Wading Home_ A Novel Of New Orleans Part 7

This was not cool. Not at all what he wanted to talk about. She went on praising his playing, telling him how happy she had been for his success (despite what they had been through, but that was all past, wasn't it?) and how she'd even taped the show so her mother could watch it.

He said very little, an occasional nodding grunt, and she seemed perfectly fine with a conversation that was decidedly lopsided, her questions exponentially longer than his answers. How did it feel, being famous like that? Did people recognize him on the streets? What about the travel? Did it get old after a while, never sleeping in his own bed? And what was Jay Leno like?

"I mean I know this is what you wanted, but is it, you know, as great as you expected it to be? Does it-"

"Velmyra," he interrupted, gritting his throbbing jaw. "I can't play right now."

There. He had said it. And he realized that, since the accident, it was the first time he'd ever said those words.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, I can play play, a little, for a little while. But I had a car accident several months ago. My jaw...I had surgery. The doctor said it should be as good as new, but it's...slow. And I tried to come back too soon. Right now, my embouchure is c.r.a.p. Nothing feels right."

Out of the corner of his eye, he could see, feel her looking at him, eyebrows raised, eyes stunned, lips parted. She was silent a moment, then turned to stare out the windshield.

"Oh, my G.o.d. I didn't know. I'm so sorry."

"It's OK. I'll be able to play after a while. I'm just impatient."

The awkward silence began again. He was testy now. He fidgeted in his seat, lowered the armrest, and put his elbow on it. Adjusted the seat with the k.n.o.b under it.

"d.a.m.n rental cars," he said.

Now he was angry, at what he didn't know. Why did she have to bring that up?

Part of him wanted to ride in silence for the rest of the trip, and part of him wanted to tell her about how he'd cried when he'd come out of surgery and felt the huge bandage on his face. About how it felt to have to cancel a boatload of gigs. About the embarra.s.sing comeback disaster in j.a.pan, at only the hottest club in the whole d.a.m.n country. Not to mention his band.

The quintet he led-Antoine Johnson on piano, Hector Rubalcaba on ba.s.s, Walter Haymaker on tenor, and Jeffrey Mobile on drums, all good friends-had been with him through fat times and lean, but had all taken gigs (temporarily, they said) while he healed. They had to make a living, didn't they? They would be back, for sure, the minute he was ready.

Sure.

And part of him wanted to say something to her that would make her feel what he was feeling now. Regret. Anger at the past. Something like, Why'd you marry that dude, so quick after we split? How could you have? What was that all about? Why'd you marry that dude, so quick after we split? How could you have? What was that all about? Or, Or, How soon did you realize what a horrible mistake you'd made? How soon did you realize what a horrible mistake you'd made?

But he said nothing.

They drove on mostly in silence. Velmyra made an occasional comment about the landscape, about how she wished she had her sketchpad with her, then reached in her huge cloth shoulder bag and realized she did. She made etchings on the paper with a charcoal pencil; cypress trees, egrets, oaks dripping moss. An eagle in flight, a pelican perched on a telephone pole. They stopped for gas and bottled water and clean restrooms, and Velmyra bought potato chips and orange juice. When they got back in the car, Julian looked at his map, then turned off the interstate onto a smaller highway.

In a few minutes they were miles into deep country, and the sun sat higher now above tall pines in variations on a theme of green: the pale greens of saplings, the deep summer greens of the mature trees. Julian stretched his shoulders and looked across the road at row after row of straightback evergreens and wispy clouds pasted against the piercing blue. He felt better now, and thought, this is not so bad. this is not so bad. The air was cooler among the trees, the sky bluer. It was actually good to get away from the city. The air was cooler among the trees, the sky bluer. It was actually good to get away from the city.

They drove on, and he sensed something had changed with Velmyra. Her silence now had an uneasiness about it; she blinked her eyes the way she used to years ago, when she had something that needed saying on her mind.

"I'm really sorry, Julian." She was shaking her head, her eyes apologetic. "I didn't know anything about your accident. Sylvia didn't tell me. It must have been horrible for you. For your career, and everything."

Sympathy always made him feel a little uncomfortable, softening his defense, breaking him down. But still, he was impressed that she had been thinking about it all this time. He sensed her comment was genuine, and he allowed it to comfort him.

"It's OK. I just need to wait. Work my way back into playing slowly. I'll be all right. Daddy kept telling me not to jump back into it, but I wouldn't listen."

She nodded, smiling slightly. "Speaking of your father, how's his friend, Mr. Parmenter? The one who owned the restaurant? Did he make it through the storm OK? I know your dad and he were close."

Parmenter. She had a good memory. He wanted to tell her that the man who'd shamelessly ripped off his father was just fine for someone who should be in jail.

"Parmenter? He made it through the storm OK but his health's real bad. Told me he wants to see Daddy as soon as I find him. Says Daddy 'owes him something.' Strange, considering how much he owes Daddy."

"What do you mean?"

He hadn't talked to anybody about this. But what the h.e.l.l. He felt like talking now. He was away from the city, on a country road, sheltered by tall trees. He felt safe. There was something about being here in the country, and being with the woman he once believed he could trust with his life, that made him feel he could tell the truth.

He turned off the narrow road onto one even narrower and full of gravel that spat up like popping corn against the undercarriage of the car. Trees hugged the roadside, their thick branches trellising the road like a dark, shading arch.

"There's a story about that," he began. He slowed the car and leaned back into the seat, his wrist resting on the top of the steering wheel.

"Years ago, when Daddy was young, he was just about the best d.a.m.n chef in New Orleans."

9.

Two Louisiana boys, one a tall and strapping blond, the other as wiry as a willow branch with skin the rich brown of live oak bark, came back from their tours of duty itching to begin the lives spared by an undeclared and nameless war. Matthew Parmenter had been thirty-one and Simon Fortier twenty-two when they met in a MASH in Korea. Country-mannered, with Crescent City grit beneath his nails, Matthew had been a supply sergeant, and young Simon, fresh from a wooded backwater called Silver Creek more than a hundred miles from Parmenter's home, brought the Fortier family recipes to his job as an army cook.

It was the dark, nutty, spicy roux of Simon's gumbo that seasoned their friendship. Sitting in the mess tent at dinner, Parmenter tasted the savory sauce, and a single spoonful brought New Orleans to mind. A second one, and he was walking through its jasmine-scented gardens of New Orleans and palm-laden courtyards, his homesickness kept at bay by French Quarter cooking half a world away. Parmenter lingered over Simon's artfully prepared meals and took a liking to the homeboy chef. Their conversations over coffee and bread pudding ran to boyhood stories, teenage tales, and boredom with Army life. When the war finally ended, they shook hands and parted, each heading back to their respective Louisiana homes.

Home just long enough to shake foreign dirt from his shoes and an odd war from his mind, Matthew wandered the French Quarter one sun-blazed Sunday after church, and stumbled upon a hand-scribbled chalkboard menu outside a tiny cafe. Hungry and aimless, he stopped in to try his luck with the red beans and rice. One spoonful of the familiar sauce and he smiled, asking to see the cook. When Simon strolled out in a white ap.r.o.n splotched with gumbo roux, Matthew grabbed him into a bear hug.

"You?" Matthew said, a smile lighting his lean, suntanned face. "What are you doing here?"

Simon's grin was electric, his brown eyes sparkling. "Didn't I always tell you I was the best cook in the South? Where'd you think I'd be?"

The two swapped wartime memories and peacetime plans while Matthew downed three bowls of Simon's special. More than a year pa.s.sed before Matthew's vision, planted that day in the back of his brain, bloomed into something worthy of words. With the blond man's small inheritance from a recently deceased uncle, and Simon's wizardry at a kitchen stove, Matthew conceived an elegant French Quarter restaurant that could play host to the world. Down-home friendly, uptown chic. High toned, yet easy mannered. Dainty white candles set on fine white linen spread across intimate tables, courtyard seating out back beneath blue sky and sun dappling through palmetto leaves. A Creole restaurant with Simon as head chef and Matthew as owner and manager.

Within six months, Parmenter's Creole Kitchen opened its doors in a run-down s.p.a.ce oozing rustic charm on Chartres Street next to an Irish bar. And in six more months, Friday and Sat.u.r.day night reservations at premium tables were booked weeks into the future. If the prime location and the tony yet casual atmosphere brought first-time customers in by the dozens, the menu brought them back again and again.

From soup to nuts, the entire menu was superb. Simon's Original Belle Rive Bread Pudding, sumptuously dressed in dark rum and cherry liqueur, made mouths water, and the crawfish jambalaya with a side of spicy boudin disappeared from plates within minutes after it was served. Even the Blanche Dubois Mint Julep Sundae, hastily concocted by Simon at Matthew's request, was an instant success. But the red beans and rice starred on the small menu, barely altered from Auntie Maree's recipe, and before long famous politicians, actors, athletes, and musicians from all over the world pulled up to the tables and rolled their eyes dreamily between mouthfuls of the delectable Creole fare.

By its fifth year, Parmenter's had been mentioned in no less than four national culinary magazines, and even enjoyed a paragraph of praise in the New Yorker New Yorker. But the restaurant's fate was sealed one afternoon when the president of the United States reserved the restaurant for a night and brought in a party of nine. Each ordered the red beans and rice, and each got another order to go.

Years pa.s.sed. Hungry people came in droves, then told their friends, who also came and then told their friends. Simon was doing what he loved best in a state-of-the-art kitchen for people who were as grateful as they were hungry and free with their praise. Matthew kept the bottom line steeped in black ink and ran the restaurant with army efficiency. In time both men got married; Simon to Ladeena, his doe-eyed childhood sweetheart from Pointe Louree, and Matthew to Clarisse, a pet.i.te blond legal secretary who'd winked at him daily from her cross-legged perch at the restaurant bar. While Matthew remained childless, Simon sired a son.

It was when Julian was in high school that Matthew's new idea took shape; why not package the red beans and rice in a dry mix and sell it at the restaurant? A little bit of New Orleans to take back to Cleveland, Washington, or Kansas City. A souvenir of a sumptuous dining experience near the mouth of the Mississippi.

"It's a natural," Parmenter said. "People will buy it like crazy."

Simon frowned. He used fresh herbs. No way to subst.i.tute dry ones and get the same result. "And besides," he said. "My recipe's not for sale."

But the mix wouldn't have to taste exactly like the restaurant dish; it only had to be a reminder. And the family secrets of the recipe would be guarded like gold.

After hours of wrangling, Simon agreed to concoct a special dry-herb version of his family recipe. Wrapped in clear plastic packaging with a colorful label and an artfully tied red ribbon, it was sold in the front of the store near the cash register, along with T-shirts and postcards of the restaurant. Matthew was right. The mix, Parmenter's Creole Kitchen Red Beans and Rice, was an immediate and huge success.

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Velmyra turned to Julian, perplexed.

"So what was the problem? It sounds like things worked out OK."

Julian slowed the car to accommodate an S-curve in the road. "Things worked out great," he said, "for Matthew Parmenter."

He breathed a sigh, then went on. "Parmenter offered Daddy a flat fee for the new recipe and the right to reproduce it. Ten thousand dollars. More than he'd ever seen in his life, so he grabbed it. But Parmenter said the mix would be sold in the restaurant-he never said anything about taking it to national grocery chains. That's what he did, though. A year and a half after the deal the stuff was everywhere: the French Market, souvenir shops, grocery stores as far away as New York and California. Even airport shops all over Louisiana and the South. I saw an article about Parmenter a few years ago in New Orleans Business Weekly New Orleans Business Weekly about about his his red beans and rice mix. He'd grossed millions from it." red beans and rice mix. He'd grossed millions from it."

Velmyra let out a long, low whistle. "You're kidding."

"Daddy took his ten grand and fixed the roof on the house, and helped me pay my tuition at Tulane," Julian said. "Parmenter took his money, bought that fancy mansion in the Garden District, and retired."

Velmyra nodded soberly. "I see."

They were silent for a while, as Julian negotiated the snaking turns through wooded backcountry. When the road straightened again, he turned to look at Velmyra.

"Daddy never complained. When I saw the stuff on a shelf in a deli in Manhattan, I asked Daddy about it. He just laughed it off. Said it wasn't his best business deal."

"Daddy never cared all that much about money. It was never that much of a big deal to him. But Parmenter knew what he was doing; he knew he was cheating Daddy. And Daddy still treated him like his best friend."

"So you believe Parmenter deliberately took advantage of your father."

"What do you think?" Julian snapped toward her. "When I found out about it, Daddy and me, we had it out. I told him the man was getting rich off of his recipe, and he should go to Parmenter and demand a fair share of the profits. Or get a lawyer. Daddy thought I was nuts. He blew me off."

"Like you said, Simon never cared that much about money."

"It wasn't so much about the money. It was about friendship. It was about what's fair. Would you have done that to a friend?"

Velmyra tilted her head thoughtfully toward the window. "I'd like to think not."

"Exactly."

"I get your point. But maybe your father thought it was about friendship, too."

"What do you mean?"

"Maybe he thought keeping his friend was more important than money. Maybe he thought about the money and the friendship, and chose the friendship. And if...ooh, be careful."

Julian swerved to miss a squirrel darting across the road as he made another sharp turn.

"I think this is the right way," he said. "At least I hope it is."

At the right of the turn he spied an old barn with chipped red paint and slouching as if it could be tipped over with a good strong push.

"There. That's the barn. This is the right way. We're almost there."

Velmyra turned to look at the barn and the stand of trees surrounding it. Banks of trees and brush hugged the road. As they drove further, taller trees canopied the road and veiled it in dim gray light, almost completely obscuring the sun. This was the part Julian remembered as a boy, being in the deep country surrounded by so much lushness it was almost scary, caught in the dark huddle of trees, nested in a mystery of green.

"This was what Daddy cared about. Land. Land was always Daddy's fortune."

Velmyra gazed out the window. "Well, it's gorgeous land."

They drove down the path, the Neon kicking up red dust and rocks and bouncing along on the uneven grading. When they reached the end of the lane, Julian pointed to an old cabin nestled between two live oak trees.

Julian looked at Velmyra. "We're here."

"This is it?"

"Yeah."

Genevieve lived here alone now. The front of the cabin, the patchy siding showing more raw wood than paint, the crude, warped cypress floorboards of the porch and sagging eaves, gave nothing away; it looked the way it always had when he was a young boy. Untended, like no one was home.

But the certainty that his father was not here descended from the air around him, worked its way into his throbbing temples, his shoulders, and his back, and settled over his eyes like a cloud, darkening everything in view.

"I don't have to go inside." He looked over at Velmyra. "I know he's not here."

"How do you know?"

"I just do."

Julian got out, leaned against the car door, arms folded across his chest, his head down. Velmyra got out, walked to the porch, and knocked on the door. When she turned the doork.n.o.b, the door gave out a squeaking groan.

"It's open."

When Julian joined her on the porch, they went inside. It was a sea of white; white sheets covering most of the furniture, white dust covering everything else. There was a faded yellow and orange plaid sofa and a recliner covered in green velour. A chrome-legged table of yellow Formica and four chrome-trimmed vinyl kitchen chairs sat near a window. A small ash coffee table, a china cabinet of knotted pine, and an old portable Magnovox television atop an older television console took up s.p.a.ce in a tiny living room that smelled of damp wood, mildew, and old bacon grease.

"There must be someone close by." Velmyra touched a lace doily on the back of the recliner. "The place was unlocked."

Julian looked at her with a wry half-smile. "It's unlocked because we're in the country. n.o.body ever locks anything around here."

Velmyra nodded, smiling. "Right."

Julian walked around the dusty room, absently fingering the backs of chairs and the tops of tables, thinking about his father's house in the city, covered in brown sludge and consumed in mold.

"If you had told me a year ago that this place would look like a palace compared to Daddy's house in New Orleans, I would've thought you were crazy."

The walk through the kitchen against the unenven floors took him slightly uphill, then level, then down, as the settling floorboards squeaked beneath his shoes. A swarm of memories nested in his head: the steaming heat of the damp kitchen on summer evenings, sniffing the Old Bay spice can while Simon and Aunt Genevieve prepared dinner from Auntie Maree's sacred recipes with fresh Creole tomatoes and herbs his mother Ladeena had picked from the garden, and whatever Simon had caught that morning in the creek.

In the deep backwoods of memory, Aunt Genevieve hummed church songs as she rolled out dough for biscuits. This little light of mine, I'ma gonna let it shine... This little light of mine, I'ma gonna let it shine... She sprinted around the kitchen like a woman half her age, snapping her fingers at him- She sprinted around the kitchen like a woman half her age, snapping her fingers at him-Bring me that bucket of crawdads from the porch-or scolding him for not wiping his feet before he placed them on the pockmarked linoleum.

With closed eyes, he could smell the raw fish laid out on the table waiting for Simon's gutting knife, the rich spices of a tomato-ey Creole sauce bubbling on the stove while his father stirred plump white rice in a cast iron pot. He was still stranded in the sepia fog of a childhood summer day when Velmyra came in the kitchen.

Mist glazed Julian's eyes. "Well. I guess I'm back to square one."

"I'm sorry, Julian."