Wading Home: A Novel of New Orleans (8 page)

“Yes, sir.” Parmenter slapped a hand on the arm of his chair. “Well. May I offer you a drink? Cognac? A glass of lemonade?”

“Anything cold would be fine.”

“Thank God for generators. Have you eaten yet? I’m afraid my cook is in exile in Bogalusa, but I’ve been known to put together a sandwich that more than one person has survived.” He pushed back a lock of too-long white hair from his eyes. As an afterthought he added, “Though, mind you, it won’t be as good as your father’s.”

“I already ate. Thanks.”

“Just make yourself at home.”

Matthew got up and went to the kitchen, his house shoes scuffing and cane tapping along on the high-glossed red oak floors. Julian stood up and stretched his arms. He hadn’t realized how tired he was until now, as heaviness draped his body like a curtain of lead.

Julian’s gaze fell on a long wall leading to a hallway, where hung a huge, gold-trimmed oil painting. Dressed in a white gown that swirled at her feet, a woman smiled cryptically from the canvas, her long white arm extended, her gloved hand resting on a wooden banister at the bottom of a large staircase.

Parmenter’s wife, Clarisse, Julian thought. A real New Orleans socialite. Probably done before one of the Mardi Gras balls.

He remembered vaguely the last time he’d seen her.
I heard your mama was feeling poorly.
A thin white woman in thin white linen standing at the screen door. Straightbacked, defiant against the codes of her station, the woman had boarded a streetcar and then a bus that took her across town to a place she’d never been—a handmade world of shotgun houses, lazy remnants of jazz, whiffs of barbecue, and angel’s trumpet trees. All just to bring an ailing black woman a tuna-salad-on-lettuce-leaf lunch and a pot of clove and sassafras tea. She’d put the picnic basket on the kitchen table while Julian told his bedridden mother, “You got some company.”

The woman had smiled and followed him into the sickroom, where white curtains ruffled from a breeze through the open window. She turned to him.
Would you mind putting water on for tea?
Bands of sun through kitchen blinds laying golden stripes across the walls, the water’s slow boil, the scent of gardenias hanging over the porch steps where she had been. A “fine lady,” his mother’s frail voice had uttered later. But only now, years later, Julian wondered. Could she have known what her husband had done?

It was a thought that did not ride in alone—it was saddled with a twinge of guilt. No reason to suspect the kind woman’s visit was in any way an apology for a husband whose business affairs were as unknowable to her as the mountains of the moon. Just a charitable gesture, the way southerners do. The woman’s visit, the tea and lunch, seemed to lift his mother’s spirits that week, which would be her last. When a stroke claimed Clarisse’s own life less than a year later, the image of the delicate southern lady, head high, dressed in crisp white linen, stuck in Julian’s mind.

Another frame held an enlarged black and white photograph, grainy and slightly faded—Simon Fortier and Matthew Parmenter, right hands clasped in handshake in front of a green awning and a sign announcing PARMENTER’S CREOLE KITCHEN. Opening day. Both men nattily dressed in starched and pressed white shirts, heads full of thick, longish hair, faces full of cocky grins. Two bright young men on a tear in the world, owner and head chef, employer and employee, friend and friend.

But the next frame dulled his eyes, drained blood from his face. Parmenter again, smiling, shaking hands in front of the awning of the restaurant. But his father’s image was replaced with another familiar one—the president of the United States

“I hope you like iced tea. It’s all I have.” Parmenter was standing behind him holding a tray with two full glasses. Seeing Julian’s stunned eyes and dropped jaw, he said, “Oh, haven’t you seen that before?” He ambled to the living room and set the tray of glasses on a small table near Julian’s chair.

Julian no longer had a taste for tea, but sat and sipped anyway. He well remembered Simon coming home excited that night. It was more than a dozen years ago, just before his father retired.
Simon, I want you to meet someone
, Matthew had yelled above the cackle of boiling pots on the six-burner range, while his head chef wiped greasy fingers on a towel.
The man was in my kitchen!
Simon said, his voice pitched high, ringing with giddy joy.
The man was actually in my kitchen!
The president’s strong paw engulfed Simon’s hand, and his eyes seemed fixed on his as he praised Simon’s shrimp etouffee, his bourbon-laced bread pudding, and of course, his red beans and rice. Then, he truly
listened
while Simon told about his Auntie Maree, his teacher and the true chef in the family, from the old home place at Silver Creek.

But a picture with the president? Apparently an honor reserved only for owners, not the lowly genius chef whose artistry had put the restaurant on the culinary world map, and more money in Parnenter’s pockets than he could spend in a lifetime.

“The president was a big fan of your father’s cooking. He came whenever he was in the state, right up until the week we closed.”

Right
, Julian thought.
Maybe the president would have been a decent business partner.
He stared down into the tea, then took a long, thoughtful drink.

Parmenter put down his cup, his whitish brows furrowed. “I want you to know, Julian, I will do whatever I can to help you find your father. I count him among my dearest friends. You know that.”

Julian paused a moment, then spoke quietly.

“Yes, sir.”

“I know a few people at the police department. They are stretched horribly thin, but there’s at least one or two men I can count on for help.”

“I’d appreciate whatever you could do, sir.”

“By the way, where are you staying?”

“At the Best Western in Baton Rouge.”

“Oh? Why don’t you stay here? I have so much room. My chef, I’m sure, will be back soon, my housekeeper too. You’ll be so much more comfortable…”

Julian bit his bottom lip.
Stay here?
He didn’t even want to be here now.

“Thanks. I’m good where I am.”

For the next few minutes, Julian listened while Parmenter went on about the night of the storm, the sounds of deafening thunder and rain, the crashing of tree limbs. The feral braying and cawing of the wind and the eerie calm when it finally ended. How it was so different from anything he’d been through before, even Betsy.

“It was terrible, I must say, a little frightening. But I suppose here in the Garden District we fared better than most.”

You got that right.
Julian finished his tea and got up to leave. Parmenter hobbled up with his cane. “Well, all right. I’ll make some calls today. You checked the whole neighborhood? No one has seen him?”

“Sir, there’s nobody
in
the neighborhood. Daddy’s part of the Treme took on about four or five feet of water in most of the houses and the streets. But there was a whole lot more than that in some of the other parts of town.”

Julian told him about the Lower Ninth, where houses had floated from their slabs, and New Orleans East and even further away in St. Bernard Parish, where the waters rose to the eaves and even covered some rooftops until the whole city was drained.

Parmenter bowed his head, frowning, his face pale. “I haven’t been too well lately. I haven’t been out of my house since…I listened to my radio for a while yesterday until the battery died. I guess I didn’t realize…”

For a brief moment, Julian felt a twinge of sympathy. If Parmenter had had children, grandchildren, they would have rushed in to look after him, occupying rooms in the enormous house, fluttering and fussing around him. And maybe he would have had a clue about the devastation in the rest of the city.

Parmenter opened the door and the two stepped out onto the gallery. The afternoon sun was full, the twisted branches and leaves of trees spindled out like disheveled hair after a night of restless sleep, and the air was thick and muggy.

“By the way,” he said, “how is the young lady, your friend? I remember meeting her once years ago. What was her name? Very beautiful.”

Where did that come from? He had not thought about her in months, and now, twice in one day, the thought of Vel had been forced on him by people who barely knew her.

Even Sylvia hadn’t brought up her name (out of kindness, he was sure), a fact that had made him more grateful than ever to his father’s girlfriend.

“Velmyra,” he said. “Hartley. And I haven’t seen her in a while.”

Parmenter’s face flushed. “Oh, my. I’m sorry. I thought you two were, you know. I remember your father seemed quite fond of her.”

True. Simon had loved her as much as he had, or so it seemed, and appeared crestfallen when it had ended. He felt something bob in his stomach, again.

Like this was all he needed, like he didn’t have enough on his mind. If he was put out with Parmenter before, he was pissed at him now.

“Yeah, well,” Julian looked at his watch. “Sorry, I have to be someplace. Daddy’s friend Sylvia is having some folks over and I’d told her I’d come by.”

She’d said around six. And even though it was not yet three, Julian couldn’t see staying at Parmenter’s another minute. The man had offered his help; he’d done what he came to do.

Parmenter followed him to the edge of the porch as Julian descended the steps.

“One minute, Julian.”

Julian turned to see the frail-looking man, narrow shoulders hunched, clasping his robe close around his neck as a breeze ruffled it. In the outdoor light, his skin seemed more tawny and ravaged with time, his eyes two shallow pools of fading light.

“There’s something I need to tell you,” he said, squinting as the afternoon sun blanched his face. “I…I am not well.”

“Sir?”

“What I am saying to you, Julian, is that I am dying. I don’t have much longer to live.”

Julian felt his breath catch for a moment.

Parmenter looked out over the street at the magnolias beyond the neutral ground, at the sway of cypress leaves on the trees that hovered over the streetcar tracks. “As you know, I have no family here. After I lost Clarisse, your father was like a brother to me. And you. You were like the son I never had. Oh, I know we have not been close. I wasn’t even sure that you liked me. But Simon told me so much about your life, your success, I felt as if you were mine. I never watched television, but I bought one the day you were to be on that late night show…what’s the one?”

“
The Tonight Show.
”

He smiled. “Yes, that’s it. I was as proud of you as your father. I have to believe Simon is safe somewhere. That being the case, it is imperative that I see him right away. I…ah, I have some unfinished business with him.”

Julian nodded, centering his gaze on Parmenter’s weakened eyes. He wondered if the “unfinished business” had anything to do with a small fortune that should have been his father’s.

“I’ll contact my friends with the police department today. And when your father is found, please bring him to me as soon as possible. Your father owes me something, and it is important that we settle it before I, uh, expire.”

Julian’s eyes bulged—he couldn’t help it. Owes
him
something?

“When you find him, would you bring him to me? I am asking as a favor.”

What else could he say?

“Yes, sir.”

He had three hours until dinner at Sylvia’s. So he drove through the streets of the city he barely recognized.

He steered the Neon through blighted neighborhoods of ruined houses, streets piled with debris, missing street signs, and bluetarped roofs. Stray dogs nibbling at garbage piles. Homeless men, dazed, wandering the streets. And occasionally, a rental car parked in front of a water-ruined house while family members, faces distorted with shock or disbelief, empty their homes of drowned possessions, the flotsam of upended lives.

It crossed his mind to take the bridge over to the Lower Ninth, where some of his old friends lived, but the thought of it made his heart cringe. He’d seen the TV coverage—it was like a war zone, the TV anchors had said. Some houses twisted, buckled, smashed, crumbled, reduced to piles of rotting wood, and some missing altogether. Worse than any catastrophe the country had ever seen, but he would have to save it for another day, when he had the stomach for it.

As he turned the corner to Lavalle Street in the Treme where his father lived, Matthew Parmenter was still on his mind. What in the world could his father owe
him?
As for the man’s startling pronouncement about his health, it had softened Julian’s heart—some. How old was Matthew? Eighty-five? He lived his last decades in wealth and leisure. Simon was seventy-six, and as Matthew’s life was ending, Simon’s was in doubt. But today the hope in Sylvia’s eyes shined like a lighthouse beam piercing thick fog. It helped him cling to a slippery notion—
Daddy is all right, Daddy is alive.

And if he’s alive, Julian thought, he’ll want that book.

The idea came to him after Sylvia had given him the Louis Armstrong record. If its retrieval could mean so much to Julian, the recovery of the old family Bible, no matter its condition, would mean everything to Simon. Little things. Little things mattered in big times. Julian pulled up to the house, parked near the rusting chain-link fence, took the paper filter from his pocket, and strapped it over his mouth and nose.

The Bible had been in the family for more than a century, his father had said. And while the names of the ancestors had meant little to him when he was a boy, Julian’s young eyes had grown to incandescent globes when his father pointed to Julian’s name, telling him the story of the night he was born.

How he’d slid out of his mother’s belly that night barely breathing, with a tiny hole in his heart. How the doctors shook their heads—they just didn’t know about his chances. How, even though the rain was blinding, Simon took the streetcar home during the surgery just to get that Bible and record his son’s name and birth date—etching a new life into being with a firm hand and India ink. How he’d prayed with that book in his hands, imploring God and every ancestor he could think of to hold fast for his son.