Tansy

by Gretchen Craig

  “How did you know?”

  “Rosa sent word.”

  She nodded and tore the grape in two. It had meant everything to have him here, to help her bear the fear and the waiting. To know he didn’t hate her totally and completely after all.

  “Thank you. For being here.”

  “I love him.”

  “Yes. I know you do.” She hesitated. “He’s missed you.”

  A blade-sharp flicker lit his eyes. A muscle jumped in his jaw. So he was angry still. She could imagine what ran through his head just then. So Alain had missed him? Whose fault was that?

  How she wanted to crawl into his arms. He loved Alain. He loved her. If he would only come back, they could see each other at the Academy.

  Christophe had made it clear that was not enough for him. And for herself? Could she be satisfied to seen him at school, only as colleagues, never as friends? Never another stroll on the levee with Alain between them, never another chance meeting in the park? Could she be satisfied with that? She shook her head. She couldn’t lie to herself anymore. She couldn’t see Christophe, yearn for him, and be true to Valere. And she had to be true to Valere, didn’t she? She had signed a contract. She had made a commitment. He took care of her and Alain. He would give Alain a future.

  “Are we still friends, Christophe?” Without moving her arm, she stretched her fingers as if she could reach him across the table.

  For an instant, his gaze softened. Then that same muscle in his jaw bunched into a knot.

  “Where is Alain’s father?”

  She looked at the shredded grape on her plate and shook her head, her throat too tight to speak.

  Christophe pushed his chair back. “Eat that. Tell Alain I’ll see him this afternoon.”

  ~ ~ ~

  Christophe picked up his hat and let himself into the street. With every step he took, his anger grew hotter. Friends? She wanted friendship, after what they’d meant to each other the night she’d come to his bed? Blind stupid fool. She didn’t know who the hell she was. She thought she could be a child forever, cocooned in a paper contract. How could a woman of imagination and wit be so unable to see beyond the ink on a piece of paper?

  The August sun beat down, defeating the breeze, baking the pavement. Leaves on the trees and vines hung still and limp. His cravat nearly choking him in the heat, he strode past his own cottage, let to tenants now, to Musette’s house.

  She registered surprise and then pleasure as she let him in. She hugged him and stepped back to look at his pale face and heavy eyelids. “You’re exhausted. What’s happened?”

  She made coffee and he told her about Alain. “This is the woman from Lake Maurepas — her son?”

  Christophe nodded and twisted his coffee cup in its saucer.

  “Is he yours?”

  “No.” He stood up. “Can you let me sleep here today?”

  “Of course. I have two fittings this afternoon, but we won’t make much noise. You can rest.”

  In Musette’s shuttered bedroom, Christophe undressed, climbed into the familiar bed, and lay with his forearm over his eyes. He tried to let the tension ease out of his body, but frustration still roiled in him. Tansy wanted to be friends? Damnation. If all he wanted was friendship, by God, he and Musette could have married long ago. Musette had loved her husband deeply; she knew what marriage could be. She didn’t pretend what she had with Christophe was only friendship. It was only friendship.

  Christophe fisted his hands in the sheets. Musette had her memories, her business, her independence. Tansy pretended to have a life with the man who paid the bills. Tansy hadn’t as much courage as Musette had in her little finger.

  He couldn’t sleep, not now. He got up and tried to force Tansy from his mind. He leaned into the window overlooking the courtyard and pressed his forehead against the glass pane. Alain had looked nearly gone when he’d arrived yesterday. Wasted. His skin dry, thin, and pale, his eyes sunken. Alain hadn’t even recognized him for several moments and when he did, he’d managed a little half-smile before he closed his eyes again. Fear had knifed through him. He’d wanted to crush Alain’s small body to his and hold on to him so he couldn’t slip away.

  Christophe rubbed at his face and returned to the bed. He had to sleep or he’d never make it back to say good bye.

  ~ ~ ~

  As weary and hollowed out as she felt, Martine imagined Tansy felt much worse for the strain of the last days. “Go. Take a bath. Sleep. I’ll sit with Alain.”

  Martine changed Alain’s sheets and his clothes, then lay down beside him. When the front door opened, she got up.

  “Bonjour, Martine,” Valere said as he let himself in. His hair was freshly barbered, his shave immaculate. He seemed quite jovial, a smile on his simple face. No shadows of fear around his eyes.

  Martine crossed her arms. Valere half offered her his hat, but she merely glanced at it.

  You loathsome worm, she thought. He squirmed under her gaze. She smiled the kind of smile she imagined on a nasty boy’s face as he pulled the wings off a fly.

  “Hot day,” he said, and set his hat on the table all by himself. Maybe she should congratulate him.

  “But then it’s August,” he added. “Of course it’s hot.”

  She said nothing while he babbled on. “I’m usually on the Cane this time of year. Much more pleasant than New Orleans. I’m not sure why it’s so deucedly much hotter here.”

  “Your son nearly died last night.”

  His eyes widened. “Alain?”

  “Yes, Alain,” she snapped. “You knew he was sick. You knew he had the measles. Yet you did not come by to see how he was.”

  She saw his Adam’s apple shift under the linen of his cravat. “He’s better now?”

  “Do you have any idea how frightened Tansy has been? Did it never occur to you that she might need you?”

  The idiot looked at her blankly. Clearly the thought of being needed was new to him.

  “You know Frederick DuMaine.” It was not a question. “He has been here, hours on end. He fetched the doctor. He brought in groceries. He took care of us.”

  Valere flushed deeply. “No one told —”

  “Tansy is sleeping. They both are. You can’t see them.”

  She watched the blood flooding his face and neck. Probably no one in his life had ever spoken to him with such disrespect. Unless it was his wife and sister-in-law, she thought with some satisfaction. She hoped that, mixed with the indignation, shame pumped through his veins. She hoped it burned like acid.

  She picked up his hat and handed it to him. He managed to scrape some dignity and fled from the house. Tansy would be better off if the fool never came back, not that Tansy had figured that out yet.

  Martine peeked in on Alain. Already his color was better. His breathing was almost easy. She closed the door and made the sign of the cross over her breast, saying a short prayer of thanksgiving.

  She was tired, and it would be just as well she weren’t here when Christophe returned. He would be leaving again, she thought, and it would be painful for all of them. As soon as Tansy got up, she’d go home and to bed.

  ~ ~ ~

  Christophe knocked on Tansy’s door, his heart knocking against his ribs. For a moment, they stood in her doorway plumbing the depths in each other’s eyes. In her ashen complexion and sunken eyes he saw the toll fatigue and fear had extracted from her. Behind that, he sensed the chasm that still gaped between them. Even his being here for Alain did not seem bridge enough between what he wanted and what Tansy thought she had to have.

  She let him in. “Maman brought a basket of food. Are you hungry?”

  He shook his head. “How is he?”

  Her smile, so full of relief and hope, pierced him. He ached to touch her, but he willed his hands to remain at his sides. If she had thrown herself into his arms when she answered the door, he’d never have been able to leave her, and he’d have been lost. Better this way, that he make his own life, that he not w
aste his years yearning for another man’s woman.

  “He’s much better. He’s just eaten a little broth and half a peach.”

  “I’ll see him then. To tell him goodbye.”

  He saw the joy in her eyes fade out. Saw the hurt darken them. His gaze flickered over the mahogany humidor she kept for Valcourt. He hardened himself against her. If she were unhappy, it was entirely her own choices that made her so.

  He stepped into Alain’s room. Sleepy-eyed, he lay peacefully in his bed. The spots swelling his tender ears were shrinking and drying. The puffiness under his eyes looked better. Christophe sat on the side of the bed and ran his fingers through Alain’s freshly washed hair.

  “You’ve had quite a time of it, haven’t you?”

  Alain nodded, his face very grave. “I won’t die now, will I?”

  Christophe kissed his forehead. “No. You won’t die. In a few days, you’ll be chasing Martine’s kitten. You’ll be knocking over castle walls and tearing through the house and driving your maman to distraction.”

  Christophe swallowed at the brightening in Alain’s eyes, at the smile on his lips.

  “I make her crazy. She likes it though.”

  “I know she does. Alain, are you awake enough to talk to me?”

  He nodded that he was.

  “Between here and Baton Rouge, the river wiggles and twists so that we’re about a hundred miles apart, you and I. It’s a long way, but I want you to remember, no matter how many miles separate us, I still belong to you.”

  “Do I belong to you, too?”

  Christophe hesitated. Of course Alain did not belong to him. Never had, never would. He had a father. But if Alain owned a piece of his heart, then he surely owned a piece of Alain’s, too. He flattened Alain’s palm against his starched shirt. “Yes. You belong to me in here.”

  He kissed the small hand. “I don’t want you to be sad that I’m leaving, Alain. We’ll always be friends. I will see you again. And as soon as you’re old enough, you and I will write letters to each other. All the time. As many as you like.”

  “But you’ll come back?”

  “Can you name the months? How long is it till Christmas?

  Alain held up his fingers and counted off the months.

  “That’s right. I’ll come see you at Christmas.” He lifted Alain and hugged him gently. When he lay him down again, he said, “You have a job to do now. You have to eat and rest and get well so that when I come back we can go the park and to the levee, and maybe we’ll go to a horse race.”

  “I’ve always wanted, my whole life, to see a horse race.”

  “Then we’ll go. You sleep now. I’m going to leave, but remember, we belong to each other.”

  Christophe closed the bedroom door behind him. Tansy stood in the center of the parlor, her hands at her sides, her eyes depthless. He had not seen Valcourt here in the twenty-four hours since he’d arrived. No one had mentioned him. Did she still think he was a father to Alain? Did she still think she owed him her loyalty? Her life?

  He wanted to fold her into his arms, to hug her close. He wanted to kiss the shadows away. He wanted to love her. That had not changed. But she did not ask him to stay. That had not changed either.

  “It meant everything to me that you were here. Even when Alain was sickest, I think he knew you were here, and that he had to get well for you. Thank you, Christophe.”

  He blinked at the sheen blurring his vision. For the thousandth time, he let an if only slip into his mind. No. If she were not his, he didn’t want to see her.

  “He’ll be all right now. You don’t have to be afraid anymore.”

  There seemed to be nothing more to say. With a little shake of the head, Christophe picked up his bag, found his hat, and left her once again.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  The day after Christophe left, Tansy greeted Valere without a smile, without a welcoming kiss. She put his bouquet of ox-eye daisies and cornflowers in a vase and set them on the parlor table. Then she sat with her hands in her lap and said something about the weather.

  She would not go to bed with him, the memory of Christophe in this house too vivid, too raw.

  She looked at Valere dispassionately. He sat with his knees separated, his waistcoat straining against his belly, a suggestion of softness along his jaw line. The air of happy contentment that had characterized him, that she had found attractive and comfortable, had dissipated. Signs of stress around his eyes and an air of discomfort indicated he had lost his hold on the predictable, biddable life he’d once led. Marriage had not enriched his life.

  “How is Alain today?”

  “He’s improving.”

  Valere nodded his head toward Alain’s door. “I could look in on him.”

  “That’s not necessary. He’s sleeping.”

  He attempted a laugh, though it came out wrong. “Martine tell you she laid into me?”

  “Yes, she mentioned it.”

  “Here’s the thing, Tansy. No one told me Alain was so very ill. In fact, I am quite cross with you that you did not send for me.”

  Cross with her? If he had been in a towering rage to have been excluded from this dreadful crisis, she would have respected that. But cross with her? She tilted her head to study him. Had he convinced himself he was an injured party? Or was he merely embarrassed?

  Perhaps she should be angry with him, but she was not. What she felt for him at this moment was simply pity. He didn’t love Alain, a child of sunshine and laughter who would have adored him if Valere had involved himself at all. Did he love anyone? He cared for her, she thought, but not enough to have been with her through these last hellish days. Frederick, a man with only a tenuous connection to her and Alain, had been a better friend.

  Maybe she would rediscover a measure of affection for him in time. For now, just below the pity, she felt … indifferent.

  “Would you like a cup of coffee?”

  He licked his lips, clearly uncomfortable. Poor Valere. This house had always been a happy, welcoming place for him, and recently had become a refuge from the troubles at his home.

  He sat forward and rubbed his hands across the fabric stretched over his knees. “Well. I suppose you’re too tired to make coffee today.” He looked at her hopefully. He wanted her to exclaim and say of course she wanted to make him a pot of coffee. She lived to make him coffee, to soothe his woes, to satisfy his lust. In fact, that was exactly what she had lived for.

  “Perhaps another day,” she said.

  At the door he turned back to her. “I’ll come tomorrow, then, shall I? To see how Alain does?”

  “If you wish.”

  She closed the door behind him and returned to sit with Alain while he slept.

  ~ ~ ~

  In the following days, Tansy felt as if she lived in a large multi-storied house, drifting from floor to floor. On top the windows were open to sunshine and fresh air and here she rejoiced in her son’s recovery. No more fears hid in the shadows as Alain slept less, ate more, and began to be restless in his still-weakened body. He was improving with every day.

  On the middle floor Tansy entertained Valere, kept house, and shopped at the market, going through her daily tasks as if this normalcy ensured a good life. Busy with mundane tasks, she did not have to think or to feel.

  In the lowest level of this house, a low-lying miasma curled from dark corners where she hid her disappointed hopes. When she could bear to look into those shadows, she saw herself as Christophe must see her. Weak and aimless, only half the woman his seamstress had made herself into.

  Dutiful. That’s what she was. Maman said smile, she smiled. Maman said sign on the black line, she signed. Valere said be in this house waiting, and she waited. She’d given up school, given up those two hours of being someone, of finding more inside herself than Maman or Valere had any use for. But when Christophe had asked more of her, she’d said no. Her own heart and body cried out for Christophe, and she’d still said no. She’d done it for
honor and for Alain. Hadn’t she?

  Avoiding further introspection, avoiding pain, Tansy cleaned every nook and corner of the house. Re-ordering her drawers, she found her burgundy apron emblazoned with RLAB for Rosa LeFevre’s Academy for Boys. She pressed it to her face, imagining she could still smell the scent of wax and chalk and dozens of sweaty little boys. She closed her eyes for one more inhalation, then resolutely put the apron away, under the linen handkerchiefs.

  She rearranged her wardrobe, every hanger precisely four inches from the next, every shoe aligned, every shawl carefully draped. Then she sat and looked at her perfect house. All these tiny victories over chaos and disorder, they did nothing against measles or loneliness or this nagging feeling of worthlessness. Who else kept her shoes lined up like soldiers on parade? Did Christophe’s woman fight the uncertainties of life with tidiness?

  She’d invested in carefully folded linen and precisely stacked books the same way she’d invested in Valere, as shields against life. He protected her and Alain against hunger and want, of course, but somehow, she’d given him the power to control the future. Carriage accidents, exploding steam ships, yellow fever, measles — as if Valere had become God and could prevent pain and fear in this life.

  She could hear Alain playing in the next room. “Here, kitty, here kitty.” He’d begged Martine to let Jezebel visit for the morning. Tansy moved to see if Alain remembered to be gentle with her when a furious gray blur tore into the room, Alain chasing with a piercing shriek. Jezebel skidded under the bed. Alain fell to his belly to crawl after her. The cat scooted out the other side and leapt for safety in the wardrobe, scattering Tansy’s shoes, knocking a dress from its hanger, then raced out of the room. Alain, breathless with excitement, scrambled after her.

  In under ten seconds, Alain and Jezebel had obliterated her pitiful, careful attempts to control her world. A slow smile tickled her mouth as she looked at a rose satin shoe tossed on top of her black kid boots. Her smile growing, she reached for the wardrobe door, and in a leap of faith that catastrophe would not ensue from jumbled shoes and skewed hangers, she slowly closed it.