To celebrate his completion of my portrait, La Gandara took me to dinner at Taudière’s, which at the time was the most expensive and pretentious restaurant in town. Before dining on canard à l’orange, the waiter brought us a parchment document that listed the ancestors of the bird we were about to eat and the names of the luminaries who had consumed them.
Throughout the meal, La Gandara spoke passionately about his work. “Painting should appeal to the higher emotions, but beyond all else, it is the art of the senses,” he said as he gazed deep into my face with those flashing gray eyes. “It should touch the eyes by a kinship with flesh and blood.” Perhaps because I was moved by his words, or perhaps because I had consumed a duck that was descended from one eaten by Blanche d’Antigny, a famous courtesan, I agreed to go to a hotel with La Gandara after dinner. It was the start of an affair that lasted several months.
Though La Gandara was gentle and kind when we were together, he gossiped about our romance to his friends and acquaintances, which led to acute embarrassment for Pierre and a fresh batch of negative articles about me in the scandal sheets. One night after I had been seen dining out several nights consecutively with La Gandara, Pierre stormed into my boudoir and demanded an interview.
“People are gossiping about you. You must behave yourself,” he fumed as I sat at my dressing table and brushed my hair.
“You’re one to talk. You’re out every night with Madame Jeuland,” I shouted and threw my brush on the mirrored table. Since the death of her husband, Madame Jeuland had moved back to Paris, and she and Pierre had become inseparable.
“Not in public,” Pierre snapped. “Anyway, that’s different. Madame Jeuland and I have an enduring arrangement.” He glared at me, then fled the room.
At the time, Pierre had just lost a bid for a seat representing Paramé in the lower house of Parliament. The office had been held for decades by the Gautreau family and was suddenly made available by the death of Pierre’s uncle. Pierre’s friends urged him to run. My husband quickly embraced the idea and spent all his spare time giving speeches and distributing pamphlets outlining his views on taxes and Breton agricultural issues. But from the start of his campaign, hardly a day went by that the Paris newspapers didn’t mock him for being married to me. Even the Breton press chided him about it. On the day before the vote, L’Evénément, a paper that supported Pierre’s opponent, ran this poem:
Dear citizens, I am not a genius.
On this point we’ll agree.
Still, I deserve your votes,
For in some areas I excel.
My friends, run to the polling places.
Ah, ma femme est belle!
So what if I’ve done nothing for France?
Absolutely nothing but escort my wife to balls?
Believe me, there’s no job more tiring.
In fact, it’s really hell.
Think of the gloves and shirts I’ve soiled.
Ah, ma femme est belle!
If women could run for office,
You’d elect my famous wife, I’m sure.
You’ve all seen her picture,
She’s a society fixture.
Since you’re French, my friends, be gallant:
Vote for me, ma femme est belle!
The opponent won 75 percent of the vote. Pierre never said anything, but I know he blamed me.
After La Gandara, I became more discreet about men. I took a string of lovers, including a couple of dukes and a few foreign dignitaries, but I was careful not to be seen with them in public. It wasn’t only Pierre’s feelings I was concerned about. Louise was growing up, and I wanted to protect her from my private life.
Dear, sweet Louise. Almost overnight, it seemed, she had become a young woman. At twenty, she looked much more like my side of the family than Pierre’s, and much more like the Ternants than the Avegnos. Indeed, she closely resembled Julie, with her straight dark hair, her small figure, her large brown eyes, and her full, rosy mouth. She favored Julie in temperament, too. Louise was serious, intellectual. As a child, she had been tutored at home, and she had taken passionately to her studies, spending long hours reading. By age ten, she had gone through all the books in our library, so I began taking her to the bookstore every week to buy a new volume. She has never given me a moment of sadness, and we are as close as two people could be. With Louise, I broke the cycle of mother-daughter hostility that had plagued our family—my proudest accomplishment.
Throughout her adolescence, Louise and I often traveled together, and every summer we spent a week at Baden-Baden. One day, as we sat and sipped iced tea on the terrace of our hotel, we struck up a conversation with a handsome young man at the next table. He introduced himself as Olivier Jallu and said he was on vacation from his law practice in Dijon. Immediately, he was smitten with Louise, and she with him. They were inseparable for the rest of our stay, and as soon as we returned to Paris, Olivier began bombarding Louise with letters. Then he started showing up in person. For a while, he traveled to Paris every weekend. It was clear he and Louise were deeply in love, and it came as no surprise when they asked Pierre’s permission to marry in the spring of 1900.
Their June wedding was at Saint-Sulpice, and the reception following at Mama’s hôtel was a large, elegant affair. Finally my mother got to stage the grand society wedding of her dreams.
After a brief trip to Italy, Olivier took Louise to live in Dijon. I was thrilled that my daughter was happy, but I missed her terribly. The house seemed like a mausoleum without her. I was so lonely I could barely stand to be home. So I decided to embark on that favored antidote to melancholy—a trip abroad.
For years, Julie and I had dreamed of returning to America, particularly to see Parlange. This was the occasion. We booked passage on a new luxury liner, the France, sailed on July 10, 1900, and arrived in New Orleans ten days later.
As the ship pulled into the slip, the familiar screech of the steam whistle brought forth a flood of memories. A terrible sense of loss came over me, and I thought of Parlange with a stab of longing. I began to wish I had never left this country of magnolias and Spanish moss, of languid days and soft, warm nights. There’s something to be said for staying where you were born and placed by God. I believe my life would have been easier if we hadn’t moved to France.
On the dock, we pushed our way through the clusters of Negro fruit peddlers and stepped aside as wagons piled high with cotton bales clattered by. Church bells pealed, drowning the hoarse cries of the tallyman as he directed the wagonloads of cotton to the spots on the wharves where they’d rest until sold.
We hired a cab and directed the driver to 528 Esplanade, where Charles Parlange, my uncle and childhood companion, now lived with his wife and four children. The carriage stopped in front of a white house with an ornate Italianate cornice, tall windows, and an intricate cast-iron balcony. A tall, bald Negro answered the door. I handed him our cards, and we stepped into a large, sunny parlor. Two little boys hovered near the long, curving staircase in the adjacent hall and stared at us with wide eyes. I heard a commotion on the second floor, and a moment later two more children, both girls, bounded down the stairs, followed by a petite blond woman and a portly gray-haired man, Charles.
Had I met my uncle on the street, I doubt I could have discerned the slender black-haired youth I had known years earlier. It was only when he spoke, in his deep, major-key voice, that I recognized him. He smiled broadly, and taking Julie and me into his powerful arms, crushed us to his chest. “My God, it’s good to see you,” he cried.
After he introduced us to his wife, Lulu, and their children, we passed to the parlor and caught up on each other’s lives. So much had happened in the long years since we had been together, and Charles had kept in touch only periodically through letters. After Grandmère’s death in 1870, he had stayed on at Parlange and tried single-handedly to keep the sugar operation going, despite floods that destroyed the crop during several years and a steadily declining supply of laborers.
For a while, he worked alone, plowing the fields himself. To make ends meet, he raised bees in the pigeonniers and sold honey. He made enough from that business to put himself through Centenary College in Jackson, Louisiana; then he read for the law and was admitted to the bar in 1873. His career had been a string of successes. In 1885, he was appointed U.S. attorney for New Orleans, and in 1890, he was elected to the state senate. Two years later, he became lieutenant governor of Louisiana and, the next year, a state supreme court judge.
Charles had married Lulu, the daughter of a planter in Pointe Coupée, in 1882. Like most New Orleanian Creoles, they clung ferociously to their French heritage and to the culture that was the last remaining tie to the prewar life they had once known. They spoke nothing but French at home and sent their children to schools where the lessons were in French. The boys also were learning English, and Charles was distraught that they had discovered the novels of James Fenimore Cooper. “Now all they want to read about are cowboys and Indians,” he said with a great sigh. “They won’t have anything to do with Hugo and Molière.”
Soon the conversation turned to Parlange. “I know you want to see the old place,” said Charles, a sudden sadness shadowing his face. “I’m afraid you’ll find it much changed.”
“We’re very eager to see it,” said Julie.
“The widow of one of the tenant farmers lives in the house now,” Charles continued. “An old Negro woman. I pay her a bit to keep it clean. In summer, she changes the bed linens regularly, in case we show up. I’ve written her to expect a visit from you sometime this month. We try to go once or twice a summer. The children love it, don’t they, darling?” Charles looked at his wife.
“Oh, yes,” said Lulu. “They have the run of the place. But don’t worry about your grandmère’s valuables. I packed them up long ago and stored them in the attic. Feel free to take anything you like.”
“We wouldn’t dare take anything,” I said. “Someday Parlange will be restored to its original splendor. Perhaps one of your children will live there.”
“That would be lovely,” said Lulu. “We are lucky to have it. So many of the old country places are gone. My family home was burned by the Yankees. Nothing is left, and we sold the land.”
We talked until dinner, then retired early. The next day and for several days following, while Charles was in court, Julie and I passed the time getting to know Lulu and her children. The heat was sweltering, and we stayed indoors to escape it.
One afternoon, however, I ventured out on my own in the French Quarter. I bought some chocolate for Charles’s children at a confectioner’s shop and was headed home when I noticed a sign for Falconer’s Books at the corner of Dauphine and St. Ann. I decided to pick up something to read.
The shop was empty except for a middle-aged woman who sat on a stool near the register, reading a book. When I walked in, she stood, laid her book on the stool, and stepped from behind the counter. I knew instantly she was Aurélie Grammont, my lost friend from convent school in Paris. When I had last seen her, she had been a slender, tawny-skinned, spectacle-wearing girl. Now her hair, arranged in two plaits pinned to the top of her head, was graying, and she was dressed in a simple blue linen gown instead of a purple serge school uniform. But her bright hazel eyes, her tall, willowy figure, her intelligent expression, were just as I remembered them.
“Can I help you?” Aurélie said.
“I’m Virginie Gautreau. I mean Mimi Avegno.” My heart was pounding as I waited for her reaction.
Aurélie studied me as if I were a rare volume. Then her eyes grew wide, and a gasp rose in her throat. “Mimi Avegno! My God!” She put her thin fingers together in front of her face and shook her head from side to side.
“My mother wrote the letter to Mother Superior behind my back. I had no idea,” I stammered.
“I suspected that’s what happened,” she said coolly.
“It was that boy Harry Beauvais, who knew your father. He knew the story about—” I realized I was babbling and shut my mouth.
“That was a long time ago,” Aurélie said with a deep sigh. “To tell you the truth, I haven’t thought about it in years.”
Aurélie took a long look at me. Her gaze traveled from the top of my little straw hat, with the wide satin ribbon tied under my chin, to the hem of my expensive cream silk dress.
“I knew you were going to be a great beauty. And I hear you’re famous as well, always being painted by artists,” Aurélie said. “At least that’s what my mother writes me.” She cocked her head to the side and looked at me over the top of her spectacles.
“Is your mother still in Paris?” I asked.
“Yes. We came back here after the war. That’s when I met my husband, Henri Falconer. His family has owned this shop for years.”
I wondered if Falconer knew Aurélie’s background. As if reading my mind, she said, “He knows about me. But our sons don’t. My mother moved back to Paris when the second one was born twenty-five years ago. She thought her presence was a threat to our status as a respectable white family.”
“I would never dare say anything.”
Aurélie looked at me with sad eyes. “My husband is in New York on a buying trip. We can go upstairs to talk.”
An uneasy silence descended as Aurélie crossed to the front door and flipped the sign hanging from a chain so that the side reading CLOSED faced the street. She led me through a dark corridor in the back and up a narrow flight of stairs. I sat in a wing chair by the window. Aurélie disappeared into the kitchen and emerged a few minutes later carrying a tray with a coffee service.
“I’m accepted as white by everyone I know here,” she said as she handed me a cup of coffee. “I always have been.”
“I won’t say anything, I promise.”
Aurélie sat in a chair opposite me and poured herself a cup of coffee. Outside, the summer day glistened. White light and long blue shadows poured through the cozy parlor. “I’m not worried about you,” she said. “It’s your mother.”
“She’s not here. She’ll never know I saw you. I’m so ashamed for what my mother did. Can you forgive me?”
Aurélie removed her spectacles and pinched the bridge of her nose with her thumb and index finger. Then she put her spectacles back on, carefully hooking the arms behind each of her well-shaped ears.
“There’s no need to ask my forgiveness,” she said. “I have something to tell you, too.” Aurélie looked at the floor and sighed heavily. Then, lifting her gaze to meet mine, she continued. “It was my mother who wrote the letter to the columnist, asking her to cancel your party in 1884. She was friendly with one of the upholsterers who was working in your mother’s house.”
I recoiled in shock. “I never dreamed—” The words died in my mouth.
“The upholsterer was a light-skinned Negro from New Orleans who was passing for white like me,” Aurélie said. “When my mother told him the story about what had happened at the convent, he suggested she exact revenge by ruining your party.”
“I guess we’re even, then.”
“I suppose so.”
Aurélie and I talked for the rest of the afternoon, reminiscing about the convent and catching up on each other’s lives. She showed me photographs of her sons, schoolteachers who had their mother’s curly black hair and tawny skin. I told her about Pierre and Louise. When we parted, we hugged each other tightly and promised to stay in touch. In early evening, I returned to Charles’s house, and went straight to bed after dinner, exhausted by the chance reunion with my girlhood friend.
It warmed me to see that Aurélie’s life had turned out well, and to finally solve the mystery of our Salon party debacle. I rose the next morning feeling lighthearted. Julie and I boarded a steamboat for New Roads. Eight hours later, we stepped ashore at the Waterloo landing, hired a carriage with a pair of harnessed horses from the depot livery, and set off for Parlange.
We might as well have been in a foreign country, so changed was the landscape since I had
last seen it. Nearly all the plantations I knew from my childhood were gone, the houses demolished, the gardens trampled, the fields overgrown with trees. Streets had been paved through some of the old farms, and the once-empty countryside was dotted with houses, churches, offices, even a department store, the Famous, a low-slung white frame building, which sold everything from coal and groceries to corsets, hats, furniture, and buggies.
The air was still, thick with humidity. I could hear the carriage driver’s labored breathing, and from a stream near the side of the road, the croaking of frogs. By the time we reached Parlange an hour later, the weather had cooled a bit. Dusk had fallen, and the alley of oaks was softly lit by a golden-pink sunset.
The house was just as I had remembered it, with bright-green shutters and a collection of brown wicker chairs scattered on the gallery. As Julie and I mounted the steps, I noticed several buckets of water on the gallery floor. Then the door creaked open, and a fat black woman in a red calico dress and an old-fashioned tignon appeared on the threshold. She was carrying two more buckets, which she set down in front of her.
“You must be Miss Mimi and Miss Julie,” the woman said. “I wasn’t expecting you folks so soon.” She spoke French in a lilting Creole patois. “Come on in. I’m sure I can find something to throw together for supper.” She held the door for us, and we stepped into the foyer.
“I’m Cora Périne,” she said. “My husband, Michel, and I used to farm that strip near the new mill. Michel’s been dead now five years.” Cora crossed herself with a pudgy, callused hand.
The light slanting through the windows was fading quickly. Cora reached into a pocket in her apron and pulled out a box of matches and two candle stubs, which she handed to Julie and me. She lit the candles and led us through the house. It was even barer than it had been when I had seen it last. Most of the chairs and tables were gone from the parlor, and of Grandmère’s one hundred china plates in the dining room cupboards, only twelve were left.
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