All That Glitters (6 page)

"I'll go see about dinner," I said. "Why don't you show everyone into the dining room."
"I haven't really seen your house, Paul," Gladys complained.
"Oh. Right. Let me take my mother around first, Ruby."
"Fine," I said, happy for the chance to get away. This was going to be harder than I had imagined, I thought.
Letty, as though she knew the deepest, darkest secrets, prepared a meal that was even more special than the first she had prepared for us. Octavious kept saying how jealous he was that his son had a finer cook. For her part Gladys complimented everything properly, but every time she spoke, I sensed a control wound so tight that at any moment it could spring loose and become hysteria. It was as if she might burst out in shrill screams suddenly over the slightest thing. It kept Paul, his father, and me on pins and needles. I was relieved when we had gotten through the dessert, which was a chocolate rum souffle Paul's father said rivaled any he had ever had.
Just as Molly refilled everyone's coffee cup, Mrs. Flemming appeared with Pearl in her arms.
"Isn't she gorgeous, Mom?" Jeanne cried. "I think she has Paul's eyes, don't you?"
Gladys Tate stared at me a moment and then looked at Pearl. "She is a pretty child," she said in a very noncommittal tone of voice.
"Do you want to hold her, madame?" Mrs. Flemming offered. I held my breath. Mrs. Flemming was a grandmere who knew how much any grandmere would want to hold and kiss her own grandchild.
"Of course," Gladys said with a forced smile. Mrs. Flemming brought Pearl to her. She squirmed uncomfortably in her arms, but didn't cry. Gladys Tate stared into her face for a moment and then kissed her quickly on the forehead. She smiled up at Mrs. Flemming and nodded to indicate she wanted her to take her back. Mrs. Flemming's eyes narrowed for a moment and then she hurried forward.
"How does it feel to be a grandmere, Mom?" Jeanne asked.
Gladys Tate smiled coldly. "If you mean do
I
feel any older as a result, Jeanne, the answer is no." She turned and fixed her gaze on me across the table, and then Paul suggested we all go into the library.
"It's not much yet. Nothing is, but after Ruby and I return from New Orleans, this place is going to be a showcase."
"Why don't you two tell your mother some of your plans for the house decor," Octavious suggested. He turned to me. "Gladys did most of our decorating."
"Oh, I'd love to get some suggestions," I said, turning to her.
"I'm not a decorator," she snapped.
"Now, don't be modest, Gladys," Octavious said, undaunted. He nodded at me. "Your mother-inlaw knows her way around when it comes to furnishing and decorating expensive houses. Why, I bet she could just walk through this house with you and make suggestions off the top of her head."
"Octavious!"
"You could, Gladys," he insisted.
"You two go on," Paul suggested. "I'll entertain everyone else in the library."
Gladys looked enraged for a moment. Then she gazed at her two daughters, who looked puzzled by her reluctance.
"Of course, if Ruby would really like that," she said reluctantly.
"Please," I said, my lips trembling.
"Fine," Paul said, and rose.
"What should we look at first?" I asked Gladys Tate. "You should do your bedroom first," Jeanne suggested.
"They have separate bedrooms with an adjoining door. Isn't that like a royal couple, Mother?"
There was a deep moment of silence. Then Gladys smiled and said, "Yes, it is, dear. Very much so."
As we walked upstairs and down the hallway, Gladys remained a few inches behind me. She said nothing. My heart was thumping as I searched frantically through my mind for small talk that wouldn't make me sound silly or nervous. I started to talk about the colors I was considering, babbling quickly about color coordination, furniture design, and accent pieces. When we paused in the doorway of my bedroom, she finally looked at me.
"Why did you do it?" she asked in a hoarse whisper. "Why, when you knew the truth?"
"Paul and I have always been very close, Mother Tate. Once before, I was forced to break Paul's heart so that I could hide the truth from him. You know what it was like for him once he found out," I said.
"And how do you think it was for me?" she demanded. "We weren't even married that long before Octavious . . . before he was unfaithful. Of course, your mother wove a spell over him. Catherine Landry's daughter wasn't without mystical powers, I'm sure," she said.
I swallowed hard. I wanted to defend the mother I had never known, but I saw how Paul's mother had developed this theory to accept her husband's infidelity, and I wasn't about to poke holes in her balloon.
"But what did I do?" she continued. "I accepted and I covered things up and I made it possible for us to remain respectable and for Paul to grow up protected. Now the two of you . . go off and . . . It's sinful," she said, shaking her head, "just sinful."
"We're not living together that way, madame. That's why we have separate bedrooms."
She shook her head, her flinty eyes unrelenting in their condemnation. Then she sighed deeply and took on an expression of self-pity.
"Now I must pretend again, swallow my pride once more and do what I must do so that my children are not disgraced. It isn't fair," she said, shaking her head. "It isn't fair."
"No one will know anything from my lips," I promised. She laughed a short shrill laugh.
"Why should you say anything? Look at all you have now," she added harshly, and lifted her arms. "This house, these grounds, this great wealth. . . and a father for your child." She fixed her eyes on me.
"Madame, Mother Tate, I assure you--"
"You assure me. Ha! I'm sure you cast the same sort of spell over Paul that your mother cast over Octavious. From mother to daughter, only I'm the one who pays for it all. . . not my dear husband, not my dear adopted son. Funny," she said, pausing. "I have never used that term once, never; but now, here with you, I can't say anything else but the truth: my adopted son."
"It's not the truth," I spit back. "You love Paul in your heart the same way you would had you been the one to give birth to him, and he loves you that way, too. I will make you one promise, Mother Tate, and that is that I will never do anything to interfere with that love. Never," I insisted, my eyes narrow and fixed with determination on hers.
She smiled coldly as if to say I couldn't even if I wanted to with all my heart.
"But you should know that Paul loves Pearl as much as he would had she been his from the start," I warned. "I hope you will accept that and love her as much as a grandmere should."
"Love," she said. "Everyone needs so much of it, no wonder we're all so exhausted." She sighed again and then looked into my room, her face hardening with criticism. "You should do something nice with drapes on those windows. The sun will be setting on this side. And those colors you were thinking about . . . I thought you were supposed to be an artist. You'll use beige with a little pink in it in here," she commanded. "Now, when you get to New Orleans," she continued as she walked on, "there's this place I know on Canal Street . . ."
I followed along, grateful for the truce that had fallen between us, even though it was a truce on her terms.
We rose early the next morning for our trip to New Orleans. Fortunately, the morning overcast broke and the patches of blue with the bright sunlight seeping through made the trip more enjoyable. I hated going long distances in the rain. But as we traveled the familiar highway, I couldn't help but feel like someone reliving an old nightmare. I recalled my first trip, when I had run away from Grandpere Jack. I had arrived in New Orleans during the Mardi Gras and was nearly raped by a man in a Mardi Gras mask who pretended to help me find my way through the city.
But that was the day I had met Beau for the first time, too, I remembered. Just as I was about to give up and turn away from my father's house, Beau arrived like some dreamboat stepping off a movie screen. I knew from the first moment I set eyes on him that he was special, and from the way he gazed at me once he knew I wasn't my twin sister, I knew he thought the same about me. When Lake Pontchartrain came into view with its water a dark green and its small waves capping, I vividly recalled my first date with Beau and how passionate we had been even then.
I was so lost in these memories, I didn't even realize Paul had driven us into the city until we pulled up to the Fairmont Hotel. Pearl had slept for most of the trip, but when we stepped out, she was fascinated with the sounds of traffic and people and all the activity around us as we checked into our suite of rooms. Paul had arranged for us to have a room with two double beds that adjoined a room for Mrs. Flemming and Pearl.
After we had a little lunch in the hotel, Mrs. Flemming took Pearl up for a nap, and Paul and I began our shopping spree. I had forgotten how much I loved the city. It had its own special rhythms that changed as the day grew into night. In the morning it could be so quiet. Most of the shops weren't open and the shutters and balcony doors were closed, especially in the famed French Quarter, the Vieux Carre. The shadows were still deep and the streets relatively cool.
By late morning the shops were open and the streets were filling with people. The scrolled balconies above us were bursting with flowers. Hawkers called out their wares; music started to draw the tourists to the doors of restaurants and bars. Then, as the afternoon continued, the rhythm quickened. Street performers took their positions on the corners, tap-dancing, juggling, playing guitars.
Paul had a list of places to go, a list he revealed his mother had prepared.
"She knows a lot more about all this than we do," he stated, and then he showed me a list of items she had dictated we buy. "What do you think?" he asked.
"Fine," I said, although many of the things were not particularly things I would have chosen.
Paul and I went from store to store, buying the furnishings, lighting fixtures, lamps, and tables, as well as accoutrements, his mother had suggested. I began to feel as if I were just tagging along.
"My mother is a woman of great taste, isn't she?" he declared before I had much of a chance to comment.
"Yes," I said. It was as if she were right there beside us.
Late in the afternoon, Paul and I took a break and went to the Cafe du Monde for coffee and their famous beignets. We could watch the artists at their easels and the tourists marching by, their eyes big, their cameras swinging on their necks. There was a cool breeze off the river, and the magnolia blossoms that lifted and fell in the air seemed particularly brilliant.
"I've made a dinner reservation for us at Arnaud's," Paul declared.
"Arnaud's?"
"Yes. Mother suggested it. Don't you think it's a good choice?"
"Oh yes, it's nice," I said, quickly smiling. How was Paul to know that it was to Arnaud's that Beau had taken me on our first formal date? However, to me it seemed as if the city were conspiring to stir up each and every memory I had of living here, whether they be good ones or bad.
We had a wonderful dinner and Pearl was well behaved. Afterward, Paul wanted to sit in the hotel lobby and listen to the jazz. We did so for a while, but the day's traveling and shopping with all its emotional implications had been more exhausting than I believed. I couldn't keep my eyes from closing. Paul laughed and we went up to our room.
This was the first night we spent together sleeping in the same bedroom, and although we weren't sharing a bed, there was an intimacy that at first made me a little uncomfortable. As I stood before the sink and mirror dressed only in my slip and washed the makeup off my face, I saw Paul in the mirror, standing behind me, staring, the blue in his eyes so deep, I felt naked. Once he saw my gaze go to him, he moved away quickly.
I went into the bathroom and dressed for bed. Paul was already in his when I put out the light and crawled under the cover.
"Good night, Ruby," he said softly.
"Good night." The silence and the darkness seemed to grow thicker between us. We would share everything a man and a woman who married and became one could share, except one thing: each other. That thought lingered in the darkness above me, taunting, tormenting. I turned on my side and when I closed my eyes, my thoughts fled back to my memories of Beau and our passionate lovemaking. For now, those recollections were all I had.
We continued our shopping safari the next day, following the list Mrs. Tate had written. I went to an art supply house and gave them my list. Everything would be delivered. After lunch, Paul and I walked through the French Quarter, now looking for gifts for his sisters and parents.
"You haven't mentioned it yet," he said, "but do you intend to see your stepmother? She has yet to learn about us."
"I was thinking about it, yes," I said. "Although I'm not eager to do it."
"I'll go with you."
"No. I think I'd better do this alone for now," I said.
"Okay." He smiled. "Should I get you a cab or. . ."
"No, I think I want to take the streetcar," I said. I had done it so often when I had lived in my father's great house in the Garden District. It was still a quaint and delightful ride for me, but the moment I stepped off the car and began to walk toward the mansion, I felt my heart begin to pound.
Could I do this, walk back into that house and face my stepmother after I had run away? I knew Gisselle was at school, so I wouldn't have to contend with her, but to go into that great house knowing my father was gone, Nina was gone, and Beau was off in Europe involved with some other young woman seemed like self-imposed torture.
I paused across the street and gazed at the ivory white mansion. It looked unchanged, frozen in time. Maybe if I crossed this street, all that had happened since the day I had arrived would disappear and I would be starting over again, I thought. Daddy would still be alive, vibrant and handsome. Nina Jackson would be in the kitchen mumbling over some ingredients and complaining about some evil spirits that had camped in the closets, and Otis would still be at the door, waiting to greet me. I would hear Gisselle shrieking some complaint from upstairs.
I started to walk across when the familiar RollsRoyce pulled into the driveway. I watched it come to a stop in front of the house and then Daphne step out. If anything or anyone looked unchanged, it was she. Still the ice queen, she rose to her statuesque posture instantly and uttered some command to the driver. The car pulled away and she started up the steps. A new butler, a shorter man with dark gray hair, instantly opened the door. It was as though he did nothing but wait just behind it for her return. Without acknowledging him, she marched into the house. He bowed slightly and then looked out as if he were looking at freedom. A moment later the door was closed and I stepped back onto the walk.