The Hideaway

“She always told me she understood,” I said.

“Sure she did. She was so proud of you over there. She never wanted to be a burden to anyone, especially you. You know Mags. She hardly ever asked for help and she was private until the end.”

Of course Mags wouldn’t have called me up and begged me to come for a random weekend. That’s not who she is—or was. She wanted me to come on my own terms. I just waited too long.

“No sense in worrying over it all now,” Dot said. “How could any of us have known? She was Mags—we took it for granted that she’d be around forever.”

By the time we finished our call, the courtyard had emptied out. Only Millie and Walt remained, peering at each other and pondering their next moves on the chessboard. I could just barely make out the early evening sounds of Bourbon Street a few blocks away, quiet as a house cat compared to the frenzy that would ensue in the coming hours.

“You’re a million miles away,” a familiar voice called out. “What’s going on?”

Bernard, an artist who lived in one of the duplexes across the courtyard, settled down in the chair next to me. He twisted off the plastic top of a dented Nalgene bottle and took a long sip.

“Just watching Millie and Walt. Married sixty-eight years and still embarrassingly in love.”

We watched them in silence for a few moments.

“Gone out with the fellow from the law firm again?” he asked.

“We’ve gone out a few times.” A slow grin crossed Bernard’s bearded face. “What’s that look for?”

He held up his hands in mock surrender. “I’m not saying a thing. He just appeared to have a fat wallet for someone so young.”

Mitch was a lawyer at one of the oldest firms in New Orleans. He made partner when he was thirty, a record in the firm, maybe even in the city. We’d been out a handful of times since he booked the chef’s table at Commander’s Palace for our first date, but it wasn’t exclusive and definitely wasn’t serious—which is exactly how it had been with most of the men I’d dated in New Orleans. And I was just fine with that.

“He’s nice, believe it or not. He asked me to go with him to some gala tomorrow night, but I have to cancel. I’m going back to Sweet Bay, actually. My grandmother died.”

Saying the words out loud gave my new reality—that I was now family-less—a weight I didn’t quite know what to do with.

“I’m so sorry. Were you close?”

I hesitated. “We were and we weren’t. There was always some part of her she kept away from everyone else, including me.”

“So that’s where it comes from.”

“Where what comes from?”

“You’re a private person yourself. Locked up. You don’t lay all your cards out like most everyone else around here.”

I considered that for a moment. “Maybe Mags and I were more alike than I realized.”

“Was she a typical ‘fresh-baked cookies and soap operas’ kind of grandmother?”

I laughed. “Not quite.”

“Mine made the best potato-chip cookies in Butler County, Mississippi.”

“Potato-chip cookies?” I rubbed my eyes. “Now, that does sound like something Mags would have cooked up. But no, she wasn’t typical, that’s for sure. She used to embarrass me like you wouldn’t believe.”

“Isn’t everyone embarrassed by their grandparents to some degree? Come on—potato-chip cookies? No one actually ate them—we just shoved them under our napkins until we could sneak them to the dog.”

I smiled and thought of the woman who didn’t think twice about picking me up from school in a men’s smoking jacket and plastic flip-flops. She walked or biked everywhere she went because of constant floaters in her eyes. When Mom and I would drive her to get her hair done, I always slumped down in my seat. With fuzzy gray curls peeking out from under a bird’s-nest hat complete with baby-blue eggs perched on top, Mags was oblivious to my humiliation. At least she pretended to be.

But she was my only true family. Probably my biggest fan. And now she was gone.

I stood and squeezed Bernard’s shoulder. “I should get on to bed. Allyn will be giddy at the prospect of running the shop for a few days without me. I need to have his instructions ready to go.”

Inside my loft, everything was in its place: overstuffed down pillows on a couple of linen slip-covered couches, vintage silver vases of fresh flowers, a few tasteful pieces of artwork. I’d decorated the loft in the same vein as Bits and Pieces, although I was rarely home long enough to enjoy the flowers or the soft comfort of the couches.

As I went through my usual preparations to get ready for bed, my mind was on Mags. Occasionally, she’d flutter through The Hideaway in a burst of energy, saying she was going to clean out and declutter. She’d poke through closets, check desk drawers, eye various pieces of furniture as if she’d actually have the nerve to get rid of any of it. She never did. It was as if once things—or people—found their way there, she couldn’t bear to force them out.

I, on the other hand, hated clutter and chaos, and my home and shop were evidence of that. I hadn’t consciously developed a taste so different from what I grew up with, but that’s how it turned out.

Across the room my eyes fell on two side chairs I’d recently refinished but hadn’t had the nerve to part with yet. I’d run across them on a rainy Saturday trek to an estate sale at a decadent, moss-covered home on St. Charles. Water dripped from the ceiling into silver buckets discreetly tucked around the opulent parlor of the eight-bedroom, prewar home. Mildewed silk curtains covered the ten-foot-tall windows. A tarnished, silver-encrusted mirror hung in the downstairs powder room. It was shambles like these that had made me fall in love with old, forgotten things in the first place. I came away from the sale toting the pair of French side chairs with busted cane bottoms that now sat in my living room, proud and beautiful. My shop was full of similar rescued and restored beauties.

Maybe I wasn’t as different from Mags as I’d thought. I’d spent years all but running from her and The Hideaway, but there I was, inviting other old and tattered things into my life by the armful.

I sat up against the bed pillows and gathered my hair into a braid to keep it neat while I slept. On the bedside table was the bottle of Jo Malone hand lotion I rubbed into my fingers and cuticles, the last item to check off my list before turning off the light. But tonight, I paused with my hand on the chain. Instead of pulling it, I opened the drawer of the small table and reached all the way to the back.

The photo was still there, though I hadn’t pulled it out in a while. Mags and my mother smiled up from the yellowed Polaroid, while I, a busy eleven-year-old, laughed at something outside the camera frame and tried to bolt. My mother’s hand on my shoulder was a feeble attempt to keep me in place long enough to snap the shot.

I focused on Mags. The ever-present bird’s-nest hat was missing, and her hair—salt and pepper, heavy on the salt—was loose around her shoulders. It must have been a day with low humidity, because her hair fell in gentle waves instead of frizzy curls. Her face was soft, and her eyes crinkled into a smile at the corners.

I’d never thought much about Mags as a younger woman, but in this photo, it was easy to peel back the years and see how she must have looked at my age, or even younger. I’d held this photo in my hands many times, but I’d never seen past her fifty-four-year-old face into the person she may have been before my time, before my mom’s time even. As far as I knew, she’d always been the same strange, frustratingly dowdy woman I’d always known her to be. But those eyes. And her smile—it was tilted higher on one side, as if a smirk was in there somewhere, trying to sneak out.