And then came a worse betrayal. Remy stole her prince.
When Julius St. Claire started coming around to the house, she thought it was because of her. She would get herself all prettied up for him and put on her party manners, even though whenever she was in his presence she got all fluttery and so tongue-tied she could barely manage a breath, let alone a word. It took her a while to realize that it was to Remy his gaze always went whenever she was around, that it was Remy he was always talking about, Remy he was charming for, Remy, Remy, Remy.
Why, if Julius St. Claire had had his way, it was Remy who would have wound up with Sans Souci. Only before that could happen, Julius had killed himself, and Remy had run away, and Belle was the one who'd been left all alone.
Never mind that it was she, Belle Lelourie, who had been raised for something different, raised to be both a queen and a lady, and a wife. She knew which of the five forks sitting beside her plate to use on the oysters, which on the terrapin, and which on the mango—should she ever be invited to a dinner party, which she never was. She could play “Variations from the Operas” on the piano, and “The Grand March of Napoleon,” and yet with no one in the house to hear but herself and mama, the music always got swallowed up by the moldy silence. She never went uptown without her hat and gloves, even during the hottest days of summer. Only she had no girlfriends to meet her under the clock at D. H. Holmes for lunch and shopping, and that salesgirl at the perfume counter always gave her such a pitying look, and so she quit going uptown at all after a while. She would work in the garden instead. She would push her hands through the soft, loamy earth, stirring up a strange restlessness inside of herself, and she would wonder how she could be so full up with feelings and yet be so empty inside.
In the evenings she would sit with Mama in the parlor, tatting lace and doing cross-stitching, prettying up pillowcases and sheets and tablecloths for her trousseau. She had a cedar hope chest up in her bedroom, where she would put each piece of linen after it was done. One day she saw that the chest had become so full she could no longer close the lid. She cried that day like the child she no longer was, pushing her face hard against her knotted fists, beating those fists on top of the cedar chest that wouldn't close, and wishing she were dead.
She had cried before, on the day Julius killed himself, even though she'd been wishing misery on him for a long while, praying for him to suffer the way they'd prayed for Daddy's suffering. She had wanted Julius to be sorry for all he'd done to her, picking Remy over her, and he must have been sorry, to go and shoot himself like that. After it was done, though, she kept feeling as if all the hope she'd been putting in her hope chest had been about him and now he was gone for good, forever, and so the chest might as well be empty. Then Remy had run off, leaving her alone with Mama, leaving her alone.
It was a late summer's afternoon a couple of years later and she was in the garden, deadheading the roses, when she realized a whole parade of cars and carriages was passing by their house and slowing down to stare. Some people were even pointing and waving at her, and she couldn't imagine why. It couldn't be the Scandal, surely, not after all these years and with Daddy dead and buried.
It was starting to scare her, the way those people were behaving, and she was about ready to run on back into the house when she spotted Ruthie, the colored girl who did for the family next door, coming out onto the gallery to see what the ruckus was about.
Belle waved her hand and called out soft little yoo-hoos to Ruthie, but Ruthie, the silly girl, was gaping at the traffic in the road and not paying the slightest attention, so that Belle practically had to shout, even though ladies never shouted.
The girl finally sauntered down off the gallery and took her own good time coming over to the fence, so that Belle was in an agony of nerves by the time she got there. “Hey there, Miss Belle,” the girl said, “what you doin' hidin' behind that tree like that?”
Ruthie had a scattering of tiny black moles going across her cheekbones and wide-open, Raggedy Ann-like eyes, and Belle was beginning to wonder if those eyes were laughing at her. Only she'd never known Ruthie to forget her place before.
She didn't care at this point, anyway; she was too fretful over what was happening with all those people passing by the house and slowing down to stare. “Do you know who are all those people, Ruthie? What are they all doing? What are they looking at?”
“I 'spect they only be comin' 'round to get a look at y'all and y'all's house 'cause you family of the Cinderella Girl.”
Belle forced a laugh. “Oh, what nonsense, Ruthie. Cinderella is a fairy tale. There is no such person.”
“Yes'm. I mean, no'm. They done wrote all 'bout her in the newspaper this mornin'. Ain't you seen it? You just wait right here and I'll get it for you.”
Before Belle could even say, Yes, please and Thank you, the girl had run on into the house and was back in a few moments with the Times-Picayune folded up in her hand. “You go on and keep that, Miss Belle,” she said, passing the newspaper over the fence. “We-all's done with it over here.”
Belle had a hard time getting the paper unfolded, so that she became impatient and almost tore it.
The headline made no sense to her at first: NEW ORLEANS GIRL LIGHTS UP THE SKIES OVER HOLLYWOOD. But the photograph that was spread over four columns hit her like a blow to the chest. Surely it could not be, and yet it was. Remy, her sister Remy. Remy, who appeared to be going to some sort of a ball, for she was wearing an evening gown with a long train and a tiara in her hair. It was hard for Belle to see the newsprint, her hands were shaking so. Then one passage seemed to leap right out at her:
After only a few moments in her presence, while one stares speechless, enraptured, at those stunning bones, the flawless skin, that luscious mouth, one must conclude that Miss Remy Lelourie is undoubtedly the most beautiful woman in the world.
She took the newspaper into the house, went back with it to the kitchen, and buried it deep in the garbage, beneath the coffee grounds and the eggshells and the fish bones. She felt better then, once it was out of sight, her belly not so queasy, her chest not so hollow.
So her sister had gone and acted in some movie—well, Remy was always doing wild and crazy things. No real lady would ever make a spectacle of herself in public that way, and one day Remy would probably be really sorry for having done it. No nice New Orleans boy would ever marry a girl who had gone and done something like that. As for what that man wrote about Remy being pretty, well, the newspaper had just gotten his words wrong, that was all. No one would ever even think to say such a thing about her sister Remy. Why, when they were little, she herself was the one everybody was always making a fuss over. She was the one they called Belle.
After that it seemed Remy's face was everywhere. Mama said it was a shameful thing, what Remy was doing, flaunting herself in those moving pictures. Vulgar, low-class things. Belle told Mama how people were saying that Remy was near to naked in that one movie, the one where she was in a harem of all things, the slave girl to some Arab sheik, a darkie no less. Shameful, utterly shameful. Remy would be sorry someday, sorry, sorry, sorry. It made Belle feel better to think how someday Remy would be sorry. For a moment Belle would fell better, not so empty inside, thinking how sorry Remy would be.
The night Remy came home to New Orleans for the premiere of Jazz Babies, Belle couldn't stop herself from going to the old Union Street station. The size of the crowd shocked her—why, as many people were there as you would find at a Carnival parade. They all started screaming as soon as the train pulled into the station, Re-my, Re-my, Re-my Le-lourie, and went on screaming and whistling and calling out her name, and the screaming only got louder when the train's door slid open and she was framed there in a wash of light, and flashlamps were popping off everywhere, and Remy was smiling and lifting her hand in a way that seemed at once both gracious and shy.
Belle watched it all through a wash of tears that scalded her eyes. How had this happened, how could it be that Remy ha
d become something so much more splendid than a Mardi Gras queen?
Chapter Twenty-One
FROM THE EDITORIAL PAGE OF THE NEW ORLEANSTimes-Picayune, Saturday, July 16, 1927:
LET JUSTICE BE DONE
While our colleagues of the competition inveigh against the officers of law and order for their seeming reluctance to arrest and try matinee idol Remy Lelourie for the crime of murder, we at the Times-Picayune believe the time has come for a moment of calm reflection. A heinous act was committed last Tuesday night, an act so bloody and savage one can only shudder to contemplate the horror of Mr. Charles St. Claire's last moments. Just as poverty and ignorance should not result in too swift a leap to judgment, neither should beauty nor fame preclude any judgment at all. Yet it is a serious matter for the state to bring one of its citizens before the bar to answer for a capital offense, a matter so serious it must be undertaken with great care and thoroughness, but above all with fairness. Evidence must be gathered and witnesses questioned. Charges must be filed, and then the innocence or guilt of the duly charged must be weighed by a jury of peers. If in the final judgment Remy Lelourie is innocent of the charges brought against her in the court of public opinion, she has nothing to fear in a court of law, for it is there that the truth will out and justice will prevail.
You always hope, thought Daman Rourke, that the story will have a happy ending, even if it won't ring true. Yet whenever he set foot back into his dead wife's champagne-and-silk-stockings world, he felt as though he were caught in an unfinished fairy tale. He and Jo, two wedding-cake figurines trapped forever beneath the glass dome of a bell jar. She hadn't even lived long enough for him to imagine what might have been.
He parked the Bearcat in front of his in-laws' antebellum mansion, underneath the dark green shade of a live oak tree. He cut the engine and the world descended into the silence of gentility and elegance that was Rose Park. If you strained your ears you might make out the occasional tinkle of a piano or the splash of someone diving into a swimming pool, but you sure wouldn't know it was a summer's Saturday afternoon by this part of town.
Rourke half turned in his seat to look at his Katie. She was adorable in a white dress with a big square sailor collar trimmed with yellow stars and blue anchors—all sugar and spice and everything nice, the picture of femininity if you overlooked the grungy baseball cap on her head.
He smiled at her and she sent a marvelous smile back at him. “You have your paw-paw's birthday present?” he asked.
She rolled her eyes at him since she was holding the present, plain as day, in her lap. She had gotten Weldon Car-rigan, superintendent of the New Orleans Police Department, a water pistol.
“Don't you go eating so much ice cream this time that you end up puking in the hydrangeas,” he said.
She rolled her eyes again. “Daaaaddy! That happened ages and ages and ages ago, when I was just a baby.”
“Be that as it may,” he said, deliberately echoing every southern woman he had ever known. “And see if you can get through the evenin' without giving your cousin Gordon a bloody nose.”
“But Gordo asks for it, Daddy. He's always ratting on everybody and he's just so full of hooey.”
“That's no excuse for trying to knock it out of him. And don't go giving your cousin Annabel another case of the hysterics.”
The picture of femininity made a rude noise with her nose. “Can I help it if she is such a dumb Dora that she believes every little thing I say?”
Rourke laughed and gave the bill of her cap a tug. “Right. What was I thinking? Come on, let's go before they start the party without us.”
As he went around to help Katie climb out of the car, he noticed an old dusty Model T parked along the curb of the broad, landscaped neutral ground, deep within the dark green shade cast by the oaks. It was not the sort of automobile one usually saw on Rose Park, which was why it caught Rourke's eye. As he was looking the flivver over, he saw a man hurrying along the side of the Carrigan mansion, on the path that led to the trade entrance.
The gray-hatted head was turned away from them, looking back toward the house, but there was no mistaking the slouching, rolling walk of a man half-tanked on the hooch. He spat a stream of tobacco juice into the gutter before opening the door to the Model T and getting behind the wheel.
Rourke watched the Model T's smoking tailpipe and bouncing spare tire until they had disappeared around the corner onto St. Charles. He was, he thought, going to have to sit down later this evening and have a heart-to-heart talk about old times with homicide detective Roibin Doherty.
Katie decided to practice singing the Happy Birthday song as they walked through the tall scrolled-iron gate and down a flagstone path toward a house with thick stately columns, a deep marble gallery, and a door glittering with leaded beveled glass. A Negro in evening dress and white gloves met them at the foot of the stairs. He escorted them around to the porte cochère and through an arched carriageway guarded by a pair of stone lions.
Rourke heard the shout of “My service!” coming from the tennis court, and the pat of the ball against the strings. They emerged onto a lawn shadowed from the full heat of the sun by a canopy of oaks and palms. The air smelled festive: of roses, freshly watered dirt, and the whole pig that was roasting on a spit.
Waiters dressed all in white strolled over the clipped grass, carrying trays of lemonade. If the party was true to form—and in this part of town everything always ran true to form—then the glasses with the silver trim would be spiked with bootlegged gin.
Katie had spotted her grandmother and ran pell-mell to greet her, dancing in her excitement to present the bouquet of jasmine she had decided on her own to pick and bring along with them, because as she had said, Paw-Paw shouldn't be the only one to get presents today. The flowers had gotten a bit crushed and wilted on the drive uptown, but Katie's grandmama Rose Marie exclaimed over them, smelled them, and then added the scraggly offering to the perfectly arranged celadon vase of yellow roses displayed on a wrought-iron table among a grouping of wicker lawn furniture dressed in starched white coverlets.
Cousin Annabel, the dumb Dora, skipped up to Katie and grabbed her by the hand, dragging her off to a game of shuttlecock that was being played next to the swimming pool. A couple of drowned birdies, Rourke saw, were already floating feathers-up in the bright blue water.
He walked up to his mother-in-law as she turned to greet him, still flushed from the whirlwind that could be Katie in a passion of excitement. Rose Marie Carrigan was a small woman, all white and pink and soft, like a strawberry meringue. He often thought of her as being soft in the center of her too, but that was probably unfair. In her world, ladies learned early on to blunt all their sharp edges.
“Good evenin', Mama Carrigan,” he said, taking both her hands and bending to kiss her cheek. It was as smooth as a doeskin glove, her cheek, and smelled faintly of jasmine.
“Day, my dear. How splendid it is to see you.” She stared up at him, and her hands trembled once in his before she pulled them free. He had always made her nervous, even when he wasn't trying to. “Weldon is most anxious to have a word,” she said. “I am to send you to him the very moment you arrive….” Her voice trailed off as her gaze searched the yard for her husband, a crease of worry appearing between her pale eyes like a thumbprint.
“I'll try and take it like a man,” Rourke said.
Her gaze flew back to him, the worry between her eyes deepening. “Oh, dear.”
“I was only teasin'. I'm sure it's nothing serious.” He looked around him, admiring the splashes of color that were like a messy painter's palette: yellow jasmine, pink camelias, orange azaleas, lavender wisteria growing on a trellis. “Your garden is looking lovely. I don't know that there's a prettier one in all New Orleans.” He brought his gaze back to her face and gave her his most brilliant smile. “Mama says to say hey.”
Color rose up to stain Rose Marie Carrigan's cheekbones, and she made a fluttery movement with her hand. “I do ho
pe your poor mama isn't feeling too terribly awful. Summer colds can be so debilitating.”
“Mostly she's disappointed to be missing the party,” he said, playing his part in this ritual of southern manners. Any invitation to him and Katie always politely included his scandalous mother, and she always politely declined. Thus feelings were spared while propriety was still served, rudeness and awkwardness both neatly avoided.
More guests arrived and Rose Marie Carrigan turned to greet them, freeing Rourke to go look for his father-in-law. He took his time about it, walking out to the fountain beneath trees that were strung with Japanese lanterns for when it grew dark.
Jo was everywhere here, and it hurt, in the way an old wound could sometimes ache years later during stormy weather. Water splashed from an angel's marble trumpet, and he heard her laugh. A dark-haired girl in a picture hat turned her head, and for the skip of a heartbeat the face beneath the wide straw brim was hers.
The dark-haired girl was talking to someone on the other side of the fountain. He watched her through a rainbow spray of water and waited for her to turn her head again.
When he realized what he was doing, he turned away and almost walked into his father-in-law. The two men spent a moment staring at each other, tasting the memory of an old and sour antagonism, then Rourke smiled and held out his hand. “Happy Birthday, sir.”
“I'm getting a water pistol,” Weldon Carrigan said in a mock whisper as he shook Rourke's hand. “Only I'm not supposed to tell anyone 'cause it's a surprise.”
“She tried it out for you on a pantywaist named Ernie this morning. It surprised him, too.”
His father-in-law was laughing as he took a cigar out of his vest pocket, but Rourke thought the eyes beneath the thick, black hedgerow of eyebrows looked tired and troubled. The dark-haired girl in the picture hat was glancing over her shoulder now, laughing and waving to someone behind him; she didn't look at all like Jo or anyone else he knew.
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