Wading Home: A Novel of New Orleans (41 page)

“You don’t have a wreath on your door! Ain’t these pretty? Fifty percent off now, since the season’s almost over. Five dollars. Made’em myself. You’ll have something nice for New Year’s Eve.”

The man explained that he’d just come back to town from Cincinnati to learn his job as a waiter in the French Quarter was gone, since the restaurant where he worked was unable to reopen.

“That’s OK, though. I’m starting my own business! Firewood for the rest of the winter. And handyman work. I do roof repairs, carpentry, drywalling, insulation, you name it, I do it! I give a you fair price, not like some of these jackasses around here! You can trust me, sure as my name is Jacob.”

Julian smiled. Jacob. Fairly common, but it meant something that this man shared his grandfather’s name. His eyes looked kind, hopeful, lit as brightly as tree bulbs, and his cheeks were flush, reddish with the night cold. He’d combed the city for supplies, the man explained, found fallen pine trees and cut enough branches and discarded chicken wire to make wreaths. Then he’d found enough dry wood from uprooted oaks in devastated neighborhoods to chop, split, and sell as firewood door to door when the weather had turned cool. He’d found acorns from the dead pines and sprayed them red and gold and green to make tree ornaments, and sold out of them.

He reached in his wallet, pulled out his business card, gave it to Julian. Julian found a five in his pocket and handed it to him. The man thanked him, then went to his truck and came back with an extra wreath.

“A little lagniappe for ya!” His neon smile lit up the night. “Merry Christmas!”

“You too.” Julian waved, watched as the man’s truck pulled off down the street.

He finished restacking the wood, setting enough aside for the fireplace, then looked at the man’s card.
Building the New New Orleans…Jacob W. Boudreaux, Handyman, At Your Service
, it read.

In the last month or so Julian had noticed that the talk of a disappeared, dead New Orleans had, itself, died; no one was saying anymore that the city was finished. They’d completed repairing the Convention Center, and now they were talking about renovating the Superdome. He’d been torn about that; he loved his Saints, but those two places had seen so much heartache. The slow upward climb had begun. People might be carrying their heartaches on their backs, but they were still walking.

He turned Jacob’s card over to see a small fleur-de-lis, the new symbol of the reviving city, on the back. He wondered what the man’s story was; everybody had one. Wondered who or what he had lost. Wondered where he’d been, what he’d gone through, and what he’d seen when he returned. And he wondered if that light shining in his eyes had always been there. Or if maybe it had dimmed to near darkness, then revived itself like a dying fire stoked with the irons of faith and will.

Julian thought about a conversation he’d had with his father when he was little. He’d come home from school crying when a classmate told him that the city where they lived would eventually be swept away by a hurricane that would wipe it off the face of the earth.

It had been a winter night like this one. His father poured him a glass of hot milk, and told him about an old city where the streets were filled with water, and that for years experts claimed it was sinking, and someday would be gone.

They might be right, Simon told his son.

“But they tell me Venice is still there.”

Early May, and all arrive at the hour Julian has set, 9:30, and the day’s heat is just beginning. A small gathering of friends and family, they didn’t come to celebrate death (even though it was on all their minds), but life itself, since each death affirms the eternality of all things living, each life as eternal as the trees whose roots run deep into seasons past, the sky above, the creek, or the land itself.

Kevin Larouchette and his new bride, Raynelle, a pixie-like brunette with an effusive smile, along with their two-year old, Suzy, and their two Labradors, Jack and Ruby, rambled up the road to Silver Creek in the slightly used Caravan he’d bought his first year at Piaget and Foster, a small law firm in Local. Genevieve and Pastor Jackson, now living together at the Silver Creek cabin (since a fire at Pastor Jackson’s near Elam C.M.E. nearly destroyed the house) ate a quiet breakfast, then dressed in their finest for the occasion, the Pastor in his gray Lord & Taylor Sunday suit and Genevieve in a new summer frock of bright blue silk.

Julian and Velmyra, who’d driven from New Orleans, had been living out what Genevieve called “one of those newfangled relationships,” traipsing back and forth between New York and New Orleans and anywhere else they cared to go, “jumping around the country like a couple of rabbits,” as she put it. (Who did they think they were—Oprah and Stedman?) Unable to define their place in each other’s lives, but unwilling to accept that no such place existed, they carried on like many a modern couple: him flying from New York to New Orleans to visit her, her flying from New Orleans to New York when he wasn’t on tour with his band. Spending summer months together at the European jazz festivals while Vel’s school was out, spending winter months in New Orleans when the New York cold was too much for either of them.

They had just returned from Europe when Velmyra, sitting across from Julian at one of their favorite coffee shops in SoHo, gave him her news. Julian listened, not believing her words at first, then, dumbstruck, closed his misting eyes and let a wave of joy wash over him. “I hear that twins,” she said, reaching for his hand, “are usually easier to raise than people think.” Julian felt like he’d been given a second chance. “Thank you,” were the only words he could manage. This time, he would be there. The whole world, finally, seemed right again.

Their wedding, a no-fuss New York courthouse affair with Velmyra dressed in white and lavender linen and Julian attired in the same deep blue suit he’d performed in the last night of the North Sea Jazz Festival in Rotterdam (to great reviews), lasted all of nine minutes, with Julian’s young drummer, in a blue blazer and slightly baggy jeans, serving as a witness. And after that, they were only somewhat more settled; they set up housekeeping in the St. Charles place after Simon’s house was completed, sold half the antiques and other furnishings, and occupied the cavernous, empty rooms for half the year, meanwhile keeping Julian’s apartment in New York as an East Coast base. In New Orleans, they gradually converted many of the unused, light-filled rooms of the mansion into a nursery, a music studio, a recording studio, a painting studio, and an activity room for a nonprofit they formed called Living Dreams, a program for teaching art and music classes to the returning but still at-risk children of the struggling city.

Julian stood in the dust-covered yard at the foot of the cabin steps looking at his watch, wondering what is keeping the others, and had begun to regret asking everyone to dress up a little, even though they were only going to the cemetery a few yards away. Their spirits high on this auspicious day, no one would have suspected the somber nature of the occasion, and it had been decided this would not be a typical funeral, no New Orleans style fanfare, no brass band or second line, simply a graveside ceremony with family and friends at Silver Creek.

It had been Julian’s idea, this kind of ceremony, and Velmyra and all the others agreed.

That morning, he’d awakened early in their spacious, almost empty bedroom on the second floor of the St. Charles house and watched Velmyra snoring softly, wondering if he should fix her coffee or herbal tea before the drive (she loved both), and wondering what he’d been thinking all those years, choosing a life without her. He’d stroked the side of her face with the backs of his fingers, and decided it would be coffee, if there was any CC’s left. She’d slept anxiously the night before, and he wondered if she had been thinking what he was thinking—about the day ahead and what might be in store. Funerals were a tricky business; you never knew how the occasion would affect you until you were there. But this one had a certain rightness to it; they were laying one of their own to rest in a place where he belonged.

It had been early still, not quite light, and oak-lined St. Charles Avenue, visible from the sheer-covered French windows of the bedroom, still wore the glaze of the night’s rain. He’d peeked into the bedroom down the hall; satisfied, he scuffed his bare feet across the polished hardwood of the hallway and descended the grand mahogany staircase down to the huge kitchen. He’d fixed a full pot of coffee, and after sipping from his cup, carried another upstairs.

She was waking as he sat on the bed, leaned over, and kissed her temple.

Her eyes opened wide.

“I love you,” she’d said reaching up to touch his cheek with one hand, rubbing sleep-heavy eyes with the other. She’d smiled, said, “What time is it?”

“Time to get going, babe. Big day.”

“Is that for me?”

He’d handed the cup to her. She’d sat up, sipped.

“Are they awake?”

He’d smiled. “Not yet.”

“Good. There’s time.” She’d lifted the spread for him to climb back in.

He’d held her close. It would be a long day, but they would get through it. They’d survive, just as they had survived everything else—this death (the one that would take them to Silver Creek today), a flood that changed all their lives, a city almost lost and a love all but dead, rekindled from glowing ash. In the coming years of their lives together there would be more times like these. Because when it came down to it, living was just that: walking headlong into the wind and coming out on the other side. Surviving the storms, the trials, the comings and goings, and then doing it all over again.

They had decided to walk the short distance from the cabin to the graveyard, rather than take cars, as the weather was perfect, dry and crisp, with the faint odors of honeysuckle and wisteria sweetening the breeze.

At 9:45 they were to assemble in the yard to begin the walk across the dusty road and through the clearing toward the place where all the family had been buried since Silver Creek began. The children—Kevin and Raynelle’s daughter Suzy, and Julian and Velmyra’s eighteen-month-old twins, Christina Maree and Jacob Lawrence Fortier (both born with perfect hearts), had been left at the cabin with a sitter, Pastor Jackson’s niece, Gloria, a wide-eyed, surprisingly responsible marine biology major at LSU.

But at 10:05 they were still straggling onto the porch, each preening and pulling and straightening their clothes as if the dirt road before them were a red carpet teeming with paparazzi. (It had taken Genevieve two hours to find her new dress for the occasion at a Macy’s in a Baton Rouge mall, and Pastor Jackson a half hour to find the right polish for his shoes.) Genevieve came out on the porch first, adjusting her V-neck to allow a tasteful bit of cleavage to show, followed by Pastor Jackson, Velmyra, Raynelle, and Kevin.

More than a few minutes later, Sylvia emerged from the porch onto the yard, her hair perfectly coifed in tight red curls, her lemoncolored linen pantsuit shimmering in the late morning sun.

Julian walked back from the car, new camera in hand.

“Forgot this,” he said, checking the battery.

“Morning, baby.” Sylvia reached a hand to straighten his tie. “You look just like your daddy,” she said, a motherly smile playing around her eyes. “You know, I see why you always made him feel so proud.”

He kissed her cheek. “You look beautiful.”

She hugged him. “I know this isn’t easy for you. I’m proud of you too.”

Velmyra walked up behind her husband, touched him gently on the back.

Taking a deep breath, she said, “Everything OK?”

He smiled, leaned down to kiss her cheek. “Yeah. You look great.”

He turned to the others, all looking at him. “Everybody ready? OK. Let’s go.”

Taking Velmyra’s arm, he began walking toward the road.

“Wait a minute.” Genevieve looked behind her.

“Where’s Simon?”

Sylvia looked around, sucked her teeth. “Still in there gettin’ pretty. That man will be late to his own funeral.”

And finally, Simon came out, his new black suit elegantly framing his slender shoulders, his black Florsheims polished to a farethee-well, his hand-carved African cane, rescued from his flooded house, in hand.

“Somebody call my name?”

“We just waiting on you,” Genevieve said.

“Well, you coulda started without me. It ain’t like I don’t know my way over there.”

“Now you tell us.”

So they walked, Julian and Velmyra in the lead, Velmyra holding tightly to the small brown urn of mottled glass carrying the remains of the couple’s first child, Michael (named Davenport, but, in truth, the first in the new generation of Fortiers), to be buried alongside a century of his forebears.

When Julian had suggested the idea to Velmyra, that the cremated remains of baby Michael—stored in a tiny urn in a cool room at a New Orleans mausoleum all these years—be buried in the Fortier cemetery, she had smiled and hugged him.

“Yes,” she said. “That’s a perfect idea.”

And when they had told Simon what they had in mind, a tear sat suspended on the ridge of his eyelid before it fell, unabashed, down his cheek. “My first grandchild,” he said. “He was a Fortier, too.”