Eden Burning (7 page)

But later in the room upstairs Marcelle said, “Anatole was right. Frankly, I didn’t think you’d be his type. He likes you, though. He wants to take you to the theater tomorrow.”

They went to a play and afterwards to supper, at which he ordered oysters, raspberries, and champagne. From a vendor on the corner he bought an extravagant sheaf of gladioli for Tee to bring home.

“Tell me about St. Felice,” he urged. “It sounds so strange to me, like Patagonia or Katmandu. Who lives there? Is it all sugarcane? Do they have pineapple? Telephones? Do you have great parties on the estates? Tell me about it.”

She laughed and was pleased at his curiosity, pleased at having been given something to say. And while saying it she understood that St. Felice had been the cause of attraction, that St. Felice—and therefore she herself—was exotic to Richard Luther, something new. He was a person who would want the different and the new: the latest fashion, the artist about to be discovered, the master chef in the tiny restaurant at the end of the
hidden street.
Having taken from all these what he wanted, then he would be off to something newer. So it would be with her, she saw.

Meanwhile, though, Richard gave her what she needed that summer, what she had not even been aware of needing. He gave cheer. Life was to be enjoyed. He was kindly (sugar lumps for the drayhorse at the end of Anatole’s street); generous (a pocketful of francs for the flower vendor and an admonition to go home out of the rain). They were constantly on the move: a picnic in the country, a boat ride, the races, the art exhibits, the auctions, where he bought beautiful, expensive objects, which did not surprise Tee, for had not her mother also been a buyer of extravagant objects?

She went with him, then, a quiet presence, an observer, almost, of his enthusiasms, carried along, bemused and soothed.

Anatole asked no questions, but Marcelle probed for him. “What do you think of Richard, Teresa?”

“I don’t know.”

“You are the strangest girl! What do you mean, ‘you don’t know’?”

Actually, Tee was thinking, Is he, or is he not, just a little conceited? Is his face, so handsomely symmetrical, a little weak? And puzzled, she answered with a question.

“I have no means of comparison, have I?”

Marcelle softened. “True, true. I keep forgetting how young you are. Well, take it from me, he’s ready for marriage, it’s the right time for him. He’s twenty-five, he’s done all the sampling he wants. And you’re different from anyone he can have known. Only sixteen! There’s charm in that.”

“I suppose I am different.” What did he call her? Dark child, aloof—

“Your family would be pleased. He’ll make a good husband.”

“He hasn’t asked me.” In fear her heart accelerated, partly because he might not ask her (for what was she to do then?), and partly because he might.

Late in the summer, when it was almost time for him to go home, Richard Luther did ask her. They had left the bookstalls, where he had bought two old volumes, when he stopped and took a flat box out of his pocket.

“Open it,” he said.

On gray velvet lay a triple strand of tenderly shining pearls.

“For you, Teresa. Pearls for the young and innocent. Diamonds for a little later.”

“But I can’t accept a present like this!”

“I know you can’t, not from a stranger. This is just my way of asking you to marry me.”

“You hardly know me!” she cried.

“I know enough. Teresa—it’s a gentle name, like you. I’d be very good to you. You know that, don’t you?”

“Yes,” she whispered.

“I’ve lived in New York with my mother since my father died. My mother would be enchanted with you,” he said confidently. “But of course we’d have our own place. We could have a country house, too. I’ve been thinking about New Jersey; there are miles of soft hills; they might even remind you of your mountains at home.”

Still she hesitated.

“Are you thinking that you want to go back to St. Felice? Is that it?”

Her hands went unconsciously to her throat. “Oh no, oh no, I don’t want to go back, ever!”

“Yes, now that you’ve started to see the world, I can understand that. Well, then? I do love you, Teresa.”

They were standing at the river where the bridges, in both directions, arched like loops in stone, time-stained, yellowing and streaked. For minutes Tee looked down. So long ago, in another age, she had stood watching a river twist to the sea, watching the same slow flow of water, the little froth and bubble, the water, like time, maybe, carrying things away, the self with the flow.

Oh, I can, it can be, I want—she thought, as she turned to him. He’s a good man, so lively and kind. He’s a happy man. You feel happy yourself when you’re with him! You feel as if nothing would ever hurt you. You’d never be alone anymore.

He put his arms around her. Smiling, he stroked her cheeks and her hair. His face glowed with his smile, making a glad hope surge in her. Perhaps this, after all, was love, the real and true, and it would keep on growing forever. Oh, she would return his kindness, his goodness, ten times over, be everything he wanted, surprise him beyond his expectations.

And at the same time she was thinking, We have nothing to talk about, and I don’t know if we ever will have….

They were to be married quite simply in Anatole’s small,
unkempt garden. There were, in the preceding weeks, moments that stabbed her.

“Will I ever make this work?” she cried to Marcelle. “Tell me, how can it possibly work?”

“Why not? Why shouldn’t it? Listen, you’ll be a good wife, you couldn’t be anything else, and he’s crazy about you. Have many children, that’s what will be best for you. You’re the type for it and it’ll keep both of you busy and happy. Above all, no guilt, no looking back! Never. Do you hear?”

So, on a gilded autumn day, just one year after she had arrived in France, Teresa Francis married Richard Luther. The very next morning they sailed for New York.

Richard’s mother was indeed enchanted by the bride. “How young! How shy and young!” she said, and everyone marveled, “Born on an island in the West Indies, imagine!” And someone whispered, “There’s no end to the wealth those people have there….”

Well, anyway, they gathered her to themselves, and even in a New York winter, they warmed her. Richard went back to the brokerage office and was gone all day while Tee furnished a house. This world now was so different from St. Felice that one could forget its very existence. Besides, she was already pregnant….

Eleven months after the marriage, she gave birth to a fine, large boy, fair like his father. Sitting up in her flower-filled hospital room, Tee held the child close, laying her cheek on his head. Here, here was repayment for everything! Hers now, her own! Never to love anyone as much as him; never to be loved by anyone as much as by him. She would be such a mother to this child! Nothing would ever hurt him, not the rough sleeve of his father’s coat, nor the faintest draft from the door to the hall. There was something special between the two of them.

And indeed it was to be so, although she could not really have known it then.

On the day of his christening the baby wore the lace robe that had been in the Luther family for five generations. Afterwards they brought him home and took his picture with his parents on the velvet sofa in front of the fireplace, then laid him lovingly to sleep in his nursery upstairs.

His name was Francis Virgil Luther.

He knew he had been born far across the sea, but he had no recollection of the long voyage back to St. Felice, eighteen days from Marseilles. His mother said, “I didn’t like it over there, Patrick. Too many strangers and too cold. So I brought you home.”

His mother was Agnes, pronounced, as he later learned, with the accent on the second syllable, in the soft French way. She was strong. Her tongue could be sharp. When she gave him an order, she wanted immediate obedience. Yet, from her dark hands with their pink palms, he received, it would seem to him when he was old enough to think about it, daily and continual blessing: food, bandages for the bruised knees of childhood, and comfort when he was afraid. Sometimes he was very much afraid: of what? Of nameless things, of spirits among sighing trees, of being lost and losing her.

He was never very far away from her. As soon as he learned to walk, he followed her everywhere, from early morning, when they woke in the cabin, through the day in the big house, where she worked, and back to the little room again, where she gave him his supper and put him to bed.

The big house was vast and open, with tall doors, verandas, and wide halls through which breezes blew. The house had a shine to it; he had an impression of silver and shine. Even the dark tables and chairs had a silver shine when Maman polished them. It seemed to him that that was what she did all day, rubbing things to a glow: floors, teapots, and mirrors.

From the first he understood that this was not Maman’s house. She was different there.
Shush,
she would say when
he spoke too loud. In their own room she never said that. There she was loud herself, singing and rocking him. When other women came by in the evenings, they laughed together in high, shrill voices, talking fast, clapping each other on the back, swaying with laughter. And he would stand wondering at their laughter, not understanding it, yet in some nameless way enjoying it.

Little by little he learned to place himself in the world. The big house belonged to Mr. Kimbrough, a quiet man with a dry, white face and a white linen suit. Mrs. Kimbrough was white too; her hair was like chicken feathers.

In the kitchen of that house the faces were dark. The kitchen people were not nice. Tia, the cook, sat at the head of the lunch table; Loulou, who did the laundry, and Cicero, who served the Kimbroughs’ meals on that other table in the dining room, sat across from Patrick and Maman.

“He certainly doesn’t look like you, with that complexion,” Tia would start slyly. She would shake her head while Patrick lowered his face to his rice and peas, away from her stare. “No, he certainly does not.”

And Maman would answer, “How many times I tell you he is the son of a Frenchman? Born in France, you know that as well as I.”

“A Frenchman, hey? And rich too, I suppose?”

“Rich enough, anyway, so I don’t need to worry too much about this boy here.”

“Why you working in this place then? You have so much money, why don’t you quit?”

“I just might. I just might open a little shop somewhere, when I find the right place. Not in Covetown, though. The price is too dear.”

Now would come Loulou ‘s turn. “You boast too much, Agnes. Why didn’t you stay in France, you had it so good there?”

“Because”—spoken scornfully—“because I came home
to show off my boy, my baby you all thought I couldn’t have.”

Laughter, then. Years later he would recall it, only then comprehending the cruelty of such laughter, the sting of pleasure at someone else’s expense, someone else’s weakness or humiliation.

“Well, good you had him at last,” Loulou would say. “If a woman never have child she bound to have troubles up here,” and would tap her head significantly.

Then Tia: “Let’s see how many more you can have, old as you are.” Tia herself has nine children whom she talks about freely and rarely sees; they are cared for by her mother on the other side of the island.

Then Maman firmly: “I don’t want any more. This one is precious enough. I want to bring him up right. Can’t do that with too many pulling at your skirt.”

He would remember a feeling which later he understood was confidence and safety.
This one is precious enough. I want to bring him up right.

And he would remember old, disconnected moments, probably not in the right order or in rank of importance, though what was important was not always easy to know.

There was a house on a hill at the end of a long drive. They had been riding in cars and busses, riding and walking all day, looking for a shop to buy, Maman said. His legs ached.

“What place is this now?” he wanted to know.

“It’s called Eleuthera.”

“What does that mean?”

“I don’t know. It’s a name, that’s all.”

Eleuthera. He liked the sound of it. Words were pretty. On Sundays the preacher talked too long with a kind of dull roaring, so that he usually fell asleep, but sometimes proud words woke him up: celestial, eternity, paradise. Now: Eleuthera.

A tall thin man stood on the veranda.

“I was passing,” Maman said. “I thought you might want to have a look at this boy.”

The man didn’t speak. He was silent for so long that Patrick looked up at him, questioning.

After a while the man said softly, “You shouldn’t have brought him, Agnes.”

“You’ve nothing to worry about, you know that,” Maman said. “I won’t bring him again.”

The man put his hand on Patrick’s head. “You’d like some cake and milk, wouldn’t you?”

“No,” Maman said, “he doesn’t want any.” But he did want some.

“Well then, some money for toys when you get back to town?”

He would remember of that day that she did buy him some toys, but he forgot what they were.