Never Fear (42 page)

“
Let me talk to Mama
Estelle,” Paulette said. “She’ll think of something.” God, she
thought, I hope it’s not an Infant of Prague outfit, it’ll cost a
fortune with all that satin and Robin won’t want to wear it when
she goes trick-or-treating at night—not when the rest of the
neighborhood is dressed as witches, skeletons and the ever-popular
white-sheeted ghost. There’s no bragging rights or scare factor
when you’re dressed like baby Jesus or the Blessed Mother. She’s so
tiny she doesn’t even need
half
a sheet; I can cut eyes out from a pillowcase, if
necessary, Paulette decided, and call it done.

But Paulette’s mother surprised them
all and even Paulette was excited when she brought home the
jingling toy tambourine with the fluttering ribbons and the green
flounced skirt and gypsy headscarf for Robin’s
Halloween.

*

Naturally, Paulette didn’t own any
necklaces made from coins—gold or otherwise—but she thought Robin
would do very nicely with some beads and a two or three bangle
bracelets. There were no zippers and the costume’s bodice-blouse
tied in the back and she was helping Robin get ready for the
morning kindergarten session.

“
But Mommy, what will
Sister say? I’m supposed to be a saint—”

“
You tell Sister Mary
Frances that you’re Saint Sara the Gypsy, who gave alms to the poor
in France.”

“
Was she a real
saint?”

“
Absolutely. You just have
to leave the tambourine at home for now—and, instead, take this
basket.”

“
What’s in there?” Robin
asked looking under the cloth napkin. “Is that alms?”

“
Yes.”

“
It looks like
bread.”

“
It
is
bread. But for today, it’s alms
for the poor.”

“
I don’t think Sister will
like it—” Robin shook her head.

“
Are you kidding? With
half the class dressed like the Blessed Mother, and the other half
dressed like Saint Joseph, she’ll love it.” Actually, Paulette
thought the other kids’ mothers were pretty
canny—
their
offspring already had costumes for the Nativity play on tap
in December. She went on: “Sister will be thrilled. Variety. It’s
the spice of life, kiddo.”

“
If you say so.” She
shrugged. “But tonight—”

“
Tonight, yes, you can
carry the tambourine.”

*

“
Robin, that necklace’s
only to borrow—not for keeps—and you have to be very careful. I
really mean it.”

“
Mrs. Briggs wanted me to
wear it—she said I’d be the
perfect
Esmeralda.”

The mistake, Paulette
thought, was her own. She’d suggested that on the way home from
King Street Elementary School Robin stop and show the Briggs
beldames her Saint Sara costume. “For tonight,” Robin had chirped,
“I have a real tambourine and I get to be a
real
gypsy.” Immediately Alma—or
maybe it was Myrtle—consulted with Mother Briggs and Paulette heard
rummaging upstairs (presumably in a dresser drawer) and then the
old lady glided down the straight staircase on her moving chair,
carrying the necklace in her crabbed white claw of a
hand.

Paulette had no idea if it the gaudy
green gem was real or “paste”—as De Maupassant famously called
costume jewelry—but that didn’t matter. “I’m not kidding. It goes
back as soon as you’re done trick-or-treating.”

Like all kids—and not a
few adults—in the metropolitan area, Robin was addicted to Channel
9 WOR-TV’s Million Dollar Movie—which opened with Tara’s theme and
ran one film almost continuously for a week at a time. Robin could
recite the come-on: “If you missed any part of this movie or would
like to see it again, the next showing begins immediately.” Just
how much of
The Hunchback of Notre
Dame
Robin understood was doubtful—though
when Paulette caught her tossing the satin bolsters over the stair
railing and made it very clear that Robin was stopping that at
once, and furthermore, would
also
not
be filling the big
soup kettle with water she planned to pretend was molten lead and
throwing
that
over the balustrade, and when she continued snatching up and
heaving sofa cushions, Paulette threatened to spank her bottom, and
Robin yelled “Sanctuary!”—it was obvious she got the whole
Quasimodo-Charles Laughton character. And though she’d never been
spanked, Robin obeyed more or less: Paulette watched her running up
and down the stairs bent-over—a pillow stuffed behind her shoulders
inside one of Luc’s sweaters—with her fingers simultaneously
pushing her nose up and pulling her right eye down…watched as Robin
lay back on the landing kicking her legs and feet and shouting,
“Guillaume…Gabrielle…Big
Ma-a—Rie!
”

Paulette’s concession to
the American version of the holiday was to serve a hot dog and
sauerkraut and mulled cider dinner—which, Robin in her excitement,
scarcely touched; neither did Luc, who was to stay home and hand
out goodies to the neighborhood, because he didn’t like cabbage or
cider—with or without rum—or frankfurters. They were nothing, he
swore, like the delicious
saucissons
Provençal. Paulette
scraped plates while Robin sped into her costume.

“
First stop to see the
Misses Briggs,” Robin declared. “I want to show them my costume.”
She banged the tambourine against her palm.

“
No. Last stop, Robin, to
share some of your treats—
and
, to return the
necklace.”

*

“
Why Howie… Myrtle… look
at this: Esmeralda, the gypsy girl, has come trick-or- treating
right here in our neighborhood.”

“
And I’m French too,”
Robin put in helpfully.

“
Adorable. Come in,
dear—and you, too Paulette. Mother will want to see
this!”

The treat table had been set up in the
wide foyer—a plate with huge caramel apples and small orange
draw-string bags. Howard and Myrtle helped Robin, as Paulette moved
through the tied-back green velvet curtains toward the living room.
“Only one of each, Robbie,” she called over her
shoulder.

The old ladies, Paula saw,
had decorated the mantel with bright red and gold, and flaming
orange leaves—gathered in the park, no doubt. Small pumpkins sat
along the wooden edge; two round black-amethyst vases spilled a
profusion of bittersweet and ivy from either end; and tiny
glassed-in votive candles twinkled here and there. This was not the
sort of house, Paulette thought, where one found store-bought
dangling cardboard skeletons or gaudy papier-mâché witches. Very
Victorian. More turn-of-the-century than mid-century. But
maybe
which
century was the real question, she mused.

“
The fireplace looks
lovely,” Paulette said honestly. “Feels good, too” she added,
rubbing her hands. There was a heavy pot—something whitish bubbled
and frothed inside—hanging above the grate; it was the first time
Paulette had noticed that this fireplace had an iron swing hook—the
sort one associated with colonial times, colonial cooking—in this
part of the country at least. Paulette had never seen one in any of
the World War I era houses in the neighborhood—

“
Month has an R in it…care
for a bowl of oyster stew?” The old lady, propped in a rocking
chair, nodded toward the flames. “’Course in my day, mind you, it
was more likely we ate
prairie
oysters—hah!” She laughed. “Still, a body gets
used to things, and I was used to an iron swing-arm inside a
fireplace—so was ’most every homesteader in my time—and Howard, he
rigged up this one for me,” Hannah said. “Food tastes better,
somehow, when it’s cooked over a wood fire.”

“
Yes, I know.”

“
You might at that—being
French and all,” she said. ’Course, the colonials hereabouts didn’t
have much use for the French, and by the time I was born in 1860,
nobody had any use for the Indians—even if those wars helped us
Americans eventually throw off the Brits. Freedom is a great
thing.” She paused. “But they herded all the Indians into
territories and onto reservations. Ever tell you about the time I
saw my own sister scalped?”

“
Yes. Or maybe Alma told
me—”

“
Hid behind a rock on the
trail, but they found me. Know why they didn’t take my tresses,
Missus?”

Paulette shook her head
slowly.

“
Can’t guess? Your ma told
me how after nursing school you wanted to go out west and work with
the Indians—said you felt sorry for them. That was very unusual.
But she wouldn’t let you go.” Hannah wiped her lips with the back
of her hand. “Well, you met Luc and had Robin, so you’re better
off, girlie. But, can’t you guess why they let me go?”

“
No… ” Paulette said
again.

“
Sure, you can—you being
part gypsy and all—like your ma told me.” The old woman turned her
white, blind eyes on Paulette and the younger woman would have
sworn she was being stared at with the intensity of a searchlight.
“And old squaw-woman—a seeress—stopped ’em,” she said. “Told those
braves to let me be ‘cause I had a gift—”

“
A gift? I don’t
understand?”

“
Same as yours.” The old
woman’s hand suddenly shot out and clamped down on Paulette’s
wrist. She found herself wincing at the woman’s surprising strength
and thinking crazily that Robin was right—Hannah’s skin was like
leather—like stiff, tanned
hide
. “Same as your girl’s—though
sometimes it skips a generation.”

“
What gift?” Paulette
wrenched her arm free

“
The gift of seein’” the
old woman said, tapping alongside her right eye. “The gift of
knowin,’ the gift of prophecy.”

“
I don’t
know
. I don’t know what you’re talking
about.”

“
Sure you do,” Hannah
Briggs said, nodding, then sitting back and winding her knobby
hands over the down-curved arms of the rocker. “Of course you know.
You saw the angel of death when your father passed,” she said. “And
you saw your father beckon that angel—crooked his finger calling
her, didn’t he? And what did he whisper? ‘Come closer…’ wasn’t that
it, Missus?”

“
Robin—” she
began.

“
Robin knows
that
story,” said Mrs.
Briggs.

“
She doesn’t—”

The old woman shrugged.
“Well maybe she overheard it, and maybe she just
knows
certain things.
Like I did. Things other girls her age haven’t a notion in the
world of. Doesn’t matter,” she said. “Anyhow, here’s a story for
you, Missus—though if you let yourself, I wouldn’t even have to
tell it. You’d know it. Same as that angel by your father’s death
bed—you’d
see
it.” The rocker creaked once, twice, and then the old woman
began to speak in a half-whispered, papery voice.

*

Paulette had stood there
by the fire, arms folded across her chest, and tried very hard not
to listen to what Mrs. Briggs told her; she convinced herself she’d
actually been successful at blocking out that avid, nearly feverish
voice. When they came in just after 8 p.m., Luc was nodding over
a
Life
magazine
in the wing chair. She’d let Robin eat one candy bar, untied the
gypsy costume and just sent her daughter upstairs to get into her
pajamas and brush her teeth, when she discovered the shiny green
gem in the bottom of Robin’s paper spook-ridden trick-or-treat
bag.

She was so angry at the thought that
Robin had somehow wheedled Alma or Myrtle into parting with the
necklace—or worse, filched it—Paulette was on the verge of dragging
her from her low single bed. Instead, she steeled herself and
picked up the phone.

*

“
Yes, Paulette, this is
Alma. What’s that you say? Robin still has Mother’s necklace? Well,
Myrt gave it to her, of course—we both did. No, she didn’t whine or
plead. Really. Oh, pshaw, let her keep it… What? No! It isn’t any
heirloom… An emerald?” Alma laughed. “That’s no emerald, my dear.
No, it’s—what Mother? Hang on Paulette. Just one second. Yes, it’s
shiny all right, but Mother says it’s nothing but a semi-precious
green sunstone. They mine ’em out Oregon way, she says…”

Paulette could picture
Alma—tall and slim and still ramrod straight—standing by the black
Bell telephone in the hallway, old Mrs. Briggs in her wooden rocker
by the fire, and tiny white-haired Myrtle scurrying back and forth
between the ancient woman and her elderly daughter, hovering over
both of them. “I couldn’t possibly let her keep it, Alma,” she
said. “It’s very kind of you
not
to make a fuss, but Robin knows better than
that—”

“
Better than what? That
chain isn’t gold, Paulette—I’m surprised it’s not as green as the
stone by now. I played with it sometimes when I was a girl after
Mother gave it to me one birthday—what did you say Mother?” Pause.
“She says it was for Christmas one year, not my birthday. And
Myrtle says she wore it for over the holidays when first Howie
courted her and—hang on Paulette. What’s that Mother? Yes, all
right, I’ll tell her. Listen, Paulette, it’s not even a genuine
antique. Not yet, anyhow. Mother got it when she was nine or ten.
Says some old Plains squaw must’ve had a husband or an uncle or a
brother who traded with one of Plateau Indians and the Plains
squaw—hang on Paulette… She was what? Oh… Mother says the squaw was
Pawnee or maybe Ponca and told her it would clarify her vision. She
gave it to Mother in the winter around 1870—or thereabouts. Says
none of us have daughters—or any children—for that matter, and to
go ahead and let Robin keep it. Like Mother said, it’s just a green
sunstone—not some emerald—but it’s still a nice little memento for
Robin, for dressing up like Esmeralda, the gypsy.