I shook my head. “Oh, no. Like I said, I just needed a change of temperature.”
“It’s too bad you’re not more spontaneous,” said Beau with a laugh before he gave me the once-over. “My gosh, y’all haven’t changed at all.”
“I know you’re lying, but keep it up,” I said with a wave of my hand.
Age hadn’t been cruel to me, but it wasn’t bending over backward for me, either. I had packed on more than a few pounds (and with menopause looming near, I was sure there were more to come), and I was hoping, but not quite believing, that with my height I could somehow carry it off. And I don’t know that I could still have described myself as brunette, seeing as how the gray had well-established squatter’s rights.
Beau’s eyebrows raised then, as if boosted by the force of a good idea. “Hey, you’re gonna join Mama and me for dinner, aren’t you?”
“You don’t have to ask me twice,” I said, ignoring the look on Faith’s face that begged me to decline the invitation.
The maître d’ at Arnaud’s showed us to our table as if we were visiting royalty and he was a page honored to be in our company.
“Man, I could get used to this southern hospitality,” I said, putting my napkin onto my lap.
“I am so excited to be here,” said Faith, her cheeks flushed, her eyes dancing. It was odd—as reluctant as she’d been to have me join them, she was as excited as a girl at her first dance, whereas Beau, who had been Mr. Convivial, was now decidedly gloomy.
“Beau hasn’t told me a thing about her,” she said after we’d ordered our drinks. “Every time I press him for details, he says, ‘You’ll see, Mama.’ ” Faith touched Beau’s sleeve, smiling. “Why, she’s probably a big old tub with rotten teeth and body odor.”
“Mama,” said Beau, his fine handsome face flushing. “Please.”
“I’m telling you—Roxanne, the girl he left behind? She writes me from college. I think she figures if she stays on my good side, Beau won’t forget her so easily.”
Beau was looking a little green around the gills, and I wasn’t surprised when he excused himself to the men’s room.
“Faith,” I said as we (along with every other female customer) watched him stride across the restaurant, “when did he grow up and become such a movie star?”
Faith made a moue. “Like mother, like son, I guess.”
“I think I should powder my nose too,” I said, standing up. “If the waiter comes, order me a big exotic drink.”
I stood by the men’s room, waiting for Beau to come out, and when he did, he still wore that look somewhere between nausea and terror.
“Mrs. Forrest!” he said, a little yelp of surprise in his voice.
“Please, call me Audrey. What’s the matter, Beau?”
“How did you . . . oh, yeah, Mama told me you’ve got the sixth sense.”
“Beau, I wouldn’t need any sense but sight to know something’s bothering you. Now, do you want to tell me about it? Maybe I could help.”
“I think I’ll save your offer for when I really need it.” He looked at his watch. “Which should be in about five minutes.”
“When you tell your mother about your boyfriend?” The thought was out of my mouth before my internal censor showed up for duty.
Beau’s mouth dropped open like a trapdoor.
“I’m sorry, Beau, I had no right to say that.”
After the stunned look faded from his face, Beau raked his hand through his curls and offered a crooked smile.
“Congratulations, ma’am, you win the Kenmore washer and dryer.” He shook his head. “I don’t know why I didn’t tell Mama before—but she was just so thrilled when I went out with Roxanne, and she automatically assumed Shelby was a she. Oh, Lord, what could I be thinking, springing it on her like this?”
“Are you sure you’ll be springing it on her?”
Beau narrowed his eyes. “You don’t miss much, do you, Audrey? But no, Mama’s spent too much energy making me straight to think I could be anything but.” He sighed and looked at his watch again. “Shelby’s supposed to meet us at the hotel after dinner—he’s at a lecture right now—but after I tell Mama about him, I have a feeling the meeting will be canceled.”
“Would you like me to leave?” I asked. “I can fake a headache or something.”
“Oh, Mrs. For—Audrey, please stay. I could use the moral support.”
Back at the table, Faith was drinking one of three mint juleps.
“When in Rome,” she said, holding up her glass. We all toasted Rome, and Beau and I seemed in a race as to who could finish our drink faster.
“Beau,” scolded Faith, “I hope you don’t drink like that all the time.”
“Only when I’m conscious,” he said, à la Groucho Marx.
He caught my eye and we laughed, the kind of laugh that’s just a screen door holding back fear.
“So, tell me all about your life here,” I said. “What kind of classes are you taking?”
“Oh, Audrey,” said Faith, “I don’t want to talk about school. I want to talk about Shelby.”
“Let’s order first,” said Beau, hiding behind the big, tasseled menu. “I’m starving.”
We ate the way I like to eat—as if we didn’t know where our next meal was coming from. Conversation was not at a premium as we made our way through gumbo and jambalaya and various incarnations of shrimp and seafood.
“Oh, my,” said Faith, pushing her plate aside and patting her mouth with her napkin.
“Let’s get some coffee,” I suggested, for now I wanted nothing more than to curl up on the banquette and take a nap.
“Good idea,” said Faith, looking at her reflection in a spoon as she reapplied her lipstick. “I need to perk up for when I meet Shelby.”
I saw Beau go pale. Then a look of resolve—the look my son Bryan got on his face the first time we put him on water skis—changed the features of his face.
“Mama,” he said, “Shelby is not my girlfriend.”
Faith looked like she’d been asked how many stars there are in the Milky Way.
“What? What do you mean? Did you break up?”
Beau gave a nervous little laugh, and raked his hand through his hair.
“Actually, Mama, no. No, we didn’t break up. What I mean is . . . well, Shelby’s not a she, he’s a he.”
“He’s a he?” said Faith like an English student learning a phrase she doesn’t understand.
Pressing his lips together until they disappeared, Beau nodded.
“He’s a he and he’s my boyfriend.”
Faith’s circumflex eyebrows, which could look both mean and exotic, knit together, and she offered a jagged little smile before lurching up.
“Excuse me,” she said, and then she was out of the booth and racing through the restaurant as if someone had just cried, “Fire!”
Beau and I stared at each other.
“I’ll go after her,” he said.
“No, I will,” I said. I took a couple hundred dollars out of my purse and gave them to Beau. “You take care of the bill and meet us back at the hotel bar.”
WHEN I WAS PREGNANT with Michael, Davey had woken Bryan out of a sound sleep, told him that I had had the baby, and asked if Bryan wanted to see it.
Oh boy, did he; Bryan had been so excited about becoming a big brother.
Davey had held Bryan’s hand, and they’d crept down the hallway to the newly decorated nursery.
“There she is,” Davey had said softly as they entered the moonlit room. “Your new baby sister.” Leaning over the bassinet, he’d carefully pulled back the corner of the satin baby blanket to reveal the baby. Bryan, expecting to see a sweet little pink face, hadn’t been prepared for the furry, scary one that stared back at him. Not only did his screams wake up Paul and me, they practically brought on my labor.
“I was just playing a joke!” Davey had laughed as Bryan wailed in my arms. “It’s just dumb old Doogie!”
Doogie was Dave
y’s long-discarded, one-eyed teddy bear.
Bryan had lain on his tummy on his bed and cried for what seemed like hours, and that’s the way Faith was crying now: on the bed, on her tummy, absolutely bereft.
I had chased after her out of the restaurant, through the French Quarter, into the hotel, and into her room, and had been rubbing her back for what seemed like a quarter century, my hand ready to fall off at the wrist.
“Faith,” I said for the thousandth time, “Faith, it’s all right, honey.”
I guess saying a thing for the thousandth time is the charm, because she pushed herself up on her arms, gasping mightily as if she’d just broken the surface of a slough she’d been under for too long. She sat on the bed, facing me.
“No,” she said, her voice ragged, her face battered with tears, “no, it is not all right, and you know it!” She paused and stared at me. “What are you doing?” she asked as I picked up the telephone receiver.
“I’m calling the hotel bar,” I said. “I’m going to tell Beau to come on up here.”
“No, you’re not!”
I set the receiver down. “Faith, you need to talk to your son. He’s been waiting downstairs”—I looked at my watch—“for over half an hour, and you need to talk to him. I’d be happy to stay with you, or I’ll leave if you want.”
“No,” said Faith, panicky. “Don’t leave.”
I dialed the bar. After speaking briefly to Beau, I cupped my hand over the bottom half of the receiver and asked, “Can Shelby come up too?”
Faith rolled her eyes like the prelude to a swoon.
“Good God, no. That little bastard cannot come up.”
I relayed Faith’s message, in somewhat softer terms, to Beau. Minutes later, there was a soft knock on the door.
Faith scrunched up against the tufted headboard, hugging a pillow to her chest as I opened the door for Beau, who looked like he’d shed a few tears himself.
“Mama,” he said softly, but as he came toward her, Faith held up her hand.
“Don’t come any closer, Beau. You can sit on that chair by the table. Just don’t come any closer.”
Poor Beau; his whole body sort of collapsed under those words.
I am not proud of the fact that in my career as a mother I have said some hurtful things to my children (once I called Davey a “fucking juvenile delinquent”), but I can’t ever remember a child of mine crumpling in utter dejection the way Beau did now (in fact, I had gotten the distinct impression that Davey had liked being called a “fucking juvenile delinquent”).
I poured water from a carafe on the nightstand and gave both Faith and Beau a glass. Me, I could use a cigarette.
“Beau,” I asked, “you don’t happen to smoke, do you?”
Looking sad, as if he had disappointed me too, Beau shook his head.
“That’s good,” I said. “I don’t either—I mean, I quit a long time ago, but I just thought how a cigarette might be a good thing to have about now.”
I bit my upper lip to stop myself from babbling.
“I’m surprised,” said Faith, looking coldly at her son. “You do everything else.”
I could see the emotional shift on Beau’s face; the hurt and fear stepped aside, replaced by anger.
“What exactly is that supposed to mean, Mama?”
“Not smoking probably leaves you more room for all your other vices.”
“All my other vices? Is that what you think Shelby is—a vice?”
“Well, he’s not the girlfriend you led me to believe he was, that’s for sure.”
“Mama, you’re the one who made that assumption, I . . . well, I should have set you straight right away, but I guess I wanted to postpone”—he waved his hand in the air—“all of this as long as possible.”
Faith stared at him for a moment, her expression unreadable, and then looked at me. “I could use a cigarette too.”
“You want me to run downstairs?” I asked. “There’s a cigarette machine in the bar.”
Faith studied me for a moment. “Should we?”
I shrugged. “It’s been a long time—we’d probably get pretty light-headed.”
“I know. And what if it took just one cigarette to make us start up the habit all over again?”
“That would be a drag,” I agreed.
“Excuse me,” Beau said, standing up.
“Where are you going?” asked Faith.
“I’ll be right back.”
In less than a minute he was, bearing a pack of Kents.
“Hey,” said Faith. “My old brand. Where’d you get them so fast?”
“There was a guy ready to get on the elevator,” Beau said. “I asked him if he had any cigarettes I could buy.”
“Well, that’s nearly a full pack,” said Faith. “Why didn’t you just ask for a couple?”
“Mama, you wanted cigarettes, I got cigarettes. I didn’t know you had a particular number in mind.”
“Well, we might be tempted to smoke the whole thing. If you’d just gotten one or two, the temptation wouldn’t have been there. In fact, I think you should throw out the whole thing.”
“What?” said Beau, looking at his mother as if she had just recited the Twenty-third Psalm in pig Latin, and then turned to me, as if I could somehow translate.
“I . . . I . . .” So much for my translation skills. I looked at the pack of cigarettes Beau held in the palm of his hand, and knew that if I pulled one out, I might keep pulling and pulling. “It was so kind of you to get these, but I guess I’ll have to pass too.”
He looked at me and then back to his mother the way a wary orderly might look at two unpredictable inmates in a psych ward.
“But I paid five dollars for the pack,” he said.
“Five dollars?” said Faith. “That’s ridiculous, Beau! It’s not even a full pack.”
Beau opened his mouth to say something but, thinking better of it, clamped it shut until it was a thin, lipless line. He looked up at the ceiling briefly and then did a neat about-face and walked to the window. He pushed it open, flung the pack of cigarettes out, closed it, and turned back toward us, brushing his hands together.
“Litterbug,” said Faith, which struck all the nuts in the nuthouse—and, after a moment, the orderly too—as hilarious, and we laughed our heads off.
“I DON’T WANT YOU to be gay!” Faith said at one point that long night.
“Believe me, Mama, I didn’t want to be either. And I tried hard not to be—you know how hard I tried.” His gymnast shoulders rose in a shrug. “But there comes a time when you just sort of give up. Give up the charade and realize: this is who I am.”
I nodded. “That’s what Grant said. He said that it was like being forced to do everything awkwardly right-handed when you could do everything easily left-handed.”
“Exactly,” said Beau.
“And finally he realized all the problems he’d face being gay were less than the problems he faced not being himself.”
“This isn’t about Grant,” said Faith tightly.
“Audrey’s just trying to help, Mama,” said Beau, whose patience with his mother, while exemplary, occasionally had to crack.
“How can she help? None of her sons is gay.”
“That I know of,” I said, and both Beau and I laughed.
“I’m glad you two think this is so funny.” Her eyes glittered like paste jewels. “I’m the one who has to worry about my son, that he’s not catching that AIDS virus or getting turned down for a job or an apartment . . . worrying that a group of football players is calling him a fag before they beat him to a pulp!”
“You’re right, Faith,” I said, humbled. “That is a lot to worry about.”
Beau looked at her steadily and said, “I thought what you’d worry most about was what to tell your friends, or Grandma and Grandpa.”
Earlier I had seen what Faith’s words did to Beau; now I saw the effect his had on her.
“Oh, Beau,” she whispered, her face whit
e.
We sat there under the shade of those words for a while, Beau fiddling with a pen on the nightstand, Faith on the bed staring at the toes of her crossed feet, and me wondering if I should race downstairs and search the street for that pack of cigarettes.
“Hey,” I said finally. “We ran out of the restaurant before we got any dessert.”
“Well, let’s go get some,” said Beau. “Come on, let’s go get Shelby and get us some pie.”
We wound up at a little all-night diner off Bourbon Street, waited on by a sharp-featured woman whose Cajun accent was so thick I could understand about every fifth word she spoke. She was the chatty type of waitress too, handing us menus with a greeting that sounded like, “Y’allwaleconaPapa’swaydefoohissogooy’allgonethankayoudyedayngonewaytaven.”
“Uh, thank you,” Faith said.
The diner smelled of strong coffee and a day’s worth of food cooked in a deep-fat fryer.
“I like this place,” I said, looking at the sign that announced THE SECRET’S IN OUR SPICES and the autographed black-and-white photographs of musicians like Louis Armstrong and Pearl Bailey and Count Basie that hung on the white plaster walls.
“Shelby introduced me to it,” said Beau, smiling at the young man seated next to him. He had straight black hair and the angular features of a Native American, and he probably turned as many heads as Beau did.
Although someone at the next booth might glance at Faith and think she looked perfectly normal, I had felt her shaking next to me since we’d been seated; it was as if a tiny motor was idling inside her, unable to shut off. I watched Faith’s throat rise and fall as she swallowed her Coke.
“Where are you from . . . Shelby?” she asked, saying his name as if she’d been forced to.
“Shreveport.”
“His people have been here since the eighteenth century,” said Beau.
Faith allowed herself a smile. “You said ‘people’ instead of ‘relatives.’ You’re getting to be a real southerner, Beau.”