by Ciji Ware
Shafts of steamy September light were pouring through the tall windows in the front parlor on Dauphine Street. Serena walked past Corlis sitting on the chaise lounge and stood near the sill, gazing out at the enclosed courtyard with its fountain splashing water that glistened in the hot sunshine outside.
What if, thought Serena bleakly, Mrs. Leone had her own view about why her marriage had broken down? If Marco had had an affair with Serena, perhaps there had been other women in Mr. and Mrs. Leone’s early marriage that had destroyed the trust between husband and wife?
The silence in the room lengthened and Serena sensed that her brother was staring at her back, probably wondering why she’d stood up so abruptly and walked away from them. She had never told him or anyone in her family about her affair with Marco, which certainly indicated she was ashamed of what she’d done.
There was no escaping it: her behavior had wounded Mrs. Leone... just as Jack had hurt her by his actions. That horrific afternoon in Las Vegas, Serena had grabbed her suitcases and bolted out the door, refusing to answer the woman’s accusations. And for damn sure, she’d never listened to Mrs. Leone’s side of the story, just as she hadn’t given Jack a chance to explain why he’d never revealed his suspicions about the role his uncle played in the canal wall failures. Feeling righteous, she’d refused even to talk to him when he’d come back from King’s cabin in Covington after his story ran in the newspaper. She’d ducked him, just like she’d ducked an ugly confrontation with Mrs. Leone.
Serena turned and faced Dylan who remained sitting quietly on the satin settee.
“So?” drawled the erstwhile real estate agent when she’d remained silent, unsure what to say next. “What do you think about this idea of ancestral clearing by means of forgiveness? Willing to give it a try?”
Serena inhaled a deep breath. Briefly, she wondered how many generations of Antonelli women had transgressions they’d never owned up to? Finally, she made a decision.
“Jack is not his uncle,” she said in a low voice, “and Jack’s actions did not result in the death of our brother Coz and his wife and baby. Corlis has told me a bit about the legal constraints that both the paper and standard journalistic ethics place on reporters regarding safeguarding their sources. Maybe he had other reasons—other than cowardice or protecting his uncle—for remaining silent, as he did. At least, I should hear him out.”
“Good girl,” Dylan said softly. “I think you understand that there are ways to call a halt to all this misery between people who, at heart, love each other very much.”
Nick spoke up.
“You know... I-I’ve treated my father with very little respect and have felt tremendous anger in response to how nasty he’s always been about having a gay son like me. If I were religious—and believe me, I am not—I’d have to say I have not lived up to the ‘Honor Thy Father’ bit, but then neither has he showed me one bit of compassion or respect.”
Dylan nodded. “That one I understand very well, Nick,” he said, craning his neck for a quick, playful whiff of the carnation in his boutonniere. “But I’d better point out that forgiveness is kinda a one-way street. You have to decide to forgive, regardless of how the other side reacts. If you don’t initiate the process of forgiveness from your end, the continued bad feelings you harbor toward your father end up poisoning you without regard to whether he forgives you for being gay—or not.”
Nick shook his head. “Forgiving the guy seems impossible, but trying to run a business with him as a partner is killing me! God only knows what it’s been doing to my DNA,” he joked.
Dylan smiled faintly. “Exactly. So for starters, maybe just try telling yourself that, at least, you can forgive a man of his generation and religious upbringing for not understanding your world, and leave it at that for a while.”
Nicholas nodded and Serena could tell he was mulling over Dylan’s suggestion.
“Sounds like we have to be the ones to reverse that old adage: ‘the sins of the father shall be visited on his son’” Nick replied, heaving a sigh. “Otherwise, I ’spect the vicious stuff just keeps repeating and repeating.”
“You got it!” Dylan said, grinning as he stood up, indicating their conversations were coming to a close. “That’s what ancestral clearing is all about. And when you change your thinking about something—like going from hatred to forgiveness, for example—you kinda rewire your brain’s reactions. Hopefully, that means you’re not going to suffer from so much stress on that particular subject, which can relieve PTSD symptoms sometimes. I promise you, a little direct forgiveness goes a long way toward clearing up a lot of this psychic ca-ca that’s handed down and then revived with each generation.”
Serena crossed the room and put a hand on her brother’s shoulder.
“I suggest, however, Nick, that we don’t go into much detail with Mama and Daddy or Flavia about this little woo-woo session we’re having here today,” she said wryly. “And we definitely shouldn’t mention the idea of ‘ancestral clearing.’ The part about DNA and trauma, though, sounds okay, doesn’t it, bro?”
Nick looked at her and then broke into a grin.
“Agreed. How about we have a session where we see if Dylan can help the family work though all this stuff about Jack’s articles, or—”
“... or the pain will never end,” Serena completed his sentence.
Nick nodded. “Maybe we should just call it a plain, ole’ family meeting with Dylan here, as a neutral third party. It might do some good to get everyone concerned in the same room and deal honestly with what we’ve learned since Jack’s revelations came out, just like we did when all of us finally admitted that Mama’s drinking was killing us, including her.”
Serena cast a look of gratitude at Corlis and said, “I’ve changed my mind. I think Jack as well as his uncles should be there, too. And I second the notion that we definitely don’t have the skill to handle this on our own.”
Nick asked his sister, “Is it really okay with you to include Jack?”
“It’s worth a shot,” she replied with a shrug. “It may not solve everything between Jack and me, but at least we might not have to cross to the opposite street if we meet now and then.”
Dylan asked Corlis, “What if they all came here, to this house? Neutral ground, you know?”
“That would be fine with King and me,” Corlis agreed, “... that is, if you two can get everyone to show up” she added, addressing Serena and Nick.
Nick answered for them both.
“One way or the other, we’ll get the Antonellis here, won’t we, sis?”
But will Jack and his uncles be willing to face them all? Serena wondered silently.
As if Corlis as well as Dylan could now read Serena’s thoughts, WJAZ’s anchorwoman volunteered in her no-nonsense style, “And I’ll do my best to deliver at least two of the Durands. How about tomorrow, five o’clock?”
The bomb had been dropped. That week, the newspaper published the revelation that reporter Jack Durand’s uncle, among other sources cited, had been one of the whistleblowers. It had been the senior Durand who maintained that undue influence in the oil industry and politics had produced ill-advised decisions made by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, decisions that ultimately resulted in Hurricane Katrina’s catastrophic flooding of the city of New Orleans. Also in the short, follow-up article, the self-same Jacques Durand was identified as having placed his signature, among other engineers, on the final plans for the 17th Street Canal walls back in the early eighties. This was due in part, he was quoted as saying, to pressures he claimed were placed on then-junior engineers by higher-ups in the chain-of-command.
On the same day the news story appeared, Vincent Durand called Jack’s father in an absolute fury.
“I never want to see my nephew again as long as I live!” he announced to his brother. “And believe me, I will never attend a Durand Sunday family dinner if that little bastard is sitting at the table!”
The retired barge captain and
former member of the New Orleans Levee Board continued to scream over the phone that Jack had cast shame on the entire Durand family. Jack’s mother said that her husband, George Durand, Jr., refused to disclose whether he or his younger brother hung up the phone first.
Turning over these events in his mind, Jack rested his hands on the steering wheel of his car parked in the Duvallons’ courtyard and stared at the splashing fountain near the paving stones that led to the front door. King must have moved his Jaguar to a parking lot somewhere else in the French Quarter because an unknown vehicle Jack assumed was owned by the Antonellis already occupied the spot next to where he’d pulled in minutes before.
“You coming, son?” asked Jacques, his hand on the passenger door handle. “Or are you chickening out?”
Jack pulled his thoughts back to the present and met his uncle’s gaze.
“I’m coming,” he replied, “but I have a feeling this could turn out to be a total disaster.”
Just then, the front door opened and King stood blocking the view into his three-story house, its broad wrought iron balcony looming above their heads.
“C’mon in, you two,” King called. “The party’s already started.”
Just as Jack feared, the first few minutes were unbearably awkward when he and Jacques entered the large parlor with its set of double fireplaces. His gaze immediately sought Serena’s who was sitting next to her brother Nick on the small settee facing the second fireplace fifteen feet away. Jack noted that the two siblings held hands for mutual support, he figured. Both studiously avoided any glances in Jack’s direction.
His Uncle Jacques remained standing near the marble mantel nearest the windows that faced the courtyard where they’d just entered. Turning away from Serena, Jack sat down in one of the chairs left vacant when Corlis and King quietly excused themselves and went upstairs.
Dylan Fouché, the man Corlis had explained in her email would “facilitate” this summit meeting between the Durands and Antonellis, appeared totally at ease in his seersucker suit, pale blue Oxford shirt and pink tie, with a matching pink carnation in the buttonhole of his lapel. He took his place next to Jacques and then calmly explained that he had been asked to help “clear away—or at least reduce—any feelings of anger and hurt that had been caused not only by the newspaper series, but by events like Hurricane Katrina that were out of the control of everyone in this room.”
Serena’s parents, Cosimo and Sarah, stared stonily at the wall behind the two men, while their youngest daughter, Flavia, twisted her fingers unceasingly in her lap.
“To start us off,” Dylan suggested with friendly glances in all directions, “I want to bring you up-to-date about what the medical world knows about PTSD: Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, which I think may play a role here.”
He swiftly repeated the information he’d shared earlier with Serena and Nick about the new science of epigenetics and how it related physiologically to people experiencing traumatic events like war or witnessing a murder or... “going through destructive storms—and all that comes with it before, during and after.”
“You a doctor?” Cosimo Antonelli challenged the African-American guiding the discussion. “Serena told me you were a dropout from a seminary someplace and now you sell houses to lotsa gays in the Quarter.”
“Dad!” Serena protested and looked at Nick for support, but her brother merely shook his head as if his father’s rudeness was par for the course.
Dylan, however, appeared unfazed by the senior Antonelli’s obvious hostility.
“Oh, I am definitely an equal opportunity real estate agent. I happily sell homes to anyone who has the money to buy them, sir. In my spare time, I do family mediation... and other work... as my brand of ‘give back’ to the community.”
“If you’re just some house hustler, why should we listen to you about this PTSD stuff—which I think is mostly an excuse for not just getting on with life?”
“Good question,” Dylan replied pleasantly. “No, I’m not an MD or a shrink, but I am a student of several experts in the field of post-traumatic problems and can, perhaps, explain in layman’s terms various forms of PTSD some of you may still be experiencing—along with the latest research in helping people cope.” He gazed directly at Cosimo. “Plus, I cost a lot less than going to the Ochsner Clinic or someplace, ’cause I do this work for free.”
“Why the hell do you do that?” he sneered.
“Glutton for punishment, I guess,” Dylan said lightly. “Now then, I think Jacques Durand wants to say something first and then please feel free to ask me any questions you want.”
Jacques, who had remained standing took a step toward the senior Antonellis and nervously cleared his throat.
“I-I know that my nephew’s articles brought back some terrible memories for y’all.” He paused as if gathering his courage, and then continued. “’Cause those three stories in the Picayune sure did for me, too. Like Dylan just said, it’s kinda this PTSD thing, I think. Reading what he wrote made me feel as if Katrina hit me all over again.”
“Yeah, yeah... it’s all about you, you bastard!” Cosimo spat.
Jacques grew silent and Jack wondered if his uncle would simply throw in the towel and walk out. To his surprise, the retired engineer merely nodded as if he accepted this verbal abuse as his due, but would not be deterred from what he’d come here to say to the Antonellis.
“Reliving Katrina because of the anniversary last month affects all of us, I ’spect, in different ways, but I came here today ready for your anger and blame—both of which I deserve. Even so, I want to tell you how sorry I am for everything that happened to your family... and to ask... to ask for your forgiveness for not... for not having the strength of character to stand up to my superior officers thirty-three years ago.”
“So it’s all the Corps fault, is it?” Cosimo scoffed.
“Partly it is,” Jacques countered, “but I could have made a different choice.”
“Well, for God’s sake, why didn’t you?” Cosimo shouted, shaking his fist. “If you had, my namesake son wouldn’t have died and we wouldn’t have to be in this stupid meeting!”
Jacques raised his chin and took a step toward his accuser.
“I was twenty-four-years old and a new father with a wife and a mortgage for my bungalow in the Lower Garden District that I could barely afford. It’s no excuse, but maybe it explains why I signed those documents, along with a bunch of other junior engineers.”
“It sure is no excuse!” Cosimo shouted.
“I know,” Jacques agreed, the deep lines carved on his face reflecting his misery. “As the project was being readied for construction, it got real nasty. They threatened my job in ’82 if I didn’t sign off on a set of engineering specifications for the Seventeenth Street Canal retrofit that everybody involved knew weren’t what the outside consultants said that they should have been. I told my commander that the walls could fail if we ever got a storm again like Hurricane Betsy was in ’65. But Cosimo is right,” he addressed his listeners. “I signed anyway.” To Serena’s mother he said softly, “It’s my fault your son and daughter-in-law and their baby died August 29th, 2005, and I would do anything to have that not be so.”
“And my mother died of a heart attack the same week!” Cosimo exclaimed, his fists clenched. “She had it when they tried to evacuate her from the nursing home and they couldn’t save her.”
A sob escaped from Sarah. Jack winced at the stricken looks that invaded the expressions of every person in the room. Serena’s mother stuffed her fist in her mouth and began to cry softly. Cosimo stared straight ahead, making no move to comfort her. Meanwhile, Jacques stoically continued.
“Back in eighty-two, I was a young, wet-behind-the-ears engineer who was scared to death of the higher ups and too weak to stand up to them. I was a coward and a fool and I’m deeply sorry for what I did—and for everything that happened to your family and others like you as a result.”
“I don’t need
to hear this!” exclaimed Cosimo, but his wife put a surprisingly strong, restraining hand on his arm to prevent him from bolting from his seat.
Jacques turned to address Nicholas, Flavia, and Serena.
“A decade ago, when I saw the news reports about the monster storm they were calling Katrina bearing down on New Orleans, I literally got down on my knees and prayed this wasn’t the one that would break the wall,” Jacques said, his voice choking. “But the wall broke anyway—and so did all those other ones.” Tears had begun to stream from his eyes. “God help us, but eighty-seven percent of all the water that flooded New Orleans was the result of the failures of these canals and levees that the Corps had built.”
He stretched out his right arm and clasped the mantelpiece with a look of desperation that signaled to Jack his uncle was close to pitching forward onto the carpet. A grief-stricken look etching his features, Jacques addressed Serena directly.
“I am so sorry for that weakness. If I could go back in time and tell my commander to go to hell—and me, not sign off on those specs, no matter what they did to me—I’d do it in a heartbeat! Nothing is worth what I’ve been through and what my actions put y’all through.” Jacques’ chin sunk to his chest, his voice barely above a whisper. “I am so sorry I am Jack’s uncle and have brought all this pain and sorrow back into your life and your family’s lives. My nephew loves you so much, Serena. I can see that so clear, now... and because of me—”
Jacques’ shoulders began to heave and he brought the hand not clutching the mantel to his face to hide the anguish he could no longer suppress. “I don’t expect you to forgive me, but please... please don’t blame Jack—”
“I forgive you, Jacques,” Serena intervened with quiet intensity as she rose from her chair. “I can’t speak for the others in this room, but I do forgive you.” She took the few steps to reach his side, and embraced the man’s hunched and trembling shoulders. “It must have been terrible living with this secret all these years. I know,” she added, “because I’ve lived with a few secrets myself.”