Gabrielle

I folded the letter and put it in an envelope quickly. The next morning after breakfast, I went down to the dock, got into my canoe, and poled up to the Daisy dock. I hurried up to the shack and put the envelope in the center of the kitchen table where it would be prominent. Then I gazed around what was to have been our love nest for as long as we could have it. The tears streamed down my cheeks. I sighed, bit down on my lower lip, and ran out of the shack. I sobbed as I poled my way back, but when I reached our dock, I sucked back my tears, took a deep breath, and forced myself to stop thinking about what I had done.

I dove into the work Mama and I had to do, weaving, cooking, organizing, and I didn't permit myself to think about Pierre. Whenever his face came to mind, I started doing something else. Mama watched me all day through her wise eyes. She said nothing while I worked, but that evening, after dinner, she came out to see me on the galerie and just hugged me without speaking. We gazed into each other's faces.

Finally she said, "Don't think I don't feel your pain, honey. We're too close."

"I know, Mama."

"You're a good girl, a strong girl, stronger than me," she said, and smiled. I smiled back, but I didn't believe those words. If anything, I felt more fragile and thinner than ever.

Another day passed and then another and another. I began to believe that Pierre had come to the shack, found my letter, and returned to New Orleans. The longer time grew between us, the more I began to believe Mama might have been right about everything. I was saddened, but a little relieved.

And then, one night, just as I was about to go to sleep, I paused to gaze out of my window as I often did, and there in the moonlight, his form well outlined, was Pierre. He stood staring up at my window. I wanted to go down to him, to talk and tell him why I wrote the letter, but I didn't move. I watched him and waited. He stood there for nearly an hour, waiting, looking like a statue. My heart was bursting, but I stopped myself every time I went toward the doorway. And every time I returned to the window, I hoped he would be gone, but he wasn't.

Clouds came and blocked the moon. He disappeared in the shadows, but when the clouds parted, he was there again, waiting, watching, hoping.

I went to bed and pressed my face in the pillow, nearly smothering myself, squeezing, clinging to the sheets like someone who might drown if she let go. Finally, when I went to the window, he wasn't there. He had resembled my ghost once more, and once more, he had returned to that other world. I couldn't fall asleep. I lay there with my eyes open, wondering if he had returned to the shack to sleep or if he had taken my advice and gotten into his car to drive back to New Orleans.

All the next day I was tempted to pole up to the Daisy dock to look. I thought he might also pole down to see me, but he didn't come. I took my walks, did my work, watched the road every time I heard an automobile, but he didn't appear. It's over, I thought that night after dinner. I did it. The realization made me sick inside. I had to go to bed early. Daddy was off playing bourre and Mama finished cleaning up.

But just as I got into bed, I heard someone come to the front door. I listened hard. Was it Pierre? I heard the voices and realized it was Jed Loomis, a neighbor who lived about a half mile toward Houma. He had come by in his pickup truck to tell Mama that his mother was suffering something terrible from stomach cramps. She was in great pain. Everyone was very worried; his father wouldn't leave her bedside. They weren't sure whether it came from something she had eaten or if it was something worse.

Mama packed up her herbs and her holy water and then came up to tell me she was going.

"You want to come along, Gabrielle?"

"No, Mama. Not unless you think you'll need me."

"No. There's nothing for you to do and it might take most of the night. I guess there's no sense in both of us staying up," she said. "If your daddy comes home early for some reason, you'll tell him where I've gone."

"Yes, Mama."

"You all right, honey?"

"Yes, Mama," I lied.

She paused a moment. "I gotta go," she said. "Poor woman's in pain."

"Okay, Mama."

She descended the stairs and was gone. I closed my eyes and tried to sleep, and for a little while I did fall into a deep repose, but suddenly my eyes popped open. My heart had started to drum as if it knew something I didn't. I lay there staring up into the darkness waiting for it to slow down. When it didn't, I sat up and then went to the window.

There he was, outlined in the moonlight, staring up at the house, waiting . . . Pierre. My ghost would not go away.

I threw on my dress and hurried down, closing the screen door softly behind me. He was waiting on our dock.

"Gabrielle," he said as I approached. "I was afraid to come to your house to ask for you."

"I'm glad you didn't," I said, stopping a foot or so away from him.

"Why? Why did you write that letter?"

"I had to," I said as harshly as my lips would permit me to speak to him. He stepped toward me. "Mama knows," I added, and he froze for a moment. "She threatened to go to New Orleans and knock on your door if she had to," I added.

As the moon peeked over the shoulder of a passing cloud, the light caught his face and revealed a pained expression.

"What is it your mother thinks of me?" he asked softly. "What has she told you?"

"You are rich, Pierre. You can go anywhere, do anything, see anyone you want."

"Oui,” he said. "That's true, Gabrielle, but I didn't go anywhere else; I didn't do anything else, and I haven't seen anyone else but you. You were right in your letter. Our love, my love for you, is a double-edged sword, and when you said you couldn't see me again, I felt its sharpness in my heart. Do you know what it's been like being here, looking up at your window at night?"

"Pierre . . ."

"And during the day."

"During the day?"

"Yes. I've watched you from a distance, seen you walking, seen you working, talking to people, but I was afraid to approach you in daylight. Remember the exquisite torment of being beside each other and not touching? It wasn't exquisite this time; it was just torment.

"You think I have other lovers, don't you? You think because I am rich, I can go anywhere and have affair after affair and then one day pick up and leave, breaking someone's heart without caring?"

I was ashamed to say yes, but I had thought it. He nodded and turned away for a moment.

"Other men I know, wealthy, married men, fit that description. I would not deny it, but you are the first woman I have kissed passionately since I married Daphne. You must believe me."

"Didn't you love her?"

"I . . . thought so. She's a very beautiful woman and she comes from a family as distinguished as mine, although not as wealthy. Ours was more of an arranged marriage. We were thought to be the perfect couple, but things happen, things change. I'm a very lonely man these days, Gabrielle, and despite what your mother might fear for you and even what you might think at this moment, I am not one to go wandering and philandering. I do not give myself liberally.

"But when my eyes feasted on you, when I first saw you, I felt something so deep and so sincere in my heart, I could not deny it; I will not deny it. I swear I'm not here to take advantage of you and then leave you in the lurch. I will never do anything to harm you or make you unhappy. Somehow, I want to be able to take care of you.

"I can't believe," he continued, raising his voice and his clenched hands in the air, "that this love is not meant to be. What a horrible trick Nature has played on us then. To bring me here, to permit me to see you and you to see me. To permit us to kiss and hold each other and pledge our feelings to each other, and then to rip us apart mercilessly like this . . . no. No!" he cried. "I won't permit it to happen. Tell me what I must do to be with you and I will do it."

"I can't ask you to do anything, Pierre. It's enough that you and I have been together while you are married, but I believed you when you said our love is so good and pure, it makes it all right. I wanted to believe you."

"Don't stop believing that, Gabrielle. It's true. It's as true as the morning light and the evening stars." He stepped closer to me. "How can you deny that?"

"I don't deny it," I said softly.

"Good. Love me then, Gabrielle; love me as purely as I love you and throw caution and unhappiness to the wind."

"Pierre," I said, whispering. He put his hands on my shoulders. I couldn't drive him away; I didn't have the strength. God forgive me, I thought, but I love him more than I love what's logical or right or what's sensible. He kissed me and I kissed him back.

Instantly his arms were around me. He lifted me to him and held me.

"I thought I might kill myself," he whispered in my ear between kisses. "I thought I might throw myself into your swamp and let your snakes or alligators feast on my depressed body. It seemed a fit place to die."

"No, Pierre. Don't think of such a terrible thing."

"I won't as long as you will hold me and be with me and love me," he said. I promised I would and we kissed again. Then we stepped into his canoe. I lay back and watched him push off and pole us into the darkness.

The swamp seemed to come alive. It was as if all sound, all life, had been put on hold while we spoke, and now that we were quiet, Nature spoke. She spoke through the owl that hooted from the branch of the pecan tree onshore, the cicadas that raised their voices to drone their nightly symphony, the frogs that croaked at us every inch of the way, and the night heron that called from the darkness.