They Gave Me a Check at Twelfth Night, So I Took Their Mardi Gras novel · Chapter 3 of 32

Chapter 3: The Curb on Prytania

Hortense has put Clem's life on the sidewalk, Blythe watches from the gallery in Clem's robe, and Gaspard promises Clem an escort to the Queen's Tea.

At noon on Saturday my whole married life was stacked along the curb in front of the Prytania Street house.

Boxes, lamps and three garbage bags of clothes had been set out in the thin January sun.

My grandmother's copper king cake mold sat on top of a box of cookbooks, face down in a puddle.

Gaspard backed the trailer to the curb and cut the engine.

Then he stayed in the cab for a moment with his hands on the wheel and looked at the house.

"It's more than I remembered," he said.

"It's three floors and a ballroom."

"I mean the street." He nodded at the other houses. "Everybody's watching."

He was right.

The woman across the road stood in her robe on her gallery with a cup of coffee, not even pretending to water her ferns.

Two joggers had slowed to a walk.

A man with a stroller had stopped at the corner, and a delivery driver was leaning on his van.

I got out of the truck.

My stomach was tight, but my feet kept going, and that was all I asked of them.

The wedding dress lay at the bottom of the pile, in its dry cleaner's bag, with the plastic sticking to a wet cardboard flap.

I picked it up.

It weighed almost nothing.

I had wanted a plain dress, and Hortense had chosen the one with the lace and the forty buttons, and I had said thank you.

Gaspard climbed down from the cab and stopped a few feet away from me.

He didn't reach for it.

"What do you want done with that?" he asked.

"Why are you asking?"

"I said I wouldn't touch anything you hadn't asked for." He put his hands in his pockets. "I'll stand here until you tell me."

I looked at him.

He meant it, and for some reason that unsettled me more than a hand on my elbow would have.

"Hold the gate," I said.

He opened the iron gate.

I walked up the path to the bottom of the front steps.

I hung the dress on the nearest fence post, with the hanger hooked over the spike, facing the gallery.

The plastic bag fluttered in the breeze.

Then I pulled my wedding ring off my finger and put it in the pocket of the bodice, where it clinked against a button.

"Let them keep that," I said, out loud, to nobody in particular.

The woman across the road lowered her coffee cup.

A window opened above me.

On the second-floor gallery a figure in a champagne-colored silk robe stepped into the light with a glass of orange juice.

It was my robe.

I had bought it myself on Magazine Street the winter before last, and my initials were embroidered on the pocket.

Blythe leaned on the rail and looked down with a gentle, apologetic smile.

"Clem," she called, soft enough that only the street would hear.

"I'm so sorry about all this. Hortense said I should move in right away. For the baby."

"It's a nice robe," I said.

"It's so comfortable."

"My initials are on the pocket."

She looked down at it.

For a moment the smile came apart, and then she put it back.

"I'll get them taken out," she said.

The delivery driver coughed into his fist.

I turned my back on her and picked up the copper mold from the puddle.

I wiped it on my sleeve.

Gaspard crouched at the pile and started lifting boxes into the trailer without a word.

He took two at a time, steady and careful.

The cook came out of the kitchen door on the side of the house, a large woman in an apron.

She pushed a grocery bag into my arms.

"Your grandmother's recipe cards," she whispered. "Madame put them in the trash. I fished them out."

"Thank you."

"Don't thank me, chère. Just don't let them have the cake."

She hurried back inside.

I was putting the bag into the trailer when the front door of the house opened.

Hortense came out onto the gallery in a dove-gray suit, leaning on her cane.

She looked at the dress on the fence, and her mouth went thin.

"Take that down at once," she said.

"No," I said.

"You are making a spectacle of yourself, Clementine."

"I'm standing on a public sidewalk. Anybody can look."

Hortense lifted her chin.

She stood a moment, plainly deciding which blow to use.

"The Queen's Tea is next Saturday, at the Monteleone," she said.

"As keeper of that ridiculous plastic doll, you'll be expected. The court sits in pairs."

She smiled.

"No lady of Thalassa attends without an escort. And no gentleman in this city will walk through that door with you."

I felt the heat rise in my face.

She was right about that, and she knew it.

Everyone I knew in this city was a Villere, or paid by one.

Beside me, Gaspard set down the last box and straightened up.

He looked at Hortense on her gallery with no expression at all.

"She'll have an escort," he said.

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