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for a brief span we link our lives to others--even as Lizette had linked her arm with mine--and then,
our time elapsed, we move apart. Through a haze of pain occasionally; usually through a veil of
memory that clings, then passes; sometimes as though we have never touched.
“My name is Paul Ordahl,” I told her. “And the most awful thing that ever happened to me
was my first wife, Bernice. I don’t know how else to put it--even if it sounds melodramatic, it’s
simply what happened--she went insane, and I divorced her, and her mother had her committed to a
private mental home. “
“When I was eighteen,” Lizette said, “my family gave me my coming-out party. We were
living in the Garden District, on Prytania Street. The house was a lovely white Plantation--they call
them antebellum now--with Grecian pillars. We had a persimmon-green gazebo in the rear gardens,
directly beside a weeping willow. It was six-sided. Octagonal. Or is that hexagonal? It was the
loveliest party. And while it was going on, I sneaked away with a boy...I don’t remember his
name...and we went into the gazebo, and I let him touch my breasts. I don’t remember his name.”
We were on Decatur Street, walking toward the French Quarter; the Mississippi was on our
right, dark but making its presence known.
“Her mother was the one had her committed, you see. I only heard from them twice after the
divorce. It had been four stinking years and I really didn’t want any more of it. Once, after I’d
started making some money, the mother called and said Bernice had to be put in the state asylum.
There wasn’t enough money to pay for the private home any more. I sent a little; not much. I
suppose I could have sent more, but I was remarried, there was a child from her previous marriage. I
didn’t want to send any more. I told the mother not to call me again. There was only once after
that...it was the most terrible thing that ever happened to me.”
We walked around Jackson Square, looking in at the very black grass, reading the plaques
bolted to the spear-topped fence, plaques telling how New Orleans had once belonged to the French.
We sat on one of the benches in the street. The street had been closed to traffic, and we sat on one of
the benches.
“Our name was Charbonnet. Can you say that?”
I said it, with a good accent.
“I married a very wealthy man. He was in real estate. At one time he owned the entire block
where the Vieux Carré now stands, on Bourbon Street. He admired me greatly. He came and sought
my hand, and my maman had to strike the bargain because my father was too weak to do it; he
drank. I can admit that now. But it didn’t matter, I’d already found out how my suitor was set
financially. He wasn’t common, but he wasn’t quality, either. But he was wealthy and I married him.
He gave me presents. I did what I had to do. But I refused to let him make love to me after he
became friends with that awful Jew who built the Metairie Cemetery over the race track because
they wouldn’t let him race his Jew horses. My husband’s name was Dunbar. Claude Dunbar, you
may have heard the name? Our parties were de rigueur.”
“Would you like some coffee and beignets at Du Monde?”
She stared at me for a moment, as though she wanted me to say something more, then she
nodded and smiled.
We walked around the Square. My unicorn was waiting at the curb. I scratched his rainbow
flank and he struck a spark off the cobblestones with his right front hoof. “I know,” I said to him,
“we’ll soon start the downhill side. But not just yet. Be patient. I won’t forget you.”
Lizette and I went inside the Cafe Du Monde and I ordered two coffees with warm milk and
two orders of beignets from a waiter who was originally from New Jersey but had lived most of his
life only a few miles from College Station, Texas.
There was a coolness coming off the levee.
“I was in New York,” I said. “I was receiving an award at an architects’ convention--did I
mention I was an architect--yes, that’s what I was at the time, an architect--and I did a television
