Читать книгу Diary Of A Blues Goddess - Erica Orloff - Страница 15

A rriving home, I stood in front of our house, its ancient brick weathered and elegant. The house did seem to be alive. Some nights, Nan and I would hear a woman walking upstairs, her heels clicking across old floorboards. Occasionally, I smelled perfume in my room, a complex mix of jasmine and lily of the valley. Not my perfume, yet an intoxicatingly familiar scent. The way I could smell it just in one spot in the room as I crossed my floor made me feel as if I was being watched by someone. I wanted to whisper to Sadie’s ghost, What is it you want from me? But I think I was afraid of the answer.

I stepped inside the house and found Nan in the kitchen preparing a feast. All the members of Georgia’s Saints would be attending Sunday Saints Supper, along with Dominique, Gary’s wife, Annie, Maggie—and Red.

“Smells good, Nan. What’re you making?”

“Georgia, for goodness’ sake, you’ve lived in New Orleans since the day you were born. Can’t you smell it?”

“Jambalaya?”

“Mmm, hmm. Mighty spicy, too.”

“Red’s coming. I hope that’s all right.”

She looked genuinely pleased—as she did every Sunday we went through this little charade. “Of course that’s fine, Georgia. You set another place at the dining-room table.”

Thank God my grandfather left Nan “loaded,” as they say, because she likes to entertain with style. Every Sunday bottles of good red wine are uncorked to breathe, champagne chills in the refrigerator, and delicious smells emanate from brewing pots and pans. Our dining-room table could fit twenty, its cherry-wood surface polished to a brilliant sheen. The house recalls the grandeur of New Orleans, and the antiques give it character. At any moment, you half expect a Southern belle with a hoop skirt, or a flapper from the 1920s, to walk down the stairs…or Sadie to return to life.

I pulled another plate out of the china cabinet. The plates had been imported from France at the turn of the twentieth century by my great-great-grandmother. It made me nervous serving on them. Each of them, hand-painted with a pattern of tea roses, was probably worth more than the band pulled in on a Friday night, but my grandmother doesn’t believe in saving the good china for fancy occasions. Her motto is: “Having your friends gathered around your table is occasion enough.” We’d lost a plate and a saucer or two, as well as several teacups—three when we opened our house to a Christmastime historic-homes tour—but we still had most of the pieces, and the table did look spectacular each Sunday, with ivory-colored linen napkins and stemware sparkling beneath a chandelier dangling with Austrian crystals.