Ruined

by Paula Morris

  "Really?" Rebecca didn't know that she would want to come here more than she absolutely had to.

  "Not very often. But this year I'm coming to the party."

  "You are?"

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  "Mmmm," murmured Lisette, staring up at the house. "It's time."

  Rebecca didn't know what that meant. Lisette was pulling away from her now, dropping Rebecca's hand. She started walking off alone toward the cemetery: Rebecca was standing-- suddenly visible again, she realized -- outside the Bowmans' wrought-iron gates.

  "I'm coming to the party, too!" Rebecca called after her, not caring that any neighbors looking out their windows at that moment would see her talking to no one in particular. Lisette glanced back at her, smiling.

  "Look for me at ten o'clock," Lisette said. She looked exhausted, spent with the walk and with the story she'd told.

  Rebecca nodded, watching Lisette amble away. Now she understood why Lisette haunted the Bowman house. She understood why for the past one hundred fifty years she'd drifted around in the long shadow of its quiet, oak-shaded galleries. It was the place she'd died, murdered at the age of sixteen -- and it was her father's house. Villieux may have been her mother's last name, but Lisette was a Bowman.

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  ***

  CHAPTER TWENTY

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  "It took some planning, and some lies, and the enthusiastic cooperation of Aurelia and her coconspirator, Claire, but Rebecca was going to the Bowmans' party whether Aunt Claudia -- or anyone else -- liked it or not.

  A week had passed since the walk with Lisette, and all Rebecca had been able to think about was getting inside the Bowmans' house, and seeing the place where her friend had been murdered. She and Anton had communicated by text only: Rebecca didn't want anyone to see them together. She had to take this opportunity to at least see the staircase at the Bowmans'. Helena was hardly going to invite her around for dinner.

  The afternoon of the party, her aunt arrived home from her day in the Quarter, complaining about patchy business and out-of-tune buskers. Rebecca made her some tea and mentioned, in an oh-so-casual way, that she was going to the movies that night with Aurelia and Claire.

  "You know, that Reese Witherspoon thing," she said,

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  watching her aunt count out the day's meager takings onto the stained Formica table. "It's on at the Prytania."

  "I thought Aurelia was just having a sleepover at Claire's," Aunt Claudia said, smoothing out crumpled notes and shuffling them as though they were a floppy deck of cards.

  "Oh, she is! But first we'll go to the movies together ... and I may go back with them for a while. To hang out."

  This sounded so lame and implausible that Rebecca had to turn toward the window and pretend to be intent on rinsing old tea leaves out of the strainer. As far as her aunt was concerned, Rebecca spent all her spare time doing homework in a café or reading books in her room. The idea of her hanging around with that high-energy twelve-year-old twosome, Aurelia and Claire, both as fizzy as a whole bottle of Alka-Seltzer ... well, it wasn't a very compelling lie. But Aunt Claudia seemed just distracted enough to buy it.

  "Do you want me to drive you there, baby?" she asked.

  "Yes, please," said Rebecca. This was all part of the plan, so her aunt wouldn't suspect anything. And anyway, as Rebecca had realized, her aunt thought the party had already taken place. Inadvertently, she'd given Aunt Claudia the wrong date -- December fifth, which was the day before. "Claire's mother is going to pick us up afterward and take us to her house. I'll just walk home from there. I won't be home late -- ten-thirty or so, I guess."

  "I'd rather Claire's father walk you home," her aunt said. "Just to be safe."

  "I'm sure he won't mind," Rebecca told her. Of course, Claire's parents knew nothing about her coming over to

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  their house, because she wasn't going to their house. Claire and Aurelia had been sworn to secrecy on the lives of the entire cast of Gossip Girl.

  That night, after Aunt Claudia let them out of the car outside the Prytania -- an old redbrick movie theater that seemed completely out of place on its residential street -- Rebecca shepherded her giggling charges up the stairs, bought tickets from the guy in a black SAVE NOLA T-shirt sitting behind the arched window, and waved good-bye to her aunt. Inside, she bought the girls tubs of popcorn and bottles of water -- at the same inflated price they commanded in New York, she noticed -- and left Aurelia and Claire to find seats in the cavernous, shabby old theater.

  In a tiny stall in the women's bathroom, Rebecca opened her shoulder bag and removed its contents: her one decent dress, which was black, strapless, and carefully folded; a pair of strappy black sandals with kitten heels; some dangling silver earrings bought at one of the little boutiques in the Quarter; and a small makeup bag crammed with mascara, lip gloss, and eyeliner. She had fifteen minutes -- fifteen minutes to tug off her jeans and American Eagle checked shirt (while trying not to crack her elbows on the walls of the toilet stall), to wriggle into her dress and make up her face, and to meet Anton in the street outside. And she made it, in perfect time.

  "You look great," he said, holding open the passenger door of a silver Audi. Anton had turned seventeen a month ago, so he could drive without a licensed older driver in the car -- not that his parents had ever been sticklers about that kind of thing, from what Rebecca could gather. They'd left him alone this weekend altogether, with only the housekeeper

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  for company: His father was on a business trip in Chicago, and his mother had gone along to do some Christmas shopping.

  "You don't look bad yourself." Rebecca slid onto the leather front seat, blushing because it sounded more flirtatious than she'd intended, and hoping it was too dark for Anton to notice her red cheeks. He did look good, very mature, in Ralph Lauren pants and a button-down shirt, his pale blue tie flecked with a tiny fleur-de-lis design; a navy blazer lay across the backseat. But he also looked as embarrassed and awkward as she felt.

  "It seems like ages since we, you know ... saw each other," he said, driving slowly along Prytania, back toward the Garden District. "I thought maybe you'd changed your mind about ... you know ... hmmm."

  His voice trailed off into a choked sort of cough.

  "Oh, no!" Rebecca said quickly. "I mean, I really want to go."

  That sounded way too eager, she thought. She didn't want Anton to think she was some giggling Pleb, desperate for a St. Simeon's boyfriend.

  "What I mean is, I really want to, you know, go to the party. To see the house and everything. I didn't mean -- ah, anything else."

  "Oh," he said, frowning a little and drumming his fingers on the steering wheel. "OK."

  Now she was worried she'd offended him. It was so much easier to talk when they were walking down St. Charles, Rebecca thought. Sitting here together in this confined space was way too hard. It felt like ... well, a real date.

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  People were going to see them in public together for the first time, if you didn't count that day at the café. A wave of anxiety washed over her.

  "Well, this is it," Anton said at last, parking on a quiet block of Fourth Street, in a pool of yellow cast by the antique streetlight.

  A lot of people were parking nearby, on that block and the next, hurrying toward the Bowmans' mansion on Prytania. Most of them were older, Rebecca noted as Anton locked her bulging shoulder bag in the Audi's trunk: The women wore long dresses and carried pashmina wraps; the men wore elegant jackets. She wished she had some kind of wrap or jacket -- the night was clear and getting colder. Rebecca didn't recognize the younger people ahead of them on the sidewalk, but that might have been because she was used to seeing everyone in a school uniform.

  Beyond its tall wrought-iron gate, the Bowman house quivered with light: Miniature storm lanterns, each sporting a tiny, flickering candle, lined the pathway and dangled the full length of the front porch. Very little progress seemed to have been made
on the dug-up side yard, and lumber was still stacked at the foot of the broad side gallery, draped with a giant canvas. But the construction didn't detract from the imposing grandeur of the house, and once she was inside the double doors -- opened by the dignified elderly black man Rebecca had seen on her first day of school -- she soon forgot about the less-than-perfect garden. There was so much else to take in: the spacious central hallway with its black-and-white tiled floor; the towering Christmas tree, every decoration glinting silver or pristine white; and,

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  sweeping up to the next floor, the long dark swirl of the staircase.

  Rebecca stood at its foot, one hand caressing the ornate post, ignoring the rush of people around her. This was it: the spot where Lisette had been killed, her head smashed open on the blunt edge of one of these steps. Rebecca was transfixed. The house looked so elegant, as though nothing bad could ever happen there. How many of its guests knew about this terrible guilty secret?

  Anton's hand was on her arm, drawing her toward the doors of the double parlor: Those were the doors where Lisette had hunched, listening! Rebecca reluctantly followed him into the long, high-ceilinged room -- two rooms, really, the edges of their tall dividing pocket doors just visible. The sofas and some of the art on the walls were modern, but Rebecca doubted that much had changed in these rooms in the last century and a half. The looming windows with their open shutters, the ceiling rosettes from which sparkling chandeliers hung, the ornate carved fireplaces, the wide, creaky floorboards -- they were all relics of the house Lisette must have known.

  Rebecca had been to adult parties before in New York -- her father insisted on dragging her to them, so she could learn, he said, how to be "civilized." But rooms were smaller in New York; everyone they knew lived in an apartment. In the Bowmans' house, everything was larger than life. Rebecca wondered how they even got a Christmas tree so large into their foyer.

  A waiter approached, and Anton picked up two glasses of champagne. Rebecca took a sip of hers, wincing when the

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  bubbles rushed up her nose, and followed him through the crowd and its miasma of perfume. He led her through the front rooms and through another set of double doors, into an even bigger, grander space. Silk curtains puddled on the floor at each window; the only furnishings were a few dark, red-cushioned chairs, and some indoor palms splayed against the windows.

  A makeshift bar was set up in one bend of the curving room, waiters in white shirts and black pants pouring out glasses of champagne and juice. In another bend, a jazz trio -- also dressed in black and white -- played in front of the marble fireplace, though nobody seemed to be listening to them. Everyone was talking and laughing and shouting and drinking. The only black people at the party, as far as Rebecca could see, were the men serving drinks and the musicians. It was just like one of those quadroon balls, Rebecca thought: She'd been doing some more reading in the library at lunchtimes. The only black men allowed to attend those were the musicians. Most of the women at the balls looked white -- they were quadroons, which meant a quarter black, or octoroons, which meant an eighth.

  These fractions mattered back in those days, when mixed-race marriages were strictly forbidden. Perhaps here, tonight, there were women who wouldn't have been allowed to marry their husbands. Or perhaps that was why everyone was so obsessed with names, and bloodlines, and keeping marriages within a select group of families. They didn't want any skeletons in the closet -- though at least, Rebecca thought, laughing midsip and accidentally inhaling a glug of champagne, all skeletons were white.

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  Anton led her around, whispering to her about various older guests who were friends of his parents, and in no hurry, apparently, to go off in search of his friends. She could see several girls she recognized from Temple Mead, all from the grade above hers. Julie Casworth Young was wearing a jade-green taffeta cocktail dress, her fair hair tightly wound in a chignon. When she spotted Rebecca, she looked bemused, then annoyed, darting off to whisper in Marianne Sutton's ear. Marianne frowned and looked a little confused for a moment. But soon, Rebecca noticed, Marianne had started acting up; she stood with a gaggle of her friends, shrieking with laughter, or was busy draping herself over a boy Anton identified as Paul Robichon. Paul had graduated from St. Simeon's that spring and had just arrived back from his freshman semester at Duke.

  Maybe Marianne was trying to make Anton jealous, Rebecca thought, but it didn't seem to be working. He seemed more affected by the way Toby Sutton and the other guys from his year at school were keeping their distance. It was pretty clear they were avoiding him. In the dining room, where platters of crab cakes, deep-fried oysters, stuffed figs, garlic shrimp, and delicious cornbread muffins were crowded onto a dining table that seated twelve, Anton and Rebecca lingered for a while, standing by the windows to eat. But nobody came over to talk to them. They might have been as invisible as Lisette.

  Helena flitted in and out of every room, wearing a floaty short dress of silver and white. She looked like one of the Christmas decorations, Rebecca thought, surreptitiously licking garlic butter off her fingers and picking her champagne

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  flute off the windowsill. When Helena brushed past them without even a glance in Anton's direction, Rebecca realized the gang was all intent on snubbing him. This was her fault, she knew. By taking her as his date to the party, Anton was a social pariah.

  Rebecca didn't care on her own account, but she felt awful for Anton. He was looking more and more preoccupied, more uncomfortable, as the evening went on. She squinted over at the clock on the mantel, trying to check the time, but the guests swarming the buffet table kept getting in the way.

  "We can go any time you like," Anton told her; he must have seen her looking at the clock. "I know you have to get home and all."

  He sounded depressed, and Rebecca couldn't blame him. She was here tonight to see the house, and to see Lisette, not to hang out with friends, but for Anton, this was one of the biggest events in his annual social calendar. He knew practically everyone here -- in fact, most of their conversation tonight had involved her asking about people on some sofa or standing in a cluster and Anton telling her their life stories. Lots of the adults had come over to chat with him and to smile politely when he introduced her as "Rebecca Brown, who's visiting from New York." It sounded so glamorous and sophisticated, as though she'd just flown in for the party.

  "Oh, really?" one lady with a plastic surgery--tight face asked her. "Aren't you just precious? Where are you staying while you're here?"

  "With my aunt," Rebecca told her. "On Sixth Street. Her name is Claudia Vernier."

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  "Oh!" The lady's face would have registered surprise, Rebecca thought, if it were possible, but her face was too fixed in place for her expression to change. Instead, all she could do was sound icy and take a step back. "Well, well."

  And that was the end of the conversation. Rebecca wasn't sure if the woman knew Aunt Claudia and thought she was a weirdo --very possible -- or if she'd never heard of such a person and knew, instinctively, that this meant Aunt Claudia had to be a social untouchable. Also, all this talk of her aunt being descended from a voodoo queen had made Rebecca wonder: Most of those olden-days voodoo queens were black women, French speakers who fled the turmoil in Haiti during the revolution there. Maybe Aunt Claudia was an octoroon.

  "We should stick around until ten or so," Rebecca told Anton. "I don't have to be home until ten-thirty."

  "How about we go sit out on the porch?" Anton asked her, handing his empty plate to a waiter. "If you get cold, I can give you my jacket."

  "Sure," Rebecca agreed. Poor Anton -- all he wanted to do was get away. Out on the porch, she'd still be able to see Lisette dropping in. And before they left, she could squeeze in a "powder room" break or two --just to get another good look at that staircase. At some point in the future, Anton would make up with all his snobby friends, she was sure, but Rebecca had a feeling she would never cro
ss the threshold of the Bowman house -- by invitation or by choice -- ever again.

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  ***

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  ***

  Outside, anton and rebecca sat close together on a wooden porch swing that faced the ballroom, its back to the broad side yard. They could still hear the band, which was playing some jaunty call-and-response number in French called "Eh, La-Bas," and hear the high-pitched talk and laughter from inside the house. Some guy in a pinstriped suit was dancing with Helena over by the closed French doors, spinning and dipping her out of time to the music. She was giggling theatrically and leaping about with more energy than anyone would expect from a girl who'd been too sick to come to school half the semester.

  It was nicer outside, away from the clamor. Tea lights sparkled along the curving gallery railings, brighter than the muted moonlight. Anton pulled off his jacket and draped it around Rebecca's bare shoulders, and the slight rock of the porch swing tilted them together.