"How long will this take?"
"It can't be done overnight, madame," he said
frankly.
"But my baby. . . Oh, Beau."
"Did you consider going to see Madame Tate
and talking it out with her? Perhaps this was an
impulsive angry act and now she's had some time to
reconsider," Monsieur Polk suggested. "It would
simplify the problem."
"I don't say this is her motive," he added,
leaning forward, "but you might offer to sign over any
oil rights, et cetera."
"Yes," I said, hope springing in my heart. Beau nodded. "It could be driving her mad that
Ruby would inherit Cypress Woods and all the oil on
the land," Beau agreed. "Let's drive out there and see
if she will speak with us. But in the meantime . . ." "I'll go forward with my research in the matter,"
Monsieur Polk said. He stood up and put his cigar in
the ashtray before leaning over to shake Beau's hand. "You know," he said softly, "what a field day our gossip columnists in the newspapers will have with
this?"
"We know." Beau looked at me. "We're
prepared for all that as long as we get Pearl back." "Very well. Good luck with Madame Tate,"
Monsieur Polk said, and we left.
"I feel so-w--eak, Beau, so weak and afraid," I
said as we left the building for our car.
"You can't present yourself to that woman
while you're in this state of mind, Ruby. Let's stop for
something to eat to build your strength. Let's be
optimistic and strong. Lean on me whenever you have
to," he said, his face dark, his eyes down. "This is
really all my fault," he murmured. "It was my idea,
my doing."
"You can't blame yourself solely, Beau. I knew
what I was doing and I wanted to do it. I should have
known better than to think we could splash water in
the face of Destiny."
He hugged me to him and we got into our car
and started for the bayou. As we rode, I rehearsed the
things I would say. I had no appetite when we stopped
to eat, but Beau insisted I put something in my
stomach.
The late afternoon grew darker and darker as
the sun took a fugitive position behind some long,
feather
brushed storm clouds. All the blue sky seemed
to fall behind us as we drove on toward the bayou and
the confrontation that awaited. As familiar places and
sights began to appear, my apprehension grew. I took
deep breaths and hoped that I would be able to talk
without bursting into tears.
I directed Beau to the Tate residence. It was one
of the larger homes in the Houma area, a two-and-ahalf-story Greek Revival with six fluted Ionic
columns set on pilastered bases a little out from the
edge of the gallery. It had fourteen rooms and a large
drawing room. Gladys Tate was proud of the decor in
her home and her art, and until Paul had built the
mansion for me, she had the finest house in our area. By the time we drove up, the sky had turned
ashen and the air was so thick with humidity, I
thought I could see droplets forming before my eyes.
The bayou was still, almost as still as it could be in
the eye of a storm. Leaves hung limply on the
branches of trees, and even the birds were depressed
and settled in some shadowy corners.
The windows were bleak with their curtains drawn closed or their shades down. The glass reflected the oppressive darkness that loomed over the swamps. Nothing stirred. It was a house draped in mourning, its inhabitants well cloistered in their private misery. My heart felt so heavy; my fingers trembled as I opened the car door. Beau reached over
to squeeze my arm with reassurance.
"Let's be calm," he advised. I nodded and tried
to swallow, but a lump stuck in my throat like swamp
mud on a shoe. We walked up the stairs and Beau
dropped the brass knocker against the plate. The
hollow thump seemed to be directed into my chest
rather than into the house. A few moments later, the
door was thrust open with such an angry force, it was
as if a wind had blown it. Toby stood before us. She
was dressed in black and had her hair pinned back
severely. Her face was wan and pale.
"What do you want?" she demanded.
"We've come to speak with your mother and
father," Beau said.
"They're not exactly in the mood to talk to
you," she spit back at us. "In the midst of our
mourning, you two had to make problems."
"There are some terrible misunderstandings we
must try to fix," Beau insisted, and then added, "for
the sake of the baby more than anyone."
Toby gazed at me. Something in my face
confused her and she relaxed her shoulders. "How's Pearl?" I asked quickly.
"Fine. She's doing just fine. She's with Jeanne,"
she added.
"She's not here?"
"No, but she will be here," she said firmly. "Please," Beau pleaded. "We must have a few
minutes with your parents."
Toby considered a moment and then stepped
back. "I'll go see if they want to talk to you. Wait in
the study," she ordered, and marched down the
hallway to the stairs.
Beau and I entered the study. There was only a
single lamp lit in a corner, and with the dismal sky,
the room reeked of gloom. I snapped on a Tiffany
lamp beside the settee and sat quickly, for fear my
legs would give out from under me.
"Let me begin our conversation with Madame
Tate," Beau advised. He stood to the side, his hands
behind his back, and we both waited and listened, our
eyes glued to the entrance. Nothing happened for so
long, I let my eyes wander and my gaze stopped dead
on the portrait above the mantel. It was a portrait I had done of Paul some time ago. Gladys Tate had hung it in place of the portrait of herself and Octavious. I had done too good a job, I thought. Paul looked so lifelike, his blue eyes animated, that soft smile captured around his mouth. Now he looked like he was smiling with impish satisfaction, defiant, vengeful. I couldn't
look at the picture without my heart pounding. We heard footsteps and a moment later Toby
appeared alone. My hope sunk. Gladys wasn't going
to give us an audience.
"Mother will be down," she said, "but my father
is not able to see anyone at the moment. You might as
well sit," she told Beau. "It will be a while. She's not
exactly prepared for visitors right now," she added
bitterly. Beau took a seat beside me obediently. Toby
stared at us a moment.
"Why were you so obstinate? If there was ever
a time my mother needed the baby around her, it was
now. How cruel of you two to make it difficult and
force us to go to a judge." She glared at me and then
turned directly to Beau. "I might have expected
something like this from her, but I thought you were
more compassionate, more mature."
"Toby," I said. "I'm not who you think I am." She smirked. "I know exactly who you are. Don't you think we have people like you here, selfish, vain people who couldn't care less about anyone
else?"
"But . . ."
Beau put his hand on my arm. I looked at him
and saw him plead for silence with his eyes. I
swallowed back my words and closed my eyes. Toby
turned and left us.
"She'll understand afterward," Beau said softly.
A good ten minutes later, we heard Gladys Tate's
heels clicking down the stairway, each click like a
gunshot aimed at my heart. Our eyes fixed with
anticipation on the doorway until she appeared. She
loomed before us, taller, darker in her black mourning
dress, her hair pinned back as severely as Toby's. Her
lips were pale, her cheeks pallid, but her eyes were
bright and feverish.
"What do you want?" she demanded, shooting
me a stabbing glance.
Beau rose. "Madame Tate, we've come to try to
reason with you, to get you to understand why we did
what we did," he said.
"Humph," she retorted. "Understand?" She
smiled coldly with ridicule. "It's simple to understand.
You're the type who care only about themselves, and if you inflict terrible pain and suffering on someone in your pursuit of happiness, so what?" She whipped her eyes to me and flared them with hate before she turned to sit in the high-back chair like a queen, her
hands clasped on her lap, her neck and shoulders stiff. "Much of this is my fault, not Ruby's," Beau
continued. "You see," he said, turning to me, "a few
years ago we. . . I made Ruby pregnant with Pearl, but
I was cowardly and permitted my parents to send me
to Europe. Ruby's stepmother tried to have the baby
aborted in a run-down clinic so it would all be kept
secret, but Ruby ran off and returned to the bayou." "How I wish she hadn't," Gladys Tate spit, her
hating eyes trying to wish me into extinction. "Yes, but she did," Beau continued, undaunted
by her venom. "For better or for worse, your son
offered to make a home for Ruby and Pearl." "It was for worse. Look at where he is now,"
she said. Ice water trickled down my spine.
"As you know," Beau said softly, patiently,
"theirs was not a true marriage. Time passed. I grew
up and realized my errors, but it was too late. In the
interim, I renewed my relationship with Ruby's twin
sister, who I thought had matured, too. I was mistaken
about that, but that's another story."
Gladys smirked.
"Your son knew how much Ruby and I still
eared for each other, and he knew Pearl was our child,
my child. He was a good man and he wanted Ruby to
be happy."
"And she took advantage of that goodness,"
Gladys accused, stabbing the air between us with her
long forefinger.
"No, Mother Tate, I--"
"Don't sit there and try to deny what you did to
my son." Her lips trembled. "My son," she moaned.
"Once, I was the apple of his eye. The sun rose and
fell on my happiness, not yours. Even when you were
enchanting him here in the bayou, he would love to sit
and talk with me, love to be with me. We had a
remarkable relationship and a remarkable love
between us," she said. "But you were relentless and
you charmed him away from me," she charged, and I
realized there was no hate such as that born out of
love betrayed. This was why her brain was screaming
out for revenge.
"I didn't do those things, Mother Tate," I said
quietly. "I tried to discourage our relationship. I even
told him the truth about us," I said.
"Yes, you did and viciously drove a wedge between him and me. He knew that I wasn't his real
mother. Don't you think that changed things?" "I didn't want to tell him. It wasn't my place to
tell him," I cried, recalling Grandmere Catherine's
warnings about causing any sort of split between a
Cajun mother and her child. "But you can't build a
house of love on a foundation of lies. You and your
husband should have been the ones to tell him the
truth."
She winced. "What truth? I was his mother until
you came along. He loved me," she whined. "That
was all the truth we needed . . . love."
A pall fell among us for a moment. Gladys
sucked in her anger and closed her eyes.
Beau decided to proceed. "Your son, realizing
the love between Ruby and myself, agreed to help us
be together. When Gisselle became seriously ill, he
volunteered to take her in and pretend she was Ruby
so that Ruby could become Gisselle and we could be
man and wife."
She opened her eyes and laughed in a way that
chilled my blood. "I know all that, but I also know he
had little choice. She probably threatened to tell the
world he wasn't my son," she said, her flinty eyes
aimed at me.
"I would never. . ."
"You'd say anything now, so don't try," she
advised.
"Madame," Beau said, stepping forward.
"What's done is done. Paul did help. He intended for
us to live with our daughter and be happy. What
you're doing now is defeating what Paul himself tried
to accomplish."
She stared up at Beau for a moment, and as she
did so, the gossamer strands of sanity seemed to shred
before they snapped behind her eyes. "My poor
granddaughter has no parents now. Her mother was
buried and her father will be interred beside her." "Madame Tate, why force us to go to court over
this and put everyone through the misery again?
Surely you want peace and quiet at this point, and
your family--"
She turned her dark, blistering eyes toward
Paul's portrait, and those eyes softened. "I'm doing
this for my son," she said, gazing up at him with more
than a mother's love. "Look how he smiles, how
beautiful he is and how happy he is. Pearl will grow
up here, under that portrait. At least he'll have that.
You," she said, pointing her long, thin finger at me
again, "took everything else from him, even his life." Beau looked at me desperately and then turned
back to her. "Madame Tate," he said, "if it's a matter
of the inheritance, we're prepared to sign any
document."
"What?" She sprang up. "You think this is all a
matter of money? Money? My son is dead." She
pulled up her shoulders and pursed her lips. "This
discussion is over. I want you out" of my house and
out of our lives."
"You won't succeed with this. A judge--" "I have lawyers. Talk to them." She smiled at
me so coldly, it made my blood curdle. "You put on
your sister's face and body and you crawled into her
heart. Now live there," she cursed, and left the room. Right down to my feet, I ached, and my heart
became a hollow ball shooting pains through my
chest. "Beau!"
"Let's go," he said, shaking his head. "She's
gone mad. The judge will realize that. Come on,
Ruby." He reached for me. I felt like I floated to my
feet.
Just before we left the room, I gazed back at
Paul's portrait. His expression of satisfaction put a
darkness in my heart that a thousand days of sunshine
couldn't nudge away.
After the funeral drive back to New Orleans, I
collapsed with emotional exhaustion and slept into the
late morning. Beau woke me to tell me Monsieur Polk
had just called.
"And?" I sat up quickly, my heart pounding. "I'm afraid it's not good news. The experts tell
him everything is identical with identical twins, blood
type, even organ size. The doctor who treated Gisselle
doesn't think anything would show in an X ray. We
can't rely on the medical data to clearly establish
identities.
"As far as my being the father of Pearl . . . a
blood group test will only confirm that I couldn't be,
not that I could. As Monsieur Polk said, those sorts of
tests aren't perfected yet."
"What will we do?" I moaned.
"He has already petitioned for a hearing and we