Feast of All Saints (85 page)

She writhed in her chair. Her hands were again on the sides of her head, and that tautness to her muscles went away. Her mouth was quivering with some terrible sadness. She could so keenly remember her sisters’ laughter, their heads coming together, “Why, he’s so handsome, Aglae, he’s so handsome,” and Christine destined to marry Cousin Louis who was so old then and white as a bone. There had been tears in Christine’s eyes when she said, “He is splendid, Aglae,” Christine had been dancing with him until she was so dizzy she could hardly stand. But oh, how he had angered Aglae, maddened her with that need, those eyes flashing to her again and again from the end of the supper table, from across the crowded room, and how sheepish was that whisper when he drew near to her, and that smile and that look, “We share a secret, you and I.” She had loathed him! No, No. She shook her head. “No!” she said aloud to the empty room. “It could not have been different, I am not to blame, I am not to blame, I am not to blame…”

As
SOON AS THEY ENTERED
the cottage, Cecile looked at the clock. She stared so intently at it, her face drained and weary, that Tante Louisa took her by the arm and told her to sit down. They had all been in the Cathedral at the moment when in St. Jacques Parish, some fifty miles away, Philippe had been taken from the Requiem Mass in the St. Jacques chapel to his family grave. Friends had come to the Cathedral. Madame Suzette had been there with Giselle. Celestina had come with Gabriella and Fantin. And in the great empty church where there had been no service on this day, others moved about oblivious to this small gathering in the back pews. At last it was three o’clock. No doubt the stone had been set in place, and most likely no one even remained in the cemetery in St. Jacques Parish. So Louisa had said, “Let’s go home.”

And now having come into the cottage, Cecile stared at the clock and had to be told to sit down.

“I don’t see why you stay in this house,” Colette said, her voice light so that it sounded strange and sing-song among so much black bombazine. Marie took a pot of coffee from Lisette and poured it into four small gilt-edged cups.

“Put some brandy in that,
ma petite
,” Louisa said. And Colette, thinking that Cecile had been offered enough brandy and enough sherry and enough straight whiskey, shot her a disapproving and vain glance.

“I don’t see why we just don’t go right up to our place now,” said Colette folding her shawl and laying it over the back of her chair. The cottage was cold, since Lisette had only just made the fire.

“You should go,” Cecile said quite suddenly. Both the aunts were startled. Cecile’s eyes were glassy, but calm. “You should both go now and leave Marie and me here alone.”

For a moment they all studied her as if they had not properly heard.

“I want to be alone here with Marie,” she said.

Marie’s face was remote and cold. She set the coffee down for her mother and glanced from Louisa to Colette. There was as always now a defiance in Marie’s expression. Louisa had several times told her that her haughty look was not feminine, and she ought to be more demure but this did no good. And now Colette appeared exasperated.

“You’ve got plenty of time to be alone with Marie, you come up to the flat with us. Where’s Lisette, seems like someone is always asking where’s Lisette, get her to pack your things, you don’t want to stay here right now…”

“This is my home and this is where I want to stay,” Cecile said sharply, baring her teeth involuntarily as she clenched them. She drank the coffee down in one gulp.

Marie seated herself at the end of the table and stirred her coffee with a small silver spoon.

“All right, then, “Louisa said. “But you send Lisette up there for us if you get to feeling bad. Has anyone taken the time to write to Marcel yet to tell him to come home?”

“No!” Cecile’s teeth clenched again. “I’ll take care of that when I want him home.”

“Well, what difference does it make now, for God’s sake?” Colette asked. “Those
Bontemps
people have been here and gone, they won’t be coming back here, I don’t see why he can’t…”

“Will you leave that to me?” Cecile said.

“This lady’s tired,” Louisa said. “Come on, let’s leave her alone.” And she was halfway out the door before Colette could protest.

Marie had her back to her mother, more or less. She could see
her mother out of the corner of her eye. She was not particularly afraid now, it seemed a time to forgive, if that were possible, or at least to pretend to forgive, but she was quite uncertain as to why her mother would want her here, why such a situation as this could thaw the hatred between them when her mother had others to lean on, when her mother had not spoken a civil word to Marie in a year. She herself was sickened by her father’s death, sickened by the manner of it and the months of drinking that had preceded it, and was shamed and humiliated that he had died under this roof, not for herself, but for him.

She felt she had known he was going to die long before it had happened, and the sight of the man in those last weeks had horrified her, torn her heart. It had brought her to tears to see him stumbling, unable even to keep the cigar to his lip, her mother’s terrified eyes gazing on. She drank a sip of the coffee into which she had put no brandy and wondered how long she must wait now for the marriage, if Cecile could conceivably throw another obstacle in her path, some decorous period of mourning, for instance, and just how long that might be. Rudolphe didn’t care about a dowry, and in veiled gentlemanly terms had let her know. And now, having become quite adept at putting her mind someplace else when she was alone with her mother, Marie looked at the lace curtains, or at the papered walls, or at the whatnot shelf or the statues on the mantel and thought, I am with Richard, in Richard’s house.

Her eyes moved numbly over the surface of the table when she heard her mother rise, saw the black dress in the corner of her eye drawing closer and closer and suddenly felt her mother’s hand on her shoulder and heard her intake of breath. She looked up, and to her amazement her mother’s face was completely sad. She was staring at the ceiling above Marie and she looked dreadfully softened and sad.

Marie hesitated and when the hand didn’t go away, she lifted her left hand and slid it around her mother’s waist. She felt stiff and cold doing this, and unnatural, and she wished that this extremely unusual moment could elicit more from her, but it could not.

“Wouldn’t it be better to go up to the flat?” she asked.

“I have precisely seventy-five dollars and seventy-five cents,” Cecile said in a simple voice, her eyes still on the ceiling, and her hand tightening on her daughter’s shoulder. She looked down now into Marie’s eyes so boldly that Marie flushed. “Now how long do you think we can live on that?”

“Marcel should come home, right home,” Marie said.

“And what can Marcel do?” her mother asked without a trace of the usual acrimony, the voice strangely unaffected by anything but sincerity.

Marie was painfully conscious of the hand on her shoulder, painfully conscious of the closeness of her mother’s body. In fact, her mother’s breasts, very high and firm beneath the bombazine, aroused in her a vague disgust. She looked at the table, and opened her eyes wider as the hand actually clasped her arm and she felt her body tilted toward her mother and felt her mother trembling all over beneath the bombazine and the scent of roses.

“These are decisions we must all discuss together, we need Marcel,” Marie said.

Suddenly her mother sat down and reaching out so that Marie was frightened, she suddenly pulled the pins from Marie’s hair. She did this gently, deftly, her brows knit as she did it, so that her dark face, so devoid of wrinkles that it was almost a girl’s face, became suddenly brooding with care. Marie was astonished. She felt the hair unraveling from her chignon, and that great sweet relief as it fell down on her shoulders. She could not resist lifting her fingers to massage the scalp suddenly while her mother sat looking at Marie’s hair, her own hands clasping the pins. The fact that the mere touch of her mother’s hands to her hair had given her the usual tingling pleasure she always experienced when her hair was touched confused her. She wanted nothing from her mother, least of all pleasure, intimacy, affection. Her mother hadn’t touched her hair since she was a little girl.

“It’s beautiful,” her mother said, and took a handful of the dark tresses. This was quite amazing, really.

“Like your own,” Marie said coldly.

“Yes, but that is where the resemblance stops.” Cecile looked her right in the eyes. Again, no venom. “You are as beautiful as everyone says you are. I’ve been jealous of you from the moment you were born.”

“Maman, don’t say these things,” Marie drew back. She hadn’t used that word, Maman, in years. Years! It was “you” and “she” or “Maman” in the third person when speaking of Cecile to others, but most often then “my mother” which she had often allowed herself to say with the faintest sneer. People were often puzzled by her expression when she spoke of her mother and she liked it, seeing the vague discomfort in Gabriella’s eyes. But everyone must know, surely, we hate each other. Now Marie was flushed, and staring at the floor.

“But it’s true,” Cecile said. “I’ve hated you for being beautiful while other mothers would have been proud.”

“Then don’t talk of it, it’s best if it’s not talked about…” Marie murmured.

“Why? Aren’t you tired of the tension, tired of the hatred between us? Don’t you want it to end? We only have each other now, you and me.”

“We have Marcel.” Marie glanced at her but couldn’t continue to look into her eyes. She’s mad, she thought. The grief has driven her temporarily out of her mind. “I’m tired, I want to lie down.”

“Get me the sherry,” her mother said.

Relieved to get away, she got it at once. She set a glass down and filled it and was just a little alarmed to see her mother drink that right away and refill the glass.

“That’s warm,” her mother said. It was a phrase Monsieur Philippe had often used, when coming in on cold nights he had taken a heavy drink of his whiskey. “That’s warm.”

Marie moved to the fireplace and taking the poker stoked the coals. Her mother was drinking a third glass. “Did you like him?” she asked as if she knew that Marie was thinking of Monsieur Philippe. “I know that you loved him, but tell me…did you like him?”

“Very much,” Marie said.

Cecile sat back and let out a low moan. Her eyes moved over the ceiling and her hands moved feverishly along the stem of the glass. “If he hadn’t died right there in that bed, I don’t think I’d believe he was dead. I think I’d spend the rest of my life waiting for him to come in that door.”

“Let’s go up to the flat,” Marie said.

“Hmmmmm, no. No, I want to be alone here now with you,” Cecile shook her head. “You don’t know how shy I was in the beginning, you have no idea. You only know the woman who had grown accustomed to him, who loved him so. You have no idea how it was in the beginning. I used to hide from them, they wanted to take me to the balls, and I used to lock my door and hide. I would have gotten under the bed to get away from them, and I was twenty-four years old. I was terrified! And all day long in the shop I spent my days on my knees under those white women’s hems. Pins in my mouth, pins…” she looked at the tips of her fingers and rubbed her thumb along the tips. “I used to be pricked all over by those pins. Even now when I thread a needle, I can hardly bear it.” She shut her eyes and shook her head.

Marie was staring at her. She had never, never heard her mother speak of any of this. Only once in a great while she had said in the past how she hated to sew.

“And then they brought that old man home to the flat, that old man…” Cecile mused.

“But what old man?” Marie asked. She was still holding the poker. A faint ray of sun came in through the close trees outside the window and struck the rings on her mother’s hand. The sherry in the glass sparkled. Her mother’s small mouth was wet and gleaming.

“Magloire Dazincourt,” her mother said with mock dignity, “Magloire
Dazincourt. Old enough to be my father, with yellow teeth. He built this house, not your father, and those are his babies in the cemetery, not your father’s. You never knew that, did you? ‘What are you going to do?’ Colette kept saying to me, ‘throw your corset on top the armoire and be an old maid? You’re twenty-four years old, what are you going to do?’ ” She turned with wide eyes toward Marie and then with a strange sweet but bitter smile, she said, “They didn’t want me on their hands forever, I don’t blame them.”

“Oh, but I don’t believe that,” Marie whispered. “They would have taken care of you forever, they will take care of you…” she stopped.

“Now?” Cecile whispered. “Is that what you were going to say?” And again braced for the malignant edge, Marie did not sense it and was confused.

Cecile drank more of the sherry, and bent her profile scowling in the ray of sun. Dust swirled about her in the light, dust which in church in similar rays of light had often put Marie in mind of the Annunciation, the word of God coming to the Virgin in a ray of light. Those tiny particles seemed to be a spirit in the light.

“I wasn’t fortunate enough to have a child that lived during Monsieur Magloire’s time, and he died the very day this house was complete. But the house is mine, and the furniture is mine, everything here is mine, he was a generous man. He had in fact a young friend who looked after me, a man so handsome people turned to look at him when he passed. That was your father, Monsieur Philippe.” She glanced at her daughter, and Marie, quite fascinated by this tale, was staring at her.

“And so the old maid, you see, at the age of twenty-five, had snared the handsome planter who could have his pick.” Cecile smiled. “I did well.”

Marie nodded.

“And I tell you,” her mother sighed suddenly, her head thrown back so that her breasts seemed higher, fuller, and the sun gilded the edge of her throat, as the voice became low, husky, “in those days you have them in the palm of your hand. You can have anything, anything,” she said. “Later? They become practical, they have other things to think about, but in the beginning…” she let out a low intimate laugh…“You’ve got them! And it’s diamonds if you want them.” Her right hand fingered the rings on her left. “Diamonds,” she said, “and champagne.”