Read Ruby Online

Authors: V. C. Andrews

Tags: #Horror

Ruby (10 page)

BOOK: Ruby
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"For me," he replied. That nearly set her laughing. She rocked a bit and shook her head.
"You come here to beg forgiveness?" she asked. "I came here to borrow some money," he said.
"What?" She stopped rocking, stunned.
"My dingy's motor is shot to hell and Charlie McDermott won't advance me any more credit to buy a new used one from him. I gotta have a motor or I can't earn any money guiding hunters, harvesting oysters, whatnot," he said. "I know you got something put away and I swear--"
"What good is your oath, Jack Landry? You're a cursed man, a doomed man whose soul already has a prime reservation in hell," she told him with more vehemence and energy than I had seen her exert in days. For a moment Grandpere didn't reply.
"If I can earn something, I can pay you back and then some right quickly," he said. Grandmere snorted.
"If I gave you the last pile of pennies we had, you'd turn from here and run as fast as you could to get a bottle of rum and drink yourself into another stupor," she told him. "Besides," she said, "we haven't got anything. You know how times get in the bayou in the summer for us. Not that you showed you cared any," she added.
"I do what I can," he protested.
"For yourself and your damnable thirst," she fired back.
I shifted my gaze from Grandmere to Grandpere. He really did look desperate and repentant. Grandmere Catherine knew I had my painting money put away. I could loan it to him if he was really in a fix, I thought, but I was afraid to say.
"You'd let a man die out here in the swamp, starve to death and become food for the buzzards," he moaned.
She stood up slowly, rising to her full five feet four inches of height as if she were really six feet tall, her head up, her shoulders back, and then she lifted her left arm to point her forefinger at him. I saw his eyes bulge with shock and fear as he took a step back.
"You are already dead, Jack Landry," she declared with the authority of a bishop, "and already food for buzzards. Go back to your cemetery and leave us be," she commanded.
"Some Christian you are," he cried, but continued to back up. "Some show of mercy. You're no better than me, Catherine. You're no better," he called, and turned to get swallowed up in the darkness from where he had come as quickly as he had appeared. Grandmere stared after him a few moments even after he was gone and then sat down.
"We could have given him my painting money, Grandmere," I said. She shook her head vehemently.
"That money is not to be touched by him," she said firmly. "You're going to need it someday, Ruby, and besides," she added, "he'd only do what I said, turn it into cheap whiskey.
"The nerve of him," she continued, more to herself than to me, "coming around here and asking me to loan him money. The nerve of him . . ."
I watched her wind herself down until she was slumped in her chair again, and I thought how terrible it was that two people who had once kissed and held each other, who had loved and wanted to be with each other were now like two alley cats, hissing and scratching at each other in the night.
The confrontation with my grandpere drained Grandmere. She was so exhausted, I had to help her to bed. I sat beside her for a while and watched her sleep, her cheeks still red, her forehead beaded with perspiration. Her bosom rose and fell with such effort, I thought her heart would simply burst under the pressure.
That night I went to sleep with great
trepidation, afraid that when I woke up, I would find Grandmere Catherine hadn't. But thankfully, her sleep revived her and what woke me the next morning was the sound of her footsteps as she made her way to the kitchen to start breakfast and begin another day of work in the loom room.
Despite the lack of customers, we continued our weaving and handicrafts whenever we could during the summer months, building a stock of goods to put out when the tourist season got back into high swing. Grandmere bartered with cotton growers and farmers who harvested the palmetto leaves with which we made the hats and fans. She traded some of her gumbo for split oak so we could make the baskets. Whenever it appeared we were bone-dry and had nothing to offer in return for craft materials, Grandmere reached deeper into her sacred chest and came up with something of value she had either been given as payment for a
treateur
mission years before, or something she had been saving just for such a time.
Just at one of these hard periods, the second thing occurred to put vim and vigor into her steps and words. The postman delivered a fancy light blue envelope with a lace design on its edges addressed to me. It came from New Orleans, the return address simply Dominique's.
"Grandmere, I've got a letter from the gallery in New Orleans," I shouted running into the house. She nodded, holding her breath, her eyes bright with excitement.
"Go on, open it," she said, slipping into a chair. I sat at the kitchen table while I tore it open and plucked out a cashier's check for two hundred and fifty dollars. There was a note with it.
.
Congratulations on the sale of one of your pictures. I have some interest in the others and will be contacting you in the near future to see what else you have done since my visit.
Sincerely, Dominique
.
Grandmere Catherine and I just looked at each other for a moment and then her face lit up with the brightest, broadest smile I had seen her wear for months. She closed her eyes and offered a quick prayer of thanks. I continued to stare incredulously at the cashier's check.
"Grandmere, can this be true? Two hundred and fifty dollars! For one of my paintings!"
"I told you it would happen. I told you," she said. "I wonder who bought it. He doesn't say?"
I looked again and shook my head.
"It doesn't matter," she said. "Many people will see it now and other well-to-do Creoles will come to Dominique's to look for your work and he will tell them who you are; he will tell them the artist is Ruby Landry," she added, nodding.
"Now you listen to me, Grandmere," I said firmly, "we are going to use this money to live on and not bury in your chest for some future thing for me."
"Maybe just some of it," she accepted, "but most of it has to be put away for you. Some day you will need nicer clothing and shoes and other things, and you will need traveling money, too," she said with certainty.
"Where am I going, Grandmere?" I asked.
"Away from here. Away from here," she muttered. "But for now, let us celebrate. Let's make a shrimp gumbo and a special dessert. I know," she said, "we'll make a Kings Cake." It was one of my favorites: a yeast cake ring with colorful sugar glazes. "I'll invite Mrs. Thibodeau and Mrs. Livaudis for dinner so I can brag about my granddaughter until they burst with envy. But first we'll go to the bank and cash your check," she said.
Grandmere's excitement and happiness filled me with joy I hadn't felt in months. I wished that I had someone special with whom to celebrate and thought about Paul. I had seen him only one other time beside church the whole summer and that was when I was in town shopping for some groceries. When I came out of the store, I caught sight of him sitting in his father's car, waiting for him to come out of the bank. He looked my way and I thought he smiled, but at that moment his father appeared and he snapped his head around to face front. Disappointed, I watched him drive off, not looking back once.
Grandmere and I walked to town to cash my check. On the way we stopped at Mrs. Thibodeau's and Mrs. Livaudis's homes to invite them to our dinner of celebration. Then Grandniece began to cook and bake like she hadn't done for months. I helped her prepare and then set the table. She decided to stack the crisp twenty dollar bills at the center of the table with a rubber band around them just to impress her old friends. When they set eyes on it and heard how I had received it, they were astonished. Some people in the bayou worked a whole month for this much money.
"Well, I'm not surprised," Grandmere said. "I always knew she would become a famous artist someday."
"Oh, Grandmere," I said, embarrassed with all the attention, "I'm far from a famous artist."
"Right now you are, but one day you will be famous. Just wait and see," Grandmere predicted. We served the gumbo and the women got into a discussion about varieties of recipes. There were as many gumbo recipes in the bayou as there were Cajuns, I thought. Listening to Grandmere Catherine and her friends argue over what combination of ingredients was the best and what accounted for the best roux amused me. Their spirited talk became even more so when Grandmere decided to bring out her homemade wine, something she saved for only very special occasions. One glass of it went right to my head. I felt my face turn crimson, but Grandmere and her two friends poured themselves glass after glass as if it were water.
The good food, the wine, and the laughter reminded me of happier times when Grandmere and I would go to community celebrations and gatherings. One of my favorites had always been Flocking the Bride. Each of the women would bring a chicken to start the flock for a newlywed, and there was always lots to eat and drink, and lots of music and dancing. Grandmere Catherine, being a
Traiteur
, was always an honored guest.
After we served the cake and cups of rich, thick Cajun coffee, I told Grandmere to take Mrs. Thibodeau and Mrs. Livaudis out to the galerie. I would clear the table and do the dishes.
"We shouldn't leave the one in whose honor we're celebrating with all the work," Mrs. Thibodeau said, but I insisted. After I cleaned up, I realized we still had the stack of money on the table. I went out to ask Grandmere where she thought I should put it.
"Just run up and put it in my chest, Ruby dear," she said. I was surprised. Grandmere Catherine never let me open her chest or rifle through it before. Occasionally, when she opened it, I looked over her shoulder and gazed in at the finely woven linen napkins and handkerchiefs, the silver goblets, and ropes of pearls. I remembered wanting to sift through all the memorabilia, but Grandmere Catherine always kept her chest sacred. I wouldn't dare touch it without her permission.
I hurried away to hide my new fortune. But when I opened the chest, I saw how empty it had become. Gone were the beautiful linens and all but one silver goblet. Grandmere had bartered and pawned much more than I imagined. It broke my heart to see how much of her personal treasure was gone. I knew that every item had had some special value beyond its money value. I knelt down and gazed at what remained: a single string of beads, a bracelet, a few embroidered scarfs, and a pile of documents and pictures, wrapped in rubber bands. The documents included inoculation certificates for me, as well as Grandmere Catherine's grade school diploma, and some old letters with ink so faded they were barely legible.
I sifted through some of the pictures. She still kept pictures of Grandpere Jack as a young man. How handsome he had been when he was a young man in his early twenties, tall and dark with wide shoulders and a narrow waist. A charming smile flashed brightly from the photograph and he stood so straight and proud. It was easy to see why Grandmere Catherine would have fallen in love with such a man. I found the other pictures of her mother and father, sepia colored and old and faded, but enough left for me to see that Grandmere Catherine's mother, my great
grandmother, had been a pretty woman with a sweet, gentle smile and small delicate features. Her father looked dignified and strong, tight-lipped and serious.
I put back the packets of documents and old family photographs, but before I deposited my money in the chest, I saw the edge of another picture sticking out from the pages of Grandmere Catherine's old leather-bound Bible. Slowly, I picked it up, handling the cracked cover carefully and gently opening the crisp pages that wanted to flake at the corners. I gazed at the old photograph.
It was a picture of a very good-looking man standing in front of what looked like a mansion. He was holding the hand of a little girl who looked a lot like me at that age. I studied the picture more closely. The little girl resembled me so much it was like looking at myself at this young age. In fact, the resemblance was so remarkable, I had to go to my room and find a picture of myself as a little girl. I placed the two side by side and studied them again.
It was me, I thought. It really was. But who was this man and where was I when this picture was taken? I would have been old enough to remember a house like this, I thought. I couldn't have been much less than six or seven at the time. I turned the picture over and saw there was scribbling on the back near the bottom.
.
Dear Gabrielle,
I thought you would like to see her on her seventh birthday. Her hair is very like yours and she's everything I dreamed she would be.
Love, Pierre
.
Pierre? Who was Pierre? And this picture, it was sent to my mother? Was this my father? Had I been somewhere with him? But why would he be telling my mother about me? She had already died. Could it be he hadn't known at the time? No, that made no sense, for how could he have gotten me even for a short time and not known my mother was dead? And how could I have been with him and not recalled anything?
The mystery buzzed around inside me like a hive of bees making my stomach tingle. It filled me with a strange sense of foreboding and anxiety. I looked at the little girl again and again compared our faces. The resemblance was undeniable. I had been with this man.
I took a deep breath and tried to calm myself so when I went back downstairs and saw Grandmere and her friends, they wouldn't know something had disturbed me, disturbed my very heart and soul. I knew how hard, if not impossible, it would be for me to hide anything from Grandmere Catherine, but fortunately, she was so involved in an argument over crabmeat ravigote, she didn't notice how disturbed I was.
Finally, her friends grew tired and decided it was time for them to leave. Once again, they offered me their congratulations, kissing and hugging me while Grandmere looked on proudly. We watched them leave and then we went into the house.
"I haven't had a good time like that in ages," Grandmere said, sighing. "And look at what a wonderful job you did cleaning up. My Ruby," she said, turning to me, "I'm so proud of you, dear and . . ."
Her eyes narrowed quickly. She was flushed from the wine and the excitement of all her arguments, but her spiritual powers were not asleep. She quickly sensed something was wrong and stepped toward me.

BOOK: Ruby
2Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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