Thrown-away Child

people. That’s the change I promise to make. Now I’m just going to do it, ain’t saying no more about it.”
    “That’s good,” Bud said. “There’s more food in the kitchen, let’s eat.”
    Mama put the hundred dollars in her apron pocket and stepped up to Perry. She touched a cheek and his chin. “La, you look so much like Willis.” Her eyes teared over, and she kissed him.

    That night, about an hour after the early WDSU news broadcast, Janice came to the house with Claude in tow. I watched out the window as the two of them stepped from Claude’s car and walked up to the house, holding hands.
    When Ruby and Janice were happily occupied with photo albums—pointing and laughing at each other’s growing-up pictures—Claude asked me, “How about we talk outside? Don’t want me to be having a lonely smoke, do you?”
    Claude lit up a Pall Mall as we stood together outside on Mama’s steps in the black night. The two of us big tough cops jumped when a dead branch made a lot of noise falling down from the top of the double oak tree down at the curb.
    “Janice and Ruby’s father planted that tree,” I said. “It’s like he just talked to us now.” We were quiet for a while. Then Claude spoke again. “You know I had to put you in front of me, sort of push you into all this to break it up.” Rather than looking at me, even in the darkness, he looked straight ahead as he talked. “I got to be straight with you, I didn’t care much about maybe you take a bullet for your troubles. Now I want you to know, Detective Hockaday—I’m obliged to you beyond my being able to say so.“
    “Using me—what was in it for you, Claude?“
    “Well, like I say, hell’s just another iceberg after all’s happened. So that’s my sign. I’m staying with the department.” Claude threw his cigarette down and stamped it out. “How about you? You staying, or hanging it up?”
    “I wish I knew.”
    Later yet, a black Lincoln pulled up to Mama’s house. Miss Ava LaRue’s driver, Matthew, had come to deliver a bottle of Dom Pérignon as a gift from Mama’s longtime employer.
    “No man come to my house on Thanksgiving going to leave hungry,” Mama said, accepting the champagne. By that time she had enjoyed a number of lesser intoxicants. Mama grabbed Matthew by the hand, led him to the kitchen, and set him up with a plate. “You ain’t going to turn me down, are vou Matthew?”
    “I surely am not.”
    Mama turned her back and whispered, “Thank you, Ophelia.”

    On Friday, I had Huggy drive me over to Crozat Street so I could say my good-byes to the legend called Joe Never Smile. Then Huggy returned me home, where Ruby had packed our bags and was waiting on the front steps for the ride to the airport.
    Then the hard part.
    Mama held Ruby tight in her arms and smiled bravely, the way people do when they think they might die and never see anybody again. The two of them made promises to each other. I heard Mama say, “You done all right, girl. I’m proud of you, and if you ever blue you remember I’m right here loving you.” When she broke from Ruby, I took Mama and held her by the shoulders and kissed her lips, and told her she was lovely as spring’s first blooms along the cool, blue streams of Galty. Mama said, “I’m going to love you like your own mama and I’m going to nag you, too, Neil. You take care of my girl. Hear?”
    Then Mama pushed me away, and said to us both, “Farewells ought to be abrupt. Remembrance is all the fonder that way.”
     

EPILOGUE

     
    “You notice how Janny and Claude were slow-dancing?”
    “I noticed.”
    Ruby lay her head against my shoulder. Below us, as the plane climbed toward cruising level, was Lake Pontchartrain. It was blue, struck in half by a wake of yellow-white sunlight.
    “Everything is changed forever for everybody,” Ruby said. “Of all people, Perry’s going to see to that.”
    “Change comes every day.”
    “Not in New Orleans, not in the family. Not until you, Irish.”
    “I don’t know about that. I do know that the rest of the changes coming aren’t going to be easy. There’s still Tilton to deal with, for instance. Even in prison he’s got rights to those properties. Then there’s the little matter of Hippo’s estate.”
    “Zeb Tilton will cooperate with property transfers when it’s pointed out to him that it’s either that or maybe a choice between life in prison or the injection. I suppose that’s how Perry’s lawyers