Jeanne mistook the shock in my voice for disgust. "I know how revolting that must sound to you, Gisselle. He doesn't admit to it. It's almost as if he really does forget the things he does," she continued, "but my husband and I drove down there one night and we saw the dim light of a single oil lamp. We spied on him," she admitted.
"What do you see?"
"He was curled up on the floor at the foot of that old settee, sleeping like a baby. We didn't have the heart to wake him. It's so sad."
I didn't speak. I couldn't speak. My own tear
s were falling inside me. I crumpled like a rag in the chair. Paul's pain was far more intense than I ever imagined it might be. He wasn't, as Beau expected, coming to terms with the way things were and would be. He was falling back in time, clinging to happier memories, destroying himself with his return to the past.
"I know you don't care, but he's getting worse and worse, and if he doesn't get hold of himself soon, how will he ever be able to be a father to his child again?" Jeanne said, because she thought that was the one thing that would disturb and worry Gisselle.
"He'll get hold of himself. One day he'll just wake up and realize that what has to be done, has to be done," I said in as cold a voice as I could muster, but it was a voice without any confidence in what it was saying, and Jeanne heard it.
"Sure. I believe that as much as you do." After a pause she asked, "Do you intend to visit your sister again?"
"It upsets me too much," I said. Gisselle would say that, although it would upset me, I thought. It was just that as Ruby, I wouldn't be thinking of myself as much and I would go.
"It doesn't exactly make the rest of us ecstatic, but we go," Jeanne said dryly.
"It's easier for you. You don't have to make the trip to the bayou," I complained.
"Right, that enormous trip. How is the baby?" "She's doing fine."
"Doesn't she ask for her father and mother all the time? You don't even talk about her."
"She's all right," I insisted. "Just do what you can for your brother."
"I think if he had Pearl here with him, he would do better," she said. "Toby thinks so, too."
"We have to think about what's best for the baby," I insisted, perhaps too strongly for Gisselle.
"Being with her father is best," Jeanne replied. A flutter of panic crossed my stomach and sent a chill up to my heart. Then Jeanne added, "But Mother seems to agree with you for the time being, and Paul. . . Paul won't discuss it."
"Then leave it alone," I warned.
"Who'd have thought you of all people would want an infant roaming about her house, as big as it is," Jeanne said.
"Maybe you don't know me as well as you think you do, Jeanne."
"Maybe I don't." She sighed. "Maybe some of your sister's goodness is in you after all. I know I'm just sick to my stomach over all this. It's so unfair. They were the most perfect couple in the world, the two people who were living the fantasy romance all of us wish to live."
"Maybe it was a fantasy," I said softly.
"You would say that."
"This conversation isn't going anywhere important," I snapped in my best Gisselle tone of voice. "I'll call you tomorrow."
"Why do you call so much? Is Beau making you do it?"
"There's no reason to be insolent, Jeanne."
She was quiet a moment. "Sorry," she said. "You're right. I'm just overwrought myself these days. I'll talk to you tomorrow."
Now that my conversations with Jeanne were a strain, it was becoming harder and harder to keep in contact with Cypress Woods and learn what was happening there. Beau's advice was to let things go for a while.
"It's more in Gisselle's character anyway, Ruby. None of them are in the mood to be particularly nice to you as it is."
I nodded, but not calling to see how Paul was and what, if anything, was new about Gisselle was very difficult. I didn't have all that much to distract me now that we had servants looking after the house.