They stood in the hall near the front door. Zora had returned to the kitchen, but the workers were only a room away, in the second parlor, which was going to become a library. Thea did not want them to hear Lyle, who had not bothered to lower his voice. She took him out to the front porch.

"But Lyle, I know these people. Burgess is Delzora's son. These men work for him; he trusts them. I," she put one hand on her chest for emphasis, "trust them."

With his stony policeman's eyes he said, "Drop a twenty under your hall table. See how long it stays there."

Thea did not like Lyle's shoot-now-ask-questions-later att.i.tude toward black people, yet she saw that in his self-appointed role of protector he allowed no room for error because of misplaced sympathy, compa.s.sion, or trust. He took no chances. The part of her that was afraid, that came close to panic when she thought Bobby could have been killed out in front of her house, appreciated Lyle's vigilance, as did her neighbors, people she felt a growing sense of community toward, but Zora, Burgess, the workers, these were people she knew and liked.

His sincerity aside, Lyle still made Thea uncomfortable when he was around, especially if Bobby wasn't there, and it was always with relief that she watched him retreat down the brick walkway. Even if she were willing to agree that someone had to be the watchdog, she did not want the watchdog mentality thrust upon her. Even when she was willing to concede that she might like the security of a burglar alarm, his doggedness called up her resistance. She did not understand her ambivalence. It made her uncomfortable too.

She went inside and closed the front door behind her, still not bothering to lock it, perversely not wanting to. She started back to the kitchen, pa.s.sing the hall table, her purse and keys on top of it, as Lyle, always the detective, the watcher, had no doubt noticed.

She hesitated, then abruptly turned. She picked up her purse, put her keys in it, and brought it with her to the kitchen. Indeed, her actions were perverse and she knew it, for if Lyle had said anything to her about keeping her purse on the hall table, she wouldn't have moved it.

15.

Five o'clock, everyone gone, the house to herself, what to do. Thea was tired of making decisions about furnishings, about things that were now hers but belonged to her chiefly because they were part of her childhood memories. How was one supposed to decide which memories to keep, which to use, which to store, which to sell or give away? She could not view these things with any objectivity, could not decide which of them fitted in with the way she wanted the house to look. Part of the problem was that she had no clear-cut vision of exactly how she did want the house to look. As long as it had Aunt Althea's possessions in it, it was Aunt Althea's vision.

So the third floor had become a large attic, a place to store anything she had the least doubt about keeping, a cluttered s.p.a.ce with covered furniture and sealed boxes and locked trunks.

A perfect hideout for a ghost.

Thea wandered the nearly empty front rooms of the house in search of a vision. The rooms seemed enormous now without their little groupings of furniture, isolating rather than intimate, their thick curtains suffocating and claustrophobic, their copiously patterned wallpapers repeating designs like fences.

The light walls and open s.p.a.ces should have offered possibilities, but no vision was forthcoming. Instead the walls seemed stark, the s.p.a.ces desolate. Her feet struck hollowly on the wood floors. The sound of emptiness was beginning to grate on her.

She stopped in the living room, where she'd temporarily left the red brocade sofa, a matching chair, and the coffee table with the beaded border off to the side of the room, no longer a group but at odd angles to one another, as if at odds and hastily left to their bad humor. They told of abandoned old lady.

She went to the gray-veined marble mantel. Above it hung a huge mirror framed in rosewood, the old gla.s.s beveled to follow the curves in the wood. It was a beautiful piece, the only thing in the room she'd been certain she wanted to keep, rehung on freshly painted walls. Across from it, in the next parlor, was another mirror. The two mirrors reflected each other, mirrors inside mirrors, nothing but emptiness between them to break the infinite see-through images, as if the house itself were made of gla.s.s.

Thea stood in front of the rosewood mirror in the empty s.p.a.ce and half expected her reflection to be transparent, emptiness inside emptiness, left blank at the end of each day. The nights, unless Bobby came over, and even sometimes when he did, made her restless, as if the day had promised something and then eased out, taking its promises with it.

The last time she'd spent the day antic.i.p.ating the night was a year ago, well over a year ago, when Michael had started coming to see her again before their divorce had been final. She would be at work, perhaps taking an inventory of vitamins or stocking the shelves with the latest health-food craze, and suddenly there would be that funny p.r.i.c.kling sensation at the back of her tongue, and the roller-coaster wave of expectation at the pit of her stomach, traveling down deep, making her legs weak.

She had thought they would get back together. But the divorce proceedings had continued, Michael saying to her, Let's see what will happen; and slowly, too slowly, she began to realize he was only coming for some measure of comfort, perhaps, but that he no longer wanted to be married to her. The divorce had gone on to completion.

And so the excitement was lost, the antic.i.p.ation was gone. And yet. . . and yet she had continued to sleep with him.

What was it she'd always said about Bobby, the reason she still wouldn't sleep with him? That he was too easy. Just as she'd been, though she knew so well that the rush of excitement Michael had produced in her this second time around was caused as much by his elusiveness, his refusal to be pinned down, the challenge he presented, as by the s.e.x itself.

If she wanted to, she could call up that feeling now, that rush, but the memory of it produced a dull ache, a well of loneliness that dropped away into deep disappointment. She saw that disappointment reflected back at her in the mirror and she closed her eyes against it, against the disappointment of having been abandoned, and against the disappointment in herself too.

The doorbell rang and startled her. Through the leaded gla.s.s on the front door she could see a black man, young, a student perhaps, in his wire-rimmed gla.s.ses, faded jeans, and T-shirt, hip-looking with a battered porkpie hat on his head despite the lingering heat from the afternoon.

As soon as she opened the door he started talking. "My name is Sonny Johnson, ma'am." He held a driver's license at her eye level. "I'm with an envir'mental group called SAFE." He held up another card showing member identification. "I'm not sellin anything and I promise-I'm safe." He gave a short nervous laugh as he handed her a sheet explaining the purpose of his visit, which he was telling her himself as well. He talked fast, as if he were afraid she would slam the door in his face. Thea knew about talking fast. She used to talk fast too, at school, afraid that if she took too long, whomever she was talking to would turn away, leave her in midsentence.

As close as he was to her, she could feel his nerves. "Maybe you heard of SAFE," he was saying. "We're a group of more than two hundred concerned citizens who want to make New Orleans a better-" another short laugh "-a safer place to live. What we concerned 'bout right now is them trucks carryin hazardous chemicals down Convent Street to the river."

"But I thought trucks weren't allowed to use Convent Street anymore," Thea said. That battle had been fought while she was in high school, but it wasn't over hazardous chemicals; it was because the homeowners said the trucks were cracking their houses, causing the foundations to sink.

She'd made him more nervous. He nodded quickly. "Yes ma'am. That's true. There's a city ordinance against the big trucks, but what they doin is carryin the chemicals in small trucks, like delivery trucks. You know, vans. We wouldn't've knowed about it 'cept for an accident. Maybe you saw it in the paper. Twelve blocks was evacuated, right down there." He pointed toward the river. "An accident could happen anywhere," he said, rattling on as if his words could stop the door from closing. "Be specially bad over there by the project"-he pointed in its direction away from the river-"where they's always kids playin in the street, or here, right in front your house." As he talked his eyes had grown large and round, magnified by his gla.s.ses, his eyebrows creeping up his forehead.

Thea didn't want him to persuade her, she didn't want to watch his unease, his just-under-the-skin distrust of how she might treat him. She signed the pet.i.tion asking the city council to rewrite the ordinance so that no hazardous chemical could be conveyed by any means on Convent Street. He held out his sheaf of explanatory materials so that she could use them as a support while she signed. He had perhaps twenty signatures, but she recognized only a couple of the names above hers. Most of the addresses were on the other side of Convent, near the project.

"Thank you, ma'am." He took the pet.i.tion and papers from her. "Uh, it ain necessary or nothin," he said, nervously hitting the side of his leg with the papers, "but if you want to make a contribution so we can keep on with our work, it'd be tax deductible."

She smiled at him. "Sure," she said and stepped back to the hall table for her purse, but after Lyle's visit, she'd put it in the kitchen. She asked him to wait, felt awkward closing the door on him, and went back to the kitchen. She started to pull out a ten-dollar bill, thought better of giving him cash, and took out her checkbook instead. In compensation she wrote the check for twenty dollars.

She shook her head as she walked back to the front: she was letting Lyle's distrust propel her, making her actions contradictory, absurd.

She handed him the check. "Thank you, ma'am," he said enthusiastically, as if the sum were so great, yet, ridiculously, making her feel cheap. He sped off in the direction of the river.

She watched him, waiting to see if he went to the house next door, then caught herself double-checking to make sure the door was locked, though she knew Zora always locked it when she left. She closed the door as he was going up the steps to her neighbor's house. What was she doing? Why was she watching-like Lyle? What had Sonny Johnson done? He had committed the crime of being too nervous.

Thea wanted to shake herself free of Lyle, and Aunt Althea and Michael too, like a dog shakes off water; they were getting to her. But it wouldn't be that easy. It would be more like a crab shedding its too-small sh.e.l.l: struggle, rest; shudder, ease out a bit. Once her father had gone crabbing and brought her back a crab just about to crack its sh.e.l.l and shed. He put it in a bucket so she could watch it become a soft crab. It was already partially out. She watched for over three hours, until all at once the crab took a swift step backward and was free of its confinement. Her father told her that once the crab's struggle is over, it has used up its excess weight; it is free and light and vulnerable.

What to do. There was no point in brooding about the past, about what she had done. There was the future to think about with its many possibilities. She would finish the house, and if she still could not release it from Aunt Althea's powerful presence, then she would leave it. She must not become paralyzed by her many choices. If she got tired of thinking about the house, she would think about the garden. With that thought she gathered up some copies of Architectural Digest and a couple of Aunt Althea's garden books, poured herself a gla.s.s of vernaccia, and went to sit in the gazebo.

It was quite pleasant outside late in the day like this, still warm but the sun beginning to go down. The gazebo itself, though, was just as uncomfortable as ever. Maybe if she had some cushions made for the benches it would help. Even so, nothing would help one's spine. She situated her backbone against the side of one of the posts, her legs stretched out along the seat. She sipped wine and leafed through the magazines, making dog-ears on the pages with ideas she liked.

The first garden book she picked up opened automatically to an English cottage garden, borders of perennials flanking a curving walkway of gra.s.s, a garden densely planted with flowering shrubs and trees. She imagined her pain-in-the-back gazebo at the end of such a walkway and finally recognized what she had never liked about it: it had no setting; its placement seemed purely accidental, and so it looked out of place. It needed just the sort of intimate, romantic setting shown in the picture. She could plant more azaleas, perhaps a flowering plum . . .

Thea shuddered, someone walking across her grave. The way the book had fallen open to this page, the crease on the binding faded to a thin stripe . . . she leaned forward to see past the roof of the gazebo. Was it possible that Aunt Althea's ghost was dictating to her from the third floor of the house?

She laughed aloud at her superst.i.tious thoughts-and hoped her laugh would break the spell. The doorbell rang inside. She jumped and spilled wine on the picture. Such a peculiar feeling this gave her, this bell ringing as she laughed . . .

There must be bats in the belfry, Aunt Althea used to say to explain strange noises, eerie coincidences. And other people's lunacies.

Thea opened the front door and Burgess said, "Hey, I know it's late, but I got two carpenters can start on your bookcases tomorrow, and I want to be sure I'm clear on the plans."

"That sounds like a polite way of asking me if I've changed my mind again," Thea said.

"You can change your mind when we finish if you want. We be glad to start all over again."

"Come on in," she said. There was something slightly arrogant about Burgess. Maybe it wasn't arrogance but that trace of irony he always spoke with, his self-a.s.suredness. She liked the way he didn't take everything she said with deadly seriousness. If she'd made the remark about changing her mind to any of the other men, there would have been a lot of Oh-no-ma'am protests.

"I was just out back looking at magazines," she said. "I can show you what I want."

"Good."

They reached the kitchen. "A beer?"

"Sound real good."

She got him an Abita Amber from the refrigerator, took her bottle of wine as well, and led him out to the gazebo.

It was strange that these two should be sitting in as unlikely a place as the gazebo. They leaned into the center of it, holding a magazine between them.

"Something like that," Thea said.

"But your room is shaped entirely different." Thea's room was chopped up with windows and doors and a fireplace.

"Well, I know, but I mean the detail work on the edges of the shelves, the columns in between the cabinets. See? It's sort of a-" she didn't know how to describe it; she thought of the Hinder-manns' house "-an updated traditional look."

He laughed, slow and lazy. "Yeah. Updated traditional."

In the fading light she hoped he couldn't see the heat she felt along her jawline, rising to her cheeks.

He said, "We gon have to buy a new saw to do that." He let go of the magazine and sat back.

"Is that a problem?" she asked, holding the magazine suspended a few seconds longer before she closed it and sat back too.

"Findin extra money's always a problem."

"Well, maybe I could front the money for the saw. We can work something out."

There was, for Thea, an embarra.s.sed silence before he said, "Yeah, but first you got to decide where you gon put the shelves."

"I know. I'm just not sure yet."

"Well, look." He leaned across to get the magazine and took an invoice folded lengthwise from his breast pocket. On the back of it he roughly sketched the room, talking about narrow s.p.a.ces and corners, but Thea was finding it difficult to concentrate, her mind racing with thoughts totally unrelated to what he was saying: he didn't wear his black hat and mirrored sungla.s.ses anymore; Zora didn't call people ma'am or sir either; Zora was angry at Burgess about something big, important; there was something oriental about the way his eyelids folded down at the corners; the way he was leaning forward now, his shirtsleeve riding up as he showed her his sketch, she could see part of a nasty-looking scar on the underside of his forearm. And then she was thinking about his life in the Convent and wondering if the scar was from a knife fight, if there were other scars, her mind leaping to guns, it was gunfights you heard about: had he ever been shot?

Burgess was saying something about limited wall s.p.a.ce for a library. He stopped talking and looked at her quizzically. "You with me?"

"Urn, Burgess," she said, "No, I'm not with you. I can't seem to focus on this right now. Let me think about it overnight and get with you in the morning." Maybe Sandy could help her with this, with the renovation. All these decisions, it was getting entirely too complicated; his presence, the life he led when he was not here, that she could not get herself to stop thinking about, was making it too complicated.

But he didn't get up to go right away. He sipped beer, she sipped wine, the evening lingered on.

And from the third floor of the house, Aunt Althea's ghost raged at these two intruders drinking and talking and laughing low-the nerve, using her gazebo like that.

16.

They sat in the gazebo way past dark, longer than Thea thought it was possible to sit in the gazebo without spinal injury.

They talked all around things. She wanted to ask him what his mother was so angry at him about. He wanted to ask her about her parents and why she wasn't afraid to be sitting in the dark with a dangerous black man; except, of course, she didn't know he was dangerous.

Burgess heard the commotion in the street first. He and Thea went to the tall wooden gate, unlatched it and opened it a crack, but all they could see was blue light careening from the oak leaves overhead, to the side of the house next door, the front of the one across the street. They eased out of the gate, Burgess first, to get a better look.

The police car was in the middle of Convent Street, and two policemen had Sonny Johnson spread-eagled against the side of it.

First Thea was confused: why were they doing this to him- because he was caught mugging someone, breaking and entering, trying to commit some crime? She realized she didn't believe he had committed a crime. And there was no one around that she could see, no victim. So why?

Because he was black? Had one of her neighbors seen him going from house to house and called the police? It was carrying things a bit far. Thea looked at the houses across the street. Windows were dark or curtains were drawn. How many pairs of eyes were watching from behind dark windows and peeking from behind curtains?

She moved closer to Burgess, whispering to him that the man was with an environmental group called SAFE. He smiled-there was that irony again-and nodded, never moving his eyes from the scene on the street.

They watched. One cop was on the radio, sitting halfway in the car. They couldn't hear him, though they could hear the crackling of the radio and the metallic, indecipherable voice coming from it. The other cop stood behind Sonny Johnson.

From his spread, stretched position against the car, Sonny turned his head toward the policeman on the radio. When he moved the cop behind him moved too and slammed his head down on the top of the car. Sonny cried out, his hand automatically seeking his wounded head. The cop picked his head up by the hair and slammed it again.

An involuntary cry rose from Thea and she began to move forward, but Burgess stopped her, his hand on her arm, pulling her back at the crook of her elbow, shushing her.

"But, Burgess, this is making me sick."

"Not yet," he said softly, and they stood there, his hand at her elbow, hearing low moans whenever the radio cut off the incoherent, tinny words, metal twigs that snapped with a protest of harsh static.

After another few minutes the police let Sonny go and drove off, leaving him without help. He was dazed, both hands going to his head. He took one lurching step and sat down on the sidewalk, rocking slightly back and forth.

Burgess went after him with Thea at his heels. Together they led the punch-drunk black man across the street. Who had called the police? She hoped whoever it was watched them now.

They sat Sonny Johnson on the den sofa in between them but finally had to lay him down. He'd been cut twice by his own gla.s.ses, a lesser cut in his eyebrow, a deeper one that Thea thought may have gone through his eyelid. He held a piece of gauze to his eye. The bent wire rims with one lens cracked into opaqueness sat on an end table laid out with peroxide, iodine, a box of cotton b.a.l.l.s, packages of gauze, everything in the house Thea could find for first aid.

But Sonny obviously needed to go to the hospital. Thea volunteered to take him, but Burgess said he would take care of it and made a phone call from the den phone. "I'm ready," was all he said. Thea was disappointed; she wanted to go with them, but she didn't want to intrude on what suddenly seemed something between the two black men.

Sonny began to rally, feeling well enough to get a bit heated over his ordeal. SAFE, he said, would press charges of police brutality.

"You better get yourself checked out first, brother," Burgess told him.

"Look here at my gla.s.ses," Sonny demanded. "They coulda put my eye out."

"Yeah, but they didn't."

"Don' matter."

"Sure it does," Burgess said. He grinned at Thea. "SAFE ain exactly an envir'mental group." He asked Sonny, "What's SAFE stand for?"

"Serious Advocates for Equality," Sonny answered, and Thea didn't know how he accomplished it, but he stated the name of his organization with boyish pride, enthusiasm, and anger.

"Yeah," said Burgess, "serious."

It wasn't long before the oxidized-red truck pulled up in front of the house, the m.u.f.fler's coughing and putting sounds announcing it half a block away. As Burgess was following Sonny through the door, Thea reached out and lightly touched the back of his white shirt sleeve.

He turned around in the doorway, a look on his face not unlike that quizzical glance he'd given her in the gazebo.

Thea had no idea exactly what it was she wanted to say to him. Something was different between them; they had a different sense of each other. And there had been a shift in power, to his side. She said, "Look, I don't mind being a witness."

She half expected his amused expression, as if she were so nave, but he smiled, genuine this time, none of his irony. "I know," he told her, "but I doubt it will come to that."