by Anne Rice
This dread. It called in question all that was warm, seemingly solid, and sometimes when it was at its worst, she felt a weakness in her toward all the world, as if she could not reach out for cold water right in front of her on a burning day.
“Come home with me,” Gabriella squeezed her arm too tight, and yet she felt powerless to do the simple thing of walking through the cottage door to ask her mother, “I should like, I should like to go…”
At times when Cecile thrust at her some ribbons or lace left by her aunts, Colette or Louisa, murmuring indifferently she should try this out, Marie would look at these bits and pieces numbly, from the center of that weakness, and finally only by an austere act of will, manage to touch them long enough to put them away.
In recent weeks there had been argument among the women, begun amid all the sherry and cakes of Marie’s First Communion while she sat alone at the foot of her bed, paging slowly through the prayer book given her by Marcel, running her fingers over its cover of laminated pearl. They talked of the opera, of Marie’s clothes, and like the nuns at school insisted it was time, surely, for corsets, and a change in dress.
“She’s thirteen, that’s sheer nonsense,” Cecile said coldly. “I’m weary of this subject, all this attention to an impressionable girl.”
“But look at her, look at her,” came the shrill voices beyond the closed door.
And Tante Colette that afternoon had flung a corset across the poster bed, laying out with ceremony a dress of pale blue flounces trimmed with the most delicate white ribbon, the center of each little bow a masterfully folded rose. She waved a warning finger as she left with heavy steps that made the mirrors shiver. Marie alone in the shadows, felt the backs of her arms, her hair shrouding her bare shoulders. And turning slowly to see if in fact her aunt was gone, encountered instead her own dark shape in the tilted glass, the swell of breasts against the white eyelet of her chemise.
Dress her properly, Cecile, Mon Dieu!
Properly.
The word hung in the air. Cecile, slamming the fluff and whalebone into the broad armoire drawer, paused for a moment with a bent back adjusting the cameo on its velvet ribbon at her throat. Marie, in the corner of her eye, was not there.
On the streets she loomed monstrous, turned her head from the darkened reflective windows of shops, could feel her stockinged ankles as though they were naked beneath her short girlish hem, and at night the pressure of her bosom, loose and large in her flannel gown against the mattress filled her with a vague disgust. She could see a dusky down on her arms, a bit of fleece on the backs of her fingers, and lay awake picking out of the dense gloom the distant roses on the tester of her bed, wondering vaguely what if Marcel had not finally gone to the garçonnière, had not left her the luxury of this small middle room, how could they have gone on, mother and daughter, sharing that other larger bed? It was as if they had never slept together, flannel against flannel, huddled in winter for warmth. Some splendid simplicity was gone, a surface broken. She did not sense as yet that it would never be mended.
But all this might have lain dormant within her. Mothers after all make mistakes. Gabriella laced to nineteen inches and in décolleté at dusk for the first soiree shook her head at the bad judgment of mothers, and with a furtive glance took the white camellias out of her hair, “Just too many!” And Sister Marie Therese taking girls aside at school had so often whispered, “And your mother said you might wear this, indeed I don’t think…”
But was it a matter of that? Kneeling at the small bedside altar her hands clasped against the marble top, feeling the barest warmth from the votive candle, Marie in the flickering dark forgot her prayers at times, sensing instead some terrible illumination that fell back, back through the corridors of memory where there was hardly memory at all, as she was overcome with a profound listlessness liken to that of the infant in its crib, who, fed only at the whim of others, soon ceases its own cries because those cries have never brought it anything at all.
Oh, this must pass!
But it did not.
One evening late she climbed the stairs to Marcel’s room and sat still in the corner watching him at his desk, listening to the scraping of his pen. He put it down at last bending toward her, “What is it, Marie?” And when she could not answer, with both hands he stroked her hair and kissed her eyelids quickly as he clasped her hands.
She loved him. It was nothing to defer to him, wait supper for him, take the buttons off his worn shirts, saving them carefully in a wicker box. She went to church when he wished, tied his four-in-hands, waited on warm evenings until he had had his bath, gave him in winter the chair by the fire. He was the only person in truth whom she did love now, she was sure of it; and she would find herself thinking, more often than she was aware, of afternoon naps long years before when climbing onto his bed she had curled up by his side, his knees tucked beneath her own, and felt the gentle pressure of his arm around her waist. He had smelt of pressed linen, rosewater, and something warm that was all his own. Rain fell outside the open windows with the soft rumble of thunder, and jasmine, pounded softly on the sills, filled the room with yet another sultry perfume. He had held her tightly in his sleep, and often kissed her hair. She liked the smooth golden flesh of his face, the lips ashen and rose, and all this so taut and satin in repose that she could not imagine it fired with waking laughter. Then stirring, he might rise and stare before him with such utterly blue eyes.
No, jealousy of him, it was impossible, it was not this constant favoritism she begrudged her mother, it had always seemed so natural that he should be first, and now if anything this only brought her to the brink of a new sharp pain:
After all, what was the matter with him now, why did he roam the streets at all hours, why had he finally been expelled from school?
She felt she knew the answer only too well. It had come with the abrupt end of childhood. One day childhood was gone and that was all. And in the new world of harsh adult distinctions, everyone she did not know believed Marie to be white, while no one who laid eyes on Marcel believed for a moment that he was.
It sent a shock through her to think of it; it was impossible that he did not know. Though she herself could never pinpoint that exact moment when she had found it out. And it was hurting him now, she was certain, causing him to shun her, to say always at the cottage door when she came in that he was going out. He passed her in the streets without a glimmer of recognition, and she had even glimpsed him on a Sunday afternoon, wandering in the Place Congo. Drums beat, incessant, urged on it seemed by the constant tink of the tambourines, the rattle of bones, and somewhere in the midst of that thick and common crowd, of Yanquis, tourists, slaves, vendors, the blacks danced just as they must have done in African villages, something wild and terrible that she herself had never seen. And there he was on the periphery, her brother, his hands clasped behind his back, his brow furrowed, he had seemed at once a child and an old man. He turned one way, then the next, eyes wild or in the midst of some blinding concentration, she could not tell. It seemed the crowd opened to envelop him and toward that pulsing terrifying center he had moved. She could hardly stand it. All she knew of love, its pleasure and its sublime pain, were wound up with Marcel alone.
That anyone could see him as any less desirable than her was inconceivable to her, the attraction was so strong, so rooted in detail when she studied him, hung on his words, relaxed easily into his casual embrace. He was beautiful to her, and must be to all the world, precious in fact, his hands when he spoke enchanted her, so that to some extent prejudices of color had become for her at this early age something highly suspect, something all too caught up with ideas.
But she knew well how her world worked, heard more of it from sharp tongues of pale friends than ever did the world’s victims. Indeed it seemed sometimes that angels protected the victims, as they did children and fools. Or so it seemed with Anna Bella, who with her broad African features and American drawl seemed for all the world unaware of
how Marie’s schoolmates snubbed her, and ever-pleasant with smiles, took not the slightest offense when others for sheer meanness, some idiot righteousness, had intended for her to do so. Girls on the way home from school turned their heads as Anna Bella waved from her courtyard gate.
And Marie, a quiet person who said little ever to anyone, despised herself at such times for this natural inclination. It was cowardice not to say, “Why, that’s Anna Bella Monroe, she’s our friend.” Anna Bella, who brought preserves in flowered porcelain crocks and tureens of this special soup, that special brew to cure a fever, leaning on the door-jamb, ever so gracefully, one shoulder higher than the other, her neck so very long, said in a lilting voice, “Well, you just get better now Ma’ame Cecile, and if there’s the slightest thing…I don’t go to school anymore, you just send for me…”
But no such gathering of angel wings sheltered Marcel who, on the sly, slipped away with Monsieur Philippe’s newspaper and left it open under the lamp to an article on the special feeding for African slaves, Marcel, who took command when Lisette ran away insisting that no one say a word to her, after all, she’s come back, hasn’t she? But then he had a way with Lisette as he had a way with everyone, and when she would not work it was Marcel who brought her round, and later gently hinted to Cecile, “Monsieur Philippe will be so tired from the long trip when he comes, he won’t want to hear complaints, isn’t it better he not know?” The man of the house, her brother!
He could have anything, do anything, even now when he acted the madman and frightened everyone, he still had that power…
No, it wasn’t jealousy of him for a moment that could explain this awesome dark thing that lay between herself and Cecile, this throbbing violence of emotion that seemed to threaten the very coordination of Marie’s limbs.
She was nearing the notary’s office without thinking of where she was going, and through the tears that stood in her eyes the Rue Royale had become some avenue of the grotesque where men and women worried each other with ludicrous errands.
She could not stop seeing her mother, could not stop hearing her voice at that moment when she had turned, her head lowered, the veins in her neck standing out, and her lips taut with hissing, “Take that to his office, go!” And the vision of Cecile had been the very same the evening before, all semblance of the lady lost in one blazing instant in Richard’s presence when she had said those unmistakable words, “Get out!” Not one syllable had passed between them all the long night afterwards, not once had Cecile so much as given Marie a glance. She had learned of Marcel’s expulsion from Cecile’s cries outside his door. And withering after into a corner of the bedroom, had listened for an hour to her mother pacing the floor.
Her mother disliked her, disliked her! The word formed instantaneously from the chaos of her conscious with stunning cold. Disliked her, it was manifest at last in those flashing eyes, the lips drawn back from the teeth, the quick turning of the head with that overpowering aversion, dissolving utterly all myths of family love, and all that which had been mere pretense crumbled at once like something splendid, painted on ancient paper, come apart at the touch. But ah, to reveal this in the presence of another, with blind impatience to display it, this which should have been the deepest of family secrets! It was unforgivable! Marie, shaken, throbbing, in fact, from the sting of it, felt for her mother suddenly the most profound contempt. And this contempt, like all else between them, was as cold as a barren hearth.
She stopped in the street, astonished to discover that she was at the notary’s door.
She did not for an instant know why or what she was doing, and then the necessities of the moment flooded back to her, and she felt, if anything, more helpless and confused than before. This note, this foolish, if not disastrous, note! Her fingers, moist from the heat, had disfigured it but not enough. She was mildly amazed to feel her hand shaking as she grasped for the latch.
It was here that her rage should have focused all along, she felt it in a flash, and there came a vague relief as this passion was deflected from her own behalf. After all, what was being done here to Marcel with this note? What a rash and utterly foolish action this was. Who was Monsieur Philippe really, this gentle man she called mon Père when he bent to kiss her cheek? He was a white man, a protector, a benefactor upon whose whim Marcel’s fortune utterly depended, and for the moment the child in her who had loved this man gave way to the woman who felt that the other woman was committing a stupid and absurdly destructive act. She felt superior to Cecile in that moment, worldly and peculiarly strong.
But what could she do about it? How could she stop it? Go back now, not to the cottage, but to Anna Bella’s right by, where she might borrow pen and paper and write another letter, something milder, that would give her brother time? Cecile who could neither read nor write might never actually know. But this was inconceivable really. She had never done such a thing, and she was powerless to do it now.
And seeing her father in these moments as some remote and powerful personage from another world, she loathed the sheer reality of these thoughts, her own calculations, and their sordid resonance and resented all at once the whole circumstance that had made her think of lies and tricks, such words as indiscretion and the very practical phrase, common sense. It was repulsive, as repulsive as that moment when Richard had hurried from the cottage door, an unwilling witness to hostile words.
She bowed her head. She did not know it but she appeared ill as if the steaming street with its ripening smells had made her weak, and the clerk having seen her through the shadowy glass came to open the door.
“Mademoiselle?” he whispered. He extended his arm. She didn’t see him. She took the chair he offered and sank down in cooler air, breathing the clean fragrance of leather and ink, and watching dumbly as he neatly closed the silk folds of her parasol.
When he brought her water, she did not drink it, but merely looked at the glass in her hand. He thought she was white, naturally, and there was another aspect to his gentle attentions which made her drop her eyes.
“Monsieur Jacquemine, I have to see him please,” she explained at once.
There was nothing to be done.
“Ah, Mademoiselle, forgive me, I don’t believe I have had the pleasure,” the notary came blustering from an inner office, and imprisoning her hand needlessly touched the palm of it with rough fingers that set her teeth on end. She rose.
“Marie Ste. Marie, Monsieur, I believe you know my brother.”
His thick mossy brows lifted, and his reddened cheeks plumped with his smile. “Aah, I would not have guessed.” he whispered.
She was furious. She could feel the smarting of her own face. That he should think this a compliment. And thrusting the note quickly into his hand, she turned to go.
“But wait, ma petite,” he insisted. She had moved to the door. “Expelled from school?” he held the note at arm’s length, feeling for his spectacles, no doubt, in a breast pocket. “But what school is this, ah, this is serious…what school does your brother attend?”
“Monsieur, if you can reach Monsieur Ferronaire.” She had never said her father’s surname before. Even this hurt her, shocked her. She reached for the latch.
He came close to her, a hand pressing the door shut. His sleeve brushed her arm, and turning slowly toward him she looked up into his eyes. She could see him shying backward, see the effect of her chilly expression and felt not the slightest regret.
“Ah, Mademoiselle, I’m sure I don’t know if Monsieur is in the city, if he is not in the city, it might be some time…” he smiled confidentially, “these matters…” he murmured.
“Merci, Monsieur,” she whispered and found herself in the crowded street.
He was insisting upon something, calling her. She did not hear. Glancing back suddenly, she saw that smile again, confidential, seemingly tender, and his gaze passed furtively over her yellow muslin dress.
Tears formed in her eyes as she moved quickly away, but they did not come.
The crowd was blurred, indistinct. Someone brushed her shoulder and mumbling apologies gave her a wide berth so that she felt unsteady and reached out for the bricks of the wall. But she did not like to touch such things. Her fingers dropped, closing instead on the folds of her dress. She had forgotten about her hair, and saw it suddenly in flat tresses against her bosom and whispered to the raucous rumbling about her, “Mon Dieu, mon Dieu.”
Through the open doors of the St. Louis Hotel came a press of white women, clambering into open carriages, one behind the other at the curb, so that she was obliged to stand with others for a moment as they passed, and turning her head she became aware of a strange noise.
It was as if an orchestra were playing already at this early hour, and all but the thick vibrations of the bass were drowned by the murmur of the lobby crowds. Above this came the faint high-pitched nasal cries of the auctioneers at war with one another under the high rotunda. Lifting her hand to her cheek, she was astonished to see on her fingertips the bright wetness of tears.
The crowd moved. And she was forced to move with it. She had never fainted in her life, but felt for the first time a rising darkness and a weakness in her limbs. Her mouth was curiously moist, and loose. She was afraid. But then a hand reached for her, steadied her, and meant to guide her closer to the wall. This was dreadful. She was going to pull away, most certainly had to pull away when with stinging eyes she saw that this was Richard Lermontant.
Had it been anyone else, anyone at all, it would not have mattered. Strangers did not frighten her, not in the Rue Royale. She could have gotten away and gone home. But when she saw him leaning forward, saw the passionate concern in his large brown eyes, and felt again the mild press of his fingers on her arm, she commenced to shake. Humiliated, she turned her back on him and on the crowd, stared mutely at the red bricks before her, and gave way to silent sobs.