Queen of the Mardi Gras Ball

by Lynn Shurr

  “Damned Spanish influenza!” Laurence wiped his face with a clean white linen handkerchief. “I like Boylan. He’s a man’s man like Pete Herman or Pal Moran. And, everyone overindulges a little on New Year’s Eve. But, I wouldn’t want Rosie to encourage that Cajun lad even if he is a doctor. None of my girls should marry down. Why, he’d carry you off to that backwater, Chapelle, and we’d never see you again.”

  “That’s absurd, Papa. Your cousin André and his wife live there, and they visit quite often. Philadelphia is much farther away.” Roz snuggled into her white fur wrap, warding off the night’s damp chill.

  “Yes, that’s true. What did André do to get sentenced to a life in Chapelle?” Laurence rummaged through his bag of hazy memories. “Oh yes, he married a girl from there. A guest at one of the Mardi Gras balls, Loretta was. Love at first sight, André claimed. She didn’t want to leave her mama, so the family opened a branch out there to give André a living. Poor sap.”

  The touring car passed Pierre Landry walking toward the streetcar stop. Rosamond looked back, but neither of her parents instructed Clement to offer a ride.

  ****

  The hothouse roses, vermilion against the gray sky, arrived on January second. The note written by Burke Boylan read, “My Dearest Rosie, I am nursing a big head and a broken heart. Please forgive me for my boorish behavior at the Yacht Club. Jealousy drove me to it. With all my love, Buster.”

  The out-of-season flowers had cost Boylan a big chunk of the miserly Christmas check his old man sent. He watched from across the street as a maid accepted the bouquet. The lavish flowers ought to be effective in getting him back into Rosamond’s good graces. All the girls he knew went for jazz like that. As for Pierre Landry, he would get what was coming to him some day, too—though Artie warned all those Cajuns carried knives. Burke had been lucky to end up in the bushes with a few scrapes and bruises instead of a cut throat or broken neck. For now, Burke Boylan had to let Pierre Landry go, but not forever.

  Chapter Four

  Twelfth Night came and the revels of Mardi Gras began somewhat marred by rainy weather. The year 1926 seemed determined to be as wet and dreary as 1925, but the festivities in the City that Care Forgot went unhindered. The parades marched on even if the flambeaux that lit the night events were difficult to ignite, and the mules that pulled the floats occasionally slipped in flooded streets. Even the death of Mayor Behrman did not stop the revels, and the mayor would have wanted it so, Roz observed.

  Rosamond collected enough silver charms from the King Cakes served at the numerous teas she attended to fill a bracelet. They promised her wealth and a husband, children and luck, but none guaranteed happiness. There were luncheons, of course, and balls. Many young men followed in her wake, though as the season progressed, these dwindled to Buster Boylan, Artie Delamare, and a few of their fraternity brothers who always seemed to cut out the others.

  As for Pierre Landry, Rosamond had seen him only once as she rode the streetcar to her college. Pierre had been riding a car passing the other way. She waved frantically, and he lifted a hand and smiled. They watched each other out of sight, but the whole incident possessed more the feel of a farewell than a greeting as they moved farther and farther apart.

  Roz continued to take a light schedule of classes at Newcomb. These resulted in the creation of one ugly pot and a knotted weaving. She knew more about Renaissance and Baroque artists than she ever wanted to know. The mystery, Rosamond felt, was how she could be so busy and so bored at the same time.

  Of course, she had no objections to the new dresses filling her room, and though the fittings bordered on tedium, Leda Hincks Plauché, the renowned costume designer, was creating her queen’s gown. Mama insisted the dress be white. When her daughter objected, saying rumor had it that the Queen of Rex would appear in gold lamé, Madame Plauché winked at Roz and promised that her cape would be covered in silver leaf and edged with ermine, every bit as fine and much more tasteful than anything Rex could offer. The crown would fit low over her head like a cloche hat and pearls dotted her dress. Her father intended to provide a diamond choker and two matching bracelets. Her outfit would be beyond compare.

  The never-ending argument cropped up again. “My crown would fit better if my hair were bobbed. Wouldn’t it look stunning if I could lighten the color just a little, Madame Plauché?”

  This time the grande dame of costume shook her head. “If the arrangement of your hair is a problem, you could always wear it down, Rosamond. That would be charming.”

  Win some, lose some. Roz conceded the battle.

  With the passing days, Rosamond felt herself becoming more and more the daughter her parents wanted and less and less Roz, the woman she wanted to be. The devil-may-care, caution-to-the-wind flapper sat on the sofa holding hands with Burke Boylan while he and her father talked about the latest boxing matches at the Holland House.

  In rare moments unchaperoned, she submitted to Buster’s crushing, unpracticed kisses and roving hands while wondering if she would feel less indifferent to Dr. Landry’s caresses. Her Aunt Harriet had considered some sexual experience essential to Rosamond’s education, providing the girl did not go all the way, and so Roz knew that the men of France, Spain and Italy could bring a woman to climax with their hands and tongues alone. Buster wanted to wring a response from her with bear hugs and rough squeezes.

  When she questioned her uncle about where Pierre Landry was and what he did, the answers were always “at the hospital” or “very busy.” Finally exasperated, Gilbert said, “You must know, Rosie, your parents do not want me to bring him here. Pierre knows his place in society, and you should assume yours.” Judging by her vanishing entourage, society assumed Rosamond St. Rochelle had become Boylan’s girl.

  As the frenzy of Mardi Gras day approached, the parades rolled day and night, and the elite danced at their bal masques late into the evening. On Saturday so as not to conflict with the balls of Comus and Rex, the Krewe of Hercules held its grand event at the Orpheum. Rosamond and her court sat in a box adjacent to the stage to view the carefully constructed tableaux of Great Masterpieces of Art.

  Slim young men in marbled tights, their faces and hair a stark grayish white, stood on columns and struck the poses of famous classical statues. Each was wheeled forward by attendant Greek slaves to be viewed by the audience. They were followed by the entire company of the Rembrandt’s Night Watch, who could walk off under their own power after striking the scene.

  A picture by Hieronymus Bosch full of grotesques and tiny devils drew the most laughter and applause until the pièce de résistance, Leda and the Swan. Full-feathered and wide of wing, the magnificent swan glided onto the stage to settle himself between the legs of a very voluptuous and Rubenesque Leda on her ornate couch. The rolls of white flesh, the prominent breasts in their gold halter, wild, tangled hair and twisted draperies must be disguising only one person—Willard Morrison—and the swan—who else but Artie Delamare? Rosamond applauded wildly as the swan, exhausted from impregnating Leda, rested his long neck on her alabaster thigh.

  The lights dimmed. A large golden egg rolled onto the stage. It cracked and expelled a dainty Helen and a gorgeous Pollux. Each carried away their half of the egg, and King Hercule, as the French called him, was revealed in all his glory: the paunchy middle-aged businessman well concealed beneath padded tights and a real lion skin, the head of which formed a mask over his eyes. A gilded beard hung down on the king’s chest concealing any lack of muscles. Behind him, small pages held up a purple cloak embroidered in gold with the Twelve Labors of Hercules. In one hand, the king held a scepter and in the other, a jeweled cup. He approached Rosamond, his Queen Hebe, on golden sandals and offered a toast. King Hercule beckoned his consort from her box.

  Rosamond, her attendants carrying her cape of silver leaf, crystal, and pearl edged in ermine, joined the king on the stage for the final procession. The magnificence of the cape far eclipsed her white dress with its handkerchief hem of
lace and droplets of pearl and crystal, but the diamonds her daddy provided caught the light and threw it back at the audience. Burke Boylan and Rosamond’s proud family rose and applauded with the rest as the court left the theater for a midnight dinner at one of the finest restaurants in the city. Rosamond had done as she was asked, and the rest of Mardi Gras belonged to her alone.

  Chapter Five

  Roz slept past noon as expected. She was finally rousted and convinced to dress by Roxanne who said Artie and Buster had arrived to take them walking in City Park and for an ice cream float if only her sister would get up and put on some clothes. Once more, Roz did something to please a member of her family.

  The sun had come out and coaxed the bedraggled mounds of azaleas to open their pink and purple blooms. Wearing tilted straw boaters, Buster and Roz, Artie and Roxanne relished the soft spring air as they walked arm-in-arm along the paths. They reached the Holland House and went inside by way of the ladies entrance. The promised sodas were ordered and served. Roz felt kindly toward Buster and Artie and relaxed in a way she hadn’t been for weeks. Her reign as Queen Hebe was over. She could be herself again. She hinted to Buster that she would rather have a Manhattan from the discreetly placed bar, but he kidded her out of it by saying, “Not in front of the children.” Both Roxanne and Artie made faces at them.

  Claiming she wanted nothing more than to sleep away Monday, Roz got them back to the mansion on Esplanade early. Roxie could call her a killjoy all she wanted; Rosamond St. Rochelle had other plans for the rest of Mardi Gras.

  Early on Lundi Gras, the Monday before the big celebration, she asked Clement to take her to visit her Uncle Gilbert. After all, he must be missing Aunt Harriet dreadfully. Harri had so loved Mardi Gras. Her attic was filled with trunks of costumes from years past, and in one corner stood her own queen’s gown on a dress form and covered with a muslin sheet. As a child, Roz had played for hours with the clothes in the attic, never particularly wanting to be the queen so much as a pirate or a soldier of the Great War. When she outgrew her tomboy days, her favorite disguise became the Spanish gypsy with its skirt of orange and yellow flounces and bright red blouse. If she deserved any divine reward for her good behavior the last six weeks, the costume would be right on top in the second trunk on the left.

  Her uncle, as she had figured, was attending to patients in plentiful supply after the pre-Mardi Gras weekend. Servants who had known Rosamond from early childhood saw nothing wrong in letting her rummage through the trunks in her Aunt Harriet’s attic and helping herself to some old stuff she put in a worn pillowcase to carry. Harriet St. Rochelle would never deny her favorite niece anything.

  Roz hid the sack in the dependency near the washtubs and across from the old privy the servants used. The house would be lightly staffed on Mardi Gras day since the family went out to dine elsewhere. What a snap to slip into her costume and be on the streets before the parade of Rex rolled if her mother accepted her excuse for staying home.

  Mardi Gras morning, Roz joined her family for a breakfast of early strawberries, fresh orange juice, dark coffee diluted with steamed milk, and hot beignets smothered in powdered sugar. Today, she could have devoured a dozen of the pillowy doughnuts and eaten ripe strawberries until the juice ran down her chin, but that would belie her story. She nibbled, sipped her coffee, and winced.

  After Papa left the table, Roz lowered her voice and told her mother, “Cramps. I’m afraid my monthly may be starting. If I spend the afternoon lying down, I might be able to attend the ball this evening.”

  “But, Rosamond, we have seats in the stands by the Boston Club. Don’t you want to see the queen of Rex in her gold lamé?”

  “I’ll see her at the ball. If Odette would bring a hot water bottle to my room, I’ll be fine. Have a good time without me.”

  When the front door closed behind her family, Roz tossed the hot water bottle aside and tiptoed quietly down the stairs, across the yard, and out to the dependency. She wore dark sheer stockings under her nightgown, shoes fit for dancing on her feet, and the Spanish shawl over her shoulders. In the cover of the old building, she traded her nightie for the gypsy’s red silk blouse. Without vest or binding, her breasts felt large and loose. She’d forgotten about the daringly low cut bodice of the costume.

  The tiered ruffles of the skirt that dragged on the floor when she was a child now hung barely below her knees. She wrapped a long orange scarf around her waist and knotted it over a hip. The silly yellow bloomers that went under the skirt, she pushed up all the way on her thighs.

  Wrapping her braids tightly around her head and pinning them in place, Roz settled a wig of real human hair over her own. The wig was dark, lustrous, and curly. Her aunt never scrimped on Mardi Gras accessories, and some Italian girl had probably been paid well to part with her tresses. Over the wig, Roz tied a bright bandana gypsy style.

  The bottom of the sack yielded a pile of cheap jewelry. Roz fished out a coin necklace, hoop earrings, and enough bangles to put four on each arm. Using a hand mirror, she painted her lips a deep carmine, and rouged her cheeks like a hootchy-kootchy dancer. She darkened her brows and eyelashes, and for the finishing touch slid on the black half mask. Swinging her Spanish shawl over her shoulders, Rosamond St. Rochelle stepped out into the alley where deliveries were made and the rag-and-bone man drove his horse and cart to pick up discards and began her Mardi Gras celebration. Oh, the freedom!

  She joined the crowds on Chartres Street, accepted a drink from a sailor’s bottle, but twirled away when he tried to grab her waist. She jumped aside when a car full of prostitutes dressed in tuxedos and smoking cigars barreled down the narrow street. They swigged from their own bottle and called to passing women, “Hey, hot Mama!” doing a fairly good imitation of their customers. From a balcony, a fat man tossed her a necklace of tawdry glass jewels. Roz hung it around her neck.

  On a cross street, she intercepted the two palmetto-covered floats of the Zulu Parade with its Negro men dressed in blackface, their eyes and lips ringed in white, making a daring loop into the French Quarter. Their mules pulled up in front of an Italian eatery.

  “I say, I say, King Zulu gots a big thirst, a mighty thirst. Who can slake this thirst of mine!” King Zulu, with his crown of gold paper and mantle of purple velvet, pointed his scepter, a large zucchini, at the good natured proprietor who looked both ways before handing up a raffia-covered jug of cheap red wine. King Zulu drank deeply, then passed the jug around the float. “Witch doctor, give that man one o’ my special signed coconuts, then get these mules headed back to niggah town. King Zulu gots places to be.”

  The witch doctor in his grass skirt and horned headdress flipped the man a coconut. Looking directly at Roz, he held up a coconut carved like a hideous monkey. “Show me yo’ coconuts, I throw you mine, hot Mama!” he challenged boldly, probably taking her for a whore trolling alone for business. Instead, Roz turned her back, flipped up her skirt showing off her absurd ruffled panties and the rolled tops of her stockings.

  “Good ’nuf. Here it come.”

  Roz caught it two-handed and swung along the street holding the coconut by its fibers like a trophy taken by a headhunter. On any other day, the exchange would never have happened, but this was Mardi Gras, and the black man could be a Zulu warrior, and Rosamond St. Rochelle could be anyone she wanted to be.

  Ravenous after her small breakfast, she bought a nickel hot dog from a vendor and wolfed it down. She broke out of the Quarter onto Canal Street and moved among the revelers until she came to an old Negro strumming a battered guitar for change.

  “I’ll trade you this coconut for a Spanish tune, good sir,” she offered.

  “Well,” he scratched his head, “I’m guessin’ I could crack it and eat it. Sho’, a Spanish tune, lez see.”

  The song he plucked from the old guitar was no fandango, but it had enough rhythm to pass for a dance tune. Rosamond twirled in her ruffled skirts and swung her Spanish shawl out behind her. Her breasts bobbed loo
se beneath the red silk blouse, and passersby, mostly male, threw nickles and pennies in the old man’s case.

  “You sho’ good for business, honey. Keep it up.”

  Roz caught more necklaces tossed her way and draped them around her neck. She danced until she was breathless and dizzy, staggering with joy, not liquor.

  Then, she saw him on the edge of the crowd watching her performance. He was dressed as Zorro in tight black trousers and a loose black shirt unbuttoned far enough to show a patch of dark chest hair. He wore the required cape and sword, and a black cloth mask pulled over his hair and half his face. His mustache was real, thicker now and longer at the sides than Roz remembered, but just as silky. She twirled his way, the crowd parting before her, until she collapsed against his chest.

  “Buy a poor gypsy girl a drink, Senor Zorro?”

  If he hadn’t recognized her before, he knew her voice. He hadn’t forgotten that or the softness of her lips, the boldness of their one kiss. “Certainly, Senorita. I know a place.”

  Arm around her waist, he drew her back into the Quarter. They entered a gumbo shop where customers sat before steaming bowls and side orders of potato salad and drank hot coffee or lemonade. Masks hung temporarily on the back of chairs as the people ate.

  “Lemonade wasn’t what I had in mind, Senor.”

  “Me neither, Senorita.”

  He scratched on a dingy door in the dim back of the shop. A peephole opened and then the door. A blast of music and the smell of gin and whiskey spilled out as the revelers slipped inside. They took seats at a corner table and tried to talk over the noise of a three-piece band with a trumpeter, a bass player, and a clarinetist blasting out a hot jazz tune. On the tiny dance floor, a lone flapper did the Black Bottom to the applause from a table of drunken seamen.

  Weaving her way between the closely packed tables, a waitress in a black leotard and pink tutu came to take their orders. She drew a pencil from her red hair drawn up on top of her head in a dancer’s bun and said, “What you drinkin’?”