Lies Agreed Upon (7 page)

Tess ignored the critical hiss as she had ignored the living woman when it came to Mac
Reese.

Tess and Mac had officially parted just a month ago. Mac worked for an investment banking firm. He was tall and tanned, in season and out, and moved with broad-shouldered at
hleticism in his tailored suits. He met the world with an engaging grin and a firm handshake, and his thick blond hair achieved the perfect balance between elegantly styled and casually tousled. He was a walking testimonial to the values of professional grooming and personal confidence. His ambition and self-presentation were sending him up the corporate ladder, unaffected by the economic downturn that had knocked others, including Tess, off their financial feet.

After a wait, Mac answered his mobile phone, probably pausing to check the caller nu
mber first. His upbeat hello had an impersonal friendliness that made Tess wince. For a few panicked seconds, she held the phone blankly, unable to remember the opening line of the conversation she had rehearsed in her mind all day.

“Hi, Mac. It’s Tess,” she finally blurted out and realized with resigned acceptance that the conversation was not going to go as fantasized.

“Oh, hey, I was meaning to give you a call and congratulate you. I guess you inherited some big bucks suddenly. That should be a relief given your current financial crunch,” Mac responded, his voice so bright it had a steel glint to it.

“Who told you?”

“I heard about it from Bill’s girlfriend, who sometimes hangs out with your BFF Katie,” he answered. Mac and Katie were no longer close, but there had been a time when Katie’s romantic side was quite taken with Mac’s charm. Meanwhile, Christina had flirted with him outrageously and called him “sexy.” Jen had conceded to him intellectual respect and even asked his advice on investment matters. Tess had reveled in knowing that this paragon had chosen her.

Only Tess’s mother resisted joining Mac’s coterie of female admirers. She had declared after a couple of meetings, “Sorry, dear, I don’t think
Mr. Reese is right for you. The boy smiles too much.”

“You think it’s a problem that I’m dating someone who’s happy?” demanded Tess,
irritated by the critical negativity so typical of her mother.

“The only people who grin that much are fools, maniacs or liars. I think you know which he is,” answered her mother.

Tess had rejected her mother’s assessment as unfair then. After all, since her mother was so critical, Mac was not thrilled with her company and mustered only strained pleasantries.

When Tess was with Mac, the intimacy of his smiles intoxicated her. Her blood fizz
ed warmly at the sight of him—whether he was rumpled and sipping morning coffee, or intently talking business on his cell, or laughing with friends at a crowded party. Even when he was absent, his image slipped constantly into her thoughts. She liked to wake up in the morning to possess him in solitary bliss. She would relish his sleeping face beside her, handsome and relaxed, with his stubble-shadowed cheek resting boyishly on a sinewy masculine hand. She would rub her cheek against the smooth warmth of his shoulder while his breath tickled the part in her hair.

Yet she had gone from this state of giddy infatuation to agreeing only a month ago that they should “give each other space.” Somehow their relationship had begun to come apart at the seams, tugged by both sides until there were gaping holes in the fabric of contentment. She did
not know if she had expected too much or he had offered too little.

When her mother died six months earlier, she felt Mac was holding himself thoughtlessly aloof. There was probably no comfort that would have assuaged her isolation, but she wanted his presence to bring at least the promise of warmth to the cold, slow passage of grief. She began to feel anxious when he stayed late at work and depressed when he spent time with friends.

When she lost her job, the estrangement grew, and she saw his smiles with her mother’s eyes: a distracting flash to disguise indifference. Frightened by the cold riptide of loneliness, she grabbed at him more desperately, creating waves of dark feelings that pushed him further away. A month ago, he had suggested they take a “time-out” in their relationship to “evaluate.” Tess was so exhausted by then that it was a relief to give up the effort to hold him.

Then, after her meeting with Dreux, she realized that she had not only survived her di
sasters but, by some strange quirk of fate, come to a place of unexpected good fortune. She began to hope that she might recapture the champagne bubbles of romance with Mac—but this time exorcised of any souring anxiety. She had given in to the urge to reconnect with him.

“Yes, I’m planning to go to New Orleans in two weeks to pick up a check and act like a tourist
for a bit,” Tess said now. “You’re welcome to meet me there. Things have changed so much for me recently that I thought we should give the relationship another chance. I’d hate to give up on a good thing because of a few rough months.”

Mac was quiet for so long that she began to feel dizzy and realized that she had been holding her breath. She inhaled deeply
, like a diver coming to the surface. She hoped he could not hear it.

“Yeah, I miss the good times, too, babe,” Mac finally replied softly, but it sounded like an echo in an empty room
to Tess’s anxious ear. “I meant to give you a call earlier, but things have been crazy at work. But, you know, I have a meeting in New Orleans in three weeks, which is around the same time that you’re planning to be there. Maybe we should get together.”

Tess felt her heart, which had plummeted at his initially disinterested tone, begin to a
ccelerate almost painfully. “I’d love that,” she responded softly.

“Great! I’ll give you a call when
I get to the Big Easy. We can wine and dine and catch up. Hopefully, make up, too. I’ve missed you. Oh, I hate to cut this short, but I’ve got an important call coming in from Asia just now. I’m glad we’ll hook up, really. See you soon.” Click, Mac was gone.

Her worries about her adventure in New Orleans were swept away by the prospect of se
eing Mac again. Now any painful truths she learned about her family’s past would not only be soothed by financial gain but by more intimate personal pleasures—at least she hoped so.

She closed her eyes and sent her emotions back to a time when they were happy together, when she often spent weekends at his u
pscale Santa Monica apartment.

She could picture Mac so clearly. Once more he stood nude in the shared bathroom, gloriously unconscious of his male appeal as his eyes fixed on his mirrored image while he shaved. She was dewy fresh from the shower, wrapped only in a towel. Her hair was pinned up, but fine tendrils curled damply around her flushed face. She sa
vored him for a moment unnoticed. Her eyes caressed the sculpted muscles of calf and thigh, the firm curl of buttocks, the graceful curve of spine, and then the vulnerable nape of a masculine neck. She dropped the towel on the floor and took a few small, quiet steps to wrap her arms around his waist. She laid her check upon his firm back and snuggled her naked belly against his warm skin.

He chuckled and turned, face still half-lathered and embraced her in turn, his gaze heavy-lidde
d but intent. The remembered feel of his warm lips on her bare breast—warm breath, warm tongue and warm whispers—sent sparks down her spine to heat her core.

Oh, she had really missed him.
She fell asleep plotting her New Orleans romance—happily ignorant of any threat to her happy ending.

5
history

On a drizzly
night in mid-June, Tess sat in a taxi bound for the French Quarter of New Orleans. She looked out blankly as she passed by clumps of low-rise architecture and voids where the broom of nature or man had swept urban life back under the soggy earth.

The taxi was old, with cracked vinyl seats and loose suspension, and the obese driver li
stened to radio Gospel, his dark silhouette periodically nodding and mumbling “Amen.” Gaudy Mardi Gras beads swung from the rearview mirror as Tess bounced and swayed between the hum of the rainy pavement and the rhythmic tide of salvation and damnation – and admitted to herself she felt uncomfortably alien.

Her mother and grandmother had not only suppressed their history, they had su
ppressed any cultural legacy. Perhaps because of the secrets she guarded, her mother had worked hard to erase regional accent and customs. Her grandmother had even been explicitly forbidden from serving “unhealthy” larded Southern cuisine.

Tess felt especially disoriented because she was without her usual armor of bookish knowledge. She had embraced the spontaneity her friends
had urged on her and purposely limited her travel research. Plus, she was solo. She had informed Dreux’s office of her schedule and accommodations, but she did not expect to be contacted immediately. She was in town a week before her appointment with Dreux, who only came to his office on Thursdays. It was Friday, the start of a weekend, and Mac was not coming for six interminable days.

After a long ride in the
muggy cab, Tess was relieved to finally roll down a narrow French Quarter street and stop in front of the Hotel d’Iberville. “Tess of the D’Iberville has arrived,” she announced to herself and smiled.

She had been amused by th
e literary allusion to Hardy’s
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
when she selected the hotel. It was why she had selected it. Only Dame Fortune would couple a young woman named Tess with the Hotel d’Iberville.

Tess looked up curiously at a three-story façade of worn
cream stucco. The old-fashioned paned windows were framed by louvered-wood shutters coated in weathered black paint. The hotel stood shoulder to shoulder with a row of aged architectural contemporaries, all sharing a sidewalk canopy held up by lacey cast-iron columns that sprouted from the undulating brick sidewalk. But the damp night air was kind, and the entrance’s old-fashioned gas lamps wreathed it in a misty golden aura.

“The adventure begins,” Tess reassured herself as she clambered out into the warm dri
zzle and wrestled her suitcase over the uneven brick and through the tall etched-glass-and-brass doors.

Crossing the hotel threshold, she was struck immediately by the faint, sour
odor emanating from carpet, wallpaper and upholstery, the exhaled memory of almost 200 years of humidity and decay. She looked around curiously. The lobby was narrow and deep, with the high ceiling of its early nineteenth century construction.

An enclosed reception office was clearly a newer addition, and its service window framed an attractive young man with smooth café-au-lait skin and limpid long-lashed brown eyes. He smiled attentively and introduced himself as Pierre. He carefully provided Tess with a keycard and detailed directions to her room, and then e
xplained with an apologetic air that there was no restaurant in the hotel but many excellent places to eat a few minutes’ walk in any direction.

“Oh, I almos’ forgot,” exclaimed helpful Pierre and pulled from under the counter an e
nvelope with the gilded return address of Graham, Odom & Dreux. “Some lawyers sent this over for a special welcome.”

Tess accepted the envelope and glanced inside. It contained four coupons for a free o
range juice and “breakfast pastry” with purchase of breakfast at Café Bon Temps.

Pierre peered curiously at a coupon. “I guess you wanna try that Café Bon Temps.
It’s a block over from here,” he smiled. “Nice of those lawyers to get you somethin’ free.”

An exhausted Tess navigated a maze of oddly crooked halls to her room, which was an old-fashioned, high-ceilinged space divided into a
tiny sitting area and bedroom, with a bathroom sandwiched between. She glanced into the bathroom and grimaced; it had been awkwardly updated, so that various tiled risers lay in wait to trip the unwary in the dark. She also eyed the antique-looking bed with a frown. It was piled with marshmallow-soft, brocaded and tasseled bedding and was so tall it required a footstool to mount. Tess wondered if it was a romantic affectation to evoke “historic New Orleans.”

Tess emptied her suitcase and barely filled the two drawers of a little TV-cabinet-cum-armoire facing the foot of the high bed. Then she opened the shallow closet’s louvered doors and, ignoring the faint scent of mildew and cigarette smoke, hung up a meager array of summer dresses, slacks and blouses. At the bottom of the closet, she nestled a few sandals and athletic shoes. Even the closet’s small size could
not disguise the paucity of her wardrobe. Christina and Katie had argued strenuously that she needed a lot more clothing and accessories, but Tess had insisted on traveling light.

She stored her toiletries and set Jen’s big book of crosswords on the bedside table. “I needed it for the plane trip. And it helps me sleep after a long day,” Tess defended herself to the empty room.

Restless, she ambled to the window in the bedroom, whose only view was a wall of curtained windows across the narrow street. She looked up speculatively at the clearing sky. The pale drowned face of the moon surfaced, only to drift from sight beneath a silver cirrus wave. It was only 10 p.m., and she supposed that Bourbon Street revelries would be in full swing, but she did not have the energy to join merry-making strangers. Tomorrow she would feel less disoriented.

“Always tomorrow with you, isn’t it?”

“Go play with the other ghosts. These old halls are probably crowded,” muttered Tess.

Tess felt justified in her
early bedtime when she left the hotel with renewed energy the next morning. It was already warm enough to presage a sweltering noon, so she dressed in shorts and covered herself in sunscreen for a day on foot in the French Quarter. She planned to take advantage of a walking tour that serendipitously began at the 1850 House Museum in the Lower Pontalba Building on Jackson Square, where she could look for the portrait of Josephine Chastant mentioned by Dreux. She hoped to make her family history more tangible by putting it in its original setting.

But to digest New Orleans history, Tess decided she needed a New Orleans breakfast; she would make use of the breakfast coupon. Café Bon Temps turned out to be a tiny place filled with locals, which Tess hoped was a good sign. The odor of bacon grease was so dense in the air
that Tess could almost taste the meal while standing in line to order. As she waited, Tess studied the breakfast menu painted on a wooden board above the counter. She could order two fried eggs and grits, or scrambled eggs and grits. Adding bacon, sausage, toast, or a biscuit with gravy cost extra. There was no sign of a “breakfast pastry.”

Tess ordered fried eggs and, by default, grits, along with a large coffee. A wide mahog
any-skinned woman, in an orange shirt embroidered with the name LaVerna, took her order. When Tess proffered her coupon for free juice and pastry, La Verna looked at it sourly. “You gotta show dat to Remy when he bring da food,” she said with a dismissive head shake. Tess wondered why she had to redeem her coupon through the waiter, but she shrugged it off as a peculiarity of the place.

Tess went to sit at one of the little tables on the sidewalk, or banquette as
she had read it was called in New Orleans.

“
Thank God, you’re not going to sit in Café Bon Grits. You should swallow your food,
not absorb it through your pores.”

S
nide maternal remarks could not dent Tess’s determination to enjoy her al fresco breakfast on the picturesque street. The worn pastel stucco of the buildings was just catching the gilt of the rising sun. A merry parade of pink, mint and yellow facades was accented by lime, black and azure shutters, flouting the sedate color schemes of more modern architecture. The buildings’ second-story balconies were adorned in lacey cast iron and exuberant with a kaleidoscope of flowers in hanging baskets and planter boxes. Tess pulled out her mobile phone and snapped a quick picture to send to her friends. Today she would start to show how she was enjoying her adventure, she told herself bracingly.

Tess was startled from her reverie by a warm voice saying, “Here you go.” The next i
nstant a plate of eggs and grits slipped under her nose. She looked up to see a waiter with a narrow olive-skinned face, long aquiline nose and high cheekbones. He looked to be in his late 20s or early 30s and was dressed in the uniform of greasy apron and orange shirt. He grinned at her with white teeth, perfectly aligned except for an endearing crookedness from prominent canines. Collar-length dark curls emerged from the cap of a piratical black bandanna tied back behind his ears.

The waiter arched black brows teasingly above
dark eyes. “I understand you have something you’d like to give me.”

“What? Oh, yes, you’re Remy,” stammered Tess, reading the embroidered name on the shirt
and blushing. “Yes, I do have a coupon for a free orange juice and ‘breakfast pastry,’ whatever that is. They told me inside to give it to you.”

Tess hoped Remy would credit her rosy cheeks to sun rather than shyness, as he e
xplained that the “breakfast pastry” meant either a croissant or a Danish roll. When she chose the croissant, he nodded pleasantly and returned shortly, still smiling, with a large glass of juice and a flaky warm croissant on a small plate. She suddenly felt quite light-hearted. Tess decided to eat breakfast at the same place on Sunday just to start the day with Remy’s smile.

“My, my, isn’t it amazing what attention from a handsome man can do for a girl’s spirits.”

Since the French Quarter is a relatively small grid of streets, Tess quickly reached Jackson Square after leaving the café. At the rear of the square stood the white three-spire St. Louis Cathedral. It was flanked on both sides by the matching heavy mansard roofs and arcades of the Presbytere, built as a clerical residence, and the Cabildo, once the seat of Spanish government. Both were now state museums. In the middle of the square, a bronze General Andrew Jackson, victor of the 1815 Battle of New Orleans and future president, reined his horse, turned his lean, weathered face toward the Mississippi and lifted his military bicorne hat aloft in a gesture of fierce American will. Beyond the statue ran the great river, where a passing tanker seemed to float above the square.

The Pontalba
Buildings would be the two arms of four-story, red-brick row houses that embraced opposite sides of the plaza, and the 1850 House would be halfway down the left-hand Pontalba block. Tess began to follow the banquette on the left side of the square, idly observing the street vendors trolling the early schools of tourists. Against the black iron fencing around the central green space, artists leaned gaudy oils of jazz trumpeters and idealized Creole cottages. A psychic sipped coffee at an umbrella-capped table topped by fanned tarot cards. Mule-drawn open carriages circled the plaza, touting romantic journeys.

It was all reassuringly touristic, like a Disney movie set. Tess entered the ground floor of the 1850 House
Museum. The commercial ground floor sold books and gifts focused on local culture, while the museum tour involved the two floors of the historically restored residential apartment above. She haphazardly browsed the ground floor shop while watching for the walking tour to start.

H
er eye was caught by a large poster with a map of plantation holdings along the Mississippi. She moved close and squinted at the tiny type but was unable to find the names Arnoult, Chastant or Cabrera. She was turning away with a shrug when a fluting voice asked, “May I help you?”

Startled, Tess looked down at a tiny
old woman with carefully coiffed white hair and bright black eyes. She had probably been a petite woman in her youth, but now her spine had compacted and her torso shrunk so that she was even smaller. The thin bony legs beneath her round body gave her a distinctly birdlike appearance.

The little woman cocked her head quizzically
and clasped little clawed hands together at her waist. “Are you looking for something in particular? I’m a tour guide here, and I help in the shop.”

“Oh, I was just interested in this map of plantations between Natchez and New Orleans. I have ancestors who once owned property near here, so I was curious to try to find their names,” said Tess.

“Really, that’s quite interesting,” she chirped. “But you know this map shows holdings up to 1858 so if the land was acquired after that…” Tess wondered if the woman was politely inferring that, since Tess was clearly not a Southern local, her ancestors were likely Yankee interlopers.

“No, they had all settled here before then. I’m not finding anything, but I’m not sure where to look. One of the names was Chastant, however, and I was told that there is a
nineteenth century portrait of Josephine Chastant in this museum.”