by Tina DeSalvo
He high-fived her. “Let’s write a note on it saying that we’ll be coming back for it,” he said, not sounding as enthusiastic as she felt. “We’ll put it over there away from the trash.”
“We can’t leave it, Beau.” She started carefully digging through the pile of rubble using the broomstick, looking for the missing leg. “Someone else might take it.”
“I hardly think that will happen.” He looked at the desk with his hands on his hips. “I’m certain of it. Besides, you don’t think we’re going to put that thing in my car, do you?”
“It’s a lyre harp writing desk-chair combo. And yes. It’ll fit. It’s not that big.”
He looked down the road. She knew he was hoping a big truck would drive by and roll over the desk. She wanted to smile at his obvious thoughts. Jewell looked at him, but was immediately distracted at the sound of a truck coming down the road, shifting gears. She looked behind her. “Oh, no! Truck.”
“Cane truck,” he shouted, grabbing the desk with one hand and her around the waist with the other and stepping off the road, half stumbling and half falling over the pile of limbs. The truck whooshed by, gears grinding just as they landed hard in the dry ditch. “You okay?”
She rubbed the back of her head where she’d hit it on the desk. “Yeah.” He stood, climbed out of the ditch, and extended his hand to her. “Let’s get out of here.”
“Thank you for saving my desk…and me,” she said, still standing in the ditch. Then she reached for his hand, but just before she took it, she started to laugh. “Look what I found.” She picked up the missing desk leg. It was completely covered in mud and hardly recognizable.
“You like digging in trash and mud way too much,” Beau said, his smile giving away his good humor about her junk-pile diving. “Give me your hand. No. Your clean hand.”
She tossed the muddy desk leg onto the road, grabbed the desk by one of the legs and dragged it out as Beau pulled her up the short incline. “I think we cracked the drawer.” She noticed the gash in the front panel that hadn’t been there earlier. “I can fix that.”
“Why you would want to, is beyond my understanding.” He shook his head, lifted the desk and carried it toward his car. Jewell rubbed off as much mud as she could in the roadside grass before following him. “If you’re as tenacious and stubborn as you are with this piece of crap desk when you’re trying to find Mimi’s Twinnie, I think you'll drive me absolutely insane.”
“So you understand why I need to look for Twinnie?” She hated that she wanted him to say yes. Hated feeling such a strong need to have someone, anyone, validate her determination to research Mimi’s claims. “You believe that it is possible she exists?”
He left the desk at the back of the car, then opened the driver’s door and unlocked the trunk before answering her. “I didn’t say that.” He put the desk and the dirty leg into his clean and completely empty trunk. Jewell had never seen a trunk completely empty before. “I’m not sure what the hell I believe. I just know what I won’t let happen. I won’t let anyone hurt my family. I think I’ve made that clear.”
“One thing I can say about you.” She held up two fingers. “Actually, two. You are consistent. And, you are either freaky neat with your car trunk or you are a mass murderer who needs to keep it squeaky clean to hide the evidence from carrying the bodies in there.” She closed the trunk and climbed into the car. “Maybe Mimi was right about you.”
He closed his door and started the car with a push of a button. “Did she say I was handsome, smart and extremely kind to crazy women who like to dig in the garbage like a rabid coon?”
“No.” She bit back a smile. “She said she thought you were a mass murderer.”
Beau and Jewell turned onto the road leading to Tante Izzy’s. If they hadn’t made the stop for the desk, it would have taken them less than fifteen minutes, instead of the forty minutes it had taken to get there from Sugar Mill. Jewell, always paying attention to details, noticed that the road consisted of the same shell and dirt bedding as the one at Sugar Mill. She also noted that while the house wasn’t near the road, it wasn’t set as far back as the plantation, and the large two-story Acadian style farmhouse quickly came into view.
“Oh…my…it’s pink,” she gasped, rubbing her eyes to make sure something hadn’t malfunctioned with them. “Did she really paint this beautiful old home the color of cotton candy?”
“You can thank Elli for that.” He parked the car near the front door. “It’s the same color Elli had to paint Sugar Mill for the first movie she brought there.”
“I saw it. I thought it was done with special effects.” She looked at the rose bushes near the front porch, where the pretty pink blooms were lost in the color of the house. “I guess it was just wishful thinking.”
“Word of advice. Keep that opinion to yourself.”
“Well, ’bout time,” Tante Izzy shouted from the front porch. Like the roses, she was lost in the color of the house too because she was wearing a long, pink shift dress and matching pink fuzzy bunny slippers.
“Yeah, ’bout time,” Mimi echoed.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake.” She was camouflaged in the same shade of pink and similar style dress as Tante Izzy. Both of the ladies had gone to the beauty parlor that morning and had a similar haircut, a low teased style with the same pale strawberry blonde hair color. Jewell looked at Beau, who was biting his lower lip to keep from laughing.
“Hello, gorgeous. Hello, beautiful. You two look like the Susan Hayward twins with your new hairdos,” Beau said easily, giving each of the ladies a kiss on the cheek. He carefully avoided their bright bubble-gum pink lipstick when they tried to kiss him in return. Jewell, on the other hand, didn’t have his maneuvering skills. She knew without seeing it, that petite Tante Izzy had left her thin lip print on the right side of her neck where she’d kissed her in greeting, while Mimi had smeared her lipstick in a sticky mess on Jewell’s left cheek.
“Don’t Mimi look pretty wit’ da Fanci-Full rinse in her hairs from Margie’s Beauty Shop? And me too?” Tante Izzy added.
Jewell nodded. “It’s a nice color.”
“I can make you an appointment if you want? Margie does fine work.”
“Not ma sucrée,” Mimi said, saving Jewell from answering. “She doesn’t wants to change nuttin’.” Her accent sounded more Cajun than Parisian. “In fact, I tried encouraging her to get a tattoo, and she refused.”
“I want a tattoo.” Tante Izzy nodded. “Somethin’ pink. Maybe a pink crown. I like being queen. Maybe you and me can go get ourselves tiaras.”
Beau leaned against one of the wooden square house columns and crossed his arms over his chest, grinning. He was enjoying the conversation and did nothing to dissuade them from what they were planning.
“Don’t get youself too comfortable, Beauregard Bienvenu,” Tante Izzy said, walking to her front door and abandoning talk about a tattoo. “You might be all handsome lookin’ like Rhett Butler from Gone wit’ da Wind, but we got work to do.” Then she whispered something in his ear. He shook his head and frowned.
“You should’ve talked to me first,” he said.
“You would’ve said no, so why would I talk to you?”
“We got lots of work to do.” Mimi said, interrupting their conversation, again speaking with the same accent as Tante Izzy. Jewell forgot about the cryptic conversation between Beau and his aunt and laughed. Mimi was adorable. She’d spent one day with Tante Izzy and had picked up her Cajun accent.
Tante Izzy waved them inside. “You come too, Beauregard.”
“Just for a little while. I have work to do.”
“I thought you said that you had the rest of the afternoon off.” Jewell smiled a fake smile.
“So happy you enjoy my company so much that you want me around, chère,” he whispered in her ear. His warm breath lingered on her ear and neck like the memory of their earlier kiss.
“Glad you has time for your poor aunt wit’ da very rich oil we
ll.” She smiled. “What we has to do will take all afternoon.”
“She got a lot of stuff, ma sucrée,” Mimi said, grabbing Beau’s arm to walk inside. She looked up at him. “Now, who are you again?”
“I’m the man who’s crushin’ on the very attractive strawberry blonde on my arm.”
Mimi smiled. “Oh. That’s right. You’ll have to fight my man for me, you know?” She batted her eyes at him. “He’s really tall.” She looked up at him. “Like you. Only he used to play professional football, so he’s got more bulk. And his skin is a really pretty dark color. Now, he’s a big NFL front office man, you know?” She paused, looked away like she was searching for a memory. “Or he was…”
“Sounds like I’ll have quite a challenge then.” Beau smiled.
Jewell had no idea who Mimi was talking about. She had never mentioned dating a former NFL player before. Maybe she would ask her more about it tonight. It could be one of her imaginings, or it could be a happening from her past that she never thought was appropriate to share with her granddaughter. If it was the latter, Jewell wanted to hear the story. It was part of her Mimi’s history. Her history. It was one of the life events, grand or small, that made her grand-mère the woman she had become, the one who had passed her values on to the young girl she raised.
Jewell walked into the house with the others. Thank God, the inside wasn’t decorated as brightly and out of character for the era as the exterior. The front parlor was filled with antique walnut furniture and local craftsmen accents. Local art hung on cream plastered walls. Soft, well-worn floral cushions rested on just about every seat, while doilies draped every armrest. There were red and royal purple silk roses in glass vases and statues of the Catholic saints on tabletops. And there were about a dozen photo collages framed in dark wood hanging on the wall. The photos appeared to be mostly of children in their school uniforms, probably given each year they were taken to their favorite aunt.
If the large number of family photos around on the walls and tabletops didn’t hint at the age of the homeowner, Jewell thought, the scent of the room would. It smelled of old-fashioned face powder and that special flowery perfume she always associated with elderly ladies. This was definitely the home she would’ve imagined Tante Izzy living in. There were even a few stuffed animals to complete the picture.
“The pink poodle is so adorable.” Jewell walked over to the fluffy toys positioned in the center of the large red velvet mission style sofa. “But this soft, cuddly, furry raccoon and the huggable crocodile are incredibly sweet. I’ve never seen anything like them before. Wherever did you find them all in pink?”
“I didn’t,” Tante Izzy said. “Beauregard did.” She pointed to him. “He gets them for my birthday every year. He knows I collects them. I have more upstairs, but these are my favorites.”
“She said I can have the raccoon,” Mimi told Jewell in French.
Tante Izzy looked at her, eyes wide. She walked over to Jewell, “I did not tell her dat,” she whispered in French. “She lies a lot. I don’t like it. I like her, but I don’t like her lies. Must be da old-timer’s.”
Jewell felt her throat tighten with emotion. She nodded. She felt she should respond, but what could she say? You are right. She lies, but not because she has ill intent. It’s because my Mimi’s mind is slipping away and I can’t do anything to stop it. Jewell swallowed hard. Beau’s hand settled on her shoulder. She felt his strength in the simple touch, in his body standing so near to her. She wanted to lean back into him, let him hold her and kiss her until the reality of her world slipped away as it had earlier, when they had kissed in the attic.
Foolishness. It was something her mother would think…hope for…do. And look what kind of person she was.
Jewell moved away, pretending to look at the stitching on a hand-sewn linen napkin that was draped over the back of a burgundy Queen Anne chair in the corner.
“If you like dat,” Tante Izzy said, motioning toward the adjoining room, “you will like my momma’s needlepoint.”
She led Jewell, Beau and Mimi into the dining room, where a large framed tapestry of hand-stitched needlepoint was featured on the center wall. Mimi sat on a dining room chair, uninterested in the needlepoint artwork. Jewell wasn’t certain if that was because Mimi didn’t notice it or because it didn’t look familiar to her. Either way, Jewell wanted a better look.
She moved in as close as she could to look at the types of stitches that were used, but a tall buffet prevented her from getting too close. Besides that, the piece was under glass, and without her magnifying glass or the right lighting, it was hard to make out the details. She could tell the flowers were created from the same pattern as the flowers on the footstool Mimi had taken from the nook.
“It’s beautiful,” Jewell told her. “Did you help your mother make it?”
“Mais non.” She frowned. “She gave it to me when I made sixteen. It was for my hope chest. She was disappointed I never got me a man to marry, but I used my pretty t’ings anyway.” She nodded. “I done gave a lot of it away as weddin’ or grad’ation gifts. I even gave my Beau a pretty paintin’ my momma gave me.” She looked at Beau. “It was a house warmin’ gift when he bought hisself a house. Right, Beau?”
“Yes, indeed.”
“It got his great-grand-pépère, Emile, in it. He’s standin’ with his brother, my grand-pépère, François Bienvenu. You know him?”
“I know of him.” She stepped back to look at the needlework as a single piece of art. The pink, gold and green colors in the piece were still vivid. “François, whose full name is Aguste François, was the man who came from Toulouse, France, in his twenties and built Sugar Mill Plantation soon afterward.” She looked at Tante Izzy. “I haven’t seen any documentation to confirm it and maybe you have family stories passed down that do, but that was around the time of so much political unrest in France. I suspect he came to America as most immigrants had, for a better life. He must’ve made money or inherited it to be able to come and establish a plantation in Louisiana when France was so economically depressed. That was in the years following Napoleon and just before the Franco-Prussian war.”
“The war is what convinced my great-grand-pépère to follow his younger brother to America,” Beau added. “He didn’t see it as a noble thing to stay and fight for an emperor he did not support.”
“My momma said da bad feelings for da Germans from da Franco-Prussian war continued for a long time,” Tante Izzy added. “It was a hard life in France and a sad one in America.”
Jewell remembered seeing the death date for François’s wife and his six children listed as being the same day. “François lost his wife and six children on the same day, didn’t he?” Jewell asked.
“It was a fire in New Orleans. At a fancy hotel. Dey had gone to a party at a friend’s home earlier. It was Epiphany, January 6, 1886. Dey had been dere to celebrate da kickoff to da Mardi Gras season on All Kings’ Day.”
“How did François survive?” She touched her chest, her heart aching for the horror that he’d had to endure. “To lose your entire family in one single event. That’s awful.” Tante Izzy made the sign of the cross.
“François’s wife, Marie Brigitte Bissette, had taken all six of their children to a Mardi Gras party at a friend’s home,” Beau said. His voice was even, but Jewell could see how much the tragedy moved him. “The family story, Jewell, is that Aguste was scheduled to attend, too, but the temperature had dropped into the teens. It was unusually cold and he feared severe problems at the plantation. He stayed behind to oversee the preparations.”
Jewell felt a lump form in her throat. She looked at Tante Izzy and Beau. If Aguste had not survived that night, they wouldn’t be standing in the dining room with her right now. Would his life or death have affected her grand-mère’s life and, in turn, her own? She looked at Mimi. Her chin was resting on her chest. She was sound asleep.
“Huh, it must be nap time,” Tante Izzy said, looking at Mimi too. “
But you cain’t take a nap. You got to work.” She pointed her crooked finger at Jewell. “Down here is da good stuff. I don’t go upstairs anymore. My family t’inks it’s a bad idea since I live alone and don’t need to. Dey afraid I will fall and cry like da lady in da commercial. ‘I’ve fallen and I cain’t get up. Help.’”
“At least she let her family get the emergency call button for her,” Beau said. “And she wears it around her neck.” He looked at Jewell. “She’s agreed to restrict her movements to the first floor. She has a bedroom and everything she needs on this one floor,” he added. “The upstairs is mostly storage.”
“What exactly do you want me to do, Tante Izzy?” Jewell asked.
“I want you to clean my upstairs and have a garage sale.”
“I’ll take a look now, but you do know I have to finish Elli’s job first.” Tante Izzy frowned. “I’m sorry. I have a contract with Elli, and she has a tight deadline before she needs the barn finished.”
“I have a tight deadline too.”
So did Jewell. She pulled out her phone to look at her calendar, but she didn’t need to see it to know what was on it. The trial was still scheduled for the end of the following week. Whatever the decision, she’d be in the news and then be a pariah again. The fact that it was going to be a closed hearing only made the case more mysterious and appealing to the public. Whatever she was to accomplish, it had to come before the trial began.
“I’ll show you the upstairs,” Beau said, placing his palm on the small of her back and gently urging her toward the stairs.
“We’ll be down here,” Tante Izzy said. “Mignon’s finished her nap. She’s awake now, so we gonna watch Ellen.”
“We like to dance with Ellen,” Mimi added, settling into a different chair and shoving a needlepoint pillow in the small of her back.
Beau escorted her upstairs, but her heart and emotions had turned so heavy at where her thoughts had gone that each step felt like she was walking with cement blocks on her feet. She couldn’t pull herself out of the fog shrouding her enough to notice the special architecture or photos that were certainly along the way. When they reached the top floor, he turned her to face him. “I’m not getting involved with your problems and those sad eyes,” he said, anger in his voice. “Hell, I don’t even know if I believe you're really sad, except that it is seeping through your pores and over your pretty skin. Damn it, Jewell. I don’t know what to do with you.”