My Juliet Read Free Page A

before he was able to open his eyes again.
    Haunted or not, the house by any measure is a mansion, and Sonny has always heard it referred to as such. The Beauvais, people call it, pronouncing the word “Boo-vay” as the family likes to. Once a showplace in an affluent area, and the finest example of French Colonial plantation architecture in the southern United States, the house today backs up to a corridor where illegal drugs are sold and murder is commonplace. And yet Juliet’s mother has continued to live there as if the neighborhood doesn’t recommend burglar bars on every window and a team of Dobermans in the yard.
    â€œMiss Marcelle, you think you’ll ever move out to the suburbs?” Sonny asks her today. “Get yourself a town house maybe with all the modern conveniences?”
    She stares at him, as if waiting for the punch line. “Not unless Anna Huey makes me,” she answers at last in all apparent seriousness, then allows a dark trickle of laughter.
    Sonny knows Miss Marcelle to be a hermit, as one too tired and dispirited to have much to do with the world, and as one too smart to trust a stranger. For years he has made a point of visiting her on those days when he’s on a painting expedition in the neighborhood or out shooting reference photos for later use. He and Miss Marcelle sit in the parlor and, careful as to the scope of their conversation, talk for hours about subjects that hold little interest for either of them.
    â€œEver try Funyons, ma’am?”
    â€œNo, Sonny, I haven’t. What are Funyons?”
    â€œThey’re this food, somewhere between potato chips and Styrofoam. Don’t be put off by their appearance. They’re actually pretty good. You should try them.”
    Today instead of tea Anna Huey has served a substitute, a fruit brandy with a high alcohol content, and inside of an hour Miss Marcelle and Sonny are working on a second bottle.
    â€œMy favorite is still barbecue corn chips,” he continues. “I like a bag at lunch with my ham and cheese sandwich. Sometimes I eat two ham and cheese sandwiches.”
    â€œCorn chips were popular even in my time, if you can believe.”
    â€œWhat time was that, Miss Marcelle?”
    She looks at him as if he’s just asked the most personal question a man can ask a woman. “When I speak of my time I mean the days when I first met Juliet’s father, when I was young and in love. A person’s time is always the time when he or she was happiest.”
    â€œWould you please tell me about Juliet’s father, Miss Marcelle? I didn’t get to know him too well.”
    â€œI met Johnny Beauvais in 1953 when he came to Opelousas to judge the Miss Yambilee beauty pageant, in which I was a contestant. Apparently he was a last-minute selection; the first choice, a radio personality for KSLO, our hometown station, took sick with gout and his doctor confined him to bed. Johnny happened to be visiting Saint Landry Parish with one of his fraternity brothers from Tulane. How he was recruited to judge us beauties I never really knew, but there suddenly he stood at the foot of the stage in the old World War Two Quonset hut where the event was being held. Girls swooned for him, and not a few boys. He selected me Miss Yambilee. Toward the end, when we fought, he still called me that.”
    â€œMiss Yambilee?”
    â€œYes. And Miss Sweet Potato Pie. He thought he was so funny.”
    â€œWhat else can you tell me?”
    â€œHe never really cared for me. In the beginning he responded to my looks, my naïveté. But that didn’t last long. Johnny was searching for someone to bear his children. He didn’t want a wife.” She hesitates, the brandy at her lips. “Johnny was a Beauvais to the very last, Sonny. I could tell you more, but that would still be the best description I could come up with.”
    â€œHe used to wear white suits.”
    â€œYes. And