As the preacher droned on, Ines leaned on Achilles to adjust her shoes. She regularly shifted her weight from foot to foot. Her mother’s feet were a half size smaller, as was her dress size. Ines wore a simple black sleeveless dress with a black shawl draped over her shoulders, camouflaging the zipper that wouldn’t close. The dress fit like candy coating, threatening to crack every time she bent from the waist. Under other circumstances, he would have thought she wore it only to remind him of what he was missing, but he knew they were her mother’s clothes. She adjusted her other shoe, leaning on him again, and he put his arm around her, pulling her close to warm the chill in his bones. They were trapped in the shade under an overhang, next to crypts stacked like the drawers of an oversized apothecary. Like most New Orleans cemeteries, all the tombs at Mt. Olivet were aboveground, walled in to prevent floods from washing the coffins away, and arranged like a grid with the graves geometrically aligned along parallel roads wide enough for cars to pass, and with a few alleys limited to foot traffic. It was arranged like a city, except everyone was dead, as were most of the people he knew.
The service was small. Achilles, Ines, Mrs. Wages, and Bethany’s family were the sole attendees. Wexler hadn’t come, as expected. They’d long ago agreed there was no need to attend each other’s funerals.
He’d wanted Wexler to come, and maybe even Naomi. They could both meet Ines. They would see that he was different now, and Naomi would feel, well, he didn’t know what she would feel, but she would see that he wasn’t all bad. That would have meant telling Ines everything, but what did he have to lose? Never mind that Ines admitted coming back to the condo only because she felt sorry for him, couldn’t bear another night at her mother’s house, and was horny that night, that one night, that one night only. He brought that on himself, he knew, trying to laugh off his teary breakdown, blaming it first on the full moon, then on alcohol, then on hormones, meaning he needed sex. Never mind that they lived like roommates of necessity, like relocated refugees, she in the bed and he on the couch, knocking before entering the bathroom, eating only the food they individually bought, carefully refolding the newspaper like considerate travelers. He could live with that as long as he could live with her.
After Wages’s service, they held no jazz procession because these now required a permit. The permit office had reopened the day before, but there was no jazz procession permit division. No one knew if it would be a new department, or considered a parade, or a protest. The last jazz procession Achilles had seen was blockaded by nearly twenty blazing police cars, the trombonist arrested for disturbing the peace. Ines, who was in the car with Achilles, called it an outrage and heartbreaking. Watching the pallbearers struggle to remain poised, the coachman soothing the horse — frightened by the sirens — with sugar cubes, and the mourners’ expressions of disbelief, Achilles had agreed with her. At least she didn’t say I told you so. Though he hated to admit it, Ines was right about transplants taking over. What else could you call it when people called the police to complain that a funeral march was disturbing the peace and squad cars arrived within five minutes? BK—before Katrina—you wouldn’t see a cop in the Tremé until the day after a homicide. The coroner often arrived before the cops.
The memorial repast was held across the street in the vestry. He excused himself and slipped into the church next door, a small one, just a nave and an altar. The brick walls were intact, but the cupola and the cross that once stood high above it were no more. In their stead, one perfectly round hole opened to the sky, through which the waters had rushed in, fading the pulpit and rotting the dais. The stained glass hadn’t yet been replaced, nor the clerestory windows, nor the side door, nor the pews, so there was no place to sit. It was dark, but he knew the church well. He and Ines attended every Sunday, because the diocese had decided that her church, St. Augustine, wouldn’t be reopened because it wasn’t profitable.
Twelve of Ines’s friends, including Margaret, were staging a sit-in, but the future looked bleak for the congregation. Achilles felt sorry for them. He’d never considered that people might actually need their church, but recently worship was the center of everyone’s life. Since returning to New Orleans, he and Ines had been to the same tiny, pewless church six times, gathered sometimes around a coffin, sometimes an urn, sometimes an article of clothing. He now understood that church helped people through tough times. It didn’t matter whether he thought the stories ridiculous, or preachers ostentatious, or the diocese despicable for declaring a church unprofitable. He likened this revelation to the experience of someone who had never known they needed glasses, and once fitted with a pair realized that the clouds of green above the trees were comprised of individual leaves. The storefront churches weren’t ridiculous. It never was about the building.
A whispering teenage couple dressed in a tux and formal gown ducked into one of the corners of the church. Seeing no one about, they started making out. Achilles knelt at the altar and thought about his father and mother, Troy, Merriweather, O’Ree, Dixon, Price, Wexler, Wages, everybody. He didn’t know if that counted as prayer, but he thought, visualized them, concentrating until he saw Wages, felt Wages’s hand on his head, heard Wages say, as he used to, Let’s get oscar-mike, Connie.
The teens were still tucked into the corner, kissing in the shadow of a stack of coffins. He pretended not to see them. Achilles wanted to say good-bye to Mrs. Wages before he and Ines left. He found her at the grave. She was tall like Wages, her hair even redder. She had stood with her back rigid and stared straight ahead while the preacher spoke, her hands clasped to her chest as if in prayer, remaining a few feet from the coffin even as everyone filed by to touch it one last time. Shoulders rounded, head down, she was relaxed, as if all she wanted was privacy. The vault had been sealed, the flowers and drapery removed, and she stood with one hand on the cool cement wall, her other tracing the names carved into the stone.
Achilles softly whispered his good-bye. He wouldn’t have recognized her from the pictures in which her hollow cheeks, combined with her broad forehead and large, piercing eyes, gave her an air of regency befitting an elder queen. Now, those cheeks red and puffy, the large brow furrowed, the eyes dull, called to mind his mother at his father’s funeral and at the funeral yet to be, the inevitability of his own duty, and his failing as a son. Forced to look away, he was surprised to see two tombs with Kyle Wages etched into them. He had thought the infant was buried with Bethany’s family. As if reading his mind, Mrs. Wages said, “His father. The first Gulf War.”
They hugged, Mrs. Wages squeezing tightly, as a mother would.
“Thank you,” she said. “I know how you all are about funerals.”
Achilles nodded. How could he not have come? “Have you been to the house?”
“I know you stayed there, that you know it. I was hoping … I know it’s terrible. I wanted his medals, but I couldn’t go … up there.”
Achilles held up his hands, halting her. “Of course. Where are you staying?”
She gave him the name of the hotel. “Thank you, Achilles. He said you were like a brother.”
“Yes, ma’am. He was too,” said Achilles. “I’ll bring whatever I can find.” Even as the tears welled up in Mrs. Wages’s eyes, Achilles regretted the promise. He had no intention of entering Wages’s house ever again. He saw Ines in the vestry entry and waved her toward the parking lot.