Wading Home

by Rosalyn Story

  Somebody told me you might like this. The man gave me a good deal…

  He had just turned sixteen, and music was the elixir he lived and breathed. Louis Armstrong, his father’s favorite, had become Julian’s idol too. His father was so excited his wide eyes blazed above a smile that erased years from his weathered face. It was as if he was presenting his son with the keys to a castle.

  He’d never taken the record to New York with him, choosing to listen to it on visits home. His turntable didn’t work anyway, and he’d believed that the valuable recording would be safer at his father’s house.

  The things that survive. If he’d wished for anything from the ruined house, it would have been this.

  “Wow,” he said, blinking back tears. His voice cracked, tamped down to a whisper. “Thank you, Sylvia.”

  “I don’t know how it made it. None of the other records did. Your daddy’s jazz collection, your mama’s opera records, all messed up.”

  There was a wistful look on her face as Sylvia fished in her purse for her keys. “Oh, listen,” she said, “why don’t you come by my house tonight, ’round six? I figure people coming back to town to see all this mess need something decent to eat. Just a few folks from church; I’m celebrating my electricity coming back on.”

  A feeling of clarity, like a cooling breeze, swept his skin. He knew he was home, now. When people here were happy, they cooked, and when they wanted to celebrate something, they cooked.

  And when they were frustrated and angry, and their lives were uncertain, and their hearts were torn with worry and grief, they cooked.

  “OK.”

  “Nothing fancy, you know. Just a big pot of red beans. And don’t be expecting them to be as good as your daddy’s.”

  He sighed and blew a slow stream of air through his lips, scratched at the itchy bristle of his unshaved cheek. Sometimes he wondered what in hell was keeping him going. Days went by in a haze of lists: Get up. Shave (or not). Eat. Meet Sylvia. Call hospitals, churches, insurance agents. Listen to the news. Eat. Make more calls. By evening, his mind was a swamp where thoughts trudged along in hip boots, each step heavier than the one before until his brain stopped, bogged down in muck. Misery lolled alongside the notion that the next few days or even weeks could not be anything but hard, or even heart-breaking, if he did (or did not) find Simon.

  All this—not to mention his career, his band, the draining of his cash, and figuring out when, if ever, he could play again.

  But here was Sylvia, a hand stretched out from the fog. Seeing Sylvia was like coming home. Simon was the spine that joined them, him and Sylvia, front and back covers of the same book, and if he needed to, he could reach around that spine to cling to the other side.

  She reached up to give him a hug, and he almost resisted, thinking about the way he must smell. But she pulled his shoulders down into hers, her hand on the back of his head.

  “We’re in this together, baby, you and me,” she said. “You’re not alone.”

  From outside on the gallery, Julian could hear the shuffle of slippers against hardwood.

  The French door opened with a groan, and from the room floated the smell of Ben-Gay ointment and Old Spice. Matthew Parmenter, in powder-blue pajamas and a burgundy robe, stood a little shorter than the last time he’d seen him. He used a cane now, his big frame marked with an arthritic stoop.

  Parmenter had always looked to him like a cross between a tall Santa Claus and an avuncular Confederate general. A thick mop of unruly snow-white hair flopped in his faded blue eyes, and his skin, ghostly pale, seemed as if it repelled sun. At eighty-five he stood about six-three, a good two inches taller than Julian, and probably fifty pounds heavier. The pale eyes glistened with a kindness Julian hadn’t remembered.

  “Oh, my God! Julian?” Parmenter’s face opened into an exultant smile.

  “You’re here! Is your father all right? Have you seen him?” His thick New Orleans accent rolled out in fat, longish vowels. “Sorry, my boy, come in. Come in. Suffering through the apocalypse is no excuse for bad manners.”

  Julian stepped inside, and Parmenter reached for him and grabbed him into a hug so tight Julian could feel the heat of his sluggish breath.

  Parmenter stepped back and pulled his robe close. “Ah, excuse my appearance. No reason to get dressed these days, what with…. Sit down, son. My God, I haven’t seen you since…how long has it been? Come on this way, it’s cooler in here. And please tell me you have good news.”

  5

  Matthew Parmenter led the way into the high ceilinged foyer of red-striped embossed wallpaper, cherry wood paneling and gilt-framed paintings. In the living room, two wing-backed chairs slipcovered in linen flanked the enormous red-brick fireplace. Matthew sat in one, and gestured to the other. Julian sat and leaned forward in his chair, his hands clasped together, elbows on his knees.

  There was no sense in beating around the bush. “Sir,” he said, “my father is missing.” A pall shadowed Matthew’s face. He bowed his head, mired for a moment in thought, then lifted it.

  “I was afraid…I tried to get him to come and stay here. But he wouldn’t…”

  He shook his head and sighed heavily.

  “There was a lot of water in the house, five feet maybe, but I think…there’s a good chance he got out safely,” Julian said, rubbing his hands together. “And he left a note. We just have to find where he went.”

  Parmenter massaged the space between his eyes and frowned, then, as if he’d come to some indisputable conclusion, gave a quick, resolute nod.

  “You’ll find him. I know you will.” From a nearby window, an arrow of sunlight pierced the room, and Parmenter stared at the dust motes dancing in it. “I’ve been listening to the radio. It’s so sad, what’s happened in this city. So much heartbreak…”

  His voice trailed off. He looked up at Julian. “Simon is a strong man, resourceful. We have to believe that he’s all right.”

  “Yes, sir.” Parmenter slapped a hand on the arm of his chair. “Well. May I offer you a drink? Cognac? A glass of lemonade?”

  “Anything cold would be fine.”

  “Thank God for generators. Have you eaten yet? I’m afraid my cook is in exile in Bogalusa, but I’ve been known to put together a sandwich that more than one person has survived.” He pushed back a lock of too-long white hair from his eyes. As an afterthought he added, “Though, mind you, it won’t be as good as your father’s.”

  “I already ate. Thanks.”

  “Just make yourself at home.”

  Matthew got up and went to the kitchen, his house shoes scuffing and cane tapping along on the high-glossed red oak floors. Julian stood up and stretched his arms. He hadn’t realized how tired he was until now, as heaviness draped his body like a curtain of lead.

  Julian’s gaze fell on a long wall leading to a hallway, where hung a huge, gold-trimmed oil painting. Dressed in a white gown that swirled at her feet, a woman smiled cryptically from the canvas, her long white arm extended, her gloved hand resting on a wooden banister at the bottom of a large staircase.

  Parmenter’s wife, Clarisse, Julian thought. A real New Orleans socialite. Probably done before one of the Mardi Gras balls.

  He remembered vaguely the last time he’d seen her. I heard your mama was feeling poorly. A thin white woman in thin white linen standing at the screen door. Straight-backed, defiant against the codes of her station, the woman had boarded a streetcar and then a bus that took her across town to a place she’d never been—a handmade world of shotgun houses, lazy remnants of jazz, whiffs of barbecue, and angel’s trumpet trees. All just to bring an ailing black woman a tuna-salad-on-lettuce-leaf lunch and a pot of clove and sassafras tea. She’d put the picnic basket on the kitchen table while Julian told his bedridden mother, “You got some company.”

  The woman had smiled and followed him into the sickroom, where white curtains ruffled from a breeze through the open window. She turned to him. Would you mind putting water on for te
a? Bands of sun through kitchen blinds laying golden stripes across the walls, the water’s slow boil, the scent of gardenias hanging over the porch steps where she had been. A “fine lady,” his mother’s frail voice had uttered later. But only now, years later, Julian wondered. Could she have known what her husband had done?

  It was a thought that did not ride in alone—it was saddled with a twinge of guilt. No reason to suspect the kind woman’s visit was in any way an apology for a husband whose business affairs were as unknowable to her as the mountains of the moon. Just a charitable gesture, the way southerners do. The woman’s visit, the tea and lunch, seemed to lift his mother’s spirits that week, which would be her last. When a stroke claimed Clarisse’s own life less than a year later, the image of the delicate southern lady, head high, dressed in crisp white linen, stuck in Julian’s mind.

  Another frame held an enlarged black and white photograph, grainy and slightly faded—Simon Fortier and Matthew Parmenter, right hands clasped in handshake in front of a green awning and a sign announcing PARMENTER’S CREOLE KITCHEN. Opening day. Both men nattily dressed in starched and pressed white shirts, heads full of thick, longish hair, faces full of cocky grins. Two bright young men on a tear in the world, owner and head chef, employer and employee, friend and friend.

  But the next frame dulled his eyes, drained blood from his face. Parmenter again, smiling, shaking hands in front of the awning of the restaurant. But his father’s image was replaced with another familiar one—the president of the United States

  “I hope you like iced tea. It’s all I have.” Parmenter was standing behind him holding a tray with two full glasses. Seeing Julian’s stunned eyes and dropped jaw, he said, “Oh, haven’t you seen that before?” He ambled to the living room and set the tray of glasses on a small table near Julian’s chair.

  Julian no longer had a taste for tea, but sat and sipped anyway. He well remembered Simon coming home excited that night. It was more than a dozen years ago, just before his father retired. Simon, I want you to meet someone, Matthew had yelled above the cackle of boiling pots on the six-burner range, while his head chef wiped greasy fingers on a towel. The man was in my kitchen! Simon said, his voice pitched high, ringing with giddy joy. The man was actually in my kitchen! The president’s strong paw engulfed Simon’s hand, and his eyes seemed fixed on his as he praised Simon’s shrimp etouffee, his bourbon-laced bread pudding, and of course, his red beans and rice. Then, he truly listened while Simon told about his Auntie Maree, his teacher and the true chef in the family, from the old home place at Silver Creek.

  But a picture with the president? Apparently an honor reserved only for owners, not the lowly genius chef whose artistry had put the restaurant on the culinary world map, and more money in Parnenter’s pockets than he could spend in a lifetime.

  “The president was a big fan of your father’s cooking. He came whenever he was in the state, right up until the week we closed.”

  Right, Julian thought. Maybe the president would have been a decent business partner. He stared down into the tea, then took a long, thoughtful drink.

  Parmenter put down his cup, his whitish brows furrowed. “I want you to know, Julian, I will do whatever I can to help you find your father. I count him among my dearest friends. You know that.”

  Julian paused a moment, then spoke quietly.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I know a few people at the police department. They are stretched horribly thin, but there’s at least one or two men I can count on for help.”

  “I’d appreciate whatever you could do, sir.”

  “By the way, where are you staying?”

  “At the Best Western in Baton Rouge.”

  “Oh? Why don’t you stay here? I have so much room. My chef, I’m sure, will be back soon, my housekeeper too. You’ll be so much more comfortable…”

  Julian bit his bottom lip. Stay here? He didn’t even want to be here now.

  “Thanks. I’m good where I am.”

  For the next few minutes, Julian listened while Parmenter went on about the night of the storm, the sounds of deafening thunder and rain, the crashing of tree limbs. The feral braying and cawing of the wind and the eerie calm when it finally ended. How it was so different from anything he’d been through before, even Betsy.

  “It was terrible, I must say, a little frightening. But I suppose here in the Garden District we fared better than most.”

  You got that right. Julian finished his tea and got up to leave. Parmenter hobbled up with his cane. “Well, all right. I’ll make some calls today. You checked the whole neighborhood? No one has seen him?”

  “Sir, there’s nobody in the neighborhood. Daddy’s part of the Treme took on about four or five feet of water in most of the houses and the streets. But there was a whole lot more than that in some of the other parts of town.”

  Julian told him about the Lower Ninth, where houses had floated from their slabs, and New Orleans East and even further away in St. Bernard Parish, where the waters rose to the eaves and even covered some rooftops until the whole city was drained.

  Parmenter bowed his head, frowning, his face pale. “I haven’t been too well lately. I haven’t been out of my house since…I listened to my radio for a while yesterday until the battery died. I guess I didn’t realize…”

  For a brief moment, Julian felt a twinge of sympathy. If Parmenter had had children, grandchildren, they would have rushed in to look after him, occupying rooms in the enormous house, fluttering and fussing around him. And maybe he would have had a clue about the devastation in the rest of the city.

  Parmenter opened the door and the two stepped out onto the gallery. The afternoon sun was full, the twisted branches and leaves of trees spindled out like disheveled hair after a night of restless sleep, and the air was thick and muggy.

  “By the way,” he said, “how is the young lady, your friend? I remember meeting her once years ago. What was her name? Very beautiful.”

  Where did that come from? He had not thought about her in months, and now, twice in one day, the thought of Vel had been forced on him by people who barely knew her.

  Even Sylvia hadn’t brought up her name (out of kindness, he was sure), a fact that had made him more grateful than ever to his father’s girlfriend.

  “Velmyra,” he said. “Hartley. And I haven’t seen her in a while.”

  Parmenter’s face flushed. “Oh, my. I’m sorry. I thought you two were, you know. I remember your father seemed quite fond of her.”

  True. Simon had loved her as much as he had, or so it seemed, and appeared crestfallen when it had ended. He felt something bob in his stomach, again.

  Like this was all he needed, like he didn’t have enough on his mind. If he was put out with Parmenter before, he was pissed at him now.

  “Yeah, well,” Julian looked at his watch. “Sorry, I have to be someplace. Daddy’s friend Sylvia is having some folks over and I’d told her I’d come by.”

  She’d said around six. And even though it was not yet three, Julian couldn’t see staying at Parmenter’s another minute. The man had offered his help; he’d done what he came to do.

  Parmenter followed him to the edge of the porch as Julian descended the steps.

  “One minute, Julian.”

  Julian turned to see the frail-looking man, narrow shoulders hunched, clasping his robe close around his neck as a breeze ruffled it. In the outdoor light, his skin seemed more tawny and ravaged with time, his eyes two shallow pools of fading light.

  “There’s something I need to tell you,” he said, squinting as the afternoon sun blanched his face. “I…I am not well.”

  “Sir?”

  “What I am saying to you, Julian, is that I am dying. I don’t have much longer to live.”

  Julian felt his breath catch for a moment.

  Parmenter looked out over the street at the magnolias beyond the neutral ground, at the sway of cypress leaves on the trees that hovered over the streetcar tracks. “As
you know, I have no family here. After I lost Clarisse, your father was like a brother to me. And you. You were like the son I never had. Oh, I know we have not been close. I wasn’t even sure that you liked me. But Simon told me so much about your life, your success, I felt as if you were mine. I never watched television, but I bought one the day you were to be on that late night show…what’s the one?”

  “The Tonight Show.”

  He smiled. “Yes, that’s it. I was as proud of you as your father. I have to believe Simon is safe somewhere. That being the case, it is imperative that I see him right away. I…ah, I have some unfinished business with him.”

  Julian nodded, centering his gaze on Parmenter’s weakened eyes. He wondered if the “unfinished business” had anything to do with a small fortune that should have been his father’s.

  “I’ll contact my friends with the police department today. And when your father is found, please bring him to me as soon as possible. Your father owes me something, and it is important that we settle it before I, uh, expire.”

  Julian’s eyes bulged—he couldn’t help it. Owes him something?

  “When you find him, would you bring him to me? I am asking as a favor.”

  What else could he say?

  “Yes, sir.”

  He had three hours until dinner at Sylvia’s. So he drove through the streets of the city he barely recognized.

  He steered the Neon through blighted neighborhoods of ruined houses, streets piled with debris, missing street signs, and bluetarped roofs. Stray dogs nibbling at garbage piles. Homeless men, dazed, wandering the streets. And occasionally, a rental car parked in front of a water-ruined house while family members, faces distorted with shock or disbelief, empty their homes of drowned possessions, the flotsam of upended lives.

  It crossed his mind to take the bridge over to the Lower Ninth, where some of his old friends lived, but the thought of it made his heart cringe. He’d seen the TV coverage—it was like a war zone, the TV anchors had said. Some houses twisted, buckled, smashed, crumbled, reduced to piles of rotting wood, and some missing altogether. Worse than any catastrophe the country had ever seen, but he would have to save it for another day, when he had the stomach for it.