"What's that?" Gisselle asked when she saw the locket lying between my breasts.
"A gift from Beau."
"Let me see it," she said, leaning forward to take the locket in her fingers. I had to lean over so she wouldn't snap the chain off my neck.
"Be careful," I said.
She opened it and saw our pictures. Her mouth dropped open and she looked back through the window at Beau, who stood talking with Edgar.
"He never gave me anything like that. In fact," she said angrily, "he never gave me anything."
"Maybe he thought you had everything you wanted," I said
She dropped the locket back on my chest and flopped back in the seat to pout. Daddy got into the car and looked at us.
"All set?" he asked.
"No," Gisselle said. "I'll never be set for this."
"We're all set, Daddy," I said. I looked through the window at Beau and mouthed, "Goodbye. I love you." He nodded. Daddy started the engine and we began to pull away.
I looked back through the rearview mirror and saw Nina and Wendy on the galerie, waving. I waved to them and to Edgar and to Beau. Gisselle refused to turn around and wave goodbye to anyone. She sat with her eyes forward, hatefully.
When we reached the gate, I lifted my gaze slowly up the front of the great house until my eyes focused on a window in which the curtains had been drawn back. I studied it, and as the shadows moved away, I saw Daphne standing there gazing down at us.
She was wearing a smile of deep satisfaction.
2
Further from the Bayou
.
As we drove out of the Garden District and
headed for the highway that would take us to Baton Rouge, Gisselle grew unexpectedly quiet. She pressed her face to the window and gazed out at the olivegreen streetcar that rattled down the esplanade, and she looked hungrily at the people who were sitting out in the sidewalk cafes as if she could smell the coffee and the freshly baked breads. New Orleans always seemed busy with tourists, men and women with cameras around their necks and guidebooks in their hands, gazing up at the mansions or at the statues. Some parts of the city had a quiet, lazy rhythm, and other parts were bustling and busy. But the city had character, a life of its own, and it was impossible to live here and not become part of it or stop it from becoming part of you.
When we passed under the long canopy of spreading oaks and passed the great homes and yards filled with camellias and magnolia trees, I too suddenly felt melancholy. The feeling surprised me. I hadn't realized that I had grown to think of this as home. Perhaps because of Daddy, because of Nina and Edgar and Wendy, and certainly because of Beau, I felt a sense of belonging now. I realized I would miss th
is part of the world that I had come to claim as mine almost a year ago.
I would miss Nina's good cooking and her superstitions and rituals to ward off evil. I would miss the chatter I overheard between her and Edgar when they argued about the power of an herb or the evil eye. I would miss Wendy's singing to herself as she worked, and I would miss Daddy's bright, warm smile when he greeted me every morning.
Despite the clouds of tension Daphne had kept hovering over us from the moment I arrived in New Orleans, I knew I would miss the great house with its enormous entryway, its impressive paintings and statues, its rich, antique furniture. What a thrill it was for me during my early days to leave my room and descend that grand stairway like a princess in a castle. Would I ever forget that first night when Daddy brought me to what would be my room and he opened the door on that enormous bed with the fluffy pillows and linen all in chintz? I would miss the painting above my bed, the picture of the beautiful young woman in a garden setting feeding a parrot. I would miss my large closets and my large bathroom with a tub I could soak in for hours and hours.
I had become so comfortable in our mansion, and yes, I had to confess, somewhat spoiled. Having grown up in a Cajun toothpick house built out of cypress with a tin roof, a home where the rooms were no bigger than some of the closets in the House of Dumas, I was bound to fall into awe when I
confronted what was rightly my home too. I would surely miss the evenings when I sat out on the patio and read while the bluejays and mockingbirds flitted around me and settled on the railings of the gazebo to stare. I would miss smelling the ocean in a breeze and occasionally hearing a foghorn in the distance.
And yet I had no right to be unhappy, I thought. Daddy was spending a great deal of money to send us to this private school, and he was doing it so we wouldn't have gray, sad days, so that we would enjoy our teenage years unmolested by the dark burdens of past sins, sins we had yet to understand or even discover. Maybe in time, some joy would return to Daddy's life. Perhaps then we could all be together again.
There I was, believing in blue skies when there were only clouds on the horizon, believing in forgiveness where there was only anger, jealousy, and selfishness. If only Nina really had a magical ritual, a chant, an herb, an old bone we could wave over the house and its inhabitants and turn out the dark shadows that lived in our hearts.
We made a turn and had to come to a stop to wait for a funeral procession to go by, something that accented my sudden mood of despair.
"Oh great," Gisselle complained.
"Just be a moment," Daddy said.