Iron Lace (12 page)

“That’s no way to speak of your papa.” There was no force
behind Ti’ Boo’s words; rather, she sounded sad that Aurore was compelled to say these things, things that were all too true.

“While I’m here, let’s just pretend I don’t have a father. Pretend I’m your…” Aurore cast around for the right concept. “Your sister.”

“Sister? Me, I already have sisters. Too many sisters. A cousin? From New Orleans?”

“A cousin.” Aurore smiled. “Your dearest cousin. So, cousin, when do I meet Jules Guilbeau?”

Ti’ Boo pulled her to the side to escape a passing wagon drawn by a team of sturdy horses. “He’s visiting tonight. You’ll meet him then.”

“Is he handsome? Truly handsome?”

“Handsome? Oh, so handsome! In truth, he has only a few faults. One leg is higher than the other, so he walks with a cane. He has no teeth of his own, but he’s promised to send to Donaldsonville for some before the wedding. His hair is too long, so he ties it on top of his head in a Chinaman’s knot to cover the bare patches.”

“Ti’ Boo!”

Ti’ Boo laughed and squeezed Aurore’s hand. “You will see for yourself,
chère.
”

“He is the handsomest old man in the village,” Minette said.

Ti’ Boo slapped at her. “He is not old, merely well seasoned. The young men who court you are like gumbo without pepper or salt.”

“The young men who court me are too many to count.”

Aurore listened to the two sisters teasing each other as they approached the Boudreaux home. Although it was fall, and late afternoon, the sun devoured her shoulders and neck through the stiff cloth of her dress. Dust stirred by the wagon
mingled with the steam of swampland and bayou so that the air felt gritty in her lungs. Even the short walk was beginning to tire her.

Minette lowered her voice. “Who’s that driving the wagon, Ti’ Boo?”

Aurore looked ahead. The wagon had stopped up the road at the house just beyond Ti’ Boo’s. As they watched, a young man leaped to the ground and secured the horses to a fence rail. An older man followed at a more measured pace.

The wagon was filled with lumber, rough-sawed boards that looked as if they had come straight from the mill. The young man shouldered several and slid them from the wagon; the older man grabbed the ends, and the two started through the gate.

“Étienne Terrebonne,” Ti’ Boo said. “And his father, Faustin. Faustin has a mill in the swamps. Étienne is his only child.”

“That’s Étienne?” Minette’s eyes widened.
“T’es sûr de la?”

“I’m certain,” Ti’ Boo said. “When you saw him last, you were still playing
faire la statue
on the levee with your friends. You weren’t interested in young men.”

Minette rolled her eyes. “Was there ever such a time?”

Aurore laughed along with Ti’ Boo. If she’d worried that coming here might not be worth the price of her father’s anger, that worry had nearly disappeared.

The laughter caught in her throat as Faustin Terrebonne stumbled and the boards that had been balanced on his shoulder swung toward the limb of a tree in the center of the yard. For a moment, there was only the slap of wood against the tree; then the air was filled with a fierce buzzing.

“A hornet’s nest.” Ti’ Boo pointed. “Look, he’s shaken up a hornet’s nest.”

Aurore gauged the distance. Already the hornets had
targeted their closest victims. Faustin leaped from foot to foot, slapping and cursing. Étienne, under attack himself, grabbed for his father’s hand, as if to pull him away.

The rest unfolded slowly, like a clock badly in need of winding. One of the horses reared, a new and captive target for the angry insects. His mate heaved from side to side. In their distress, they tore the fencepost from the ground, and it followed behind them, along with a portion of the fence, clanging against the wheels as the wagon plunged down the road toward the place where Aurore and the others stood.

“Quick! Out of the way!”

Instinctively Aurore leaped to one side, bringing Ti’ Boo with her. Behind them, Minette and two of the little girls who had been trailing them remained in the road, mesmerized by the sight of the approaching horses.

“Minette!” Ti’ Boo started back for her sister, but Minette, suddenly aware of the danger, made a dash for the side of the road. She collided with Aurore, who was shouting and running toward the little girls. For a moment they were a tangle of arms and legs; then Aurore freed herself and leaped toward the shrieking children.

Behind her she could hear more screams, the clanging of the fencepost against the wagon wheels, the harsh breathing of the horses and the wild sound of their hooves against the hard-packed earth. She despaired of reaching the little girls in time. They were incapable of movement, so frightened by the sight of the horses bearing down on them that they were rooted to their places.

Any moment she expected to be trampled to the ground. She couldn’t spare a second to see how close the horses were; she could only run faster, despite the impediment of her long skirt.

She heard a shout. The air behind her seemed to thicken with the strong smell and heat of horseflesh. She dived for the two children, her arms spread wide, and knocked them sprawling into the ditch along the roadside. Only then did she have time to scream.

She was gasping for another breath, another scream, when arms encircled her.

“Ro-Ro, are you all right?”

She was. She realized it in that moment. She didn’t know why, and she didn’t know how, but she was all right. And the two little girls sobbing in the ditch beside her were all right, too.

She sat up and scanned the road. Étienne Terrebonne was hanging like an anchor from the harnesses of the horses. Their eyes were wild, but as Aurore stood, the horses calmed as Étienne muttered to them in deep, unintelligible French.

“Étienne grabbed them,” Ti’ Boo confirmed. “I’ve never seen anyone move faster, except maybe you.”

A woman sprinted up the road, her long white apron billowing to the side. She grabbed one of the little girls and kissed her on the cheeks and forehead before she hauled the child to her feet to shake her. Another woman appeared to repeat much the same drama with the other child. Then, after several excited renditions of the story, profuse thank-yous to Aurore and to Étienne, who was still anchoring the horses, the mothers dragged their bawling daughters away.

Aurore dusted off her dress and retrieved her hat, which had flown from her head. Her hands weren’t quite steady. Only minutes into her stay in the village, and she was already a heroine. In the retelling, her simple act had already assumed mythic proportions. She had risked her life for the two little
girls. Assured of death and yet unafraid, she had thrown herself on top of the children.

Étienne turned. The horses were now completely under the spell of his voice. Sweat gleamed on his forehead, and an angry welt on his cheek confirmed his encounter with the hornets.

“You’re all right, then?” he asked.

“Fine. What about you?”

He smiled, as if he found the question amusing. His teeth were white against his tanned skin, and his dark eyes flashed with humor. “A runaway horse is a small thing here. Two? Two small things.”

His voice was resonant, a musical baritone. Aurore was accustomed to listening to the voices of young men; she wasn’t accustomed to finding them so pleasing.

She smiled, too. “Well, it’s no small thing anywhere to dive at them and risk your life. I don’t know if I would have gotten out of the way in time if you hadn’t stopped them.”

“It would have been a shame to see such a lovely young woman trampled.”

Ti’ Boo stepped forward. “Étienne, you haven’t even been introduced.
T’as du goût.
”

The phrase was a bayou one, unfamiliar to Aurore. But she knew enough to understand that Étienne had been chastised for being too forward. “I think our introduction is only missing a name or two,” Aurore said. She extended her hand. “I’m Aurore Le Danois, from New Orleans.” She waited for his response.

There was the briefest hesitation. She guessed that his hands were dirty and he didn’t want to dirty hers. “Étienne Terrebonne,” he said, clasping her hand, then dropping it quickly. “From New Orleans?”

“I’ve come for Ti’ Boo’s wedding.”

“She’s known Ti’ Boo since she was a child,” Minette said, insinuating herself into the conversation. “And have we been introduced?”

Étienne turned politely. “Maybe not. I don’t often come this way.” He made a quick, old-world bow.

A rapid-fire explosion of French cut off more conversation. Faustin, limping and muttering, joined them. He looked nothing like his son, who was tall and lithe. Faustin was a small man, stocky and bent from years of hard labor. “Them bees have settled down. Let’s get rid of this wood so I can go, Étienne.”

Étienne frowned and touched a series of welts on his father’s neck, but Faustin slapped his hand away. “Come on, let’s get this done.”

Étienne gave another quick bow, then began to turn the horses. The women stepped out of the way of the wagon and watched from the side of the road until Étienne and his father were busy setting the fencepost and rails back in place.

“You can get the stars out of your eyes right now,” Ti’ Boo told her sister. “Maman would never let you go to a man from the back of Lafourche, especially not Étienne. He and his father live alone, and they have little.”

“It would almost be worth living in the swamps.”

Aurore knew only vaguely of swamps or of the kind of poverty that Ti’ Boo was hinting about. But after even a brief introduction to Étienne, she thought that Minette might be right. At seventeen, Aurore was already much sought after by the young men of New Orleans society. She was a rare combination of pure Creole bloodlines and substantial wealth that appealed to both the impoverished Creole gentry and the canny American opportunists.

But never in her forays into society had she come across a man quite like Étienne Terrebonne, a man who balanced charm and strength as easily as he balanced cypress boards from his father’s mill.

J
ules Guilbeau had a full set of God-given teeth and a thick head of silvering hair. He was broad-shouldered and svelte, and when Ti’ Boo was in the room, his affectionate dark-eyed gaze never left her for a moment. In the days since Aurore’s arrival, more than one woman had confided that Jules’s first wife had been sickly, a complainer who had depended on the goodwill of her maman and sisters to see that her chores were finished and her children tended. Ti’ Boo would better suit such a man as Jules, a man worthy of devotion and sacrifice.

Aurore had never fully understood devotion or sacrifice. Now, on Ti’ Boo’s wedding day, she understood it better. Life on Bayou Lafourche was more difficult than she had imagined. Even the youngest Boudreaux child understood that his work was important for the family’s survival.

As an honored guest, Aurore wasn’t expected to contribute to the well-ordered family system, but Ti’ Boo’s maman, Clothilde, a woman with her oldest daughter’s intelligence and
instincts, had understood Aurore’s longing to be included. She had found plenty for Aurore to do, jobs that needed few skills other than those Aurore had come with.

Her needlework had been in high demand. She had sewn buttons and hems, embroidered rosettes on a nightdress for Ti’ Boo’s trousseau and initials on half a dozen handkerchiefs. Ti’ Boo, whose own needlework was extraordinary, had made her wedding dress, ivory silk with a scalloped lace yoke, from fabric sent weeks before by Aurore as her wedding gift to the bride. With Aurore in residence, the two women tucked, adjusted and gossiped unceasingly until the dress was perfect.

Some of the other preparations were less artistic. With dozens of wedding guests expected, the feast was to be lavish. Women had gathered every morning to help. At times it seemed that any woman who had ever passed within one hundred yards of the Boudreaux house was expected to come and lend a hand.

After the first day, Aurore had given up trying to remember names. She shelled and chopped nuts on the wide gallery with dark-haired, dark-eyed women who quickly got over the novelty of her presence and giggled when she winced at the squeals and squawks of the animals being slaughtered behind the house.

The men were just as busy. After the butchering, they came to dress the meat and to trade boasts and stories. Café noir, dark coffee freshly roasted and ground by Clothilde, flowed as freely as the muddy water of Bayou Lafourche. After twilight, home-brewed whiskey flowed, as well.

On the morning of Ti’ Boo’s wedding, the excitement reached a fever pitch. Outside, Valcour, with the help of his sons and brothers, roasted a dozen small pigs. In the kitchen at the back of the house, Clothilde supervised a work crew.
Aurore had peeked in twice to see the progress. Gallons of shrimp, crabs and crawfish waited in barrels of cool water to be boiled with red pepper and herbs. Spicy jambalaya, a fragrant mixture of rice, vegetables and sausage, steamed in roasting pans.

Duck gumbo, made from a closely guarded recipe of Clothilde’s, bubbled enticingly in a cast-iron kettle.

The girls’ bedroom, tiny and crowded under ordinary circumstances, was a riot of colorful dresses and noise.

“You’re sure you didn’t break any thread when you were fixing the wedding dress?” Minette asked Aurore. “Very sure?”

“I don’t think so,” Aurore said. She shooed away a tiny cousin who was edging closer and closer to the dress in question.

“And there were no knots in the thread?”

“The dress looks beautiful. Perfect. Ti’ Boo will be the most beautiful bride ever. What could be the problem?” Aurore cocked her head in question.

All the girls in the room giggled in unison. “You don’t know?” Minette asked.

Aurore fell to the nearest bed, a simple moss-stuffed mattress, and tucked her feet beneath her. “Tell me.”

“If the thread for a wedding dress is broken, it means the marriage will end in sorrow. If there’s a knot, there will be trouble!”

“Then this marriage is sure to be happy.”

“Mine will be the same,” Minette confided. “I already have a serious suitor. Did you know?”

“Already?”

“I’m nearly sixteen.
Maman
was married at sixteen,
Mémère
at fifteen.”

“Only one suitor, then? And you want to marry him?”

“
Mais non!
After he comes to the house, I sweep it right away, to sweep away his love.”

Aurore tried not to smile. “And does that work?”

“I think so, yes. He comes less often now.”

“He comes less often,” Ti’ Boo said, entering the room to chase out all the younger children, “because you are so rude to him.”

“That, too,” Minette agreed cheerfully.

“Do you love another man?” Aurore asked. “Is that why you’re rude?”

“I’ve seen the face of my husband-to-be in our well. Now I have only to wait for him to court me.”

“In the well?”

“I don’t think you’re learning anything you need to know in New Orleans,” Minette said.

“If you look in a well at noon, and you’re lucky,” Ti’ Boo explained, “you’ll see the face of your intended.”

“Did you?”

“Me, I saw nothing, and when I leaned over to search harder, I nearly fell in.”

“It’s almost noon!” Minette clapped her hands. “Aurore must try.”

“But I don’t want to get married,” Aurore said. Silence fell—an extraordinary event in the Boudreaux household.

Aurore wondered how she could explain. She had never seen a happy marriage, except, perhaps, in her brief sojourn here. By society’s standards, Ti’ Boo’s parents were poor, and despite Clothilde’s poor health, they both worked unceasingly. But they were seldom cross with their children or each other, and when they had a few minutes that didn’t have to be parceled out to someone or something else, they spent it
together. Aurore had seen them touch hands when passing; she had heard their contented murmurs late at night.

In contrast, there was the marriage of her own parents. It had ceased to resemble a marriage many years ago. “I don’t think of marriage as you do,” she tried to explain. “Look what it did to my mother.”

Ti’ Boo sat on the bed beside her and took Aurore’s hand. “I haven’t asked before, because I was afraid it would make you sad. Is Madame Le Danois any better?”

Aurore considered a lie, but the truth was a burden better shared. “I was allowed to see her six months ago. She sat at the window and murmured lists of names, like a new mother choosing what to call her baby. Boys’ names, of course.”

Ti’ Boo’s hand tightened spasmodically around Aurore’s. “And you think marriage did this to her?”

“She worked so hard to please my father and hers. I don’t think she ever thought about what she wanted, except on the night of the hurricane. After that, she blamed herself for
Grand-père
’s death. His name is prominent on the list she repeats.”

“But she pleaded with him to leave Krantz’s.”

“Yes. I remember.” Aurore stroked Ti’ Boo’s hand. She also remembered the terrible, ceaseless screaming of the wind, the miscarriage her mother had suffered that night, the horror of learning that her grandfather had been killed in the collapse of the cottage he had believed to be safe. “I didn’t come to Côte Boudreaux to convince you not to get married. But there’s no hope I could marry for love. How could I tell if a man wanted me, and not my money or my name?”

She was afraid to speak a worse possibility out loud. What if she mistakenly married a man like her father, a man who viewed women as ornaments, or broodmares? What if she ended up in
a locked hospital room, endlessly repeating the names of babies she hadn’t been able to bring into the world alive?

“Ro-Ro, do you think I marry for love?” Ti’ Boo said. “I make marriage with Jules to care for his children and give birth to my own. I marry him to have a home that’s mine.”

“You marry him to have a man to warm your bed,” Minette said. “And because he makes you laugh.”

“You’re too young to speak of such things!”

“Do you love him, Ti’ Boo?” Aurore asked.

“I won’t mind growing old with him.”

Minette rolled her eyes. “He’ll grow old before you.”

Ti’ Boo jumped to her feet and started after her sister. “I’ll grow old sitting here listening to your chatter. Enough!”

Aurore didn’t have much time to think about their conversation as the day progressed. She spent the rest of the morning on the gallery, helping Ti’ Boo’s weeping
nainaine
put the finishing touches on the traditional paper flowers for the church. In the early afternoon, Aurore arranged Ti’ Boo’s hair. The task had fallen to her after a great deal of consultation. It was decided that only Ro-Ro would know the latest styles and have the good taste not to make Ti’ Boo look like a china doll.

While Ti’ Boo sat on a chair before her, Aurore brushed the shining mass of waves, silky and soft from a rainwater wash the night before. She parted it in the middle, then pushed it forward before she doubled it back to the crown and twisted it into a perfect Psyche knot. Carefully she freed tiny wisps from the sides and curled them around her fingers.

“Jules is a good man,” Ti’ Boo said, as if their conversation of the morning had never been interrupted. “I want children of my own, and I love his children already.”

“They’ll be very lucky to have you as their maman.”

“Don’t you want children, Ro-Ro?”

Aurore did want children. But she was afraid she knew the choices she faced. A loveless marriage and much-loved children, or no marriage and no children at all. She told Ti’ Boo something she had never told anyone. “I don’t know, but if I ever do have children, I’ll be like your mother, not mine. I’ll give them my life. I won’t let anything separate us. Not illness or misfortune. Nothing. Not ever.”

Ti’ Boo took Aurore’s hand and placed it against her cheek. “You’ll be a good mother, too.”

When it seemed as if the day had stretched to the breaking point, Clothilde arrived to tell Ti’ Boo it was time to dress. Like Ti’ Boo’s
nainaine,
Clothilde wept, and like other Acadian mothers before her, she threatened not to attend the wedding because it would be too sad to witness. Aurore wondered if Acadian mothers were unhappy because they were losing their daughters or because they knew what awaited them in their married lives.

Clothilde threatened, but in the end she dressed in her Sunday best and climbed into the buggy. Ti’ Boo, resplendent in her dress and long veil, with her mother and father beside her, took the long ride to the church at the head of a lengthy procession. Aurore, in pale green batiste and a discreetly feathered hat, was escorted by a Boudreaux aunt and uncle.

The small church was lit by gentle, lingering sunshine. Despite a tradition that real flowers were a show of vanity, the paper flowers had been supplemented with bright blossoms from family gardens. Ti’ Boo walked down the aisle to the smiles and sobs of the people who loved her best, and Aurore shed her own sentimental tears.

There were no tears after the last words were said. Ti’ Boo and a formal Jules, dressed in black, climbed into his buggy to lead the race back home. The Boudreaux and Guilbeau men, who had been models of propriety, raucously fired shotguns into the air.

At home, all unnecessary furniture had been stacked against the wall to make space on the floor for the
bal de noce,
the traditional wedding dance that was to begin later in the evening. Tables had been set under the trees for the feast, and honored matrons took their places in line to serve the wedding guests.

Aurore wasn’t hungry. Throughout the day she had sampled tidbits, until her appetite was gone. Since the meal was to be served one sitting at a time, she was happy to wait.

To the mournful cadences of a lone fiddler, she stepped out on the gallery. As she had promised her father, the Boudreaux had been as strict with her as with their own daughters. She had been watched and kept from any compromising behaviors. Her virtue was assured; at home she would resume the life of a New Orleans debutante, and nothing on the surface would be changed.

But she was changed. The days at Ti’ Boo’s house had awakened memories of childhood summers on the Gulf, of warm, scented afternoons at the Krantz’s Place, when her mother had sat on a cottage gallery and watched her play with the other summering children. She had recalled what it felt like to be wanted, to be part of a community of people who cared whether she was happy.

No one watched her now. Clothilde was splendidly occupied as overseer of the feast, and Ti’ Boo’s aunts were in the serving line. Holding her skirt with one hand and her hat with the other, she crossed the buggy-lined road to stroll along the levee.

Geese flew across the twilight sky, and on the opposite bank of the bayou a heron skimmed the water, searching for its final meal of the day. From somewhere up the bayou she heard the whistle of a steamboat. She would start her journey home in the morning. Ti’ Boo and her new husband would spend tonight at an aunt’s, and tomorrow they would lay paper flowers on the graves of their closest departed relatives before returning to Jules’s home. Ti’ Boo would begin her new life as Aurore returned to her old one.

She was so immersed in that thought that she came within yards of a solitary figure before she realized she was no longer alone. “Mam’selle Le Danois.” The man swept off his straw hat, and gave a little bow. With some relief, she recognized Étienne Terrebonne.

“Étienne.” She glanced behind her and saw just how far she had strayed. “Clothilde will be furious with me for coming out here alone.”

“You’re not alone anymore.”

“If she knew that, she’d be even more furious.”

“Then better run back home before she finds out.”

She laughed. “No, I think I’m safe. She’s well occupied for the moment. Ti’ Boo was married today. Did you know?”

“I’ll be at the
bal de noce.
I’m staying overnight at their neighbor’s house to build a new room.”

“Then you’re a carpenter?”

“And a trapper, a fisherman, a moss picker. An Acadian. Have you learned what that means?”

“It means hard work.” She crossed her arms and stood beside him to stare at the bayou. Something more than surprise flickered inside her. She was aware of the differences that separated them, but there was also an awareness of sim
ilarities unexplored. She could almost believe he knew what it felt like to yearn for what he’d never had. She wondered at her own sentimentality. Étienne was a stranger, one she wouldn’t see again after tonight.