Every moment, every now could not be perfect. She didn’t need perfect. She needed possibilities. She needed courage, not certainty.
~ ~ ~
The week before school was to start, Tansy left Alain curled up on the sofa with Maman. She had hardly left the house for three weeks and stretched her legs in a long stride. Rosa had called twice, bringing grapes for Alain, a book for her. Today she meant to return the visit.
Rosa’s apartment above the classrooms was light, airy, and cluttered. Books, papers and pens lay haphazardly on tables; three shoes peeked from under the sofa at odd angles. Yet which of them, Rosa with her disorder or Tansy with her books precisely aligned, controlled her own life? Certainly not Tansy. She had ceded control to Valere. She meant to change that.
When Tansy felt they’d had enough polite discourse, she drew a deep breath and put aside her coffee cup. “Rosa.”
Rosa smiled at her. “Yes, Tansy?”
“Rosa, I want to teach full time.”
Rosa set her cup down. “All day, every day?”
“I know you have a teacher for every classroom, that Mrs. Thatcher has taken Christophe’s class. But there’s the room at the end of the hall. It’s full of old desks and chairs and flags and dusty boxes. I could clean it out. I could have a class in there.”
Rosa steepled her fingers under her chin.
“You could expand the school. You could accept a class of younger boys, six and seven year olds. And the new students would offset my salary.”
“And what about your protector? He would allow you to be unavailable from eight o’clock until four?”
A dart of anxiety in her breast, Tansy sat quite still for a moment. She drew in a steadying breath. “I do not intend to ask him if I may. I intend to tell him that I will.”
Rosa rubbed the inner corners of her eyes. Tansy tensed. She had thought, she had hoped, that Rosa would immediately, enthusiastically accept her proposal.
“I’ve never had a class that young. I have no lessons prepared for that age group.”
“I will make lesson plans.”
She met Rosa’s level gaze. She could do this.
“The thing is, Tansy. If I open the school to a new class, it is essential that it continue through the term. It would be disastrous if after a few weeks, you had to abandon them because your protector insisted you must. Your life is not your own, is it? You have accepted a protector. You must answer to Monsieur Valcourt.”
Tansy got up and walked to the window. Two half-grown cats slept in the shade of a banana tree. She had denied Alain a kitten, knowing how badly he wanted one, simply because Valere might not want a cat in the house. “Are those kittens downstairs yours, Rosa? Are they part of Ophelia’s litter?”
“Yes.”
“Is it too late to take one home? May I have one for Alain?”
Rosa raised an eyebrow. “If you’re doing this for Christophe —”
Tansy closed her eyes tightly against the squeezing in her chest. She drew a slow, shallow breath until the pang eased. “I’ve lost him, Rosa. He isn’t coming back, not for me.”
The humid air of the room thinned, the clarity of the light intensified. She felt as if every moment of her life had led to this one inescapable, inevitable decision. “Rosa, I will not quit mid-term. If Valere will not accept this, I will put an end to our contract.”
Rosa’s brows rose nearly to her hairline. “You’ve thought this through? You’ve always been taken care of, first your mother, then your Valcourt. You’ve always had security and protection.”
Tansy shook her head. “I’ve clung to Valere, Rosa, as if he had God’s ear and no harm could come to Alain and me as long as he took care of us. I’m not quite such a fool now. There is no true security in life. Valere’s protection did not prevent Alain from nearly dying.”
“You will be alone in the world.”
“No more alone than you. No less secure than you.”
“But my children are grown. Your child will have no father.”
“He has a poor one now. I don’t think he will notice when he has none.”
Rosa got up and came back with a bottle of wine and two glasses. “This will require some thought. I’m not ready to say yes, or no.” She poured for them both and sat down again. “Explain to me why you would sacrifice Alain’s future prospects for … ” She waved her hand vaguely toward the school rooms below. “For this. You will make a living, but it will be a poor one compared to what Monsieur Valcourt gives you each month.”
Tansy took her time formulating an answer. Some of the thinking she had done about this had been in the back of her mind, as if it had hid from consciousness and then emerged into the light when she was ready for it.
“When Alain was so sick, Rosa, I didn’t care whether he would grow up to be a doctor, or a businessman, or have a big house and a carriage. I just wanted him to grow up.” She looked out the window as if finding new truth in the treetops and clouds. “Alain does not need wealth to have a good life, Rosa, to become a good man. What he needs is to discover what he can do for himself.”
“That is the way of strong men, yes.”
Tansy cleared her throat. “Denis came from a humble family, I believe. He worked hard and put himself through school here in New Orleans. He’s a scholar and a teacher. I’m sure his mother is proud of him.”
“He is her darling.”
“And look at Christophe. When his father died, he was just a boy, yet his mother made a life for herself and her son. She raised Christophe to make his own way, and look what he’s accomplished.”
She couldn’t sit still with her life opening up before her. She paced to the window and back. “I want Alain to have courage and grit, like Christophe. He won’t learn that from Valere, and he couldn’t learn it from me, not the way I handed my life over to someone else. But I can change, and not just for Alain, Rosa. I want to discover what I can do for myself, too. I want more, to do more, to be more.”
“Denis and Christophe, you understand they struggled to get themselves an education, to survive. Without your Valcourt, life for you and Alain will not be easy.”
“I’m tired of easy, Rosa. I’m tired of all of it.”
Tansy met Rosa’s shrewd eye as Rosa focused on her, taking her time, thinking. “All right. This is what I’m going to do.” She tore a piece of paper from a tablet and wrote a figure on it. She folded the paper into a tight square and handed it to Tansy.
“Go home. Make a budget, a careful budget, and decide what you absolutely must have to live. Then you may open that paper. That is what you will earn at the Academy. But only September through the first week of June. I believe you will find managing on that little amount of money would be a greater challenge than you imagine.”
Tansy strode home with chest lifted high. Whatever the number Rosa wrote on that slip of paper, Tansy meant to make this work. She would not cut Alain off from his father, not if Valere cooperated with her, but she and Alain, from now on they would direct their own lives.
~ ~ ~
Tansy told Maman that she had simply been visiting her friend Rosa. She did not share her plans. Maman would not approve.
When Valere came, she had not yet worked on the budget Rosa required. She still thought Valere might be persuaded; perhaps he cared about her enough to give her these hours of freedom during the day. Ah, no. The word “give,” again. Being given freedom — that’s the wrong avenue to what she wanted. She meant to seize those hours.
She hoped, then, that she could take what she wanted without hurting Valere or pushing him away. He was Alain’s father. He had to understand, though, that she needed more out of life. And if he couldn’t understand, the budget would not matter. She was going to do it anyway.
After they made love, she poured him a glass of wine and together they sat up in bed, leaning against the headboard. “Valere, I want to talk to you.”
He put one hand beneath his head, his bare arm pale in the candlelight.
He closed his eyes. “Talk away, my dear.”
“Valere, I have loved you, and you have been good to me. But I’m not the girl you took under your protection five years ago. You’re not the same young man. You have a wife. I have Alain. It’s time for us to make adjustments to our understanding.”
He opened his eyes and cast a wary glance at her. “What kind of adjustments?”
She swallowed hard. “I am going to teach at Rosa’s Academy for Boys. Every day. Eight till four.”
His jaw tightened. He shifted to face her. She held up her hand. “Let me finish, Valere. I will still be here for you in the evenings and every weekend. Alain will still be your son. And because I am making these changes, you will reduce my allowance accordingly.”
Valere set his glass on the table, sloshing the wine over the lip “You aren’t a teacher. You don’t know anything about teaching. Are you bored again? Is that what this is about?”
“Yes, Valere, I’m bored. I’m more than bored. I want to grow and learn and do something useful. I want a life.”
“You have a life. You’re already grown. You have a child. You have me.”
She shook her head, gazing into his eyes. He would never understand. “It’s not enough. It’s not, Valere.”
“You need another child. That’s what you need.” He reached his arm across the bed and touched her breast. “I’ll give you another baby. You’ll be content. Remember how happy you were when Alain was a baby?”
Another baby? She’d be trapped. She’d be stuck. She’d never be anything but Valere’s woman, the mother of his bastard children.
“No, Valere. I don’t want another baby. I want you to agree to this.”
He snorted. His mouth curled in disgust. He swung his legs off the bed and pulled on his clothes with such haste he misbuttoned his shirt. He didn’t even bother to tie his cravat.
“Valere?”
He left her without a backward glance.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Proudly wearing the apron embroidered with the bold letters RLAB, Tansy waded into the store room cluttered with boxes and chairs and tables. Inside the boxes were everything from tattered text books to brittle-paged student essays.
Alain amused himself with the old picture books, running his finger along the lines as he pretended to read to Ophelia, who’d been a lonely cat all summer with no little boys to pester her.
Tansy moved everything to the hallway, then raised a cloud of dust with her broom.
“I thought I heard sneezing,” Denis Fournier said.
“Denis! You’re here today?”
“Getting ready for the invasion of all the little princes next week. Would you like some help?”
“I’m going to need buckets and buckets of water to scrub this floor.”
“Done.”
They worked till noon and sat down together with their bagged lunches. Alain, still recuperative, lay down on the blanket Tansy had brought and quickly fell asleep.
“Christophe came,” Tansy said.
“Yes. Rosa told me. He has a special attachment to your boy. And to you.”
Tansy met his eyes. “Alain is not his son. That’s what you’re wondering?”
“Forgive me, my dear. It is none of my business. I only saw how sad you were in the spring when he went away.”
“Well. No more moping about for me.” She gestured at the disorder around them and smiled. “Too much to do.”
“I miss him, too,” Denis said.
Tansy let out a slow breath. “Yes. Well, he’s gone.” She stood up and squared her shoulders. “And I’m going to turn this store room into a class room.”
Later, she and Alain walked home hand in hand, both of them dusty and tired. She found her door unlocked and paused at the stoop. She had not seen Valere in more than a week. Had he relented? Or was there to be a renewal of the battle she had begun?
She found Valere half-asleep on the sofa, his legs stretched out, the wine decanter at his side.
“Hello, Papa,” Alain said.
Valere sat up and ran his hands over his sleepy eyes. “Hello, young man. Look at you. One would never know you were ill. Scared your mother, you did.”
Tansy thought Alain still looked like a child who’d come close to the end not so many days ago. His face was pale and the suggestion of those faded spots still remained. He’d lost weight, and hollows still shaded his cheeks.
“Yes, sir.” Alain picked up his half-grown kitten curled on a chair. “This is General Ney,” he told his father.
“General Ney? What a strange name for a cat.”
“He helped Napoleon beat the Prussians. That’s what Monsieur told me.”
Valere looked at Tansy with narrowed eyes.
“Frederick DuMaine,” Tansy said. “Martine’s protector.”
Valere nodded. He knew DuMaine. “Before Waterloo, then?” He looked at Tansy. “You see, I know my history.”
Of course he had heard of Waterloo. New Orleans had been inflamed ten years before with the news that Napoleon was truly finished this time. She had been twelve years old. Valere must have been almost a young man. He’d remember the bands playing dirges in the street, the sermonizing from the pulpit, the speeches condemning the British. Even though he apparently did not remember who had won that battle.
Valere rose from the sofa and sauntered over to Tansy. “Have you missed me?” He took her by the upper arms and kissed her with a hard persistence.
“Alain,” she said, stepping away, “let’s see if Martine is home. You can bring General Ney.”
When Tansy returned from Martine’s, Valere took her to the bedroom and undressed himself. She stood at her mirror to remove her tignon and let her hair down. There was a distinct smudge across her forehead from cleaning the classroom. Dust-streaks smeared her bodice. Valere didn’t seem to have noticed.
An hour later, Valere looked into her mirror to tie his cravat. “I am very glad that little fancy of yours is over, Tansy. I’ll come again tomorrow at the same time, around two.”
She stood in her shift, bare-footed, her brush in her hand. “No, Valere,” she said softly. “At two, I shall be at the Academy getting ready for school to start on Monday.”
“I’ve been thinking about that,” he said as he untied the knot and tried again. “You’re restless. Summer can be dull in the city, can’t it? We’ll go to the balls again when the season starts. And I’ll take you to the races. You liked that, didn’t you?”
“Yes. I liked the races.”
“And you love to dance.”
His eyes were on the intricacy of the knot he attempted in his cravat.
“Thank you, Valere. I enjoy the balls and the races. But I will not be here at two o’clock tomorrow.”
“And doubtless,” he continued, as if she hadn’t spoken, “you need an increase in your allowance. A little more money in your pocket should keep you busy buying tignons and dresses and slippers. And Alain must have outgrown everything over the summer. You will enjoy outfitting him from top to bottom.”
She stepped in front of him and stilled his hands. “Valere. I’m not trying to push you away, and it’s not more money I want.” She took one of his hands and held it in both of hers. “I hope you will come perhaps at five or six. Or later. But I won’t be here at two o’clock tomorrow afternoon.”
The corners of his mouth whitened, and his eyes darkened into black ice. He lightly wrapped his fingers around her throat. She felt the latent force in his fingertips as he tightened his grip on her neck. She ignored the tremor of fear and held his gaze, insisting he look at her and remember who they were together.
He rubbed his thumb over the hollow at the base of her throat. “You will say no more about this school. You will be here at two o’clock tomorrow. Or eleven, or whenever I say.”
She palmed his cheek. “No, Valere. I will be home a little after four.”
He pressed his thumb into her throat. “Your mother signed a contract.” His voice
cracked. “You signed it.”
She swallowed hard against the pressure of his thumb. “And I, just as you, have the right to end it. I haven’t asked for that, Valere. Only for an amendment. You may adjust my allowance. You may come to me at any other time. That’s all I ask.”
With no warning, he shoved her away with such force she bounced off the bed. “You straighten up or you’ll find yourself without a protector at all. I will cut you off. No more dresses. No more French wine and plumes for your hair. You may starve for all I care!”
He fled the room, his cravat half tied. The outer door slammed behind him. Slowly she rose from the bed. Starve, he’d said. The old threat: smile at the gentlemen — or starve. Learn to please — or starve. Or — join Collette Augustine at her brother’s brothel. She ran trembling fingers over her bruised throat. She didn’t believe it, not any more. She had a strong back, a readiness to work. There were other possibilities in life.
~ ~ ~
Two hours later Tansy’s mother marched in with all the energy and ferocity of a tropical storm. She halted in the middle of the room and pointed a finger at Tansy. “You are a fool!”
Alain, propped up on the sofa with his kitty, gazed at his grandmother with somber eyes. He showed no distress at the outrage in her voice and stance, but General Ney tensed, the hair at the back of his neck rising.
“Maman, would you like to sit down? A glass of wine? Or I could make coffee for you.”
“Don’t you dare change the subject. I know exactly what you’ve done, you stupid stupid girl.”
Tansy moved Alain’s foot and sat down on the sofa next to him. She smoothed her skirt over her thighs, then folded her hands in her lap.
Tansy Page 21
