Queen of the Mardi Gras Ball

by Lynn Shurr

  Roz stared down at the ring. “It’s lovely,” she said. A large diamond shone in the center of a most fashionable art deco setting. Smaller stones were channeled along the band and around the geometric design. Her girlfriends chanted, “Answer him, answer him!” She could see her father bursting with approval and her mother gloating over her snagging Genevieve Renard Boylan’s son.

  Finally, Roz looked at Buster. “I suppose I must marry you, Burke Boylan. Everyone thinks it’s the thing to do.”

  She gave him a small smile, and he returned it with one of his big, smothering kisses. On cue, Artie went into the parlor and struck up the Wedding March on the piano. The newly engaged couple was pushed apart by the surge of young women who wanted to see the ring up close. Burke went to hulk by the piano where Roz’s little sister languished over his friend who had sworn to play only love ballads for the rest of the afternoon.

  “That’s over with. For a minute there, I thought she was actually going to turn me down after I went to all the trouble to humble myself before Father to get the money for that ring. Now, I just have to get the St. Rochelles to set a date fairly soon, and I’ll be living in clover.”

  “You’ll be an old married man with a wife you probably can’t handle,” Artie joked.

  “There’s no one I can’t handle.” Burke gave Artie a shove from the piano bench that landed him on the floor in mid-stanza.

  Roxie glared at her sister’s fiancé. “I don’t like you, Buster.”

  “Then, it’s a good thing you’re not the one I’m marrying, brat.” Burke yanked her pigtails hard enough to smart and took himself off to the smoking room.

  ****

  When the guests had gone and only family remained, the engaged couple sat with the bride’s parents to discuss the wedding date. Burke pushed for June when he would most likely have passed his bar exams and be ready to set up a practice.

  “As I promised you, sir, I’m staying right here in the Crescent City. I won’t be carrying your daughter off to Philly,” Buster swore.

  “There’s a lot of work the bank can send your way, son. With business booming, mortgage closures alone could make you rich. I’ll see to it.”

  Emmaline, however, objected to a date only two months off. “People will think, well, they will think you had to marry in haste. That won’t do. July and August are much too hot for festivities, and the best people will be at their summer homes. Perhaps, October at the earliest. The weather is usually very pleasant then, but that gives us only six months to plan.”

  “The first week in September. I won’t wait any longer to make Rosie my bride. The way I feel, accidents could happen. We might even have to elope.”

  Madame St. Rochelle seemed horrified. Her husband assured her, “He’s joking, my dear, but I don’t see why they shouldn’t marry in September. We could have the reception at the Jung. It’s air-conditioned, you know, and very elegant.”

  “Yes, the Jung might do. If I engage Madame Plauché immediately to design the wedding dress, we might have enough time. Wouldn’t it be fine to use your queen’s cape as an altar cloth, Rosamond? I must speak to the priest at the cathedral tomorrow about reserving a date.”

  “Whatever you think would be right, Mama.” Rosamond put her hand in Burke’s, and he gave it a crushing squeeze.

  Chapter Seven

  If the engagement was any proof, then marriage to Buster Boylan would be one long party. At first, he visited his intended mostly on weekends, always being there for Sunday dinner. With Burke cramming for the bar exam and Rosamond completing her year of college, this might be expected. Everyone agreed Roz had no need to take classes in the fall. She would be setting up a household and, God willing, starting a family.

  When Buster passed the bar, they held the celebration at the mansion on Esplanade where Artie Delamare rejoiced almost as hard at having failed the test. If Burke drank too much and got a little rowdy, so did most young men. When Madame St. Rochelle caught him pressing Rosamond against a wall while he ran his hand up her dress and fondled her bosom, she turned aside and pretended not to see. They were an engaged couple after all. Times had changed, perhaps too much, since the days of her courtship. Petting—she thought they called it petting.

  Roz allowed Buster to run his thick fingers over her thighs and squeeze her breasts when alone or at least secluded. Other men had touched her in the same places. If American men were ham-handed, so be it. Wishing for a lighter touch would do no good. She was going to marry Buster.

  Her father saw to it that Burke attained a position in one of the finest law firms in the Crescent City and sent a steady stream of bank business his way. This work did not fill Buster’s days or impede his pleasures. Any afternoon, he might show up at the Esplanade house in the roaring white Mercedes Model K with its nickel-plated exhaust pipes and 6.2-liter engine with supercharger that he purchased with the monetary gift his father sent when his son became an attorney-at-law. Snaring Rosamond St. Rochelle and becoming a lawyer like the old man opened the Philadelphia moneybags wide.

  He came to collect Rosamond and stuff Artie and sometimes, Roxie, if she begged hard enough, into the rear seat, and they’d be off to the beach and amusement park at Spanish Fort. The ladies much admired Buster in his trunks and sleeveless striped tank top that spanned across his chest even though he burned a lobster red.

  “You got a real Johnny Weissmuller there, dearie. Ain’t you lucky?” remarked a young woman with her bob covered by a bathing cap and her tiny waist accented by her belted bathing outfit. Kicking her shapely gams over the edge of the swimming pier, the flirt fluttered her eyelashes at Buster.

  Buster enjoyed being compared to the five-time Olympic medal winner and famous swimmer. He yanked the sisters under water by their long single braids, and pushed Artie down until he turned blue in the face while his admirer giggled. Roxanne, however, surfaced angry and launched herself on to Boylan’s red shoulders.

  “Let Artie up! You’re hurting him.”

  Burke flopped backwards pushing Roxie toward the lake bottom with the weight of his body, but Artie surfaced spluttering and gasping for air. Roz ducked under and came up hugging her sister while Buster stood examining the white marks Roxie made in his sunburn.

  “See if I ever bring you to the beach again, you vicious brat,” he told the child.

  Artie gave Roxanne a hug. “Well, you may be a vicious brat to Buster, but you’re a heroine to me, kid. Roz, I tell you, you don’t have to marry this lug. There are plenty of other men on the beach.” When he noticed Burke’s glare, Artie flexed his own puny muscles into a strongman’s pose. “Like me,” making the bathing party and the flirt on the pier laugh.

  “Honey,” the floozy said, “if you’re in over your head, I’ll take the big one off your hands.” Burke preened.

  Because Buster enjoyed playing games of strength in the arcade and winning an armload of Kewpie dolls, Teddy bears, and cheap, beaded lamps for Rosamond by ringing a bell with a sledgehammer or knocking over wooden bottles with a hard-thrown ball, they spent hours at such amusements along with the rides offered at the park. A small bribe to the operator was good for getting the couple stuck at the top of the Ferris Wheel for a few minutes of necking while Roxie and Artie waited impatiently below to move on to the next ride.

  They played tennis in the early morning before the temperatures became unbearable on the courts at Audubon Park. Once the sun went down, they took trips to the flickers to be scared by the likes of Dracula or the Phantom of the Opera from the safety of a theater seat. Buster would punch the air afterwards and tell his Rosie that is what he would do to any monsters that tried to molest her. When Roz asked if he never felt pity for the creatures of the dark, Burke put back his head and laughed at her.

  On an evening cruise on Lake Ponchartrain aboard the Camellia while the great King Oliver jazz band played, Artie turned his date over to Burke for a dance. He asked Roz if she wanted to shake a leg, but she said she’d rather get some air out
on the deck. Artie followed her.

  “Roz, I’ve been wanting to say something. You know, I wasn’t joking that day at Spanish Fort. Buster has a mean streak, and I got the bruises to prove it. I kind of regret introducing you two on Christmas Eve. We’d been drinking, you see.”

  “Do tell, Artie Delamare.”

  “No, really. I’m not kidding now either. Something happened back in Philly. I don’t know what, but it got Boylan sent down here to his mama’s people for law school. I know they told him to straighten up and settle down if he wanted to get back in his family’s good graces. Of course, he moved right into the frat house, but the Renards keep an eye on him and report back. So I’m saying, maybe you should find out what happened up north, and get yourself another man to marry.”

  “Why, are you proposing, Artie?” Roz teased.

  “No joke, Roz. I worry about you.”

  “Thanks, Artie, but this girl can take care of herself. I’ve gone too far to back out now. Mama would die if I broke it off. Probably, Papa, too.”

  Artie looked over his shoulder, as he did frequently when around Boylan, and saw Buster coming their way. “Okay, my conscience is clear. Be careful, Roz. Burke, old buddy, are you ready to trade back?”

  “Yeah, mine’s prettier. That dog you brought is back at the table. She says I tread on her feet. Come on Rosie.” Buster reclaimed his fiancée by jerking her into his arms and laying on one of his rough kisses.

  The amusing pastimes continued with day sails across the water to Mandeville and Milneburg to visit friends at their summer cottages. Meanwhile, Madame St. Rochelle complained endlessly about having to stay in the sweltering heat of the city during the summer in order to bring off a wedding the first week in September when she would so much rather be taking in the Gulf breezes at the Pass or Biloxi. Playing the martyr, Madame continued to bend florists, caterers, and hotel managers to her will in order to create an event that would leave Genevieve Renard Boylan speechless.

  A polio scare closed the beaches and chased them from the water in late August. With the wedding only two weeks off, Roz felt oppressed by the relentless heat and humidity that sent her to her room to change two or three times a day. She spent hours laying in her skivvies beneath the ceiling fan in her darkened room trying not to think about the wedding approaching as inevitably as autumn. That’s where she hid from her future on the afternoon when giggles and commotion filled the house. She didn’t have the energy to rise and see what went on until Odette came to tell her guests had arrived.

  “Tell them I have a sick headache. Tell them I have my monthlies. Tell them to go away, would you, Odette?”

  “Can’t do that, Miss. Let me help you put on a party dress and fix yo’ hair up nice. They’s waitin’.”

  “Oh, no! A surprise shower. Why won’t Mama simply leave me alone? It’s not enough that I have to be dragged to final fittings for the trousseau all week, now this.”

  “It yo’ time of the month, honey? Still, you got to get up and go. Peoples is waitin’, and you been raised with better manners than that.”

  Two more weeks of this, and she’d be a married woman who could do as she pleased. At least, something good would come of all this fuss. She put on her best smile and her lightest cotton frock and descended the staircase into the flurry of guests, declaring herself totally caught unawares.

  Knowing full well that no St. Rochelle would need a set of pots and pans, her friends gifted Roz with fine linens, some naughty black lace lingerie from Hazel DuLac—known to be a little fast—and a pair of the best vases the Newcomb kilns had turned out that week presented by her old college friends. The most beautiful object of all, a perfume bottle in a Tiffany box, came all the way from Philadelphia sent by her future motherin-law. Of weighty Favrile Glass, its sides appeared to be adorned with iridescent peacock feathers. Of all the gifts, this was her favorite.

  The company of women settled around the parlor with refreshments of tiny rolls filled with shaved ham, pastel bonbons, and cups of fruit punch made slushy with shaved ice. Several of the girls had gotten engaged since Mardi Gras, and the talk was all of wedding preparations and honeymoon plans that went on and on until Roz thought her head would split with the agony of listening.

  Burke arrived brandishing steamer tickets as the party ended. “We take the train to Philly with my family, then the liner to Paris, two weeks in Gay Paree, then home the same way.”

  Several of the girls squealed with envy, but Rosamond’s lack of appreciation rubbed him the wrong way. Buster squeezed her shoulder beneath the sheer fabric of her dress hard enough to cause some pain. “What’s the matter with you, Rosie? I thought you’d be excited about a month long honeymoon, just you and me.”

  “I am, Buster. My head hurts, and,” she said in a whisper, “it might be that time of the month. I think I need a week to myself.”

  Buster dropped his hand. “Okay. We won’t have to worry about that mess on our wedding night. I hope you show a little more enthusiasm then.”

  He went to find Laurence in the smoking room. Women were good for only two things, sex and babies. Otherwise, they were just too much work.

  Chapter Eight

  By seven p.m. on the first Friday in September, the wedding guests sat in the echoing vastness of St. Louis Cathedral. The sun had yet to sink below the levee, and the air remained as stifling as if it were still August. The humidity hovered at ninety-eight percent, just shy of a full rainfall. Sweat trickled between Rosamond St. Rochelle’s shoulder blades as her bridesmaids fussed, arranging the lace panels of her train and a tulle veil of equal length just so. The lace brow band holding the veil in place seemed to be pressing into her forehead, aggravating the headache that none of Uncle Gilbert’s powders could cure. The bouquet of three-dozen ivory roses, accented with fern and trailing ivy arranged in a cascade covering her from waist to pointed hemline just below the knees, hung heavy in her hands.

  One by one, her maids, every one of whom had served in her Mardi Gras court, walked down the aisle until only Roxie and her father remained. Roxanne kissed her sister’s pale cheek. “Good luck, Sis. When I marry Artie, I want you to be in my wedding.”

  That made Roz smile. She watched her feisty sister, who had fought with Mama for the privilege of being in the wedding party, practically skip toward the altar.

  Papa took her arm. “Steady now,” he said when she faltered. “This will all be over soon, and we can go enjoy the wonderful reception your mother has planned at the Jung Hotel.”

  They made their way toward the priest standing before the altar covered with her silver queen’s cape. Buster stood to one side, massive in his evening clothes, and grinning like a victor in the decathlon. On the end of the line of groomsmen, Artie Delamare twitched nervously. As Roz passed the front row where the Boylans sat, she felt Genevieve Renard Boylan, once queen of Rex and still handsome of form and cold of eye, measuring her every step.

  Because her mother would have nothing less, the priest began a full nuptial mass that would end in a communion for three-hundred people if they wished to partake. With the long periods of standing and kneeling, Roz went faint twice, but Buster refused to let her fall. He pinched the tender skin under her arm each time he pulled her upright to make sure his bride stayed alert. She repeated her vows by rote, and when she failed to say the “I do” promptly, got an elbow in the ribs from her groom. As for Burke, he bellowed out his promises and sealed them with one of his signature rough kisses. He gained applause for his manly eagerness.

  Papa was right, of course. Once she left the cathedral and went on her way to the fabulous new Jung Hotel with its travertine walls and indoor fountain, the bride revived. Her rise in spirits might have had something to do with the flask Hazel DuLac produced from its place in her garter and passed around generously, declaring she’d never been so dry for so long. Good old Hazel, ever the life of the party. Most of the guests brought their own additives to perk up the reception punch.

  If the
band chosen by her mother played tepidly, the menu at least displayed excellence, from the chilled vichyssoise to the Lady Baltimore cake. The wedding party partook of the feast after the official photographs culminating with the bride and groom formally posed between two large potted palms.

  With the lace train detached from her dress and flowing veil removed from her headband, Roz was free to dance, beginning with her heavy-footed husband, then with other men who crowded in for a spin around the ballroom with the bride. Buster had no objections tonight. He used his time slipping out of the ballroom and stumbling back in ever more red-faced and clumsy.

  Gilbert St. Rochelle took his favorite niece in his arms and waltzed her to the far side of the ballroom. “Little Rosie, a married woman. I wish your Aunt Harriet could see you now.”

  “What would she say?”

  “Probably that you should have finished college and seen more of the world first. Before I forget, Pierre Landry sent a gift, good of him since he wasn’t invited to the wedding.”

  They paused on the edge of the dance floor by the potted palms. Gilbert took a small, oblong box from his jacket pocket and weighed it in his hand. “My guess is a silver cigarette box. He said to open it when you are alone. I gather you aren’t to share it with Buster. Perhaps, he had it engraved with some lovelorn phrase.”

  “Pierre is against smoking, and the last time I saw him, he gave the impression he could live without me. Here.” Roz turned her back and secured the box to her leg with one of her two new blue garters. “If anyone notices, they’ll think it’s a flask. I do hope it’s not more silver. Mama has scads of it on display at the house already.”

  “You’ll have servants to polish it, never fear. If you had taken up with Pierre that might not be the case.”