Recovering Charles (21 page)

Chapter
29

Jordan was stunned by the photos.

  The three of us sat in my apartment, clicking one at a time through the albums on my laptop. Jordan couldn’t keep her mouth closed. “I’ve never . . . I’ve never seen . . .” She hadn’t finished a sentence in ten minutes.

I clicked on the group shot Frank had snapped on the street the day we took the johnboat to Dad’s house in the Lower Ninth.

Jordan stared intently. “Who’s that?”

I named everyone in the photo.

“The girl next to you—is that Bela?”

“Uh, yeah, Bela Cruz, how’d you know?”

“You must have mentioned her,” Jordan said.

I hadn’t noticed earlier just how close Bela and I were standing in the photo.

Jez excused herself to the bathroom.

Jordan noticed.

“Tell me about her,” she said.

“Not much to tell.” I hated lying to my best friend. “She’s a grad student, worked at the club. She helped with recovery.”

Jordan studied the photo then put her hand on my cheek. “You know what I see in this photo, Luke?”

“What?”

“A look I’m unfamiliar with.”

“I’m lost.”

“No, you’re not. That look on your face . . .” She gently guided my chin toward the screen on my laptop so I couldn’t look in any other direction. “I’ve never seen that look before.”

We both knew exactly what she meant. Jordan rarely cried, but her eyes were unmistakably wet.

She stared back at my face in the photo. “I’ve waited to see that look since our first date.”

“IHOP.”

“Belgian waffles.” She took my hand.

I kissed the back of hers.

“I’m your best friend, Luke, and heaven and all my girlfriends know I’ve wanted to be more. But Luke, girls know looks.”

What do I say?

“You’re stuck, aren’t you?”

I nodded my head ever so slightly.

“Oh, Luke. I’ve known our visions of this haven’t been the same.”

“How?”

She closed the laptop and took my other hand, too. “Did you fall in love with me the first time we met?”

I looked past her and out the window.

“Luke, the first time you saw me—that first meeting—
did you know?
”

I didn’t have to answer.
Was this my father’s final lesson?

“Luke.” Her wet eyes couldn’t hold the tears up any longer. “That look on your face says you’ve
got
to find her.”

“I’m not sure I can.”

“Yes, you can.”

“How do you know?”

“I told you—the
look
.” She stood up and put her arms around my shoulders. “And I guess I just have a feeling.”

Premonition.

Jordan pulled a Kleenex from her purse, wiped her nose, then kissed me on the cheek again.

Jezebel stepped back into the room with her arms crossed in front of her chest and her head bowed slightly.

“Thank you, Jezebel,” Jordan said the words so sweetly, so sincerely, as if they’d known each other for years.

“You’re welcome.” She said the words as she stepped in for a tight hug. Then, as she let go of Jordan, Jez placed her hands on her red cheeks.

“You’re going to be OK.”

“I know,” she said.

“Come see me sometime?” Jez asked, and most wouldn’t have meant it.

“Mm-hmm,” Jordan answered.

“Be safe.” Jez kissed her forehead and retreated quietly to the kitchen.

“Please call,” Jordan said to me. “When you’re back. When your father is settled. Please.”

“I will.”

“Promise?”

“Of course. You’re still the best friend I’ve ever had.”

She hugged me again. “I love you, Luke.”

“I know. I love you, too. I always will.”

She put the Kleenex back to her eyes and walked toward the
 
door.

“Good-bye,” I said.

“Not good-bye,” she said, looking over her shoulder.

I think she wanted to say something else, but instead she blew me a kiss, smiled, and shut the door behind her.

Jez reemerged. “I’m sorry,” she said.

“It’s OK. She’ll never be out of my life. I couldn’t afford to lose her.” I’d said that before, but never with much sincerity. It felt good to mean it this time.

“What’s next?” Jez asked.

“Pack your bag back up. I’ve got to run to the basement and then we’re off.”

“Now?”

“Now.”

“All right,” she said.

“Let’s get my father to Texas.”

I didn’t wait for the elevator. Despite sore, achy legs, I ran down fourteen flights of stairs to the basement with the key to my storage closet clutched in my fist.

I opened the metal door and rummaged for the last package Dad had sent me. It was bigger than I remembered when it first arrived.

I jabbed and cut through the packing tape with the key and dug through the foam peanuts.

I slowly pulled out a case, and my heart raced exactly the way I’d expected.

I set the case on the floor and unlatched the lid.

A saxophone with a tiny wrinkle in the bell.

I could barely see it through the tears.

I lifted it from the red-velvet-lined case.

I held it in my hands like a newborn and wept.

In the case I also found a folded, handwritten chord chart to a song Dad had started but not finished. He’d called it “Love Me if You Can.”

Just to the side of the title, he’d scribbled the words:

Help me write my second verse, son.

Chapter
30

Four days later, FEMA transferred Dad’s body to Dallas.

It helped that one of Dad’s old partners at the firm was from Crawford, Texas.

The funeral was scheduled for a Saturday, a day when many from Dad’s old firm promised they could attend. I was humbled by how many kept their word.

Lee, Dad’s very first A.A. sponsor from Austin, made the trip. So did a half-dozen others from Step Eight on Dad’s list.

We bypassed a traditional church service and opted to hold all the services graveside. It had been a week since Jez had shown up at my doorstep, and she hadn’t left my side. I liked being at her side.

I’d initially asked Jordan to come—and she wanted to—but when she told me one of the biggest deals of her career was collapsing at home in New York, I uninvited her.

“You’re sure?” she asked me on the phone. “It’s just work. You’re a bazillion times more important.”

“Of course I’m sure,” I answered. “You don’t have to be here for me to know you care.”

“Dinner when you get back?”

“Of course,” I said. I knew she was curious to know whether I’d found Bela, but I also knew she wasn’t ready to ask.
In time,
I thought.

Since first arriving back home, I’d called Jerome dozens of times trying to find her.

“Still nothin’,” he said each time. “No one has seen her, son.”

Jez assumed she was home in Arizona. A good guess, but her last name, Cruz, was like looking for a grain of salt in a desert sand dune. We’d come up empty.

“Appropriate,” I told Jez. “Empty is exactly how I feel without her here to help bury my father.”

The service was short. I spoke, Jez said a few quick words, and Dad’s confidant and most loyal friend, Kaiser, added some thoughtful words about the man Dad had been, the man he fell into, and the man he’d become at death.

No more inspired words were ever spoken.

After Dad’s former secretary offered a brief benediction, the emotional crowd of twenty-eight stood to pay their final respects.

But the sound of a vehicle pulled our attention to the cemetery’s southern hillside.

First the white top crested the hill. Then the grill. Then the rest of the only fifteen-passenger van I’d ever ridden in.

The name Verses was painted on both sides.

Jez stepped up to me and put both her arms through one of mine. “Oh, my! A funeral march!” I think she’d meant to whisper.

They parked Jesse a hundred yards away and unloaded. Jerome, Tater, Hamp, Castle, and a woman Castle carried in his arms and placed in a wheelchair—his cancer-surviving sister.

From behind the van appeared one more mourner. Even from a distance the figure’s legs were bronze and beautiful, the hair gorgeous. It blew behind her in a gentle breeze as if God Himself were tousling it. She wore a white spring dress and twirled a purple parasol. I felt enough sparks to start a bonfire.

They took their instruments from their cases and played “Just a Closer Walk with Thee” as they marched toward the grave like a classic New Orleans jazz funeral. They were ragtag no more. They played the clarinet, bass drum, tuba, and the same trombone and trumpet I’d seen in New Awlins.

For a moment there was no Katrina, no recovery, no helicopters, no Guardsmen to tell the holdouts where to go or when to go home.

No politics. No hearings. No fraud, waste, or blame.

Just a funeral dirge the way only the people of New Orleans could perform it.

When they got closer, they “cut the body loose” and broke into the traditional “Second Line.” Joyful riffs, smiling, voices, and chords in celebration.

Lastly, the funeral march played the tune to a song I’d only ever seen on paper in Dad’s handwriting: “Love Me if You Can.”

The band played the first verse while Bela sang Dad’s letter-perfect lyrics.

After the crowd cleared, Bela and I sat on the grass near Dad’s grave and wrote his second verse.

Together.

“Love Me if You Can”

Tonight I tried to write the perfect song of love

But all the words I sang were blue

Because I’ve tried and I’ve tried to win you over

And I’ve done the best I can do

So we may never be together

But my heart is in your hands

And if you ever think about me in your long-lost dreams

Love me if you can

I know that you’ve moved on, it’s what you had to do

I never had the chance to say good-bye

It’s on my list of all the things I never said

It goes on for pages and it keeps me up at night

And my heart is missing pieces

That only you could understand

So if you ever think about it in your long-lost dreams

Love me if you can

So this song I sing is a little sad

And it’s unrehearsed

I just hope you hear that this broken life

Has had a second verse

’Cause in those days gone by, I tried to build you castles

And maybe they just turned to sand

But if you can only love who you wished I could have been

I wish you knew it’s finally who I am

I remember how you needed me

And I know yesterday will never come again

But if you feel me reaching for you in your long-lost dreams

Love me if you can