Wading Home: A Novel of New Orleans (13 page)

It was the dark, nutty, spicy roux of Simon’s gumbo that seasoned their friendship. Sitting in the mess tent at dinner, Parmenter tasted the savory sauce, and a single spoonful brought New Orleans to mind. A second one, and he was walking through its jasmine-scented gardens of New Orleans and palm-laden courtyards, his homesickness kept at bay by French Quarter cooking half a world away. Parmenter lingered over Simon’s artfully prepared meals and took a liking to the homeboy chef. Their conversations over coffee and bread pudding ran to boyhood stories, teenage tales, and boredom with Army life. When the war finally ended, they shook hands and parted, each heading back to their respective Louisiana homes.

Home just long enough to shake foreign dirt from his shoes and an odd war from his mind, Matthew wandered the French Quarter one sun-blazed Sunday after church, and stumbled upon a hand-scribbled chalkboard menu outside a tiny café. Hungry and aimless, he stopped in to try his luck with the red beans and rice. One spoonful of the familiar sauce and he smiled, asking to see the cook. When Simon strolled out in a white apron splotched with gumbo roux, Matthew grabbed him into a bear hug.

“You?” Matthew said, a smile lighting his lean, suntanned face. “What are you doing here?”

Simon’s grin was electric, his brown eyes sparkling. “Didn’t I always tell you I was the best cook in the South? Where’d you think I’d be?”

The two swapped wartime memories and peacetime plans while Matthew downed three bowls of Simon’s special. More than a year passed before Matthew’s vision, planted that day in the back of his brain, bloomed into something worthy of words. With the blond man’s small inheritance from a recently deceased uncle, and Simon’s wizardry at a kitchen stove, Matthew conceived an elegant French Quarter restaurant that could play host to the world. Down-home friendly, uptown chic. High toned, yet easy mannered. Dainty white candles set on fine white linen spread across intimate tables, courtyard seating out back beneath blue sky and sun dappling through palmetto leaves. A Creole restaurant with Simon as head chef and Matthew as owner and manager.

Within six months, Parmenter’s Creole Kitchen opened its doors in a run-down space oozing rustic charm on Chartres Street next to an Irish bar. And in six more months, Friday and Saturday night reservations at premium tables were booked weeks into the future. If the prime location and the tony yet casual atmosphere brought first-time customers in by the dozens, the menu brought them back again and again.

From soup to nuts, the entire menu was superb. Simon’s Original Belle Rive Bread Pudding, sumptuously dressed in dark rum and cherry liqueur, made mouths water, and the crawfish jambalaya with a side of spicy boudin disappeared from plates within minutes after it was served. Even the Blanche Dubois Mint Julep Sundae, hastily concocted by Simon at Matthew’s request, was an instant success. But the red beans and rice starred on the small menu, barely altered from Auntie Maree’s recipe, and before long famous politicians, actors, athletes, and musicians from all over the world pulled up to the tables and rolled their eyes dreamily between mouthfuls of the delectable Creole fare.

By its fifth year, Parmenter’s had been mentioned in no less than four national culinary magazines, and even enjoyed a paragraph of praise in the
New Yorker
. But the restaurant’s fate was sealed one afternoon when the president of the United States reserved the restaurant for a night and brought in a party of nine. Each ordered the red beans and rice, and each got another order to go.

Years passed. Hungry people came in droves, then told their friends, who also came and then told their friends. Simon was doing what he loved best in a state-of-the-art kitchen for people who were as grateful as they were hungry and free with their praise. Matthew kept the bottom line steeped in black ink and ran the restaurant with army efficiency. In time both men got married; Simon to Ladeena, his doe-eyed childhood sweetheart from Pointe Louree, and Matthew to Clarisse, a petite blond legal secretary who’d winked at him daily from her crosslegged perch at the restaurant bar. While Matthew remained childless, Simon sired a son.

It was when Julian was in high school that Matthew’s new idea took shape; why not package the red beans and rice in a dry mix and sell it at the restaurant? A little bit of New Orleans to take back to Cleveland, Washington, or Kansas City. A souvenir of a sumptuous dining experience near the mouth of the Mississippi.

“It’s a natural,” Parmenter said. “People will buy it like crazy.”

Simon frowned. He used fresh herbs. No way to substitute dry ones and get the same result. “And besides,” he said. “My recipe’s not for sale.”

But the mix wouldn’t have to taste exactly like the restaurant dish; it only had to be a reminder. And the family secrets of the recipe would be guarded like gold.

After hours of wrangling, Simon agreed to concoct a special dry-herb version of his family recipe. Wrapped in clear plastic packaging with a colorful label and an artfully tied red ribbon, it was sold in the front of the store near the cash register, along with T-shirts and postcards of the restaurant. Matthew was right. The mix, Parmenter’s Creole Kitchen Red Beans and Rice, was an immediate and huge success.

Velmyra turned to Julian, perplexed.

“So what was the problem? It sounds like things worked out OK.”

Julian slowed the car to accommodate an S-curve in the road. “Things worked out great,” he said, “for Matthew Parmenter.”

He breathed a sigh, then went on. “Parmenter offered Daddy a flat fee for the new recipe and the right to reproduce it. Ten thousand dollars. More than he’d ever seen in his life, so he grabbed it. But Parmenter said the mix would be sold in the restaurant—he never said anything about taking it to national grocery chains. That’s what he did, though. A year and a half after the deal the stuff was everywhere: the French Market, souvenir shops, grocery stores as far away as New York and California. Even airport shops all over Louisiana and the South. I saw an article about Parmenter a few years ago in
New Orleans Business Weekly
about
his
red beans and rice mix. He’d grossed millions from it.”

Velmyra let out a long, low whistle. “You’re kidding.”

“Daddy took his ten grand and fixed the roof on the house, and helped me pay my tuition at Tulane,” Julian said. “Parmenter took his money, bought that fancy mansion in the Garden District, and retired.”

Velmyra nodded soberly. “I see.”

They were silent for a while, as Julian negotiated the snaking turns through wooded backcountry. When the road straightened again, he turned to look at Velmyra.

“Daddy never complained. When I saw the stuff on a shelf in a deli in Manhattan, I asked Daddy about it. He just laughed it off. Said it wasn’t his best business deal.”

“Daddy never cared all that much about money. It was never that much of a big deal to him. But Parmenter knew what he was doing; he knew he was cheating Daddy. And Daddy still treated him like his best friend.”

“So you believe Parmenter deliberately took advantage of your father.”

“What do you think?” Julian snapped toward her. “When I found out about it, Daddy and me, we had it out. I told him the man was getting rich off of his recipe, and he should go to Parmenter and demand a fair share of the profits. Or get a lawyer. Daddy thought I was nuts. He blew me off.”

“Like you said, Simon never cared that much about money.”

“It wasn’t so much about the money. It was about friendship. It was about what’s fair. Would you have done that to a friend?”

Velmyra tilted her head thoughtfully toward the window. “I’d like to think not.”

“Exactly.”

“I get your point. But maybe your father thought it was about friendship, too.”

“What do you mean?”

“Maybe he thought keeping his friend was more important than money. Maybe he thought about the money and the friendship, and chose the friendship. And if…ooh, be careful.”

Julian swerved to miss a squirrel darting across the road as he made another sharp turn.

“I think this is the right way,” he said. “At least I hope it is.”

At the right of the turn he spied an old barn with chipped red paint and slouching as if it could be tipped over with a good strong push.

“There. That’s the barn. This is the right way. We’re almost there.”

Velmyra turned to look at the barn and the stand of trees surrounding it. Banks of trees and brush hugged the road. As they drove further, taller trees canopied the road and veiled it in dim gray light, almost completely obscuring the sun. This was the part Julian remembered as a boy, being in the deep country surrounded by so much lushness it was almost scary, caught in the dark huddle of trees, nested in a mystery of green.

“This was what Daddy cared about. Land. Land was always Daddy’s fortune.”

Velmyra gazed out the window. “Well, it’s gorgeous land.”

They drove down the path, the Neon kicking up red dust and rocks and bouncing along on the uneven grading. When they reached the end of the lane, Julian pointed to an old cabin nestled between two live oak trees.

Julian looked at Velmyra. “We’re here.”

“This is it?”

“Yeah.”

Genevieve lived here alone now. The front of the cabin, the patchy siding showing more raw wood than paint, the crude, warped cypress floorboards of the porch and sagging eaves, gave nothing away; it looked the way it always had when he was a young boy. Untended, like no one was home.

But the certainty that his father was not here descended from the air around him, worked its way into his throbbing temples, his shoulders, and his back, and settled over his eyes like a cloud, darkening everything in view.

“I don’t have to go inside.” He looked over at Velmyra. “I know he’s not here.”

“How do you know?”

“I just do.”

Julian got out, leaned against the car door, arms folded across his chest, his head down. Velmyra got out, walked to the porch, and knocked on the door. When she turned the doorknob, the door gave out a squeaking groan.

“It’s open.”

When Julian joined her on the porch, they went inside. It was a sea of white; white sheets covering most of the furniture, white dust covering everything else. There was a faded yellow and orange plaid sofa and a recliner covered in green velour. A chrome-legged table of yellow Formica and four chrome-trimmed vinyl kitchen chairs sat near a window. A small ash coffee table, a china cabinet of knotted pine, and an old portable Magnovox television atop an older television console took up space in a tiny living room that smelled of damp wood, mildew, and old bacon grease.

“There must be someone close by.” Velmyra touched a lace doily on the back of the recliner. “The place was unlocked.”

Julian looked at her with a wry half-smile. “It’s unlocked because we’re in the country. Nobody ever locks anything around here.”

Velmyra nodded, smiling. “Right.”

Julian walked around the dusty room, absently fingering the backs of chairs and the tops of tables, thinking about his father’s house in the city, covered in brown sludge and consumed in mold.

“If you had told me a year ago that this place would look like a palace compared to Daddy’s house in New Orleans, I would’ve thought you were crazy.”

The walk through the kitchen against the unenven floors took him slightly uphill, then level, then down, as the settling floorboards squeaked beneath his shoes. A swarm of memories nested in his head: the steaming heat of the damp kitchen on summer evenings, sniffing the Old Bay spice can while Simon and Aunt Genevieve prepared dinner from Auntie Maree’s sacred recipes with fresh Creole tomatoes and herbs his mother Ladeena had picked from the garden, and whatever Simon had caught that morning in the creek.

In the deep backwoods of memory, Aunt Genevieve hummed church songs as she rolled out dough for biscuits.
This little light of mine, I’ma gonna let it shine…
She sprinted around the kitchen like a woman half her age, snapping her fingers at him—
Bring me that bucket of crawdads from the porch
—or scolding him for not wiping his feet before he placed them on the pockmarked linoleum.

With closed eyes, he could smell the raw fish laid out on the table waiting for Simon’s gutting knife, the rich spices of a tomato-ey Creole sauce bubbling on the stove while his father stirred plump white rice in a cast iron pot. He was still stranded in the sepia fog of a childhood summer day when Velmyra came in the kitchen.

Mist glazed Julian’s eyes. “Well. I guess I’m back to square one.”

“I’m sorry, Julian.”

He took out his handkerchief and wiped his face.

He was silent a moment, then said, “Cousin Genevieve must be staying somewhere else. It looks like she hasn’t been here for a while.”

He pondered this a moment. He hadn’t seen her since the last time he was here, when his mother died.

He took a deep breath, shook away the memory.

“I’m gonna go over and see Mama’s grave before we go. If you want to you can stay here and I’ll come back for you, or you can go with me and wait in the car…just, you know, whatever you want to do.”