Big Easy Bonanza

talking about Chauncey, telling Chauncey anecdotes, and then his tone changed. He talked about the fact that after a death the living tend to feel guilty for being alive, and how they must learn to accept themselves as they are, without guilt for another’s death. And then he said they had to accept the dead too. He said, “We must all accept Chauncey now, as he is now—which is dead.” Bitty’s sobbing stopped for a moment. He did not say that Chauncey had gone to his maker or been claimed by Jesus or any such nonsense. He said dead.
    Chauncey had been dead to her for years.

3
    They buried him at Metairie Cemetery or, more properly, entombed him, as New Orleanians, because of the high water table, have historically preferred this method. The Mayhews apparently had claimed him as their own—to the Mayhew plot he went.
    Skip, shivering in her silk blouse and suit jacket, thought the obelisk-centered plot, with its imposing tombs and monuments, its careful carving, and most of all, its vast size, might more properly have been called the Mayhew acre. With the Mayhew estate on it.
    She saw Chauncey’s parents, the St. Amants, standing together, huddled against the wind, like a couple of out-of-place old retainers, except that now Mrs. St. Amant claimed intimacy by taking the tiny hand of André Gaudet. Mrs. St. Amant wore a plain black-and-white tweed coat. Mr. St. Amant wore a brown suit. He was an accountant, Skip thought.
    The morning sun hadn’t lasted. On a day like today, overcast and windy, the place was properly eerie. New Orleans cemeteries were called cities of the dead, and Metairie was the biggest city of all, and probably the most beautifully landscaped. The tombs were like small houses—in some cases large ones—set on carefully manicured streets. The Mayhew plot, with its own obelisk, which in turn had its own moat, and with so many tiny buildings to contain the bones of so many bygone Mayhews, was like a self-contained little necropolis within the larger one. The “estate” was as crowded as if an outdoor concert was about to be presented.
    Skip had caught a glimpse of her parents in the church, and she saw them again here, her mother leaning against her father in the cold, both of them looking slightly ill in black. She made no attempt to say hello.
    Even her brother was here. He wasn’t with her parents, but with a woman, she saw—probably some Mayhew relative he was going out with. Conrad had inherited the family hobby of social climbing. The woman turned and she saw who it was—Sara Ann Gaillard, one of Alison’s sisters. Alison and her husband were standing with them.
    God! Everyone she’d ever gone to Miggy’s or McGehee’s or Newcomb or Trinity with was here, and everybody from her old neighborhood on State Street, and all the next-door neighbors of all the little girls at whose homes she’d played as a child.
    There was Judith Harmeyer, Tolliver Albert’s redoubtable gray-haired sister, and her husband, Arthur. Tolliver and Henry stood near Bitty, whose father had an arm around her, holding her up perhaps. Bitty looked defeated, as if she’d crumple to the ground if someone didn’t hold her, but Skip had glimpsed her in church and her color was good. She was ethereally beautiful in her widow’s black. Tolliver, though—God! He was paler than usual, and his eyes were sunken and deep-circled, as if he hadn’t slept. And that was the least of it. Skip didn’t know when she’d seen such a look of misery on a human being’s face. He was staring at Bitty as if she was drowning and he couldn’t swim.
    The musicians seemed at home, seemed to feel Chauncey had been public property and it was fine for them to be there. John Hall Pigott, the black star who’d returned to his roots, was standing with some of them. At the edge of the crowd were a fat guy in a dumpy-looking suit and a tall guy in a nicely fitting blazer who were hanging back, hands behind them, shifting awkwardly from one foot to the other, looking as out of place as Chauncey’s parents. Watching them did Skip’s vengeful heart good—she was pretty sure it was O’Rourke and Tarantino. They looked like parasites who couldn’t quite get a grip on their hosts.
    Near them, but closer in, was Marcelle, like Bitty stunning in black, except that it made her look vibrant rather than fragile. Now that André had gone to his grandmother, she looked as if she hadn’t a friend in the world.
    Skip started toward her and