Big Easy Bonanza

out to the car.

2
    “Hollandaise
and
creamed spinach?”
    “Yes ma’am.”
    The woman wrinkled her face up.
    Her husband said, “Oh, try it, Marilyn. Be adventurous for once.”
    They had New York accents that sounded like a fingernail on a blackboard in the sweet southern morning.
    “The soft-shelled crab wasn’t enough?” She turned to Henry. “The thing looked like a giant spider. Right on the plate. You wouldn’t believe how disgusting…”
    He forced a smile. “Perhaps Madame would prefer an omelet?” He said “Modomme” instead of “Maddum”— the tips were bigger that way. Sometimes he even did a phony French accent.
    “Well, I’ll have the Eggs Sardou,” said the husband, smug in his solitary adventurousness.
    “You’ll have a triple bypass too.” To Henry, “Could I just get some fresh fruit?”
    You don’t come to Brennan’s for fresh fruit, idiot. You come to clog your arteries and die.
    He had dreamed of death last night. He was in the cemetery again, and they were going to open the family vault. Chauncey was already in there, it wasn’t for Chauncey. It was for Bitty. Even this morning, in the bustle of the restaurant, he felt the shroud of sadness from the dream drop over him again. The casket was there, like Chauncey’s, ready to be entombed. He couldn’t stand it. He wasn’t going to let them bury Bitty. He was going to save her, take her away. He opened the casket to get her out and saw that it was all right. It wasn’t Bitty in there but himself.
    He’d been afraid he was going to continue missing Chauncey, be sorry he was dead after all. But the feeling was gone now. The dream showed it. Chauncey was dead in the dream, and yet it didn’t matter. It didn’t matter at all, had nothing to do with the plot, and Chauncey had nothing to do with their lives anymore.
    “Watch it, son!” Another waiter, carrying a tray full of Ramos fizzes, sidestepped him skillfully.
    At the funeral he felt he needed to be with Bitty and had stuck to her like an old retainer. To his regret, he’d only briefly been able to see the only relatives he could stand besides his mother—his paternal grandparents, Poppoo and Mommoo. Or Pa-Pére and Ma-Mére, as stupid Marcelle, eternal Doris Do-Right, still called them. As soon as he was old enough to think of it, Henry had Anglicized the nicknames, which seemed too fancy and not at all to fit his down-to-earth grandparents. The names had been Chauncey’s idea, a salute to the St. Amant heritage, for once.
    Before Henry and Marcelle were born, Bitty’s mother, Merrie Mac Mayhew, had inherited a friendly old house in Covington, on the Bogue Falaya River, large enough to accommodate the rambunctious and numerous MacDuff clan in the sticky summer months. Bitty had spent summers there as a child, and after Merrie Mac died, her father gave it to her. Bitty and Henry and Marcelle spent most of every summer there, leaving Chauncey to work at the bank. He joined them on weekends, and every now and then Geegaw, Henry’s Grandfather Mayhew, did as well. Mommoo and Poppoo were there most of the time.
    Henry had loved those summers. In those days, as soon as you got off the causeway you were in the woods. Covington was a place of pines and sycamores and magnolias bigger than you could imagine, so that standing outside was like being in a high-ceilinged, earth-smelling room. Merrie Mac’s house creaked with character and old age. It had a pointed roof, front porch with swing, side yard, and sleeping porch with screens.
    One day Henry had said: “Want to go down to the river, Poppoo?”
    His grandfather answered without missing a beat: “Sure, Kiddoo.” From that time on, neither of them called the other anything else.
    Remembering Poppoo and Mommoo, Henry slammed an empty tray down, drawing stares from his colleagues. What made him angry was that Chauncey had no excuse for being the kind of father he was. Poppoo and Mommoo were the salt of the earth, polar opposites of anyone else he knew. Simple folk. Poppoo was an accountant, Mommoo just a grandma. Poppoo spent every day with Henry while Mommoo cooked and Bitty mooned about. Mommoo would make a big pot of gumbo, or boil up some shrimp, and they would all eat outside. Every night was a picnic; every day was peaceful as the river itself.
    Poppoo was a big, dark, gentle man who would fish all day and bring his prizes back to Bitty as if they were piscine keys to heaven. Both of them adored her,