Tarnished Gold l-5

by V. C. Andrews

  But the truth was, my mind wasn't on young men and marriage. Daddy was right. All I could think about was baby Paul and how I would get to see him again. Romance and love, marriage and husbands, seemed the stuff of movies and books, far-off like a thunderhead in the distance, bursting over someone else and not over me.

  One afternoon because, my heart was so empty it had put a twilight gloom in my very soul, I poled my pirogue east on the canal and docked near the Tates' mansion. I found a deserted path to the road under a canopy of cypress trees and then crossed the highway and slipped through the forest to come around behind the house where I knew they had put up swings and a sliding pond. The Tates' nanny would bring little Paul out to play. I found a shaded spot under a large willow tree nearby and crouched down behind some branches and leaves of the vines that were woven through the fence to watch him laugh and giggle, stumble about and make discoveries, or just sit in his sandbox and push his toy cars.

  Paul's nanny was a girl the Tates had imported from New Orleans. She had honey-colored hair, but a plump face and a pear-shaped figure. She waddled lazily behind the baby, her face revealing her annoyance with any extra effort Paul demanded of her. She didn't look all that much older than I was, and every time I saw her with the baby, she always looked bored. Whenever he played in the sandbox, she would sit with an emery board and work on her fingernails for hours, as if she were carving out some great marble statue, or she would be reading one of her movie magazines and chewing gum like a milk cow chewing on a blade of grass. Sometimes she would let him cry for nearly ten minutes before she looked to see what was bothering him or what he wanted. It took all my strength to keep my lips sealed or keep myself from jumping up and running over to him. It was probably more painful to do what I was doing than not to be there at all.

  But sitting undetected in the woods by the house, I could imagine myself there, beside him, maybe reading him a story or caring for his needs. Usually he played so well and so quietly by himself. I could see he was going to be a bright young man; everything attracted his curiosity. I was disappointed when his nanny realized the time and scooped him up to bring him into the house.

  However, I returned the next day and the day after that, sometimes waiting for hours before she would bring him out. And when it rained, I was terribly frustrated, for I knew he wouldn't be out at all. Then one day while I was sitting in my spot watching him play, crawl, and toss the sand in his box while his nanny sat reading a magazine with her back to him, I spotted what I was positive was a cottonmouth snake slither over the grass and curl just beside the sandbox. It raised its triangular head ominously. Paul caught the movement out of the corner of his eye. He studied it a moment and then laughed and started toward the snake. The nanny continued to be absorbed in her magazine.

  "No!" I screamed from the woods. She spun around. "He's going right for a cottonmouth snake. Quickly!" I screamed, and pointed. For a moment it looked like she wouldn't get over the shock of seeing me pop out of the woods, but she got herself together quickly enough to reach down and scoop him up just as the snake recoiled.

  She screamed, too, and the cook came charging out the back door, followed by Gladys Tate.

  I was too amazed to retreat quickly enough, so when the nanny started to explain and point, Gladys focused in my direction, her face filled more with disgust about me than the snake. The cook went around the sandbox and killed the snake with a metal rake. Gladys ordered the nanny to take Paul into the house. I turned and ran through the woods, my heart pounding all the way to my pirogue. I never poled up the canal as quickly to get home.

  I was afraid to tell Mama what I had done and what I had been doing. Lucky for me, she was busy with a customer for her linens, so I was able to sneak by and go into the house and up to my room. When twilight fell, Mama called.

  "You all right?" she asked after I appeared on the stairway.

  "Yes, Mama. Just resting."

  "Well, I'm not preparing anything new for dinner. We'll eat the crawfish etouffée. Your daddy sent word he won't be home for dinner. Claims he has work to do, but I know he'll be playing cards in some garage or barn and losing a week's wages."

  She was so distracted about Daddy, she didn't notice anything in my face, but we no sooner had sat down to eat when we heard an automobile pull up to the front of the house. Whoever it was started to honk his horn and wouldn't stop until we appeared in the doorway. My heart sunk. I recognized the expensive, big Cadillac.

  "Who is that?" Mama wondered, and then her squint changed to wide eyes and her face filled with annoyance. "What does that woman want?"

  Gladys Tate got out of her automobile and strutted toward our shack with her familiar arrogant gait. I stood a few inches behind Mama, my heart thumping so hard, I was sure Mama could feel the pounding, too. Gladys looked taller in her black cape. She had her hair down. As she drew closer, she glared up at me with her cold brown eyes shooting hateful sparks. A white line was etched above her tightened lips.

  "How can I help you?" Mama asked.

  "I'll tell you how you can help me. You can keep your daughter off my property and away from my baby. That's how you can help me," she replied.

  "Property?" Mama turned to look at me.

  "That's right. She was there today, spying on my family, hiding herself in the bushes."

  "Is this true, Gabrielle?" Mama asked. "You were at the Tates'?"

  "Yes, Mama, but I wasn't spying on her family. I was just . . ."

  "Just what then?" Gladys demanded, her hands on her hips. She looked like a giant hawk about to pounce.

  "Just watching baby Paul. I wanted to see how he plays. That's all."

  "Oh, Gabrielle," Mama said, shaking her head and fixing her eyes of pity on me.

  "Everywhere I go, in town, to church, stores, every time I turn, I see her gaping at us. I won't have it, I tell you," Gladys said, her voice coming almost like the hiss of a venomous snake. It reminded me of what happened.

  "If I wasn't there today, Paul might have been bitten by a cottonmouth. Go on, tell it all," I said with defiance. "Tell Mama how your nanny doesn't pay attention to the baby."

  "That's none of your affair," Gladys replied, but a lot less firmly.

  "The baby was almost bitten by a cottonmouth?" Mama asked.

  "She exaggerates. There was a snake in the yard. My girl had plenty of time to protect the baby. Besides, it's none of her business," Gladys insisted. "We paid to keep you away and I intend to see that the deal is kept. The next time your wild daughter is seen on my property, I'll have her arrested, do you understand? And if she continues to follow us around wherever we go, I'll go see a judge and get a court order that will slap the lot of you into jail."

  "I don't follow you around," I moaned.

  "You've got nothing else to do with your meaningless life than seduce grown men and then follow their wives around," Gladys continued. "You should be in a convent, away from good and decent people."

  "That's quite enough," Mama said. "You've made your point. Gabrielle will never again set foot on your property, and if she sees you people in town or in church, she will look the other way."

  "That's more like it. If you kept a tighter grip on her in the first place, we all might not be in this situation," Gladys added, her face flushed with satisfaction.

  "I think you have it all a bit muddled," Mama said softly. "If you had given your husband the loving home a wife should provide her man, he might not have wandered into the swamp to rape my daughter."

  "What?" She raised her shoulders. "If that's not the pot calling the kettle black . . . Why, your husband is probably the worst degenerate in the bayou."

  "At least he doesn't pretend to be a saint and put on false faces in church," Mama retorted.

  Gladys Tate's face reddened. She pressed her lips together and then lifted her right arm slowly to point her long, thin forefinger at me, the fingernail a silver shade.

  "Keep her away or else," she warned, pivoted, and marched b
ack to her car.

  I couldn't swallow. I felt numb and incapable of movement. It was as if my feet had been nailed to the galerie floorboards. We watched her churn the lawn with her tires and then spin out and away.

  "A horrid woman," Mama said. "It's like she has a snake eating away her heart." She turned and looked at me. "Gabrielle, you have got to let go, honey. It's over; he's gone."

  "Yes, Mama. I'm sorry."

  "It's all right, honey," she said, embracing me and petting my hair. "It's all right. Let's have a good dinner and think about tomorrow."

  I nodded. In the distance we could hear Gladys Tate's car squeal around a turn and accelerate. With it went my hopes of ever really knowing my own baby.

  We never told Daddy about Gladys Tate's visit. He would have just ranted and raved and threatened reprisals. He might even have seen it as a new opportunity to extort some money from them.

  He surprised us the next day anyway when he brought home a new dress for Mama and a new dress for me. Now it was her turn to think he was extravagant, for she could make a dress as good or better than any store-bought one.

  "And what did you do, Jack Landry," Mama asked with suspicious eyes, "win a big pot at bourre?'

  "No. This comes from all honest work, woman." He poured himself some lemonade and sat at the dinner table, smiling widely.

  Mama gazed at me, looked at the new dresses, and then shook her head. "Something's up."

  "Nothin's up. I was just thinkin' it was about time I took you and Gabrielle out for a night. We should go to the fais dodo at the Crab House this Saturday night."

  "Fais dodo? A dance? You want to take me to a dance?" Mama asked with amazement.

  "And Gabrielle. It's a good place for her to meet someone. I been thinking I ain't done enough to provide the opportunities for her."

  Mama stared at him, still not believing what she heard. "That's all, woman. It's no big thing here," he said, looking down quickly.

  "You ain't asked me to a dance for a long time, Jack Landry," she told him. "Something smells rotten."

  "What? Howja like them apples, Gabrielle? A man asks his wife to a dance and she says it smells rotten."

  "Well, I can't help it, it does," Mama said.

  "Well nothing. I realized we ain't been out together for a long time and thought it was time I asked, is all."

  "You ain't going to take us there and then get stupid drunk, are you, Jack?" she asked, her head tilted, her eyes scrutinizing him.

  "On my honor," he said, holding up his right hand. "I have changed. You see that, don'tcha?" He nodded emphatically to drive home his own claim.

  "You going to get cleaned up?"

  "Absolutely. You'll see."

  Although she was still suspicious, Mama agreed. She said she was doing so mostly for me. She tried on the dress. It was pretty and she was very pleased at how she looked in it. She made me try my dress on, too. She decided to take in the waist and let out the hem a bit, but otherwise, she thought Daddy had made amazingly fine choices.

  "It's been so long since we did something like this," she told me. "It's against my better judgment, but I think I'll let myself go a bit and trust him."

  On Saturday Mama washed and ironed Daddy's pants and shirt and then sat him on a rain barrel behind the house and trimmed his hair, beard, and mustache. He didn't put up his usual opposition. Scrubbed and pruned so even his fingernails turned from green-brown to clean, Daddy, looked his handsome self again. It was as if a human being had peeled off this smelly, grimy swamp creature and stepped forward..

  I watched Mama brush out her own hair and put her fancy combs in it, and when she put on the new dress and a little lipstick, she was about the prettiest woman in the bayou.

  Daddy rained compliments over her .He said it made him proud, proud to be escorting the two prettiest women in the bayou. Mama blushed like a young girl. She helped me with my hair, and after I put on my new dress, she stepped back and said "You might just catch yourself a handsome young man tonight. I hate to say your daddy could be right, but he could be."

  I hadn't been to a fais dodo since I was in, school. I hadn't made any new girlfriends, and most of the girls in my class had gotten married or were of living with relatives because there was someone nearby who would soon be marrying them. Evelyn Thibodeau had married Claude LeJeune, just as she had planned. He was doing well shrimping and owned two boats. Evelyn had a two-year-old boy and was pregnant with her second. Yvette Livaudis married her uncle's foreman, Philippe Jourdain, just as she had said she would, and then, a year later, gave birth to twin girls. I had just gotten a letter from her a month ago with a photo of her daughters inside. It took me a week to write back. I really had nothing new to tell her about myself, and it looked like her and Evelyn's predictions for me would come true: I would remain a spinster working beside Mama at our roadside stand forever.

  The night of the dance was warm, although a bit overcast with sprinkles threatening. I remember as the three of us, all fancied up, stepped out of the house, I felt hopeful. Maybe we could be a family yet. Maybe Daddy was telling the truth about himself, about the changes in him. Maybe there was a new future for me, waiting out there, waiting like some beautiful pink rose, waiting to be plucked.

  It wasn't until we were halfway to town that Daddy let out what his real motives were. Mama almost made him turn back. The truck took a big bounce. Daddy laughed and told us to hold on.

  "Don't want to see my beauties messed up 'fore we get there," he said. "By the way," he added, "I went ahead and promised out Gabrielle's first dance."

  "What? What are you talking about, Daddy? Promised me to who?"

  "Jed Atkins's brother's boy Virgil is visiting from Lafayette."

  "An Atkins?" Mama wailed.

  "Nothin's wrong with him. He's got a good job working for Jed's brother."

  "And what sort of work is that?"

  "They have a busy service station in Lafayette. Jed says the boy's a master mechanic, a natural with engines."

  "Uh-huh," Mama said. "And what else about him, Jack?"

  "Nothin' else." He paused. "Cept one minor physical thing."

  "Physical thing? What might that be, Jack? Spit out the whole truth," she added quickly. "I know how truth always tastes bitter in your mouth anyway."

  "Zat so?" He hesitated. "Well, he has this birthmark on his cheek. Just a minor thing . . . a big blob of red, but I told Jed my Gabrielle especially ain't one to look down on a man because he got a little birthmark on his cheek. Ain't that right, Gabrielle?"

  "Yes, Daddy," I said cautiously.

  "That's what I thought."

  "There's more to this story, Jack Landry," Mama said, focusing her eyes on him so intently, he couldn't look at her. "'What is it, Jack?"

  "Nothin' else. He's a strapping young man, tall, about my height, rich dark hair . . ."

  "How come he hasn't asked anyone to marry him, and how come he's not in the army, Jack? Mechanics ain't being excused."

  "Well . . he was in the army," he replied quickly.

  "Was? What happened?"

  "He got accused of something, but he swears he was innocent."

  "Accused of what, Jack?" Mama said. Daddy hesitated. "This is worse than pulling ticks out of a child's hair."

  "Attacking a nurse. Now, don't that sound stupid?"

  "Attacking? You don't mean sexually, do you, Jack? You do," Mama said, answering her own question. "And you want Gabrielle to meet this man after what's happened to her?"

  "He was innocent. The woman was one of them, you know, one of them who likes men, all men, and he refused her, so she accused him and—"

  "And they threw him out of the army?"

  "After he served his time in the brig unfairly, yes. He's better off anyway. Probably would have been killed. He's a good boy, Catherine. I'll vouch for that."

  "It's like the devil swearing for Judas."

  "What's that?"

  "Nothing. And how much did Jed say his brother w
ould give you if you arranged this marriage, Jack?"

  "How much . . . ! How could you accuse me of that?"

  "Easy," Mama said. "Now I know why you were so eager to get us to this fais dodo," she added, her voice thick with disappointment.

  "Why, that's a downright lie."

  "Just tell us how much money you were promised and get it all out, Jack, so we don't discover nothing under a rock later."

  "It ain't that he's paying me anything. He just said he would be sure we had something for our own nest egg. He's just a generous man when it comes to those who are members of his family," Daddy explained. "Now, ain't that a nice family to marry yourself into?" he asked.

  "Jed Atkins's family can't be much to holler about," Mama replied.

  "There you go, putting my friends down again. You don't let a man breathe, Catherine."

  "Breathing is not what worries me about them; it's what they do with their breath and how it stinks," Mama said with a knowing, small smile.

  "Nevertheless, Gabrielle," Daddy said, leaning over to speak to me, "we ain't folks who look down on other folks because they've had some bad luck, are we?"

  "No, Daddy."

  "Tell your mother. It ain't like we don't have our own skeletons to keep in the closet, right?"

  "Yes, Daddy."

  "All I ask is you give the boy a chance. He's a shy one, which goes to prove he couldn't do what they accused him of doing in the army."

  Mama smirked. "Why did I let myself get talked into this?" she muttered. "I should have known."

  "Just relax, Catherine. Relax and let's have a good old time of it, no?"

  Mama closed her eyes as the truck bounced and swayed, but I had grown very nervous.

  The Crab House was a restaurant with a big ballroom in the rear. In it there was a small stage for the musicians who played the accordion, the fiddle, the triangle, and guitars. This fais dodo was one of the most popular of the year. People were streaming in and out the front door, and we could hear the zydeco music as we pulled into a parking space. Cajuns brought their whole family to dances like this. A room was set aside in the Crab House for the small children, many of whom would fall asleep while their parents danced or played bourre.