Big Easy Bonanza

got that? If you want proof, just look at my poor wreck of a mother. Hélène is dead, and her death tore our family apart. Who the hell do you think you are, trying to stick your nose into old wounds and open them up again?”
    “I’m sorry.” For once she looked daunted. “But tell me something—what were you going to say about Marcelle?”
    “Marcelle! I thought we were talking about Hélène. Which is it, goddammit?” He moved closer to her, threatening for real now, his voice probably carrying out to the Moonwalk.
    “You said, ‘Hélène is dead,’ and then you said Marcelle’s name. What were you going to tell me?”
    “Shit, you idiot, I was just upset, that’s all. I wasn’t going to say a goddamn thing and you know it—you just won’t let well enough alone, will you? You’ve got to twist the knife once it’s in. It’s true what they say, you know that? Cops are sadists, especially fat, ugly women cops with ankles that belong in a zoo.”
    She stood up. “You little darling, you.”
    “I’ve lost my father and my lover. Can’t you leave me alone?”
    “With pleasure. The same pleasure I get from leaving maggots alone.”
    “Bitch.”
    “Next time I come I’ll bring insecticide.”
    As she took her hippo-bodymus heavily down the stairs, Henry quickly found the joint he’d put out and sucked as if it was oxygen. Why the hell had he mentioned Marcelle? Maybe a combination of the pot and the conversation he had had with her about Hélène. Fuck. Despite his early cool, he felt as if he’d blown it after all. He wanted nothing so much as a drink, followed by another three or four or eight. But he simply couldn’t let down his guard again. The pot was bad enough. Booze just wasn’t going to get it. He’d nearly blown it, breaking into her apartment Sunday morning. He couldn’t afford to get that far out of control again. And anyway, he had to cook for his mother that night.

Bitty
    SHE WAS SITTING still, not a muscle moving, in her wing chair, still wearing the black dress she had worn to the Harmeyers’. The low hum of the TV came from the back of the house, confirming André’s small, comforting, if somewhat zoned-out presence. TV seemed to put him in a sort of waking coma, but Marcelle wanted him away from her, saying he had been sick earlier but now was well enough to go out—she just worried he was still contagious. Bitty thought he still looked too sick to go out. Marcelle had brought him over because she didn’t want her mother to be alone. (She hadn’t been informed that Bitty was soon due at Henry’s, of course, but she might have guessed, might have known Henry wouldn’t leave her alone.)
    No one would leave her alone. Everybody was so afraid for poor Bitty and her terrible addiction. Who was Marcelle to get high and mighty? The television dulled her child’s senses every bit as much as Bitty’s booze dulled hers. The pill was wearing off and Marcelle had gone to get her another one—anything to keep sober, even if it had to be drugs.
    Marcelle had no way of knowing that Bitty had her own reasons for staying sober today. She could do it when she wanted to, no one seemed to understand that, and today she had to, even though it was the worst day of her life, even though she would have loved nothing better than to spend it in an alcoholic coma, preferably with an IV hooked up to drip the merciful liquid into her arm. She liked that phrase—“merciful liquid.”
    That Tolliver was dead was nearly unbearable. That she had to stay sober—and the reason for it—was salt in the wound. She couldn’t drink today—and maybe not for many days to come. She couldn’t go out of control in any way, she’d have to stay alert as long as Henry was talking about jail. He’d pulled it out of his hat with no warning—and rather cruelly, she thought, though she understood what he was trying to do, and why, but it certainly hadn’t had the effect he wanted. Except for the temporary one of keeping her sober, and sober she would stay because she must not let that happen, no matter how much it hurt.
    Did she want to die? The question kept coming up. No, she didn’t want to die. She knew that because she didn’t dare. Because if she died there would be no one to help Henry, and Henry was still desperately important to her. Therefore she didn’t want to die.
    Marcelle brought the pill and sat down silently, in the other wing chair, apparently unable to think of anything to say.