"It will take time," he said. "These things take time. Unfortunately, we have no drug, no medicine, no treatment, to cure grief." He pressed Gladys's hand between his, kissed her on the cheek, and left. She turned and glared at me in the strangest way, shooting icicles out of her eyes. Then she went upstairs to be with Paul.

Toby and Jeanne went off in a corner to comfort each other. People began to leave, anxious to put this dreadful sadness behind them. Paul's mother remained in the suite with him, so I couldn't get to see him even if I had wanted. Octavious came down to speak to us. He directed himself at Beau as if he, too, couldn't fix his eyes on my face.

"Gladys is as bad as Paul is," he muttered. "It's the way she is about him. Whenever he was sick, even as a child, she was sick. If he was unhappy, so was she. Dreadful, dreadful thing, this," he added, shaking his head and walking off. "Dreadful."

"We should leave now," Beau said softly. "Give him a day or two and then call. After he comes back to himself somewhat, we'll invite him to New Orleans and work out everything sensibly."

I nodded. I wanted to say good-bye to Jeanne and Toby, but they were like two clams who had closed their shell of grief tightly around themselves. They wouldn't look at or talk to anyone. And so Beau and I started out. I paused at the door. James was holding it open, waiting impatiently, but I wanted to gaze around at the grand house once more before leaving. I was filled with a sense of termination. This was the end of so many things. lut it wasn't until late in the afternoon of the next day that I was to discover just how many.


15

  Farewell to My First Love

Early in the evening of the following day, just as Beau and I were about to take our seats for dinner, Aubrey appeared in the dining room doorway, his face pale, to inform me I had a phone call. Since returning from the funeral and Cypress Woods, both Beau and I had been moving like two sleepwalkers, eating little, doing little, talking in low voices. The clouds of gloom that hovered over the bayou followed us back to New Orleans and now lay over us like a ceiling of oppression, darkening every room, filling our very souls with shadows. It had rained all the way back from Cypress Woods. I fell asleep to the monotonous wagging of the wipers on the windshield and woke with a chill that a pile of blankets and a dozen sweaters couldn't chase from my bones.

"Who is it?" I asked. I was in no mood to talk to any of Gisselle's friends, who I imagined had heard about my death and wanted to gossip, and I had left instructions with Aubrey to tell any of them who did call that I was unavailable.

"She wouldn't say, madame. She's speaking in a coarse whisper, however, and she is very insistent," he explained. From the way he couched his words and shifted his eyes, I understood that whoever it was, she had spoken to him roughly. I was positive now that it was one of Gisselle's bitchy, spoiled girlfriends who wouldn't take no as an answer from a servant.

"Do you want me to take it?" Beau asked.

"No. I'll take care of it," I said. "Thank you, Aubrey. I'm sorry," I added, apologizing for the ugliness he had to experience.

I went into the study and seized the receiver, my heart pumping, my face flush with anger.

"Who is this?" I demanded. For a moment there was no reply. "Hello?"

"He's gone," a raspy voice replied. "He's gone away and we can't find him and it's all because of you."

"What? Who is this? Who's gone?" I asked with machine-gun speed. The voice had sent an icicle down my spine and nailed my feet to the floor.

"He's gone into the canals. He went there last night and he hasn't returned and no one has been able to find him. My Paul," she sobbed, and I knew it was Gladys Tate.

"Paul . . . went into the canals last night?"

"Yes, yes, yes," she cried. "You did this to him. You did all this."

"Madame Tate . . ."

"Stop!" she screamed. "Stop your pretending," she said, and lowered her voice into that scratchy old witch's voice again. "1 know who you really are and I know what you and your . . . lover did. I know how you broke my poor Paul's heart, shattered it until there was nothing left for him to feel. I know how you made him pretend and be part of your horrible scheme."

I felt as if I had stepped into ice water and sunk down to my knees in it. For a moment I couldn't speak. My throat closed and all the words jammed up in my chest, making it feel as if it would burst.

"You don't understand," I finally said, my voice cracking.

"Oh, I understand, all right. I understand better than you know. You see," she said, her voice now full of arrogance, "my son confided in me far more than you ever knew. There were never secrets between us, never. I knew the first time he paid a visit to you and your Grandmère. I knew what he thought of you, how he was falling head over heels in love with you. I knew how sad and troubled he was when you left to live with your upper-class New Orleans Creole parents, and I knew how happy he was when you returned.

"But I warned him. I warned him you would break his heart. I tried. I did all that I could," she said, and sobbed. "You enchanted him. Just as I told you that day, you and your witch mother put a spell on my husband and then my son, my Paul. He's gone, gone," she said, her voice faltering, her hatred running out of steam.

"Mother Tate, I'm sorry about Paul. I . . . We'll come right out and help find him."

"Help find him." She laughed a chilling laugh. "I'd rather ask the devil for help. I just want you to know that I know why my son is so brokenhearted and I will not sit by and let him suffer without you suffering twice as much."

"But . . ."

The phone went dead. I sat there, my heart going thump, thump, thump, my mind reeling. I felt as if I were in a pirogue that had been caught in a current and was spinning furiously. The room did twirl. I closed my eyes and moaned and the phone fell from my hand and bounced on the floor. Beau was at my side to catch me as I started to lean too far.

"What is it? Ruby!" He turned and shouted for Sally. "Hurry, bring me a cold, wet washcloth," he ordered. He put his arm around me and knelt down. My eyes fluttered open. "What happened? Who was on the phone, Ruby?"

"It was Paul's mother, Gladys," I gasped.

"What did she say?"

"She said Paul's disappeared. He went into the swamps last night and still hasn't returned. Oh, Beau," I moaned.

Sally came running with the cloth. He took it from her and put it on my head.

"Just relax. She'll be all right now, Sally. Merci," Beau said, dismissing her.

I took some deep breaths and felt the blood returning to my cheeks.

"Paul's disappeared? That's what she said?"

"Yes, Beau. But she said more. She said she knew about us, knew what we had done. Paul told her every-thing. I never knew he had, but now that I think of the way she glared at me at the funeral . . ." I sat up. "She never liked me, Beau." I gazed into his wide eyes. "Oh, Beau, she threatened me."

"What? Threatened. How?"

"She said I would suffer twice as much as Paul's suffered."

He shook his head. "She's just hysterical right now. Paul's got them all in a frenzy."

"He went into the swamps, Beau, and he didn't come back. I want to go right out there and help find him. We must, Beau. We must."

"I don't know what we can do. They must have all their workers looking."

"Beau, please. If something should happen to him . . ."

"Ail right," he relented. "Let's change our clothes. You were right," he said with an underlying current of bitterness in his voice, "we shouldn't have involved him as much as we did. I jumped at the opportunity to make things easier for us, but I should have given it more thought."

My legs trembled, but I followed him out and upstairs to change my clothes and tell Mrs. Ferrier we would be leaving the house and might not return until very late or even the next day. Then we got into our car and drove through the night, making the trip in record time.

There were dozens of cars and pickup trucks along the driveway at Cypress Woods. As we pulled up to the house, I looked toward the dock and saw the torches being carried by men who were going in pirogues and motorboats to search for Paul. We could hear the shouts echoing over the bayou.

Inside the house Paul's sisters sat in the study, Toby looking as cold as a statue, her skin alabaster, and Jeanne twisting a silk handkerchief in her hands and gritting her teeth. They both looked up with surprise when we entered.

"What are you doing here?" Toby asked. From the expressions on their faces and their astonishment, I guessed that Gladys Tate hadn't told her daughters the truth. They still thought of me as Gisselle.

"We heard about Paul and came to see what we could do to help," Beau said quickly.

"You could go down and join the search party, I suppose," Toby said.

"Where's your mother?" I asked.

"She's upstairs in Paul's suite, lying down," Jeanne said. "The doctor was here, but she refused to take anything. She doesn't want to be asleep if . . . when . . . Her lips trembled and the tears rushed over her eyelids.

"Get hold of yourself," Toby chastised. "Mother needs us to be strong."

"How do they know for sure that he went into the swamps? Maybe he's in some zydeco bar," Beau said.

"First of all, my brother wouldn't go off to a bar the day after he buried his wife, and second, some of the workers saw him heading toward the dock," Toby replied.

"And carrying a bottle of whiskey clutched in his hand," Jeanne added mournfully.