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.Norma didn’t usually let Rusty roam without her.With the dog Wayne walked around the house.The side door was wide open, strange because of the chill in the air, strange because Norma didn’t use that door much.He went around back and crossed the patio to the kitchen door.It too was open.Wayne went into the kitchen and practically walked into a pool of blood.He didn’t think; he mechanically skirted it to the bathroom, got a couple of large bath towels, and wiped it up.He called Rusty in, closed up the house, and drove to the St.Tammany Hospital.There he was told that his wife had been transported by ambulance across Lake Pontchartrain to the Ochsner Foundation Hospital in New Orleans, with a gunshot wound to the head.When Wayne arrived at Ochsner, Norma was in surgery.She died less than an hour later—at 5:07 p.m., December 14, 1974.When Wayne arrived at Ochsner and saw Sarah, he fell to his knees and buried his head in her lap, holding her so tightly that she was finally forced to tell him he was hurting her.He went home that night with Sarah and Gus.When Norma’s ashes were returned from the crematorium two days later, Sarah took on the task of disposing of them.Norma had told her that she wanted to be cremated and her ashes spread along the streets of the French Quarter.But Sarah hated the French Quarter after having worked Elmo’s clubs for so many years.She told Wayne she wouldn’t put Norma’s ashes downtown.Wayne gave Sarah no argument when she suggested that they take the ashes to Lake Pontchartrain, even though he knew Norma hated water.Sarah turned the urn over and let Norma’s ashes fall into the choppy water.As she did so, she thought to herself, Poor thing, she don’t know, but the fishes will be eating her pretty soon.Upstairs in the house in Bush is a room filled with Norma’s things.Her four-poster bed from Waggaman is there, along with her mahogany dresser and its matching mirror, a boudoir chair left over from Conti Street, a small antique drop-leaf table from her family, and a sliding-door rattan cabinet.Some of the dresser drawers are still lined with the flowered paper Norma put in them.In one is a heavy gold-tone metal belt, part of the costume she wore to a gay Mardi Gras ball; in another is a hairbrush, strands of Norma’s white hair still tangled in its bristles.A couple of years ago some of Jean’s relatives came to spend Halloween weekend with the Bernards.One of the women spent the night in Norma’s bed upstairs.It was an unseasonably warm Halloween night, but in the middle of it, the woman woke up shivering and aware of a most unpleasant odor.She slept fitfully for the next few hours, huddling beneath the light blanket on the bed, covering her nose with it to block the smell.In the morning she told Wayne and Jean about her strange night.Wayne laughed.“Well,” he said, “you were sleeping with your head just a few inches from the urn that Norma’s ashes were in.” Not knowing what else to do with the urn and unable to part with it, he had sealed it in the wall behind the bed.A couple of months after Norma’s death, Wayne and Jean got back together, and Jean went to live in the house in Bush with her two sons, Jim and Darby; that was when Wayne decided he needed to do something with the urn.Even with Norma gone, Wayne and Jean’s relationship was rocky, and Jean returned more than once to Franklinton, thinking she should end things with him.But Wayne and her older son, Jim, who had never known his father, had formed an attachment by then.“I was doing what a man my age should have been doing,” Wayne said of that time.“I had a son.” Jean and her sons had helped get Wayne back into ordinary life.When Wayne and Jean married a couple of months later, he adopted Jim.But even for a while after they were married, Jean wasn’t sure that they would make it.She began to get superstitious.In their bedroom she thought she could see Norma’s face where two knotholes formed eyes, and other markings in the blond paneling created an oval face and waves of hair, like Norma’s.She tried hanging pictures over the spot, but she always felt weirdly compelled to take them down.She thought Norma had put a jinx on her and Wayne, to keep them from staying together.Not only that, Norma’s old dog, Rusty, had an overwhelming dislike of Jean [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
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.Norma didn’t usually let Rusty roam without her.With the dog Wayne walked around the house.The side door was wide open, strange because of the chill in the air, strange because Norma didn’t use that door much.He went around back and crossed the patio to the kitchen door.It too was open.Wayne went into the kitchen and practically walked into a pool of blood.He didn’t think; he mechanically skirted it to the bathroom, got a couple of large bath towels, and wiped it up.He called Rusty in, closed up the house, and drove to the St.Tammany Hospital.There he was told that his wife had been transported by ambulance across Lake Pontchartrain to the Ochsner Foundation Hospital in New Orleans, with a gunshot wound to the head.When Wayne arrived at Ochsner, Norma was in surgery.She died less than an hour later—at 5:07 p.m., December 14, 1974.When Wayne arrived at Ochsner and saw Sarah, he fell to his knees and buried his head in her lap, holding her so tightly that she was finally forced to tell him he was hurting her.He went home that night with Sarah and Gus.When Norma’s ashes were returned from the crematorium two days later, Sarah took on the task of disposing of them.Norma had told her that she wanted to be cremated and her ashes spread along the streets of the French Quarter.But Sarah hated the French Quarter after having worked Elmo’s clubs for so many years.She told Wayne she wouldn’t put Norma’s ashes downtown.Wayne gave Sarah no argument when she suggested that they take the ashes to Lake Pontchartrain, even though he knew Norma hated water.Sarah turned the urn over and let Norma’s ashes fall into the choppy water.As she did so, she thought to herself, Poor thing, she don’t know, but the fishes will be eating her pretty soon.Upstairs in the house in Bush is a room filled with Norma’s things.Her four-poster bed from Waggaman is there, along with her mahogany dresser and its matching mirror, a boudoir chair left over from Conti Street, a small antique drop-leaf table from her family, and a sliding-door rattan cabinet.Some of the dresser drawers are still lined with the flowered paper Norma put in them.In one is a heavy gold-tone metal belt, part of the costume she wore to a gay Mardi Gras ball; in another is a hairbrush, strands of Norma’s white hair still tangled in its bristles.A couple of years ago some of Jean’s relatives came to spend Halloween weekend with the Bernards.One of the women spent the night in Norma’s bed upstairs.It was an unseasonably warm Halloween night, but in the middle of it, the woman woke up shivering and aware of a most unpleasant odor.She slept fitfully for the next few hours, huddling beneath the light blanket on the bed, covering her nose with it to block the smell.In the morning she told Wayne and Jean about her strange night.Wayne laughed.“Well,” he said, “you were sleeping with your head just a few inches from the urn that Norma’s ashes were in.” Not knowing what else to do with the urn and unable to part with it, he had sealed it in the wall behind the bed.A couple of months after Norma’s death, Wayne and Jean got back together, and Jean went to live in the house in Bush with her two sons, Jim and Darby; that was when Wayne decided he needed to do something with the urn.Even with Norma gone, Wayne and Jean’s relationship was rocky, and Jean returned more than once to Franklinton, thinking she should end things with him.But Wayne and her older son, Jim, who had never known his father, had formed an attachment by then.“I was doing what a man my age should have been doing,” Wayne said of that time.“I had a son.” Jean and her sons had helped get Wayne back into ordinary life.When Wayne and Jean married a couple of months later, he adopted Jim.But even for a while after they were married, Jean wasn’t sure that they would make it.She began to get superstitious.In their bedroom she thought she could see Norma’s face where two knotholes formed eyes, and other markings in the blond paneling created an oval face and waves of hair, like Norma’s.She tried hanging pictures over the spot, but she always felt weirdly compelled to take them down.She thought Norma had put a jinx on her and Wayne, to keep them from staying together.Not only that, Norma’s old dog, Rusty, had an overwhelming dislike of Jean [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]