Snow on the Bayou: A Tante Lulu Adventure (5 page)

Some guys just limp along in life until… bam!…

“Give it to me straight, Doc. How long does my grandmother have?”

Cage’s posture might have appeared casual—legs extended and crossed at the ankles to accommodate the brace under the denim of one knee—as he sat in front of Dr. Evan Posniak’s desk at the Ochsner Cancer Center in New Orleans, but he was far from calm.

To give him credit, the busy oncologist, who was part of the team treating his grandmother, had spent more than a half hour with him so far. Showing him x-rays and MRIs. Telling him what courses of treatment had been tried so far, what further treatments his grandmother refused to pursue, her prognosis in everything except time.

The doctor combed his fingers through his thick white hair, disarmed by Cage’s blunt question, then looked Cage directly in the eye. “Six months to a year from the time of diagnosis, that’s what the textbooks tell us.”

He’d thought he was prepared for bad news, but Cage felt as if he’d been sucker punched by a lethal g-force, his heart racing like a Thoroughbred thundering to the Preakness finish line. When SEALs went up in jets on tight maneuvers, they were taught to suck in their abdominal muscles in a procedure called “hooking” to fight the gravitational pull, or g-force. He’d forgotten to hook today, and the terminality of his grandmother’s disease was just such an assault on his mind and body.

“No offense, but wouldn’t it be smart for my grandmother to get a second opinion? Cancer Treatment Centers of America? Mayo Clinic? Johns Hopkins? Sloan-Kettering. Whatever? Maybe there are trial drugs, or something. Even outside the country. I don’t know. Damn, damn, damn!” He put his face in his hands, then looked up. “I feel so helpless doing nothing.”

“Your reaction isn’t unusual, Justin, and I’m not offended by your suggestion. You should know, though, that Ochsner’s reputation is outstanding, and I’ve been a practicing oncologist for more than forty years. Frankly, son, it would be a waste of time.”

“Time! That’s what it’s all about now, isn’t it?” Cage couldn’t keep the anger out of his voice. Not so much anger at the physician, but anger at himself. “Maybe if I’d come home earlier, when MawMaw’s cancer was in the early stages, there might have been something that could have cured her.”

The elderly physician shook his head sadly. “Not at her age. Lung surgery and aggressive chemo and radiation would have killed her.”

Cage winced at the blunt words. The word “kill” was so final.
What else is new, Cage, my boy? Cancer
is
final.

“Keep in mind, those numbers, six months to a year, aren’t set in stone. There
are
things that extend life for some people, or at least make the time they have left more bearable.”

Hope sprang suddenly. “Like what?”

“Diet. Exercise, even walking. Pain meds. A positive outlook. Having family or friends around to avoid depression. Even prayer.”

Hope sank suddenly.
Prayer? That’s his lifeline to me? Has he been talking to Tante Lulu?

At Cage’s skeptical expression, the doctor shrugged his shoulders and laughed. “There’s so much we don’t know about cancer, Justin. I personally don’t rule out anything.”

Cage’s brain was spinning with all the information he’d been given and all the questions he still had. “Will her condition deteriorate… I mean, I know it will, but MawMaw would hate having to go into the hospital.”

The doctor nodded. “Most folks like to stay at home as long as possible, even to the end. We don’t recommend that unless there are family or friends to stay twenty-four/seven. In the latter stages, I mean. And there’s hospice, of course.”

Well, that sealed it. Cage was going to stay, even if it meant leaving the teams. He was her only close family left, he wouldn’t shirk his responsibility. And it was more than a responsibility. Not even as a payback for all the years she and PawPaw spent raising the difficult child he’d been. No, he would stay with MawMaw for love.

“You won’t realize this now, but you’re luckier than many people, having this time with a loved one,” the doctor concluded.

They must teach that platitude in Bullshit 101.

“Just try to make your grandmother as comfortable and happy as possible. If she changes her mind about further radiation, give me a call.”

“Are you sure the further chemo and radiation wouldn’t extend her life significantly?”

“No guarantees, and the side effects can be brutal. Your grandmother is lucid and she knows what she wants. Bottom line, Justin. If it were my mother, or grandmother, I would respect her wishes.” The doctor checked his wristwatch and stood.

Cage stood, too, carefully. His knee screamed with pain when he sat in one position too long. He laughed then and told the doctor, “I know the one thing that would make MawMaw happy. A baby.”

The old man’s harried face eased into a smile. It must be tough dealing with cancer patients all day long, year after year. “Oh. I didn’t know you were married. When’s the little one due?”

“I’m not married, and there is no baby.”

The doctor’s brow furrowed with confusion.

“My grandmother is trying to guilt me into rushing the blessed event.”

“The wedding or the birth?”

“Both. Of course I’d have to find a woman first.”

“Well, that would certainly give her something to hold on for.”

Cage’s eyes widened with shock. Was he actually suggesting—

The doctor laughed. “I was teasing.”

As they were walking out to the reception area, the doctor said, “A Navy SEAL, huh? My grandson has been thinking about becoming a SEAL ever since the raid that
killed Bin Laden. He’s a premed student at Tulane. Any advice?”

“Tell him to go to med school.”

The physician arched his unruly white eyebrows in question.

“Becoming a SEAL is ten times harder than becoming a doctor. And doctors have better chances for a long life.”

After shaking hands and leaving the building, Cage roamed the streets of the French Quarter for a while, not an easy task with his gimpy leg. But exercise was good, within limits; otherwise the knee would lock up on him. He limped slowly down the narrow streets, avoiding busy Bourbon Street and other tourist traps. He paused occasionally to gaze into store windows with their ornate displays of antiques, jewelry, and New Orleans oddities, but the whole time his mind was on his grandmother and how he had to have a bright face on when he returned to the bayou this afternoon. A Hurricane or five, heavy on the bourbon, might do the trick, but he had a long drive ahead of him. Instead, he would stop for some oyster po-boys to bring for their supper.

Just then, he noticed a shop with colorful Mardi Gras costumes and masks. E & B Designs. Not that he was into that whole Fat Tuesday hoopla. Even as a teenager, he’d been a spectator, rather than a participant. Who was he kidding? The drunken Mardi Gras crowds had been a field day for an experienced pickpocket as he’d been, before moving up to harder crimes. And all the women exposing their boobs for a mere set of beads? What young boy didn’t love that?

Things were different when he’d been with Emelie, his steady girlfriend in those days. He’d behaved to please her. And she’d loved everything about Mardi Gras, especially
the parades. He smiled, remembering the one time he’d snuck Priscilla out of the garage after his grandparents had fallen asleep. He and Em had watched the parades and stayed out all night, ending up in the backseat of the big old car. They didn’t make bench seats like that anymore. A pity!

He was still smiling as he prepared to walk on when his attention was caught by a framed newspaper article on a small easel inside of the window about E & B Designs from the
Times-Picayune
. What stopped him cold was the photograph that accompanied the article. There were two women smiling at the camera, and he knew both of them. Belle Pitot and Emelie Gaudet. Em! Apparently Belle designed the costumes and Emelie made the designer masks.

Holy shit! What were the chances of this kind of coincidence happening? For a blip of a second, he wondered if Tante Lulu might be lurking around the corner, having planned the whole thing.

Now that he thought about it, he could see Em designing Mardi Gras masks. Her two passions, aside from her passion for him, had been art and singing… the blues mostly. He’d even bought her a fancy wooden box filled with colored pencils for her sixteenth birthday, along with a boxed set of Bessie Smith CDs, and he hadn’t even shoplifted them. Instead, he’d worked his butt off, dawn to dusk, on his grandfather’s shrimp boat one whole weekend.

He stood frozen in place, wondering if he should go in or not. There was a lot of history between him and Emelie Gaudet, and some of it not very pleasant. He’d carried an angry chip on his shoulders for a lot of years, courtesy of Em. Did he want to stir up that old hornet’s nest?

But then, he recalled that Em had married within months of his having left Louisiana seventeen years ago. To his cousin Bernie, the geek, no less. She was probably
fat with a bunch of kids by now. Hell, her kids might even be as old as he and Em had been when they were screwing each other like Energizer bunnies.

With that thought in mind, he opened the door and stepped inside.

Big mistake!

Tears of a clown, or was that a SEAL?…

C
age stepped into the colorful shop and stopped dead in his tracks at the double whammy standing before him. Twin boys. Just when he’d been wondering if Em had children, there stood before him not one, but two dark-haired, dark-eyed Cajun mini-Ems.

“Hey, man, what’s up?” one of them asked.

The other twin elbowed the first and asked, “How may we help you, sir?”

The first twin elbowed the second right back, though harder, and muttered, “I was about to say that.”

“Dweeb!”

“Dork!”

As one they turned to face him, realizing how inappropriate their bickering was. Their faces went comically blank. “Welcome to E & B Designs, where every day is Mardi Gras,” they sing-songed.

Cage bit back a laugh.

They were identical twins… well, almost identical. Tall and lean. Gangly. Anywhere from thirteen to fifteen years old, he would guess. They both wore braces and St. Ambrose Football T-shirts tucked into well-worn, holey jeans. St. Ambrose was a Catholic boys’ school in New Orleans.

“Um. Just lookin’ around,” Cage said. “That okay?”

“Sure. Our mother is part-owner of this shop.”

“She must be very talented.”

“She is.”

“I’m Mike,” offered the twin with a bruise on his cheekbone that was turning yellow. Probably a football injury.

“And I’m Max,” the other twin said. He had an Alfalfa-type cowlick growing on the back of his head.

Cage reached across the counter to shake their hands. “Justin LeBlanc. People call me Cage.”

“How come?” Mike asked. Never let it be said that teenagers had tact.

“Because I’m Cajun. Born and bred on the bayou, before I moved away.”

“No shit!” Max exclaimed.

Mike elbowed his brother and said, “You know what Mom said.”

“Sorry,” Max said to Cage.

Cage grinned. “I’ve heard worse.”

“Where do you live now?”

“California. I’m just visiting.”

“Lots of people come to N’awlins for Carnival. Even from around the world,” Mike said. “There was a guy here this morning from China.”

“Japan,” Mike corrected.

“Whatever!” Max shot his brother a glower.

“Hey, are you a Navy SEAL?” Mike asked.

“Oh, wow!” Max added.

“Huh?”
How would they know that?
he wondered, then saw the direction of their eyes.
Well, duh!
Normally SEALs didn’t announce themselves with T-shirt logos and such, but it had been cool this morning and he’d grabbed a windbreaker that said
U.S. NAVY SEALS
with an official emblem on the front. Actually, most SEALs carried, even when not on duty, and the jacket concealed the pistol tucked into the back of his jeans. “Well, actually… yeah, I am,” he admitted, figuring it wouldn’t hurt for a couple of kids to know what he did for a living.

“Man, that is so cool!”

“Awesome!”

“Bet you have women crawlin’ all over you,” Max said wistfully.

“Oh, yeah. Like lice.”

“Huh?” Max blinked at him.

“Just teasin’.” And actually, the kid was right. Women did want to hook up with SEALs. Like rock stars, SEALs also had their groupies. Even obnoxious guys like their teammate Frank Uxley, appropriately named F.U., had no trouble getting a date.

“I saw
American Sniper
last year with Bradley Cooper. Man, you SEALs can kick ass and take names without blinking,” Mike said.

Oh, God! Another movie that was almost a parody of SEALs. Rarely were those flicks vetted by anyone with military creds. Although he had to admit,
American Sniper
was better than most, recounting the life of a true American hero, Chris Kyle.

“Do you know Bradley Cooper?” Max wanted to know, a hopeful expression on his young face.

What? Did he think they were good buds, that the
famous actor was just sitting outside in Cage’s car, slumming the Quarter? He laughed. “No.”

“Oh, I just thought of something,” Mike said, his face bright with whatever new thought had popped into his young head. “Did you kill Osama bin Laden? I mean, were you one of the SEALs that took him out?”

Everyone asked him that.

The boys were gazing at him now as if he was some kind of superhero.

“No. I was in Somalia at the time.”

A young couple came in then, and the boys reluctantly moved off to wait on them.

Cage felt like he had dropped down into some rabbit hole, an alternate universe, where he met up with the sons of a woman… okay, a girl… he’d once loved. Sons that could have been his. They even looked a little bit like him.

After meeting with MawMaw’s doctor, he wasn’t sure how many more shocks he could take today. He should leave. Forget Em and her new life. Let old dogs… rather old loves… die.

The young couple purchased a booklet about Mardi Gras and a poster that could later be framed when they got back to Kentucky. The boys turned back to him.

“You oughta check out those doubloons over there. Some of them are, like, a gazillion years old,” Max said, pointing to the glass case on the other side of the room.

Cage walked over and pretended interest, trying to get his emotions under control. Never a problem before, or not for a long time.

“You’re limping,” Max remarked. “Didja get hit by an AK-47 or somethin’?”

Son, if I got hit by an AK-47, I wouldn’t be here.
“Naw, just landed the wrong way in a Halo jump.”

The slack-jawed boys stared at him as if he’d said he just invented the latest video game or, better yet, told them he knew the model on the cover of the latest
Sports Illustrated
swimsuit issue.

“So you live here in N’awlins?” Cage inquired with seeming casualness. Meanwhile his heart was beating like a drum.
Ka-thump. Ka-thump. Ka-thump
.

“Yep. With our mother. We have a little house on the outskirts of town,” Mike said. “Do you wanna see any of those tosses up close?”

“Tosses?”

Mike pointed to some of the items in front of Cage in the glass case. “Things that get tossed during parades. You know, beads, medallions, coins, and stuff,” Mike explained.

He used to know what tosses were. He’d forgotten. What else had he forgotten, deliberately or not? “Nah, I’m just looking. A little souvenir for my grandmother,” he said but then his tongue developed a mind of its own. “So you mentioned a little house and your mother. How about your father?”

There was a silence behind him and he turned to look at the boys.

“We don’t have a father,” Max said.

“Of course you have a father,” Cage told him. “Everyone does.”
Good Lord! I sound like an absolute moron.

“Not us. At least not one our mother ever admitted to,” Mike said sadly.

“But what about Bernie?”
Yep, diarrhea of the tongue.

“Bernie? Bernie who?” Max’s brow was furrowed with puzzlement. Then he laughed. “Do you mean that dweeb Bernie Landry?”

“Max,” Mike chided his brother. “Mom doesn’t like
us calling him that.” Mike turned to Cage then and said, “No, Bernie is not our father.”

Dweeb? I like the sound of that.
He concentrated on making sure a smile didn’t emerge, before remarking, “But your mother married Bernie. I know she did.”

“Our mother was never married,” both boys said.

Now Cage was the one who was confused. “I don’t understand.”

“Mom says we are the joyous result of a one-night stand,” Max elaborated. “And that’s all she’ll tell us.”

“Impossible! Your mother is not the type to…” His words trailed off as he realized he was saying too much.

Max put his hands on his hips. “Do you know our mother?”

“You could say that.” Cage’s hesitation was telling.

Mike and Max exchanged a glance, then turned as one to stare at him.

“Are you our father?” Mike demanded.

“Whaat? No. Of course not.”
Not unless you two are older than you look.
“How old are you guys?”

“Thirteen,” they answered as one.

“Then I am definitely not your father.”

“Whoa, are you saying you did the deed with our mother?” Max asked. “Eew! That is gross.”

“I think it’s cool. A Navy SEAL! Mom usually brings creeps home, like that biker dude last month, remember?” Mike said to his brother.

A biker dude? Em with a biker dude? That’s like Mother Teresa with Howard Stern.
“This is very confusing.” Cage sighed and then asked the one thing he shouldn’t. “Where’s your mother? I need to talk to her.”

“Mom won’t be here for an hour or so. Do you want to talk to our aunt? She’s back in her workshop.”

“Aunt?” Cage asked dumbly. Em didn’t have any brothers or sisters. So how could the boys have an aunt?

“Honorary aunt, sort of,” Mike elaborated.

Then, instead of stepping back to the room, or rooms, behind the shop, Max let out with a holler, “Yo! Aunt Em. Someone wants to talk to you.”

Aunt Em?

Slowly, the gears in Cage’s brain began to move. Emerging into the doorway was Emelie Gaudet. Or was that Emelie Landry? She looked a little bit older, but just the same. Dark hair pulled back off her face into a high ponytail. A white coverall marked with new and old paint spatters, over a short-sleeved white T-shirt. No makeup.

“Boys? You
called
?” she said, wagging a forefinger at Max and Mike, a gentle reminder that they weren’t supposed to shout in the shop. Then she glanced up, and did a double take. Her brown Cajun eyes went wide with shock before she whispered, a hand over her heart, “Justin?”

For seventeen years, Cage had become the comedian of the teams. Always lighthearted. Always the one ready to share a joke or a beer. Always game for a new adventure… or a new woman. It was a ruse, of course, and not all that original. The clown covering his inner tears.

So he tried for a bit of humor now, tipping his head at Em. “Honey, I’m home.”

No one laughed. Least of all him.

The years, and other things, melted away…

Emelie stood frozen in the doorway.

Justin LeBlanc was a man now, of course, but still she
would have recognized him anywhere. A bit taller. He had already reached six foot by his seventeenth birthday, but he appeared about six two or three now. The same lean frame, except his shoulders were wider, his waist narrower, and the muscle definition, visible through the T-shirt under his open windbreaker, was more defined. SEAL training, she assumed. One thing remained the same, though. The boy could fill out a pair of jeans nicely. Very nicely. His hair was military short, unlike the long hair he’d worn as a teenager—his rebel statement—but still attractive.

Seventeen years! And Justin stood before her, staring at her in the same old way, his dark Cajun eyes smoldering some hidden message. Hungry eyes, she used to call them. Except in the old days, she’d known exactly what that message meant. Desire for her. Now his eyes seemed to be sparked with anger. At her? What reason did he have to be angry?

“What are you doing here?” she asked, making a preemptive strike.

“Hello to you, too, Em. Long time no see, darlin’.” He hadn’t lost his Southern drawl.

She bristled. How dare he darlin’ her? He’d walked out on her seventeen years ago with never a backward glance. And what was with the “Honey, I’m home” crap? Did he imagine he could walk back into her life and she would welcome him with open arms? Like they would be lovers again? Not a chance! Like they remained good buddies? Not a chance! “What are you doing here?” she repeated. The ice in her voice was a clear barometer of her feelings for him. She hoped.

His lips twitched with amusement at her blunt question, but his eyes weren’t smiling.

There was a time when that little hint of a grin would
have melted her heart. Now her heart was frozen solid where he was concerned.

“Here in Louisiana or here in your shop?” he asked.

“Both.”

“I’m here to visit my MawMaw.”

“For how long?”

He shrugged.

Emelie recalled what Bernie had told her, and now she felt guilty for her rudeness. “Sorry. I heard that Miss MaeMae’s been ill. Hope it’s nothing serious.”

He didn’t answer, and she could tell by the way his jaw went rigid that it was very serious. Just then, she noticed Mike and Max watching the interplay between her and Justin, and without thinking, she said to Justin, “Would you like to come back and have a cup of coffee?”

He hesitated, which should have felt like an insult, but she understood what he clearly did, too: shaky ground. “Sure.”

She led him through Belle’s workroom and into her studio. He studied the area, both hers and Belle’s, with interest.

“How long have you and Belle been in business?”

“Five years,” she said, going over to the counter on the side and starting a new pot of coffee. Her hands were shaking. Darn it!

“Didn’t your Grandmother Delphine used to live here?”

“I’m surprised you remember that.”

“Me, too.”

What did that mean?
“Yeah, this house belonged to MawMaw Delphine. She left it to me when she died seven years ago. I’d been living with her for a few years before that, working for an artist over on Chartres Street.”