Big Easy Bonanza

had put André to bed an hour ago and now Henry had gone up at last, after hours of draping his besotted self all over the parlor furniture, pretending to be alert in case Bitty needed anything. Bitty was out cold, having left Marcelle and Henry alone to cope with their father’s death. Neither was strong enough, yet somehow they’d done it. Relatives came out of the woodwork, for one thing, and they’d done a lot of the heavy work of notifying other relatives and friends, planning a proper wake for the next day.
    And when Marcelle got right down to it, Bitty herself was rather amazing. She had actually made the funeral arrangements before checking out for that never-never land she loved so well. And all without having a drink. Marcelle was dumbfounded at first, but when she thought back over the years she realized that her mother wasn’t completely helpless. Indeed, to everyone’s astonishment, she was absolutely at her best in a crisis.
    Once over in Covington, Marcelle fell and ripped her leg open—not just a little cut, but a nasty laceration with puckered-up skin and blood flowing out like cranberry juice. Henry started screaming and wouldn’t stop. Marcelle sat down and put her head between her knees. Chauncey raced around looking for a towel to stop the bleeding, running from one end of the house to the other, never finding it. Pathetic, drunken, incompetent Bitty simply tore down a curtain, tied up the wound, threw Marcelle into the car and drove her to the hospital before anyone noticed they were gone.
    There were lots of incidents like that. When things were at their absolute worst, Bitty was a marvel of competence and efficiency. But if they were simply day-to-day, marginally awful, she was a vegetable. Chauncey was always touchingly protective of her, as if her illness, her addiction, were his fault, as if he could do something to bring her back to life.
    Marcelle almost laughed. He’d had to die. Marcelle couldn’t remember seeing her mother so alert in ten years or more. Chauncey wouldn’t have been able to believe it, would have been falsely heartened—it wouldn’t last, and Marcelle knew it earlier that day. It was over already.
    But lately Chauncey had seemed to accept her condition. Marcelle guessed that’s what you’d call it anyway. He’d obviously been making certain other arrangements for himself.
    Finding herself about to burst into fresh tears at the thought, she went up to the bathroom to wash her face. Then she went into her old bedroom, still decorated with her dolls and teddy bears, and changed into a short pink satin nightgown. She and Henry (and her son André) were spending the night at their parents’—their mother’s, she reminded herself, and fought off more tears. She was here, but she didn’t know what she could do for her mother. If Bitty called for something—water or another round of pills, perhaps—she was there. Meanwhile, she would have a drink herself—her first since Skip had brought the news.
    Bourbon, perhaps. Something good and strong, because this was going to require a lot of help. She tossed one down, made herself another. And then she thought about the fact that she knew her father’s murder wasn’t political—the fact that she knew who the murderer was.
    Should she tell Skip? Would any purpose truly be served by doing that?

3
    Skip put on a pair of jeans and took a gin and tonic out to the balcony, dragging with her one of her two director’s chairs. February and March were dicey in New Orleans, but it had been a warm day for Mardi Gras and tonight she was comfortable wearing only a sweater.
    Still, no one else was doing any balcony sitting. Skip had come out because she wanted the sights and sounds of Carnival, the seasonal shouting and screeching along with the everyday raucousness from the piano bar at Lafitte’s Blacksmith Shop. Sometimes she heard the music as she was falling asleep, and the next morning was awakened by children playing in the school yard across the street. Pleasant sounds to live with. And no matter how tiny her living space, who could feel poor who had a balcony?
    Fortunate, she thought, that nearly everyone who lived in the Quarter did. Nearly everyone in the city, for that matter, who lived above the first floor. To sit on your own balcony, drink in hand, and stare at the lacy cast-iron galleries curving so gracefully round the flat-roofed buildings was enough to make your heart break, it was so beautiful.
    It