Hidden Jewel (11 page)

"I hope we see snakes and alligators," Jean said as we drew closer to what had been the Dumas family's country home.
"Never mind about them," Mommy warned. "You two mustn't wander off exploring on your own. I want you close to the house except when Daddy takes you, hear?"
Reluctantly, they promised.
"There she blows," Daddy cried as we came around a turn and our country house came into view.
The building that my grandfather Dumas used to refer to as his ranch actually resembled a chateau. It had a steeply pitched hipped roof with spires, pinnacles, turrets, gables, and two oddly shaped chimneys. The metal cresting along the roof's ridges was elaborately ornamented. The windows and the doorway were arched. To the right were two small cottages for the servants and caretakers, and to the right, some thousand yards or so away, were the stables with the riding horses and a barn. The property had rambling fields with patches of wooded areas and a stream cutting across its north end.
Like some of the chateaux in the French countryside, it had beautiful gardens, and two gazebos stood on the front lawn, as did benches and chairs and stone fountains. When we arrived, the caretakers were busily trimming hedges and weeding.
"Can we go horseback riding right away, Daddy?" Jean cried.
"Let's settle in first, unpack, and get organized. Then we'll see about the recreational schedule," he said.
The twins put a cork in their overflowing bottle of excitement, but both looked as if they would burst as they feasted their eyes on our beautiful grounds, the ponds, the fields, and the stream that wove its way deep into the woods and promised adventures forever. They started to rush away as soon as Daddy stopped the car, but he hauled them back with a cry.
"You two help unload. Carry your own suitcases to your room. Come on. You're both big enough to take care of yourselves," he said.
They returned to the car and took their things, Jean proudly heaving his suitcase over his shoulder and helping Pierre unload his.
Mommy stood for a moment gazing around. Then she lifted her eyes to look at an upstairs window. Some memory brought shadows to her face. Daddy sensed her concern and moved quickly to her side.
"Let's have an enjoyable few days and let the past remain buried, Ruby. Please," he pleaded. She nodded, took a deep breath, and started for the front door.
Except for the inclusion of some of Mommy's paintings, my parents had done little to change the decor. The chateau had a short foyer decorated with drapes and large landscape paintings. The furnishings were a mixture of modern and the same French Provincial found in our New Orleans house.
After we all settled in, Daddy took the twins fishing, and Mommy and I went into the garden, where I read and Mommy set up her easel. Although we didn't converse much, we sensed and drew from each other's presence. Both reading and working on artistic projects required concentration and solitude. Mommy soon became lost in her project and I in my reading. Before either of us realized it, the afternoon had turned to dusk and we had to go in to prepare for dinner.
Daddy and the twins returned with their catch. The twins were so excited about the turtles and the other wildlife that they jabbered continuously through dinner. No one else had a chance to get in a word, but their excitement was infectious. All of us felt rejuvenated--Mommy especially. I took charge of getting the twins to bed and left Mommy and Daddy alone to enjoy the warm, star-blazing bayou evening. The twins reluctantly surrendered to sleep only when Daddy promised they could go horseback riding in the morning.
I enjoyed riding too, so the next morning Mommy went back to her painting while Daddy and I and the twins rode for nearly two hours. After lunch Daddy went up to his room to take a nap, and Mommy and I returned to the garden where she continued to paint and I continued to catch up on my college reading.
Toward the later part of the afternoon, a wave of dark clouds crept in from the east. The breeze kicked up, and Mommy decided to go inside. The wind played havoc with our hair, my pages, and Mommy's easel and canvas. We both laughed at our struggle to keep control of our possessions. As we packed up Mommy's brushes and paints, canvas, and easel, she suddenly paused, a half smile of confusion on her face. "What's that?" she asked.
I shook my head. "What's what, Mommy?"
"Didn't you hear it? It sounded like someone screaming." She turned slowly. Daddy had just stepped out of the house and was moving toward us when I heard the screams, too.
"Pierre," I whispered. I saw him flailing about as he struggled to run through the tall grass. He fell once, and Mommy cried out. Daddy started to run toward him.
"Pearl," Mommy moaned.
"It's probably nothing, Mommy," I said and started toward Pierre. But where was Jean? I wondered and felt my heart turn to cold stone when I heard Pierre cry out Jean's name and point to the wooded swamp area behind him. "Snakebite!"
His words were carried to us on the wind and reached Mommy who had followed behind me. She brought her hands to her cheeks and screamed at the fast-approaching storm clouds.
"Nina!"
I
stepped back to embrace her just as her legs gave out.
The thunder seemed to come from both our hearts.

6
The Curse Strikes
.
The water moccasin is a large poisonous olivebrown viper. Folks in the South often call it a cottonmouth. It coils itself on the lower limbs of willow trees and when it lies in the water, it can look like a broken branch floating.

Jean had waded into a pond to catch a turtle sleeping between the lily pads. Pierre had warned him not to, but Jean was fascinated. I knew that when Jean fixed his mind on something, he was sometimes like someone hypnotized. He would turn off everything around him and concentrate on what he wanted to do or see or touch. Pierre had remained on the shore screaming at him, but Jean had ignored him.

When he got too close to the snake, it struck. "I thought it was a branch, Daddy," Pierre moaned. It would be something he would chant in his own mind, for a long time: "I thought it was just a branch."
Jean was floating face down when Daddy lunged into the water to get to him. He scooped him up, lifting him over his head. I had just arrived at the clearing and saw him rushing from the water as if it were boiling around him. There is nothing more frightening to me than the sound and the sight of a grown man screaming. Daddies aren't supposed to cry. There was no sight more heartrending and terrifying to me at the same time as the sight of my father, petrified at the prospect of losing his son, my brother. Daddy looked as if he had lost all sense of direction; he had lost his wits.
Daddy flooded Jean's face with kisses I knew he prayed would be magical; but the stitches that had drawn Jean's eyelids shut appeared unbreakable, and his beautiful little face, a face always animated, those blue eyes sweeping a room or a place to find something interesting, was already growing as pale as a faded water lily.
Daddy turned to me with eyes I shall never put to sleep in my memory, frantic eyes.
I hurried to his side.
"He's not breathing!" he said.
I had him put Jean on a patch of soft moss. "Make him better, Pearl. Make him better," Pierre pleaded.
Jean had been bitten on the left wrist. It had swollen into a large lump, so I knew an adult viper had bitten him and he had taken a big dose of venom. The shock of the bite and its effect on his nervous system must have put him into a panic. He obviously fell into the water, but instead of heading for shore, he had floundered into deeper water. His wrist was surely burning; his heart pounding.
From a first aid course given by the fire department last year, I knew that when a person panics at the surface of water, his thrashing
movements are incapable of keeping his body afloat. If they sink and begin to swallow water, initially, an automatic contraction of the muscle in the windpipe prevents water from entering the lungs and instead it enters the esophagus and stomach. However, the laryngeal reflex impairs breathing, which can quickly lead to the loss of consciousness even without the injection of lethal viper venom. This was surely what had happened to Jean.
Jean's lips had turned blue-gray. I couldn't hear his heartbeat or feet a pulse in his wrist, so I began CPR, never having dreamed when I learned it last year, that I would be practicing it for real on my own little brother. I kept reciting the instructions in my mind, shutting out Daddy's moans and Pierre's cajoling to make Jean better. Instead, I heard my instructor saying the rate of compression should be eighty per minute with two breaths given after every fifteen compressions. After what seemed like hours, but was really only two minutes, I looked up at Daddy.
"We've got to get him to the hospital."
He nodded and lifted Jean in his arms. Pierre and I followed him out of the woods and across the field. Mommy was seated on a bench, her face drained and white, her tears flowing, her lips quivering.
"We've got to rush to the hospital," Daddy shouted and headed for the car. Mommy shook her head violently, as if to drive off mosquitoes. I took Pierre's hand and we both helped her to her feet.
We all piled into the car. Mommy and I remained in the back with Jean. She kept his head on her lap and stroked his hair, her tears now falling on his face as well.
I don't remember the ride. Daddy had the car on two wheels around turns, his horn blaring at anything and anyone in our way, driving them off the road. We pulled into the hospital emergency lane, and Daddy scooped up Jean again. Mommy rose slowly to follow. All hope was gone from her. She was a shell of herself, drifting along with us.
A team of doctors and nurses worked on Jean. I sat with Mommy in the lobby, holding her limp hand. Pierre sat beside me, stunned, his head against my shoulder, his hands clutching my other hand as if he hoped I could pull him up from the tragedy unfolding around us.
Mommy had been sitting there staring blankly at the wall, when suddenly she spoke: "If only I had left the party . . . if only I had spoken to Nina before she died."
"Stop that, Mommy. Nina had nothing to do with this."
She shook her head and sighed so deeply I thought I heard her chest shatter. She continued to stare ahead with vacant eyes, waiting.
In my mind I envisioned what they were trying to do with Jean. They were injecting the antivenom; they were defibrillating his heart; they were drawing the water from his lungs. Daddy was beside them watching, praying, a man turned to stone.
Time had no meaning, so I didn't know how long we actually waited before Daddy emerged, followed by some of the medical staff. There was no need for words. Everything was said in their faces.
Pierre, who had drawn even closer to me and put his arms around my waist, still clung desperately. The analytical part of me, incredibly detached emotionally, wondered when we as children first understood the finality of death. We are told that people who die go away forever to a place that is nicer, and that eases our confusion and the pain because we can imagine them even happier. It helps us to put them aside, to forget, to turn back to those who are still with us.
But later, at some fragile age, we suddenly realize that death is more than just a ticket on a train or a plane, and we understand the temporal nature of our own lives. Sometime, somewhere, somehow, we, too, will take that inevitable journey. But nothing is more unfair and unreasonable than when a child is made to go.
Maybe Jean wouldn't have become a doctor or a lawyer, but maybe he would have become a great athlete or a good businessman. He would have had his own family and his own children. He was still at the well of "maybes," there to draw from the dreams and possibilities. He was curious and alive and full to the brim with a desire to live every moment, to taste every cookie, drink every soda, laugh every laugh, run until his heart felt as if it would burst, climb trees and have a dog at his feet or a cat in his lap. He was Everyboy, our own Huckleberry Finn, more comfortable in a pair of torn jeans than in suit and tie, never annoyed by strands of hair over his forehead, eager to poke his finger into the pie or the cake icing.
And now he was no more.
"He's gone," Daddy said, and the stone face crumbled under the flow of his own cold tears.
Mommy raised her eyes toward the ceiling and screamed just before she collapsed into Daddy's arms. I was so shattered by her reaction that I never noticed Pierre had toppled back. But when I looked at him, I felt a second stab of ice through my heart. I realized he had fallen into a catatonic state, his eyes wide open.
Our tragedy was just getting under way.
To see Pierre without Jean at his side was like looking at someone who'd had a limb removed. He always looked incomplete; so it was understandable that he would fall into a state of shock, perhaps even deeper and more intense than the shock Mommy was feeling. The doctors examined him. They thought he would snap out of it after a while. They advised us to take him home and pay him as much attention as possible. Daddy had carried his one twin son into the hospital, and he had to carry the other out. We drove back to the chateau as if we were already in Jean's funeral procession. Mommy lay back, her head against the side of the car. I sat with my arm around Pierre, holding him beside me and whispering words of comfort in his ear. Daddy was mechanical, going through the motions of what had to be done. He carried Pierre into the chateau, and I helped Mommy. Daddy put Pierre to bed, but we weren't going to stay there. Daddy had the servants get our things together quickly, and he called ahead and had our doctor waiting at the New Orleans house. Then he made the arrangements for the transfer of Jean's body to the funeral parlor. I was at his side, ready to help him with anything, but he wanted me to concentrate on Pierre, who still hadn't snapped out of his
semiconscious state. When it was time to leave, he had to be carried to the car, where he lay limp against me all the way to New Orleans. Mommy was collapsed in the front seat, her eyes shut to keep out the reality.
Nothing travels as fast as bad news. We weren't home an hour before the phones began to ring. Daddy had to call Europe to tell Grandpa and Grandma Andreas what had happened. As usual, they had gone to the Riviera for the summer. Grandma Andreas told Daddy that Grandpa was too sick to travel home for the funeral. He had suffered a stroke the year before.
The doctor had given Mommy a sedative. He examined Pierre and thought he would snap out of his shock soon. Following the doctor's orders, I tried to get him to eat something, drink something; but he wouldn't open his mouth. I began to fear that the doctors at the hospital and our doctor might have underestimated the intensity of his emotional trauma.
The air of gloom that had permeated our house before we went to the country was nothing compared to what followed. Death had made a camp in our dark corners; it moved proudly and freely through the corridors, dimming every light, fading every color, making every flower droop, and painting our windows with a gray tint so that no matter how much sunshine fell from the blue sky above, it looked like rain to us. People spoke only in whispers and lifted their feet so their footsteps were barely audible. The servants glided in and out of rooms to do their work and then hovered together in the kitchen or the pantry to console each other. The ticking of clocks began to sound like thunder.
Later in the day Daddy gathered all his inner strength to greet people in his study and finalize the arrangements for Jean's funeral. In the dim lamplight, he looked ashen and gray, like a man who had aged decades in minutes. Early in the evening, just after one of his business associates left, I entered his study. He was sitting back in his desk chair, staring blankly at the opposite wall. He didn't seem to notice me.
"Daddy," I said.
He turned to me as in a dream. His dark eyes shone, full of tears. "Yes, Pearl."
"It's about Pierre, Daddy. He's not improving. He hasn't eaten anything since . . . since the hospital. He won't even sip water."
"He's blaming himself," Daddy said, shaking his head. Then he pounded his chest with his closed fist so hard that I winced. "I am the one to blame," he declared.
I hurried to his side and put my hand on his shoulder. "Of course you're not, Daddy. No one's to blame."
"I wanted us to go there. I pushed for it," he moaned, his voice cracking.
"But, Daddy, sooner or later we would have gone there anyway. You can't blame yourself. It was a horrible, horrible accident."
"Accident," he said bitterly. His chin quivered. "I warned them; I told them not to wander off, didn't I?"
"Yes, Daddy. Stop blaming yourself. Mommy's upstairs wrenching her heart with blame, and Pierre has fallen into a serious coma because he blames himself. Jean simply shouldn't have gone into the water."
"He was just a young boy, still a child," Daddy protested. "It was my job to take care of him, watch over him, protect him. I failed. I failed miserably," he said and closed his eyes. He looked as if he might keep them shut forever.
"Daddy, I'm afraid for Pierre. We've got to do something. Call the doctor back."
Daddy opened his eyes slowly and stared at me as if my words were taking hours to enter his brain. "You think it's that serious?"
"He'll be dehydrated. I think he's even running a fever."
"Oh, no. I'll lose both of them," he said and stood up. He nodded after his own thoughts. "I'd better pay some attention to him and stop wallowing in my own tragedy," he added and started out. I followed him up the stairs to Pierre's room.
Pierre hadn't moved a muscle since I had last been beside him. His eyes were open, but so empty it was as if I could see through them, down the long corridor, into the blackness of his closed-down mind. Daddy went to the bed and sat beside Pierre, taking his hand into his.
"Pierre, you've got to snap out of this and help us, help Mommy. You must eat and drink something. It wasn't your fault. You tried to keep Jean from going into the water. Come on, Pierre," Daddy pleaded. Pierre didn't even blink. "Pierre." Daddy touched his cheek. "Come on, son. Please," he begged. Pierre's eyes remained turned inward. Suddenly he grimaced as if in great pain. And then he made a horrible guttural noise that frightened Daddy and me. Daddy retreated with surprise and stood up. "What's wrong with him? Why is he doing that?"
"I think he's reliving the tragedy," I guessed.
"Pierre, stop it. Stop it," Daddy ordered. He shook him by the shoulders. Pierre's expression didn't change, but the horrible sound ended. Daddy released him and turned to me. "I'd better call the doctor, as you say, Pearl."
"Go on, Daddy. I'll stay with him," I said. Daddy left the room.
I sat on the bed and took Pierre's hand in mine, stroking it gently.
"Poor Pierre," I said. "You had to see such a terrible thing, but you can't blame yourself. It wasn't your fault."
I lifted my eyes to his face and saw the beginning of a single tear as it crawled over his eyelid and made its slow zigzag journey down his cheek to his chin. Incredibly, that was it, only one tear; as if he had cried all the others inside and had nothing more left to show. I leaned over and wiped the solitary tear away.
"Won't you try to drink some water, Pierre? Please. For me. Please," I begged. His lips didn't move, and his eyes remained as cold and hard as chips of turquoise. I sighed and held his hand and spoke to him softly until I was exhausted with the effort. Then I heard the door open and saw Mommy standing there, her hair down, her face streaked with her own dried tears, her skin waxen. She was in her
nightgown, but wore no slippers.
"What's wrong with him?" she asked in a voice stripped of emotion. She sounded like someone who had been mesmerized and was speaking under a spell, but she seemed finally to realize there was something the matter with Pierre.
"He won't drink or eat anything. His expression hasn't changed since we returned, nor has he moved. He's in a catatonic state, Mommy. I told Daddy to call the doctor."
"Mon Dieu,"
she said. "What have I done?"
"Mommy, please. It doesn't do anyone any good if you blame yourself. Look what it's doing to Pierre." I turned to him. "I'm sure he's blaming himself."
"My baby," she said and moved forward to embrace him. She sat on the bed and took him in her arms, but he was like a rag doll, his head wagging, his eyes frozen, his limbs lifeless. She rocked with him and tried to soothe him, but he didn't respond. The realization struck her, and she lowered him to the pillow, an expression of shock and fear in her face.