His curiosity was peaked when, on Ines’s bookshelves, he discovered The Delesseppes in the New World. On the back cover was a family tree that ended with Ines. Before he could open it, she angrily slapped the book out of his hand, rebuke in her eyes. Respect my privacy! But the damage was done. America was only a chapter in her family’s history. The names alone were stunning. Rich, stately names. French names, Old World names. New Orleans had so many names: the Big Easy, Nawlins, Nola, the Crescent City, the Boom-Boom Boomerang, Mardi Gras City, Birthplace of Jazz, Sin City, Voodoo City, Hot Chocolate City, the Lucky Charm. Ines’s family had even more exotic appellations: Gautreaux, Beauvais, Jaquillard, Larmeau, Mouleroux, Villemeur, going back at least three centuries. By the time he met her, Achilles knew that Ines’s mother wouldn’t like the name Achilles Holden Conroy. He was right. She even scowled as she said it, as if between her front teeth—as sharp as guillotines—she’d caught a bitter black currant. Was it a Creole name? She didn’t think so. A-sheel, as she pronounced it, was a Cajun name. “I knew some Cajuns in the lower Ninth Ward. They sure could throw a party.” She gazed wistfully at the ceiling for a moment. “They were brothers. One was named A-sheel.” She pointed to his table tent for emphasis.
It was almost two months after he’d first walked into St. Jude and his first time meeting her immediate family, which consisted of her mother and her uncle Boudreaux, who lived together in the Garden District, as far from the Ninth Ward as Paris was from Algiers. The Delesseppes family home was a stately stone Georgian mansion, constructed in 1806, when they migrated from Toulouse. They’d brought from France a Mopani dining table so vast that when they were sitting alone, Achilles called Ines on her cell phone to ask how she was doing. Fine, with you here. Intricately patterned tapestries and family portraits labeled like museum pieces lined the dining room walls, joined during the meal by a staff of white-coated, white-gloved attendants who, between courses, stood in the shadows of the room as still and silent as tombstones. Achilles was seated across from Ines. Mrs. Delesseppes sat opposite Boudreaux, where she could see the portrait of her recently deceased third husband hanging over her brother’s head. “Two lawyers and a doctor,” she said. “Not necessarily in that order.”
Troy would choke on his drool if he got one look at Ines’s mother. Even Achilles was enchanted by Mrs. Delesseppes, still as striking as her daughter. A graceful woman with hair like Jackie O, her right forearm suspended haughtily at her side in defiance of gravity, as if carrying a purse, her long legs confidently sliced the air. Like Ines, she had ripe lips, and when in thought, she bit the lower lip hard enough to leave two tiny indentations, an M in Morse code. If he ran his tongue over those two faint lines, neat as stitches, would they feel slight as a whisper, pronounced like gouges, or nothing at all? He was mesmerized by her melodious Southern accent, the carnivorous smile, and the deeply channeled shadow of her bosom. There was gravity defied.
“Those Cajuns had a quaint shotgun, with fleurs-de-lys stenciled in the front windows,” said Mrs. Delesseppes. “I remember it clearly. They lived below the industrial canal.”
“Really? When were you in the lower Ninth Ward?” asked Boudreaux, always smiling, always drinking, never drunk.
Mrs. Delesseppes answered her brother in what sounded like French, eliciting the censure of her family.
“Mama!”
“Heloise!”
She ignored them and asked, “Tell me A-sheel, how do you find New Orleans?”
Achilles hesitated. Most people seemed to assume there was no more natural destination than Nawlins. When people did ask, he usually mumbled a line about school or work or friends. Fortunately, Ines cut in.
“Achilles, Mama, like the warrior. And, you didn’t answer Uncle B’s question.”
“Certainly you don’t mean like the heel. It’s A-sheel,” said Mrs. Delesseppes. “Trust me, darling. I’ve lived here all my life.”
Ines huffed and winked at her uncle, plopping her elbows on the table. “Well? When did you see the lower Ninth Ward from anything but an aeroplane?”
Mrs. Delesseppes regarded her plate for a moment. “Bogalusa is no longer a reliable source for sausage. I must instruct Monique to start shopping at Basheman’s again.” She pointed to Achilles’s empty plate and snapped her fingers.
Before he could object, a servant in a white coat as tight as a straight-jacket was at Achilles’s side, serving tray in hand. The servant’s neck spilled out over a bowtie tied so tightly that Achilles knew if he pulled it, the man would explode.
“A-sheel, did Ines tell you we always outlive our men?” asked Mrs. Delesseppes.
And that was only the entrée.
The waiters held their breath like marksmen as they served course after course. After the oysters Rockefeller came turtle soup, then grilled andouille, then crabmeat mirlitons. The main course was a Creole bouillabaisse: lobsters, oysters, mussels, and scallops cooked in a tomato-based broth garnished with a yellow violet and swathed in wisps of steam, so spicy and sweet that Achilles had an urge to raise the dish and slurp the last drops trapped by the cursive D etched in the bottom of the wide, shallow bowl.
And for dessert, Mrs. Delesseppes asked, “Where is your family from?”
When Achilles said Maryland, she replied, “Oh, the southern state with the identity crisis.”
Achilles had never thought of the “old line” state that way, and didn’t know how to respond.
“Mama, have you talked to Aunt Harriet recently?” asked Ines.
“You know, dear, I’ve been so busy, I haven’t time for charity, dear. I’m already paying Sammy’s tuition for that fancy school in Atlanta. And for Saturdays, I’ve taken to attending morning mass. Besides, tears age one prematurely.” Mrs. Delesseppes zeroed back in on Achilles. “How long has your family been in Maryland?” She stretched out the last word, tasting each syllable, Mare-ree-land.
“Generations,” said Achilles.
“His grandparents are dead. His father just died, when he was on the way back from active duty. I mentioned this.” Ines looked to Boudreaux for help.
Boudreaux nodded solemnly.
“I meant before then. I don’t mean to upset. It was only a casual question.” She dropped her hand to the table, ending the discussion, then tapped her fingers as if to say, For now. “You know she does things just to spite me. Like writing on herself. Look at that horrid black smudge on her arm. Pitch. Pitch, I tell you. I raised her better than that.”
After dinner, Mrs. Delesseppes suggested they retire to the drawing room, where Ines cringed when her mother handed Achilles The Delesseppes in the New World, which she had commissioned to document their many cultural and commercial contributions to the New World. Achilles didn’t dare meet Ines’s stare as he made a show of licking his finger and settling into a chair to leisurely peruse the very book Ines had slapped from his hands only days before.
Parasols, stiff collars, buttoned boots. Blurry kids. A few death masks. Old shops and bars with French names. Delesseppes Brasserie. Café Delesseppes. Businesses. Delesseppes Tackle and Feed. Delesseppes & Son. Delesseppes & Co. Delesseppes Chicory and Tobacco. Delesseppes & Delesseppes Ltd. Stately couples in horse-drawn carriages. Large estates. Farms. In the middle of the book, a few Asians, and then a few Spanish, or very light-skinned blacks of the kind he had never before seen. Button boots, walking sticks, and horses with regal accessories.
As he leafed through the pages, Mrs. Delesseppes recounted the family history. The Delesseppes bought pews for slaves when St. Augustine was built in 1842. Ines said they should have bought their freedom. The Delesseppes first invested in Jax Brewery when it still made beer, and again when it became a tourist attraction of cultural and historical import. Capitalistic self-interest, said Ines. The Delesseppes fought in the battle of Chalmette Plantation, as they called the Battle of New Orleans. On the wrong side, according to Ines. They had varied relations of note, whatever that meant, but Mrs. Delesseppes was proudest of her fat
her, Paul Delesseppes. Paul, or Papa P as they called him, was the first councilman in St. Bernard Parish with African American blood and a leading critic of the plan to blow up the Caernarvon Levee. Ines giggled, then whooped until her cheeks shone with tears. Mrs. Delesseppes steadfastly continued her advance, making it clear that her family had a long and proud history. Ines conceded only that it was long, making it clear that unless you wrote it, history was hateful. Boudreaux, between sips of bourbon, murmured his agreement with both of them.
Mother and daughter flashed perfect teeth. The conversation waned, the remainder of the hour like watching a poorly dubbed movie. Eventually, Achilles understood that Ines and her mother got along like snipers. If he followed Boudreaux’s example, and stayed out of the line of fire, they would only shoot each other.
It was his first time around old money. The rich kids he’d known—or known of—from childhood lived in gated communities where the homes were built from one of three standard floor plans, and they all had identical front yards of bermuda grass cut as neat and clean as carpet. Each front door was one of four acceptable colors. In the Delesseppes’ neighborhood, each home was unique but they all fit together. The houses in New Orleans were older, larger, self-confident. Not unlike Mrs. Delesseppes.
Still reading, Achilles found himself stealing glances at Mrs. Delesseppes. In some photos he saw her resemblance, and in others none at all. She and Ines both looked remarkably like Papa P. His skin was very light, lighter even than Troy’s. White, actually. If they were always free, as Mrs. D had contended, how did they get the black in them? In 1850, Do you want any black in you? were fighting words. Had a free black married into the family? Were there free blacks? What was it like being a free black in a country where slavery was legal? Achilles would have never left the house.
Hearing that her grandfather Paul was coming over, Ines gathered their jackets and hustled Achilles out the door. Mrs. Delesseppes bid farewell with a smile and a queen’s wave, standing in the driveway until they made the corner, her raised hand a stubborn weathervane.
Achilles knew he’d made a bad impression on Ines’s family. He had been one step behind everybody; how else would he know which fork to use first, or to spoon soup away from his mouth?
“Sorry baby,” she said, “for the who’s-your-momma interrogation. The family name, genealogy, and we-kill-our-men-young-she-wolf talk. And A-sheel.” They were in Ines’s car and she shifted angrily, making him think that he wouldn’t mind her taking him for a spin when they got home.
“It doesn’t matter.” Of course they would be curious about him. Of course Mrs. Delesseppes wanted Ines to have a man with letters behind his name, and not SGT. Of course they would be proud of their history. They remembered when the Vieux Carré was New Orleans. Theirs was a lineage he found as vast and incomprehensible as owning a tract of land that extended beyond the horizon. Theirs was history personified, like entering in the middle of a play in innumerable acts.
“She knows how Achilles is pronounced.”
Achilles shrugged, of that long cured. “I know what they mean.”
Her voice tight, Ines said, “What if some guy at a shelter was like, ‘Yo, A-sheel, gimmie some more ham’? Why should she be different? That’s what’s wrong with her. No one stands up to her. If you don’t earn her respect now, you’ll never get it.”
“I just met them.”
“It’s like that saying, ‘Speak your mind even if your voice shakes.’”
In her profile, he saw Heloise Delesseppes, and imagined her at Ines’s age. They had the same luscious skin, smooth as cream, accented by sparkling freckles, and highlighted by honey eyes that glinted silver and pearl. The same long frame, and finely tapered fingers. The same stubborn streak, deep veins of opinion. They were bulletproof.
He made a pistol with his hand, kissed his index finger and pointed. “Think fast!”
“You got me.” Ines put her hand to her heart. “I’m sorry. I’m so embarrassed. We’re just so fucked up and old-fashioned sometimes. All the New Orleans shit, you know: good hair, bad hair; the ‘we’re Creole, not mulatto, or octoroon, or quadroon’ crap. It’s disgraceful, shameful, and unforgivable. They’re like dinosaurs; it’s a prehistoric mentality. It won’t be the first time they scared someone off,” said Ines.
“They’ll have to pry my cold, dead fingers off your ass.”
“You don’t know them.” She paused, then added, “I guess dinosaurs are still polluting the earth.”
“Huh?” asked Achilles.
“Never mind. You know that’s creepy,” said Ines.
“Don’t worry. It takes a lot more than that to scare me.”
“Who said I was worried?” asked Ines.
“You did.” Achilles chuckled. He thought it sweet when she was salty.
“Humph,” said Ines. “Really?”
“Seemed that way,” said Achilles, retreat in his voice, recoiling from her tone, unsure now if she was angry with them or him. He was frustrated to have squandered that precious moment when they were united against their families.
“I thought you didn’t scare easily.” Ines glanced his way.
“I don’t. Cold, dead hands,” he said.
Ines made a show of shivering, and shot a kiss back. “It’s not those cold, dead hands I want right now.”
Achilles’s leg jumped. She was nothing like her mother. Ines billed herself as a global citizen from New Orleans by way of New York. She drank beer from the bottle, and once, when drunk, had burped the ABCs. Ines’s concern and embarrassment brought home the full weight of the afternoon, the stress that crawled over him as he wandered the long, wainscoted halls—lined with daguerreotypes and Boudreaux’s mounted butterfly collection—looking for a bathroom. He felt like he had accidentally wandered into a museum where each display reflected his ignorance. As he’d passed the kitchen, the double doors momentarily parted and let escape exotic fragrances. His gaze following his nose, he glimpsed the kitchen staff, and realized he was the darkest person in the house who didn’t work there. He wouldn’t have noticed that before dating Ines, who was always pointing out skin tone, race, and sex—gender—in movies, on TV, and in public interactions. Indians were replacing blacks, she claimed. She complained about black women, like Beyoncé, being “caucasized,” a word she pronounced with vehemence, spitting it out as if it were sour. That was the tone he had just heard. The anger suffusing her voice was directed at her family, not at him.
They’d left in a hurry, she explained, because she refused to acknowledge her grandfather, who fled to St. Bernard to pass: He left as Zulu and returned Comus. She told Achilles how her aunt Harriet had Sammy out of wedlock by an addict who pimped her, how Achilles couldn’t know what it was like to go to a soul food restaurant in Harlem and have the server explain the menu, then retreat to the racist, backwards city where you were born because it’s the one city where you don’t have to explain what you are, and then realize that your name was all that ever mattered.
“I can’t see Paul. I know I’m supposed to feel sorry for him, but I want him to suffer the way he’s made us suffer. He’s a coward and opportunist. Anyone who abandons their family doesn’t deserve them. Why should he have it both ways?”
Except Paul, how Ines’s family was fucked up he didn’t exactly know. Achilles didn’t care if they were Creole or quadroons or whatever. He couldn’t figure the math anyway, and the more he saw Boudreaux drink, the more Achilles thought of him as a macaroon. Achilles guessed that Ines would tell him in her own time. He understood that people could be embarrassed for reasons clear only to themselves.
Right then, right there, on St. Charles Avenue, was the first of many moments he regretted not admitting he was adopted. After each visit they made to Magazine Street over the next few months, Ines left in a funk, and he wanted more and more to offer his life as proof that it could be worse.
The majority of their time together they spent limbs locked. They fucked. A lot. Until sore.
He, blistered. Her, a little raw. Afterwards, they’d lie on their backs, slick as seals, with only their hands and feet touching and watch the shadow of the fan blades grow long and faint. He swore steam rose from their bodies. And it only got better. Everything he’d read about, she was up for. She was open but in control, and made that clear the night she wrested his head from between her thighs, already polished with sweat and saliva, and said, “You go at sex the way you walk.”
“The way I walk?” His erection subsided. His dick didn’t like the way that sounded.
“Remember when we went to the movies? You saw the marquee, and led me diagonally across the lot, through that short alley, between two moving vans, and jaywalked. A straight line to the goal.”
He rolled back on his haunches.
“Watch me,” she said. “Don’t touch me except where I put you. I’ll tell you if I need help. Otherwise, don’t touch me. You’ll want to do something slick-like, like stick your finger in my ass or something. Every time you do that, you reset the meter. Be patient. And you shouldn’t drive anywhere until the engine is warmed up anyway.” She took his hand, squeezing two of his fingers between her own, moved the fingers back and forth across the outer edges first, ruffling the faint downy trail below the navel before brushing along the shorter, bristly hair between her legs, at one point moving slower and slower, his hand just grazing just teasing, then faster, then tracing the fingers straight up the center, parting the folds, her back bucking as she did, and slipping in only the tip of his finger, and Achilles bit his lip at the heat as she made larger and larger circles around the outside, her other hand strumming up and down until his breath was as shallow as hers, shorter and shorter her breath, faster and faster the fingers, until she was rigid and then melted, and he was as long catching his breath as she was. His hand. His hand. And his hand, feverish with the memory of her skin, spent all that night stroking his chin, bowled like an oxygen mask.
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