Feast of All Saints (87 page)

Nothing stirred above.

“Marie!” he called again, only to hear a scraping sound behind the shutters of the house next door. “Marie!” he cried again.

He backed slowly into the street, almost bumping into a passing cart. A little cluster of passersby had stopped to stare at him from beneath an awning, and a woman passed in front of the dress shop scrutinizing him suspiciously from beneath a dark bonnet brim. “Marie!” he shouted once more. And not waiting for an answer, he suddenly reached down, picked up a glistening lump of coal from the slush, and heaved it overhand so it struck the high shutters and fell to the banquette below. A murmur rose from those around him, a wagon groaned behind him forcing him toward the curb. He saw another rock, grabbed it, and threw it as well.

“Lermontant!” a voice intruded suddenly.

He was jerked from some acute state of concentration to find himself looking down at the notary, Jacquemine. A pace behind him on the curb stood a dark-faced woman, her head slightly averted, gazing at Richard from above her wool cravat with one enormous
expressionless eye. He felt a chill pass over him as he stared at her, in fact, he hardly heard the notary’s voice. “Indeed, you are making a spectacle of yourself, Lermontant, what’s the matter with you?” It was Cecile Ste. Marie, that dark-faced woman, that bundle of wool and bonnet brim that turned now with a lift of the head. Again the eye fixed him, wide, wild, like the eye of a bird.

“Get out of the street, for the love of heaven,” said Jacquemine. But Cecile Ste. Marie had turned her face away and walked on and the notary ran to catch up with her, as the clop of a horse sent a spray of wet mud over Richard’s coat.

Richard stood there motionless. A sickening spasm caught his stomach, as the two figures receded, the notary glancing nervously back as he panted to keep up with the marching woman.

And above, those windows shuttered as before like blind eyes.

Marie was crying. She sat in the darkened parlor with her elbows on the table. Tante Colette stood at the windows, looking through the glass and the dark slits of the shutters at the street below. “I want you to go out of here,” she said over her shoulder to Louisa. Louisa said, “But why?”

“Because it’s time I had a talk with this girl,” Colette said. “It’s time I had a talk with her alone.”

Louisa didn’t want to go. She stood watching her sister. But then Colette ushered her into the hallway and closed the door.

Two oil lamps burned on the mantel above Marie, and Colette turned the little brass key in these, one by one, to raise the flame. Then she looked at the girl who sat at the round table, her hair down, her face covered with her hands.

“It’s time we cut out all this sweet talk,” Colette said, “and get down to the facts.”

“That
was
Richard, wasn’t it?” Marie said through her tears. “I know it was.”

“Stop asking me that question,” Colette said. “For days now, it’s been poor
bébé,’
and ‘poor
bébé
just lost her papa,’ and ‘poor
bébé
has had such a shock,’ and ‘let poor
bébé
rest’…”

“It
was
Richard!” Marie said.

“Well, I think it’s time we got down to the facts.”

“Which are what!” Marie said bitterly, her eyes glimmering with her tears. She was shivering with her sobs. “That my mother wants me to take a white man for a protector? And that’s what you want, too! That’s what you always wanted, wasn’t it?” She meant to look away, but something caught in the corner of her eye. It was a stiff expression on Colette’s face, something quite alien to the soft chattering affection that perpetually filled this flat.

“It is what you want, too, isn’t it?” Marie said. “All the time you would have approved of it. It was all hypocrisy your taking me to Mass, all hypocrisy your receiving Richard…”

“I’ve heard just about enough,” said Colette. “I’ve heard just about enough tears and enough complaining and enough foolishness to make me sick.”

Marie stared at her, stunned.

“’Course I took you to Mass, I go to Mass every Sunday of my life, don’t I, every feast day, every day during Lent! But what’s that got to do with what’s happening to your family now, may I ask, what’s that got to do with the fact that your brother hasn’t a cent to his name, that your mother can’t put food in her mouth, that you’ve got nothing, none of you, but that cottage and the clothes on your backs! Now when your papa was alive,” she said, drawing near to the table, “that was a different time. Your papa was rich, and your maman was rich, and if you wanted to throw away your life on some colored boy that was your whim! But I’m sick to death now of hearing this spoiled selfish talk! What do you mean to do, march up that aisle in a white dress with everyone in the church thinking you’re a damned fool—and don’t think they won’t—and leave your mother and your brother to sell off the furniture for a living, end up selling that house? And what would your fancy people the Lermontants do, give Marcel some pittance for working for them with his sleeves rolled up, and enough to keep Cecile in a rented room? Or are they just supposed to be the poor relations? Living off the charity of the Benevolent Society with Marcel giving lessons to the children and escorting the old aunts to Mass? Are you crazy, girl! And you think your mother would ever live in that Lermontant house? Even if they would take her in and give her some attic room with the rats and spiders, your mother would rather die!”

She drew near to Marie, who sat mute staring up at her, and put her hands on the table as she leaned forward.

“Now you listen to me. For sixteen years, you’ve had the best of everything, now I mean the best! Any dress you wanted, any jewelry I had in my box, you had it, pearls, diamonds, silks from Paris, the hats right off the boat, the slippers, the pomade, the perfume, the best! And you got that because your mother got it for you, and I got it for you, and Louisa got it for you! And now it’s time for you to give something back! I haven’t begun to fight for you, oh, no, I haven’t begun. I haven’t begun to give you up to some colored undertaker and his penny-pinching bourgeois people, oh, no, not for this world. You are going to those balls with me, you are meeting those white gentlemen who couldn’t take their eyes off you in the Théâtre d’Orléans, who can’t take their eyes off you when they see you coming down from that Communion rail at Mass! You are going there with me and you
are going to make the best alliance this family can get! And you are going to get your brother on that boat for Paris, you are going to get him to a place where he can marry a woman who will respect him and look up to him as if he were a man! Now, why do you think, why do you think your maman made your papa swear he would send that boy to France? Education, Sorbonne, all that foolishness? There’s no life for your brother here! And you are going to get him out of here, and you are going to get a comfortable income for your mother so that she can keep her house! And you can get all that, Marie, you can get it like that!” She snapped her fingers, holding out her hand. And as Marie stared at the fingers, Colette snapped them again with an unconscious tightening of her teeth. “Like that!” she said. And again, “Like that!”

She turned away. She folded her arms and commenced to pace the floor, her gray head slightly bowed, her lips pursed. Marie was not looking at her. She was staring at the surface of the table, her arms limp in her lap.

“Now, I tell you what you’re going to do.” Colette said. “You’re going to rest a while. And we are going to wait until a little interval passes, a decent interval, and then you and I are going to call on Celestina Roget. I don’t have to tell you who’s courting Gabriella, you know all about it, Alcee LeMaitre, one of the richest white men on the coast. Well, we are going to talk to Celestina, we’re going to talk about the balls, whether that’s the best way to go. And then you are going to be the toast of this town.”

Marie stood up. She looked slowly about the room. Her shawl lay on the chair by the door. She walked to the door and drew the shawl up around her shoulders.

“You just go on to your room,” Colette said. “And you leave the details to me.”

“I’m going home,” Marie said in a small voice. “I’m going to see if my brother’s come back.”

“Your brother’s not coming home, not till your mother tells him to, and your mother does not want you at the house.”

Marie drew the shawl up over her head. She turned to her aunt, her eyes level and wide.

Colette glanced anxiously at the lamp. When she looked back, Marie was still staring at her, and she looked away again with a slight shudder.

“You’ll be back,” she said, “soon as you get a taste of what your mother’s got to say.” She pursed her lips. “After all, where else have you got to go!”

I
T WAS LONG AFTER DARK
when Marie rose to leave the Cathedral. The sacristan was putting out the lights. Thunder rumbled beyond the heavy doors, and dully, Marie thought of the black streets. But it was fear of her mother and her aunts that had kept her here till this alarming hour, and lingering in the vestibule of the church she stared numbly at the distant tabernacle, bewildered that the serenity which had always visited her under this roof had not visited her when she needed it most. A thousand desperate considerations had inundated her mind in the past hours, all of them floundering ultimately upon the same rock: Marcel was on his way home, she must wait for him, she must not make matters worse. But prayer had not fortified her, the figures and forms of her faith were beyond her reach. It was almost as if the hypocrisy of those around her had drained all of its meaning, or had her own anger cut her off from God, her own bitterness burnt her prayers dry? A chaos threatened her, gaping wider and wider with the mounting intensity of her anger, becoming fathomless with her rage.

And as she ran through the pitch blackness of Pirate’s Alley toward the Rue Royale, she was dogged by one terrifying thought. What if he were not coming, what if they could keep Marcel away? And she must prevail against them night after night, day after day?

Lightning flashed as she turned into the Rue Ste. Anne, and as she ran toward the corner of the Rue Dauphine, there was a light crackle of it again, illuminating the street as if it were midday so that she could see the bleak deserted façade of the Mercier house. If there had only been a light there, she thought suddenly, she would have pounded on Michie Christophe’s door, maybe even gone inside to stay for just a moment by his hearth. But the house lay dark beneath the pelting rain. Her shawl was soaked, her chest ached. And bracing herself against the swirling wind she went on toward the dull lights of the cottage ahead.

The rain came faster Or was it just that it shot off the low roof and caught her in shimmering blasts? She stopped in the walkway beside her mother’s window and saw her shadow on the blinds. Her mother was walking back and forth. Marie slumped exhausted against the wet wall and covered her face with her hands. Her shawl fell loose, the cold rain fell on her hair, and making a lattice of her fingers she saw in a sudden silent flicker of lightning the distant unlatched kitchen door.

“Lisette?” she whispered as she stepped inside. All was blackness
save for a pulse of red light from the dying coals. But she could hear little sounds, near imperceptible sounds, breath in the dark, cloth folding against cloth. “Lisette?” she whispered again. “Let me come in?”

“Nobody’s stopping you,” came Lisette’s low voice in the darkness. She sat against the wall, her legs stretched out across the width of her cot. Marie padded softly across the floor and settled in the wooden rocker by the stove. She saw a flash of gold in the shadows and knew it was whiskey in the glass. She saw Lisette’s head now in a thin gleaming line of light from the kitchen coals. And that gleaming line followed the bulge of Lisette’s breasts as a soft ugly sigh came from her lips. Marie, her elbow on the arm of the rocker, began to cry.

Lisette having been in this dark room for three hours could see Marie perfectly, her hair cascading down over her arm, the rustling shadow of her taffeta dress. The rain on the taffeta had given off a funny fragrance which mingled now with the heat from the coals in the kitchen and the coals in the stove. Lisette lifted the glass again and barely tasted the whiskey and then put it down. This was Michie Philippe’s whiskey, delicious and strong. An elixir compared to the corn whiskey to which Lisette was accustomed or the drams of rum or wine which she could buy for herself. She had four bottles of this whiskey under the bed, stolen from his gambling rooms upstairs, and she saw no end to the warm and numbing feeling that had come over her sometime early this evening with her fifth glass.

Lisette was thinking, however, thinking. This calm and warmth had given the course of her deliberations a certain freedom and, strangely, a certain relief. At dark, her mistress had come home, with the notary to inform her that Michie Philippe had not left her free. “You belong to me, now,” Cecile had hissed at her, the soul of the woman coiled like a snake in those fancy clothes, “Monsieur Dazincourt is sending your papers from
Bontemps
to me! And if you think Marcel can help you, you’re wrong!” She had smiled as she leaned forward from the kitchen door: “Why don’t you run off,” she had said, “go on, run off the way you’ve done it before, go to that Lola Dedé, live hand to mouth in back alleys, go on. You think I won’t find you, I’ll post a notice on every wall, on every tree! You’ll never work for a decent family in this city, not so long as I have breath. Go on. Run off, let me tell Marcel when he comes home, you’ve run off again.”

Wild-eyed, panting, oh, if only the rest of them could have seen that ladylike face then. “Go into the country,” the curling smile. “Go on, let them catch you and put you on those slave gangs, let them sell you when no one comes for you. But you won’t do any of that! Even if I get that notary to execute copies of those papers, even if we don’t wait for them to come from
Bontemps!
You’re going to be a good girl, you’re going to stay right here. Because when I take you to that yard,
you want me to say you’re a good girl, you’re a good lady’s maid, or else they’ll sell you right into the fields!”