Arianne

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June,1963

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Like a Bayou Drifting to the Gulf

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And then his attention shifted from the intense present which he could no longer bear and slide into the past. He lost his focus and his memories floated through his mind like a bayou drifting to the Gulf.

“Mama said to tell you she’d be back next Saturday for my birthday,” said Woody’s son, a boy whom everyone called Sonny, but whose real name was Émile. “I’m gonna be eight years old. Mama said she’d bring me a present from where she’s gonna go sing.”

As if in a dream, but in an actual memory, Woody looked out the window on a sleepy Sunday afternoon. He saw a big black DeSoto driving away. He focused on the hood ornament: it was a helmeted conquistador. The car was pulling a trailer with the musical logo of Barry Lasso and the Bayou Buckeroos.

“She’s gone to sing, again?” said Woody.
“Yeah, Daddy, she said just to let you sleep. You been working hard and you need your rest. But she let me help her pack. She took her singing clothes and her notebook with all of the words to the songs she’s been writtin’. She said that she loves us.”
“You know that man?” said Woody, pointing outside of the window.

“No, he just drove up and waited,” said Sonny. “I waved at him and the guys in the band waved back. Mama got her bags. She said not to wake you up. Wave now so that she knows that we love her as big as the whole wide world.”

Woody and Sonny waved to Arianne as the DeSoto sped away. Arianne never did arrive for the birthday party. A postcard arrived from Nashville one day that next week saying she had found a good paying job and she would be gone. That was the last he had heard from his wife for that Summer. Now, it was three years later. She would come in, visit for a month or two and then she’d be gone, each time progressively longer. In the interim, he would hear indirectly that she was singing at local clubs, or on tour with local bands that had regional hits. Once he heard from her when she was living in Nashville and another time he heard rumors that she was living in New York and working as an actress. They said that she had changed her name. Occasionally, she’d send a postcard. Despite the estrangement, he never divorced her and never saw other women. The only thing they really shared was Woody’s bank account.

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June
1963

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I
Would
Like
to
Pardon
You

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Woody said to Arianne, his wife in Cajun French:“Oh ho, bèbè, je voudrai te pardon pour tout les affaires que tu m’as fait. Reviens back. — Oh ho, baby, I would like to pardon you for all the things you did to me. Come back.”

“ Je suis pas ta femme et je va jamais retournais back avec toi. — I’m not your woman and I’ll will never return back with you.”

Her anger flared as he touched her. She came around the chair and cursed him with deliberation, resentment, contempt, and a fury that he had not seen or imagined was possible. Her words were like salt water flowing across the dying embers of their love, killing that love, so it would never be awakened. She marked the end of her curse with a slap, hard across his face.

“I never could understand how you always hurt the people who love you,” he said turning his head to the side and speaking to the wall.

Arianne’s fury blazed now and she stumbled backwards. She hurled anything she could get her hands on. When a glass ashtray hit a mirror and shattered it, they heard a knock on the door. From the hall, they heard, Gabriel, the night desk man, calling to them “Keep it down in there. The man next door’s gonna call the police. Lord knows we don’t need that here.”

Arianne walked to the window and looked out over the fog, and then said over her shoulder “Oh, Woody, why’d you come now.” Tears came to her eyes. “Just leave. Please. Now. Before I do something that we gonna both regret. Or so help me, I’ll keep it up and then they’ll bust me and you for fighting and getting doped up. You want that?”