Enigma of the Heart

by Wynette Davis

  Taffy stood staring up at the ceiling. She was bored with Lou Pearl and her histrionics. Lou Pearl could make a hang nail seem like murder. In her opinion, everyone was out to get her, do her harm, or they were against her in some way. Taffy had to deal with her for several months in California during the contesting of the will. She’d thought it was all behind her. Apparently, Lou Pearl had other ideas.

  “You can leave now, Lou Pearl,” said Taffy. “And take your dog with you.”

  “We ain’t got no dog,” DePaul said with a sneer.

  Taffy blinked in disbelief. If she didn’t know better she would think that DePaul was what many called touched. The PC term would probably be slightly mentally challenged. Taffy would call him stupid.

  Lou Pearl turned her attention on Jean-Michel. “I heard about you Frenchie. I heard you were up in this house changing things that ain’t yours to change. You probably ain’t even French. My great-granddaddy was a Frenchman. He was from a place called Paris, France,” Lou Pearl said indignantly to Jean-Michel, although she pronounced it as Pair-ree. “I know French when I hear it, and that ain’t you.”

  Jean-Michel gave Taffy a look of disbelief. Taffy only shrugged her shoulders. He looked over to where DePaul was leaning against the wall looking as though he wanted to hurt Taffy. Jean-Michel raised his eyebrow to ask if he should stay. Taffy shook her head, telling him he could leave.

  “Madame, please take a look at the sunroom,” said Jean-Michel. “It is going to be beautiful. Excuse me.”

  Lou Pearl watched Jean-Michel walk away, and then stared back at Taffy. “I heard you went out to see Monice Rischarde,” she said distastefully. “I heard they threw you out of the house,” she said laughing.

  “Threw her out,” DePaul echoed.

  “Oh, you care?” said Taffy sarcastically. “What I did out at the Rischardes shouldn’t concern you. But just so you know, I went there to tell them about Mama and Daddy. They didn’t know they’d died. I thought they had the right to know that. You remember my father, right? Your son?”

  Pop! Pop! Pop! Lou Pearl chewed. Then she abruptly turned and started to storm out. “Come on, DePaul! We’re leaving!”

  “Yeah, we’re leaving!” DePaul repeated.

  “Thank God,” said Taffy, feeling a hundred times better after they’d gone.

  She walked toward the back of the house where the bulk of the work was being done. Jean-Michel was poring over plans with his foreman Austin. They both looked up to see her.

  “Hey, Taffy,” Austin said to her.

  “Hi, Austin. The room looks great. Big.”

  “Did your guest finally leave?” Jean-Michel asked.

  “More like pest, but yes,” Taffy said.

  “Good. Would you like to see what we did to the master bedroom?” Jean-Michel asked her.

  Taffy nodded, letting Jean-Michel walk in front of her. She wanted to see the bedroom. Jean-Michel had promised that she would love what they had done. Thalia had come by taking measurements, and helping Taffy pick out the best colors for the rooms. She had yet to see the finished product, but Jean-Michel had told her she would be able to move into the room by the end of the week.

  Jean-Michel opened the door to the bedroom, and let her walk inside before him. “Oh!” exclaimed Taffy.

  The floors were finished in the same dark cherry wood that would be in the rest of the house. The room was very large with a sitting alcove to the right. The large window ahead of her had a window seat. She told Jean-Michel that she wanted to be able to sit by the window and watch the rain. He’d put the window seat in for her. The room had even been painted in a soft, pale yellow that she loved. It was everything she wanted.

  “Oh, Jean-Michel,” she said turning around in the middle of the room. “I love it! It’s beautiful!”

  “Good. I was afraid you wouldn’t like it,” he said closing the gap between them. “The bathroom is proving to be a little harder, so a little more patience, yes?”

  “Definitely.” She gazed up at him, and then went to sit on the window seat.

  “The woman and her son,” he said sitting down next to her. “Who are they?”

  Taffy started to laugh. “Oh, well…The woman is my grandmother.” She glanced over at him. “And the doofus passing for living brain matter is my Uncle DePaul. Her son.”

  “Your family? I would have never guessed. Why does she hate you?” He pulled her to sit between his legs with her back against him, as he wrapped his arms around her.

  “That’s a long story,” Taffy said, unconsciously snuggling next to him. “It started so long ago. Some say it started right after the Civil War. But the Thibodeauxs and the Rischardes have hated one another forever. The recent feud came about because of Grammy. That’s my great-grandmother. Lou Pearl had her committed.”

  “Committed? She was crazy?”

  “No, she was too independent.” She began to tell the story of her family.

  Some say that the Rischardes and Thibodeauxs hated each other because of race. The Thibodeauxs because the Rischardes were the only affluent black family in the county. The Rischardes because the Thibodeauxs used to own some of the Rischardes back in the days of slavery. But no one actually knew for sure. For years nothing would be said or happen between the two families, and then like a match to dry kindling it would all erupt again.

  In the early part of the twentieth century, a young Thibodeaux man fell in love with a Rischarde woman. The woman became pregnant and a scandal was born. Her family, shamed by what she’d done with a Thibodeaux man, made her claim it was rape. It was either that, or they would cut her out from the family. The rape claim never went anywhere, since she refused to testify, and because it was a white man and a black woman. But the tale goes that because the young lovers couldn’t be together, they killed themselves by taking overdoses of laudanum.

  Each family blamed the other, and the feud continued. The bad blood between Lou Pearl and her mother stemmed from that history. Jacinda Blaylox, or Grammy as she came to be known later on, was married to Carlton Thibodeaux for over forty years before he died from pneumonia in 1980 or maybe it was ’81. But the fact of the matter was Jacinda was only sixty-four years old. Her husband had been ten years older than she was, which back then was the norm. To hear Grammy tell it, the year her husband died was the year she was born.

  She had married at eighteen to a man that was ten years her senior. She didn’t want to get married, but her mother had too many children to feed as it was. Getting them out of the house was a priority. Carlton was a Thibodeaux. So, when a wealthy Thibodeaux came courting, there was no question about whether or not there would be a wedding.

  But her heart never belonged to Carlton. Jacinda was, and had always been in love with Harris Rischarde. They could never let their love be known back then. The town would have lynched Harris in a heartbeat for loving a white woman. Even if that white woman was from a family of sharecroppers. She married Carlton, but she never stopped loving Harris.

  When Carlton died, Jacinda moved her true love into the Thibodeaux house to live with her. They never married. It wouldn’t have been allowed. Plus, they were set in their ways and didn’t want to lose what independence they had, but they loved each other passionately. Or so the story goes.

  The Thibodeaux family was disgusted by the scandal Jacinda was making. They told her that she had to kick Harris out of the house. She refused. Harris remained in the house until his death two years later. By then, Grammy was getting older and the family was beginning to talk about her will and who would get what. It was also at that time that Andre had fallen in love with Wilma, setting the Thibodeaux family into what they felt was another scandal.

  Lou Pearl and her sister Eunice Mae devised a plan to get their mother out of the property they both wanted to have. With their father dead, Harris dead, and their mother already feeling distaste for her family after the way they treated her and Harris, the girls knew it would be easy to have their mother declared incompe
tent and put into a mental facility. It would be very uncomplicated and hush-hush. All they would have to do was find a judge to sign the commitment papers. And that was easy since with the Thibodeaux name anyone could be bought.

  When Andre heard about what his aunt and mother had done, he flew back to Mandeville to try and get Grammy released. He was also surprised to see that his mother had moved into Grammy’s house with DePaul and Visalia in tow with all of their family. The judge finally overturned Grammy’s commitment after three months in the facility. It was appalling to do something like that to family, but to your own mother was beneath anyone.

  Andre got the house back after a lot of paperwork. Sending more nails into the coffin of his relationship with his mother. But at least Grammy was back in her own home. She was in no frame of mind to deal with her daughters. She had barely talked with them before, but after the commitment incident, she had them both removed from her will. And so it went on for years until Grammy died.

  After her death, Lou Pearl moved back into the house along with DePaul. Visalia passed on the offer. She was living with her husband in her own home. So, when the judge ruled that the home was Taffy’s by way of inheritance, Lou Pearl had been living in the house for a little over twelve years. And in those twelve years, she had done more to destroy the house than any natural disaster ever could.

  “Unbelievable,” Jean-Michel said softly.

  “Lou Pearl believes I stole this house from her because she had disowned my father,” Taffy said facing Jean-Michel. “It wouldn’t matter if God himself had decreed the home was mine, Lou Pearl would still not believe it.”

  “So, this house was only sitting empty for a few years? The damage,” he said shaking his head. “I can’t believe it.”

  “Well, you would if you saw where Lou Pearl was living until a about a year ago, according to the Mandeville grapevine. It’s the large colonial at the end of the street here.”

  Jean-Michel sat frowning at her. “No, that house has been abandoned for years.”

  “No, that house had Lou Pearl living in it.”

  Jean-Michel was needed downstairs, so they said good-bye in the only way Jean-Michel knew, with lots of tongue. By that afternoon, she was on her way to Charleston to see Nina. She was beginning to think Nina had been right. Maybe she had bitten off too much in the way of family, and the house, and now with all that she was feeling and trying to deny feeling for a man she had only recently met. She had to put distance between them. She told herself that she didn’t want a relationship. She didn’t want to go down the same path she had with Seth. She felt that Jean-Michel was leading her down that path, but she refused to go down it again.

  But each time he looked at her, she felt like a lightning bolt had speared her heart. It wasn’t supposed to happen that way. She wasn’t supposed to meet a man at a club, have sex with him, amazing, phenomenal, toe-curling sex with him, and feel anything but sexual release. She wasn’t supposed to look forward to catching a glimpse of him if she stopped by the house. She wasn’t supposed to smile at hearing his voice when he called her. She wasn’t. She had to distance herself from him before something happened. But even as she thought it, she knew it was already too late.

  Chapter 8

  Nina was smiling at her cell, entering text at lightning speed. She put her phone down beside her and turned her attention back to Taffy.

  “Are you sure you’re finished?” Taffy asked her.

  “No. But he can wait.” She smiled at Taffy.

  “Who’s he?”

  Nina continued to smile at her. “Austin.”

  Taffy’s mouth dropped. “Austin, Jean-Michel’s foreman, Austin?” Nina nodded. “Since when do you know him? And when did you and him…? When?”

  “Wow, mother. What’s with all of the questions? Since I went looking for you at the house and didn’t find you there. Since…Maybe right after you started batting your eyes at Jean-Michel.”

  “I’m not…Whatever. You started banging Austin. Wow. I guess you’re having a little fun, too, huh?”

  Nina sat back and leveled a look at Taffy with raised eyebrows. “Oh, no. Don’t play it off like you’re just tickling your nipples for a while. You and Frenchie have got it bad for each other.”

  “Please don’t call him that. It reminds me of Lou Pearl.” Taffy told her about Lou Pearl and DePaul’s visit.

  “And that woman had the nerve to commit her mother?” Nina said. “Okay, no calling him Frenchie. How’s about we call him your man?”

  “He is not,” Taffy said, blinking rapidly. “He’s… He’s…”

  “You fucked him again,” Nina said, sitting up in her seat. “Do not look away from me, girl.”

  Taffy tried to look at anything but Nina. “Don’t judge.”

  Nina screamed out. “I knew it! I knew you would. That man is too damn fine not to jump all over him. Was it good? I know it was good. At least this time you can give me details, cuz I know you weren’t drunk. Spill.”

  “No.”

  Nina stared at her best friend. “Taffy?” She scooted closer to where Taffy was wedged into the corner of the sofa. “Trisha Vivienne Thibodeaux? Oh my god. You’ve fallen for him.”

  Taffy let out a short laugh. “I have not. I’ve only known him for what? Two weeks? You don’t fall in love in two weeks, Nina. I like him.”

  “Why can’t you fall in love in two weeks?” Nina asked.

  “Because it’s only been two weeks!”

  “Well, you’ve got to tell me who the board of trustees for the heart is, cuz I don’t understand why there’s this specified time it takes to feel something.” Nina sat looking over at her.

  “Are you in love with Austin?” Taffy asked defiantly.

  “No, but I’m also not going to deny it’s possible to fall in love with him. Austin and I have agreed to be friends with benefits. A whole helluva lot of benefits,” Nina said with a giggle.

  Taffy sat silently, as if she were thinking about what Nina had said. “Love just doesn’t happen like that,” she said softly. “Benefits do, but not love. Besides, I couldn’t be serious about him. Not in a relationship way.”

  “I’m just going to open the can of worms, because I kind of have a feeling of why you would say that, but why not?” Nina asked her.

  “Nina,” Taffy said staring intently at her. “I’m not trying to rush into a relationship right now.”

  “Rush? Taffy, it’s been two years since Seth. That’s not rushing it. You’re making excuses for not wanting to feel for Jean-Michel.”

  “Can we talk about something else? Do we always have to talk about him?”

  “You just want to avoid what you feel again, huh?”

  “I’m not trying to avoid what I feel. I’m concentrating on mending relationships with my grandmother Monice. I don’t want them to—”

  “Shut up,” Nina said abruptly. “Don’t you dare tell me that you would let anything Monice and them say have any bearing whatsoever on how you feel about Jean-Michel? Don’t you dare!”

  “My parents died without their family, Nina. Why is it wrong to want that?”

  Taffy could tell that Nina was angry. Nina sat looking at her through the slits of her eyes. “Why do you care? Your parents didn’t give a fuck what anyone thought. They were in love.”

  “I’m tired of talking about this, Nina. Why do we always have to talk about this? I’m done with it.” Taffy got up and went into the kitchen, with Nina on her heals.

  “No,” Nina said. “You’re not doing this. Every time things get too intense, you shut down and run, Taffy. Stop running.”

  “I’m not. Listen, I know what I’m doing. You might think that I’m trying to avoid something with Jean-Michel, but I’m not,” Taffy said taking a deep breath. “Jean-Michel is fun, but that’s all this is, Nina. Fun.”

  Nina nodded her head. “Okay. It’s fun. You aren’t falling for him?” Taffy shook her head. “All you’re doing is having some fun, and then you’re going
to cut him loose?” Taffy nodded.

  Nina walked over to the freezer and started to look through her frozen foods. “Ooh, I think I have something to go with this,” she said to Taffy, as she continued to look in her freezer.

  “What the hell are you doing?” asked Taffy.

  Nina continued to rifle through the freezer. “Looking for the frozen bull I must have bought to go with the shit you’re trying to shove down my throat.”

  * * * *

  Taffy stayed longer than she planned to at Nina’s. By the time she left it was dark. Nina had begged her to stay and go out to one of the clubs with her. Taffy wasn’t in the mood for partying. The last thing she wanted to do was to end up drunk on tequila and waking up in some strange man’s bed again.

  She decided to make a pass by the house. Soon she wouldn’t have to make a pass. Soon she would drive up to the house and park her car in the driveway. Soon it would be hers. Lou Pearl could bitch and moan all she wanted. No judge in this country or beyond would overturn a ruling that clearly stated that the house was bequeathed to her. It least not one that wasn’t in the back pocket of one of the Thibodeauxs. That was something she should fear. Lou Pearl had a lot of judges in Mandeville that owed the Thibodeaux family. It wouldn’t matter, she reminded herself. The ruling was binding in all states.

  The lights were on. She stopped her car in front of her house. The damn lights were on. Maybe some of the workmen had forgotten to turn them off when they’d left yesterday? It was Saturday. No one was supposed to be there over the weekend. She hated to think that the lights had been left on since the day before. It was wasteful.

  She pulled into the drive, not driving around to the back of the house. Getting out of her car, she looked around and noticed more than one room of the house lights were blazing. “Damn it,” she said to herself.

  Taking her key, she walked to the front door. She tried the latch first and discovered it was open. “Son of a bitch. Thanks for locking up assholes.”