The Roses Academy- the Entire Collection

by Tara Brown

  “Six at night. You sleeping over?” I point at the clock.

  She nods and stretches into the chair to get more comfortable. She blinks several times and fixes her eyes up at Angie and frowns. “What are you doing here?”

  Angie sighs. “Yup, she's fine. Saucy and rude but fine. Anyway, when are you coming back to school? You missed ‘how to run your own home’ and ‘what to do when certain aspects of your home are not what you want them to be.’ Oh, and we had ‘how to dress your maid’ day. I wish for death every hour you're not there. It's like prison but worse. That woman would talk a deaf to death.”

  I laugh. “Then I guess never. I'm too sick to finish out the year.”

  Angie snorts and stands. “Yeah, the five days left. I hate you. Have a good sleep and don’t forget to mention to his lordship that I'm in the market for a new boy toy.” She turns and walks out, waving backward.

  Emily shakes her head. “What?” I ask.

  “You have the weirdest friends and you look like something drug out from under the porch.” Her voice sounds raspy.

  I furrow my brow. “Thanks. You getting sick?”

  “No, I had choir today. It always makes me sound funny.” She stares at the floor and then up at me. “Did she really let Marcello touch her?”

  I laugh and nod. “I guess so.”

  Emily smiles. “I wonder what that would be like. Sometimes I wish Greg would try something, anything. He is so polite. True Southern gentleman.”

  “Em, nice boys are the ones you want to marry. He is sincerely nice. You know how many of those exist in our world? We have the cold-mannered men like Martin and the players who smile the right way but really have ten women falling all over them.”

  She grins. “I'm only marrying if my husband agrees I can work.”

  “Oh Greg will let you work. He is so mellow and sweet.”

  She closes her eyes again and moans, “I hope so. I hope he asks me to marry him tomorrow. I would do anything to leave that house and get away from her.”

  My eyes dart back to the door. He never came back.

  “Yeah well, her and Daddy are in the middle of signing me over to the Ryans. We both know once that's done, she'll be coming for you too.” I don't tear my gaze from the doorway. Suddenly, the prospect of Martin Ryan feels horrid.

  “I have a terrible inkling she ain't never gonna let me marry, Lorelei.” Her voice is hollow.

  I shake my head. “You ain't that lucky, Em.”

  Chapter 4

  My dress is too tight. Hospital food should have thinned me out, but I'm thicker than ever. I think about the snacks and treats Mr. Whitlock brought me every evening and wonder if that was what has ruined my figure. My body and I don’t feel different, but the dress fit only weeks earlier.

  I study my reflection and slump. She’s gonna kill me. I snap my fingers and make the spark. I see myself in the small flashes of light I'm making.

  My day has already been painful in every way. Ramón's funeral was awful. His grandmamma told me to come and visit her and squeezed my hands. She was trembling and sobbing. It made me sick. I felt like I killed him, like he should have stayed with me. She kept asking if I was okay. It made me sick to lie to her, but I couldn’t let my pain be worse than hers. Watching his casket go into the vault almost killed both of us.

  Coming home was much worse. Everyone in our family acted like we hadn’t just been to a funeral, except Em. She loved Ramón and was properly destroyed by it. But Momma nagged us about dresses and hair the minute we got home and Daddy ran for his study, no doubt hiding out until the party.

  Now I’m cleaned and dressed, wishing I were staying home to cry over my dead friend. Instead, I am being forced into a party I don't want to attend, in a dress I don't fit.

  I pull my hair back and scowl down at the dress. Sweat glistens on my brow from the struggle of getting into it. My breasts are almost heaving out the top and my bottom feels like it's lifting the dress a foot off the ground, like two hams under a picnic blanket.

  Momma walks into the room shaking her head in disgust. “Lorelei, that's obscene. Put a wrap on over it. You have got to cover up that fat, child.” She grabs a pale-yellow silk wrap to go over the cream dress. I feel like I'm busting out all over.

  I frown at her. “Momma, I need to change. This ain't comfortable. Can't I just stay home?”

  She crosses her thin arms and laughs. “That is the size you should be. You ate too much as usual, Lorelei. You always eat too much. I can't help it if you can't control yourself with food. Now cover those up before someone gets the wrong idea, and get downstairs. You father is waiting.” She turns on her high heel. She swivels back as she crosses my carpet to the door. “No food at the party. That’s not why you're going.”

  I hate her. I eye the yellow wrap and know I will be sweating like a pig the entire night. The pig I am. I grab my baby blue fan and leave the room.

  My pride stays behind. I won't need it anyway.

  The ride over is painful. The new driver watches me in the rearview mirror, making me uncomfortable.

  I see his eyes flicker to Emily in her pretty pink dress and I glare him.

  “Lorelei, stop making that face. How are we supposed to marry off such an unpleasant girl?” Momma asks while fanning herself angrily.

  Daddy glances back at her. She softens under his stare. I don’t know how he does it, but I wish I could.

  Emily smiles at me from a sideways glance. I smile back. She makes a face at the driver who she sees watching her. She slices her finger under her throat at him slowly. He flinches. I stifle a giggle. Emily has always been crazy.

  “Creep,” she mutters.

  I don’t have to look out for her, if anything it’s the other way around. She is more sensible and more put together. I envy her that. That, and the fact she is naturally thin, regardless of eating everything in sight.

  Momma actually told me once she loves her more just because Emily is built like her. She said it's easier to love thin people. I hate Momma.

  I'm not pudgy, but my size six dress is tight and I'm probably an eight, but I'm taller than all of them at five foot seven. It doesn't matter, in my momma's world, women who choose to stray beyond a size six are heifers.

  I hate her.

  I wish I had some chocolate or licorice or Ramón. He always said I was beautiful and she was a skinny crazy woman. He always said bones were not attractive.

  I miss him. I think I will miss him until I'm dust, and even then, as I ride along the wind, I will miss him.

  I miss the run we took every day. We ran for miles. He said my strong thighs made me a fast runner. I could sprint faster than anyone. My momma hated that we ran, but she agreed I needed something to trim down my figure. Little did she know, a lot of it was muscle.

  My momma hated Ramón and he hated her.

  She woulda hated him even more if she had known his secret. Ramón liked men. No one knew but me, and Grandmamma.

  The car swerves sharply. I hang onto the door and feel my chest heave as we turn.

  “For Christ's sake, not so fast,” my daddy bellows at the new driver who he clearly hates also. I hate him because he’s not Ramón and partly because he leers at Em and me. Mostly, I hate him because I don’t like new things.

  The party is at the governor's mansion. The governor invited us the other night. It is an impromptu party, celebrating the arrival of the governor's cousin. I don’t really know any of them well. My daddy plays golf with them and we have had to socialize with them a few times. They have a son, Daniel, who is a pervert that hunts my sister like a gazelle, and a daughter named Michelle who is a ridiculous snob.

  I lean into Emily and whisper, “I heard from Mandy that Michelle is a total slut at her new school.”

  Emily nods. “I heard her brother and her—well, you know.”

  I make a face.

  “Girls, stop whispering. It's rude. And don’t make faces like that, Lorelei. Your wrinkles are based on t
he faces you make. Soon you'll look like that permanently.”

  I sigh. “Momma, I'm eighteen. My wrinkles aren't gonna come in for some time. You don’t have any and you're—”

  “No.” She cuts me off and holds a hand up. “It's bad enough I have teenage daughters, but for you to name my age is offensive. I really thought we raised you better than that.”

  My daddy shoots me an amused look and then scowls. “Ladies, best behavior.” His bark is nothing but a show for her. She smiles and nods like he has told us. We know better though. We can see it in his eyes. He hates her just like we do. Or at the very least, he knows what a joke of a mother she is and he feels some empathy for us. His empathy is always soaked in bourbon and his mistress's perfume, but it's better than nothing.

  The governor’s mansion is huge. It makes my house seem paltry, which is a feat. When we pull up, butlers and valets meet the cars. A man I think I recognize opens the door and smiles. I climb out, trying desperately to adjust my dress. It's obscene how badly my breasts are swelling over the top of it.

  I see the valets looking. I pull my wrap around myself tightly.

  “You're gonna roast in that, Lorelei.” Emily scowls. She is sweating in her slip dress.

  I grin bitterly. “Roast like the pig I am.”

  Her face twists into the grin we are taught to speak with. “I hate it when you let her get to you. You're the prettiest girl in all of Louisiana. You have curves not fat. She could make the devil contemplate suicide. Don't listen to her.”

  I laugh. “Don’t make me laugh, Em, it makes me sweat more. This silk and satin is killing me.”

  She grabs the back of my dress and gives it a subtle yank when no one is looking. I pull up the front again as people mill past us, not noticing. We've managed to hide at least some of my breasts.

  Momma leans in. “Don't cover up all those assets. Martin is here tonight.”

  I feel sick suddenly. Angie's words of being cattle sold into slavery start to ring true. I want this, don’t I? I want to be married, don’t I? I wonder if being with Mr. Whitlock every day at the hospital has made me question things. Or was it the terrible things Angie said about Martin?

  I shake it off and remind myself of my core values. Who will I be if not a wife? I don’t want anything but to run my own home and make a man happy. Right? Confusion has settled in deep and I ain't getting rid of it so easily. I need to follow Angie's advice and get to know Martin before I make a decision.

  I walk up the huge steps of the Greek-revival mansion with my family. My momma floats on my daddy's arm like a queen would. Everyone knows her as his wife. She has no identity of her own. I watch her and feel my doubts creeping in.

  Is that really the life I want?

  No identity?

  Is that the life Ramón would have wanted me to have?

  She glanced back at me, smiling sweetly. “You are very close to having my life, Lorelei. Don’t screw this up for me.”

  People see the sweet smile and soft eyes of the wealthy wife. They don’t hear the way her voice twangs the cuss word “screw.” They don’t know the other person inside her. The poor white-trash little girl who was raised on the edge of a bayou with no shoes. They don’t know about the money-grubbing and uncivilized beast that hides its scales beneath the soft pale skin of Mrs. Huntington.

  But I know who she is.

  Grandmamma Holt, Ramón's grandmamma, showed me where my momma grew up. It's on the drive out to Ramón's grandmamma's house. She slowed down as we passed and told me the story about how she knew her when Momma was a girl. She used to buy fish from her.

  The image is unforgettable. The fat man standing at the door of the trailer with the pit stains on his white tee shirt and dirty green pants. It still haunts my dreams. Grandmamma narrated the tale as we slowly drove by. I had my face pressed against the glass, watching him just as he watched me from the porch. We were kin, and yet we were perfect strangers.

  I can't imagine the terrors my momma was subjected to in that stale old trailer. She was raised on the edge of the gator-infested waters where huge haunted-looking cypress trees, with their trunks covered in wild red moss, made up her yard. It looked like the bloody water of the swamp washed up onto the base of the huge trees and dried there. It's still the only real color I see when I close my eyes and imagine the picture of her house.

  Nothing about her home made me want to get to know my granddaddy. Grandmamma Holt told me he was bayou scum, part of the filth that gives Louisiana's bayous their mysterious charm. Personally, I prefer the streets of New Orleans and the mansions of the plantations. I even prefer the graveyards with the tombs and vaults containing the dead who will never rest in the soggy earth of the city. We called them the Louisiana army. They are mummies awaiting the magic of New Orleans to wake them and march them through Bourbon Street with a jazz funeral leading the way.

  I prefer all of that to my own granddaddy who ain't even allowed to be dead to me. He is alive and walking, but he is deader than the dead. He is nonexistent because my momma never lived that life.

  Her life never happened and her daddy never raised her. The story has always been that an aunt in New Orleans raised her. Her aunt died and left Momma money so she could afford to go to finishing school where she became fast friends with my aunt Tessa. Momma was wed to my daddy, Tessa's brother, the year she finished school and then suddenly the old man in the bayou never existed. According to Momma, she never starved or sold white perch on the edge of the bayou outside a trailer, looking lost and alone.

  Picturing her sad, alone, and abused on the side of the road, doesn’t make me feel sorry enough for her that I can find love for her. I pity her in the way I pity a criminal who is punished for stealing to feed his family. They don’t know any better. That doesn’t make me love them or her.

  I gasp as we step inside the grand front entryway of the mansion. It's massive, with a showcase imperial staircase, just like the one at Twelve Oaks, in Gone with The Wind. That will always be my favorite movie. I feel tiny and excited the moment I see the inside of the house. Ladies hold drinks and stand littered along the stairs and the main entrance. It even feels like Gone with The Wind. Like there will be a ball and I will dance with Ashley Wilkes while eyeing up Rhett Butler. I think deep down I'm a Rhett Butler sort of girl. But I keep that to myself.

  Emily squeezes my arm. “Wow. What a staircase!” she whispers excitedly.

  I nod. I have no words.

  Momma's eyes interrupt my staring. She is fixated on me. I must look like a country bumpkin gawking at the finery like we live in a slum somewhere.

  I stand up straight and suck everything in. It makes me sweat more, but I fan myself lazily and try to act unimpressed.

  “Martin is over by the bar,” Momma whispers to me and walks away with Daddy. Emily and I let go of each other. We are royalty of the South. We are not to clutch each other in fear. We do not fear the fine people around us. They are not strangers. They are my kin. My family that is forced upon me, based on class and wealth.

  In truth, I'm not comfortable with any of them, except Angie. When I see her, all my discomfort melts. Relief fills me as she comes rushing up. Her face is a huge beaming grin. She has no doubt been at something unholy.

  “Why, Miss Huntington, you look ravishing. Or rather, like you'll be ravished. That dress leaves nothing to the imagination. Let me guess, your dear mother is attempting to close the deal on the cattle sale?” Her sarcasm is duly noted and her giggle tells of liquor and a cigar, possibly. I laugh and pinch her arm.

  Emily gives her a look and rolls her eyes. “Yes, well, this dress fit two weeks ago. Now, however, it seems our mother had it taken in to ensure the assets that sweeten the deal are being displayed properly.” We speak properly in public, always.

  Her words claw at me.

  Is that why the dress doesn't fit?

  “No.” Angie feigns a surprised look. “Not your sweet mother who only ever has your best intentions and desire
s in mind. I refuse to believe that. Let's get a drink, shall we?”

  “Have fun.” Emily waves me off and goes looking for Greg. She is always looking for Greg. He never chases her. He is never the assertive one and she seems content with it, or even to prefer it. He truly is the sweetest boy in all the South.

  I can't help but wonder if Emily has nailed it on the head. Has our dear mother taken my dress in as she too heard the rumors about Martin Ryan? Did she dress me like a whore on purpose?

  The night smells of bourbon and cigars. Only the women drink from flutes, and even then, it's only the proper women. Free-thinking women, like Angie, drink from rock glasses.

  I see a woman with short dark hair in a pantsuit and know we have Yankees at the party. Women from California and New York are infamous for their freethinking, feminism, and pantsuits. My daddy cusses about it regularly. The Civil Rights Act has him, and every other gentleman in Louisiana, frothing at the bit. I like to watch them froth over something I secretly admire but am too well trained to speak of.

  I spy Martin at the bar, holding a rock glass and smiling at a woman in a red dress. It fits like mine does and his eyes are planted in her chest, just like a cad would. Just like Angie said he was.

  She was trying to warn me and I didn’t listen.

  I blush and look down. I have been dressed like a whore for him. He’s not the man I thought he was and my momma knows it. He’s the other kind, not a gentleman.

  “Wait.” I avert my eyes. “On second thought, Angie, I don’t want to find him.” She's right, I don’t want a man who has already tasted the whole world without me.

  “Praise the lord.” She turns us to the right. He catches my eye. He smiles but I don’t. He is smiling at my dress and the prospect of taking it off. I can't smile at that. Not with him.

  Angie drags me to the parlor where the French doors are open, revealing a massive patio. We step out into the night and I know she feels it too. The Louisiana air sparkles at night. Mystery and old magic can't help but float in the heavy air with the soft jazz music.