by Ciji Ware
“Key’s inside the dried alligator head sitting on the front porch.”
“Thanks.”
And Jack hung up.
After the Antonelli’s multi-course brunch at Commander’s Palace, the family had gathered around the table at their home that evening for a simple meal of red beans and rice, along with an insalata mista and a big pitcher of sweet tea.
Serena’s mother called into the living room for young Flavia to come to the table, which, surprisingly, she did. She walked into the dining room with her cellphone in her hand and tears running down her cheeks.
“Have y’all read the paper today?” she demanded, waving her phone where she tended to get her news from the online version of the Times-Picayune. She looked at Serena accusingly. “You never told us that your invisible boyfriend did the big anniversary story on ten years since the storm.”
Serena quickly glanced around the table at the startled faces.
“H-he told me he was working on a big, hush-hush three-parter on the anniversary but wasn’t allowed to say much about it, so I haven’t either. Rules at the T-P and—”
Flavia interrupted, pointing to her small screen.
“Well, did he tell you that he finally tracked down the jerk engineer who, way back when, was one of the guys who signed off on plans for the Seventeenth Street Canal? It says here he did that knowing that the damn pilings should have been driven to at least a depth of thirty-five—and even fifty feet where the peat was that deep—but okayed them being sunk not very far at all!”
Nick scowled. “No wonder the damn thing collapsed in Katrina!”
Tears continued to bathe Flavia’s cheeks.
“Whoever this guy was,” she shouted between sobs, “he murdered our brother and screwed up this whole, fucking family!”
Serena’s mother dropped her spoon into the bowl of red beans and rice that she was about to dish out and enfolded her youngest daughter in her arms. Cosimo sat with both fists clenched on top of the table, silent, his face ashen.
“Where’s the paper?” Sarah Antonelli demanded. “I want to see exactly what it says! Did it name this person?”
Nick volunteered, “I saw it on the front porch earlier this morning when I came from the shop. It’s probably still there.”
“I’ll get it,” Serena said quickly.
She bolted upstairs, snatched the paper off the bedspread in her room, and dashed back to where her family was still gathered around the dining table. Collapsed in a chair, Flavia sunk her face in her hands. Serena sat next to her, her throat tight with tears of her own, and slowly began to read aloud.
An hour later, Serena called Jack from her bedroom on her cellphone. When he didn’t pick up, she sent him a text praising his work, then adding:
It was hard for all of us to read your
story, but at last you answered our questions
about why the 17th canal failed so horribly.
Flavia demanded to know who it was that
signed off, but I explained what an ‘anonymous
source’ meant and the reasons for keeping it
confidential. Call when me you can...
By the next day, when she’d had no reply from Jack, she called the landline at his office and was told he’d taken a few days off after his big three-part story “had been put to bed,” the editor’s assistant had told her. Puzzled by this news, she borrowed her mother’s car and drove over to Julia Street.
When she emerged from the sedan’s air-conditioning, the suffocating August heat bore down hard, and by the time she reached Jack’s front door, she could feel her cotton shirt sticking to her back. She looked for his car parked on the street and didn’t see it anywhere. Then she rang his buzzer and stepped back on the sidewalk to see if she could spot any movement in the window of his office where he always waved to her before sprinting to the intercom to buzz her in.
Nothing. Jack wasn’t home and he hadn’t told her where he’d gone.
She retraced her steps and got into the driver’s side, turning on the ignition. For several long moments, she sat with her hands on the wheel, staring through the windshield up at Jack’s flat as frigid air-conditioning blew on her face and legs. How could he just take off and disappear like this when he had to know the devastating impact his story would have on her... would have on everyone in the Antonelli family? Why had he gone into hiding?
She thought of calling the Duvallons to see if they knew where he was, and then couldn’t face how demoralizing it would feel if they knew his whereabouts and she didn’t.
A feeling of crushing desolation invaded her chest along with the synthetic air pouring out of the car’s dashboard. The sensation was like none she’d ever experienced—except for the instant Marco died in her arms, followed by his estranged wife screaming at her the next day to get the hell out of his house.
Twenty minutes later, she somehow managed to drive home and leave the car in the family driveway. Without speaking to anyone, she immediately boarded the St. Charles streetcar back to the CBD. When she got to the costume shop, Nick met her in the reception area, waving a newspaper.
“Have you seen Part Two of this thing?” he demanded. “That boyfriend of yours sure pulls no punches, I’ll say that for him. There are gonna be a lot of folks around here mighty unhappy with the guy about all the stuff he’s dug up. But I hope it’ll do some good before the next time New Orleans gets walloped.”
Serena merely waved her hand, unable to speak.
“Have you talked to him?” Nick asked, looking at her questioningly.
Shaking her head “no,” she tore past him and bolted up three flights of backstairs. Gus was on the top landing, about to head downstairs. Without a greeting, Serena brushed past and disappeared into the empty flat, slamming the door and then locking it. She was betting no one could hear her crying with her head buried beneath the pillows on their double bed.
CHAPTER 22
Nick reported to her that every single customer who had come into the shop the following day was buzzing about the three-part story in The Times-Picayune.
Gus chimed in, “Finally, we’re finding out why the damage went far beyond the power of the storm, itself—and who was ultimately responsible.”
Nick agreed, adding, “It’s kinda scary to learn that even all the new stuff that’s been built to keep the water out might not work. What does Jack say about the reactions he’s got? I bet there are people in certain quarters that want to tar and feather him. He sure played guts ball on this one.”
Serena barely managed a casual shrug and continued to fiddle with her colored pencil at her drawing board. Her brother and his partner exchanged looks and left her in peace.
Later that afternoon Nick asked, “Sis, are you okay?”
“In a word: no.”
“Want to talk about it?”
“Second word: no.” Then she added softly. “Maybe sometime, but not today, and please don’t ask me anything more about Jack.”
“Uh-oh... trouble already? Jeez, and I hardly met the guy. Kinda like the Phantom of the Opera.” At Serena’s stricken look, Nick put an arm around her shoulder and apologized. “I’m sorry... that was a real stupid crack. I’m sad if things have gone haywire between you two.”
“That, they have,” Serena said, waving him off.
Despite the stifling heat that continued to bear down on New Orleans, the fall social season had already begun. Thankfully, Lauren Hilbert’s negative comments at the fashion show the previous May were proving to be empty threats. Given all the positive public exposure that had flowed from the media stories and the fashion show itself, the Antonelli Costume Company had started to enjoy a huge boom in business. Both krewes and private clients were flocking to the shop. Scores of customers had ordered outfits not only because of Mardi Gras the following early spring, but also ball gowns and fancy dress items for everything from Southern Decadence over Labor Day, to Halloween, to balls that were scheduled from October through Christm
as, and beyond. Meanwhile, it was Day Four and Jack’s “radio silence” had been a total blackout.
Just do your work... eventually he’ll let you know one way or the other what’s going on and why he’s pulled a disappearing act again.
But maybe this time, she’d have the guts to let him know she wasn’t interested in hearing about it.
Jack sat in King Duvallon’s flat-bottomed pirogue watching his fishing line twitch in the murky waters of Bayou Lacombe. His boat bobbed on one of several tributaries that fanned out from the main body of water and flowed near the old slave cabin his friend had restored on what was left of a family plantation property, long since carved up by post-war descendants.
The first day Jack arrived in this remote part of Covington across Lake Pontchartrain from New Orleans, he’d dove into the big double bed, pulled up an ancient quilt some ancestor of King’s must have stitched, and slept a straight eighteen hours.
His body obviously had craved rest after long weeks of concentrated work, but when he awoke, his mind spun into the death spiral that had driven him to seek this isolation in the first place.
It had been a couple of days since the last of his Katrina anniversary pieces were published. There was no calling back anything he’d written. He could just imagine his office email Inbox and the howls of protest from certain quarters throughout the city from officials who only wished to be described publicly in the noblest of terms.
And Serena? Just as King had predicted, the very big secret Jack had been keeping from her weighed as heavily on his shoulders as a waterlogged cypress stump. He’d found it impossible to summon the strength to confront it—or her—right now.
An image floated through his mind of thousands of New Orleanians holding newspapers in their hands, reading what he’d written. He figured a lot of people were unhappy with Jack Durand about now. And a lot of people had questions that he didn’t have the energy—or wouldn’t be allowed—to answer. Absently, he watched the ripples ruffling the water from an unseen creature passing below the boat. One of the best things about coming out here, he considered silently, was that there was no cell coverage. He couldn’t call anyone, and they couldn’t call him.
And he’d never felt lonelier in his life.
It had been six days with no word from Jack. During this time, Serena had kept to herself at work, hunched over her drawing board in a corner of the big cutting room and slept on the fainting couch in the ladies room, figuring her family would think she was at Jack’s.
By the third day of this silence, she’d moved her drafting board and drawing implements into one of the private client consulting rooms, shut the door, and posted a “Creative Frenzy - Do Not Disturb” sign on the window. Anyone who looked at her, she guessed, would know how upset she was becoming by the hour so seclusion seemed the only answer. Her makeshift office became a blessed hideaway, even though it faced the corridor that led to the enormous room where some 1500 rental costumes hung on tiers of clothing racks stacked all the way up to the warehouse’s tall, tin roof.
Despite her clear request for privacy, the intercom speaker overhead announced that two potential clients had just arrived, asking for her by name. When she didn’t respond, Etheline, the receptionist, buzzed her on the phone, inquiring politely if she’d heard the page. The employee hurriedly explained in hushed tones that two very well dressed women were waiting in the large conference room situated toward the front of the building.
Serena glanced down at her appointment book and sighed. She’d thought she’d have an uninterrupted few hours to do some design work, the best way she’d found to distract herself, but real, live customers took precedence. She pushed back from her drawing board where sketches of a new costume had done a reasonable job keeping her mind off a certain reporter and his latest disappearing act. She waved her thanks to the receptionist who signaled from the front door that she was on the way out to her lunch break.
At the entrance to the glass-enclosed conference room, Serena halted at the door, stunned by the sight of a young woman whom she didn’t recognize sitting beside none other than Dr. Lauren Hilbert.
“Yes?” Serena asked, her heart starting to pound at the sight of the person who’d said at their last meeting that she would make it her business to dissuade her friends and fellow krewe members from patronizing Antonelli’s.
Oddly, it was Lauren’s companion that rose from her seat next to the conference table and extended her hand in an ostensibly friendly greeting.
“Hi!” she offered with a nervous laugh. “I’m Judy Mansfield. My friend Lauren, here, said we should come by and see about maybe ordering matching costumes? We’re planning to walk with a group of our friends from Tulane days in the St. Anne Parade next year. We heard how busy you are and... well... we... we thought we should get our order in early.”
Serena remained where she stood, thereby declining to shake the woman’s hand. The visitor looked embarrassed and glanced at Lauren, apparently waiting for further instructions.
“Well, hello again, Serena,” Lauren said, with a slight smile, as if they were friends—or at least acquaintances. “That costume you wore at the children’s charity event? It was certainly eye-catching. I think it was called ‘Venice Rising Waters’ or something like that? Well, our group is thinking of marching in St. Anne’s as ‘New Orleans’ Rising Waters’... as kind of a tribute to all those who died in Katrina, you know?”
By this time, Serena had regained her composure and gazed at the two visitors, her mind filled with all sorts of speculation, none of it good. She wanted absolutely nothing to do with Lauren Hilbert and figured the quickest way to get rid of her and this friend of hers was to quote an outrageous price and be done with them both.
“Well, you should know before we discuss anything further,” Serena said in her most pleasant and professional tone, “that a costume like the one you’ve just described, Seas of Venice—made to order—would be very expensive.”
“How expensive?” asked Lauren’s companion with a nervous glance at her companion.
“Somewhere in the range of five-to-eight thousand dollars and up... each,” Serena replied blandly.
Just as she thought, the young woman’s eyes widened and she looked again at Lauren with alarm.
“Oh, I don’t think that’s anything I could afford on my salary,” she explained with a nervous laugh.
“Well,” drawled the fledgling plastic surgeon, “come to think of it, maybe Katrina’s tenth anniversary being this year is a bit too close to do something like ‘New Orleans’ Rising Waters’... especially given that newspaper piece in the Picayune a few days ago about all the corruption and skullduggery that went on when the levees and canals were built, back in the day. I’m sure you read all about it, right, since Jack Durand wrote it?”
Serena could see that Lauren’s friend was made uncomfortable by this turn of the conversation and had seized her purse, obviously intending to make a hasty exit.
“Look Lauren,” the young woman said in a rush, “I’m way past due back at the courthouse. If it’s a non-starter here, I think we’d better...”
Her sentence dangled, unfinished, as Lauren took a step closer to Serena who stood blocking the door that led out of the conference room.
“Y’know,” Lauren said to the designer, “upon second thought, wearing a get-up called ‘Seas of Venice’ or ‘Gulf’s Rising Waters’ or anything like that would be the height of bad taste, probably. Especially since everybody in New Orleans is kinda depressed about learning somebody at the Army Corps signed off on that faulty design of the canal walls, right? What amazes me is that Jack quoted him as an anonymous source when the guy is his own uncle!”
Silence now filled the room in the wake of Lauren’s declaration that Jack’s namesake relative was the person whose identity every member of the Antonelli family had been speculating about since Part 1 had landed on their doorstep. Serena felt her lips part with surprise and couldn’t disguise her shocked reaction
to this announcement.
By this time, Lauren’s cohort looked positively ill.
“You promised you wouldn’t repeat what I told you in confidence!” exclaimed the woman who’d introduced herself as Judy, looking for all the world as if she were about to be sick. “You swore as a sister Theta! You just said you wanted to come here because you needed to find out how much Antonelli’s charges for stuff!”
However, Lauren ignored her and moved even closer to Serena, who could only stare, speechless, at the two visitors.
“Maybe this is news to you, Serena,” Lauren said softly, “but Jack told me one time that his Uncle Jacques was an engineer with the Army Corps since back in the eighties. All the damaging stuff was probably on the public record that Jack must have dug out in his research—but just didn’t want to name his uncle in person, right? And besides,” she added, sending a stern look in Judy Mansfield’s direction, “I have it on good authority that it’s Jacques Durand’s signature on the plans for that under-engineered Seventeenth Street Canal debacle. Just imagine how that old guy must have felt ten years ago on the morning Katrina hit and the walls broke. Or maybe he didn’t care?”
Judy bolted for the door and brushed past Serena.
“Lauren, I’ve gotta go!” she declared harshly, “and I truly don’t think I’ll ever speak to you again!”
Unmoved by her sorority sister’s outburst, Lauren casually picked up her handbag that she’d left on the table and slung it over her shoulder. She gazed at Serena as if she’d just realized how this information might affect her.
“Oh... that’s right,” she said, her voice lush with false concern. “How thoughtless of me. I remember hearing through my mama how your brother drowned in Lakeview that day when the Seventeenth Street canal buckled, did I get that right?”
“Yes. And my sister-in-law, who was pregnant,” Serena murmured, wondering that this woman could either be so cruel... or so clueless... that she’d say such things to her face. She felt as if she were suddenly inside an aquarium looking at Lauren through a sheet of glass that held back a tank of water. A thousand thoughts were swimming through her brain, but she remained unable to utter another word.