On week days, when I’m alone in the house, I turn off the air conditioning – to save money, to see how long I can stand it. By four, my head starts to feel swaddled with cotton wool. I’m sleepy. I stick to things. Sometimes, clammy and oppressed, I feel almost feverish.
It’s overcast outside most afternoons: in the month since I’ve been back from the UK, there’s been two or maybe three days without a thunderstorm. On Monday it rained almost all day – the soggy shoulder of a tropical depression pushing up into the Florida panhandle. I lie in the bedroom, the coolest room in the house, and think of ways to describe the heat. Every day is sweltering. Outside the heat is a thicket, almost visible: we wade through its dense swamp in dreamy slow-motion.
If I could write my first novel, Queen of Beauty, over again, there’d be much more about the heat in New Orleans. The heat and the rain and the smell of things here. I was talking about this today with Susan Larson, the books editor of the Times-Picayune; she was interviewing me about my YA novel, Ruined. I would include more heat, more smells, and more lizards, I told her. In August, the lizards are the only fast-moving creatures in this place. At the moment the ones I see are bark-skinned and tiny, darting across sidewalks, disappearing into bushes.
TM has had various face-offs with lizards in the house in summers past, involving absurd hallway chases and daring Tupperware entrapments. Lizards particularly like the Venetian blinds in our south-facing back room, which is oven-like for six months of the year. They lie, lizard-legs dangling, on the dusty slats.
The heat won’t break for more than a month – maybe in two months’ time, maybe a little sooner. We were married in New Orleans nine years ago, at the very end of September. Knowing this place a little better now, we would never dream of arranging a wedding (a black-tie wedding, in fact) for such a volatile time of year. It’s the heart of hurricane season, the end of September. The heat is usually still ferocious and unrelenting. Last night, I met up with a few people for birthday drinks, and my friend Russell Desmond was talking about business over the summer – he owns Arcadian Books, in the French Quarter. People forget, he says, that September is still the summer here. It’s another hot, stifling month that has to be endured – survived – between the European tourists and the fall conventions.
Sometimes it’s Christmas here, and we’re still waiting for the fall.
Last night T. Middy got to indulge in a rare public rant on one of his favorite topics: the weather coverage of WDSU, otherwise known as Channel Six, the NBC local affiliate. We’ve lived here for five years, and TM continues to be outraged by the weather coverage. (Don’t ask why we don’t just watch another local affiliate: wherever we live, we watch NBC. We miss you, Sue Simmons.)
The WDSU empire has established an outpost on Channel 108, which is known as WDSU Weather-Plus News and Traffic. When TM has tired of being aggrieved at my various crimes – finishing all the wine, eating all the cashews, watching yet another past-season marathon of America’s Next Top Model – he likes to turn to 108 and complain that it’s never New Orleans weather.
Here is a transcript of a recent diatribe on this topic.
TM: No matter when I tune in, it’s Houma. Then Mandeville, then Hammond. You say it’s in alphabetical order, but, baby girl, look – it’s HOUMA, MANDEVILLE, AND THEN HAMMOND.
[Turns to another station, then switches back.]
TM: Now it’s THIBODAUX, GRAND ISLE, AND GULFPORT. And what’s on right now? GRETNA.
[Turns to another station, then switches back.]
TM: And then it’s mostly commercials for WDSU.
[Lower-level grumbling while distracted by Tropical Storm Watch in the Gulf of Mexico.]
TM: So now it’s New Orleans. They’re saying thunderstorms at noon tomorrow. Let’s check back tomorrow, shall we? Let’s see what they say then!
[Turns to another station for quite a while, then switches back.]
TM: Just to see what’s happening, let’s turn to 108. THIBODAUX, GRAND ISLE, AND GULFPORT! This is the New Orleans metropolitan area! Why don’t they show New Orleans? They could at least show Metairie.
[Swearing and muttering.]
TM: And you know, I bet a lot of these forecasts are the same. Because it’s a ****ing tiny area!
[Turns to another station, then switches back.]
TM: Slidell. What’s next? HOUMA, MANDEVILLE, HAMMOND.
[The next day: I’m in another room]
TM: Ha! GRETNA!
Actually, I don’t know why he needs to watch the weather. It’s the same every day: mid 90s, with a chance of thunderstorms. I’ll be here, waiting for the sky to darken and for the heat in the house to simmer and thicken. Until my head aches, and my hair curls, and it’s time to turn on the air again and finish off all the wine.
7am and sticky here on the 20th of August. My sweaty fingers are making the keyboard damp.
Before your post, I was just thinking about how in just six weeks or so, we will start to see occasional beautiful weather days - if we survive our tropical environment until then. And we get to enjoy beautiful weather days well into March. We might even have a few tolerable days in April.
Don't you just hate it when it's sometimes warm and very muggy between Christmas and New Years? How many times have we not been able to see New Years fireworks shows because it was too foggy?
Posted by: CrescentCityRay | August 20, 2009 at 01:22 PM
We are in August and are still waiting for summer to show up. 60s and 70s and cool and wet since May, and hardly enough decent weather to take Libby to the park, and now winter is going to be breathing its ugly white head down our necks.
Tell T. Middy to remember that the definition of insanity is repeating the same behavior patterns over and over but expecting a different outcome...
Posted by: TLB | August 20, 2009 at 03:14 PM
Beautiful post. Please tell your husband there are many New Orleanians living in all those outposts that are still very connected to the city. It may mean listening to those 'strange areas" weather reports but I can tell you from personal experience there are New Orleanians in those areas listening. It might mean more to him thinking of it in that way.
Posted by: doctorj | August 21, 2009 at 01:55 AM