Makenna wiped a glob of yams off her collarbone with the back of her hand, her face twisting into an ugly, mask-like snarl. “You selfish, narcissistic bitch! You think you can live like a queen in a three-thousand-square-foot palace while we cram into a one-bedroom dump? Demetrius is your only son! Everything you have belongs to him! Which means it belongs to us!”
Before I could answer, Mrs. Fontenot stepped forward from the edge of the room. The tiny, eighty-year-old neighbor looked at Makenna with the kind of pity usually reserved for stray dogs with mange.
“Young lady,” Mrs. Fontenot said, her voice trembling slightly with age but carrying the steel of a woman who had survived the Great Flood of ’27. “In my day, a girl who flipped a table in her elder’s house wouldn’t have just gotten cake on her face. She would have walked home to her mama in her stocking feet. And as for you, Demetrius Babineaux—I knew your daddy, and he’d be turning over in his grave right now if he saw you standing there letting this bleached-blonde hussy talk to your mother like a stray alley cat.”
“Mrs. Fontenot, please, stay out of this,” Demetrius groaned, rubbing his temples.
“Out of this?” Brenda Landry shouted, stepping into the middle of the room with her arms crossed over her floral blouse. “We are staying out of nothing! Araminta, you get those bags out of your bedroom right this second, or help me carry them to the curb. I’ve got four nurses in my car who can have this girl’s boxes on the front lawn in under three minutes!”
“Don’t you touch my things!” Makenna shrieked, lunging toward the stairs as if she could defend her territory single-handedly. “Demetrius! Do something! Call the cops! She hit me! She punched me right in front of all these witnesses! That’s assault! She belongs in jail!”
“Go ahead,” I said, walking toward the stairs ahead of her, my back straight, my head held high. “Call the police, Makenna. Tell them an old retired nurse gave you what you were asking for after you destroyed four hundred dollars’ worth of crystal and ruined a custom rug. Let’s see how the parish sheriff handles a trespassing, malicious mischief complaint from a girl whose name isn’t on the tax rolls.”
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Makenna froze on the bottom step, her mouth working silently like a fish out of water. She looked at Demetrius for support, but my son was staring down at his ruined shoes, paralyzed by the realization that his mother had neither broken down nor surrendered.
« Allez, viens », dis-je en me retournant vers les dix invités qui nous observaient encore depuis le salon. « Montons. Je vais vous montrer la suite principale que Makenna était si impatiente de découvrir. Vous verrez ce que donnent vingt-deux ans de projets Instagram quand ils se concrétisent. »
Le cortège montant l’escalier fraîchement recouvert de moquette ressemblait moins à une pendaison de crémaillère qu’à une inspection d’expulsion menée par un général quatre étoiles.
J’ouvrais la marche, ma robe de soirée noire bruissant doucement contre les contremarches, le dos droit comme une canne d’arpenteur. Derrière moi suivaient Brenda Landry et Mme Fontenot, puis le reste du groupe paroissial qui murmurait entre eux comme une volée d’étourneaux nerveux. Demetrius fermait la marche, traînant les pieds comme s’il marchait vers l’échafaud, tandis que Makenna le dépassait en trombe, deux pas à la fois dans sa robe rose tachée, bien décidée à atteindre la porte de la chambre avant nous.
Elle nous a devancés sur le palier, se jetant contre les doubles portes en acajou de la suite principale comme si elle gardait les joyaux de la couronne d’Angleterre.
« Vous ne pouvez pas entrer ! » haleta-t-elle, les cheveux collés à ses joues par des résidus de glaçage praliné séché. « C’est une propriété privée ! C’est une violation du quatrième amendement ! Vous ne pouvez pas entrer sans mandat ! »
« Quatrième amendement, ma petite ? » ricana Brenda en ajustant ses lunettes. « Ici, ce n’est pas un commissariat, c’est le prêt immobilier d’Araminta. Écarte-toi avant que je te fasse une démonstration clinique de la rapidité avec laquelle une vieille infirmière peut se débarrasser d’un importun. »
Makenna ne bougea pas, mais elle n’en avait pas besoin. Je passai le bras par-dessus son épaule, saisis la poignée en nickel brossé, la tournai d’un clic sec et poussai la porte en grand.
La pièce embaumait un parfum de vanille coûteux mêlé à la sueur rance de quelqu’un qui avait passé trois jours à emballer des cartons à la hâte.
Le matelas king-size à mémoire de forme dont Makenna s’était vantée reposait bel et bien sur le sommier en merisier que j’avais acheté avec ma pension d’hôpital. Mais le pire restait à venir. Le dressing – ce grand dressing sur mesure avec ses étagères en cèdre que j’avais expressément demandé pour mes manteaux d’hiver et mes tailleurs – débordait de vêtements de fast-fashion en quantité excessive, de range-chaussures en plastique et de mini-robes à paillettes suspendues pêle-mêle à mes tringles en laiton.
Mes propres vêtements, que j’avais soigneusement déballés la veille, étaient entassés en un triste tas froissé sur le banc de rangement en cuir près de la fenêtre.
Des exclamations d’indignation pure résonnèrent derrière moi dans le couloir.
“Well, I never,” Mrs. Fontenot breathed, pressing her withered hand to her collarbone. “She took your dresses off the hangers and threw them on a bench? Araminta, honey, this girl didn’t just move in. She staged a hostile takeover.”
Makenna puffed out her chest, recovering a sliver of her defiant arrogance now that she was standing among her belongings. “We needed the hanging space! My capsule wardrobe requires double rods! Besides, you’re an old lady—you mostly wear church dresses and housecoats anyway! You don’t need forty linear feet of closet space!”
I didn’t yell. I didn’t raise my voice. I walked slowly into the center of the bedroom, my eyes scanning the vanity table where my mother’s silver-backed hairbrush had been tossed aside to make room for a ring light, a dozen tubes of matte liquid lipstick, and an open container of translucent setting powder that had spilled all over my marble countertop.
“Demetrius,” I called out softly, not turning around. “Get in here.”
My son shuffled through the double doors, looking like he wished the hardwood floor would open up and swallow him whole. He stopped near the foot of the bed, refusing to look at Brenda Landry, who was glaring at him with the fierce, protective intensity of a mother lion.
“Look at this room, Demetrius,” I said, pointing an emerald-ringed finger toward the vanity. “Look at my dressing table. Look at where my clothes are piled up like laundry waiting for the Goodwill bin.”
“Mom… look, Makenna went overboard, I know she did,” Demetrius stammered, his hands wringing together in a nervous knot. “She’s young. She gets excited about interior design. We can re-hang your dresses. We can buy a second wardrobe rack for the guest room—”
“There is no ‘we’ in this house, Demetrius,” I interrupted, my voice dropping an octave into that heavy, river-bottom register. “There is me. And there is you. And as for this young lady here… she is currently a guest who has overstayed her welcome by approximately fifteen minutes.”
Makenna shrieked, marching up to me with her finger shaking just inches from my nose. “You can’t throw me out! I live here! My mail is being forwarded to this address! I signed up for internet service in my name yesterday! If you lock me out, it’s illegal eviction! I’ll sue you for wrongful ouster and harassment!”
“Illegal eviction?” I turned to face her fully, looking down at her through my reading glasses. “Child, to be evicted, you have to be a tenant. To be a tenant, you have to pay rent, or at the very least, have a lease signed by the property owner. Did I sign a lease with you, Makenna?”
She hesitated, her mouth snapping shut. “Well… Demetrius said—”
“Demetrius doesn’t own a single shingle, a single nail, or a single square inch of drywall on this property,” I said crisply. “The deed is in my name. The mortgage was paid with my cashier’s check from Capital One. And as of right now, your luggage is about to take a very fast trip down those stairs.”
I walked over to the open closet, reached inside, and grabbed the nearest armful of clothes—a pile of pink and white polyester crop tops that smelled faintly of coconut tanning oil. I carried them across the room and dumped them unceremoniously onto the hallway landing.
“Brenda,” I called out over my shoulder. “Give me a hand with these shoe racks.”
