Tarnished Gold

  Mama and Daddy weren't home when I returned, which made it easier for me. I didn't like lying to Mama, but I had a story already prepared. I was long in bed and even asleep when they came home. I woke to the sounds of Daddy's laughter and Mama telling him to hush up. He knocked into a chair and Mama chastised him again. Then she helped him up the stairs and into bed. I heard her come to my doorway and sensed she was standing there awhile, but I pretended to be asleep.

  Daddy slept late the next morning. When I went down to breakfast, Mama was up, sitting at the table, her hands cupped around a mug of steaming coffee. She gazed into the dark liquid as if it were a crystal ball.

  "Morning, Mama," I said, and shifted my eyes quickly to avoid her penetrating gaze when she raised her head. It was as good as a confession. She waited for me to get some coffee and a biscuit before she spoke.

  "You went out after your daddy and me left last night, didn't you, Gabriel?"

  "Yes, Mama."

  "Where did you go?"

  "Just for a walk and then a short ride in the pirogue," I said. I put some jam on my biscuit.

  "You met that man someplace, didn't you, Gabriel?" she asked directly. My heart stopped and then fluttered. "You can't lie to me, Gabriel. It's written in your face."

  "Oui, Mama," I confessed. She was right: Keeping the truth from Mama was like trying to hold back a twister.

  "Oh, honey," she moaned. "After what you've been through, you've suffered, to go and start with another married man."

  "We love each other, Mama. It's different and it's not like anything I've ever felt before," I protested.

  "How would you know?" she asked with a stern face. "You've never really had a boyfriend."

  "It can't be this good with anyone else."

  "Of course it can. You're just feeling your first real excitement, and with a very sophisticated, rich city man who probably has a half dozen young mistresses," she declared.

  Such an idea had never occurred to me.

  "No, Mama, he said . . ."

  "He'd say anything to get you where he wants you, Gabriel." She leaned toward me so I couldn't look away from those all-knowing eyes. "And he would make any promise to get what he wants. If you believe him, it's because you want to, first, and second, because he's done it so many times before, he's good at it," she concluded.

  I stared, thinking. Then I shook my head. "He can't be that way; he can't," I insisted, as much to myself as to her.

  "Why not, Gabriel?"

  "I feel him," I said, putting my hand over my heart, "deeply in here, My feelings have never betrayed me before," I insisted, building my own courage. "Since I was a little girl, I have known what is true and what is not. My animals . . ."

  "Animals are so much simpler than people, Gabriel. They are not conniving and deceitful."

  "Tell that to my spiders," I shot back. Mama's eyes softened for a moment with a little amusement, but then she grew worried again.

  "All right, what of your spider who sets up such a seemingly harmless world around him, so innocent looking, the fly always steps into it and realizes it too late?

  "A rich, sophisticated man like Monsieur Dumas has the power to weave a very inviting world around him. He will catch you in it, and when you realize it, it will be too late."

  "Pierre is no more conniving than I am, Mama. You don't know him yet."

  "And you do? Already?"

  "Our feelings for each other have opened our hearts and minds to each other. When you love each other deeply, truly, it takes only minutes to know everything there is to know. He has told me of his great unhappiness and I see how much he suffers, even though he is a wealthy man."

  "And what of his wife, then?" she asked.

  "They lead separate lives right now. She has been unable to give him a child and she is more involved with her society friends than with him," I explained.

  "But where will all this take you, Gabriel?" she asked with despair.

  "I don't know," I admitted.

  "And for the moment, you don't care because you're blinded by your feelings and your excitement. Don't you think I know how desperate you are for a real love, how much you need someone who will love you truly, especially after your horrid experience? You're jumping on the first opportunity, only it's not an opportunity, Gabriel. It's like a false dawn. You're going to plummet into a deeper darkness."

  She sat back firmly, her words lying heavy in the air between us.

  "I want you to tell this man first chance you get that you won't ever see him again, hear? If you don't, I will, Gabriel, even if it means marching down that road all the way to New Orleans and knocking on his front door," she threatened.

  "Oh Mama, please . . ."

  "If I stood by and watched you drown, I'd be wrong, wouldn't I? Well, I ain't gonna stand by and watch this, neither," she vowed.

  We heard the floorboards above us groan.

  "It's best your daddy don't know nothing about this, Gabriel, hear?"

  "Yes, Mama." I looked down.

  "I'm sorry, honey, but I know what's best for you."

  I shot an angry glance at her. Why did she always know what was best for me? She wasn't me. What did she think it was like having a traiteur for a mother, thinking all these years that my every thought, my every feeling, was as naked as a newly born doe before her eyes? Besides, I thought, when it came to love, Mama wasn't infallible. Look at the mistake she had made, the marriage she had. Defiant, I rose from the table and left the room.

  "Gabriel!"

  The front door slammed shut behind me as I jogged down the gallery steps and around back, heading toward the canal. I remained away from home most of the day, wandering through my paths, weaving along the water, sitting on a big rock and watching the birds and the fish. I spent most of the time arguing with myself.

  The sensible side of me took Mama's side, of course, claiming she was only looking out for my happiness and trying to protect me from sadness and disappointment. That side of me warned against living for the moment. It ridiculed the pledge Pierre and I had made to each other. What sort of a pledge was it anyway, a pledge to ignore everything and anything but our own pleasure? Living for the moment was shortsighted. What would happen when that day of reckoning came?

  The other side of me, the wild and free side that found its strength in Nature, that side of me which was never comfortable confined by clothes and houses and man-made rules, refused to listen. Look at the birds. They don't sit worrying about the winter; they enjoy the spring and the summer and feel the warm breeze around them when they glide through the air, free . . . happy.

  And what of these people who have been sensible and who have married the so-called right person? What of these people who have never been naked under the sun and the stars, who have listened first to their minds and then their hearts? Trapped in their wise and reasonable decisions, they wither away wondering what it might have been like if they had followed their feelings instead of their thoughts.

  But your mama followed her feelings instead of her thoughts, my sensible side retorted. That thought shut me up for a while. I sat there, brooding. My sensible side continued. She's only trying to give you the benefit of her wisdom, a wisdom unfortunately gained through pain and suffering. Can't you take her gift gracefully and stop being a stubborn, selfish little girl?

  I swallowed back my tears and took a deep breath.

  Still defiant, or tying to be, I turned my face to the wind and screamed.

  "I love Pierre! I will always love him. I won't give him up. I won't!"

  My words were swept away. They changed nothing. It didn't take very much effort to scream them; I could scream them again. What took great effort was to shut them up in my heart, to lock the door on that secret place within me where Pierre's face resided and his words resounded.

  As I started walking back home, I wondered if every birth, whether it be the birth of a tadpole or the birth of a spider or the birth of a human being, was another beat in the hea
rt of the universe. Maybe my birth was an irregular beat. I was simply out of sync with the rhythms of this world, and I would not ever find a place in it. I would never find happiness and a love that could be. I was destined to be an outcast. Maybe that was why I was so drawn to simple, natural things and felt safer in the swamp than I did in society.

  Mama looked up from the clothes she was washing in the rain barrel when I appeared. She wasn't angry; she was very sad for me. She stopped working and waited as I drew closer.

  "I'll tell him I won't see him anymore, Mama," I said. "It's the best thing, Gabriel."

  "The best thing shouldn't be so hard to do," I replied angrily, and went into the shack.

  Almost a week went by before I heard from Pierre again. During that time I sat by the window in my room and looked out over the canals toward New Orleans and wondered what he was thinking, what he was doing. In my mind I wrote and rewrote my letter to him until I found the words, and then I sat at the kitchen table late one night after Daddy and Mama had gone to bed and put the words on paper.

  .

  Dear Pierre,

  Some women think giving birth is the hardest and most painful experience of their lives. Afterward, of course, there is a wonderful reward. But I think the birth of these words on this paper is the hardest and most painful thing for me. There is no wonderful reward either.

  I can't see you anymore. I love you; I won't lie and deny that, but our love, as beautiful as it seems, is a double-edged sword that will turn on us someday, perhaps sooner than we expect. We will hurt each other deeply, perhaps too deeply to recover, and maybe, just maybe, we will even grow to hate each other for what we have done to each other, or worse, hate ourselves for it.

  I don't pretend to be a very wise person. Nor have I ever assumed I have inherited my mother's powers, but I don't think it takes a very wise person or a clairvoyant to see our future. We are like a stream, rushing, gleaming, sparkling, and full, that suddenly turns a corner and drops over a ledge to pound itself on the rocks below and then stagnate.

  I can't let this happen to you or to me. Please try to understand. I want you to be happy. I hope your problems will end and you will have a good and fruitful life where you are, where you belong.

  Sell this shack and go home, Pierre. Do it for both our sakes.

  Gabriel

  .

  I folded the letter and put it in an envelope quickly. The next morning after breakfast, I went down to the dock, got into my canoe, and poled up to the Daisy dock. I hurried up to the shack and put the envelope in the center of the kitchen table where it would be prominent. Then I gazed around what was to have been our love nest for as long as we could have it. The tears streamed down my cheeks. I sighed, bit down on my lower lip, and ran out of the shack. I sobbed as I poled my way back, but when I reached our dock, I sucked back my tears, took a deep breath, and forced myself to stop thinking about what I had done.

  I dove into the work Mama and I had to do, weaving, cooking, organizing, and I didn't permit myself to think about Pierre. Whenever his face came to mind, I started doing something else. Mama watched me all day through her wise eyes. She said nothing while I worked, but that evening, after dinner, she came out to see me on the gallery and just hugged me without speaking. We gazed into each other's faces.

  Finally she said, "Don't think I don't feel your pain, honey. We're too close."

  "I know, Mama."

  "You're a good girl, a strong girl, stronger than me," she said, and smiled. I smiled back, but I didn't believe those words. If anything, I felt more fragile and thinner than ever.

  Another day passed and then another and another. I began to believe that Pierre had come to the shack, found my letter, and returned to New Orleans. The longer time grew between us, the more I began to believe Mama might have been right about

  everything. I was saddened, but a little relieved.

  And then, one night, just as I was about to go to sleep, I paused to gaze out of my window as I often did, and there in the moonlight, his form well outlined, was Pierre. He stood staring up at my window. I wanted to go down to him, to talk and tell him why I wrote the letter, but I didn't move. I watched him and waited. He stood there for nearly an hour, waiting, looking like a statue. My heart was bursting, but I stopped myself every time I went toward the doorway. And every time I returned to the window, I hoped he would be gone, but he wasn't.

  Clouds came and blocked the moon. He disappeared in the shadows, but when the clouds parted, he was there again, waiting, watching, hoping.

  I went to bed and pressed my face in the pillow, nearly smothering myself, squeezing, clinging to the sheets like someone who might drown if she let go. Finally, when I went to the window, he wasn't there. He had resembled my ghost once more, and once more, he had returned to that other world. I couldn't fall asleep. I lay there with my eyes open, wondering if he had returned to the shack to sleep or if he had taken my advice and gotten into his car to drive back to New Orleans.

  All the next day I was tempted to pole up to the Daisy dock to look. I thought he might also pole down to see me, but he didn't come. I took my walks, did my work, watched the road every time I heard an automobile, but he didn't appear. It's over, I thought that night after dinner. I did it. The realization made me sick inside. I had to go to bed early. Daddy was off playing bourre and Mama finished cleaning up.

  But just as I got into bed, I heard someone come to the front door. I listened hard. Was it Pierre? I heard the voices and realized it was Jed Loomis, a neighbor who lived about a half mile toward Houma. He had come by in his pickup truck to tell Mama that his mother was suffering something terrible from stomach cramps. She was in great pain. Everyone was very worried; his father wouldn't leave her bedside. They weren't sure whether it came from something she had eaten or if it was something worse.

  Mama packed up her herbs and her holy water and then came up to tell me she was going.

  "You want to come along, Gabriel?"

  "No, Mama. Not unless you think you'll need me."

  "No. There's nothing for you to do and it might take most of the night. I guess there's no sense in both of us staying up," she said. "If your daddy comes home early for some reason, you'll tell him where I've gone."

  "Yes, Mama."

  "You all right, honey?"

  "Yes, Mama," I lied.

  She paused a moment. "I gotta go," she said. "Poor woman's in pain."

  "Okay, Mama."

  She descended the stairs and was gone. I closed my eyes and tried to sleep, and for a little while I did fall into a deep repose, but suddenly my eyes popped open. My heart had started to drum as if it knew something I didn't. I lay there staring up into the darkness waiting for it to slow down. When it didn't, I sat up and then went to the window.

  There he was, outlined in the moonlight, staring up at the house, waiting . . . Pierre. My ghost would not go away.

  I threw on my dress and hurried down, closing the screen door softly behind me. He was waiting on our dock.

  "Gabriel," he said as I approached. "I was afraid to come to your house to ask for you."

  "I'm glad you didn't," I said, stopping a foot or so away from him.

  "Why? Why did you write that letter?"

  "I had to," I said as harshly as my lips would permit me to speak to him. He stepped toward me. "Mama knows," I added, and he froze for a moment. "She threatened to go to New Orleans and knock on your door if she had to," I added.

  As the moon peeked over the shoulder of a passing cloud, the light caught his face and revealed a pained expression.

  "What is it your mother thinks of me?" he asked softly. "What has she told you?"

  "You are rich, Pierre. You can go anywhere, do anything, see anyone you want."

  "Oui, " he said. "That's true, Gabriel, but I didn't go anywhere else; I didn't do anything else, and I haven't seen anyone else but you. You were right in your letter. Our love, my love for you, is a doubleedged sword, and when you sai
d you couldn't see me again, I felt its sharpness in my heart. Do you know what it's been like being here, looking up at your window at night?"

  "Pierre . ."

  "And during the day."

  "During the day?"

  "Yes. I've watched you from a distance, seen you walking, seen you working, talking to people, but I was afraid to approach you in daylight. Remember the exquisite torment of being beside each other and not touching? It wasn't exquisite this time; it was just torment.

  "You think I have other lovers, don't you? You think because I am rich, I can go anywhere and have affair after affair and then one day pick up and leave, breaking someone's heart without caring?"

  I was ashamed to say yes, but I had thought it. He nodded and turned away for a moment.

  "Other men I know, wealthy, married men, fit that description. I would not deny it, but you are the first woman I have kissed passionately since I married Daphne. You must believe me."

  "Didn't you love her?"

  "I. . . thought so. She's a very beautiful woman and she comes from a family as distinguished as mine, although not as wealthy. Ours was more of an arranged marriage. We were thought to be the perfect couple, but things happen, things change. I'm a very lonely man these days, Gabriel, and despite what your mother might fear for you and even what you might think at this moment, I am not one to go wandering and philandering. I do not give myself liberally.

  "But when my eyes feasted on you, when I first saw you, I felt something so deep and so sincere in my heart, I could not deny it; I will not deny it. I swear I'm not here to take advantage of you and then leave you in the lurch. I will never do anything to harm you or make you unhappy. Somehow, I want to be able to take care of you.

  "I can't believe," he continued, raising his voice and his clenched hands in the air, "that this love is not meant to be. What a horrible trick Nature has played on us then. To bring me here, to permit me to see you and you to see me. To permit us to kiss and hold each other and pledge our feelings to each other, and then to rip us apart mercilessly like this . . . no. No!" he cried. "I won't permit it to happen. Tell me what I must do to be with you and I will do it."