Little Gale Gumbo (36 page)

He had nothing to lose, he told himself as he mounted the steps to her front porch. Maybe she'd be thinking what he was thinking: that there could be only one right way for the two of them to say good-bye. Sweeping open the storm door and stepping inside, he promised himself he hadn't arrived with expectations, only desire. Pure and clear.

The music was loud. Marvin Gaye. He had to shout.

“In the kitchen,” Dahlia called, and he walked quickly down the hall to the back of the house.

She was at the sink, wearing an oversize sweater and a pair of jeans. “Hi, stranger.”

“Shit, don't call me that yet,” he said, glancing around the cluttered kitchen.

If he'd come at a bad time, she didn't let on. She sipped from a glass of red wine and pointed him to a bottle on the other end of the counter. He poured himself some.

“What are we having?” he asked, coming beside her.

“Pizza.” She nodded to an empty box dangling off the top of an overstuffed trash can in the corner. “I thought you were eating at the house?”

“I did,” he admitted. “Your mom made blackened trout and ginger cake. But you know I always have room for your cardboard store-bought pizza.”

“Ha-ha,” Dahlia said, licking sauce off her finger. “We should call Joze.”

“Sure,” he said. “Later.”

Dahlia nodded agreeably and bent down to check on the pizza. She'd been expecting him somehow, she realized—how could she not have been?—and he knew it. She poured herself more wine and watched him move leisurely around the kitchen, swaying and tapping the air in time to the music. His leaving struck her suddenly, though she'd been aware of her refusal to confront it for weeks now. She'd miss him deeply. She didn't dare consider how much. Seeing the flush of his cheeks, his dizzy smile, she knew he had tallied
his
feelings. He'd come here with the balance.

They sipped their wine. Matthew rested against the fridge.

“I'm thinking of getting a dog when I get down there.”

“You should,” Dahlia said. “A really big one that eats everything and sheds all over the house.”

“You mean to replace you?”

She chucked a dish towel at him. He caught it, laughing.

The smell of the cooking pizza, fatty sausage and salty olives, filled him with a fierce giddiness. The wine was warm and smooth. He began to feel its effect. The familiar, always pleasant beginnings of the buzz, a weightless ease, slow and carefree.

The kitchen looked cozy to him, the pile of dirty dishes in the sink somehow charming.

“Gonna miss me, Dee?” he asked finally when she wouldn't confess on her own.

“Jesus, how can you even ask me that?” Dahlia pulled the pizza from the oven, set it on the stovetop. “It was hard enough with all of us moving out of the house. Adjusting to that distance. Knowing you weren't just down the hall anymore. Somebody to sneak a beer with.”

“And do your algebra homework for you.”

“One time!”

“Bullshit,” he said. “Try a dozen.”

Dahlia shrugged, chuckled. “A lot of good it did me. I still got a C-plus.”

“Serves you right.”

They carried the pizza into the living room and ate on the couch, draining the bottle of wine.

“Let's open another,” Matthew said, starting to rise.

Dahlia touched his arm to slow him. “Let's wait for Joze.”

“Why bother?” he said. “She won't come. It's too late.”

“Not for us.”

He reached for Dahlia's cheek, ran his thumb down her throat. “I'll see her tomorrow, Dee.”

Dahlia saw the familiar yearning in his eyes. He hadn't come here for a reunion with both of them, and she knew that too.

She let her head fall against his hand. “We shouldn't, Matty.”

“Why not?” He smiled, even as her expression remained serious. “Not even for old times' sake?”

“Matty . . .”

“Come on, Dee. Think of it as my going-away present.”

She looked at him sharply. “What a shitty thing to say.”

“I'm sorry. I didn't mean that.”

“Didn't you?”

He wanted to repair the moment quickly, knew he had to. He cupped her face in his palm, emboldened by the wine, by the knowledge that he was leaving.

“I just thought it might be nice,” he said. “Does it have to mean more than that?”

Dahlia smiled, reaching out to push his bangs back. “You once told me everything means something, remember?”

Matthew remembered it clearly, but still he shrugged.

“It won't make it any easier, you know,” she said.

“I'm not expecting it to.”

“Liar. You always do,” Dahlia whispered as his mouth came down over her face. First he kissed each cheek, then her lips, one at a time, lingering until he felt her kiss him back.

Looking into her eyes, in an unmistakable flash, he saw what might have been obligation—or worse, pity. But he chose to see it as something warm and familiar. What he'd always imagined he saw in Dahlia's face when she looked upon him. Something binding. Something real.

They lay down on the couch. He turned off the light before she could.

 

“The house is so quiet.”

Camille stood at the parlor window the next evening, smiling at the faded folds in the curtains she'd hung for Ben so many years ago. Ben stood behind her, his hands resting gently on her shoulders. She turned her face just slightly, enough to brush the hard peaks of his knuckles with her lips. It didn't matter that the children had moved out years earlier. Somehow, their daily activities had always brought them back to the house, even allowing for the occasional extended stay in their old bedrooms between rentals, breakups, or new jobs.

But tonight was different, and both Camille and Ben knew it. Matthew had left the island that morning, and Dahlia and Josie had finally made their own lives, their own homes. Even the café seemed to be slipping away from them.

Camille almost didn't dare ask. “Did you hear from the bank?”

Ben kissed her neck, rested his chin against her soft, graying curls. “They want to be patient, but . . .”

“But they're not a charity, right?” Camille finished softly. She frowned, feeling useless tears rising in her throat. “We just need a few more months. Winters are always tough. They have to understand that. Every business on the island has lost money in the past few summers. We can't be the only ones.”

Ben wrapped his arms around her shoulders. “I know.”

They spoke little as they made their way up the stairs to his room. For years, Ben had asked Camille to move out of the apartment and into his side of the house, but she had refused, and he had finally come to accept her simple terms. It didn't matter that she no longer needed the space, that there were only two of them in the rambling house now. Camille loved her home, though they had shared it as one almost from the start.

They made love on top of the sheets, then lay side by side under them. When the phone rang, neither wanted to leave the soft nest they'd built, but Camille implored Ben, suggesting it might be Matthew from the road. She snuggled deeper, stretching leisurely, warm and content, her worries abandoned for a moment. When Ben returned a few minutes later, his face was drawn. Camille sat up, panicked.

“What is it?” she asked. “What's happened?”

“That was Charles's brother Louis,” Ben said, his voice oddly flat. “Charles told him to call. He said Charles was sentenced today in New Orleans. Eighteen years.”

Ben climbed back into bed and Camille rolled into his embrace. They lay there, wide-eyed and silent, their hearts swelling with a relief they had never imagined.

At last, it was possible.

Charles Bergeron might never darken the shores of Little Gale Island again.

 

Wayne watched Josie in the moonlight, her knees drawn up to her chest on the window seat.

“You were supposed to send it back, Jo. You promised.”

“I meant to. A hundred times.”

“So why didn't you?”

She shrugged uselessly. “What does it matter? We need it now.”

Wayne sighed. “What happens if he gets out and he wants the money back?”

“He won't,” Josie said firmly, her eyes fixed on the night sky.

“He won't what? Want it back?”

“Get out.” Josie turned to her husband and smiled calmly. “Eighteen years is a long time. Daddy's not a healthy man. He won't see the end of it.”

“You don't know that,” Wayne said gently. “He'd survive it just for spite.”

“Then we'll cross that bridge when we come to it,” she said. “We can always save it back.”

Wayne considered that, frowning down at his hands where they lay in his lap. “What do we tell Camille and Ben? You know your mother. She won't take it if she knows where the money came from. She'd sooner see the café go under.”

“I've already thought of that,” Josie said. “We'll tell her it's your money. That you've been saving it in an account since you were a teenager.”

“What if they
still
won't take the money?”

“They'll take it,” she said. “They have to take it.”

And they did have to; Wayne knew that. The café would close if they didn't. The threat of that unthinkable event had been on their minds for months now. Ben had cleared out his savings and taken out a second mortgage on the house and still they'd come up short. The summer season was still months away. They'd never get through the stretch otherwise.

Josie came back to bed, pressing herself against Wayne as they lay back down together.

“We can't tell Dahlia either,” she whispered. “She'd never forgive me.”

“We won't tell her.”

But even as Josie nodded in the darkness, even as the thin, warm layer of relief began to settle over her thumping heart, she felt the crushing weight of regret land with it.

It was a law of the universe: Sisters weren't supposed to keep secrets from each other.

Part Four

Simmer for one hour. Add shrimp at the very end.

Twenty-seven

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Morning came quickly to the island, like something in the grip of a current, a stream rushing after heavy rain, the early sky brushed with soft gray clouds that barely moved no matter how long and hard Dahlia glared at them from her bedroom window. She lay back down, yanked the sheets above her head, and tried to find sleep again, but thoughts flickered, some almost blinding in their clarity, others so dim she could barely grasp them before they fled again. She'd never been so drunk that she'd blacked out—native New Orleanians knew how to hold their liquor, thank you very much—but today she wished for such amnesia, a few portions of the previous evening plucked from her brain: Matthew's caressing of her face, his gentle but firm pressure on her hand, the look of hurt when she'd pulled away. She thought he'd wished her good night on the steps of the inn, but she might have merely hoped for the words.

Surrendering at last, she dragged herself out of bed and down the stairs, facing the flat light of dawn that fell in fuzzy streaks across her wood floors, the dishes in the drainer, the dusty collection of sea glass above the sink. The stretch of wall where Lionel and Roman's painting had hung until recently looked somehow brighter to her, or maybe it was only her imagination.