A Handful of Leaves

The first time I heard what Lottie Labatt was, my friend Ricky and I were riding bikes past her house. He said it a few times, as though I was supposed to know what it meant, so I just rolled my eyes in surprise and disgust and fascination, which mirrored his expressions but still didn't give me much more of a clue as to what Lottie was.

Lottie came around the side of her house with those scrawny, bruised and pocked legs and the cigarette long by her side, her hair a long nest of a mess. When she saw us down the block, she squinted like she was looking past us, deep into the empty railroad tracks, with one hand over her eyes in a sunlight salute. It was not surprising to discover that she was the town drunk. It was, however, surprising to discover that she was the town prostitute, especially since I had no idea what a prostitute was. I had seen her house for years before I understood why she had so many visitors -- and before Ricky finally schooled me in the definition of a prostitute.

Lottie Labatt was the sort of woman all the women in town pretended didn't exist -- except for my grandmother, who maintained some strange relationship with her that even I didn't understand.

Lottie would come to the back door every couple of weeks and want a check cashed so she could buy milk or pay a utility. This is how she always said it too, "I gotta go pay a utility, Mzz Marie." Then my grandmother would put on her glasses and walk to the door. Lottie was never invited inside; that seemd to be Grandma's one compromise. After examining the check, which had been written out to someone none of us ever heard of and signed by someone else none of us ever heard of, Grandma would move back toward her purse and snatch some cash from her wallet, careful to hide it in her palm so I couldn't see how much it was. Then she'd hand Lottie the money, take the check, and watch Lottie disappear down the driveway. Everybody tried to tell Grandma she needed to stop this ("You have to stop this shit, Mama," was how Dad put it), but she kept on saying that even the unlovable needed love. To which Dad would reply, "But they don't need your damn money."

Everybody flinched when he said damn. Grandma was Catholic and all.

But the women in town -- it wasn't that they didn't like Lottie. It was more that they were ashamed of her. Beatrice Henderson was always putting Lottie's name in the list of sick and ill to pray for at church, and Father Ryan would say "Lottie Labatt" sometimes, and then look up rather embarrassed, as though he hadn't realized he was actually saying it again. And then Sal Mitchell, who owned the corner gas station where Mrs. Stomeyer won her lottery ticket, swore we were all going to hell for saying Lottie Labatt was sick and ill.

"Sick and ill, my ass," Dad would say. Even at church, under his breath.

And all kinds of people pretended they had never talked to Lottie, or never heard of Lottie, or didn't even know there was still a house at the end of Poplar Street by the railroad tracks. But we saw them -- me and Ricky -- while we were riding bikes. Everybody in town, it seemed, had a brother or cousin or grandfather or, in one case, a sister, who visited Lottie Labatt. And there never was going to be any bust on Lottie's life because most of the cops liked to visit her too. All three of them, although not usually all at once.

***
So it seemed to especially disturb my father when I saved up my allowance in the sixth grade to go visit Lottie myself. Mostly he just stomped around the kitchen yelling and swearing. And then he sat down at the table with his head in his hands, and just when I thought he might cry, when I actually might see this big man of my father cry, he started laughing. It was the same response he had when Helen Meyers called from the library to alert him I wanted to check out an adult book and he discovered it was a Stephen Hawkins book and he ripped into Helen Meyers -- something about how the book probably hadn't been checked out in this crummy little town in a decade anyway, and if a child wanted it a child should not only get to check it out but keep it, and that seemed to settle that, and Helen Meyers never gave me anymore problems about leaving the juvenile section of the library behind me like a mist of road dust in the fifth grade.

It took six weeks of allowance -- which came on account of a set of chores including by not limited to a weekly sweeping and mopping of the kitchen and watering Grandma's garden and picking the infinite weeds from the Brussell sprout and carrot gardens -- to get what I figured would buy me twenty minutes of Lottie's time and two rolls of film. I packed up my backpack and rode my bike, without Ricky, down to the end of Poplar Street, unsure if one could even purchase such a short period of time.

I liked that everybody "visited" Lottie -- it was such a strange choice of wording, as though Lottie Labatt might be the sort of lady who had guests over for tea, or an old friend who came by so they could sit together on lawn chairs in the back yard, drinking wine and looking at the sky. This is what I thought about while I tried to peer through the big plain pane of glass to see inside. The curtains only left a sliver to see through, and even then all I could tell was that the room was dark. There was no sound when I rang the bell, so I began knocking, first on the door and then on the glass. Hours, it seemed, passed while I stood there. The birds came and went. The squirrels came and went. And then a train came and went. But I just sat on the windowsill, stubbornly content, for I was certain Lottie hadn't gone anywhere.

When the door opened, it was a man I'd never seen before. He didn't even pause to look at me, just huffed it right down the walkway and fast around the corner. Lottie was about to close the door before I stood up, and the light sound made her peer out. "What d'you want?" she said.

"Half an hour," I said.

"This no kid house," she said.

"Ah, shut up, Lottie," I said in a friendly tone. I'd heard plenty of men say this to her when I rode my bike past, and not nearly as nicely, and I was certain it would age me just enough that she might let me in. "Besides, I got money. I don't want to make any trouble. Just let me in."

She didn't say anything, just backed up with the door wide like an invitation, and I slid right past her and into the living room, which looked nothing like what I thought Lottie Labatt's living room would look like.

***

I liked to win at the Social Studies Fair. That's when the school gym became a series of rows of cafeteria tables, where each row represented one category such as history, sociology (which always had the fewest entries since no one in the fifth, sixth, or seventh grade really knew what it was, therefore making it the easiest category in which to get a blue ribbon), and science. There must have been other categories too, because I recall about six rows of tables. I suppose I never entered those other categories though.

It took a great deal of effort to get my project out the front door without dad smashing it to pieces that year. There was a good deal of hollering at the kitchen table. Grandma just shook her head and stayed out of it -- something about curiousity being "the beginning of exploration."

"Prostitution has been around as long as money," I told him.

"And when was money invented?" he asked.

"I'm not sure," I said, "but I bet prostitution has been around at least that long. There's plenty of good evidence."

"Good?"

Just the very word "good" in conjunction with the topic made the butt of his knife click against the table repeatedly.

"I wasn't saying that prostitution is a good thing," I said. "But maybe it isn't such a bad thing either. That's not what this is about at all though."

"Oh?" he said. "Oh" like a looming powerful statement.

"I don't care if it's right or wrong, Dad," I said.

"Oh, you don't care, do you?"

"That's not the point."

"The point is, you're my son. I'm the father, you're the kid, and I say hell no you're not taking any project on prostitution to the school fair."

That's when Grandma finally interrupted it all.

"Mary Magdelyn," she said. With that one brief statement, my project was back in the fair. And, ha, ha on him, I stabbed at my peas with triumph, and he was just quiet.

***

My favorite picture was one of a woman photographed by Bellocq. I'd never heard of Bellocq before, although typed out in my report, I kept considering that the name looked a lot like Kellog, and this seemed important for a few minutes. But there was the woman in her stockings, sitting on a chair with her legs crossed and her head tilted and her glass half full. And she didn't look so awful. She looked like it was okay, and even though you knew what she did, it didn't look like it did with Lottie Labatt. It looked romantic for a moment.

There was nothing romantic about Lottie. And the photos of her living room, with the brown sofa sagging on the sides and in the middle like a series of frowns, just looked dirty. While I sat there asking her questions, I kept as still as I could for fear of stirring up the bugs. Funning this is -- and just to clarify, Lottie didn't let me in her bedroom -- any time I caught a glimpse of the bedroom, it looked all neat and clean. There were no wrinkles in the bedspread. I excused myself to go to the bathroom too, and it was pretty clean. Nothing special, of course, but clean in all the right places. But Lottie in her photograph sat at the edge of he sofa, with her scrawny, pocked and bruised legs jutting in front of her, and her right arm leaning on the arm of the sofa to hold her head up, with her cigarette perky in the left. That cigarette seemed to be the only perky thing there was about Lottie Labatt, at least in that photo for that project. And I never saw her that close up again.
The photo of Lottie, which I put right next to Bellocq's lady, was what really drew attention, and the only reason I managed not to get suspended or have my project thrown out was that Lottie was fully clothed and when push came to shove (his words, not mine), Dad always showed up at the school and told them why my hair-brained projects were evidence of curiosity being just the beginning of exploration. All these words meshed together, and suddenly, whatever I'd been working on seemed like a bonafide project, much in the way that all the little army figures and George Washington projects one white poster board never really did. Although it was a blue ribbon project that Dad even defended, that project is also what likely finally moved us out of Waterproof, Louisiana, shortly after my grandmother died.

***

I'd heard the story umpteen times and quite frankly I was just sick of it. But you've never heard and so here I'll tell you but don't think I especially like having to tell it all over again.

Everybody in town had heard of Verdi (which they usually pronounced to rhyme with "birdy") on account of my mother. Don't go thinking it was because she had some gorgeous voice that lit up the town auditorium, which was really just a gym with folding chairs, and introduced them all to the world of European opera or something like that. It's because my dad came home one evening to hear it blaring as loud as possible on the record player, and I was in the baby swing just screaming away. This is usually where people say, "Poor Andrew. That poor child. Poor Andrew."

It seems she thought there might be something romantic about leaving while the Rigoletto was playing -- and the note said something simple, which nobody in town ever got right. They repeated all sorts of things it might have said, but who the hhll would know for certain? My dad never made any mention of having saved it. Sometimes he alluded to what it might have said -- or why he thought she might have left: to find something bigger in a bigger place, or to find something brewing out there (I was always partial to that one). He never had anything really mean to say about it or about her, and he never seemed really sad or like he might have missed her, just that she had something else to do and it was likely more interesting thatn us, at least to her, and so there it was, she was gone and that was that.

And under normal circumstances, my mother would have nothing to do with anything and certainly nothing to do with any of my school projects, except that it was shortly before the social studies fair that I discovered Lottie Labatt was my deserted mother's little sister.

***

"I know who you are," Lottie had said that afternoon.

I still listen to the tape sometimes. I swear I can hear her exhaling her Kool Ultra Lights in the background. It's been seven years and seven hundred sixty-two miles since I sat in Lottie's front room.

I've re-recorded the tape so many times that this must be a fourth generation copy and by now there are tugs in the sound. Just that phrase, "I know who you arrrrrr."

"I know who you are too," I said.

She just nodded. "Course you do."

"I'm mostly here for my project," I said. "We can get to the other stuff afterwards."

Really, the project was already done by that point. I had her photograph and that's all I really needed for a blue ribbon.

"Sure," she said. "Whatever you want."

Then she looked at the clock on the wall -- an eagle sitting on a circle where the circle said ten after two -- and added, "For ten more minutes."

"I waned to know if you could tell me where my mom is," I said.

Lottie laughed. I still hate hearing that laugh and always wish that's where the sound pulled on the tape.

"If I knew," she said, "why would I want to tell you?"

"Oh, I didn't say you'd want to. Just maybe you should. I don't really care, like I said. I mean, it doesn't matter to me where she lives. I don't want to go there or anything."

"Then why you want to know?"

"It's just a priority."

"A priority?"

"Yeah," I said. "A priority."

Lottie laughed that horrible laugh again.

"Los Angeles."

"You sure?"

"No," she said. "That's just where she was the last time I heard from her."

"You hear from her much?"

"She don't exactly keep up with me. Now what are you looking for?"

I wondered sometimes if my mother's voice sounded that rough and I had a hard time she'd actually heard of Verdi, having grown up in the same--

Lottie Labatt didn't give me much information, but really I wasn't even looking for information. I was just hoping for a photo, which in the end she gave me. Something about should have had to pay extra for that, but then she just laughed again and coughed and told me to get the hell out of there. In the photo my mother is almost a teenager. Lottie is about ten, perhaps. Lotties legs are skinny and scrawny even back then, and she is standing next to the car that their father has just bought -- a 1947 Studebaker -- in the early '50s. She is leaning against it actually, and my mother is closer to the camera, closer to whoever took the picture. And whoever took the picture was standing under a tree, because the tree branch reaches down and my mother reaches up to grab a handful of leaves, and while Lottie squints against the sun, my mother smiles, and she smiles like there just might be something more interesting out there.

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