“I’ll miss you for sure, Deedee. And the city. But I doubt I’ll be back.”
“Where will you go?”
He shrugged because he didn’t know. California? Florida? He’d been trying to imagine himself in various places, but nothing appealed. Hell, maybe he’d just hop on a convenient bus and see where it took him.
A gaggle of tourists came by, and Deedee played something jazzy and upbeat. They took videos of her on their phones and dropped coins and bills into the violin case. A tall woman with multicolored hair browsed Miles’s paintings. “I love this one,” she said, smiling at a depiction of a cypress tree strung with Mardi Gras beads.
“Normally it’d be two hundred.” It was one of his larger works and had taken him over a week to paint. “But for you, how about a hundred?”
Sold.
Several other people bought that afternoon too, all at deep discounts, and he drew half a dozen caricatures. By the time the sun began to set, his wallet was full and his stomach empty. And sixteen paintings remained.
“I don’t know what to do with them,” he told Deedee. “Maybe I should just toss them.”
“You will not!” She glanced at the lavender, then up at the darkening sky. “I’ll keep ’em for you.”
“You can sell them if you want. I don’t care.”
“I’ll keep them for you.”
He abandoned the stool and easel, which weren’t in great shape anyway, and tucked paper and pens into his bag. He and Deedee assessed which paintings they would carry back to her place; the rest he tucked away in the praline shop for her to collect later. His storage fee was paid up for another two weeks.
Together they took a streetcar to the Garden District, where Deedee lived in a house she’d inherited from her mother. A black-and-white cat blinked at them from a chair on the front porch but didn’t bother to get up. “He ain’t mine,” Deedee explained as she unlocked the front door. “But he sure does like that chair.”
While the outside of her house was painted orange and green, the inside was more sedate in creams and pale blues. Miles smiled when he recognized a painting over an armchair. “You really did hang it up.”
She rolled her eyes. “Said I would, didn’t I? Now bring the rest over here.”
At her direction, he tucked the canvases into a closet that was otherwise full of board games and boxes. He watched as Deedee set the lavender on the kitchen sink windowsill, in between an aloe and a pot of basil.
“I always did like lavender,” she said. “My gra-mere used to make lavender wands to put in our dresser drawers. It’ll get plenty of sun right there, and I’ll move it outside in a month or two.”
“Thanks, Deedee.” He made an awkward move toward the front door, but she caught his arm.
“Oh no you don’t. You’re going to sit down and have a nice supper with me. Say goodbye properly.”
His heart, which had felt shriveled and icy for too long, warmed a little. “Okay.”
Deedee was, by her own admission, a terrible cook. But she was handy enough with the Grubhub app. She ordered giant burritos with sides of rice and beans and chips, and while they waited for delivery, she served sparkling water and let Miles rifle through her record collection. She had an entire bookshelf stuffed with vinyl LPs arranged in no particular order. Classical, rock, blues, jazz, opera, gospel. Elvis was surrounded by Dvorak and Abba and didn’t seem to mind. Deedee owned an enormous vintage console stereo, complete with turntable and AM/FM radio. She grinned as she put on a disc of what turned out to be sea chanties. “To get you in the mood for going home.”
The food arrived and it was wonderful, at least as much for the company as for the flavors. They chatted about Deedee’s eccentric siblings and her twenty-something son, who was in the Army, and she told Miles stories about some of her favorite composers. Miles mostly asked questions and listened. Even Deedee’s voice was musical.
“There’s something else, isn’t there?” she asked abruptly. They were standing at her sink, Deedee washing and Miles drying. The lavender definitely looked greener and less wilted.
He blinked innocently. “Huh?”
“About going home. Something else has kept you away.”
Oh boy. “I don’t know.” Realizing he was wringing the kitchen towel, he tried to relax. “I wanted to be someone. Not to go back as a failure.”
“I’ve met failures, boy. You ain’t one.”
He answered with a noncommittal grunt. He certainly wasn’t a success. “The Thorsens have weird holiday traditions. Really weird. I guess when I was growing up they felt pretty normal, but once I’d moved away I realized how bizarre they were.”
Deedee seemed unimpressed. “Everyone celebrates their own way.”
“Well, the Thorsen way is… weird.”
“Hmm. You keep using that word.” She turned off the water and plucked the towel out of his hand. “But that’s not what’s kept you away.” When he opened his mouth to protest, she waved the towel. “Never mind. Ain’t my business if you want to keep a few secrets.”
That made him feel bad. It wasn’t a secret, exactly. At least, not entirely. It was just something he didn’t want to think about.
“Thanks, Deedee,” he said by way of apology. “For everything. Dinner, taking my paintings and the plant. Being my friend.”
“I’m still gonna be your friend even if you move away. You remember that. I ain’t going nowhere, and you’re always welcome back here.”
Suddenly, leaving New Orleans felt like a terrible idea. “Maybe I should stay in town after all.” His shoulders slumped. “Until after Mardi Gras. I could try to build up a little savings, or—”
“Go home, Miles. Settle your ghosts. Then decide what you want to do.”
Ghosts. He laughed, which made her give him a puzzled look, as if she weren’t quite certain of his grip on sanity. She’d question that grip for sure if he told her ghosts weren’t the creatures he was worried about.
Deedee walked him to the door and pulled him down for a fierce hug. She smelled like lavender and cilantro. “Don’t be a stranger,” she said. “And have a good Christmas, you hear?”
He walked to his apartment in the misty dusk. It was barely over a mile, but it felt like a hundred.
3
Miles hadn’t flown since he was a kid. Mainly because he hated it. The airports were crowded and the planes packed full, with all the travelers too intent on getting to their destination to show any holiday spirit. At least he wasn’t tall like a real Thorsen. His father, for instance, would have to origami himself to squeeze his legs in. Miles was still plenty uncomfortable, however. He wished he’d asked his mother for a train ticket instead.
He was even glummer than usual by the time he reached Portland.
But as soon as he got through security, there were his parents—so eager to see him that they’d parked their car and come inside. They’d aged over the past decade, but gently. Dad still had a full head of hair, paled from blond to white, and Mom was still beautiful without a speck of makeup. Both of them sported their usual look: outfits that suggested they might pick up a backpack at any moment and go for a hike. Miles had often thought they looked more like outdoor-wear models than a pediatrician and a high school principal.