The Gorilla Man and the Empress of Steak: A New Orleans Family Memoir

Chapter Sixteen: The Empress of Steak

241 C H A P T E R S I X T E E N THE EMPRESS OF STEAK FOLLOWING THE DEBACLE OF 1991, MOM AND I DIDN’T SPEAK FOR A year or two. She made few inquiries after my health struggles. We lived in different parts of the city, me uptown, she behind the restaurant in Mid-City. Slowly I made my way back to teaching, as an adjunct at Tulane University . I taught a course on the literature of the Vietnam War, a literature filled with disappointing authority figures and the abuse of power; although I had managed to avoid the draft, these were subjects not far from my experience . I learned that Ron Ridenhour, the soldier and journalist who blew the whistle on the My Lai massacre, lived in New Orleans, and I invited him to my class. He was a mesmerizing speaker with a life-altering story to tell, and we became friends. In 199, I directed an international conference on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the My Lai story. Whistle-blowing— speaking truth to power—was something I could understand. In the mid-1990s, Mom and I began a peacemaking process. I tried to explore the theme of reconciliation. We had both made errors. I regretted mine. What about hers? What errors? It was clear I would have to leave a lot unsaid if we were to have a relationship . It would be a relationship on her terms. In the middle of one of our emotional tangles, Mom and I got around to comparing our strengths. THE EMPRESS OF STEAK 242 I was better at feelings, she admitted; she could learn a lot from me. I imagined this might mark the beginning of a change. I was wrong. Perhaps this was an element in my mother’s discomfort with me: where do feelings figure on the Daily Racing Form or the monthly P&L? Yet, in some ways, I was no better at feelings than Mom. I had my own difficulties with the life of the heart. When Earner’s mother, Pearl, died, taking her spectacular talent for crawfish bisque with her, I went to her funeral at Our Lady Star of the Sea Catholic Church on St. Roch Avenue. Nearby stood the St. Roch Chapel , where petitioners bring representations of their suffering to an altar in hopes of being blessed with St. Roch’s healing intervention, as he had done in the yellow fever epidemic in 1867. The altar is filled with legs and arms from dolls, braces and crutches, even a pair of concrete eyeballs, an effort to cure someone’s blindness. I sat in the rear of the church, to be far from my mother who sat with Earner’s family. The service was intoned by an earnest priest whose heart was big with a sense of personal salvation and of community. Pearl’s community filled the church. I found myself weeping, then heaving with tears. Yet I hardly knew Pearl. I cried for the mother who for me had died, not just because of the family business fight but somehow long before. I cried for what, given the outpouring of community I was witnessing, I now sensed I had never had, that pearl of great price, love. I should have left a plastic heart on the St. Roch altar. And yet still I wanted to know my mother and to be close to her. In the mid-1990s, Mom and I began to share some time together. One night we dropped in on Emeril’s newly opened Delmonico’s, his high-end homage to the great nineteenth century Creole table d’hôte restaurant, complete with formal tableside service. As usual, Mom was dressed in slacks. “Do you think they’ll let us in?” she wondered. “Yeah, Mom, maybe. . . .” When the Empress of Steak entered, they all but bowed and kissed her ring. Emeril himself emerged from the kitchen to carve our classic Roast Chicken Bonne Femme for two. All eyes in the packed dining room were upon us. Mom glowed. For my forty-eighth birthday, Mom took me to the Napa Valley Wine Auction. Robert Mondavi, Jack Cakebread, Dan Duckhorn, all princes of THE EMPRESS OF STEAK 243 wine, paid homage to the woman who sold more of their red wine than any other restaurateur in the world. On occasion, I cooked for Mom...