. He’s whistling as he buckles his briefcase, checks his pocket for his Racing Form and cigars.

  “If it’s OK with you, I changed my mind,” Jesse says. “Let’s go to Audubon and the track. Sounds great.”

  “You’re sure? I’m a faithful milk horse, son. I trot to the office without looking.”

  No, Jesse insists, he wants to go. It will be interesting and fun.

  Dewey’s Fleetwood is new and white and waxed so recently Jesse can smell carnauba as he opens the door. As they drive away, Emily’s father cradles his arm across Jesse’s shoulder for a paternal squeeze, then he puts his mouth around an unlit panatela.

  “You a betting man?”

  “Not especially,” says Jesse.

  “We’ll have to do something about that,” Dewey says and he spits out the window.

  FIFTEEN

  DEWEY AND JESSE’S LOCKER ROOM COMPANIONS are suntanned fellows in their fifties and sixties whose fashion sense runs to sherbet-colored double-knits and mismatched plaids. Zipping into their golfing clothes, they wolf down morning eye-openers while roaring at the punch lines of their dirty jokes. Jesse arranges himself before a floor-to-ceiling mirror. His canary leisure suit—courtesy of Dewey and the Audubon Club pro shop—broadcasts a chemical sheen. Fabric brought to market by the happy folks who manufacture napalm and Twinkies. He salutes his new image, planting his rented golf shoes into the damp wall-to-wall. Ten more minutes, he’ll be voting Republican.

  Dewey lounges on a locker bench in the company of his pals, amid hairy backs and beer bellies and more unclipped foreskins than Jesse’s ever seen. Savonne introduces Jesse as Emily’s honeybunch, and the other men take it up like a new hobby, baiting Jesse at each break in the conversation: “Hey, honeybunch, we’re bored and ignorant. You know any stories you can throw our way? Jew jokes, Irish, Negro, we’re not fancy.” “Show us your draft card, won’t you, honeybunch? Say boo, we’ll walk you on over by Magazine Street to the recruiting officer. Ship you to Nam swift as grease through a goose—Navy, Marines, even Airborne, you got the stuff for the 101st.”

  Jesse masks his face in innocence and lets the banter wash him by. Marty would know how to meet these guys head-on and charm them into co-conspirators. Without his silver touch, silence and bashful retreat will have to do. Finally, Jesse and Dewey emerge into the sunlight and approach the first tee. Emily’s father addresses his ball without preliminaries: one corkscrew of his hips and the ball flies up and out with a sound like a pistol shot. Jesse’s hands are shaking as he balances his Titleist on its tee.

  Dewey moves behind him without being asked, molds Jesse’s elbows and
legs into proper array. “Careful piece of business, how you managed yourself in the locker room,” Savonne says, stepping back to observe his handiwork. “Going along to get along, that’s how the wide world likes it. Golf’s about the same. The secret is, allow the body to run the deal. Pin your elbows in, turn your mind off, and show the old man what you got.”

  Crows flock beneath a nearby pepper tree, squawking and fighting over something on the ground. Jesse lets the noise take him over and the coppery scent of the foliage, then slams his wood against the ball. A spray of sod and dirt, a glare of white too white to mark against the sun. Somehow, fortune shining down, his shot goes a respectable distance along the fairway. In silent pleasure, the two men tote their bags to their next position.

  Dewey stalks the front nine without a letup, and Jesse watches how he makes his game, powering his shots with overkill and unblinking concentration. He mimics Dewey’s method as fairly as he can, scarring the bluegrass with divots, tasting his effort as a swill of turf and caught-in breath and sweat. Happily, he delivers an acceptable drive or putt every few holes. By midday his joints are oiled, his palms blistered, his brain sun-smacked into cheery stupefaction. Jesse’s losing, naturally, buck-fifty a stroke, down $45 and doomed for more.

  “You’re putting me in trouble,” Dewey tells him. “How’m I going face my little girl if I take all your money? She’ll have my skin.”

  Jesse lines up a putt, strokes, misses. “Is the pressure getting to you?”

  Dewey laughs. “Do me a kindness. Try your hardest, will you, son?”

  “Can do,” Jesse says and misses again.

  Into their third hour, Dewey’s pace becomes more thoughtful; his swing loses some of its punch. Jesse makes a show of quick-stepping from hole to hole, working up a lather while the older man follows behind. At the fifteenth tee, Jesse straightens his collar and fluffs the creases of his pants. For your victory photo, he explains.

  “The game isn’t over yet,” says Dewey. “Put your mind on success, why don’t you?”

  “Even when I have no chance?” Jesse asks.

  “That’s when it’s called for,” Dewey says.

  The next hole is a par four dog-leg that skirts Magazine Street and the course parking lot. As he squares his club head for the tee-shot, Jesse spots the carmine flank of a Grand Prix catty-cornered across two spaces in the rear. He stares at it for a few seconds, listening to the streetcars rattling at the Audubon light. It’s Marty’s, dripping sunlight and going nowhere. Jesse points his two-iron at the car. “We’ve got company,” he says.

  “How’s that for something,” says Dewey. “Years and years, I’ve been asking Emily to watch her daddy play—not so much as a maybe. I guess boyfriend ranks a little higher on the tree. You best decide on a shot before we’re set upon.”

  “Sorry,” Jesse says. “Too late.”

  A golf cart steers toward them, Marty squeezed between the two women on a seat made for two. They wave their arms in ragged greeting as though calling for rescue. Jesse takes in his girlfriend’s sunburnt, love-struck face, then stoops to check his ball upon its tee. His drive is low and slicking toward the rough, but long. Green in two.

  Their day was cursed one side to the other, Emily professes, with a flat tire, a roadside fire ant assault, and a no-neck Yat in a pickup who rode them into the kudzu because he didn’t like the ankh sign on their bumper. They never got halfway to Bayou Boeuf. She’s wound up, prancing from one bare foot to the other, ready for handsprings. Her toenails are newly painted, a soft coral like the inside of her mouth.

  Marty has Dewey by the elbow. “Your little girl was our cool customer, you should have seen her. She got that throwback’s license number while I was still checking to see if I had all my parts.” His face is raked with scratches. He looks from Dewey to Jesse with the satisfied grin of a man whose day has counted for something. Jesse finds it awkward to be holding his club. He stuffs the iron in its bag.

  Isabel slouches against the cart, frowning into the sun. “You’re very yellow,” she tells Jesse. She plays her fingers over his sleeve. “Like a piece of meringue pie.” The scent of Southern Comfort carries toward him. She’s drunk and he wonders how much, how long.

  “You had yourselves an adventure,” he says. “And here I was, trying to hit a little ball into a little hole.”

  Isabel takes off her sunglasses to stare at him. She seems broody and dulled, as though she’s spent a long, gray day bundled up in comforters. “The game of kings,” she says. “Are we having a jolly old time?”

  “Dewey’s chewed me up in little pieces. He’s won everything I have in my wallet and half my next week’s wages. He likes me, we’re simpatico.”

  Isabel sighs. “Dewey Savonne and the rest of them can’t bear losers; they’re a blot on the flag.” She finishes what’s in her flask and cocks her arm and flings the bottle as far as she can throw. “Alley oop,” she says and moves toward the others, stumbling nearly to her knees and laughing herself upright. “The heat,” she calls out in explanation. “I’m very fine.”

  Marty has convinced Dewey to let him hit the last four holes, and his natural ability and luck wilts the remainder of Jesse’s game into a run of double and triple bogeys. Everyone puts on their best manners. There are St. Sulpice cheers—a surfeit of laughter and rah rah. By the last hole, when he is four over par and still on the green, Jesse’s self-mockeries run dry, his spirit lags. Mercifully, Dewey shoos the others to the clubhouse for its famous whiskey punch. As Jesse tips his golf ball into the eighteenth cup, he can see them at a table in the patio. Marty is on his feet, demonstrating his swing.

  “You’ve got stamina, son,” Dewey says. “I commend you.”

  Jesse pulls out his money. “Good, it will get me through the painful part of paying off my debt.”

  The sun has reddened the tips of Dewey’s ears, lent his face a pleasant glow that confounds Isabel’s claim of kill or be killed. Savonne waves off Jesse’s offer.

  “We can pretend you paid. Just don’t let on to Emily. As you might have learned, she’s a stickler.”

  On the patio, Emily is up beside Marty, taking a lesson, tossing her red hair into the sunlight as she whips her arms over her shoulders. “She loves you a lot, doesn’t she,” Jesse asks.

  Dewey seems surprised by the question. “Of course she does. Is that so strange?”

  Jesse thinks of his parents, his high school Sunday dinners, a long corridor of dry London broil, the pitter-pat of silverware on Melmac plates.

  “It’s a big world,” Jesse suggests.

  At the patio entrance, Dewey stops them to kick the dirt out of his spikes and waits for Jesse to do the same. “You’re the first young man she’s brought around, you know.”

  Jesse says, “I wouldn’t make so much of that.”

  Dewey nods, runs the horn of his palm over Jesse’s back to brush away a spray of dirt and grass. “I wouldn’t either if I were you,” he says. “I think she’s sleeping with your friend.”

  Jesse hears the words and looks to the patio table. Marty and Emily are caught up in their game but Isabel faces him, a sorrowful and drunken smile trembling on her lips.

  Dewey asks, “You going to be all right?”

  “Tell them I went home,” Jesse says.

  SIXTEEN

  NIXON RESIGNED THAT NIGHT, his gloomy puss on national TV, every nerve exposed, every twitch on display. His voice rippled with sanctity and paranoia, and we could see that he was tweaked on potent meds. Downers was my guess, goofballs, he looked the type. We sat our dinners on our laps and watched on Dewey’s console RCA; we cheered when the man said he was leaving. But a trickle of uncertainty swam in my gut. Nixon’s cockroach soul was ballast to our youth, our lack of restraint, the glee we brought to our living. Without him we’d be off compass—who could calculate the effect?

  I took my melancholy outside and we walked to the Quarter, Emily and Isabel and I. There was street zydeco and old women hawking andouille po’
boys and barbecued shrimp, the whole world dancing the Crescent City Shuffle decked out in Nixon masks. We wandered the edges where the riffraff collected, the drunks, the spare-changers and runaways, flotsam so transported they couldn’t talk or hear or think. We handed out sandwiches and quarters, emptied our pockets, and drank Hurricanes from go-cups, stumbling to the music as the night rang down in humid waves. Jesse was gone, making miles on a Greyhound and feeling betrayed. The body does what it must, Little Brother, what it’s bred for. Some people can’t bear the news, I understand.

  The rest of the summer and into fall, the women and I stayed out of Santa Cruz, thinking we’d spare Jesse, let a callus build between us. We moved Emily to the redwoods and spent our hours on Isabel’s deck, reading the classics out loud, Melville and Conrad, those bulky sentences filled with philosophical murk. We put food on the grill and ran to bed before we came to table, slammed against each other as though we were cattle or machines. It’s a complex geometry, three in bed, and we lived in a state of self-awareness and unrest. We set one rule to keep the peace: no private frolics one on one. Emily laid down the hammer on it, our little colonel. Diligence was required, an organizing principle, or we’d do harm.

  We failed, though, didn’t we, showered hurt in every quarter before we were through. Love’s unruly and unrepentant, a merciless entanglement I barely understood. By late October, Emily and I could not ignore what we were feeling for each other. We grabbed the dog and stashed him with a friend, wrote Isabel a note and fled the country. We learned our tricks from Tricky Dick. Scorch the earth and don’t look back. Destruction, like almost everything, is in the mind of the beholder.

  Throughout the fall, Jesse demands as much overtime as Whole Earth Retreads can send his way. He trains himself on the extruder, becomes the floor boss of the graveyard shift, watching with fascination as molten tread shapes a new face onto the bludgeoned tires in his pile. When the morning crew comes in, Jesse salves his burns and jogs to campus where he sneaks a place in a life class at U.C. He claims an easel closest to the door, laying charcoal on his page while keeping the corner of his eye on the instructor. The models are all women, wholesome California blondies, and Jesse absorbs himself into setting down his lines and rubbing shadows with his thumb, time fallen away. He struggles to bring alive what it is that makes the women beautiful: their ease, their boredom, how they wear their bodies like a perfect shell.