Ruby

  "Close your eyes and lean over so the smoke touches your face," she prescribed. I did so. After a moment, she said,

  "Okay, good." Then she took the jar from me and smothered the fire. "Now you'll be fine. It's good you do what I say and don't laugh at me.

  "But I remember you said your grandmere was a Traiteur woman, right?"

  "Yes."

  "That's good for you, but remember," she warned, "the evil spirits look to go into holy folk first. That is more of a victory." I nodded.

  "Has anyone else ever heard sobbing upstairs, Nina?" I asked.

  "It is no good to talk about it. Speak of the devil and he'll come through your door smiling and smoking a long, thin black cigar.

  "Now we go back. Madame will come down soon for her breakfast," she told me.

  I followed her out again and sure enough, when I re-entered the dining room, I found Daphne dressed and seated at the table.

  "Did you have your breakfast?" she asked.

  "Yes."

  "Where's Gisselle?"

  "I guess she's still upstairs," I said. Daphne grimaced.

  "This is ridiculous. Why isn't she up and about like the rest of us?" she said, even though she had just risen herself. "Go up and tell her I want her down here immediately, please."

  "Yes, madame," I said and hurried up the stairs. I knocked softly on Gisselle's door and then opened it to find her on her side, still asleep and still dressed in the clothes she had worn last night.

  "Gisselle, Daphne wants you to wake up and come down," I said, but she didn't move. "Gisselle." I nudged her shoulder. She moaned and turned over, quickly closing her eyes again. "Gisselle."

  "Go away," she cried.

  "Daphne wants you to--"

  "Leave me alone. I feel horrible. My head is killing me and my stomach feels raw inside."

  "I told you this would happen. You drank too much too fast," I said.

  "Goody for you," she said, her eyes still shut tight.

  What should I tell Daphne?" She didn't respond. "Gisselle?"

  "I don't care. Tell her I died," she said, and pulled the pillow over her head. I stared at her for a moment and saw she wasn't going to budge.

  Daphne didn't like my report.

  "What do you mean she won't get up?" She slapped the coffee cup down so hard on the saucer, I thought it would shatter. "What did you two do last night?" she demanded, her eyes burning with suspicion.

  "We just . . . talked to Beau and his friend Martin," I said. "Out by the pool"

  "Just talked?"

  "Yes, ma'am."

  "Call me Mother or call me Daphne, but don't call me ma'am. It makes me sound years older than I am," she snapped.

  "I'm sorry.. . Mother."

  She stared at me furiously a moment and then got up and marched out of the dining room, leaving me standing there with my heart thumping. I didn't lie exactly, I thought. I just didn't tell the whole truth, but if I had, I would have gotten Gisselle into trouble. Even so, I felt bad about it. I wasn't happy about being sneaky and deceptive. Daphne was so upset she pounded her way upstairs.

  I wondered what I should do and decided to go to the library to pick out a book and spend the day reading until my art instructor arrived. I was flipping through the pages of a book when I heard Daphne scream from the top of the stairs.

  "Ruby!"

  I put the book back and hurried to the doorway. "RUBY!"

  "Yes?"

  "Get up here this instant," she demanded.

  Oh, no, I thought, she's discovered Gisselle's condition and wants to hear the whole story. What was I going to do? How would I protect Gisselle and not lie? When I reached the top of the stairway, I looked across the hallway and saw that the door to my room was wide open and Daphne was standing in my room and not in Gisselle's. I approached slowly.

  "Get in here," she commanded. I stepped through the doorway. She was standing with her arms folded tightly under her bosom, her back straight, and her shoulders up. The skin around her chin was so taut, it looked like it might tear. "I know why Gisselle can't get up," she said. "You two were just talking last night?"

  I didn't reply.

  "Humph," she said, and then extended her right arm and pointed at my closet. "What is that in your closet on the floor? What is it?" she shrieked when I didn't respond quickly enough.

  "A bottle of rum."

  "A bottle of rum," she said, nodding, "that you took from our liquor cabinet."

  I looked up quickly and started to shake my head.

  "Don't deny it. Gisselle has confessed everything. . . how you talked her into taking the rum outside and showed her how to mix it with Coke."

  My mouth gaped open.

  "What else went on? What did you do with Martin Fowler?" she demanded.

  "Nothing," I said. Her eyes grew smaller and she kept nodding as if she heard a string of sentences in her own mind that confirmed some horrible suspicions.

  "I told Pierre last night that you had different values, that you grew up in a world so unlike ours, it would be difficult, if not next to impossible, and I told him you could corrupt Gisselle and influence her more than she would influence you. Don't try to deny anything," she snapped when my lips opened. "I was a young girl once. I know the temptations and how easy it is for someone to influence you and get you to do forbidden things."

  She shook her head at me.

  "And after we were so nice to you, welcoming you into our home, accepting you, with me devoting so much of my time to setting you up properly. . why is it you people have no sense of decency, no sense of responsibility? Is it in your blood?"

  "That's not true. None of this is true," I wailed.

  "Please," she said, closing and opening her eyes. "You're cunning. You've been brought up to be shrewd, just like gypsies. Now take this bottle of rum back down to the liquor cabinet."

  "I don't even know where that is," I said.

  "I'm not going to waste any more of my time on this. It's upset my breakfast and my day as it is. Do it and don't ever do this again. Your father will hear about this, I assure you," she added, and marched past me.

  The tears that were burning behind my eyelids broke free and zigzagged down my cheeks to my chin. I went to the closet and picked up the basket. Then / went next door, barging into Gisselle's room. She was taking a shower and singing. I stomped into the bathroom and screamed at her through the glass door.

  "What?" she back, pretending she couldn't hear me. "What?"

  "How could you lie and put the blame on me?"

  "Wait a minute," she cried, and rinsed her hair before shutting off the water. "Hand me my towel, please," she said. I put the basket down on the counter and got her her towel. "Now, what is it?"

  "You told Daphne I was the one who took the bottle of rum," I said. "How could you?"

  "Oh, I had to, Ruby. Please don't be mad. I got into trouble about a month ago when I came home very late with whiskey on my breath. I was almost grounded then. She surely would have grounded me now."

  "But you blamed me! Now she thinks terrible things about me!"

  "You've just arrived. Daddy is still infatuated with you. You can afford to be blamed a little. They won't do anything to you," she explained. "I'm sorry," she said, scrubbing her hair with the towel. "I couldn't think of anything else to do and it worked. It got her off my back."

  I sighed.

  "We're sisters," she said, smiling. "We've got to help each other out sometimes."

  "Not like this, Gisselle, not by lying," I protested.

  "Of course by lying. How else? They're just little lies anyway," she said. I looked up sharply. That was just the way Daphne had put things too, little lies. Was this the foundation upon which the Dumas built their happiness and contentment: little lies?

  "Don't worry," she said, "I'll smooth it out with Daddy if he seems too upset with you. I'll make it seem as if I encouraged you to encourage me and he'll just be so confused, he won't do anything to either of us. I've don
e that sort of thing before," she confessed with an oily and evil smile.

  "Relax," she said, wrapping her towel around her nude body. "After you have your art lesson, we'll meet Beau and Martin and go down to the French Quarter. We'll have fun, I promise."

  "But. . . what am I to do with this? I don't know where the liquor cabinet is."

  "It's in the study. I'll show you," she said. "Come help me pick out something to wear."

  I shook my head and sighed.

  "What a morning this has been already. I told Nina about the sobbing I heard and she hurried me off into her room to burn brimstone and then this?'

  "The sobbing?"

  "Yes," I said, following her out to her closet. "I thought it came from the room that was Jean's."

  "Oh," she said as if it were nothing.

  "Have you heard it, too?"

  "Of course I have," she said. "What about this skirt?" she asked, plucking one off its hanger and holding it against her. "It's not as short as your skirts, but I like the way it fits my hips. And so does Beau," she added, smiling licentiously.

  "It's nice. What do you mean, of course you have heard the sobbing? Why of course?"

  "Because it's something Daddy often does."

  "What? What does he do?"

  "He goes into Uncle Jean's room and cries about him. He's done that for . . . for as long as I can remember. He just can't accept the accident and the way things are."

  "But he told me no one was crying in there," I said.

  "He doesn't like anyone to know. We all pretend it doesn't happen," she explained. I shook my head sadly.

  "It was tragic," I said. "He told me about it. Jean sounded like such a wonderful person, and to die that young with everything ahead of you--"

  "Die? What do you mean, die? Did he say Uncle Jean died?"

  "What? Well, I just . . . he said he was struck by the mast of the sailboat and. ." I thought for a moment, recalling the details. "And he became a vegetable, but I just assumed he meant . . ."

  "Oh, no," she said. "He's not dead?'

  "He's not? Well, what happened to him then?"

  "He's a vegetable, but he's still quite goodlooking. He just walks around without a thought in his head and looks at everyone and everything as though he never saw them or remembered them."

  "Where is he?"

  "In an institution outside of the city. We only see him once a year, on his birthday. At least, that's all I see him. Daddy might go more often. Mother never goes," she said. "How about this blouse?"

  She held it up but I was looking right through it. I waited as she put it on.

  "Why aren't there any pictures of Jean around?" I asked.

  "Will you stop talking about it? Daddy can't stand it normally. I'm surprised he told you anything. There are no pictures because it's too painful for Daddy," she said. "Now, for the last time, what about this blouse?" She turned to look at herself in the mirror.

  "It's very nice," I said.

  "Oh, I hate that word," she cried. "Nice. Is it sexy?" I looked at it seriously this time.

  "You forgot to put on your bra," I said.

  She smiled. "I didn't forget. A lot of girls are doing that these days."

  "They are?"

  "Of course. Boy, do you have a lot to learn. Lucky you got out of the swamps," she added.

  But right now, I wasn't so sure I was so lucky.

  15

  A Tour of Storyville

  .

  I sat with Gisselle on the patio and ate some

  lunch while she nibbled at her breakfast, complaining how sore her stomach still was from all the vomiting she had done last night. She blamed everyone but herself.

  "Beau should have stopped me from drinking too much. I was so busy making sure everyone else had a good time, I didn't notice," she claimed.

  "I warned you before we began," I reminded her. She smirked.

  "It's never done this to me before," she said, but she grimaced in agony.

  She had to wear her wide, thick sunglasses because the tiniest light sent ripples of pain up and down her forehead. She had dabbed gobs of rouge on her cheeks and painted her lips thick with lipstick once she saw how pale and wan her complexion was.

  The long gray clouds that had made most of the morning dreary had come apart on the journey from one horizon to the other, and a soft sea of blue appeared to accompany the sunshine that rained down upon us to brighten the blossoms of the magnolias and camellias. The blue jays skittered from branch to branch with more spirit and energy, their songs more melodious.

  In such a warm, beautiful setting, it was hard to feel unhappy or discouraged, but I couldn't keep the dark foreboding from inching its way into my thoughts. It moved slowly but surely like the shadow of a cloud. Daphne was very disappointed in me. Soon my father would be too, and Gisselle thought it was good for us to lie to both Daphne and him. I felt like going to Nina to ask her to find me a magical solution, some powder or enchanted bone to erase the bad things that had happened.

  "Stop sitting there and pouting," Gisselle ordered. "You worry too much."

  "Daphne is furious at me, thanks to you," I replied. "And soon Daddy will be, too."

  "Why do you keep calling her Daphne? Don't you want to call her Mother?" she wondered. I shifted my gaze away from her and shrugged.

  "Of course I do. It's just . . hard right now. Both of our parents seem like strangers to me. I haven't been living here all my life," I replied, and looked at her. She chewed on my answer as she chewed on her croissant and jam.

  "You just called Daddy, Daddy," she said. "Why should that be easier?"

  "I don't know," I said quickly, and dropped my gaze so she couldn't see the dishonesty. I couldn't stand living with all this deception. Somehow, someday, it was bound to make our lives more miserable. I felt certain of that.

  Gisselle sipped her coffee but continued to stare at me as she chewed lazily.

  "What?" I asked, anticipating some question or suspicion.

  "What did you do with Beau in the cabana before I came back and knocked on the door?" she demanded. I couldn't help but flush red. Her voice was filled with accusation.

  "Nothing. It was Beau's little joke in response to what you did. We just. . . stood there and talked."

  "In the dark, Beau Andreas just stood there and talked?" she asked, a wry smile on her face.

  "Yes."

  "You're not a good liar, sister dear. I'll have to give you lessons."

  "That's not something I want to excel at doing," I responded.

  "You will. Especially if you want to live in this house," she said nonchalantly.

  Before I could reply, Edgar stepped through the French doors and approached us.

  "What is it, Edgar?" Gisselle asked petulantly. Because of her hangover, every little noise, every little interruption annoyed her this morning.

  "Monsieur Dumas has arrived. He and Madame Dumas want to see you both in the study," he said.

  "Tell them we'll be there in a moment. I'm just finishing my croissant," she said, and turned her back on him.

  Edgar threw a glance my way, his eyes showing his unhappiness at Gisselle's tone of voice. I smiled at him and his expression softened.

  "Very good, mademoiselle," he said.

  "Edgar is such a stuffed shirt. He creeps around the house as if he owns if and everything in it," Gisselle complained. "If I put a vase on a table, he'll return it to where it was originally. Once, I changed all the pictures around in the living room just to annoy him. The next day, they were all back in their original places. He's memorized where everything belongs, down to a glass ashtray. If you don't believe me, try moving something."

  "I'm sure he's just taking pride in things and how well they're kept," I said. She shook her head and gobbled down her last piece of croissant.

  "Let's go get this over with," she declared, and stood up. As we approached the study, we could hear Daphne complaining.

  "Whenever I ask you to come home for
lunch or meet me somewhere for lunch, you always have an excuse. You're always too busy to interrupt your precious workday. But all of a sudden, you have all this time to spare to arrange for an art instructor for your Cajun daughter," she decried.

  Gisselle smiled at me and grabbed my arm to pull me back so we would delay our entrance.

  "This is good. I love it when they have a spat," she whispered excitedly. Not only didn't I want to be an eavesdropper, but I was afraid they would say something to reveal the whole truth.

  "I always try to make myself available for you, Daphne. If I can't, it's because of something that can't be helped. And as for corning home today, I thought in light of the circumstances, I had to do something special for her," my father protested.

  "Do something special for her in light of the circumstances? What about my circumstances? Why can't you do something special for me? You used to think I was someone special," Daphne retorted.

  "I do," he protested.

  "But not as special as your Cajun princess apparently. Well, what do you think now after I told you what happened?"

  "I'm disappointed of course," he said. "I'm quite surprised." It broke my heart to hear his voice so full of disillusionment, but Gisselle's smile widened with glee.

  "Well, I'm not," Daphne emphasized. "I warned you, didn't I?"

  "Gisselle," I whispered. "I've got to tell--"

  "Come on," she said quickly, and pulled me forward to enter the study. Daphne and our father turned promptly to face us. I could have burst into tears at the sight of his sad and disappointed face. He sighed deeply.

  "Sit down, girls," he said, and nodded toward one of the leather sofas. Gisselle moved instantly and I followed, but sat away from her, practically at the other end. Our father stared at us a moment with his hands behind his back and then glanced at Daphne, who pulled her head up and folded her arms under her bosom expectantly. My father turned to me.

  "Daphne has told me what happened here last night and what she found in your room. I don't mind either of you having wine at dinner, but sneaking hard liquor and drinking it with boys. . ."

  I flashed a look at Gisselle who looked down at her hands in her lap.

  "It's not the way young women of character behave. Gisselle," he said, turning to her. "You shouldn't have permitted this to happen."