by King, Leo
“You mean,” said Samantha, a rising bitterness evident in her young voice, “that he’s going to be executed.”
Kent didn’t answer that, instead saying, “He’ll need to get his affairs in order. I’ll bring up transferring trusteeship from Gladys to Marguerite. Guardianship, too, okay?”
“Okay,” replied Samantha, quickly adding a polite, “thank you.”
Kent opened his mouth, and out came the sound of a bell ringing once.
Sam was jarred from the deep recesses of her memory by that sound, the singular bell ringing coming from the copier as the copying of her manuscript completed. For a long moment, Sam stood there, blinking, breathing, and coming back to reality. Back to the nineties. Back to the present.
“Nice,” Sam said to herself as she removed her finished copies. “My imagination is on fire tonight.”
Three copies in her hand, Sam moved over to a cabinet next to her computer table and opened it up. Inside were dozens of types of office supplies: envelopes, paper tablets, stamps, binders, paper clips, and much more.
Taking out three sizable manila envelopes, Sam headed back into the study. Once there, she placed a copy of the manuscript into each one and sealed it up. Taking out a permanent black marker, Sam wrote on the upper left-hand corner of each one: “The Bourbon Street Ripper—Chapter 1.”
That task complete, Sam stood back to admire her handiwork, smiling the first genuine smile she had in quite a while. “You did it, Sam, old girl,” she said to herself. “You totally did it.”
After filing away one of the copies of the manuscript, Sam looked over the notebook with all her notes on the story so far. Picking up her silver pen, she tapped the notebook pages several times, glossing over them to make sure that she had a good plan for the rest of the story.
Her notes included it all—a quick-paced investigation racing against the clock to stop the murderer, interrogations gone wrong in the police precinct, rooftop chases high above the city, hair-raising escapes from mechanical death traps, clandestine organizations, and a climactic final confrontation between the murderer and the surviving detective for the life of the heroine.
The entire story had come so easily to Sam, both while she penned the notes and typed it out. Even though that fact alone was odd to her, since she had always struggled with outlining and following through with stories, she just chalked it up to her sudden burst of inspiration.
“I’m brilliant,” Sam said to herself, capping the pen, tossing it on the notebook, and leaving the room.
Deciding it was time to celebrate, Sam headed to the back of the house, to the kitchen, and over to a cabinet over the stove. Inside was a bottle of Valdespino Sherry, 1975, with a note taped to it reading, “For when you finish a work on time. Go for it, girl!” On the neck of the bottle dangled a small keychain, with a plastic red shoe attached to it.
Taking the bottle of sherry out, as well as a wineglass, Sam proceeded to uncork the bottle and pour herself a glass. Holding the glass, Sam swished the drink around a bit, then sniffed it, then sipped it delicately. With a joyful smile, she nodded her head and took the glass, and the bottle, to the back patio.
The night air was hot, and unlike the previous evening, the sky was clear. She placed the bottle of sherry on the patio table and sat back on the glider. She closed her eyes, sipping the sherry occasionally, and feeling good for the first time in a long time. If she had to put the feeling into words, it was like that first morning of being healthy after you’ve been sick for a very long time.
As she sat there, rocking back and forth, sipping her sherry, and relaxing, Sam’s mind turned back to her very realistic flashback. At first, she wondered if she should tell Dr. Klein about her recent flashbacks. Quickly, however, Sam decided that she shouldn’t.
Dr. Klein was quick to prescribe medications for anything Sam reported having that was new or different. When she said she couldn’t sleep, he prescribed Trazodone. When she said she was having terrible nightmares, he prescribed Prazosin. When she said she was dizzy all the time, he prescribed Dramamine. And he loved prescribing Lithium to her, like it was some sort of wonder drug. Thanks to Dr. Klein, Sam had a small pharmacy in her bedroom medicine cabinet.
Sam frowned, finding that she was tensing up again, and quickly gulped down her entire glass of sherry. For a moment, she coughed and hacked hard, having swallowed too fast. Once the coughing fit was past, she exhaled, shook it off, and poured herself another glass. Then she leaned back and looked at the label on the bottle.
The label was old and worn with time, but it clearly marked the brand and the year, 1975. The shoe charm dangling from the keychain had the word “Comus” etched on it in finely detailed gold-leaf lettering, all of which was in surprisingly good shape considering how old it was. Looking intently at the bottle, Sam suddenly remembered where she had gotten it from.
Again, her mind drifted, aided by the mental fuzz brought about by the alcohol, and without realizing it, she gave in to the feeling. Her mind traveled back to the time she had looked up at this very same bottle. The swaying of the glider was her ten-year-old body in motion, swaying back and forth, rocking on her heels, as she looked up at the bottle of sherry on the mantle, underneath a landscape portrait.
She was standing in one of the lounges of her grandfather’s mansion on Lake Pontchartrain. She was wearing a nice dress, dark blue velvet with black-and-white accents, her long blond hair tied back with a dark blue ribbon. While she no longer felt devoid of life, she had completely shut down her heart, refusing to allow herself any more pain.
“And what are you looking at, Samantha, dear?” asked a pleasant voice from behind her. Turning around, Samantha saw the pudgy face of her great-aunt Marguerite, one of her grandfather’s sisters. The older, heavy-set woman was in her Sunday best, complete with an old-fashioned white bonnet she was currently removing with white-gloved hands.
“Auntie Marguerite,” said Samantha with a faux smile, turning and curtsying as a proper Southern lady should, “I’m so glad you could make it today.”
Marguerite seemed a little surprised, but kept that pleasant smile as she asked, “What, no hug for dear Auntie Marguerite?”
Samantha shook her head. “I don’t feel much like hugging people lately, Auntie Marguerite. Sorry.”
Marguerite gave her a sad smile and an understanding nod of the head. “Well, if you should ever want a hug, Auntie Marguerite is giving them away for free. Now what were you looking at, my dear?”
Turning, Samantha pointed up at the bottle of sherry. “That bottle. I’ve seen it somewhere before. Where have I seen it, Auntie Marguerite?”
Squinting a bit, Marguerite looked at the bottle and hummed to herself, before saying quietly, “I believe that was the brand of sherry your mother used to drink.”
“Mama?” asked Samantha, her blue eyes widening. She had hardly ever heard her mother spoken of, other than to hear her father call her “a beautiful woman who could turn the heads of kings and paupers alike.”
“You knew my mama, Auntie Marguerite?” asked Samantha, pressing her hands in front of her in an almost prayer-like fashion. “You knew her when she was alive?”
“Well, not especially,” Marguerite said, a twinge of ruefulness in her voice. “I mean, she died soon after you were born, and she wasn’t exactly from, well, that is… ”
“She wasn’t from good stock,” answered a similar, but much harsher-sounding voice from the doorway of the room. Samantha’s face drew into a tight pucker, as if she were being forced to taste something particularly sour. Turning, she faced a wrinkled woman with a gaunt face, lips that had probably never smiled a day in their life, and a dress that would make a Catholic nun look like a stripper.
“Auntie Gladys,” replied Samantha in a particularly nasal voice. She spoke that way whenever she wanted to show courtesy that wasn’t genuine, and her curtsy was more of a nod than anything else.
“Still not able to show our elders their proper respect, a
re we, Samantha?” replied Gladys as she approached the child, her eyes like two pieces of coal. “I can see that even with the ridiculous amount of money spent on your etiquette lessons, you cannot manage a single curtsy to your great-aunt Gladys?”
“Oh, come, sister,” interrupted Marguerite. “Samantha is only a ten-year-old girl. And she’s been through so much recently. First her father is murdered, then Vincent is—”
Marguerite’s words were cut short by Gladys. “Do not speak that name before me again, Marguerite. Our brother is dead to us, in name and spirit, despicable man that he was. May the devil feast nightly on his soul.”
“Sister, please.” Marguerite tried to wave the taller and sterner great-aunt off, “not in front of Samantha.”
Feeling a sudden urge to speak, Samantha asked, “Auntie Gladys, what did you mean by saying that my mother wasn’t from good stock?”
While Marguerite looked anxiously between the child and the living mummy that was her older sister, Gladys replied, “I will not fill your head with stories of that irrelevant woman. But suffice it to say that when your father brought her into this house, he committed the second of two grievous sins against the noble Castille family name.”
“Grievous sins?” asked Samantha, honestly curious. “What do you mean? What was the other one?”
“His profession,” replied Gladys, who suddenly looked as if she smelled something very unsavory. “Imagine a Castille, stooping so low as to become a—”
“Sister,” Marguerite said with more vim, “stop it!”
This outburst surprised both Gladys and Samantha, as the latter had always known her younger great-aunt to be meek and easily cowed by her older sister.
Marguerite continued, “Who cares what her mother was? Or what her father did? Samantha is a Castille and”—the pudgy woman winked at the girl—“is growing up to be a fine Southern lady.”
Samantha gave another placid smile, nothing behind it but manners, and curtsied to her great-aunt. This appeared to disarm Gladys enough that the strict-looking woman huffed, said something about being late, and turned, leaving the room with her head tilted up fifteen degrees.
“Don’t mind her,” Marguerite said after her sister was gone. “She’s been angry since… Well, since she was born.” Marguerite winked again at Samantha.
Normally, that kind of joke would make Samantha giggle, but instead she just nodded.
Marguerite offered her hand, saying, “Come on, I think they are about to begin.”
Samantha took her great-aunt’s hand and allowed herself to be led to the drawing room.
There, in that room, were over three dozen people: men and women all dressed up in their Sunday best, children dressed as if going to Easter service, and the five servants who cared for the Castille estate. At the front of the room, near a mantle with a portrait of Vincent Castille in his doctor’s garb, was Kent Bourgeois, dressed in a tailored suit and rifling through a large and impressive-looking document.
As Marguerite led Samantha through the crowd of people, conversations stalled and heads turned. Voices were hushed, but Samantha could make out a few of them. “I bet she’s going to get it all,” said one voice.
“She always was his favorite,” said another voice.
“Lucky little bitch is about to become the richest person in Southern Louisiana,” said a third voice.
“Don’t you mind them,” whispered Marguerite with obvious annoyance in her voice. “They are all jealous of you. Samantha, never forget that you are the star of this story.”
Samantha didn’t respond, only looking out at the sea of faces and wondering who these people were. She knew the Castille family was large, but she had never seen any of them before.
Finally getting to the front, Marguerite joined her sister, Gladys, on a sofa, next to some older gentlemen in expensive-looking suits. Samantha recognized them as her grandfather’s associates from Southern Baptist Hospital. She curtsied to them and got a stern look and a stiff nod in response. With that placid smile, Samantha headed up to where Kent was standing.
“Mr. Bourgeois?” Samantha asked as she approached the lawyer, who stopped what he was doing and looked down at her. Samantha looked around the room to confirm that the face she was looking for wasn’t there. “Where is Mr. Bergeron? Where is Rodger?”
Kent looked troubled as he leaned in some, saying, “He’s not coming, Samantha.”
“What? But why not?” asked the young girl, feeling hurt.
With a small sigh, Kent kneeled down, drawing a few murmurs of disapproval from the crowd. The lawyer put a comforting hand on Samantha’s shoulder before saying, in a low voice, “Well, Samantha, do you remember how you said you couldn’t go to your grandfather’s funeral?”
“Yes,” answered the girl, who remembered adamantly refusing to go.
Kent nodded and said, “It’s similar to that with Rodger. You see, just as you didn’t want to see your grandfather because you… hate him… Rodger doesn’t want to be at the reading of his will because he wants to forget him.”
That made sense to Samantha. She gave the lawyer a small nod and whispered, “Thank you.” That done, she walked over to where her great-aunts were sitting and took a seat next to Marguerite.
“All right,” said Kent, clearing his throat and rapping his knuckles on the mantle. This had the desired effect of getting everyone in the room to stop talking and focus on him. “Let us begin with the reading of the Last Will and Testament of Dr. Vincent Gilles Castille.”
Later that night, young Samantha was on the back porch of her grandfather’s mansion. The guests were long gone, and with them, their sighs of relief or indignant declarations of fighting the will in court.
Samantha sat on the white bench that hung from the ceiling of the back porch, swinging in a halfhearted attempt to lighten her spirits. Nearby, a small plate of angel food cake, her favorite dessert, lay mostly uneaten. A small trail of ants marched triumphantly to and from the confection, carrying off bits and pieces in an almost cartoonish fashion.
“Samantha,” said a soft voice.
Looking up, Samantha saw her great-aunt Marguerite, looking more serious than usual. Sitting down next to the small girl, Marguerite added, “Or should I now call you, ‘Madame Castille’?”
“Call me Samantha, please,” replied the girl quietly. Her gaze cast out over the lake before her, the brackish waters managing to look beautiful in the setting sunlight.
“Okay, then, Samantha,” said Marguerite, inhaling softly. “I wanted to thank you. For having me named your trustee and your guardian. That shows you have a great deal of trust in me.”
“You’re welcome,” replied Samantha, still staring out over the water. “I’m sure you’ll do a great job.”
The pudgy woman smiled as pleasantly as one could under the circumstances. “Do you want to… talk about it? Anything, I mean. Your father, your gra—”
“No,” Samantha replied, looking over at Marguerite, feeling utterly lifeless on the inside. “I want to forget it. I want”—again Samantha gave a smile just for show—“to be happy. That’s what a lady is supposed to do, right?”
To Samantha’s surprise, Marguerite shrugged. “To be honest, Samantha, I don’t know what a lady is supposed to do. I’ve never been good at it like Gladys has, I’ve just”— the woman paused and sighed, shaking her head—“I’ve just kind of had others lead me through all that. But now, I can’t do that. Now, I have to lead you. Which means I have to learn how to be a lady, a mistress, and a mother.”
Samantha slowly turned and looked up at her great-aunt. She felt tears welling up in her eyes, her heart aching. Marguerite looked back, her own eyes tearing up.
“So,” continued Marguerite, “I’ll make you a deal. I’ll do my best to be all those things for you, dear. In return, you don’t smile if you don’t want. You don’t be happy unless you want. You don’t do anything you don’t want to do. Ever. Can you promise me that?”
Samantha
looked back out over the lake and thought. A lot of it didn’t make sense, but neither did anything in her life these past few months. Her father had died at her grandfather’s hands. Her grandfather had sabotaged his own trial, waived all his appeals, and gone to the electric chair with a smile.
And here she was, all alone, her own family hating her, and all of New Orleans fearing her. The only people she could trust were her overworked lawyer, her great-aunt, and the detective who had destroyed her family by fingering her grandfather.
And one of them hadn’t spoken to her since he had caught her grandfather and lost his own partner in the process.
“Okay,” Samantha finally said. “I promise. No more fake smiles.”
“Good,” replied Marguerite, who then presented something to her ward.
Looking at it, Samantha was surprised to see that it was the bottle of sherry she had been looking at earlier. Looking up at her guardian quizzically, Samantha said, “But I’m not old enough to—”
“I know that, dear,” said Marguerite with a smile. Handing the bottle to the girl, Marguerite pointed to a piece of blank paper taped to back of the bottle. “This is for when you are happy again. Even if it’s a small, fleeting happiness, when you finally smile, for real, this bottle is yours to drink.”
“All right,” said Samantha, trying to take it all in, and looking quite confused about the whole thing. While she was glad to be given her first bottle of alcohol at such a young age—most young ladies in New Orleans’s elite society didn’t get more than a small glass of wine occasionally until they debuted at sixteen—she didn’t see what this had to do with her becoming happy again.
“Happiness is all your mother ever wanted for you,” Marguerite said as she opened her purse and took out a small keychain. On the metallic chain was a lovely, sparkling red plastic shoe, the word “Comus” etched onto it in gold leaf. She showed it to the girl.
Samantha looked over at the charm, then up at her aunt, then back at the charm. “What’s this?”
Aunt Marguerite smiled as she said, “A keepsake from your mother. Your father, a few years before you were born, took her to the Comus Ball on Mardi Gras. These”—the pudgy woman slipped the free loop of the keychain over the neck of the sherry bottle—“were used to decorate the wine bottles. She thought they were beautiful and begged your father to get one for her. He slipped one off and gave it to her right before the captain’s toast.”