“So, you do not want to discuss your visit with your cousin?” She paused. “Were there harsh words between you?”
No, just a harsh reality. “We aren’t boys fighting over who really won at marbles.”
Rosette’s raised eyebrows warned Gabriel that his remark bordered on insolent. Over the years, he learned that that expression tended to precede what Agnes referred to as a “come to Jesus meeting” that almost always ended in tears or unhappiness for Gabriel or his sister.
“Forgive me,” said Gabriel. “The conversation was pleasant. And he looks well.”
His mother’s face softened. She closed her fan and set it on the table. “Sometimes I forget that talking to your cousin is difficult.”
“I am content where I am.” Not happy, but she did not need to know that. “I want to hear about your young lady visitor, but let’s move to the parlor where we can be cooler.” Gabriel followed his mother to the front room and lifted the windows to open the shutters.
“Our café needs a cooler January,” Rosette remarked, opening her fan again. “My visitor Serafina resides in a cottage built for her by Paul Bastion. You understand?”
He nodded. Gabriel did not need Rosette to explain the relationship any further. The white Bastions were cotton brokers and landowners, more than happy to fill anyone’s ear with tales of their wealth. Madame Bastion did not flaunt their money as much as her husband and sons. She seemed to have misplaced her joie de vivre not long after her daughter’s marriage to a plantation owner who moved her away from New Orleans. But whatever joy of life she’d lost, her husband Emile made up for in his new interest in ships and riverfront property. Paul, their son, spent money with a vengeance. “So, he is her protector.”
“Pauvre ti bebe,” Rosette said, shaking her head in dismay. “Monsieur Bastion must have been exceedingly and uncharacteristically charming to the poor little thing the night of the ball, else she would have rightly refused him.”
Gabriel recoiled at the thought of his mother or his sister as one of those young women, girls groomed to attract rich white Creole men. He shifted his eyes to the ornate French enameled ormolu clock on the side table and then turned his attention back to his mother. “And now?”
“And now she is worried the Bastions may one day become grandparents of a child they will never acknowledge.”
* * * * *
The next morning, while Rosette walked an uncertain Alcee to the Academy, Gabriel readied the last batch of pralines to take to the café that day. Cooling on a marble slab, the creamy brown-sugar-and-pecan candies smelled as sweet as they tasted. His mother’s recipe used more pecans than the other vendors who roamed the market balancing their baskets of pralines on their tignons. It meant spending days shelling the pecans that rained from the surrounding trees and avoiding the temptation of eating more than were tossed into the basket for cooking. But that effort meant Rosette sold out of pralines almost daily.
Business in the café had increased every year since Rosette first opened her small stand. Gabriel remembered Agnes and Rosette’s conversations about money those first few months after Jean Noel stopped coming to their house. Gabriel would crouch in the dining room behind the closed parlor doors, his bare feet ready in case he had to dash into his bedroom. The first visits involved mostly Rosette’s sobbing as Agnes hummed any number of hymns about Jesus. Eventually the crying and hymns gave way to practical issues. When Gabriel heard that Agnes would teach Rosette how to cook, he covered his mouth with his hands so as not to expel a yelp of gratitude. Letting go of Jean Noel had also meant letting go of their servant Olivia, which meant letting go of mouthwatering meals. In the years since, Rosette had evolved into a competent cook and an equally competent businesswoman.
Before he saw his mother return from the Academy, Gabriel heard her talking in French. He hoped her conversation was with herself, because some of the words he didn’t recognize, and if words could stomp their feet, hers certainly would be doing so. She emerged from the alley between their house and the neighbor’s, snapped her parasol closed, and clenched it in her hands as if it were a branch she wanted to snap in half. Although tempted to speak first, Gabriel decided it was best to wait for her boiling emotions to simmer.
“Your sister was almost expelled from the Academy before her first class.” She sounded angry, but her neck and cheeks did not have the crimson flush that generally accompanied her ire. She stared blankly, as if in hearing herself, she’d realized her own confusion.