by Lynn Shurr
She went to search for T-Bob. Not finding him in the house, she entered the garden, averted her eyes from the Christmas camellia and the ruts made in the gravel by Miss Lilliane’s wheelchair, crossed the yard quickly and found him in the same cattle barn where they met on her first day in Chapelle. Robert LeBlanc stood ankle deep in fresh straw in the holding pen where the calves were put for weaning. He leaned against the partition with his back toward her, just leaning, not working, and staring out the far side of the barn as if he strained to see something out of his range of vision. Laura had not intended to come up behind him so quietly.
She rapped formally on the side of the barn. He turned his dark eyes and sad mouth toward her.
“Is Miss Lilliane all right?” she asked.
“She’ll live if she can keep her temper under control. I gave her a large dose of her cough medicine. She’ll be out for hours.” Still leaning against the stall but facing her now, he made no move to come closer.
“Look, I have to talk to you about Angelle. Then, I’ll go.”
“Talk.”
“I found her lighting candles in my room just now. She could have destroyed the house.”
“But you caught her, so no harm done. I’ll talk to her about it.”
“There’s more. Mrs. Domengeaux noticed her votive candle missing right before the fire in her store. I believe Angelle took it. Look, I’ve read that pyromania can start at a very early age. You have to admit Angelle’s reaction to the fire at Domengeaux’s was hardly normal. And there have been other fires. I saw the marks when we toured the house. How old was Angelle when she set Miss Lilliane’s room on fire?”
“There’s nothing wrong with Angelle!” he bellowed like one of his injured bulls and stepped toward her.
“Your ex-wife is mentally ill, Robert. She could have affected Angelle. If the child gets help now, she might grow up normally.”
“There’s nothing wrong with my daughter! Or me. But what about you, Laura?” He moved swiftly and caught her collar again, roughly this time.
She fell into the straw when Robert hooked one foot behind her leg and toppled them together, his full weight on top of her body. He tore at her buttons and pushed the bra from her shoulders without unhooking it. The straps pinned her arms at the elbows, but Laura did not fight him. He rubbed his heavy beard against her naked breasts abrading them in a way both painful yet exciting, as if he wanted to put his own mark on her and obliterate any sign of the other man.
“Did the family legend repel you the way it did Vivien? We share the same blood, Vivien and me.” His fury ebbed. He kissed her lips more tenderly than he had her breasts. Perhaps, he noticed the tears forming in the corners of her eyes and mistook them as a sign of fear.
Laura cried for herself. She had pictured them joining together at last on her long drive, but not like this. If her arms had not been pinned by the shirt and bra shoved from her shoulders, she would have put them around him and shown him all he said had no truth. When he bent to kiss her a second time, very gently, Laura opened her mouth to respond, but another hand knocked against the barn door.
“Mr. Bob, you want that bull moved to the north pasture?” Tony, the black stockman, swung his eyes from the scene in the straw back to the other side of the barn. He retreated a step as if to go away, as if he had seen nothing.
Robert stood protectively in front of Laura while she sat up and buttoned her shirt. “Yes, move the bull,” he ordered, calmly brushing straw from his sleeves.
“Yessir.” Tony retraced his steps energetically and with a great deal of noise.
Robert offered Laura a hand up from the straw. She took it, but he dropped hers as soon as she stood.
“Don’t worry,” he said with a pained smile. “It’s an old southern tradition not to tell who you saw rolling in the hay with the boss man. It’s my shame that I’ve spent the last few minutes proving I’m not worth having instead of apologizing. I couldn’t stand the thought of you going with another man because I’d held back giving you time, Laura. I’m sorry.”
She would have reached out to him if he had not walked away so swiftly and without looking back. She doubted if he heard her say, “There is no other man.”
Chapter Nineteen
Laura called Lola Domengeaux within the hour. She wanted and needed to leave the influence of Chateau Camille, both past and present, and go somewhere more neutral to collect her thoughts. The phone rang repeatedly in the Domengeaux home, and then Myrtle Hill, the operator, interceded.
“I expect they’re still at the hospital, honey. Why don’t you try after eight?”
“Hospital?”
“You been out of town of course. They took Louie Domengeaux in for chest pains right after Christmas. It don’t look good, if you know what I mean.”
“Thanks, Myrtle.”
“Any time, hon.”
The town talked of replacing Miss Hill after her retirement with a computerized phone system, but no computer could ever do the job along with gossip the way old Myrtle did. “Telephone, telegraph, tell-a-woman,” the all male parish council joked, but they dialed her up regularly to keep abreast of the news.
Late that evening, Laura did reach the Domengeaux residence, but the daughter, not the mother, answered. Yes, Mama was fine but tired. Yes, she’d tell her Laura Dickinson had called. Click. Because she had no place else to go, Laura went to the guestroom and unpacked.
In the morning, Robert and Laura initiated another beautifully coordinated program of mutual avoidance. He had his early coffee in the kitchen, slammed the rear door loudly in signal of departure, and as soon as the crunch of his steps on the gravel pathway sounded far enough away, Laura emerged fully dressed from her room, used the bathroom, grabbed her coffee and a hot biscuit from Pearl and hurried off to work.
In the late afternoon, she politely phoned Pearl to say she would be late for dinner, please not to wait for her or set anything aside. Laura stayed at the library, sometimes actually working, cataloging a truck of books or playing with the budget to make room for a new project, sometimes merely reading a suspense novel or a piece of light non-fiction, but never a romance. When the clock reached an hour when Laura could be certain Robert and Angelle were safely in the parlor of the Chateau, she drove back to the mansion, parked in the front, but entered through the kitchen. Pearl had a tray of food waiting for her.
Laura insisted on reheating the meal herself. Afterwards, she usually joined Pearl to work on the Mardi Gras costumes in the housekeeper’s room. Sympathy had not made Pearl more talkative, but she could be drawn out by a continuous string of questions as Laura discovered when she found sewing in silence did not take her mind off Robert LeBlanc sitting nearby in another room.
“Where did you learn to sew, Pearl?”
“My mama taught me. I used to make my own costumes to save on the money.”
“Costumes?” Laura’s eyes went to the picture of the nearly nude chorus girls.
“Yeah. I danced when I was young. Tap, ballet, everything, at Miss Starr’s School of Dance. Miss Starr was kind of a hippie, still is. She had classes separate for the black kids to keep the white mamas happy, but she always told us we had more joie de vivre than her other students. Joie de vivre, that’s Miss Starr. That old lady is still dancing to this day. My mama paid for the lessons. I sewed my own costumes. Sure came in handy later.”
“Would that be you in the first row, just off center?” Laura nodded at the photo, her hands being too busy to point.
“That’s me at the Cotton Club.”
“Cotton Club!”
“Not the one you thinking of. I ain’t that old, baby. This one’s in Los Angeles, least it was.”
“When were you out there?”
“Oh, thirty years ago. The times might have been a-changing, but there were still plenty of men would pay to see black women dance with nearly nothing on. Still are. That’s where Beulah was born.”
“Beulah?”
“My
daughter. I called her after my mother, but neither of them ever thanked me for it. Children take strange revenge sometimes.”
“Revenge?”
“Yeah, revenge. See, when I was young I went with a white boy for a while. Well, my folks broke that off fast because white boys only want one thing, they said. Funny, we hadn’t got that far at all, but I was so mad I went out and found the blackest boy in town and gave him my all.” Pearl released a sear little smile. Clearly, the revenge had backfired.
“I got pregnant before my parents could bust that one up, too. See, to a respectable high yellow family like the Seguras, going with a black Black is almost as bad as going with a white man. Worse probably. My folks didn’t buy into the black is beautiful campaign. Always marry lighter, my granny said.”
“So, you went to California.”
“No, they sent me off to my sister Opal until after the baby came. What my mama didn’t know—because Opal never told her—was she married a white man out there and was passing. Well, that was fine with me. With all those Mexicans and Indians and foreigners out there, I could pass, too—until Beulah came into the world. You should have seen Opal’s face. Turned whiter than that guy she married when she saw my little ebony bundle of joy.” Pearl smiled again, this time at her sister’s pretensions. “Opal never did have any children. Maybe she was afraid they’d come out black.”
“So you and Beulah stayed out there.”
“Yeah. I got a job dancing at the club. We toured all over. I’d leave Beulah with a friend and go. Those were some years.” Her face softened, and then tightened again. “But dancers get old fast. Even so, it was too late for Beulah. She was twelve going on twenty-one by the time we came back here.”
“What happened?” Laura asked, even though she knew, to keep Pearl talking.
“Oh, she went bad on me. No parental guidance, the school said. She took money for her services, too. That’s something I never did—even with the judge.”
“The judge!”
“Look, Laura, you’re almost family it seems to me, and the family knows all about this. When I came back, I took the maid’s job here at the Chateau. A comedown for me, you know, but I needed the work. I still had my looks then, being just over thirty. Miss Auree, T-Bob’s mama, was only in her forties and dying of cancer. She’d have her good spells and her bad ones, but that lady always remained brave and wise. One day, she called me into her room and plain asks me to sleep with her husband. She said he needed the comfort she could no longer give him, and being a judge and all, he wasn’t free to go out and get some, if you know what I mean. I said he had never bothered with me. She said he would, and sure enough he came to my room a few nights later.”
“We never talked much except the night after his wife died. Then, we both cried together for her. Things kept on the same between us until his heart gave out. Never thought he loved me or anyone else but Miss Auree. He never considered marrying again. He didn’t leave me nothing or give me nothing, but I did it for her, and I never asked for nothing either.”
That night, Laura, who knew very well she was not family, felt she had pried. On other nights, Laura realized though she asked the questions, she was the one being led.
“So tell me about Mardi Gras in Chapelle.”
“Well, it’s not like New Orleans where the rich people dress up and go to balls and the poor people stand in the streets, get drunk and show their titties for beads. Here, the whole town works on the costumes and anyone who buys a ticket goes to the ball, but it helps to be somebody if you want to get elected to the court.”
“Is that why they chose Angelle?”
“Well, the LeBlancs are old family, but I suspect Denise DeVille had something to do with it.”
“I don’t think I know her.”
“Oh, she comes around here plenty when you’re at work, that Miss Denise. Nineteen and as foxy as they come. She’s old DeVille’s granddaughter, and this year’s Queen Marie Antoinette the thirty-second.”
“Old DeVille who always falls asleep in the library?”
“That’s him. Would you believe he used to chase after Miss Lilliane years ago, but his family broke it off because of those old rumors? Well, I think little Miss Denise believes those stories are so romantic she’s going to break with family tradition and marry a LeBlanc.”
“Marry who?”
“Why Mr. Bob, of course. Naturally, all the DeVilles are upset, especially the mama who won’t be able to have a big Catholic wedding at the church if Denise marries a divorced and very lapsed man who’s made it clear he ain’t paying for any annulment. And then, there’s the age difference and the old stories.”
“I don’t think Robert is interested. He never mentions her.”
“How would you know? You hardly talk to him no more. Why all month, she’s been over here asking for information on the artificial insemination of cattle. Says it’s for a college biology paper, my ass. Why just last week, I had to serve her lunch and listen to all that stuff over my food in the kitchen. Mr. Bob, he keeps loaning her farm magazines, and then she has to return them. While she’s here, she plays Barbie dolls with Angelle since she isn’t too far from the grade school herself.”
Pearl gave Laura a sharp look. “You know, a man can be put off too many times and begin to look elsewhere, especially when he wants a mother for his little girl. Me and Tony thought you and Mr. Bob had finally got together out there in the barn. Said he could see you brushing off the straw and buttoning up, even with Bob standing right there in front of you as if nothing was going on. I guess old Tony got it wrong. His eyes must be going before his mouth stops talking, but he sure was sorry to interrupt whatever might have happened.”
“I thought it was an old Southern custom not to talk about things like that!” Laura blushed a red so hot she could feel beads of sweat form on her forehead and start to roll toward the fabric she bent over trying to hide her face.
“That’s what white folks want to think. Just foolin’. Won’t go no further than Tony and me. Sure wouldn’t want Miss Lil catching on. Tony and me, we’re pulling for you, not Denise.”
Laura cleared her throat. What could she say to that? Thanks for being on my side? Instead she opted to steer the conversation back where it had begun.
“So, tell me how the court is chosen.”
“Well, the members of the Mardi Gras Association nominate people, and they have to be pretty well off because costumes are expensive and they pay for their own. Now, I know they nominated Mr. Bob for King Louis the Sixteenth, but he backed out, so Dr. Bourgeois is going to do it. That didn’t please Miss Denise at all. Before we know it, Angelle is nominated for the court, and her daddy didn’t have the heart to say no.”
“What’s the theme this year?” Laura made another attempt to direct the conversation far, far away from Robert, Angelle, Denise and herself.
“The Four Seasons at the Court of Queen Victoria. Old Miss DeGravelle is going to be Queen Victoria. She sure has the weight for the part. Angelle is in the Court of Spring. They asked Mr. Bob to be in the Court of Spring while you were gone, but he said he hadn’t done anything so foolish as to dress in a green tuxedo since he turned seventeen, and he wasn’t going to do it again.” Pearl paused, waiting for a question. When none came, she went on by herself.
“But Denise talked him into being in the Court of Winter because the men are wearing black tails, and he would look so-o-o handsome, she said. He will, too.”
Again Laura had no comment, so Pearl asked a question. “Who’s taking you to the ball, Miss Laura?”
“I wasn’t planning to go.” Laura bent way over the rosebuds she tacked to Angelle’s skirt as if she were entirely engrossed in the task.
“Everybody goes.”
“Even the black people?”
“We have our own affair—to which I am going with Tony.”
Suddenly grand, Pearl stood up and lowered the zipper on a full-length clothing bag hanging from a hook on the narrow c
loset door behind the sewing machine. Her gown was a startling shade of tangerine. Not a dress Laura would care to wear, but she truly believed Pearl could carry it off without any trouble and look fantastic.
“Our ball is just as fine and maybe even better than the white folks’ ball, not so stuffy, you know. We got a much better band. “What are you going to wear to the ball, Madame Librarian?”
Laura smiled and answered, “Nothing.”
“That might do for after the ball. But, we have to talk about beforehand.”
“I’m not going.”
“Black spandex?”
“Absolutely not! I’ve had a bad experience with black spandex.”
“Silver lamé?”
“Not going.”
“Let me get your measurements tonight,” Pearl said, and she did.
Chapter Twenty
“Hold still, child!” Pearl lowered the completed Mardi Gras gown over Angelle’s head. The little girl stood on the housekeeper’s bed, arms raised but covered by her nightie because the child complained the room was too cold. On the lower half of her small frame a hoop petticoat hung over the top her granny gown. The dress settled over Angelle like an elaborate wrapping on a very small package. Pearl began zipping. Laura watched from the doorway since the child’s costume seemed to fill the small room.
She and Angelle had returned gradually to their old relationship. After all, Laura reasoned, Angelle was not her child. She’d reported her suspicions to the girl’s father. Let it rest there. At first, Angelle had stayed in the parlor with Robert, but as the excitement of Mardi Gras increased, she began to visit Pearl’s room. When not evicted or reprimanded, she remained, sewing on scraps at Laura’s feet and interrupting the adult conversation more and more until she became her old exuberant self again. Laura welcomed the child’s chatter and even encouraged her when she realized Angelle’s presence kept the talk away from Robert.
