"Au revoir,
Gisselle. I shall never forget the way you squealed when I kissed that little beauty mark under your breast," he added, and laughed as he crawled out the window. He waved and was off as quickly as he had appeared. Only then did I release the air I had been holding in my lungs. I reached back to find the settee and sat hard.
My sister had been having affairs with other men after she had married Beau. Apparently he didn't know, because he hadn't said anything to me. How many more men would come sneaking around the house or calling? I had been lucky this time, but the next man might be more perceptive.
I should have realized Gisselle would have been involved with other men, I thought. She married Beau only as a way to get at me, to flaunt him. Even when she was going with him in high school, she was seeing other boys on the side. Whoever that man was who had just been here, he was right. One man was never enough for Gisselle. She was always thinking about what she was missing.
I could never be like that, I thought. Her friends would soon be chattering about how different she had suddenly become. I hoped they weren't smart enough to figure out why.
I regained my composure and continued to work on my studio. A little more than an hour later, Beau called to say he would be returning for lunch after all.
"Good," I said. He heard the tension in my voice. "Anything wrong?"
"I had a visitor."
"Oh? Who?"
"One of Gisselle's secret lovers," I revealed. He was silent a moment.
"I should have prepared you for that," he admitted.
"You knew?"
"Let's say I had some strong suspicions."
"Then why didn't you tell me, prepare me?" I demanded. His silence reconfirmed my theory. "You were worried I wouldn't go through with doing this, weren't you?"
"A little."
"You should have told me, Beau. It could have been a big problem."
"I know. I'm sorry. What did you do? How did it go? You didn't. . ."
"Of course not. I acted annoyed about everything and drove him off. He accused me of sleeping with someone else. I don't even know his name."
"What did he look like?"
I described him quickly and Beau laughed.
"George Denning. No wonder he was so nice to me all the time." He laughed again. "I would have thought she would have chosen someone betterlooking."
"Doesn't it bother you to learn this now, Beau, and confirm your suspicions?"
"No," he said. "Because now that I have you, there is no longer any past. There is only the present and the future," he said.
"Beau," I asked before he could end the conversation, "were you seeing other women, too?"
"Yes," he admitted. "You. Remember?"
"I meant. . . other women."
"No. My mind, my eyes, my soul, were fixed only on you, Ruby."
"Come home, Beau. I'm a bit shaken."
"All right. I'll hurry," he said, and hung up.
We had met all the challenges and tests so far, I thought, but I was sure they would continue to come at me hard and heavy. I threw myself back into my work and kept busy so as not to worry, but at lunch Beau revealed we had to prepare for the biggest challenge of all.
"My parents," he announced. "They're returning from their European holiday trip in two days. We'll have to go there for dinner."
"Oh, Beau, they'll surely see the differences and know, and you remember how much they disliked me, thanks to Daphne," I reminded him.
"They won't be any more perceptive than anyone else," he assured me. "The fact is, they didn't see much of us after we were married. Gisselle wasn't very fond of my mother, and my father was too serious and too proper for her. They made her uncomfortable. I could count on my fingers how many times we were together. Whenever we were together, Gisselle was usually sullen and quiet. And we won't have to see them that often," he added, but I was still quite nervous about meeting them as Gisselle.
That afternoon we met with the candidates for butler, maid, and cook. The butler was a proper Englishman, about five feet seven with thin, gray hair and hazel eyes. He wore thick-rimmed glasses, which kept falling down the bridge of his bony nose, but he was a pleasant man who had obviously worked for many fine families. His name was Aubrey Renner and he had a warm, friendly smile.
The maid's name was Sally Petersen. She was a tall, thin woman in her mid-forties with a long face that had eyes as big as half dollars and a thin nose that dipped over her pencil-thin mouth. I saw that being a maid was a profession to her, not a job. She appeared to me to be a very responsible person, a bit hard, but efficient.
Our cook was a light-skinned quadroon woman who said she was sixty, but I thought was closer to seventy. She called herself Mrs. Swann and said she rarely bothered to tell people her first name these days because it made her sound too rich, Delphinia. She was a short woman, not more than four feet five, with rolling-pin arms and a chubby face. But I imagined she was once a very pretty young lady. She had full, dark liquid eyes, coral lips, and teeth of pearl. She had worked in the homes of two wealthy Creole families most of her life. I had the feeling that she had retired and then became bored.
Once the servants were hired, Beau thought we should look into the nanny for Pearl; but I was reluctant about throwing another person at Pearl so soon.
"It's something Gisselle would do
immediately," Beau reminded me.
As luck would have it, a friend of his knew of a Frenchwoman who had worked as a private tutor as well as a nanny, and was now unemployed. Her name was Edith Ferrier. Beau had her come to the house the next day. During the interview I found out she had been married, but for only a short time. Her husband had died in a train accident, and the traumatic effect had left her terrified of forming another romantic relationship.
She was a soft-spoken woman of fifty-four with short, black hair streaked with gray, a soft, gentle mouth, and warm, almost sad brown eyes that brightened at the sight of Pearl. Caring and nurturing other people's children had become her whole life, every one of them replacing the children she never had. Pearl was a little suspicious of her at first, but Mrs. Ferrier's soothing voice and happy tones perked up her interest, and in a short time she was letting Mrs. Ferrier show her how to do a new picture puzzle.
Beau had met with all of these candidates before I had and he had explained the situation to them: how we were caring for my sister's child. Few questions were asked, and since none of them had ever known my sister, I didn't have to put on any performances. Beau emphasized with each of them that confidentiality about the family and its affairs was of primary importance. Anyone who talked out of school would be released immediately.
Both of us were happy about the people we had hired. Establishing our new lives seemed well under way, but before I could take a breath and relax, Beau reminded me that his parents had arrived and our dinner was arranged for the following evening.
I had never really gotten to know Beau's parents when I lived in New Orleans. Right from the beginning, because of my stepmother, Daphne, they treated me like common trash. They were people who were quite in love with their own place in high society, the sort who constantly had their names in the society columns and their pictures in the newspapers for attending or sponsoring charity balls and other affairs.
"You can choose something to wear that is more in your character, if you like," Beau told me. "Gisselle knew how my parents were and at least made some small effort not to antagonize them by wearing one of her outrageously sexy outfits. She would wear some of Daphne's jewelry, too. And she would be a little less heavy-handed with the makeup."
"I'd rather wear my own. Your parents won't know the difference." I didn't want to touch anything that had once belonged to my dreadful stepmother, even though her things were expensive and quite chic.
We decided it would be easier for us if we left Pearl at home. My knees were practically knocking together when we drove up to the Andreas mansion on Chestnut Street, which was one of the famous old houses, dating back to the 1850s. It was a classic example of Greek Revival architecture and had double front balconies with Ionic columns below and Corinthian above. Beau emphasized how proud his father was of their home, never missing an
opportunity to describe its historical significance to the Garden District.
"Gisselle showed little interest in his lectures, once even yawning while he spoke about the `dep' windows," Beau said.
"What are they? If I don't remember. . ."
"I wouldn't worry about that. Gisselle barely listened to our conversations, and my parents knew it. Dep windows serve as doorways when a wood panel beneath them is opened. Don't worry. My father won't show you around. He showed Gisselle around and was disappointed in her reactions."
"Then they didn't like Gisselle any more than they liked me, did they?"
"Not much," he said, smiling. He was amused, but all this made me even more nervous. How was I to behave knowing his parents weren't happy he had married me?
The butler let us in and we walked down the long corridor to the sitting room where his parents waited. His father, after whom Beau took the most, had grayed considerably in the temples since I last saw him. Beau had inherited his father's Roman nose and sharp jawline. He was an inch or so taller than his father, who kept his figure quite trim for a man of his age. Tonight he wore a white dinner jacket and a black silk ascot. He had color in his face, which brought out his deep blue eyes.
Beau's mother, a woman almost as tall as Beau's father, had gained some weight since I had seen her last.
Her hair was still that bleached light brown shade and she kept it styled and lacquered. She never let herself get even slightly tanned, coming from that generation of upper-class people who believed a tan made a person look common, like a street worker who was in the sun most of the time. Her best feature was her emerald eyes, which gave her tight, firm face some radiance.
"You're late," his father said, folding his paper and standing.
"Sorry. Hello, Mother," Beau said, and went to kiss her. She turned her face so he could press his lips to her cheek. "Father." He shook his father's hand.
"It was the baby," I said suddenly. "Otherwise, we would have been on time."
"Didn't you say you hired a nanny for her?" his mother asked Beau.
"We did, but . ."
"She's a spoiled little girl and I had to help calm her down," I said. It was swallowing castor oil, but it was something that one might have expected Gisselle to say.
Beau's father raised his eyebrows. "You did? Well now, maybe the two of you will be thinking of having your own children soon. I'm expecting a grandson."
"If all children are like my sister's, I think I'll check into a nunnery," I said. It was almost as if Gisselle had crawled inside me to make these remarks. Beau formed a smile around his lips and his eyes danced with impish delight.
"Yes, well, I think we should go into the dining room. Our dinner is ready," his father said.
"What exactly happened to this Cajun girl?" Beau's mother asked as we walked to the dining room. Beau explained as much of it as he could.
"And you don't expect she will recover?" his father asked.
Beau shot a glance at me before replying. "It doesn't look promising," he replied.
"Well, what do you intend to do with the child? Why don't you just send her back to her father?" his mother suggested. "It was bad enough Daphne and Pierre tried to keep a Cajun girl in their home before."
"He's in a pretty bad way emotionally at the moment, Mother."
"Isn't there any Cajun family to look after her? Really, Beau, you and Gisselle will have your own family someday and--"
"For the time being, it's all right. Isn't it, Gisselle?"
"For the time being," I said. Beau's mother seemed to like that.
"Tell us about your European trip," Beau said, and most of the evening was filled with their descriptions of sight-seeing. Before the evening ended, Beau and his father got into a business discussion and his mother asked if I would like to see some of the things she had bought in Europe.
"Okay," I said with little enthusiasm. If they weren't things bought for Gisselle, she wouldn't care about them. I followed his mother to the master suite, where she showed me the elegant new gowns she had bought in Paris, the hats and the shoes. She told me proudly how she had bought things that were only going to come into fashion here in New Orleans this year and then she handed me a present.
"I thought you might like this," she said. "We got it for you in Amsterdam. It's the best place to buy something like that."
I found a diamond tennis bracelet in the box. It was exquisite and I knew quite expensive, but I remembered that Gisselle never really appreciated how expensive these things were and took most everything for granted.
"It's nice," I said, putting it over my wrist.
"Nice?"
"I mean. . . beautiful. Thank you, Mother," I said. Her eyes widened. Apparently Gisselle had never referred to her as Mother. She stared at me curiously. I swallowed hard, my nerve ends twanging.
"Yes, well, I'm glad you approve," she finally said.
"Let's go show Beau," I said, eager not to be alone with her too long. Goose bumps had come and chicken-skinned my arms.
"That's very beautiful!" Beau exclaimed with proper enthusiasm. His father nodded and his mother looked more satisfied.
I felt relieved when the evening finally ended and we left to go home.
"I think I made a faux pas upstairs," I told Beau immediately. "I called your mother 'Mother,' after she gave me the bracelet."
"Yes. Gisselle never called her anything but Madame Andreas or Edith. My mother isn't the type of woman who warms up to other women easily, and Gisselle made no effort to be a real daughter-in-law. But I think you did very well."
"I hardly said a word at dinner."
"Which was the way Gisselle behaved. My father's very old-fashioned. He doesn't mind quiet women, with one exception. . . . He didn't mind Daphne because she was so astute about business. Actually, he was quite taken with her. I think my mother was a little jealous."
I didn't want to say it, but I thought Daphne and Beau's father would have made a good pair.
"Anyway," Beau said. "Another test passed." He squeezed my hand, his eyes happy and shining.
He was right: We were getting away with it. But when we arrived home, we had a message waiting to call Paul.
"He said it was urgent, madame," Aubrey explained.
"Thank you, Aubrey. Let me check on Pearl first, Beau." I ran upstairs and found her fast asleep. Mrs. Ferrier came out of the adjoining room to tell me everything was fine. Then I went down to the office and called Paul while Beau sat on the sofa.