Iron Lace (40 page)

“R
afe was thinking of you when he died,” Phillip told Aurore.

She was noticeably more frail than when he had last seen her. She had remained perfectly still as he briefly related the story of Rafe’s last hours to her. Her eyes were fixed on some point so distant that Phillip knew that it couldn’t be inside the room.

“He told Nicky that she was the best of you both. And she is,” he added.

“And she went to Paris from there.” It wasn’t really a question. Phillip guessed that Aurore knew the next part of the story in detail. But he outlined it anyway.

“After that night, Clarence Valentine hid her with friends for nearly a month, then he got her out of the country. He’d been offered a job at a club in Paris. Jazz was hot there, and so were American Negroes. He claimed Nicky was his granddaughter, and since most colored people were still born at home back then and didn’t have birth certificates, it wasn’t hard to get the authorities to believe him. Nicky says that
Clarence was convinced her life was in danger because she had seen the men who killed her father. She took his name and lived the lie.”

“Clarence must have been a good man.”

“Nicky loved him like a grandfather.”

Aurore turned to him. Her eyes glistened. “I thought your mother was dead, Phillip. It was so many years later when I discovered that she was still alive. I believed she was killed in the fire that was started that night.”

“Had you been following her life in Chicago? Did you have someone watching her? Is that how you knew about the fire?”

“In a way.” She took his hand. He didn’t resist, but he was sharply aware of the contrasts. “My attorney located Rafe for me. You see, I had decided to join him there.”

He stared at her.

“Yes.” She nodded. “I had thought that when Rafe took Nicolette and left New Orleans, everything would end between us. But I was still connected to them. I woke every morning and thought only of what I’d lost. My life with Henry was a blasphemy. I tried to go on with it, but I couldn’t, not while I knew there was something more waiting for me if I just had the courage to reach for it. So I wrote Rafe and asked him if he would have me. I was going to take Hugh and disappear, leave everything except my son behind. Gulf Coast. My marriage and the church. Everything. And once I made it safely to Chicago, I wanted Rafe to take us to France. We both spoke French fluently. I thought we could start over there as a family, that if we didn’t find acceptance, we might find tolerance. I wrote him, and I begged him shamelessly to let me come. Then I waited.”

“Did you ever receive an answer?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know if he never received my letter, or if he just couldn’t bring himself to tell me no. Not knowing has haunted me all my life. Spencer came to me two weeks after I mailed the letter, and he told me that Rafe had died in the riot. Spencer investigated thoroughly and discovered that your mother was never seen again after the fire that devastated the entire city block. There were bodies in the ruins that couldn’t be identified….”

So many years later, and the tears were still in her voice.

Phillip sat holding Aurore’s hand tightly. He wanted to comfort her, this woman who had made so many terrible mistakes. This woman. His grandmother.

“Wait…” He gripped her hand a little harder. “Mrs. Gerritsen…”

“You’ll never find it in your heart to call me Aurore, will you?”

“My grandfather—” the title came easily to his lips now “—got your letter. I’m sure of it. And he was making plans to have you join him.”

“What do you mean?”

Phillip thought carefully about Nicky’s story. Her last encounter with her father had been so clear to her. She had held on to it the way that Rafe himself had held on to his memory of Marcelite and Angelle and the way they had died. And when Nicky had told him about the day of Rafe’s death, she had told the story in detail.

“The night that my grandfather died, he told my mother that they were leaving Chicago for good, for a place where they could finally be happy. Then he asked her if she would trust him to do what was best for her. But he asked her in French. She told me that. It stood out for her, and she remem
bered it all those years, because after they left New Orleans they had only spoken English at home. I think my grandfather was preparing her for the trip to France. With you.”

Her hand trembled. She looked away.

“And when he died, he told my mother that she was the best of both of you. He was thinking of you then, and what the two of you had created together.”

They sat in silence. Finally, much later, she sighed; it was a long, broken sound. “I’ve had a long life.”

“Yes, you have.”

“Will you stay here in the city for a while longer, Phillip? Will you hear about the rest of it?”

“You haven’t told me everything you want me to know?”

She turned to look at him. Her pale blue eyes glistened, but there were no tears on her cheeks. “I would like you to know everything. I would like to leave you that much.”

“I’ll be staying in the city.”

She inclined her head. “Will you?”

“I’m getting married. By late summer I’ll be a father.”

She squeezed his hand. “We made a bargain, you and I. Will you honor it?”

He smiled. “You’re some old lady, you know that?”

She smiled, too, and for a moment, he saw the young woman his grandfather had fallen in love with. “Rafe would have been proud of you,” she whispered.

He leaned over and kissed her cheek. It was cool and soft against his lips. “I hope so, Aurore.”

T
his book never would have been completed without the help of some special people. My thanks to the staffs of the New Orleans Public Library, Tulane University Library, the University of New Orleans Library and the Cuyahoga County Library in Bay Village, Ohio. Also thanks go to the staff of the New Orleans Collection, who enjoy researching even the most esoteric questions about their beautiful city.

Many thanks to two New Orleanians, the reverends Melanie Morel and Albert D’Orlando, who over a period of years shared with me their riveting personal stories about race relations and the civil-rights movement in Louisiana.

I read so many wonderful books on New Orleans and south Louisiana that it’s difficult to choose only a few to acknowledge here. The works of Lafcadio Hearn, Harnett Kane and Kate Chopin fueled my imagination. Works about the hurricane of 1893 by Dale Rogers and Loulan Pitre helped me ground my imagination in history, as did
Storyville
by Al Rose and
Satchmo
by Louis Armstrong.
Righteous Lives
by Kim
Rogers gave me a greater understanding of those pivotal years when courageous African-Americans refused to sit at the back of the bus for even one more day.

Thanks to my agent Maureen Moran, who believed in this book from the beginning. Thanks to Damaris Rowland and Amy Moore, whose enthusiasm helped renew my own at different points on this journey. Thanks to my editor Leslie Wainger and Dianne Moggy for their hard work and skillful guidance.

Personal thanks go to Karen Stone and Erica Spindler for their encouragement when this book was just a flicker in my imagination. And to Alison Hart, Jasmine Cresswell and Jan Powell, who helped keep me on track as I struggled to bring that flicker to life. Many thanks to Karen Harper for her enthusiasm and support.

Most of all, thanks to my children, Shane, Jessie, Galen and Brendan, who did without mothering every now and then during the writing of this book. And most particularly to my husband, Michael, whose enthusiasm for New Orleans rivals my own, and whose enthusiasm for me never flags, even through the most difficult of times.