by Arden, Alys
I stood in the doorway and watched as the four of them bustled about, each of them wrapped up in their duties. The old couple was wiping down the furniture with spritzer that smelled like pine. Jeanne was tugging on her blonde hair while meticulously recording inventory on a clipboard, and Sébastien was lugging in giant sacks of coffee beans from the back alley.
I tried to put my bag down gently, but the weight of the canned goods made a clank. Everyone paused and turned their heads in unison.
“Adele!” cried the twins, cueing everyone to hustle over and make a fuss. French, English, everyone talking over each other: after spending so much time alone recently, it felt like a party.
Jeanne threw her arms around me.“Comment était Paris?I want to know everything!”
“Misérable,”I replied.“Tout le monde parle français à Paris!”
She laughed. “Well, it’s a good thing you have such a brilliant French tutor!”
When I was nine, my father had decided immersion wasn’t enough, and started paying Jeanne to teach me things like grammar.
“Wow, your accent is better than mine now! Très impressionnant.”
“J’en doute.I seriouslydoubt it.” I couldn’t imagine myself ever being better than Jeanne atanything. They were only four years older than me, but she was about to finish her master’s degree in biochemistry, was engaged to a med student, had the confidence of a beauty queen, and all of this before she was legally able to drink. Maybe that’s what happens when you get to skip the formidable high school years? Yes, the twins were both some kind of super-geniuses.
Sébastien leaned forward to gently kiss both of my cheeks. “Salut, Adele, bienvenue.” His voice was quiet, but I could tell he was just as excited as his sister. His shyness caused us both to blush a little. “What happened to your face?” He pushed his black-rimmed glasses closer to his baby-blues.
I sighed. “It’s an embarrassing story involving a bird. How long have you guys been back?” I felt kind of bad. I’d been so wrapped up in trying to navigate the heinous waters of Parisian boarding school, I’d done a crummy job keeping in touch with the people I actually cared about.
“We just got back from Cambridge yesterday.” Jeanne pulled my arm and whisked me down to a café table. “I thought being displaced would be terrible, Adele, but M.I.T. was SO amazing. I got to work with—”
“We,”Sébastien corrected.“We got to work with three different Nobel Laureates.”
“And they even put Mémé and Pépé up in this adorable little colonial house. It was so beautiful, all the xanthophylls, carotenoids and anthocyanins—”
“She’s referring to the different colors of the changing leaves,” Sébastien translated. “They actually have four seasons in Massachusetts.”
I gave him my all-too-familiar “thank you for explaining her craziness” look.
“But thank goodness we were able to leave before winter,” their grandmother interjected from across the room. “They got thirty inches of snow in one blizzard last year! Can you imagine? These old bones do not shovel snow.”
“Adele! I can’t believe I forgot to ask.” Jeanne’s usual scrutinizing, aquamarine eyes grew wide with concern. “Ta mère?What was she like?”
Everyone else pretended to go back to work as I scrambled to figure out what to say about my mother.
All the way across the Atlantic, I had imagined one hundred different scenarios for my joyful reunion with my mother, wherein she would tell me a complicated, heartbreaking story explaining how she had been forced to abandon me and my father and had lived in agony ever since. In some versions I cried, in others I yelled, in most we ended up drinking tea next to a fireplace and talking for hours.
But any pathetic fantasies I had entertained about finally rebuilding a relationship with my mother burst upon arrival in Paris when the only person who came to greet me at Aéroport Paris–Charles de Gaulle was her driver, Paul-Louis, who took me directly to boarding school. There was no trace of her cold-blooded heart other than a small bottle of champagne in the car with a beautiful card that said,
Bienvenue à Paris, mon amour.
Bisous,
Brigitte
It was probably the standard greeting she used for all of her acquaintances arriving at the airport. Not that I was surprised by my mother’s epic fail. I had just thought that maybe with the Storm and all, she might suddenly have started caring that I was alive. There had been a basket of luxurious French beauty products and boxes and boxes of Chanel dresses waiting for me in my dorm room, but I had to wait another week before even hearing from Brigitte. I was in full-on rage mode by the time our first meeting had occurred.
“What was she like?” I repeated. “I wouldn’t really know. I saw her three times over the course of two months. We had approximately seventeen interactions, if you include voicemail, text, and email. I did, however, see ma grand-mère a few times. She was appalled by my French but bought me racks of fancy clothes to make up for it.”
“To make up for being appalled, or to make up for your appalling French?”
“Hmm. Je ne sais pas, both maybe?” We both laughed. “Whatever.” I forced a smile and tried not to roll my eyes. “I’m over it.”
“I’m sure her intentions were good, Adele,” Mrs. Michel said loudly from across the room. “And now you are back home where you belong, safe and sound.”
I smiled back at her and, for a moment, pretended she really was ma grand-mère.
“So, are you coming back to work?” asked Jeanne, wagging her eyebrows.
“Yes, please!”
“Thank God,” she said, looking at her grandparents. “I need to get back to my lab.”
“So do I!” chimed Sébastien from behind the counter.
“No problem. I can hold down the fort. NOSA is closed indefinitely, so I’ve got nothing but time.”
“I don’t see your papa letting that stand for too long,” said Mrs. Michel without turning from the window she was spritzing.
“Oui, oui. He says I have to go back to mymother’s if I can’t get into a school pronto.”
“Don’t worry, we’ll homeschool you before we let that happen, right, Sebby?”
Jeanne and I both looked up at him with big eyes. He walked over, leaned on the back of my chair, but looked at his sister. “Why do I see that turning into me tutoring Adele in all of her subjects while you conveniently get stuck at school?”
I flicked his arm as hard as I could, even though he was right; Jeanne didn’t have the attention span to tutor me in subjects as elementary as pre-cal and chemistry. At this point, I was more her practice partner with French.
“Ouch! You know I’m kidding! Don’t worry, mon chou, we won’t let your dad send you back to Paris. Whatever you need—”
“Pre-cal!”
“You cover my shift tomorrow, and I will teach you everything I know about function derivatives.”
“Deal!”
“No, cover my shift tomorrow afternoon!” Jeanne yelled, grabbing my arm.
“Too late!” he said.
“Don’t worry. I’ll cover both of your shifts. I have to get into a school first before I can attend one. And for the record, I don’t need to know everything you know about function derivatives, just enough to get, like, a B.”
“Slacker,” they said simultaneously.
I turned to Sébastian. “So, I’ll come by tomorrow morning?”
“Oui. But I’m not sure if we’ll be open for business, so don’t wake up early on account of the café.”
“I’m still waking up early on account of crossing the Atlantic.”
I was so excited to be back in action, I kissed all of their cheeks goodbye before skipping out the door. “À demain!”
* * *
“Dad?” I yelled as I entered the house through the broken kitchen door. “Dad, are you home?” I tried a little louder; sometimes he wore protective earphones if he was using loud equipment in his studio.
“I
n the living room, Adele,” he responded, his voice beckoning me to come hither.
My hand froze as I dropped my heavy bag on the kitchen counter. We never used the living room. It was usually reserved for formal circumstances, like Christmas morning or the occasional spot of tea with a wealthy patron of the arts who was viewing my dad’s work.
As I walked down the hallway, I heard a second, vaguely familiar male voice talking about the curfew, and then the electronic beep of a walkie-talkie. I stopped short in the doorway. Oh, shit.
Thank God the words hadn’t slipped out of my mouth.
My father was sitting on the couch, tapping his foot, and Officer Terry Matthews was sitting in a wingtip chair, sipping coffee from the strawberry-shaped mug I had scored at a thrift store last year.
“Hi, Officer Matthews.” My voice reached an unusual octave. I sat on the couch next to my father but directed all of my attention towards the uniformed man.
“Actually, Adele, it’s detective now; just got the promotion this morning,” he said sheepishly.
The New Orleans Police Department had lost a lot of officers to the Storm… meaning many had fled with the evacuees and then stayed in greener pastures. I had to give credit to the ones who had stayed behind to defend the city and its inhabitants.
“Adele, Detective Matthews is here to follow up on the police report you filed yesterday. Remember, the dead body you found?” His tone indicated that I had some serious explaining to do once the detective left.
“Congratulations on the promotion!” I smiled as innocently as I could.
“Thank you, young lady. Wow, are you looking more like your mama every year.” He leaned in and gave me an awkward, one-armed hug.
Whenever I met someone who actually knew my mother, they were never able to resist mentioning how we could be twins. Even though Brigitte and I do share an uncanny resemblance, it still grated my nerves. I tried not to let my jaw clench as I asked him how his family was.
“The family is good. They’re in Houston right now. We’re waiting on a timeline from our insurance agent, plus their school was wiped out.” Just when I hoped he might ramble for a while, he stopped and asked, “So, what’s this business about a body you reported?”
“Well…”
“Don’t be afraid to mention every tiny detail. What may seem insignificant to you might be a clue to the trained mind.” He flipped open a small pad.
“Right.” I could see the protocol running through his head as he clicked the pen. I guessed his promotion had been unexpected.
I avoided my father’s gaze as I recounted my run-in with the blue-eyed corpse.
“And where were you coming from?”
I cringed and questioned whether telling the truth about this next bit was critical. Lying to a cop didn’t seem like a good idea. I sighed.
“I was coming from NOSA. I went to see if there was any information about school reopening.”
I refused to look my father’s way but imagined wisps of smoke coming out of his ears. I knew I shouldn’t have lied last night. Paris threats or not.
“And he was dead upon arrival?”
My mind wandered back to the street scene. “His blue eyes just stared at me… like he had died horrified.” And then my own eyes began to sting as I waited for the next question. I quickly wiped them and felt my dad’s hand on the top of my back.
“So, I’m going to take that as a yes?”
I nodded, and the detective handed me a folded handkerchief from his pocket.
“Were there any visible signs of violence? A wound? Blood?”
“Not that I could tell, but I didn’t hang around for very long.”
“Did you see any other people, any other witnesses?”
“No, I didn’t see a single person on my walk, not once I crossed Esplanade into the Marigny. Except for him.”
“And this was around eleven a.m.?”
“Yes, right before it started raining. I got soaked. I tried to call the police right away, but the line was busy, so I kept calling when I got home.”
“And you went straight home from the crime scene?”
I contemplated telling him about the strange shutter incident, but an image of me being dragged to Charity Hospital in a straightjacket popped into my head.
“Yes, I went straight home.”
“Did you witness anything else that might be strange, unusual, or bring further evidence to this case?”
“No, that’s it.” My throat tightened.
“Well, thanks for calling in the body, Adele. The longer these things sit in the heat, the more evidence we lose.” There was something too complacent about the way he said ‘these things.’ How many dead bodies had he seen in the last couple of months?
“Has there been other news about the case?” I asked.
“These things are complicated, but we’re ruling it as a homicide for now.”
Great, my dad was definitely going to put a lock on my door.
“That neck certainly didn’t snap itself,” he finished. “It’s crazy out there, Mac. This is the twelfth body we’ve found in the past three days, most of them in the last twenty-four hours.”
“What?” my father softly yelled.
That did seem excessive, even for New Orleans.
“All the same. Necks snapped and—”
“Have you identified him yet?” I interrupted before my father decided to never let me out of the house again.
“We don’t have any suspects yet. The crime scenes have been completely clean, but…” He stopped himself, probably realizing he was giving away more information than he should.
“No, I mean the dead man.”
“Oh, Jarod O’Connell. He had a local driver’s license. We haven’t been able to locate any family, yet, so we don’t know much else.” He downed the last sip from the strawberry and stood up. “Thanks for the coffee, Mac. I’ll keep you posted about the curfew. I understand it’s gonna cramp your biz when people get back into town.”
“Much obliged.” Dad gruffly shook his hand, and we followed our guest to the front steps. My father put his hand on my shoulder, as if I might take off running down the street.
Detective Matthews climbed back into an unmarked Crown Vic. No wonder I hadn’t noticed it when I walked up. I really need to start paying better attention.
He cranked the engine, rolled down the passenger window, and yelled out, “I hope it won’t happen, but if any reporters start sniffing around, can you kindly tell them to buzz off?”
“Don’t worry, Officer Matthews— I mean, Detective Matthews.” I dragged out the last two words.
“Not sure I’ll ever get used to that,” he said with a goofy expression. “Oh, and Mac, I’ll file a report about your kitchen break-in. It’s always better to have everything on record.”
“Thanks, Terry, I appreciate it. Stop by the bar soon.”
We waved as the car pulled away, and then stood in silence for a few seconds. I braced myself for one of my father’s painfully awkward lectures.
“Dammit, Adele.”
Here it comes, I thought.
Instead he went silent again. I didn’t know if he was pausing for emphasis or taking a moment to suppress his temper, but it confused me – and my father rarely confused me. Maybe being apart for so long was throwing off my game?
“Go put on your running shoes.”
“What?”
“Go get changed. We’re going for a run before it gets too hot. Remember?”
“Um, okay.” I was no longer in any position to argue about the run.
Chapter 9 Run, Run, Run
I was both curious and mildly disconcerted that my father was just ignoring the fact that I had lied to him. I mean, it wasn't a major lie or anything, but he was so tense about the crime in the city, I couldn’t imagine him just letting it slide. Each second it took me to lace up my running shoes and loop my hair into a ponytail built my dread of the upcoming interrogation. I traded my silver chain
for a house key on a knotted shoestring and hurried through the kitchen to get it over with.
He was already waiting outside, rolling his ankles. I bent over next to him and became momentarily woozy as the blood rushed to my head, and the stretch moved up my hamstrings.
“When’s the last time you ran?” he asked.
“Uh, I think I ran twice in Paris, in the very beginning.”
“I ran every day in Miami.”
Good for you. Normally, I would have said it, but something about this trite conversation warned me to proceed with caution, so I held back on the sarcasm. “My dad the fitness buff – who would have known?”
He did his best not to crack a smile. “Well, what else was I supposed to do without you around to bug me all the time?” He tossed me his second bottle of water and took off jogging.
So we’re joking now? My father could never stay mad at me for long, but this was a record. Something else was up.
“Wait up!”
“Catch up!”
“Oh, this is going to be loads of fun.”
The quick sprint left me panting. I took his right side; my father was adamant about the man’s position always being on the street side. He seriously watched too many Mafia movies.
We jogged in silence through Jackson Square, up the cement stairs of the amphitheater, over the two sets of nonfunctioning tracks (one for the train and the other for the streetcar) and finally arrived at the Moonwalk, as the riverfront is called, downtown.
The Toulouse Street Wharf was annihilated. Pieces of it bobbed on the river along with a mass of other buoyant debris, and heaps of floating trash occupied the large empty space where the S.S. Natchez had been docked since the early 1800s.