“Well, I guess we can’t watch anymore!” Maria announced, unable to hide the glee in her voice.
“Oh, dear!” Miss de France looked distraught. “I guess it just rotted away.”
James snagged the amputated piece of celluloid off the floor. “I can splice it together, but it will take time.”
“It will probably just break again,” Jamal said, examining the film. “I mean, it’s got to be fifty years old if it’s a day.”
“Well, you can always get a copy on DVD from Turner Classic Movies,” Sudsy offered, fiddling with her red Opus bowtie.
Miss de France pushed a delinquent curl from her forehead. “Oh dear, DVD. Makes me think of underwear.”
James unplugged the projector and made his way across the floor with the cart like a mortician wheeling out a corpse. Everyone laughed a nervous laugh.
“So that girl in the movie was you?” Maria asked when James and the projector were gone. She turned to Miss de France, her chocolate eyes wide and maddeningly gullible.
Every face in the room turned to Miss de France, waiting for her answer.
“Mais oui,” she answered without a hint of hesitation. “I was a blonde then.”
Tamara’s eyes narrowed. They were anything but gullible. “Did you have your nose done, too? I didn’t know they could make them longer.” Her words hung accusingly in the air.
A flicker of panic crossed Miss de France’s face, morphing into a show business smile. “They do wonders with makeup in Hollywood, darling. And we had the absolute best man in the business.” The smile froze on her lips, promising to stay until someone yelled Cut!
Instinctively, I dashed to her chair to shield her from the doubt that mingled with the dust in the air. Kneeling in front of her, the hem of my green toga touched the bottom of her blue gown.
“I think the strain from the party has been too much for you, Miss de France,” I said, touching her forehead. “Maybe it would be a good idea if you rested.”
Determined to play her role to the end, she reached for my hand. “You’re right, darling. I think I am a little tired.”
I helped her to her feet and we rustled across the floor in our gowns, two actresses making their exit. Sheep-like, my entourage followed through the French doors to the entry. Miss de France had just placed one small foot on the bottom step when James reappeared. He reached for her arm. “I’ll get your medicine—”
“I’m perfectly fine, James,” she interrupted. “Brooke is accompanying me to my room.”
In slow motion we struggled up the ten towering steps to the landing. When we got there, Miss de France turned to face her party guests below.
“Go on without me, children,” she said, with a flourish, pulling her hand from mine to wave. “I’ll be fine. I’ll be just...” And with a cry, reached for her chest and tumbled down the staircase.
Chapter Nine
Tyler reached Miss de France first, picking her up from the floor like a crumpled orchid. Blood ran from her forehead, creating rivulets down her blue gown in a grotesquely fascinating pattern. She lay motionless in his arms, flecks of bright red darkening his white ruffled shirt.
My God, she’s dead! She’s dead and it’s all my fault!
To prove me wrong, Miss de France fluttered her eyelids. “I’m fine,” she whispered. “Don’t worry about me.” Then closed her eyes again.
We waited for the ambulance, the five minutes until they arrived seeming like five hours. Terrified, Maria and I clung to each other while James held a dishtowel to Miss de France’s head.
“I didn’t mean it,” Tamara said, her voice barely audible. “I didn’t mean it the way it sounded.”
“Of course you didn’t,” Maria reassured her. “Of course you didn’t.”
The scream of the ambulance’s siren became intermingled with Tamara’s self-recriminations and Maria’s sobs. Like a senseless round of “Row, Row, Row Your Boat,” I thought inanely. Rwww. I didn’t mean it. Rrwww. I didn’t mean it. Rrrrwww. I didn’t mean it. I pictured Sudsy standing in front of the darkened house in her Opus costume, waiting for the ambulance. The chariot that would save Miss de France.
After the ambulance left, everybody took off. Maria and Sudsy with Tamara and Jamal; Tyler and me to St. Anthony’s. They wanted to go to the hospital, too, but I said no. I was over all of them, everyone except Tyler. Tyler, the new Troy Donahue, whoever he was.
Tyler drove the Green Lady while I cried. It was all my fault. If I hadn’t been obsessed with Elizabeth Taylor’s dress, I never would have gone to the party. That meant Tamara wouldn’t have been there, and Miss de France wouldn’t have had a heart attack. Tamara, my BFF, the most tactless person in the universe. I hated her. But I hated me more.
I replayed the evening in my head. The six of us arriving at the party. Miss de France helping me put on the Cleopatra dress. Jamal playing the piano while we waited for Tyler to appear in his tux. And then show time and the make-believe people on the screen who had somehow become part of my life.
A young Robert Wagner squinting into the sun. Terry Moore running across the dock in blue capris. The fragile film breaking. And the words of three people that would change my life forever.
“That girl in the movie was you?”
“I was a blonde then.”
“Did you have your nose done, too?”
“They did wonders with make-up. We had the best man in the business.”
It could have been my imagination, but it seemed like every sad face in the emergency room looked at Tyler and me when we made our entrance.
It’s probably their prom or something,” someone whispered.
“I love her dress,” her friend whispered back.
I looked down at my toga, pulling my white angora sweater around my shoulders.
Across the waiting room, James huddled in a corner, looking as though he were trying to disappear into his tuxedo. A different looking James, like he’d been put out in the sun and defrosted.
“How is Miss de France?” I asked when we sat down next to him.
“They haven’t told me anything,” he said, an unfamiliar warmth in his voice. His eyes were red, like he’d been crying. “They wouldn’t let me go back. I told them I was her brother, but obviously they didn’t believe me.” He laughed.
I shivered and Tyler put his arm around my shoulder. “Does she have kids or any friends?”
James shook his head. “Just me. She had a niece who died years ago. Both her sisters are gone, too.”
“Maybe I can find out how she is,” I said. “I can’t stand not knowing.”
I walked to the admitting desk, pulling my sweater more tightly around me. A pretty Greek woman sat behind the desk.
“Excuse me, but I’m here to see a lady who was brought in by ambulance a while ago. Her name is Laura de France.”
“Let me check.”
“I’m really worried about her. We’re very close and she’s my favorite...” I hesitated debating what favorite relative she should be. “Aunt.” The word came out up with a lurch, like I’d just coughed up a chicken bone.
The woman raised her head.
“Actually, she’s my great aunt,” I went on. “On my mother’s side.”
“Name?”
“Laura... Oh, my name. Brooke Bentley. With two Bs.”
Unmoved, she wrote my name on a clipboard, then handed me a sticky visitor’s badge. “Go through those double doors and ask for her at the nurse’s station.”
I stuck the badge on and pushed through the heavy swinging doors. After asking, I moved to the end of ER, walking an imaginary tight rope so as not to see or hear the sadness on either side. At the last curtained cubicle, I peeked in. There on a gurney lay Miss de France, an IV in her arm, a thin white blanket pulled over her thin white body. A bottle of clear fluid dripped into her arm. A guy in scrubs stood at her side.
“I gave her something to sedate her. She’s old, but she’s stronger than she looks. You can stay ten
minutes.”
I nodded and took her small freckled hand in mine. How awful to be old and sick and have no family or friends. How could this happen? How can you live eighty years and know a thousand people and end up with no one except your butler and a teenage girl who’s a total stranger?
A tear wetted my cheek. Well, I’d be her friend. I owed her that much. She wouldn’t be lying here in the emergency room if it weren’t for me.
When the nurse reappeared, he nodded, and I knew my visiting time was up. I bent down and kissed Miss de France on her bandaged forehead.
“I’ll be back tomorrow,” I whispered. “You just get a good night’s sleep.’’
Tyler was waiting for me in the waiting room. Without a word he took my hand and we walked out into the heartless night. The dark blue sky was strewn with a million stars, stars that looked as frosty as the words that had come from Tamara’s lips.
We pulled into Tyler’s driveway. A pair of sabal palms stood sentry, casting shadows against the stilt house, their fronds swaying in the sultry breeze. He got out, opening the trunk of my convertible for the Pluto costume. I switched to the driver’s side, watching him climb the steps, still dressed in his black tuxedo and bloodstained ruffled shirt.
“Soak the shirt in cold water and bleach right away. It will be ruined if you don’t.” My advice floated over the night air.
By midnight, I was in my room, Paige Barton’s party no more than an unopened valentine. Undressing, I draped the Cleopatra dress over the chair. The infamous dress. Now I knew how Cleopatra must have felt. Spending her life caring about no one but herself, watching the world collapse around her. I crawled into bed.
I’d never meant to harm Miss de France. All I’d wanted was to look good at Paige’s party because she’d stolen Tyler. Instead I’d ended up hurting a sweet, innocent old lady. But I’d make it up to her, I vowed. I’d make it up to her.
Chapter Ten
Morning came, the way it always does. The only bone God tossed me was that Surf’s Up didn’t open until eleven on Sunday, letting me hide in bed until the last possible moment. Awaking to the sound of Erskine scratching his paw under my bedroom door, I let him in, then staggered to the bathroom.
Glancing in the mirror, I faced my scary reflection—seaweed hair and black-ringed vampire eyes. Resisting the urge to call in sick, I creamed off my Cleopatra makeup, washed my face, and threw on some clothes.
My mother, coaxing a bit of sunshine, lay by the pool sprawled out on a blue and white striped chaise lounge, studying for her art history class. When she saw me, she lowered her sunglasses like a Hollywood star. “How was Paige’s party?” she called when I breezed by the open sliding glass door.
“Killer,” I called back. “Absolutely, killer.”
No point in getting my mother all worked up over Miss de France. I mean, she didn’t even know her. Besides, how could I tell her anything if I didn’t even know what really happened?
Racing through the kitchen, I grabbed a banana, a bagel, and my purse, then flew out the door to my car.
Having taken the Oprah no texting driving pledge, I wasn’t able to fill the Sisters in on Miss de France’s condition until I got to Surf’s Up. Sudsy was already on the job, feather duster in hand, and a serious look on her face. She nodded when she saw me, then began to frantically text me with her free hand, even though she was no more than fifteen feet away.
What’s going on?? Is M D OK?? Maria called 5 x. T is hysterical!!!
Equally as frantic, I texted back, filling her in on the little I knew. The day dragged on, consisting of nothing but the arrival of a gazillion texts from the Sisters and a migraine.
Five o’clock finally arrived and I raced to St. Anthony’s only to find Miss de France had checked out. Not DEAD checked out, thank God, just released.
Tearing back to the parking lot, I jumped into the Green Lady and peeled off. My car responded with a strange noise. Poor thing. She was as much of a nervous wreck as I was.
“I’m sorry I’m driving like a maniac,” I told her, tooling down the brick streets to Miss de France’s house, “but I can’t help it.”
Unconvinced, the Green Lady responded with a snotty ding and a curt message across the dashboard.
Bewildered I looked at the monosyllabic word. “Deck? What in God’s name is a deck?” I asked my car. “Couldn’t you possibly give me a normal message like check fluids or hot engine?”
Ignoring the dinging, I drove toward Spring Bayou and the ramshackle Victorian. James met me at the door. He was dressed in white, having apparently morphed from butler to nurse.
“She’s been waiting for you,” he said, skipping the formalities. His voice was cold again. I guess he’d rested up enough to be mad.
I followed him up the stairs to her bedroom, dread in every footstep. Miss de France was probably mad at me, too. I wouldn’t blame her if she hated me.
James pushed opened the door and I peeked in. There in the gigantic four poster, propped against a mountain of white lace pillows, was an even whiter faced Miss de France. She fluttered her hand when she saw me in an I’m-not-long-for-this-world kind of wave. I could hear James’s footsteps as he walked away.
“Oh, there you are,” she said in a breathy voice. “I knew you’d come.”
“I would have been here sooner, but I had to work,” I apologized. I crept to her bed and sat down in a tiny chair. “My boss depends on me, you know.”
“Yes, of course. But now, I depend on you, too.” She smiled. “Are the others coming?”
“Others?”
“Your girlfriends and their beaus. I especially want to see Tamara.”
Tamara? Why would you possibly want to see the person who sent you to the hospital?
“She wanted to come, but she has a huge track meet this afternoon,” I lied.
“And the rest?”
“Sudsy had a family dinner. And Maria. Well, I just don’t know. And of course, the guys. Well they’re....”
“Men. That’s all right, darling. I have you, and that’s all that really matters.”
James was waiting for me at the bottom of the staircase. I sat down beside him.
“It’s her heart, isn’t it?” I said, looking into his worried face.
He nodded. His voice was nice again. “I’m afraid her condition has worsened.”
I can’t take this. I have enough guilt in my life. “Worsened? Please don’t tell me they sent her home to die!”
“No, nothing like that. It just means she has to be more careful. She has something called an arrhythmia. Usually it’s not that serious, but I’m afraid the stress from last night...” his voice trailed.
“Yes?”
“Pushed her into atrial fibrillation, which just means the electrical impulses in the heart are irregular, so it beats faster.”
“But she’s going to be okay, right?” I said, coaxing him along.
“She should be. She just needs to stay calm and happy.” James looked into my eyes.
“But what will make her happy?” I said, fearing the answer.
“Brooke, remember last night when you asked me if Madame had any family, and I told you she’d had a niece who died?”
I nodded.
“Her name was Stephanie, a beautiful girl with long blonde hair. Miss de France adored her. She gave her everything. On the morning of Steffie’s sixteenth birthday she surprised her with a pink Thunderbird convertible with white leather upholstery and a white top.”
I thought of my Grandma Donnie and how she’d given me the Green Lady on my birthday. “Miss de France must have loved her a lot.”
“Very much so.”
“What happened?”
“Steffie was in an auto accident. Some of her friends on the beach arranged a birthday party for her, and on the way there she skidded off the causeway in the rain. She died instantly.”
“You mean she died the same day Miss de France gave her the car?”
“The very same d
ay.”
I blinked back a tear. “I just can’t imagine.”
“Neither could Madame. Steffie was her world and when she died, part of Miss de France died, too.”
That’s why Miss de France looked so sad and lonely. Her heart was broken.
“You remind Madame of Steffie,” James went on. “And when you appeared on our doorstep that night, dripping wet... Well, your resemblance was uncanny.”
I tried to imagine the Green Lady skidding into the bay and dying. I looked down at the black and white entry tiles, not wanting to meet James’s eyes.
“She needs you,” he said. “I can count on you to be there for her, can’t I?” It didn’t sound like a question.
I raised my head. “Yes, you can.”
His face softened. “I knew I could. You’re a good girl.” Pulling himself up on the banister, he got to his feet.
“I have to go,” I said. “I haven’t even told my parents what happened.”
“I understand.”
He shadowed me to the front door. “So, what time will you be here tomorrow?”
What time will you be here? Panic washed over me. Miss de France expected me tomorrow and probably for every tomorrow the rest of her life. For all I knew she’d live to be a hundred. I imagined myself twenty years from now, a middle-aged wreck of thirty-six. My life would never be the same. I was Miss de France’s slave.
Chapter Eleven
Miss de France sat in her ancient wicker wheelchair, a large straw hat on her head, me and a pair of gold opera glasses at her side. Two weeks had gone by since her fall, but it felt like a year.
If someone were to have a contest to decide what weeks of my life had been the most miserable, the last two would have to be near the top. No sleep, no time for friends, no time for Tyler, no time for me. Just constant running to see Miss de France. To be with Miss de France. To wait on Miss de France. My life as I knew it was over.
“Darling, would you push me into the sunshine?” she asked. “It’s getting a trifle cool. Besides, I love to watch the manatees in the bayou with my opera glasses.”
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