She shifted in the chair and started making crumbs with the thin crust of the bread. “Yes. I think so.”
“So.” Gabriel kept his voice light, stirred his gumbo, and watched the shrimp as they chased the okra around the edge of the bowl. “What did you talk to them about?”
Alcee made what had become known in the Girod household as her “oyster” face—that medley of pain and disgust that transformed her face from winsome to wicked when offered a raw oyster on the half shell. She swirled bread crumbs in circles on the tablecloth. “I just asked them why manners classes were important only for the girls and why we couldn’t be enrolled in whatever classes were offered for the boys.”
“I see,” he commented, and as he dipped his spoon into his bowl, he raised his eyes and saw two fat tears stream down her cheeks.
Chapter Four
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Gabriel and Alcee washed the dishes, removed the tablecloth, and discussed the idea of cake. But his sister decided she wanted to relieve her body of the weight and heat of satin, petticoats, camisoles, and a list of other garments he would have preferred she’d not mention. “I may sit outside on the back gallery and finish Romeo and Juliet. Or I may sleep,” she’d told Gabriel before she glided out of the dining room. He had attempted more conversation about the school, but she said tomorrow would be better because she would have more time to think about the day.
About to retire to bed himself, Gabriel heard his mother’s “Mon dieu!” before she slid open the door that separated her from the dining room. She stepped in and rubbed her temples with her fingertips. “I must learn when to stop listening,” she said. She collapsed into the closest chair, her skirt billowing around her in waves of silver silk. “Alcee has gone to bed?”
“Yes. She said she might read, but she hasn’t left her bedroom.” Gabriel opened the shutters, hoping for a cool night breeze, then sat in the chair next to his mother. “It seems she had an eventful day.”
Rosette smiled. “How kind of you to call it such.” She leaned closer to him. “You and I can talk at the café, so there will be no danger of her only pretending to be asleep while we talk. She’s already learned far too much using that ruse.”
Once a friend of Rosette’s complained that the hairdresser they both used made no effort to learn the latest styles. The next month when Eliza came to the house, a then-eight-year-old Alcee informed her that Madame Chatengier thought, “Eliza is too old or too slow to bother to learn what fashionable ladies want.” Fortunately, Rosette had time to tell Louise Chatengier what happened before her appointment with Eliza, else, as Rosette said, “Louise may have never needed a hairdresser again after Eliza finished with her hot irons.” His mother and sister had had a long discussion about eavesdropping and the danger of angering a woman who could make wearing a tignon necessary inside the house as well as outside.
“André stopped in at the café today. He brought me home in his carriage.”
“And nothing happened in between?”
Of course she already knew the answer to her own question. In fact, Gabriel supposed she knew his cousin would be visiting him at the café. The Tremé neighborhood didn’t need a newspaper as long as André’s mother lived there. Tante Virgine reported whatever she heard to whoever would listen. She knew how many of Old Man Mouton’s Creole tomatoes the Beranays’ mutt trampled when he ran through Mouton’s garden chasing the one-eyed calico that belonged to the German family whose daughter secretly met an American, whose family might be on the verge of bankruptcy because of the father’s frequent racetrack visits.
“Would I be able to tell you more than Tante Virgine told you?”
“Maybe this time, because you are home before André and she keeps too busy entertaining him to stroll here with gossip.” She patted her cheeks with her palms and looked around the room. “The evening is not as cool as expected. Have you seen my fan?”
“Yes, I did.” Gabriel had spotted it earlier, surprised to see it on the corner of the breakfront. She didn’t use it often. He handed it to her, sat again, and watched as she separated the carved ivory sticks to reveal an explosion of flowers hand-painted on sapphire-blue silk edged with lace.
“It is exquisite, isn’t it?” She held it in front of her and gazed at it as if it spoke a language only she understood.
Perhaps it did. The first Christmas Jean Noel Reynaud did not join them for dinner, a carriage delivered three packages. Rosette gave one to Gabriel and one to his sister and sent the other back with the driver. The next Christmas was the same, except that four packages came. Rosette handed two back, gave one to him and the other to Alcee. By the third year, when three packages were delivered for Rosette, she stopped returning them. Jean Noel sent her a fan every year after she ended their relationship. Gabriel wondered if Madame Reynaud knew the destination of the carriage at Christmas. Or did she, like almost all wives of men who had placées, choose to ignore anything connected with the woman her husband protected? Except in Rosette’s case and by her choice, his mother no longer defined herself by her relationship with Jean Noel.