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A
STRAND AT A TIME
Elizabeth Tarver It came as no surprise that Clothilde and I were accosted the evening before Mardi Gras. We’ve often wondered why we haven’t had more botheration over the years, especially in our early days together. We were coming home from watching Proteus as it paraded down St. Charles Avenue. We’d been standing at our usual spot, the corner of Milan and St. Charles. Clothilde had caught some beads and I managed to scrounge a doubloon from the ground. The parade had ended and we began to walk toward our home – we call it the Studio – our tiny decrepit shotgun on Tchoupitoulas. Clothilde was saying how admirably stingy Proteus is. How showering the onlookers with beads is terribly ill-bred. How beads in the old days were special favors, tossed in a discerning fashion. Today they pummel you with throws, Clothilde was saying, even hurling unopened bags of beads on top of folk’s heads. This is a consumer society, I was telling Clothilde as a shadowy figure emerged from behind an oak tree. Less is not more anymore, more is more, I said. “What you got in that bag?” The shadowy figure stood in our way now. “Not a red cent,” Clothilde said. “We’re as poor as the proverbial church mouse, can’t you tell?” “You with her, man?” The figure – a boy of fifteen or so, as far as I could make out – asked me. “Yes,” I said and put my arm around Clothilde’s shoulders. “Awright, awright, I’m wich ya, bro,” the boy said and sauntered down the street, receding into the shadow of another tree. Clothilde sighed. I patted her shoulder and we proceeded on our way slowly for we are in our 70’s and must take our time. **** Clothilde and I met in 1951 on Canal Street. I was in Werlein’s playing a piano. The floor manager was giving me the eye like he wanted me to move on. Clothilde stopped to listen. “My,” she said, “you are as good as a record.” We began to chat. I told her I was self-taught. That I played by ear. She told me to come to her home in the Garden District the following day and I could play her piano all afternoon if I liked. She handed me her card. Clothilde Marie Therese Fortier, the card read. Like the name of a princess, I thought. The following afternoon I went to the mansion on Camp Street. Entering through the side gate, I rapped on the delivery entrance, mentally prepared to talk a servant into letting me see Clothilde. The door opened and Clothilde was standing there with a glass of lemonade. “I thought you would be thirsty after your walk,” she said. She showed me to the parlor where the grand piano was situated. It was a fine instrument, imported from Germany. Clothilde said she played haltingly despite years of lessons. I sat down and took her requests, mostly popular tunes. My classical repertoire at the time was limited. I stayed until 5 PM when Clothilde’s father arrived. “Splendid, boy,” he said. “You’ll come back tomorrow evening and play for our cocktail party. I’ll pay you $5.” I hated Mr. Fortier on sight but I said yes. I wanted to see Clothilde again. I saw her nearly every day in 1951 and through the Spring of 1952. We shared an interest in the arts. Clothilde was an excellent painter, and I had a strong affinity for photography. We were inseparable over those months, the gangly black boy and the blonde debutante with the finely chiseled features. It was inevitable that people began to talk. Clothilde shrugged it off like it was nothing. But I was worried. I could turn up dead in the Mississippi River, I told her. One night we got in Clothilde’s car and drove north, all the way to New York City where we lived together until 1981 when we returned home, past our prime and broke. Clothilde received none of her inheritance but managed to convince her sister to part with the piano. It sits now in the Studio taking up nearly all of the front room. I rarely play it. It is out of tune and we have no money for its repair. **** When we arrived home, Clothilde separated the beads she’d caught according to color and type. She’d been experimenting with melting the beads and molding them into shapes. She had set out to make a set of coasters but had burned the beads in the oven. She would try again, she said. She would get it right. And maybe she would sell what she made and we would be able to stock our pantry again. I settled into my easy chair. A roach scurried across the floor. “As I was saying, Henry, Proteus has the right idea. A strand at a time should be tossed, not a gross at a time.” Clothilde smiled as she worked. |
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