House of Blues (36 page)

But I think that many parents, ours included, simply
do not like children much. Do not like the noise they make, their
high level of energy, the way they are always in perpetual motion—and
the care that must be taken of them. In a word, they find children
inconvenient, and an inconvenient child like Evie they particularly
dislike, though they may "love" her in some vague way that
probably has more to do with parental ego than otherwise. (I guess I
must have thought of all this because Reed was so very convenient; so
calculatedly convenient; so obedient and helpful, such a little
volunteer. In short, being intelligent and being the youngest, in a
perfect position to observe, she figured out what would fly.)

Albert, I think, actually did like children as a
class, something I hadn't seen before. He was even nice to Evie,
which was something of a taboo in our family. Whenever we saw him, it
almost made me rethink her: If Albert liked her, could she really be
so—bad?

Mother always said the way he treated us was just his
way of sucking up to her and Daddy, which hurt my feelings. But not
for long because even in my seven-year-old heart I knew it said a
great deal more about her worldview than about Albert. The way Albert
was, the way he felt, the intuitive sense I got from him—his vibe,
his energy, his presence (I don't know what to call it because there
isn't a word for it)—this feeling belied what she said.

Albert had the job in the restaurant of making the
pommes de terre soufflés. This is a dish served at most of the great
New Orleans restaurants as an hors d'oeuvre, sometimes, though not
always, with béarnaise sauce. At Hebert's the pommes are always
served plain.

Once, before the day of The Thing, Albert showed me
the whole procedure. First he'd slice his potatoes thin, thin, thin
with a tool called a mandolin, then dry them, then toss them in
boiling oil, very hot. He'd let them float to the top, then take them
out and pop them in another pan of boiling oil, even hotter than the
first, smoking this time—45o degrees. I'll never forget how proud
he looked when he told me that.

The thing I never could understand, and never will
understand is that the flat slices miraculously puff up into little
pillows, as if two pieces of potato have been glued together around a
bubble of air. How one slice of potato can do this is beyond me.

The oil makes the pommes puff up, but they aren't
perfect unless they're crisp, somewhere between french fries and
potato chips; in other words, they don't crunch when you bite into
them, but they aren't soft and soggy either. Only Albert could
accomplish this miracle. I've had the potatoes at every restaurant in
town, and nobody then or now can make them like Albert.

This is all Albert did—all day, every day, day in,
day out. A lesser cook would have been bored to tears, but Albert
took great pride in the perfection of each potato pillow he turned
out. On his day off, Hebert's didn't even serve the pommes—nobody
else's could come close to Alberts

I could watch Albert do this for hours, and sometimes
I did. The best part, of course, was that I was free to nibble now
and then, especially when he spoiled one.

The day of The Thing, Albert barely had a word for
any of us. The restaurant was working at full capacity, and two of
the line cooks had the flu. Everyone was flying about looking like
speeded-up film.

In fact, Albert was entirely out of character that
day. Perhaps he was angry at Dad for some reason; perhaps it was just
the heat and the pressure.

"
Albert! How're ya doin'?" I shouted
gleefully.

Without looking around, he said, "Grady? That
you, boy? You chirren shouldn't be here today. Too much goin' on; you
better get out of the way."

Crushed that my idol had spoken harshly to me, I
withdrew against a wall. After a while I noticed Evil Evie picking
cherry tomatoes from the salad plates. Reed, too young to know this
was forbidden, was watching too. Next thing you know, she had joined
her. They were systematically denuding all the salads, already made
up and waiting to be ordered, of their round red fruit.

Wanting to strike out, I grabbed Dad's hand. "Daddy,
Evie and Reed are stealing the tomatoes." At the time, he was in
conversation with someone, I couldn't have said who—if it wasn't
Albert, I didn't care much—and he shook my hand off. I'm quite sure
he didn't hear what I said, because to this day I believe he'd have
minded that his salads were under attack. "Don't bother me now,"
he said, and then I had been rebuked twice.

There was nothing to do but charge.

I came up behind the girls and pinched each of their
arms simultaneously, which so startled Evie that she knocked to the
floor four or five of the nearest salads. Furious, she turned around
to hit me, but I ran away.

"Reed! Get him!" she shouted, and tiny
Reed, ever-obedient Reed, came after me. I looked over my shoulder,
laughing, and ran smack into Albert, who fell forward, hitting the
handle of his first pan of grease. Sensing disaster, he hurled
himself toward Reed, but he wasn't fast enough. He landed on top of
her, but she had already slipped on the oil and her legs had
straightened as she went down. That in itself wouldn't have been so
bad except that Albert, in his leap, had knocked over the second—and
hottest—pan of grease, and its entire contents poured onto Reed's
feet and legs.

I missed the first part, but turned around just in
time to see the second pan of grease empty its contents on that tiny,
innocent, inoffensive child. Evie, half crazed with fear, ran to our
end of the kitchen, and I guess all our parents saw was that blur of
motion.

But none of that is what is most horrible to me. It
is two other things: first, what happened later—in the hospitals,
the burn hospitals, before the skin grafts, and after them—knowing
the way she suffered. And yet, I didn't know. Later, in that way that
we are fascinated by what horrifies us, I read a magazine article by
a man who'd been badly burned, and I really had had no idea. I threw
up after reading it; I dreamed about it four days running.

I didn't know the details, but I knew what her face
looked like. I saw the happy child replaced by that pinched little
mask.

Her face, remembering her face, is why I could not
write about this, could not think about it, and yet, that is only
part of it.

There was the other thing, the thing that is worse.
And that is remembering the sounds of that moment.

Albert's anguished emission of emotion—something
like "Uhhhhhh," but full of tears. A vampire shriek from
somewhere—I guess it was Evie. The clatter of the two pans hitting
the floor. The manifold screams of the kitchen staff. Reed's whimper.
That's all there was—a whimper.

And Dad beating Evie.

He spoke first. "Evie, I'm going to kill you,"
and he reached her in two quick strides. He struck her face with the
back of his hand, and the noise it made is something that is with me
still, in my dreams, in my sickest fear fantasies. I didn't see what
happened to Reed, who picked her up, who took care of her, I was too
fascinated by the horrible, the unthinkable. Dad began hitting Evie
with both hands, with his fists, and someone—several people, I
think—finally pulled him off of her.

She didn't protest, didn't even try to explain what
had happened, probably because she couldn't speak under the rain of
blows. Nor did I, and no one ever brought it up, never even asked.

The loudest noise, the most terrifying, the one that
is most debilitating today, was the sound of my silence.

But maybe it never mattered at all. Perhaps both
parents knew perfectly well what had happened, had even seen it. Not
long after, I asked my dad, timidly, why he had beaten Evie. "She's
the oldest," he said. "She should have been watching the
younger kids."
 

23

Skip got up an hour early on Wednesday and drove
straight to Manny's, hoping she'd catch him before he left. But all
was quiet at his apartment, a dump of a place on Jackson Avenue. She
got out and walked around, even rang the bell, backup or no, thinking
to play the Avon lady trick again. She had been in uniform when she
arrested Manny; surely he wouldn't recognize her. But she didn't
think it would come to that, and it didn't.

No one answered the door.

She'd gotten his motorcycle license number from her
records check, and she saw no sign of the machine. She didn't see the
point of hanging around.

She went to the work address she'd gotten from
Manny's probation officer, without much hope of finding her quarry.

Manny was apparently a mechanic. He worked at a place
called Rayson's Garage in Jefferson Parish, which appeared to be
doing a hefty business. She asked for Rayson and was directed to a
grimy, thickset man wearing round, heavy glasses, a baseball cap, and
clean T-shirt. How he managed to keep the T-shirt clean and the rest
of him dirty she could only speculate.

"You need an appointment? We're booked solid
till a week from Friday." He had the air of one too harassed for
humans; his business was with machines.

"No, thanks." She identified herself. "I'm
looking for one of your employees. Manny Lanoux."

"
Manny." He looked utterly mystified. "We
ain't got no Manny here."

"
No? You never did?"

"Well, now, I didn't say that." He rested
an arm on a handy shelf, starting to relax; he'd caught her out and
he was enjoying it.

"Did you hear me say that?"

She had no patience with whatever petty game he was
playing.

"Are you saying he used to work here but he
doesn't now?"

"
No. Not saying that at all."

He was determined to drag it out. Skip stopped trying
to cut to the chase. With or without patience, she was going to have
to play this stupid game.

"
May I ask what you are saying?"

"I'm saying I don't know."

She would truly have loved to kill him.

"
Is there anybody here who would know?"

"
Don't know."

Thats it.

"
Rayson. You're a horse's ass."

His face turned from smug to nasty. He took his arm
off the shelf and moved toward her.

"Don't even think about it." She paused,
feeling her feet dig into the earth beneath her; sure of her ground
and loving it. "Or I'll have your fat ass thrown in jail so fast
you won't remember the ride."

He stopped, hatred rampant on his heavy features.

Petty tyrant. He probably beats his kids and voted
for David Duke.

"Now you stop playing your junior high games and
start giving me straight answers."

"You gotta ask me a question first."

"
I'm not asking you any more questions. I'm
making a demand. You either tell me everything you know about Manny
Lanoux in the next five seconds"—a stubborn look crept over
his face; he opened his mouth to speak, but Skip headed him off—"or
find me somebody who can."

"Orrin!" He roared so loud she nearly
jumped. "Get your butt over here and talk to this cop."

He walked off, picking up a clipboard and roaring
someone else's name. "Larry! What the fuck are you doing?"

Orrin appeared, a confused expression on his gentle
features. He seemed a different breed of cat from Rayson.

Skip gave him her best smile, feeling guilty about
bullying Rayson, wanting to leave that part of herself behind. If you
were a cop, you didn't have to take any crap from anybody; that was
the good news. The bad news was, if you pulled rank, if you did what
she'd just done, it made you hate yourself. At least it did Skip.
O'Rourke probably loves it; he's Rayson in uniform, anyhow. She also
had a superstition about it. It was like marijuana leading to heroin.
You started popping off at the Raysons of the world and you couldn't
stop. Next thing you knew, you were beating up innocent people with
your nightstick; then you started shooting them.

She believed this because she had seen it. She had
seen perfectly good policemen start out slowly, mouthing off at jerks
like Rayson, and end up suspended, even fired.

Then there was the toughness issue. She did not
believe that nastiness was a charming quality in either sex, and she
did not think it signified its owner was tough. Toughness, to her,
was more like Hillary Clinton's quiet self-possession, her ability
simply to stand firm. She had been mystified the first time she heard
the joke about the meanest woman in the world—Tonya Rodham Bobbitt.

"What is that about?" she'd fumed at Jimmy
Dee. "What does Hillary have in common with leg-breakers and
dick-slicers?"

"Haven't you heard? Men are threatened by
assertive women. Should make your job easier."

In fact it didn't. Instead, whatever personal power
she had just made people like Rayson hostile. Which meant she
eventually pulled out the stops, which in turn meant the whole thing
was a self-fulfilling prophesy: You wont to sec a bitch? Watch this.

Why
, she thought,
can't
people just be nice to each other?