Feast of All Saints (86 page)

Marie’s eyes were wide with disbelief. Her mother was baring a soul to her that she had never even glimpsed. She found it abhorrent, and yet she was fascinated. She could not look away from Cecile.

“We are women, you and I,” her mother was saying as if she spoke
to the ray of sunlight. “We are women,” she said again, running her tongue over her gleaming lip. She drank the sherry and looked at her glass. “I was lucky,” she said, narrowing her eyes. “That’s what they all said, ‘she was in the right place at the right time.’ They said the same vicious things about me that they said about that foolish Anna Bella,” her eyes turned again on Marie with perfect candor. “I know they did because I know them, all of them,” she made an angry gesture to the world.

“But you?” she went on softly. “You? No matter whatever happens to you, they won’t call it luck, they couldn’t. You can have anything you want, and they know that, all of them, Louisa, Colette, Celestina, any of them, all of them, what could they say? You’ve stripped the spite out of them with your beauty, if you walked into that ballroom, they would fall on their knees. Oh, they’d hate you, they’ll hate you as I hated you, but where would they find the words to say anything except she’s beautiful, look at that white skin, that hair, those eyes…she can have anything that she wants! It’s there for the taking, she can just reach out for it. Philippe Ferronaire’s daughter. I tell you every man in that ballroom would go down on his knees.”

“No,” Marie whispered.

“Come here,” her mother said. She pushed the glass of sherry forward toward Marie. “Come here.”

“No,” Marie shook her head.

“It’s true,” her mother smiled. “But you don’t believe it, do you? You’ve never known. Colette said once ‘if you’d ever tell her she was beautiful, she’d believe it, you’re her mother, she doesn’t see it in your eyes,’ and me all the time thinking with an aching heart, she’ll despise me when she becomes a woman, when she sees this black skin!”

“Oh, no, never for that, never!” Marie whispered.

Cecile laughed. Her eyes were luminous. She sipped the sherry. “Sit by me then, have a glass with me, then,” she said. “I need you, I need you now.”

Marie stood stock-still. She tilted her head to one side, and then slowly she moved to the chair. Her mother moved the glass toward her and she picked it up thinking suddenly that her mother’s lips had touched it and it was repellent to her and then she looked into Cecile’s eyes.

“It’s true,” her mother said. “It’s true. You were so, so pretty,” her mother’s eyes narrowed with pain. “You were so fair! Did you know when you were a little girl, and I’d be walking with you, those white women would stop me to compliment you, to lift you and kiss you, and those women thought that I was the servant sent out with you, did you know that? They thought I was your nurse!” She leaned forward, eyes narrow, “They thought I was your colored nurse.”

Marie shook her head. She ran her hand up to her hair and it fell down like a veil. “O my Lord in heaven,” she murmured.

“You know sometimes I wonder,” Cecile threw back her head. Her hand moved nervously, almost unconsciously to her throat and pulled at the velvet ribbon there, the mourning brooch, until the ribbon came loose. Her hand slid down toward her breast pushing the fabric free from the jet buttons…“I wonder,” she sighed, “how it would have been if he had been the fair one, and you had had that kinky hair, and I could have done nothing with it, Lisette would have ironed it on the board.”

“Maman,” Marie whispered. “He is a handsome man!”

“Hmmmm…” she disregarded this. “I wonder if I would have loved you then, and ironed that kinky hair, and tried to make it like cornsilk, and put powder on that yellow skin. I wonder if I would have held you to me, protected you, been afraid for you the way I’ve always been for him. Oh, I don’t think a day passes that I don’t fear for him,” she shut her eyes, her teeth cutting her lower lip. She had made her arms into a cradle for an invisible child and now she rocked it back and forth making the faintest moan. “People look at you when you’re together, I’ve seen men look at you, look at him. O God,” she whispered squeezing her eyes shut again. “I’ve seen them staring at him thinking he was…and you were…” She grimaced with distaste and a shudder shook her frame.

“Yes,” Marie whispered. Her eyes were brimming with tears.

“You know that same fear,” Cecile whispered.

“Always…” With him, with Richard, with Rudolphe…

“If he could have just gone to Paris, if he could have just gotten away! And you, you who could have the moon and you’re throwing it all away now, throwing it all away…”

“I love Richard Lermontant!”

Her mother turned away, grimacing again as if Marie had given her a blow. “You can’t do it!” she whispered. “You can’t do it to yourself, and you can’t do it to him!” Her eyes widened, staring right into Marie’s eyes. She took the glass from Marie’s hand. “Don’t you understand that, don’t you see? The Lermontants are nothing, they’ll make Marcel a clerk in that store, they’ll pay him a pittance and he’ll be threadbare and bitter all of his days. But you can change that! You can do anything, don’t you understand? I tell you in that first year, when it’s fresh, and they are crazy for you, you’ve got them in the palm of your hand! You walk into that ballroom and they will go down on their knees! They’ll be all too glad to get rid of your brother, they’ll send him to the ends of the earth if you ask them, Paris, what’s that to them, they have wealth of which you’ve never even dreamed. Ooooooooh,” she rocked back in her chair putting the glass to her lips.
“You can do it, you can state it plain in the beginning.” She brought her left hand down flat on the table. “They send him to Paris or they don’t have you, and they will want you,
ma chère
, more than you can imagine, how they will want you, that white skin on a nigger wench, they will want you as you have never dreamed…”

Marie’s hand had risen slowly to her mouth, and she spread her fingers over her mouth tight, pressing them into her own cheek, her eyes growing wider and wider as she glared at her mother.

“You’ve got to do it, and will your aunts love it,” her mother said, the grimace wide, the taut lower lip trembling, “oh, they will turn you out for a
real
wedding day, they’ll drag out the gold thread for you, the pearls, oh, how they will love it, oh, they will be in their glory, they’ll be running to Celestina’s, they’ll be going through the old names, they’ll be inspecting all those eager offers, picking over those old pedigrees…”

Marie upset the chair. She was backing away even before she had risen, and the chair fell backwards, teetering and then to one side. She stood in the corner of the room, her hand holding the frame of the bedroom door.

Her mother rose slowly.

“Get away from me,” Marie whispered. “Get away from me!” She backed into the bedroom, the hem of her dress coming perilously close to the fire. “Get away!” she glared at the woman who stood in the door.

“Marie, Marie…” Cecile reached out toward her, her teeth drawing blood from her lip. “Marie, you can give him that,” she said, the voice strained to a hissing sound, “you can give him Paris where he can be a man.”

“Stop it,” Marie snatched her shawl from the foot of the bed. She backed across the rear bedroom to the door. “How could you think I would do this!” she spit the words as Cecile advanced. “How could you believe I would live the way I’ve seen you live! How could you think I would take on that misery, the misery I’ve seen you suffer ever since I could remember, year after year? Never knowing when he was coming, if he was coming, if there’d be money again this month for the bills, if you could keep this roof over your head, and then to have him die like that, not leaving a scrap of a will, not even a scrap of paper in secret for you with Jacquemine. Seventy-five dollars and they called you lucky, did they? And you loved him? And you love him still? You’re mad, mad if you think I would live like that, mad if you think I would turn my back on Richard for that. Oh, you would sell me on the auction block for my brother, wouldn’t you? But you don’t know me, you’ve never known me, or you wouldn’t have shown your soul to me, your whore’s soul!”

And as Cecile moaned, Marie had pulled open the door and she ran down the alleyway toward the street.

Without knocking she burst into the Mercier hallway, and through the open doors of the classroom saw Christophe. Quickly he came out to her, moving her to one side out of the prying eyes of the class.

“Michie Christophe,” she said breathlessly, “please, write to my brother, write him now, tell him to come home, I need him…” she said. “I know my brother, I know my brother…” she stammered, vaguely aware that he could not possibly understand. She clasped his hand. “Tell my brother I am with my aunts, and that I need him now!”

I
T WAS EARLY EVENING
and Richard was tired. His mother had insisted he accompany her this afternoon to the house of her Vacquerie cousins, descendants of her mother’s brother, on the grounds that since he had become a young man he had hardly called on these cousins at all. As a child, he had played there often, loving these mild-mannered people, a house of women except for Cousin Gregoire who ran the family business, a grocery store, but it had been three years now since he had seen them anywhere except on the church steps.

They were a refined family, without the bluster of the Lermontants, their modest flat furnished about a handful of treasures rescued from the Saint-Domingue revolution, and they spoke of the old plantation regime as if that world were alive today. In fact, little anecdotes of daily life had come down through the family with pet names for people who had been dead for fifty years. And one had the feeling in their sedate shadowy rooms of living in an old world that could somehow not make its peace with the thriving New Orleans of today.

There were no surprises for Richard. The shaded yard with its twin oaks in back was as Richard remembered it, and the little playhouse built for his daughters by Cousin Gregoire, though sagging from the relentless Louisiana weather, was still there. All was ruin within, however, broken toys, neglected dolls and dust, for Isabella, the youngest, was sixteen.

And it was while they sat in the parlor together, Isabella showing him with enthusiasm the new Daguerreotypes that had been made of all the family, that Richard perceived the reason for this visit, and grew silent thinking with a shocking immediacy what it would be like to be married to this sweet girl. She would have been a good wife for
anyone; generosity emanated from her small drowsy brown eyes, and she had a combination of features which he had always found beguiling, a full African mouth with a long thin Caucasian nose. All of them would make good wives, he speculated dully, this Cousin Isabella, Raimond’s cousins in Charleston, and even those green-eyed beauties, Renée Lermontants daughters, descendants of Jean Baptiste’s one illegitimate son, who had little to do with the Lermontants who had become
la famille
, but lived in luxury, Renée Lermontant owning a thriving tavern on the edge of the Faubourg Marigny.

And in the last few months, it seemed, his mother had seen to it that he called on every one of these cousins with the exception of the Charleston people who came to visit often enough. It was Madame Suzette’s intent to distract Richard, to reassure him, to buffet him against the truculent and spiteful whims of Cecile Ste. Marie, and Richard knew it. But nothing could buffet him against the possible loss of Marie now. He had been desperate since Monsieur Philippe’s death, and his mother ought to know this, Richard thought, her timing, for once, had not been so good.

When they rose to go, Isabella walked with them to the side gate.

“You must come to call on us.” Madame Suzette kissed her on both cheeks. “Next Sunday, after Mass, I insist.”

But the girl’s soft yielding manner had a touch of melancholy to it as she made her curtsy. “And I am the cause of this,” Richard thought darkly. He could add nothing to his mother’s polite invitations except his polite farewells.

They walked along in silence, Richard taking his mother’s arm in his as he guided her past the inevitable puddles and stones of the dirt street.

“I thought it was good for you to get out,” she said finally. “Maman,” he said. “I must see Marie. I want to go to Madame Louisa’s now.”

“Son, don’t do it,” she said. “Wait until Marcel comes home. Marcel is head of that family now, whether he is prepared for it or not. Your father will speak to Marcel.”

“No, Maman,” he shook his head, his voice dropping to a whisper. “I must see her now.”

This was unlike Richard, this obstinacy. He led Madame Suzette across the Rue Rampart, helping her gracefully over the deep water-filled ditches, and lifted her slightly by the waist to the curb. A few steps ahead in the Rue St. Louis she saw the gas lamps beside the door of her home, burning already at five o’clock as the sky was leaden and dark.

“My son, there is no reason under God for us to endure insult,” she said. “We are the Lermontants.” And this last statement, spoken
with simple pride, was as unlike Madame Suzette as obstinacy was unlike her son.

He stared ahead through the twilight, rendered so colorless by the winter sky.

“Maman, I cannot wait,” he said and giving her his arm as she went up the front steps, he stayed on the banquette.

“What has this done to you?” she whispered. “What is it doing to you now?”

“I must go, Maman…” He stood firm.

“Don’t let your father know,” she opened the door. And he smiled faintly, realizing that this meant she would not tell.

A cold rain had begun by the time he reached the dress shop in the Rue Royale and pulled the bell. He pulled it again after a wait of approximately three minutes, stepping under the carriageway arch where he could not be seen from the shuttered windows above.

A third time he rang, and then a fourth, and the rain was coming now with a dull force.

An unpleasant sensation paralyzed him. He moved very slowly into the center of the banquette and looked up at the flat over the shop. Rain poured down the yellowed plaster of the façade, and ran along the dark green slats of the shutters before it shot out in little jets over the street. It fell on his forehead and pelted his eyelids as he squinted against it. And suddenly lifting his hands, he cupped them about his mouth and taking a slow breath raised his voice out of the deep organ of his chest, “Marie! Marie!”