Big Easy Bonanza

drunk.”
    “We’ll just have to see about that.” This line delivered with a spirited toss of the head; now she was a fragrant magnolia machine. “’Bye now.”
    She undulated out, as the role required, and once on the sidewalk made a face. “Ichhhh!” she said aloud, causing a tourist couple in matching canvas hats to give her a wide berth.
    Dulles had flipped her back into neutral, into the automatic mode she’d run on during the wake and funeral—during most of her life—but it didn’t last. By the time she reached her car, she was deep in depression.
    Instinctively, she knew what she needed to soothe it—water. She drove to the West End, out onto the pier, and watched the wind churn the lake. It was overcast again, and very windy, so that waves were regularly smacking the retaining wall, each time sending up an exuberant surge of spray. Every time a wave hit, Marcelle jumped a little, excited; it was something else getting hit, not she.
    She was horribly embarrassed at having asked for something so obviously out of the question that it had actually made Tolliver angry. She honestly hadn’t known she was quite as hopeless as his reaction indicated, and the knowledge was paralyzing. What was the point of taking courses? Of hoping for anything of her own? Clearly she wasn’t going to get it, and she might as well live off her trust fund and call it a day.
    That was probably the long and short of it, but she felt an overwhelming bewilderment too. Uncle Tolliver had never treated her so perfunctorily. Never. But of course she’d never asked him for anything. Had she been invisible to him too?
    “’Marcelle, could you get Tom Sawyer for us? It’s time for Henry’s chapter.”
    Bitty read to Henry every night, though he was the older one, while Marcelle would play on the floor with her dolls, listening, pretending she didn’t care. She was mixed up about the painkiller Tom gave the cat. Surely he didn’t do it out of meanness and yet, that was what the story made it sound like.
    “Was the kitty sick?” she asked.
    Henry said, “This is my book. You don’t get to listen to it.”
    Bitty had gone on reading, as if she hadn’t asked the question.
    She didn’t know what she was doing. She didn’t have any idea.
But I do. And my child is never going to feel like that. Never!
    She would rather die today than go to her grave knowing she had ignored her child the way Bitty had, hadn’t been any better a mother than her own mother, hadn’t learned a damn thing by a bad example. Rather die? She’d rather André die. He was the most important thing in her life and she wasn’t going to forget it, ever again, even for a moment. The hell with Tolliver, and the hell with her stupid idea. As she backed up and turned around, she mentally thanked the lake for its restorative powers.
    She felt wonderful, liberated, by the time she got back to the day-care center. Her step was light, she was smiling. André and another boy were building a giant fort with Legos.
    “André? Mommy’s back.”
    “Hi, Mom. I’m building a fort.” He looked up at her, then at his fort, showing off.
    “I see, sweetheart. Guess what? Mommy’s got the rest of the day free. We can go to the zoo now.”
    André stared at the floor, looking heartbroken. Was he still angry with her?
    “André, I’m sorry we couldn’t go this morning. But we can go now. We’ll have just as much fun; I promise. Guess what, honey, we can take a boat. There’s a real boat that sails down the river right to the zoo.”
    It would mean driving downtown again, all the way to Riverwalk, but she owed that to André after walking out on him.
    André still stared at the floor. “Don’t want to go now.”
    “Of course you do, honey. They have white alligators, darlin’—-baby ones that somebody found in a bayou. Hardly any kids in the world have ever seen a white alligator, and you can see a whole bunch of them.”
    André didn’t answer. She took his wrist as a signal he should come with her. He didn’t rise. He shouted, “No!”
    “André, come on!”
    “No!”
    She pulled him up now, and saw that he was crying. “Honey, please don’t yell at Mommy.” She didn’t deserve to be yelled at. She was being a good mother now. This morning she’d been a bad mother, but how much did André have to punish her for that?
    He stood there sobbing, looking as if he’d just been told his daddy was going off to war. She picked him up and carried him