Chapter 23
CHAPTER 23
Connie
Once Connie entered the airspace of Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport, she braced herself. Not only did the atmosphere tangibly change on the descent, but she felt her priorities shift as well. On the entire flight, she rehearsed what she wanted to say to Evelyn. But she felt her stomach lurch the closer they got to the city; phantom bile rose to the back of her throat. Connie hadn’t been back to New Orleans in ten years. NOLA, the Paris of the South—monikers of the city, which meant nothing to her. She’d only ever known it as the hometown she wanted to escape from.
Connie had often wondered what it’d be like to meet the infamous Evelyn Lê. She had strange hallucinations during the long journey from Bali. What was Evelyn like in person? More important, which version of Evelyn would she get? The young mother who couldn’t get out of bed for weeks to care for her own children? Or the shrewd business entrepreneur who helped Duc crawl their way out of poverty and build an empire together? Or perhaps the ugly rumors were true, and that Evelyn had lost her mind a long time ago, leaving nothing but a hollow shell.
In all her versions of Evelyn, there was still always a crooked halo taped over her head, held with nothing more than straw and hot glue—because despite the trail of suffering Evelyn had caused, her absence had somehow transcended her into a larger-than-life figure. She’d become biblical, the mystery belle of Texas. Audiences loved a tortured woman. They exalted her and she was often the subject of bavardage over coffee by Vietnamese Houston socialites. Her marriage to Duc was used as a cautionary tale by those who attended temple on Sundays—Evelyn was an unsolved medical case, a true rags-to-riches story, who left it all behind for a life of solitude. Was she contagious? Was she patient zero? But Connie saw Evelyn for what she really was, nothing more than a charlatan. If Connie was labeled a gold digger by everyone around her, then Evelyn was the true con artist.
It wasn’t fair. None of it was. And yet, the punishment never fit the crime when it came to the public lashing of women.
Connie had always known each location where Evelyn was hiding out. Even when she hid out in Sydney, then moved to Oklahoma City, then Philadelphia, and had a brief appearance back in San Jose. Connie had kept tabs on her. She knew Evelyn had been in New Orleans for years now. Duc wasn’t very sneaky, hiring private investigators to keep track of the whereabouts of the mother of his children for the past twenty years. What was strange to her, though, was that he never told his children where she was, despite their own searches and anxieties about their mother. Especially when the searches stopped and the children gave up, he still didn’t tell them.
Why would Duc purposely hide their mother’s location?
Once she stepped off the tarmac, she stood on top of the ramp and took a deep breath. Long past the dog days of summer, the city of New Orleans was now in the uncomfortable transition of leaving fall and entering winter. She remembered how sharp the weather turned in the city, and how locals wouldn’t touch the French Quarter with a six-foot pole. Those quiet months were always magnificent, giving the city a breather to recuperate from outside noise and opinions and young white women who made a pilgrimage to Marie Laveau’s Tomb, where they would burn photos of their exes. Connie was always removed from all of that.
She shuddered, feeling herself regress to being sixteen, with delusional dreams of becoming a pop star one day and never seeing east New Orleans ever again.
Her life hadn’t turned out as biblical as she thought it would have. She was just Duc Tr?n’s second wife—who possibly wasn’t even really legally married to him. Oh, the anger. The anger. The unjustness of it all. Villains only became villains out of desperation. When the world wouldn’t listen, they made them listen. Her mind raged on, imagining all the different ways she would sever the limbs off Duc, if she ever saw him again.
But Duc’s time would come. Evelyn was up first. Patience.
A black SUV pulled up at the bottom of the ramp, and a driver got out, opening the passenger door for her. She made her way down the ramp, and with each step she conquered, she knew first and foremost, before she showed up at Evelyn’s front steps, demanding restitution and for her to put a stop to Duc’s insane inheritance scheme, she needed to first see her own version of Marie Laveau in the Crescent City.
She didn’t need any voodoo or any of the fake charms peddled to tourists to help them find love or ward off evil. That was amateur hour and for those who didn’t understand that there was magic in this world, in the form of a black American Express. She needed to see the most powerful woman she knew, someone she had always been frightened of, to help her take down Evelyn Lê once and for all.
“Where to, ma’am?” her driver asked as he put her suitcases into the trunk.
“Eastern Orleans Parish, please,” Connie sniffed. “We’re going to see my mother.”
Mrs. V? was a formidable, but frightening and beautiful, woman who rarely smiled. In fact, Mrs. V? hadn’t smiled since the early eighties, in an attempt to minimize her wrinkles and to avoid conversations with strangers. Also, there was nothing to smile about. Laughter, joy, silliness—those things were reserved for the uber-wealthy, and for those who lived their lives in ignorance and bliss. What was there to smile about, when she had seen the world for what it was? When men ravaged and pillaged the world for causes that hurt those who couldn’t fight back and defend themselves? How Mrs. V? longed to give her daughter that same ignorance, and then perhaps they both could have a taste for the real finer things in life.
Mrs. V? sensed her daughter was back in New Orleans. She was grateful for the invisible strings that tied them together, because at least Connie couldn’t cut those strings. She was still able to hold on to her daughter somehow, even if it was from so very far away.
The black SUV pulled into her driveway, and Connie stepped out to face her childhood home: a crumbling one-story duplex that was the size of Duc’s entire living room. Connie adjusted her sunglasses, moved her Birkin from one arm to the other, and cuffed her sleeves up, revealing a new tan from her trip to Bali. The house was even more dilapidated since her last visit, ten years ago. The cracks had widened, the small lawn was littered with various trash, and the paint job that Connie had paid for last year was starting to chip. And whatever happened to the rosebush she also gifted? The more Connie stood there, the more she felt claustrophobic. Her humble childhood home taunted her, warned her of what she could lose if things didn’t go her way.
The front door opened, and Mrs. V? stepped out, in an oversize T-shirt and mismatched bottoms. Mrs. V? looked older than ever, tired, and it seemed as if life hadn’t been as kind in the latter years to her as it had been to Connie. The smallest difference with money could have been life-changing to her. The most Mrs. V? had seen of the world was on the helicopter ride, escaping Sài Gòn. It’d been such a strange moment for her, to see her fallen city, her hometown, from an aerial view. How beautiful it was, and yet how fleeting that beauty was, watching it be torn apart by men, who looked like ants from so high up.
Mother and daughter faced each other. The tension was thick with so many past wrongs, so many lost apologies, so many grudges and miscommunications that had piled on top of one another, until the mountain was too big to climb. But they were never more united than they were when it came to seeking revenge on a man.
“What happened?” Mrs. V? asked immediately. No greeting, no “I love you,” no “How are you?” It was a blunt knife, straight to the point. “If you’re going to get divorced, at least get something. Texas isn’t a fifty-fifty divorce split state, you know. It’s not like California. I told you, you should have gotten married and moved to California.”
“I know,” Connie said in an equally apathetic voice, neither one wanting to give an inch or a hint that they cared about the other. “That’s why I need your help. My lawyer can’t help me anymore. I need to hit Duc where it hurts, or at least, secure something for myself.”
“Who is the money all going to then?”
“The first wife. The mother.”
Mrs. V? grew quiet. This situation was dire. She wanted nothing more than to make sure that Connie was taken care of for life. Duc could have dropped dead for all she cared, as long as Connie had the means to live a life better than hers.
“That old fool. Guilt will kill him in the end,” Mrs. V? muttered under her breath. She opened the front door wider, and gestured for her one and only child to come inside. Connie slowly walked up the steps and into the only home she’d ever known as a child. The four walls and a roof, familiar but suffocating, with a mother who had taught her more about how to survive than to love. “Have you eaten yet?”
“No,” Connie said in a small voice, revealing just how very tired she was. “Not yet.”