Page 23 of The Shop on Royal Street
I rolled my eyes, too exhausted to think of a more mature response. “Maybe I should start blasting ABBA on portable speakers in every room. It always seems to work for Melanie.”
His mouth quirked. “I’m sure your neighbors would love that. Actually, some of them would probably start a sing-along on the street, complete with costumes.”
“Talk about great social media exposure. I’ll tell Jolene. Maybe that will prompt FMIA members to stop by and go past the front porch. Jolene just told me that she’s been invited to write a column for their newsletter,Les Amis de Marigny, that will be like a progress report of the renovation. I hope they’re prepared for some of her phraseology.She showed me her first column before sending it in, where she described the condition of the house as a ‘hot mess.’ I’m assuming their readership is mostly local and no translation will be needed.”
“Well, that’s something.” I waited for him to tell me why he was there, since he wasn’t in the habit of making social visits. My phone rang, and I saw it was Sophie again. I quickly turned my phone on silent and groaned. “That was Dr.Wallen-Arasi. She keeps calling to make sure I’m doing everything the ‘right’ way and not going over to the dark side and using ‘inauthentic’ renovation techniques. At least I haven’t had to lie to her so far. I’m dying to get electricity in here so I can get an electric sander and other things to make this go a little faster. She just can’t know.”
He looked at the overflowing dumpster next to the house, the surfboard and cracked Formica countertops peeking over the top like ocean flotsam and jetsam. “I’m assuming the Maison Blanche door is in there, too?”
I looked at him in surprise. “What? No. It’s a gorgeous wood-and-glass door, not to mention a remnant of a vanished part of New Orleans history. I’m definitely going to incorporate it into the renovation.” I sat up. “Actually, I was hoping I could ask you if Mimi would consider storing it at the shop, in the back room. I don’t want it to get damaged during the renovation.”
He finally looked directly at me. “You’ll have to ask her, and she’s in Mobile this week at an estate auction. Although I have to tell you that if it came from this house, she won’t want to have anything to do with it.”
“But it didn’t—not really. It was taken from a department store and ended up here somehow.”
“Mimi doesn’t see it that way. She believes that objects—furniture, clothing, jewelry—contain memories of their previous owners. Or absorb the energy from violent or other extreme moments. Not that I think any of it is rational, but it’s why she has to personally approve everything that goes in the store. That’s why we don’t carry as much inventory as some of the other shops on Royal Street.”
I thought of Mimi, with her different-colored eyes set in her grandmotherly face, and the fact that she believed that objects had memories didn’t surprise me as much as it should have.
“I’m just asking to store the door, not sell it. You’ve got that huge storage room at the back of the store—I’ve seen pictures on your website.”
“Yeah, well, you still need to ask her. She’ll be back on Tuesday.”
I sat back, knowing that to him the subject was closed. I studied my now-empty water bottle, the JR Properties logo stamped across the front. “I’m curious. Who is JR? I’m guessing the R is for Ryan, and I’m assuming the company was named after a family member. I just can’t figure out who.”
He held his sweating bottle against his neck in an attempt either to cool off or to come up with a way to answer me. “JR is my sister. Jolie Ryan. We don’t call her that, though. She’s always been called Sunny. She got that nickname practically at birth because that’s exactly her personality. My mother said she was born smiling. But Mimi wanted her proper name for the company, so JR it is.”
I noticed he used the present tense. “The one who disappeared during Katrina.”
He shook his head. “No. Not during the storm.”
“But...”
“She disappeared the week before. My dad was out looking for her when the storm hit, and my mother refused to leave the city. I went with Mimi and my grandfather to their house in the Alabama mountains, along with my dad’s motorcycle. I never saw my parents or Sunny again.”
“I don’t understand. Sunny was younger than you, right? She couldn’t have been much more than a toddler.” I waited for him to say more. Not able to let it drop, I asked, “Was she... abducted?” Even saying the word was hard.
“It’s impossible to know. She was riding her tricycle in the driveway, and the phone rang. In the two minutes it took my mother to answer it and return, Sunny was gone.”
I tried to imagine either one of my siblings disappearing, and I couldn’t breathe.
“My mother was sure that Sunny would come back to the house. She kept on hoping that whoever had taken her would bring her back.” He took a long swig from his bottle, emptying it. “The stupid thing is that the phone call was a wrong number.”
We sat without speaking, the wind chime tinkling quietly despite there being no breeze. “I’m sorry,” I said.
He looked at me with the same blank expression I gave people when they said they were sorry after hearing that my mother was dead. It made no sense to be sorry about the death of someone you never knew, and whose death couldn’t have been prevented, even by the daughter she claimed to have loved most in the world.
“Not just about Sunny and your parents, but that I never asked you about it before. It’s not that I don’t care or I wasn’t curious. It’s just...”
“You were fighting your own battles. I know.” He leaned back against the railing, quickly righting himself when it began to give way. “Which is why I was surprised to find out that you’d moved to New Orleans. Of all places, you chose here.” His eyes narrowed as he considered me. “Or maybe I shouldn’t be surprised. You’ve always been the kind of person to tackle your demons head-on.”
I looked down at my ravaged nails, not wanting him to see my face. “Yeah, well, my parents say I come by my bullheadedness honestly—half of it inherited from Jack and the other half learned by watching Melanie.” I shrugged. “Jack is a recovering alcoholic and so is Melanie’s father, and my mother was a drug addict. Sometimes I wonder what took me so long to allow my demons to catch up with me.” Still looking at my hands, I said, “I could have done it on my own, you know. Without your help. I just need you to know that.”
“I do know. But if I see a moth throwing itself at a lightbulb, I’ll turn off the light before too much damage has been done. I’d seen what losing a child could do to a parent. I didn’t want your parents to go through it.”
I chewed on my lip, wishing I could make him understand that I’dwantedto get sober. That Icouldhave done it on my own if he hadn’t intervened. But that would have made me sound ungrateful, and I wasn’t. I was alive and facing my demons in New Orleans because of him. But the way I’d been raised for the first fourteen years of my life had taught me to never be beholden to anyone. Because everyone eventually demanded payback.
Lifting my head, I met his eyes. “The rain always stops. That’s why you say that all the time. Because of what happened to your family. And to New Orleans. And you’re still here, and so is the city.”
