Canticles of an Aging Creole

Nearly fifty-nine-years-old, Henry Arbuthnot deeply mourns the death of his French Creole mother, Mathilde. On Good Friday, Henry manages to shower and ready himself for work, even though his mother's overbearing voice haunts him all the while. With his daily cup of coffee for Clancy, he boards and greets the streetcar driver, his old friend and son of the family's maid. Struggling with grief, guilt, and bitterness, Henry rides the streetcar down the streets of New Orleans and the avenues of his life. He seeks a retrospective on his family's life and questions his relatives and acquaintances for their recollections. Through this reflection he hopes to understand his mother's stubborn obstruction of his desire to join the priesthood. His mother bludgeons, connives, and steals his faith-even taking a train to Georgetown University to admonish the priest and guidance counselor to keep the church away from her son. All Mathilde wants is for Henry to be a normal boy who plays sports and has girlfriends from proper society. But as his Aunt Eugenie says, "Henry is special." In the end, Henry must try to both salvage his faith and make peace with his mother's ghost.

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CANTICLES OF AN AGING CREOLEA NOVELBy Blake AshburneriUniverse, Inc.Copyright © 2010 Blake AshburnerAll right reserved.ISBN: 978-1-4502-4660-6Chapter One YOU'RE THE LAST, HENRY The morning light cut through the louvered shutters, shining into the tiny room and laying shafts of gold across the bed. As the sun grew stronger it cast a glare on the dark covers, revealing the lumpy shape of life beneath. There came a hint of movement, then another, until out from under the bedding stretched a hirsute arm grasping at the blanket and then tugging it away to reveal the sleepy face of a middle-aged man. His lids quivered and then lifted. His bony torso righted itself as his arms stretched out through the echo of a yawn. "What time is it?" Only the room heard him ask, but it didn't matter. He had made it through another night on Walnut Street. Our awakening figure reached for his robe and then rose, making his way to the bathroom. He stood over the toilet, startled by the image that shot back at him from the mirror. His beard was nearly white, and his hair-that thick head of hair-was now salt and pepper. Even the hair on his chest was turning gray. "Henry, you look like a madman! Clean yourself up. You're not a boy anymore, son. Face it-you're nearly fifty-nine!" He frowned at the sound of her voice in his head. He splashed water up from the basin until his brown eyes opened wider, the whites appearing whiter. He felt himself revive. As the Barbasol foamed out onto his palm, its bracing eucalyptus scent roused his nostrils. He spread it over the thick white stubble on his chin and then wielded the ancient razor, watching it clear paths that looked like felled trees in a snow-covered forest, revealing that strong, handsome jaw. He patted his face with the towel, drying his long boney nose, and then stood, ready for her verdict. "Now, Henry. That's better! A lot better!" "Coffee!" The word darted from his lips. "A good cup of coffee! That will keep her silent for a while." He made his way along the wide-open hall and past his parents' bedroom. He paused, listening to the quiet. At the landing the eyes of Jean Baptiste and Sophronie Delavigne followed him down the winding stairway; their stern, framed faces watched his every step just as they had when he was a boy. Down in the kitchen, he filled the iron kettle and set it on the stove. He reached for the white enamel drip, spooning in the rough grounds. The bubbling water seeped through the grind as he spooned it in, the familiar, pleasant aroma rising up. The milk foamed over the flame. Like a sleepy alchemist, he poured his elixirs together, smiling. It was just as he liked it, thick and strong. This would help keep her away. He gazed out through the French doors at the large live oaks looming in over the wall from the park like ghosts. The garden was an overgrown jungle this morning, the roots of bananas and palmettos merging out from the soil like serpents rising up from the deep. He hadn't cleaned it since Florence had died. Maybe he would tackle it later today. Maybe he wouldn't. He walked through the narrow pantry, entering his mother's dining room, its bay, fresh and open, welcoming the light. His eye caught the dust-covered table and the silver candelabra, black from neglect. What would Mother say? There it was again, the echo of those familiar voices. One of her dinner parties years ago? He moved through the double doors and entered the drawing room, the room she had cherished and cluttered with the fussy French furniture her grandmother had brought from Paris as a wedding present. "Dreadfully dark in the morning, yet by mid-afternoon the darkness moves on, and we have an abundance of sun. Florence brings me my tea here every afternoon." The park peeked in through the French doors, revealing the mist that had risen like a vapor. His attention was drawn to a rider galloping across the horizon, a cloud of dust trailing behind. He remembered the times he had spent in the quiet of this room, assured no one would interrupt, when he could be by himself in the darkness of the morning, the darkness she despised. He was a child then. He glanced at the photographs in their tarnished silver frames set along the pair of consoles. His mother's younger brother stood by the fireplace in his dapper white tie and tails. "Please, Father, snap it faster! I'm going to be late for the ball!" He had never met his dashing Uncle Henri, the one his mother had loved, the uncertain one who hadn't come home from the war. Henri, the one everyone said he resembled. He sat in a tiny armchair, extending his long legs. A young woman with her hair pulled up stared over at him from another table-a lifeless Edwardian beauty, her ornate dress, the mantle, ermine robes, all the glitter of an early Carnival queen. What was her name? Did it matter? Nothing much mattered anymore. Peeking over his shoulder was Aunt Eugenie, his favorite, with her black pageboy and that seductive undercurrent in her restless smile, the file dress cut as low as it could go, its silver fringe barely concealing those famous dancing legs. Who would ever have believed those two were sisters? "Here, Henry, over here! Aunt Maggie and Uncle Philip!" The familiar voice in his head began again. He sighed. The coffee wasn't working. "She was Maggie Delavigne," she continued, "an early queen of Comus, and her husband, my Uncle Philip, a delightful New Yorker. He's said to have invented the cocktail. Now that I think of it he probably invented many cocktails! Maggie was the first of our family to live uptown. You remember, dear, they had the old Henry Howard house on Third Street in the Garden District. Both their parents gave them that as a wedding present. Oh, were they rich! No one knew where it all came from. Old Yankee money, I suppose. Aunt Maggie had such exquisite taste! If you could have seen what she did with that house!" He let out a grin. She would be nearly weeping by this time. "Twenty-foot ceilings, thick, wonderful moldings, massive marble mantles, and the servants? Servants galore! Those were the days, Henry! Not a care in the world!" She paused. "Sad, though. Nothing lasts forever. They lost every cent in the crash in '29. Everything! I have no idea how they lived after that. One didn't ask. There were rumors they had a little shack on stilts out in Bucktown on the lake. Perhaps he took up fishing? Who knows? Whatever the case, they always made their appearance at Comus without fail." She continued, tapping her cane. "Here on the end, Henry. Here are your father's people." He gazed at the old man pictured in front of a large, gabled house in his baggy wool suit and fedora. "Arthur Arbuthnot, Henry, your grandfather. He lived in Montgomery." She shook her head. "Just what we lack in America today, the devoted country doctor. Your grandfather was really a very kind man." He remembered how she would look away, a little grimace emerging from those dark, French features. "I suppose he always thought I was a little uppity. Who knows? Perhaps I was a little uppity." She turned to the next picture. "And here is your father's mother, Gladys Arbuthnot. A jolly sort of woman, though perhaps a little corn-fed. I've forgotten her maiden name." He noticed the long, plain dress that reached to the ground. Mathilde coughed beneath her smirk. "My God, was that woman corn-fed!" By this time she was off and running, taking short, breathy steps to the next console. "coutez, Henry, coutez! Here is Uncle Gervais Devereux, Mother's brother, the cotton king! One of my favorites!" She tapped on the large silver frame. "And such a marvelous horseman! He married Cousin Clarisse's mother, Aunt Celeste. She was a Bouligny." Her eyes opened wide. "Yes, they were cousins, but let's not worry about that! Uncle Gervais was a wizard at making money-a real wizard! He would work to the bone on a big cotton contract, then suddenly disappear for days. No one ever knew where he went." She threw out her tiny arm. "Into thin air! Then, miraculously, he would turn up like a tired old tomcat smelling of yesterday's gin. Mother said he would hide off in one of the unused servant's rooms. In a day or two he'd emerge, fresh and oh, so handsome, ready to tackle the world again!" There was always a silence at this point. "Dear, sweet Papa. In the end he dragged old Gervais off to Chicago for the cure, poor wretch. I suspect that's what drove Aunt Celeste mad." Her demeanor changed as she arrived at the next photograph. "And here we have Cousin Adelaide. Charming woman in her own pious way. Grandest wedding of the year! Nanu told me that. Married copper, that's all I ever knew. A handsome man named Nichols who made a fortune in copper from those Anaconda mines up in Montana or some such place. We all got a kick out of ... Mr. Nichols in copper or was it Mr. Copper in Nichols?" She shook her head. "Whatever-it was amusing at the time! They set three huge tents up in the side garden of Grande Mama Delavigne's house on Esplanade. Six hundred of their closest friends, Beluga caviar overflowing from huge repouss silver bowls!" She rolled her eyes. "A little nouveau, if you ask me. They sailed off to Europe on the Carpathia for the wedding trip. The Nichols-or was it the Coppers?-paid for that." She shrugged her shoulders. "Sad, the marriage just never took. He eventually returned up there to Montana." Her tone turned to a whisper. "They used to say Adelaide didn't have what it took in the boudoir. Many women didn't in those days, you know. Perhaps it wasn't considered ladylike to enjoy such things-at least not too much." She walked to the end of the console, chortling under her breath. "But then that's none of my affair." She stopped. "Adelaide's life didn't end there, though. To everyone's amazement she found her real station." The cane tapped the top of a plain wooden frame. Inside, a stern woman in a black habit stared back at them. "Yes, there she is, Henry. Mother Delavigne of the Madams of the Sacred Heart. That's where Adelaide ended up, at that damn convent up near Alexandria. Poor woman never left for thirty years! Imagine that!" She lingered in silence at the next picture, the one with his handsome uncle in white tie and tails. "And this one, Mother," Henry said. "You haven't told me about your brother. What about Uncle Henri? What was he all about?" "Let's talk of that later, Henri. Really, why must you quiz me? Enough of all this family nonsense. Shouldn't you be working?" He looked out over the sea of ancestors, recalling names Mathilde had drilled him on, names he would now forget. His mother would be part of them now, the newest member of this morbid menagerie. On tables beyond were more members, each in ornate fur or spangled, sequined attire, holding crowns and scepters, mantles rising behind ancient, lifeless faces. The tired sepia daguerreotypes were frozen in time, exuding the essence of some forgotten principality; they were more than mere revelers from an indulgent past. He pulled himself up from the chair, yet looming before him was his mother, Mathilde Delavigne, queen of Carnival in the year of her unforgettable debut, 1936. "A headstrong, bossy bitch, if you ask me. Always was a bitch; always will be." He took in a nervous breath. It was his Aunt Eugenie. "Come on now!" he yelled into the silence. "That's not fair!" "Admit it, darling, your mother is a headstrong, bossy bitch." Eugenie was his mother's younger sister, the former Broadway actress who lived downtown. "Don't get me wrong, I love my sister-love her to death. But face it, Mathilde will always be a bitch! It's not her fault, just her nature." "Bossy bitch?" He repeated Eugenie's words, recalling their many spats, yet stopped himself from picturing his tiny mother lying in the hospital bed upstairs those past few months. He reached the upstairs landing and caught a glimpse of the black-framed photograph of her standing so proudly next to that strange little man in the late sixties. He noticed Florence off in the background in her new uniform with its white ruffled collar. "And just look, Henry. There she is again, pushy as ever, making our Florence wear a French maid's uniform. Come on! And how she convinced me that Walnut Street was so much better suited for my party for Tennessee Williams-better than my decrepit old Bayou Road, downtown? Tommy didn't care. We'd known each other since those days in New York. He was my friend! He didn't even know her!" Henry eyed his aunt off in the background, jeering as his mother had stolen the show that night with her new friend, the most famous American playwright of the day. "And we can't forget what she did to you, Henry. I don't see how you ever forgave her, but then that's you, isn't it, dear? You, the forgiving one, you and your darling father, Hollis Arbuthnot, rest his soul!" He approached his bedroom, remembering his mother's funeral. He had braced himself, expecting more of the same, but Eugenie was different. "We're all we have left, Henry. You and I are it, simple as that." They had stood in front of the huge Delavigne mausoleum with Father Donovan and a few friends. She was not the sassy younger sister, wearing her usual tailored suit, the quietly relieved Eugenie, witnessing her difficult sister's end and sporting the subtle smirk he might have expected. No, here was a disheveled, confused old lady, her dark silk blouse out from under her belt, a tired mantilla set atop a head of flyaway hair. "This is it, Henry. No one to look over our shoulders anymore. No one to keep me in line. No more Mathilde for me to bitch about." He remembered the feeling of her tiny figure in his arms as she wept. Later he would look out over the elaborate mausoleums rising up like tiny skyscrapers. Her words had caught him off guard. But this was not the time to break, not today, not at his mother's funeral. Eugenie pulled him back, her eyes nearly crazed as her Clara Bow lips exclaimed, "There goes another Creole family, Henry! Finis!" TAKE CARE OF MY SON, MR. HARTSTONE The tall case clock in the downstairs hall chimed nine. He would be late this morning. He jumped into the shower, lathering soap over his body and letting the water drown his thoughts. It felt good to be free of all that consumed him, if only for those few minutes under the cleansing warmth. He dried himself in front of the mirror, catching a brief glimpse of his thin, hairy body, and then reached for his robe before returning to the bedroom. The morning sun had set the room ablaze, illuminating even the darkest space below the eaves. He smiled, looking back at that special corner where the ceiling slanted so low. This was where he had spent those many hours. The prie-dieu appeared tiny now, its proportions created for a child. Above it hung the crucifix, its ancient ivory blending with the pale hue of the walls. He remembered the morning Aunt Eugenie had arrived with both pieces from her house downtown, just weeks before his first communion. Angel of God, my guardian dear, To Whom God's love commits me here, Forever this day be at my side To light, to guard, to rule, to guide.Angel of God. How much those words had meant at such an early age. He stooped down, feeling the tired threadbare velvet that covered the top of the prayer chair. He had loved the contemplative times of his youth, times spent in the quiet of this corner, reciting the prayers that calmed him. "But why such a religious present, Eugenie? I don't understand." His mothers voice had rung out with disapproval as he listened from the top of the stairs that morning. "Seriously, Eugenie, I don't want some Holy Roller on my hands. Couldn't it have been a baseball glove-or even a fishing rod? Why this?" "Come now, Mathilde, be fair. Henry's a special child; it doesn't take much to see that. Florence and I thought it would be perfect for him, especially at this time in his life. That old crucifix has hung above the prie-dieu at Bayou Road long before Nanu was born. God knows it was just collecting dust in my guest room. Both were." She paused, her voice shaking. "I thought he'd look adorable kneeling in that corner. Why, just the perfect little St. Jerome!" He could hear his mother's nervous sigh. (Continues...) Excerpted from CANTICLES OF AN AGING CREOLEby Blake Ashburner Copyright © 2010 by Blake Ashburner. Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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