"He's really overdoing it now," Beau admitted in a whisper.
I was very worried and went up to his suite anyway. I knocked on the door and waited, but he didn't respond. I tried the handle, but the door was locked.
"Paul, it's me. Open the door. We have to talk. Please," I begged. Beau stood back to be sure no one overheard my pleas.
"It's no use," he said. "He doesn't want to see you. Wait until later."
But I didn't see him until it was time to attend the services. Despair had washed the radiant color from his face until it resembled a death mask. He gazed at me with vacant eyes and moved like someone in a trance. I squeezed Beau's hand and shot him a troubled glance and he nodded. He tried to approach Paul before me and speak to him, but Paul didn't acknowledge him. He barely acknowledged his own parents, and with people all around him continuously, it was difficult for me to say the things I wanted to say to him.
The church was filled to capacity, not only because of the people the Tates knew and did business with, but because of the people who knew and remembered my grandmere Catherine. My heart nearly burst when I saw their faces. Beau and I sat up front in the pew behind Paul and his family and listened to the priest deliver the eulogy. Every time I heard my name, I winced and gazed around. There wasn't a dry eye in the church. Paul's sisters were crying openly, but Paul was like one of Nina Jackson's zombies, his body stiff, his eyes so empty, they sent chills down my spine. Who in his or her right mind would look at him and not believe it was really Ruby in that coffin? I thought. It gave me a sick, empty feeling in the base of my stomach.
I'm watching people cry over me, listening to a priest talk about me, and gazing at a coffin that is supposed to have my body in it, I thought. It made me feel absolutely ghoulish. It was all I could do to keep myself from fainting.
It was worse at the cemetery. It was I who was supposedly being lowered into the ground; it was I over whose coffin the priest was saying the final words and giving the last rites. My name, my identity, was about to be buried. I thought to myself that this was the final chance, the last time for me to cry out and say, "No, that's not Ruby in the coffin. That's Gisselle. I'm here. I'm not dead!"
For a moment I thought I had actually spoken, but the words died on my lips. My actions had made them forbidden. The truth had to be buried here and now, I realized.
The rain started and fell relentlessly, colder than usual. Umbrellas sprouted. Paul didn't seem to notice. His father and Jeanne's husband, James, had to hold his arms and keep him standing. When the coffin was lowered and the priest cast the holy water, Paul's legs folded. He had to be carried back to the limousine and given some cold water. His mother gave me a scathing glance and followed quickly.
"He's going to win the Academy Award for this," Beau said, shaking his head. Even he was beyond amazement; he was in awe and, from the look in his face, as frightened by Paul's behavior as I was.
"You're right," he whispered to me as we walked back to our vehicle. "He was so disturbed about losing you, he went a bit mad and accepted the illusion as reality. The only way he could accept the fact that you had left him was to believe it was you who was sick and now you who died," Beau theorized, and shook his head.
"I know, Beau. I'm so worried."
"Maybe now that it's over, that she's gone, he'll snap out of it," Beau suggested, but neither of us was filled with any confidence.
We returned to Cypress Woods, mainly to see how Paul was. The doctor went up to the suite to examine him, and when he came down, he told us he had given Paul something to help him sleep.
"It will take time," he said. "These things take time. Unfortunately, we have no drug, no medicine, no treatment, to cure grief." He pressed Gladys's hand between his, kissed her on the cheek, and left. She turned and glared at me in the strangest way, shooting icicles out of her eyes. Then she went upstairs to be with Paul.
Toby and Jeanne went off in a corner to comfort each other. People began to leave, anxious to put this dreadful sadness behind them. Paul's mother remained in the suite with him, so I couldn't get to see him even if I had wanted. Octavious came down to speak to us. He directed himself at Beau as if he, too, couldn't fix his eyes on my face.
"Gladys is as bad as Paul is," he muttered. "It's the way she is about him. Whenever he was sick, even as a child, she was sick. If he was unhappy, so was she. Dreadful, dreadful thing, this," he added, shaking his head and walking off. "Dreadful."
"We should leave now," Beau said softly. "Give him a day or two and then call. After he comes back to himself somewhat, we'll invite him to New Orleans and work out everything sensibly."
I nodded. I wanted to say good-bye to Jeanne and Toby, but they were like two clams who had closed their shell of grief tightly around themselves. They wouldn't look at or talk to anyone. And so Beau and I started out. I paused at the door. James was holding it open, waiting impatiently, but I wanted to gaze around at the grand house once more before leaving. I was filled with a sense of termination. This was the end of so many things. lut it wasn't until late in the afternoon of the next day that I was to discover just how many.
15
Farewell to
My First Love
.
Early in the evening of the following day, just
as Beau and I were about to take our seats for dinner, Aubrey appeared in the dining room doorway, his face pale, to inform me I had a phone call. Since returning from the funeral and Cypress Woods, both Beau and I had been moving like two sleepwalkers, eating little, doing little, talking in low voices. The clouds of gloom that hovered over the bayou followed us back to New Orleans and now lay over us like a ceiling of oppression, darkening every room, filling our very souls with shadows. It had rained all the way back from Cypress Woods. I fell asleep to the monotonous wagging of the wipers on the windshield and woke with a chill that a pile of blankets and a dozen sweaters couldn't chase from my bones.
"Who is it?" I asked. I was in no mood to talk to any of Gisselle's friends, who I imagined had heard about my death and wanted to gossip, and I had left instructions with Aubrey to tell any of them who did call that I was unavailable.
"She wouldn't say, madame. She's speaking in a coarse whisper, however, and she is very insistent," he explained. From the way he couched his words and shifted his eyes, I understood that whoever it was, she had spoken to him roughly. I was positive now that it was one of Gisselle's bitchy, spoiled girlfriends who wouldn't take no as an answer from a servant.
"Do you want me to take it?" Beau asked. "No. I'll take care of it," I said. "Thank you, Aubrey. I'm sorry," I added, apologizing for the ugliness he had to experience.
I went into the study and seized the receiver, my heart pumping, my face flush with anger.
"Who is this?" I demanded. For a moment there was no reply. "Hello?"
"He's gone," a raspy voice replied. "He's gone away and we can't find him and it's all because of you."
"What? Who is this? Who's gone?" I asked with machine-gun speed. The voice had sent an icicle down my spine and nailed my feet to the floor.
"He's gone into the canals. He went there last night and he hasn't returned and no one has been able to find him. My Paul," she sobbed, and I knew it was Gladys Tate.
"Paul . . went into the canals last night?"
"Yes, yes, yes," she cried. "You did this to him. You did all this."
"Madame Tate. . ."
"Stop!" she screamed. "Stop your pretending," she said, and lowered her voice into that scratchy old witch's voice again. "1 know who you really are and I know what you and your. . . lover did. I know how you broke my poor Paul's heart, shattered it until there was nothing left for him to feel. I know how you made him pretend and be part of your horrible scheme."
I felt as if I had stepped into ice water and sunk down to my knees in it. For a moment I couldn't speak. My throat closed and all the words jammed up in my chest, making it feel as if it would burst.
"You don't understand," I finally said, my voice cracking.
"Oh, I understand, all right. I understand better than you know. You see," she said, her voice now full of arrogance, "my son confided in me far more than you ever knew. There were never secrets between us, never. I knew the first time he paid a visit to you and your grandmere. I knew what he thought of you, how he was falling head over heels in love with you. I knew how sad and troubled he was when you left to live with your upper-class New Orleans Creole parents, and I knew how happy he was when you returned.
"But I warned him. I warned him you would break his heart. I tried. I did all that I could," she said, and sobbed. "You enchanted him. Just as I told you that day, you and your witch mother put a spell on my husband and then my son, my Paul. He's gone, gone," she said, her voice faltering, her hatred running out of steam.
"Mother Tate, I'm sorry about Paul. I . . . We'll come right out and help find him."
"Help find him." She laughed a chilling laugh. "I'd rather ask the devil for help. I just want you to know that I know why my son is so brokenhearted and I will not sit by and let him suffer without you suffering twice as much."
"But . . ."
The phone went dead. I sat there, my heart going thump, thump, thump, my mind reeling. I felt as if I were in a pirogue that had been caught in a current and was spinning furiously. The room did twirl. I closed my eyes and moaned and the phone fell from my hand and bounced on the floor. Beau was at my side to catch me as I started to lean too far.
"What is it? Ruby!" He turned and shouted for Sally. "Hurry, bring me a cold, wet washcloth," he ordered. He put his arm around me and knelt down. My eyes fluttered open. "What happened? Who was on the phone, Ruby?"
"It was Paul's mother, Gladys," I gasped.
"What did she say?"
"She said Paul's disappeared. He went into the swamps last night and still hasn't returned. Oh, Beau," I moaned.
Sally came running with the cloth. He took it from her and put it on my head.
"Just relax. She'll be all right now, Sally.
Merci,"
Beau said, dismissing her.
I took some deep breaths and felt the blood returning to my cheeks.
"Paul's disappeared? That's what she said?"
"Yes, Beau. But she said more. She said she knew about us, knew what we had done. Paul told her every-thing. I never knew he had, but now that I think of the way she glared at me at the funeral . ." I sat up. "She never liked me, Beau." I gazed into his wide eyes. "Oh, Beau, she threatened me."
"What? Threatened. How?"
"She said I would suffer twice as much as Paul's suffered."
He shook his head. "She's just hysterical right now. Paul's got them all in a frenzy."
"He went into the swamps, Beau, and he didn't come back. I want to go right out there and help find him. We must, Beau. We must."
"I don't know what we can do. They must have all their workers looking."
"Beau, please. If something should happen to him . . ."
"Ail right," he relented. "Let's change our clothes. You were right," he said with an underlying current of bitterness in his voice, "we shouldn't have involved him as much as we did. I jumped at the opportunity to make things easier for us, but I should have given it more thought."
My legs trembled, but I followed him out and upstairs to change my clothes and tell Mrs. Ferrier we would be leaving the house and might not return until very late or even the next day. Then we got into our car and drove through the night, making the trip in record time.
There were dozens of cars and pickup trucks along the driveway at Cypress Woods. As we pulled up to the house, I looked toward the dock and saw the torches being carried by men who were going in pirogues and motorboats to search for Paul. We could hear the shouts echoing over the bayou.
Inside the house Paul's sisters sat in the study, Toby looking as cold as a statue, her skin alabaster, and Jeanne twisting a silk handkerchief in her hands and gritting her teeth. They both looked up with surprise when we entered.
"What are you doing here?" Toby asked. From the expressions on their faces and their astonishment, I guessed that Gladys Tate hadn't told her daughters the truth. They still thought of me as Gisselle.
"We heard about Paul and came to see what we could do to help," Beau said quickly.
"You could go down and join the search party, I suppose," Toby said.
"Where's your mother?" I asked.
"She's upstairs in Paul's suite, lying down," Jeanne said. "The doctor was here, but she refused to take anything. She doesn't want to be asleep if. . . when. . Her lips trembled and the tears rushed over her eyelids.
"Get hold of yourself," Toby chastised. "Mother needs us to be strong."
"How do they know for sure that he went into the swamps? Maybe he's in some zydeco bar," Beau said.
"First of all, my brother wouldn't go off to a bar the day after he buried his wife, and second, some of the workers saw him heading toward the dock," Toby replied.
"And carrying a bottle of whiskey clutched in his hand," Jeanne added mournfully.
A dead silence fell between us.
"I'm sure they'll find him," Beau finally said.
Toby turned to him slowly and fixed her eyes on him in a cold glare. "Have either of you ever been in the swamps? Do either of you know what it could be like? You make a turn and find yourself floating through overhanging vines and cypress branches and soon you forget how you got there and have no idea how to get out. It's a maze full of poisonous
copperhead snakes, alligators, and snapping turtles, not to mention the insects and vermin."
"It's not that bad," I said.
"Oh really. Well then, march on out of here with your husband and join the search party," Toby retorted with a bitterness that shot through my brain like a laser beam.
"I plan on doing just that. Come on, Beau," I said, spinning around and marching out. Beau was at my side, but he wasn't enthusiastic.
"You really think we should go into the swamps, Ruby? I mean, if all these people who live here can't find him . . ."
"I'll find him," I said firmly. "I know where to look." Jeanne's husband, James, was at the dock when we arrived. He shook his head and lifted his arms in frustration.
"It's impossible," he said. "If Paul doesn't want to be found, he won't be found. He knows these swamps better than he knows the back of his hand. He grew up in them. We're giving up for tonight."
"No, we're not," I said sharply.
He looked up, surprised. "We?"
"Is that your boat?" I asked, nodding toward a dinghy with a small outboard engine.
"Yes, but . ."
"Please, just take us into the swamps."
"I just came back, and I assure you--"
"I know what I'm doing, James. If you don't want to go along, let us just borrow your boat," I insisted.
"You two? In the swamps?" He smiled, sighed, and then shook his head. "All right. give it one more sweep. Get in," he said.
Beau, looking very uncomfortable, stepped into the dinghy after me and sat down. James handed us torches. Then we saw Octavious arriving with another group. His head was down like a flag of defeat.
"Paul's father is taking it very hard," James said, shaking his head.
"Just start the engine, please," I said. "Please . . ."
"What do you expect to be able to do that all these other people, some of whom fish and hunt in here, couldn't do?"
I stared. "I think I know where he might be," I said softly. "Ruby once told me about a hideaway she and Paul shared. She described it so well, I'm sure I could find it."
James shook his head skeptically but started the engine. "All right, but I'm afraid we're just wasting our time. We should wait for daylight."
We pulled away from the dock and headed into the canal. The swamps could be intimidating at night, even to men who had lived and worked them all their lives. There wasn't enough of a moon to give much illumination, and the Spanish moss seemed to thicken and blacken to form walls and block off other canals. The twisted cyprus branches looked like gnarled old witches, and the water took on an inky thickness, hiding tree roots, dead logs, and, of course, alligators. Our movement and the torches kept the mosquitoes at bay, but Beau looked very uncomfortable and even frightened. He nearly jumped out of the dinghy when an owl swooped alongside.
"Go to the right, James, and then, just as you come around the bend, bear left sharply."
"I can't believe Ruby gave you such explicit directions," he mumbled.
"She loved this spot because she and Paul spent so much time there," I said. "It's like another world. She said," I added quickly.
James followed my directions. Behind us, the torches of other searches dimmed and were lost. A sheet of darkness fell between us and the house. Soon we could no longer hear the voices of men in the search party.
"Slower, James," I said. "There's something I have to look for and it's not easy at night."
"Especially when you've never been here before," James commented. "This is futile. If we just wait until morning--"
"There," I said, pointing. "You see where that cypress tree bends over like an old lady plucking a four-leaf clover?"
"Old lady? Four-leaf clover?" James said.
"That's what Paul told Ruby all the time." Neither James nor Beau could see the smile on my face. "Just turn right sharply under the lower branch."
"We might not fit under that," he warned.
"We will if we bend down," I said. "Slowly."
"Are you sure? We'll just get hung up on a rock or a mound of roots or--"
"I'm sure. Do it. Please."
Reluctantly he turned the dinghy. We dipped our heads and slipped under the branch.
"I'll be darned," James said. "Now where?"
"You see that thick wall of Spanish moss that reaches the water?"
"Yeah."
"Just go through it. It's the secret doorway."
"Secret doorway. Damn. No one would know that."
"That's what I meant by it being another world," I said. "You can cut the engine. We'll float on through and we'll be there."
He did so and I held my breath as the dinghy pierced the moss, which parted like a curtain to permit us to enter the small pond. Once we were completely through, I raised my torch and Beau did the same.
"Just paddle in a circle slowly," I said. The glow of our torches lifted the darkness, uncovering the pond. Snakes or turtles slithered beneath the surface, creating ripples. We saw the bream feeding on the mosquitoes. An alliga tor lifted its head, its teeth gleaming in our light, and then it dove. I heard Beau gulp. Somewhere to the right, a hawk screeched. On the shore of the pond, a half dozen or so nutrias scrambled for cover.
"Wait, what's that?" James said. He stood up and poked into the water with his oar to draw a bottle closer to the dinghy. Then he reached in to pluck it out of the water. It was an empty bottle of rum. "He was here," James said, looking around harder.
"Paul!"
he screamed.
"Paul!"
Beau followed.
For a moment I couldn't form his name on my lips. Then I cried out, too.
"Paul, please, if you're here, answer us."
Nothing but the sound of the swamp animals could be heard. Over to the right a deer rustled through the bushes. Terror jumped into my heart, flooded my eyes.
"Just keep rowing around the pond, James," I said, and sat back, but held my torch high to the right while Beau held his to the left. The water lapped against the dinghy. There was barely a breeze and mosquitoes began to sense our presence with delight. Suddenly the round bottom of a pirogue became visible. At first it looked like an alligator, but as we drew closer, it became clear that it was Paul's canoe. No one spoke. James poked it with his oar.
"It's his, all right," he said.
"Paul!"
"Over there. Is that something?" Beau asked, leaning with his torch. James turned the dinghy in the direction Beau was pointing, and I brought my torchlight to bear as well. Slumped over a large rock, his
chatlin
hair matted and muddied by the water, Paul lay facedown. He looked like he had dragged himself up and collapsed. James turned the dinghy so he and Beau could stand up and reach Paul's body. I started to step toward him, too, when Beau turned sharply.
"Don't!" be ordered. He seized me at the elbows to hold me back and get me to sit. "It's not pretty and he's gone," he said.
I slapped my palms over my face and screamed. My shrill cry pierced the darkest corners and shadows in the swamp, sending birds flapping, animals scurrying, and fish diving. It echoed over the water and was finally stopped by the wall of dark silence that waits out there for all of us.
The doctor said Paul's lungs were so full of water, he had no idea how Paul had managed to drag himself up the rock a few inches, much less enough to get his entire body up. There he took his last gasps and passed away. Miraculously, no alligator got to him, but the death by drowning had distorted him and Beau was right to keep me from looking.
Cypress Woods was already a house in mourning, so it just continued under the dark cloud of more grief. Servants who had cried so hard over what they thought was my death now had to find another well of tears from which to draw. Paul's sisters, especially Toby, had anticipated bad news, but were devastated nevertheless and retreated with James into the privacy of the study, while Octavious went upstairs to be with Gladys.