Iron Lace (29 page)

“Do you? Do you know she has no memory of you, or of it, either? What had you hoped to accomplish, Aurore? Had
you thought to make her love you a little? How could she love the woman who abandoned her at birth?”

He got the reaction he’d hoped for. She flinched and grew paler. “You haven’t told her that?”

“Haven’t I?”

She put her son over her shoulder and began to pat him. She looked at Rafe again. The defiance in her eyes had waned a little. “You hate her so much that you’d hurt her that way?”

He wanted to tell her that he hated Nicolette’s mother that much, but something inside him refused. He didn’t answer.

“She has so little. You’ve given her almost nothing. Not a mother to love her, not a home where she can be safe and secure. Nothing of yourself. Isn’t there anything inside you to give our daughter?”

“How can you ask? Don’t you remember who I am and what I’ve done?”

“She’s beautiful. You know I saw her. Do you know I held her on my lap? Just for a moment.” Her voice caught. She looked over his shoulder, as if she couldn’t meet his gaze. “She looks like you. But there’s a little of me in her, too.”

“Inconvenient for you. That might make it harder to deny her again, if the opportunity arises.”

“If I had the opportunity, I would take her and run away!”

“You had that opportunity.”

“And I’ll pay forever…for not having done it.”

“She’s dead to you. Don’t try to see her anymore, and don’t pay anyone else to answer your questions. If you don’t want Nicolette to know that her mother gave her away because she wasn’t good enough to keep, then stay away from her.”

She squeezed her eyes shut. “How can you? No matter how much you hate me, how can you think of hurting her that way?”

“It’s the truth.”

“A part of it, and I hate myself for it.” She opened her eyes, and they were filled with tears. “You’re all she has now. Can’t you stop trying to hurt me? What’s to become of our daughter? I know as much about her as you do. I’ve spied and lied to find out about her, but she lives with you, and you know nothing!”

“I know she’s too much like her mother.”

She gasped. “No! She’s a wonderful little girl, full of spirit and laughter and music, and you lock her in her room like an animal! Do you know her dreams? Do you care that she’s living in the most depraved area of the city? That she’s growing up to think that whores and the men who frequent them are normal?”

He pushed himself away from the tree and turned. He had said everything. He started back the way he had come, but her words followed him. “How soon before she sells herself, too, Rafe? And why wouldn’t she? There’s no one who loves her! She doesn’t know what it’s like to have a mother or father touch her in love! She’ll look for it from the first man who smiles at her, just like I did! She deserves better!”

He could hear her sobbing now. The baby began to cry, too, upset by his mother’s distress. “How can you hate her so?” she sobbed. “How can you?”

He still heard her questions when he was nearly a mile away. Although he walked faster, ignoring the streetcar that thundered past, her questions kept pace.

He didn’t hate Nicolette, although he hated her mother. He made sure his daughter had enough to eat and a warm place to sleep. He isolated her from the worst depravities of the Magnolia Palace, and as landlord there he made certain
that the Palace was as clean and safe a house as any on Basin Street. He had done more for her than her mother had been willing to do. At least he did not pretend she was someone else’s child.

But he did not give anything of himself to her, and he never had. Aurore’s final words haunted him. The picture of his daughter searching for love in the arms of a stranger haunted him.

The afternoon sun was high overhead by the time he reached Basin Street. He was assaulted by the fragrance of sweet olive and the tinkling of an out-of-tune piano at the end of the block. He passed a house with three yawning residents in dressing gowns on the front stoop, and one of the women called to him.

At the Magnolia Palace he heard children’s voices behind the house. He moved quietly toward the back, avoiding the crunch of oyster shells under his shoes. Beside the back gallery, in the shade of a magnolia, he watched his daughter at play.

Her middy dress flapped against her bare knees as she ran, screaming with laughter, from tree to tree. Violet, skirts hitched above her ankles, chased her, and Tony Pete, busy weeding the garden, made the occasional pretend grab as she passed. Nicolette’s curls flew in disarray, and she was smudged with dirt.

She darted not more than twenty feet from the tree where he stood. Only when she was well past did she stop and turn to look at him. He watched her laughter die and the sparkle in her eyes disappear. He saw fear take its place.

He remembered fear in the eyes of a child so much like this one. Angelle had been frightened in the boat. He remembered the way she had clung to his mother until she could cling no longer. He shut his eyes, but he could see Nicolette still. Nicolette, who looked so much like his adored sister.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Rafe.”

He opened his eyes and saw Violet standing in front of him. She was not pretending to be a little girl today. She was a little girl, far too young to be working in a whorehouse. Far too young to have discovered how casual and cruel the world could be. “Go inside and pack,” he said.

“But we were only playing. No one complained about the noise.”

“Pack and wait for me in the Azalea parlor. I have a better job for you.”

She tilted her head. For the first time he saw how beautiful she really was. He wondered which would weigh heaviest against her in the years to come, her beauty, her years at the Palace, or the drop of Negro blood that made her less than human in the eyes of white society.

She seemed to think better of questioning him. She sought out Nicolette with her eyes; then she started toward the house. Nicolette approached him slowly. She scuffed her toe along the ground when she was just in front of him. “Please don’t make Violet go away,” she said. “I’ll stay in my room all the time if you just don’t make her go.”

“Look at me.”

She did, and he could see it was a great act of courage. Defiance shone in her eyes, the final defiance of a cornered animal.

He squatted in front of her so that they were face-to-face. The world looked very different from this angle. For the first time in many years, he remembered how it had looked as a boy.

“You can’t live here anymore, Nicolette. It’s not proper. I have a house below Canal Street where I’m going to take you.
I’m going to ask Violet if she’ll come and take care of you there. Would you like that?”

Her face puckered in a frown. Already she was looking for the trap behind anything that was said to her. “Violet can come?”

“Yes. If she wants to.”

“Will the men visit her there?”

“No men will visit.”

“What kind of house?”

“A small, pretty house.” He couldn’t think of anything else to say. He didn’t know how to talk to her.

“Just Violet and me?”

“No. I’ll live there, too.”

Her eyes narrowed. “And the duchess?”

“No.”

“Clarence, too?”

He shook his head. “Clarence can visit.”

“Then we’ll need a piano.” She moved a little closer.

“We’ll buy a piano. It’s time you started lessons.”

“Lessons?”

“Yes. Music lessons. And you’ll need a tutor, too. You have to learn to read, don’t you?”

“I already read. I’d rather go to school.”

“Maybe.”

She looked down at her feet. “I’ll be very good.”

“No, you won’t. You’ll run and scream and do everything you want as soon as my back is turned.”

“Only sometimes.”

He laughed softly. He didn’t know where the sound had come from. He thought all the laughter inside him had withered years before. He stretched out his hand and touched her cheek with the backs of his fingers. She flinched.

He stroked carefully until she relaxed a little. She had not backed away, but only because she was filled with courage. His daughter, a valiant, rowdy brat-child who was his only tie to a world he had given up on.

He stood and turned his back on her, but having gained ground, she wouldn’t retreat so easily. “What about Tony Pete?”

“You’ll make new friends.”

“I want Tony Pete to come, too.”

He turned his head. She looked down at the ground again.

For the barest part of a second he saw Aurore in her, the woman at the lagoon, impotent, but never truly defeated. “There might be something for Tony Pete to do there,” he agreed.

He left before she could ask anything else, but he didn’t know who he was really trying to escape—his daughter, or his daughter’s mother.

“R
afe moved Nicolette away from Storyville after our encounter. She was still very young. As she grew up, I don’t know what she remembered about those days. But she was a resilient child….”

Aurore watched Phillip, who very soon into their session had abandoned the love seat for the window. He was staring at the garden beyond. He didn’t speak.

“There’s more to the story,” she said. “I suppose you think that you know everything you were meant to. But you don’t. Not yet.”

He faced her, his arms crossed in front of him. He was so much like his grandfather, but she would not tell him so. Telling him was a gift he wouldn’t appreciate. Not yet.

“Your reasons for wanting me to write your story never rang true.” He didn’t move toward her. Aurore thought that perhaps he was afraid to be too close, as if he couldn’t trust himself. “I knew there was more to this than you were telling me. I thought something interesting might come of it.”

“But you never expected this.”

“Why?”

There were a thousand whys, and a thousand answers. She didn’t know which question he had asked, so she chose the only one she wanted to answer now.

“If I had called you and told you I was your grandmother, would you have agreed to come and talk to me?”

He stiffened when she said the words, as if he had hoped, wildly, foolishly, that his conclusions had been wrong. “I don’t know.”

“Neither did I. This was the only way I could be sure you would.” She held up her hand to silence him as he started to speak. “But I never lied to you about wanting this story told. There are things you still don’t understand. More than I can tell in a day, or a week. You are not my only grandchild. I have another. And someday, with your help, Dawn will understand it all, too.”

His eyes blazed with anger. “What makes you think I want to help you? Blood ties? Do you think you’ve told me anything I’d want to repeat? Do you think I feel honored being part of your family or your race? That I feel more human somehow?”

“And what about your mother, Phillip?”

“What about her? Shall I tell her that her mother didn’t die at her birth after all? That she’s a rich white lady who’s sorrier than she can say that she didn’t love her enough to be a mother to her? Did you imagine that I’d intercede for you? That I’d help you plan a reunion?”

“Nothing like that.” Her hands were folded in her lap. She resisted twisting them.

“What, then?”

“If I was certain that knowing this would be good for Nicolette—”

“Don’t call her that. Her name’s Nicky. It’s been Nicky for decades. Nicky Valentine.”

“And once it was Clarissa.”

“You didn’t have the right to name her!”

She wasn’t surprised that pain could lie dormant for half a century, only to torture her again. The voice was Rafe’s, and so was the sentiment.

“If I was certain knowing this would be good for your mother, I would have told her myself. But I’m not sure of anything, except that you must hear the rest.”

“You’re doing this to ease your conscience, aren’t you? Confession is good for the soul? Well, maybe it’s good for yours, but it’s not good for mine.” He scooped his recorder off the table, jerking the plug from the wall as he did. He was nearly to the door when she made her final plea.

“And if you do tell your mother someday, Phillip, what will you tell her? Part of a story? Will that satisfy her, do you think? Or will she want to know it all?”

“If she wants to hear more, she can come to you herself.”

“I won’t be here. I’m dying, Phillip. The doctors say I may have six months. I may not. And at the end, there are no guarantees that I’ll be able to think clearly or express my thoughts.”

“So this is a deathbed confession, or nearly?”

“It’s not a confession. I’m not trying to purify my soul before I die. If an afterlife exists, I’ll gladly take my punishment. But I see no reason to punish those who’ve come after me. I know things that can change the lives of my children and my grandchildren. I’ve been a terrible coward all my life, but this is my last attempt at courage.”

He didn’t turn, but he paused, as if considering her words. She supposed it was the most she could expect.

“Please come back. When you’re ready,” she added after a moment.

The room had been empty for some time when she rose and went to the window. She stared, as Phillip had, at the view. Crepe-myrtle limbs rustled in the breeze, and a delivery truck passed on the side street.

It was the small things that made dying so hard. The way sunshine dappled the grass under the thick canopy of live oaks. Blue jays screeching from telephone wires. Air as lush, as soft, as velvet.

Phillip would return. He was a man who lived his life for answers. That passion, that drive for the truth would not desert him now. She thought of Rafe, a man as intelligent, as gifted, as his grandson. She wished with all her heart that Phillip had known him.

She was a woman who could study Eastern religion on the same day she attended mass and never see a conflict. Years ago she had become entranced by the idea of reincarnation. She had imagined herself born again into another body. She had imagined finding Rafe again, marrying him, proudly bearing his children, no matter what the obstacles.

Then she had learned that those who believed in reincarnation also believed that people were reborn with all their faults—as well as their strengths—intact. She could be a coward into eternity.

The dream of reincarnation had died, but not the vision of her own cowardice. She could not resurrect Rafe. She could not start anew with him, no matter how much she
wished it. But she could act, in what was left of this life, to right the wrongs she had done.

That much she could do for Rafe, and for herself, no matter who or what awaited her when her eyes closed for the last time.

Belinda wore red, a red so vivid and pure that her skin glowed in response. The dress was just tight enough, the neckline just low enough, to dispel all images of Miss Beauclaire, the kindergarten teacher. Her long legs were clad in dark, textured stockings, and rhinestones flashed in her earlobes.

Phillip wore the same clothes he had worn since that morning. After leaving Aurore Gerritsen’s house, he had walked through the streets of New Orleans for hours. He had walked through neighborhoods where his very presence was suspicious, and others where the color of his skin was the only passport he needed.

“You don’t look like a man who wants to go out this evening,” Belinda said.

Phillip suddenly remembered that he had asked Belinda to go to Club Valentine tonight. Now he had no desire to face the crowds or his mother. He wondered if Mrs. Gerritsen realized that from this moment on, every time he looked at Nicky, he would remember what he knew of her past and wonder what he should do about it.

“You sit on the sofa. Now.” Belinda pointed to the corner. “I’ll be back.”

He took the offered seat, sank down in the cushions and rested his head against the back. The dark sapphire walls were as comforting as a womb, and the faint fragrance of incense as familiar as his own heartbeat. He had stayed away for hours,
walked through streets he had never lived on, just to find some small measure of peace.

All he’d had to do was come back to Belinda’s.

“Here.”

He opened his eyes. Belinda was holding out a drink. He took it gratefully, knocking back half of it before he even registered the flavor of good bourbon.

“Have you had anything to eat since breakfast?”

“You’ve been taking care of people all your life. You don’t have to take care of me.”

“It gets to be a habit.” She left again. When she returned, she had cold boiled shrimp and the sections of a fresh orange.

She set the plate on the table beside him and joined him on the sofa. “Do you want me to change and make dinner here?”

“No. I’ll be okay in a few minutes.”

“Hard day?”

He’d had a thousand hard days. He’d been in Philadelphia, Mississippi, when the bodies of the three slain civil rights workers were found, and at Arlington Cemetery when Jack Kennedy was buried. He’d been denied service in a Virginia restaurant on the evening of Martin Luther King’s speech at the Lincoln Memorial, and jailed, briefly, in Birmingham. Never, at any point along the way, had he expected anyone to make him feel better.

Sometimes a man got more than he asked for.

He set down his glass and pulled her close. Her perfume had the same spicy notes as the incense she burned. He was reminded of Asian and African markets, and exotic, veiled women.

“This town needs a revolution,” he said.

“You know a town that doesn’t?”

“You’ve lived here all your life. Do you really see the way
things are? I walked down streets today where the guard dogs are specifically trained to attack Negroes. An old man I passed told me that. It was meant to be a warning.”

“Had a neighbor once who trained her Doberman to bark at white people, just for spite. Little kids on the street could pet it, dog would wag his stump of a tail and slobber for affection. White man passed by, he’d snap and strain against that chain, hoping for a white-man steak for dinner.” She kissed his hair. “You want to tell me what’s got you planning battles in the streets?”

“I feel impotent.”

“Now, I can say a word or two about that.”

He smiled, despite his heavy heart. “Why did you stay here, Belinda? Why didn’t you move out and on? You got a good education. You could have gone north or west.”

“To the promised land?” She clucked her tongue in disbelief. “Never believed that, and I still don’t. Can you really tell me it’s better anywhere than it is here? That when you’re in New York or San Francisco, people look at you and see a man first? I understand what’s happening here. I don’t have to get used to a whole new kind of racism. And when I teach my little boys and girls who they are, what they have to do to be proud, I know exactly what I’ve got to say.”

“And that’s why you stayed?”

“This is my home. Nobody’s chasing me out. This town belongs to me as much as it does to anyone. And I can make a difference here.”

The words were an echo of something Nicky had said to Phillip years before. He had questioned her decision to live in New Orleans, and she had replied that she didn’t know a place that needed her more. Her music could open doors.

It had, too. Club Valentine had been open to Negro and white from the moment the sign went up, even though that kind of racial mixing wasn’t strictly legal. Whites had stayed away at first, but they had begun to trickle in when the lure of Nicky’s artistry became too potent. One small building on Basin Street had been integrated before the public schools, the swimming pools and the lunch counters.

He realized that he wanted to see Nicky tonight, after all. He wanted to see her standing on that Basin Street stage, the object of praise and outright devotion. He wanted to watch her there and know that nothing Aurore Gerritsen had done to her had dimmed his mother’s bright spirit.

He wanted to figure out what to do from here.

“I suppose you think I’m crazy,” Belinda said.

“No. I think you’ve already figured out things I’ve never even thought about.”

“Glad to share my wisdom.”

“You share more than that. You share everything. Why?”

“You haven’t figured that out yet, either?”

“You don’t get much in the bargain.”

“I get you. Sometimes. So far, that’s been good enough.” She stood. “I can make that dinner.”

“No, let me change, and we’ll go.”

“Before you go looking for your things, I made room in my closet and hung your clothes next to mine. You can fold them and put them back in your suitcase if you want. It’s up to you.”

He watched every step Belinda took as she left the room. His mother moved with the same proud grace. Phillip had never expected to meet a woman who held her head as high as Nicky held hers. But this woman did.

And so, despite everything she’d confessed today, did an old woman on Prytania Street.

Club Valentine was already crowded when they arrived. The fragrances of red beans and boiling crawfish debated the fine points of Creole cuisine. They were seated at a table near the stage before Jake found them. He kissed Belinda, then ordered some of everything for them before they could protest.

“Stuffed artichokes are particularly good,” Jake said, flopping down beside Belinda. “And the crab came out of some bayou south of here just this morning.”

“Where’s Nicky?” Phillip asked. He called her by her first name as often as he called her anything else. Neither of them knew exactly how it had happened. It had always been that way.

“She doesn’t like to come out before she sings. Too many requests. But I’ll tell her you’re here.”

“Might as well let us surprise her.”

“She’ll be glad you’re here. Last night she’s headlining for a while. We’ve got a group from Savannah coming in tomorrow. She’s ready for a break before Mardi Gras. Place will really be hopping then.”

Nicky’s upcoming break made it a perfect time to tell her that Aurore Gerritsen was her mother, of course. She would have some time to assimilate it, to decide what, if anything, to do about seeing Mrs. Gerritsen. But Phillip couldn’t imagine passing on that bit of news to her. Not until he knew more.

He was going to have to go back and hear the rest.

“Phillip?”

He looked at Belinda and saw that Jake was gone.

“What’s going on? You were staring off into space, and I
know it’s not that woman over there in the purple dress that’s got your attention.”

“How do you know?”

Her laugh was deep and rich, café brûlot on a steamy honeysuckle night. “Because you’re with me.” She rested her hand on his. “How about some company to get your mind off your troubles?”

“You’re sitting there, aren’t you?”

“Some friends of mine just walked in, and we’ve got room. We can share some of that food Jake ordered.” At his nod, she stood up and caught the attention of two couples waiting near the doorway that led into the bar. Phillip stood when they reached the table. None of them were familiar, and it occurred to him how little he knew about Belinda’s life when he was away from her.