Mrs. Reilly’s worst fears were realized.
“Who wants peace?” Santa asked.
“Ignatius got a sign up in front the house about peace.”
“I mighta known,” Santa said angrily. “First that boy wants a king, now he wants peace. I’m telling you, Irene. For your own good. That boy’s gotta be put away.”
“He ain’t wearing no earring. I ask him and he says, ‘I ain’t wearing no earring, momma.’”
“Angelo don’t lie.”
“Maybe he just got him a small one.”
“A earring’s a earring to me. Ain’t that right, Claude?”
“That’s right,” Claude answered Santa.
“Santa, honey, that’s a sweet little Blessed Virgin you got on top that TV,” Mrs. Reilly said to get them off the earring topic.
Everyone looked at the television set next to the refrigerator, and Santa said, “Ain’t that nice, though? It’s a little Our Lady of the Television. It’s got a suction cup base so I don’t knock it over when I’m banging around in the kitchen. I bought it by Lenny’s.”
“Lenny’s got everything,” Mrs. Reilly said. “It looks like it’s made outta nice plastic, too, don’t break.”
“Well, how you kids liked that dinner?”
“It was delicious,” Mr. Robichaux said.
“It was wonderful,” Mrs. Reilly agreed. “I ain’t had me a good meal in a long time.”
“Aarff,” Santa belched. “I think I put too much garlic in them stuffed eggplants, but I got a heavy hand with garlic. Even my granchirren tell me, they say, ‘Hey, maw-maw, you sure got a heavy hand with garlic.’”
“Ain’t that sweet,” Mrs. Reilly said of the gourmet grandchildren.
“I thought the eggplants was fine,” Mr. Robichaux said.
“I’m only happy when I’m scrubbing my floors and cooking my food,” Santa told her guests. “I love to fix a big pot of meatballs or jumbalaya with shrimps.”
“I like to cook,” Mr. Robichaux said. “It helps out my daughter sometimes.”
“I bet it does,” Santa said. “A man who can cook is a big help around the house, believe me.” She kicked Mrs. Reilly under the table. “A woman’s got a man that likes to cook is a lucky girl.”
“You like to cook, Irene?” Mr. Robichaux asked.
“You talking to me, Claude?” Mrs. Reilly had been wondering what Ignatius looked like in an earring.
“Come back out the clouds, girl,” Santa ordered. “Claude here was axing you if you like to cook.”
“Yeah,” Mrs. Reilly lied. “I like to cook okay. But sometimes it gets so hot in that kitchen, especially in the summer. You don’t get no breeze out that alley. Ignatius likes to eat junk, anyways. You give Ignatius a few bottles of Dr. Nut and plenty bakery cakes, and he’s satisfied.”
“You oughta get you a letrit range,” Mr. Robichaux said. “I bought my daughter one. It don’t get hot like a gas stove.”
“Where you getting all this money from, Claude?” Santa asked interestedly.
“I got me a nice pension from the railroad. I was with them for forty-five years, you know. They gimme a beautiful gold pin when I retired.”
“Ain’t that nice,” Mrs. Reilly said. “You made good, huh, Claude?”
“Then,” Mr. Robichaux said, “I got me a few little rental properties around my house. I was always putting a little of my salary aside to invest in properties. Property’s a good investment.”
“It sure is,” Santa said, rolling her eyes wildly at Mrs. Reilly. “Now you well fixed, huh?”
“I’m pretty comfortable. But you know sometimes I get tired of living with my daughter and her husband. I mean, they’re young. They got they own family. They are very nice to me, but I’d rather have my own home. You know what I mean?”
“If I was you,” Mrs. Reilly said, “I’d stay where I was. If your little daughter don’t mind having you around, you got you a nice setup. I wisht I had me a nice child. Be grateful for what you got, Claude.”
Santa ground the heel of her shoe into Mrs. Reilly’s ankle.
“Ouch!” Mrs. Reilly cried.
“Lord, I’m sorry, babe. Me and my big feet. Big feet’s always been my problem. They can hardly fit me down by the shoe store. That clerk sees me coming, and he says, ‘Lord, here comes Miss Battaglia again. What I’m gonna do?’”
“Your feet ain’t so big,” Mrs. Reilly observed, looking under the kitchen table.
“I just got them squshed up in this little pair of shoes. You oughta see them things when I’m barefoot, girl.”
“I got bum feet,” Mrs. Reilly told the other two. Santa made a sign for Mrs. Reilly not to discuss her deficiencies, but Mrs. Reilly was not to be silenced. “Some days I can’t hardly walk. I think they went bad when Ignatius was little and I useta have to carry him around. Lord but he was slow walking. Always falling down. He was sure heavy, too. Maybe that’s how I got my arthuritis.”
“Listen, you two,” Santa said quickly so that Mrs. Reilly would not describe some new, horrible deficiency. “Why don’t we go see that cute little Debbie Reynolds?”
“That would be nice,” Mr. Robichaux said. “I never go to the show.”
“You wanna go see a show?” Mrs. Reilly asked. “I don’t know. My feet.”
“Aw, come on, girl. Let’s get out the house. It smells like garlic in here.”
“I think Ignatius told me this movie ain’t no good. He sees every picture that comes out, that boy.”
“Irene!” Santa said angrily. “You all the time thinking of that boy, and with all the trouble he’s giving you. You better wake up, babe. If you had any sense, you woulda had that boy locked away at Charity Hospital a long time ago. They’d turn a hose on him. They’d stick a letrit socket in that boy. They’d show that Ignatius. They’d make him behave himself.”
“Yeah?” Mrs. Reilly asked with interest. “How much that cost?”
“It’s all for free, Irene.”
“Socialized medicine,” Mr. Robichaux observed. “They probly got communiss and fellow travelers working in that place.”
“They got nuns operating the place, Claude. Lord, where you all the time getting this communiss stuff from?”
“Maybe them sisters been fooled,” Mr. Robichaux said.
“Ain’t that awful,” Mrs. Reilly said sadly. “Them poor sisters. Operating for a buncha communiss.”
“I don’t care who’s operating the place.” Santa said. “If it’s free and they lock people away, Ignatius oughta be there.”
“Once Ignatius started talking to them people, they’d maybe get mad and lock him up for good,” Mrs. Reilly said, but she was thinking that even that alternative wasn’t too unattractive. “Maybe he wouldn’t listen to the doctors.”
“They’d make him listen. They’d beat him in the head, they’d lock him up in a straitjacket, they’d pump some water on him,” Santa said a little too eagerly.
“You gotta think about yourself, Irene,” Mr. Robichaux said. “That son of yours is gonna put you in your grave.”
“That’s it. You tell her, Claude.”
“Well,” Mrs. Reilly said, “We’ll give Ignatius a chance. Maybe he’ll make good yet.”
“Selling weenies?” Santa asked. “Lord.” She shook her head. “Well, lemme go dump these dishes in the zink. Come on, let’s go see that precious Debbie Reynolds.”
A few minutes later, after Santa had stopped in the parlor to kiss her mother goodbye, the three of them set out for the theater. The day had been a balmy day; a south wind had been blowing steadily from the Gulf. Now the evening was still warm. Heavy odors of Mediterranean cooking floated across the congested neighborhood from the opened kitchen windows in every apartment building and double house. Each resident seemed to be making some contribution, however small, to the general cacophony of dropping pots, booming television sets, arguing voices, screaming children, and slamming doors.
“St. Odo Parish is really at it tonight,
” Santa commented thoughtfully as the three slowly strolled down the narrow sidewalk between the curb and the steps of the double houses built in solid, straight rows down each block. The streetlights shone on the treeless stretches of asphalt and cement and continuous old slate roofs. “It’s even worst in the summertime. Everybody’s out on the streets till ten-eleven o’clock.”
“Don’t tell me, precious,” Mrs. Reilly said as she hobbled dramatically between her friends. “Remember I’m from Dauphine Street. We useta put the kitchen chairs out on the banquette and set there till midnight sometimes waiting for the house to cool off. And the things the people down here say! Lord.”
“Vicious is what it is,” Santa agreed. “Dirty mouths.”
“Poor poppa,” Mrs. Reilly said. “He was so poor. Then when he went and got his hand caught in that fanbelt, the people in the neighborhood had the nerve to say he musta been drunk. The anonymous letters we got about that. And my poor old Tante Boo-boo. Eighty years old. She was burning a candle for her poor departed husband and it fall off the night table and sets her mattress on fire. The people said she was smoking in bed.”
“I believe people innocent until they proven guilty.”
“That’s the same way I feel, Claude,” Mrs. Reilly said. “Just the other day I says to Ignatius, ‘Ignatius, I think people innocent until they prove guilty.’”
“Irene!”
They crossed St. Claude Avenue during a lull in the heavy traffic and walked along the other side of the avenue under the neon lights. As they were passing a funeral parlor, Santa stopped to talk to one of the mourners standing out on the sidewalk.
“Say, Mister, who they got laid out in there?” she asked the man.
“They waking old lady Lopez,” the man answered.
“You don’t say. She the wife of that Lopez ran the little market over on Frenchman Street?”
“That’s the one.”
“Aw, I’m sorry to hear that,” Santa said. “What she died from?”
“Heart trouble.”
“Ain’t that a shame,” Mrs. Reilly said emotionally. “Poor girl.”
“Well, if I was dressed,” Santa told the man, “I’d go in and pay my respects. Me and my friends here just on our way to a picture show. Thank you.”
As they walked along, Santa described to Mrs. Reilly the many sadnesses and tribulations that had comprised old lady Lopez’s dismal existence. Finally Santa said, “I think I’ll send her family a Mass.”
“Lord,” Mrs. Reilly said, overcome by old lady Lopez’s biography, “I think I’ll send a Mass, too, for the repose of that poor woman’s soul.”
“Irene!” Santa screamed. “You don’t even know them people.”
“Well, that’s true,” Mrs. Reilly agreed weakly.
When they arrived at the theater, there was some discussion between Santa and Mr. Robichaux over who was going to buy the tickets. Mrs. Reilly said that she would if she didn’t have to meet a payment on Ignatius’s trumpet before the week was out. Mr. Robichaux was adamant, though, and Santa at last let him have his way.
“After all,” Santa said to him as he handed tickets to the two ladies, “you the one’s got all the money.”
She winked at Mrs. Reilly, whose mind had wandered again to that sign that Ignatius refused to explain to her. During most of the movie Mrs. Reilly thought about Ignatius’s rapidly decreasing salary, the payment on the trumpet, the payment on the wrecked building, the earring, and the sign. Only Santa’s happy exclamations of “Ain’t she precious!” and “Just take a look at that cute dress she’s got, Irene!” brought Mrs. Reilly back to what was happening on the screen. Then something else drew her from her meditations about her son and her problems, both of which were really the same thing. Mr. Robichaux’s hand had gently covered and was now holding hers. Mrs. Reilly was too afraid to move. Why did movies always seem to make the men she had known—Mr. Reilly and Mr. Robichaux—amorous? She stared blindly at the screen, on which she saw not Debbie Reynolds cavorting in color but rather Jean Harlow taking a bath in black and white.
Mrs. Reilly was wondering if she could easily wrench her hand out of Mr. Robichaux’s and bolt from the theater when Santa cried, “Just watch it, Irene, I betcha little Debbie’s gonna have her a baby!”
“A what?” Mrs. Reilly screamed wildly, bursting into crazy, loud tears that didn’t subside until the frightened Mr. Robichaux took her maroon head and placed it carefully on his shoulder.
*
Dear Reader,
Nature has sometimes made a fool; but a coxcomb is always of man’s own making.
—Addison
As I was wearing the soles of my desert boots down to a mere sliver of crepe rubber on the old flagstone banquettes of the French Quarter in my fevered attempt to wrest a living from an unthinking and uncaring society, I was hailed by a cherished old acquaintance (deviate). After a few minutes of conversation in which I established most easily my moral superiority over this degenerate, I found myself pondering once more the crises of our times. My mentality, uncontrollable and wanton as always, whispered to me a scheme so magnificent and daring that I shrank from the very thought of what I was hearing. “Stop!” I cried imploringly to my god-like mind. “This is madness.” But still I listened to the counsel of my brain. It was offering me the opportunity to Save the World Through Degeneracy. There on the worn stones of the Quarter I enlisted the aid of this wilted flower of a human in gathering his associates in foppery together behind a banner of brotherhood.
Our first step will be to elect one of their number to some very high office—the presidency, if Fortuna spins us kindly. Then they will infiltrate the military. As soldiers, they will all be so continually busy in fraternizing with one another, tailoring their uniforms to fit like sausage skins, inventing new and varied battle dress, giving cocktail parties, etc., that they will never have time for battle. The one whom we finally make Chief of Staff will want only to attend to his fashionable wardrobe, a wardrobe which, alternately, will permit him to be either Chief of Staff or debutante, as the desire strikes him. In seeing the success of their unified fellows here, perverts around the world will also band together to capture the military in their respective countries. In those reactionary countries in which the deviates seem to be having some trouble in gaining control, we will send aid to them as rebels to help them in toppling their governments. When we have at last overthrown all existing governments, the world will enjoy not war but global orgies conducted with the utmost protocol and the most truly international spirit, for these people do transcend simple national differences. Their minds are on one goal; they are truly united; they think as one.
None of the pederasts in power, of course, will be practical enough to know about such devices as bombs; these nuclear weapons would lie rotting in their vaults somewhere. From time to time the Chief of Staff, the President, and so on, dressed in sequins and feathers, will entertain the leaders, i.e., the perverts, of all the other countries at balls and parties. Quarrels of any sort could easily be straightened out in the men’s room of the redecorated United Nations. Ballets and Broadway musicals and entertainments of that sort will flourish everywhere and will probably make the common folk happier than did the grim, hostile, fascistic pronouncements of their former leaders.
Almost everyone else has had an opportunity to run the world. I cannot see why these people should not be given their chance. They have certainly been the underdog long enough. Their movement into power will be, in a sense, only a part of the global movement toward opportunity, justice, and equality for all. (For example, can you name one good, practicing transvestite in the Senate? No! These people have been without representation long enough. Their plight is a national, a global disgrace.)
Degeneracy, rather than signaling the downfall of a society, as it once did, will now signal peace for a troubled world. We must have new solutions to new problems.
I shall act as a sort of mentor and guide for the movement, my not incons
iderable knowledge of world history, economics, religion, and political strategy acting as a reservoir, as it were, from which these people can draw rules of operational procedure. Boethius himself played a somewhat similar role in degenerate Rome. As Chesterton has said of Boethius, “Thus he truly served as a guide, philosopher, and friend to many Christians; precisely because, while his own times were corrupt, his own culture was complete.”
This time I shall really confound Myrna minx. The scheme is too breathtaking for the literal, liberal minx mind mired in a claustrophobic clutch of clichés. The Crusade for Moorish Dignity, my brilliant first attack upon the problems of our times, would have been a rather grand and decisive coup had it not been for the basically bourgeois worldview of the rather simple people who were members of the vanguard. This time, however, I shall be working with people who eschew the insipid philosophy of the middle class, people who are willing to assume controversial positions, to follow their cause, however unpopular it may be, however it may threaten the smugness of the middle class.
Does M. Minkoff want sex in politics? I shall give her sex in politics—and plenty of it! No doubt she will be too overcome to respond to the originality of my project. At the very least, she will seethe with envy. (That girl must be attended to. Such effrontery cannot go unchecked.)
A debate between Pragmatism and Morality rages in my brain. Is the glorious end, Peace, worth the awesome means, Degeneracy? Like two figures in the medieval Morality play, Pragmatism and Morality spar in the boxing ring of my brain. I cannot await the outcome of their furious debate: I am too obsessed with Peace. (If any perceptive film producers are interested in buying the movie rights to this Journal, I might here make a note on the filming of this debate. A musical saw would provide excellent background accompaniment, and the hero’s eyeball may be superimposed upon the debate scene in a most symbolic manner. Certainly some attractive new discovery could be found in a drugstore or a motel or in whatever den people are “discovered” to play the Working Boy. The film may be made in Spain, Italy, or some other interesting land which the cast may wish to see, such as North America.)