Page 3 of The Big Easy & Other Lies
“Well? Go!”
“Now?” I asked.
“Now.”
I took the awkward step over Delphine. At least a den of rabid raccoons wouldn’t shoot cigarette smoke at me through their wizened nostrils. Scratch my eyes out with their freaky raccoon claws, maybe. But no cigarette smoke. And an archeological dig in the sitting room would beat a night on the ottoman manning the fast-forward button. I walked out without a backward glance. Delphine sank back into her TV stupor.
Back in the day, the den used to be the informal family room, and the sitting room was for fancy company, like if the parish priest came to visit. But as long as I’d lived here it had only been another room full of junk. I decided there was some truth to the archeology analogy as I surveyed the heaps and tried to figure out where to begin. I had a feeling I was about to unearth more pieces of Delphine’s life than I ever wanted to see.
With a sigh, I grabbed the box directly in front of me, intending to wrangle it to the side so I could make a path through the crowded room. As soon as I lifted it, a lizard shot out and darted between my feet. I dropped the box and shrieked.
Possible rabid raccoonsanda confirmed lizard infestation.
Awesome.
Forget this. I bolted toward the door. Might as well tackle the fabric mess first and stay away from the lizards. I could always tell Delphine I had a hunch to check the spare room for the Audubon if she questioned me, but she wouldn’t; someone in a co-dependent relationship with her Dial-a-Psychic never questioned hunches. I shot a last glance at the lizard cave and fled.
Chapter 2
There’s gross, and then there’sgross.
Things that are gross: month-old pizza boxes, moldy bags of dog food, mildewy towels, cat poop, and a great aunt who gives herself a weekly sponge bath in the TV room of the house you are forced to live in. Definitely gross.
Butgrossis shoving aside a box of ancientGood Housekeepingmagazines in the spare room and stumbling across the petrified remains of a cat. Which was the ick factor of lizards times two million.
I froze when I realized what I was staring at, kind of in horror, kind of because if I moved, I would puke. I scrambled back as fast as I could to the foyer, away from the gray pancake that used to be a house pet.
I slid down on the bottom step and practiced some yoga breathing. Then I thought about the cat and hyperventilated again. It must be One Eye. I thought he’d answered the call of the swamp when he disappeared last winter. Looked like he’d wandered back to the spare room and laid himself down for a permanent nap instead.
I debated my options. Deal with it? How? His death would somehow end up being my fault if Delphine found out. Desperate to fix it, I skirted the den where she sat watching moreAttic Cashand slipped out the back door.
A pointy shovel thing in the jumbled garden shed looked like it might do the job. Sighing, I tugged it from a tangle of rakes and headed back to the cat, snagging a plastic grocery bag from the kitchen along the way.
I scooped him up as gently as I could and slid him into the plastic bag. His fur brushed my hand, the once soft bristles now stiff.
Gross. So, so gross.
And sad. He deserved better, but Delphine would notice me missing any minute. One Eye’s Piggly-Wiggly grocery bag shroud looked pretty pathetic in the bottom of the trash bin. Feeling guilty, I mumbled the only cat poetry I knew, a TS Eliot line my mom used to tell me. “Bustopher Jones is not skin and bones. In fact, he’s remarkably fat.” I fought a laugh at the inappropriate choice for the decidedly skinny One-Eye, one hysterical giggle away from tears.
Back inside the house, I peeked in the den. Delphine sat staring at the screen, her eyes barely blinking. I hurried to the front room again. It was a bad day when ducking lizards in your house suddenly seemed like a better alternative. The sooner I found her dumb owl picture, the sooner I could be done with this room. I grabbed a different box and braced myself for whatever came scurrying out when I moved it.
I could not get out of New Orleans fast enough, but graduation stretched farther away than ever.
* * *
On Friday afternoons, Dr. Bickham’s fifth period physics lectures always felt roughly sixteen hours long, so at the first beep of the bell, I grabbed my bag and bolted for the theater. I wasn’t an actor or anything; theater arts was an integrated program. At a regular New Orleans public high school, a student like me who was into fashion design would be shuffled into a home ec class and assigned to sew aprons and pajama bottoms. But I was on scholarship at LaSalle Prep, the fanciest private school in Uptown, and since home ec wasn’t “academically rigorous” enough for the trustees, instead we worked on elaborate costumes for the theater productions while still pursuing our own personal projects. It was kind of perfect.
I loved this class because it meant sketching and sewing and escaping everything and everyone until the bell rang again. It also made a perfect lead-in to my capstone seminar, the class all seniors took that was supposed to culminate in a project that encapsulated our high school academic experience: an epic science experiment, or a novel, or an original piano composition—whatever fit our interests.
After roll call, Mr. Gervis excused the design kids, and we filed through the stage left dressing room to get to the Applied Design room on the other side where the scent of spray starch and a puff of steam from a hot iron greeted me.
I dropped my bag on my stool and made a beeline for my cubby, itchy to retrieve my green corduroy and get to work. I’d washed it at the laundromat while I slogged through my physics homework yesterday. The soft ridges of the material against my palms soothed me. I was addicted to the feel of fabric beneath my fingertips, whether it was the cool glide of satin or the reassuring roughness of canvas.
Besides a slight trace of mildew along the center fold, the cloth had been in decent shape. It measured nearly three yards even after cutting out the damaged part. My brain buzzed with possibilities. A fitted jacket, maybe? Something feminine and bright with an unexpected punk rock edge. I could totally picture my best friend, Livvie, strutting in it down the runway...
For the next forty-five minutes, I slipped deep inside my sketchbook, working up ideas. Sometimes the fabric told me what to make, and sometimes my pencil took over. The jacket I envisioned at first wouldn’t materialize. But maybe a skirt...I finished the sketch and propped the pad up to study it.
I liked it. A tiered mini had flowed out, a sassy, in-your-face skirt perfect for my capstone Color Splash collection. Other people might see something structured and utilitarian in corduroy, but in the design I sketched, the bright green played on the gap between what people expected corduroy to be—stuffy and stiff—and what it intended to be in spite of their expectations—feminine and playful.
