Page 15 of The Lady on Esplanade
“Good morning!”he called from the porch as Jorge, with two more full buckets, ran out the door behind him.
“What’s happening?”I asked as the men emptied their buckets into the street, reflecting the feeling in the pit of my stomach.This couldn’t be good.
Jorge shook his head, to mean either that he didn’t understand me or that I didn’t want to know, before hurriedly following Thibaut outside toward the back of the house.
A familiar engine roar followed by the scrape of steel bumper against concrete curb alerted me to Jolene’s arrival.I watched from the porch as she elegantly exited the car, opening her umbrella at the same time without getting wet—a trick I’d yet to master, despite her patient tutelage—before she headed to the trunk of her car.
Since I still wore my umbrella hat and bedazzled raincoat, I jogged down the steps to help.She peered out from under her umbrella as I approached, the quick blinking of her green eyes the only indication that she’d noticed my outfit.Reaching into the voluminous trunk—big enough to carry seven bodies and the shovels needed to bury them, according to her funeral-director grandmother—Jolene grabbed the handle of a thick fabric-sample book and handed it to me before taking one herself, then slammed the trunk shut.
We hurried up the porch steps, pausing to catch our breath and take off our wet jackets.“If I’d known you were coming this morning I would have caught a ride,” I said.“I had to walk my bike all the way from Canal Street, and I’m soaked through to the bone.I might have a touch of hypothermia.”
Jolene took in my old high school sweatshirt, which was layered over two sweaters, both older than the sweatshirt and both with a fair share of moth holes.“Bless your heart, Nola.I’m happy you consider us such good friends that you didn’t feel the need to dress up for me.”Pushing open the front door, she added, “I had to drive to Metairie first thing to pick up these fabric samples, or I would have offered.”Jolene shook out her umbrella and leaned it against the house as I removed my headband and placed it carefully on one of the two rocking chairs I’d painted to match the front door.
I followed Jolene inside, noticing her perfect and somehow completely dry hair.“At the very least I could have saved you from looking like a clown who escaped from the circus,” she said.
“Please notice that my boots match my jacket.”We both looked down at the small puddle around my borrowed yellow boots, a small wet pool spreading on the tarp placed in front of the door to protectthe wide-plank wooden floors that I had painstakingly hand sanded and stained.
I was spared anotherbless your heartby the front door’s opening, revealing Jaxson carrying his camera.He closed the door and grimaced.“Beau’s on the way.It seems either a water pipe has burst or part of the new roof patch has failed.Or both.Don’t worry—we’ll figure it out and get it fixed.”
I frowned.“Don’t worry?I can literally hear my bank account hemorrhaging.Something tells me that neither one of these disasters is in my renovation budget.And why did Beau call you and not me?”
“Because he didn’t want you to get upset,” Jolene and Jaxson said in unison.
“Upset?”I raised my voice to be heard over the pounding rain and the hammering that had started on the roof above us.“Why would I be upset?”I shouted.
Jolene gently took my elbow.“Let’s go sit in the kitchen, where we can talk.”She led me to the back of the house, to the only room that looked as if any work had actually been done to it.The hand-tiled backsplash that I had copied from a picture in the Preservation Resource Center’s member magazine,Preservation in Print, was my pride and joy, despite its current position, floating in the middle of the wall.Cabinets that I’d helped sand by hand and stain sat beneath the tiles, but there were no countertops yet, as Jolene was currently working on getting a steep discount from a local stone supplier.If I weren’t so broke, I would have told her to get them at any cost.I needed just one thing to be settled in my life so I could stop feeling as if I were stranded on a raft out at sea, with only the barest glimpse of land to offer encouragement.
A circa-1920s porcelain-enameled-top table that Trevor had found in a dumpster stood in the center of the floor, with an assortment of metal and vinyl-upholstered folding chairs settled around it.The table was nicked and scarred, but Trevor promised me that he’d work his “Trevor Transformation” magic on it.I couldn’t wait to see what he’d do with it, and I could only hope that I could afford it.
Jolene walked to the table, where Jaxson waited to push in her chair.Being too agitated to sit, I paced the room as my panic grew with each bang on the roof.
Jaxson placed his camera on the table before sitting.“In answer to your question, Beau called me to take pictures of the damage, since I’m the official renovation photographer.If there’s something any of the contractors did wrong, we need to document it so they can make it right.”
“But it’s my house!He should have called me first.”
Jaxson nodded.“I agree.But”—he shifted uncomfortably in his chair—“he said you were a little…confrontational in your last discussion, and he wasn’t in the mood to deal with you right now.”
“Not in the mood…” I repeated, just as a loud bang sounded from the top of the house, and what appeared to be an entire section of roof tiles fell past the kitchen window to the small backyard.
I turned my back to the window, unwilling to witness any further destruction of my dream that refused to come to fruition despite my best efforts.
“Sometimes what we think is the worst that can happen turns out to be the best.”Jolene smiled brightly, and if I didn’t like her so much I might have wanted to slap her into next week—another helpful phrase I’d learned from her.
“How so?”I asked, silently congratulating myself for keeping my voice calm.
“Well, now you can come with me to Mississippi for Thanksgiving, since it appears that we still have a ways to go before the finishing touches—unless you think you can get a new roof installed before the holiday.”
“Wait—you’re going to Mississippi for Thanksgiving?”Jaxson smacked his hands on the table.
“Um, I haven’t decided,” I said.“I can’t go home to Charleston, so I was planning on staying here, but Jolene wants me to go to Mississippi with her.”
Jolene looked at Jaxson for the first time, making me aware that she’d been avoiding eye contact with him.Not that I blamed her.Unrequited love was painful to witness.“My grandmama has a car for her.All Nola has to do is pick it up and drive it to New Orleans.It’s a vintage Mustang.”
“Wow!”Jaxson said, his expression mimicking Trevor’s when I’d told him about the car.“Actually, this might be serendipity.I need to interview the brother and aunt of one of my clients, and they’re unable to travel, so I said I’d go down to talk to them the week of Thanksgiving, since I’m apparently free.My parents, for the first time in their lives, have decided they want to go away for Thanksgiving and have booked a Caribbean cruise for just the two of them.And Carly’s family is hosting a huge family event at their beach house in Alys Beach, in the Florida panhandle, but I’m not invited.It’s strictly family, and since Carly and I aren’t married yet, I’m out.”
He shrugged, obviously not too upset about his exclusion.“I don’t really mind.I like her parents, but I think an entire week with them might be a challenge.Plus I’ve got to do this interview, so it all works out, right?”
I could almost hear Jolene’s mind spinning like a pinwheel in a hurricane.“That’s perfect!”she said.“Because I know Nola wouldn’t be comfortable driving the car by herself, so you could ride with her back to New Orleans.I would do it and let you drive Bubba, but Bubba can be temperamental and responds best to me.And I know Mama will be thrilled to have you both for the holiday.”
