by Lynn Shurr
“Sure,” she answered and went through the gate in the rickety sticks of pieux fencing. The hollow sound of her steps on the broad boards of the porch must have awakened the guide.
The woman suddenly straightened from a position of nodding over the table containing the guestbook and a Plexiglas box with “donations” stenciled on the side. She wore a red volunteer button stuck on the chest of her yellow gingham costume. The sunbonnet shoved back from her badly dyed or unfortunately natural orange hair slid off of the guide’s head and dangled by the strings. The volunteer wrung her hands in her white apron and began. “My name is Evelyn Patout, and I am your guide,” she announced, coming to attention but avoiding her visitor’s eyes.
“Hello,” Suzanne said. As if this were a magic word that set off a chain reaction, Evelyn Patout began her tour by rote. “We are standing in the living quarters of the Jean-Baptiste St. Julien home built, we think, about 1794. The home is constructed of cypress timbers and bousillage. That is mud, moss, and animal fibers packed into the walls.”
Marching to the fireplace, Evelyn pointed to a glass plate covering a hole in the wall. “This here is a section which has been cut way to show the thickness of the wall. Bousillage made excellent insulation in this hot climate.”
Past the opening sentences, Evelyn’s voice continued on in a very un-French twang. “The chimney and fireplace are also made of mud because we got so much of it ’round here. Now the family of ten slept in these here two rooms mostly. Not all at onct. Some of ’em died young. People did that then.”
Beads of sweat began to form between the freckles stretched across the guide’s cheekbones. “Now the mama and the papa slept here with the babies. See the cradle hand hewn from cypress. This was the girls’ room. There ain’t no other door but through the parents’ bedroom. The boys slept up in the loft called a garconierre entered by the stairs on the porch. Tells you something about those times, don’t it?”
“All the furniture in those days was handmade and very simple. Here is where the family ate. See the cowhide, hair and all, stretched over a frame to make a seat. And what did they eat? Corn ground up in this here stump and lots of rice.” Evelyn raised a large wooden pestle and let it fall with a thump into the hollowed log. Chips of cracked corn scattered through the air, pelting Suzanne like rice at a wedding.
“Lots of wild game and fish, naturally. Chickens, too. They raised chickens.” Her guide began to look tearful. “Oh, and I forgot. This was the birthplace of one of our state senators, Victoir St. Julien. From these humble origins sprang a long line of prominent politicians. Any questions?”
Without pausing, Evelyn raced on. “Please stop to look in the glass case which contains pictures of Port Jefferson one hundred fifty years ago. The Port Jefferson Museum is operated entirely on your donations. Please feel free to browse in the rooms and stop at the other points of interest in our town.” Evelyn exhaled. “How did I do? This was my first tour.”
Suzanne understood. Four years of college and several public speaking courses had not made her first tour of the historic home where she worked in Philadelphia last summer any more relaxed. “Fine,” she said, smiling. “What are the other points of interest?”
“Uh, they didn’t tell me. I mean the Historical Society ladies. See, I’m from north Louisiana, up by the Arkansas border. I come here when I married Billy Patout last year. He’s real good with my boys. Billy said get out, join some clubs, do something. So I volunteered for here. I had to get this costume made, and this ole bonnet here is just driving me crazy.” Evelyn pulled the bonnet up on her orange hair where it cast a sallow pall over her freckles and pushed it back again.
“I’m a stranger here myself.” Suzanne walked over to the glass case and viewed the pictures of very unglamorous steamboats laden with mountains of cotton bales and a Main Street of dirt and board sidewalks, but full of mule and wagon traffic. “There’s not much to do here on a Sunday.”
“You’re telling me!” Evelyn sympathized. “But you should have been at Joe’s Lounge last night. As they say around here, you can pass a good time at Joe’s. Say, if you’re still here next week, Billy can fix you up with a date. He got a slew of brothers and cousins, all good dancers, these Cajun boys.”
“I might take you up on that.”
Suzanne put a couple of dollars in the donation box where a handful of change rested. Evelyn wrote her number on the back of a Port Jefferson Museum brochure and handed it to her as she escorted Suzanne to the door of the cabin. Even the cars at the Methodist church had gone by now. She decided to walk up the hill. Not only would it be faster, cheaper, and safer, but the walk would consume the remains of Sunday afternoon.
While Suzanne toiled along the narrow gravel strip between the deep drainage ditch and the macadam at the crest of the hill, George pulled over in his gray Honda. She would have liked to refuse the ride and assert her independence again, but the early winter dusk began to settle over the landscape, and she had out-walked any lingering issues she had with her boss.
“I brought you some fried chicken and a piece of yam pie for dinner.” He nodded in a shame-faced way toward a bag on the front seat.
“Thanks. Were you at Mrs. St. Julien’s?” she asked, trying not to show any curiosity about where he had been all day.
“No, not at Odette St. Julien’s place.”
End of conversation. At the Hill, George went directly to the Eastlake parlor for a nightcap. Suzanne ate her chicken and pie cold in the kitchen and pondered deep thoughts: how similar yam pie was to pumpkin, one of her favorites; how even the fried chicken batter had the bite of red pepper in it; whether or not to go to Joe’s Lounge next Saturday night with a blind date. She liked the pie, disliked the chicken, and could not make up her mind about Evelyn Patout’s offer.
Chapter Five
Suzanne’s story
On Monday morning, Suzanne woke to Birdie singing a hearty version of I’m gonna wash that man right out of my hair. She could not agree with the housekeeper more. George had gone for the day. The sunshine sparkled through the window and robins, their red breasts so bright against the foliage they resembled living Christmas ornaments, festooned the dark trees and dreary lawn. Feeling fine with a week of work ahead, Suzanne bounded down the stairs and shouted to Birdie in the kitchen. “Spring is here!”
She did not find Birdie in the kitchen. Instead, she intercepted the maid in the dining room where the immense table lay covered with an old blue oilcloth. The doors of the massive Renaissance sideboard stood unlocked and open as Birdie hauled out treasure like a fat caliph about to get his weight in gold. But this was silver—ornate, invaluable, Victorian silver. Her polishing cloths and jars of silver cream stood ready for the task. Abruptly, Suzanne changed her plans for the day from beginning on the inventory of the upper rooms to surveying the silver.
“You’ll have to eat in the kitchen, honey. This takes me most of the day.” Birdie grunted as she hauled a huge punchbowl from a low shelf. Suzanne went to help her.
“Feel the weight of this stuff. There must be a hundred ounces of silver here,” she marveled. “Worth a fortune.”
“I always keeps it locked up and out of sight.” Birdie flourished a rag and settled down to a day of polishing. “Go on and eat your breakfast.”
Suzanne brought her orange juice and sweet roll back to an unused corner of the dining room table, then ran upstairs for the card file. Virginia Lee kept a special section set aside for her silver, and the files had been heavily used. Obviously, she’d lavished her time on this area of her collection. Some yellowed cards held notations made in a firm, elegant hand with a blue-inked fountain pen, but most were on crisp, clean sheets scrawled in shaky black ballpoint. The newer cards seemed out of character for the mistress of Magnolia Hill, but then, Virginia’s last years had been spent dying slowly and painfully. Maybe, the fast scrawl represented her sense of time running out.
Suzanne fingered the first card, an old one for a sterlin
g teething rattle, mother-of-pearl handle, Tiffany, circa 1895, valued at $50. Not wanting to bother Birdie who was warming up her hands and her voice with a little humming, she started with the small pieces in the long shallow drawer in the top of the sideboard. Once used for storing table linens, a modern cabinetmaker had inset the space with small cubicles lined in gray flannel. Each niche held an object of Victorian tableware that would have sent her mother into raving fits of ecstasy.
Virginia Lee had owned all the oddities of the era: grape shears with handles like twisted vines, asparagus tongs in Tiffany’s Chrysanthemum pattern, bacon forks, oyster ladles, berry spoons, a chipped-beef server, a set of ice cream forks, even an Unger Brothers food pusher used by children to pursue elusive peas around the plate. Item by item, they were worth no more than twenty to two hundred dollars each, but cumulatively several thousand in melt value, and much, much more to a collector because of the breadth of the collection. As dreary as Suzanne found some aspects of Victoriana, these absurd utensils delighted her.
Chortling over cheese scoops and lettuce forks, she pawed among them most of the morning while Birdie polished and sang under her breath to keep from disturbing her studies. Every item checked out against the cards, with the exception of the baby rattle. She asked Birdie about it.
“Oh, that ole thing was the first bit of silver Miss Virginia brought home for Georgie who hadn’t even been born yet. She was four months along and so slim you couldn’t tell. I said, ‘Now don’t you be tempting things to go wrong by buying all sorts of stuff for your baby, better to wait for the last month,’ but she just laughed and had me boil it, shine it up, and wrap it in flannel. When Georgie come, she give it to him and let him chew all over it. You could see his little tooth marks on it. That rattle is long gone down a crack or lost in the yard. Imagine giving a baby something fine to play with. They can teeth just as well on a frozen carrot.”
With her head bent over her work, Birdie scrubbed diligently at a bit of repousse work on the punchbowl.
“But I guess that was all right for her if it give her some pleasure. By nine months, Miss Virginia got no bigger than a muskmelon down there, not big and sloppy like some women get. She had all these clothes made up special to look nice, while most everybody else just stayed home and wore them big T-shirts or their own man’s shirts when they was breeding. It made no difference to Mr. Jacques. He went out tomcatting around before their first anniversary. Once he took off that uniform, turned out he was just a low-life person. I hate to say it of the dead, but a low-life person. Him too low and her too high with me stuck in the middle. Those were some bad years early on, but things took care of themselves later. Yes, they did.”
Suzanne did not press her to go on, being more interested in the silver than in George’s mismatched parents. She put a question mark on the card for the rattle, stretched, and suggested a lunch break. Birdie agreed, though she had just snacked on coffee and the last of the buns an hour ago.
The day turned strange when George’s car came up the drive. Birdie shrugged and raised her eyebrows to show she had not expected his company for lunch either. He plunged in the door with two long loaves in white paper bags under his arm, smiled without looking at Birdie or Suzanne, and said, “Savoy’s had hot French bread. I thought you ladies would like some for lunch.”
“Nice of you, Mr. George.” Birdie took the loaves and began opening another can of soup to put in the saucepan. “We just having a little chicken noodle today.”
“Great. My favorite.” George smiled inanely again, and stretching his long legs out into the kitchen, took a seat. Birdie eyed him as if he had gone insane.
“I thought my gumbo was your favorite.”
“My favorite of the canned kind, I mean. Look, I brought the mail. Two for Miss Hudson, one for occupant, and three bills for George St. Julien.”
When he looked at his utility bill, the flood of pleasant conversation stopped. Suzanne tried to renew the flow by remarking she’d seen robins, a sure sign of spring. George glanced at her blankly through those heavy glasses, then informed her otherwise.
“No. We only see robins around here in December or January, sometimes February. Then, they all fly north. Robins winter around here.”
She sighed. He had spoiled her joy in the flock, hopping and worming across the lawn. Ignoring George, Suzanne rudely opened and read her letters in front of him while Birdie served the soup. Of necessity, Birdie took hers out to the dining room to eat among the polishing rags since George had taken her chair. She would have offered to eat in the other room, but Birdie, quick to see the situation, moved out. Her speed came from years of practice in coping with the whims of white folks, Suzanne assumed.
Her mother’s letter, long and chatty, began by asking why a week had gone by without so much as a quick e-mail or a phone call. Since she had taken care of that complaint, Suzanne ignored the paragraph, just as she continued to ignore George who kept fidgeting with his soup spoon and knocking his fingers against the kitchen window to startle the robins. The letter ended with a postscript saying that Paul Smith had called to get her new address because he wanted to write and had lost the one Suzanne had given him.
Suzanne had told Paul that she would send him her address when she got to Port Jefferson, but hadn’t done so. No sense in prolonging the relationship since she was one hundred percent sure Paul didn’t want to “be friends.”
Naturally, the second letter came from Paul. After reading it, she allowed her soup to get cold and carried the bowl half-finished toward the sink. No longer ignoring George but simply forgetting he existed, she tripped over his big feet. The yellow broth sloshed on the sleeve of his white shirt as he reached out to catch her. With a strong grip, he steadied her with one hand. For a second, she wondered if George could or would protect her from Paul if the threat in the letter came to pass.
Printed very neatly in heavy lead pencil across a single sheet of computer graph paper, Paul wrote:
Dearest Suzanne,
If you do not return, I am coming to get you.
Your Loving Fiancé,
Paul
The words chilled with their directness. Mentally, she felt frozen, and physically, her arm numbed where George gripped her elbow.
“Is something wrong?” he asked with genuine concern.
She should have told him then, but George was only her employer, a quiet and sometimes bumbling one, not a man whom she could expect to take on her problems or do anything about them. In fact, having a threatening ex-boyfriend might jeopardize her job.
“No. It’s just that I seem to keep ruining your shirts. First brandy, now soup.”
“I drink Jack Daniels and have plenty of shirts.” George dropped her arm when Birdie pushed into the kitchen.
“Go on doing whatever you was doing. Old Birdie has to wash those shirts. Don’t think about me none.”
“I’ll take it off right now and put it in some cold water.” George fled the scene.
“Now, I didn’t mean to do that. I was only joking with him, but Miss Virginia made him jumpy like that. Just when he was starting to warm up to you, too. Why, he hasn’t come home to lunch in months, and this time it wasn’t to see old Birdie.”
Great, Suzanne thought, returning to the silver spread on the dining room table. Now, she had two men she did not want, and one of them happened to be her boss. The afternoon rolled downhill from there. She started to check the larger pieces: the punchbowl; a pair of candelabra; a tea set with an amazing number of pieces from a waste bowl to sugar tongs. Each item seemed to have some little niggling thing wrong with it. The manufacturer’s mark and the sterling symbol were obscured and illegible on the punch bowl, though Virginia Lee listed it as Tiffany. The candlesticks had the proper weight for sterling, but something about their patina bothered her. She questioned Birdie, too heavily, perhaps.
“So you’ve been here thirty years,” Suzanne began subtly.
“More like forty. Mr. Fred and Miss Bea
trice took me on right out of school to help old Effie. Then they died within a year of each other, Mr. Fred of a stroke and Miss Beatrice from missing him, I think. She got the pneumonia and wouldn’t call in a doctor ’til it was too late. Effie and me kept the house up until the boys got home from the war and settled everything. Then, Effie retired. Said she was too old to learn new tricks from the likes of Miss Virginia.”
“How often have you polished all this silver over the years?”
“Oh Lawd, least once a month, more when Miss Virginia entertained, maybe not so often after she got sick. I mean Mr. Georgie never has folks over, and it takes all my time to keep the place clean by myself. ’Fore, we had other maids and a cook. I does my best.”
“Of course you do, but look at these candelabra. When a piece has been polished often, it develops this sort of deep glow called a patina. This article seems almost new, but Mrs. St. Julien’s note dates it as 1853 and values the pair at nearly $4,000.”
“Well, I don’t know nothing ’bout that. That’s one of her new candlesticks she got the last five years, traded it for her old set with her antique dealer, trading up she said. So maybe I didn’t shine it so much. It’s hardly been out the bag since she got it. Liked the old ones better myself. They was all covered with curlicues and had these little cups to catch the wax.”
“Bobeches.”
“What say?”
“Bobeches, the little cups that catch the wax.”
“Yeah. They were the devil to clean, but I liked them sticks better. They did sort of glow.”
“Did Mrs. St. Julien trade any of the other pieces?”
“Nearly all the big ones. Trading up, she told me, every time.”
“It’s just that some of the pieces don’t quite match their descriptions.”
“I don’t know about that neither. When Miss Virginia died, the estate people took the inventory, one punch bowl, one tea set. They was all here. They still is.” Birdie’s lower lip protruded belligerently.
“She might have made some mistakes,” Suzanne suggested, trying to calm her down.
