Love Finds You in New Orleans(26)
She does not discuss how or when we came to New Orleans. On All Saints’ Day, when many in the city are placing flowers at the graves of loved ones, Grand-mère remains at home. She refuses to allow me to visit, even with Agnes. I have thought, lately, that I should find a way to the cemetery on my own.
If only I could know, Mama, whether you feared becoming a wife, or if you, like Justine, counted the days until your coming-out. How did you come to care about Papa? Maybe my feelings for Gabriel are not love. Perhaps I confuse the love between friends with that of a husband and a wife. We spent so much of our childhood together. I have come to trust that he would protect me, and he believes women can do so much more than we are allowed to do. He encourages me to be true to myself. I know that when I am with him, I feel as if I am home. Is it foolish to believe a husband would be a friend?
My party is February 27, now only a few weeks away. Agnes says having it on my birthday makes it more special and blessed, though I am sure she was trying to console me. Grand-mère is taking me to my final dress fitting in a few days. I must admit, when Madame Olympe stands me in front of the mirror, I feel as if I am a princess. Madame said it is a dress to attract a prince. We shall see.
My love and affection,
Genevieve Charlotte
* * * * *
Lifting her white silk dress higher than any woman of low breeding would consider, much less one trained in the social graces, Lottie raced through the Place d’Armes, the train of her gown wet from weeds untrampled by her soft leather shoes. Grand-père shouted words in French as she approached and then caught Grand-mère as she swooned in his arms. Abram and Agnes held the lines to the steamship, preventing it from leaving for Paris. Exhausted, Lottie pushed herself to run faster, but she could not bridge the distance. It was as if her feet spun the earth underneath them, leaving her in the same place. She was afraid that if she stopped, she might fall over the earth’s edge.
Agnes’s calling her name pierced the dream. Lottie was trying to capture the images before they drifted away when a warm light exploded near her face. She covered her eyes with her hands and summoned her voice from the girl left running that Agnes made disappear. “Make it go away. Make it go away,” she begged, before rolling over and mashing her face into her pillow.
“That sun going nowhere till evening.”
Lottie lifted her head only long enough to mumble, “I can wait.”
“A girl might not be so ornery in the mornings if she don’t go to bed late.”
The new torture of the pillow almost suffocating her and Agnes’s comment moved Lottie to turn her head and squint as one panel of the heavy damask drapes closed.
“That better? You ready to join the living now?”
“Yes,” she answered, knowing that even if she had disagreed, nothing would change. Like most things in my life right now. Lottie propped herself up on her elbows as Agnes stood at the foot of her bed picking up the bed linens that had spilled onto the carpet. Maybe I ran harder than I thought. “What makes you think I stayed up late?”
Agnes folded the down comforter in sections at the end of her bed. “See that candle on your desk?” Her hands now busy with the blanket, she nodded her head in that direction. “When I come in here, I see hain’t nothing hardly left to burn on the candle. So, you maybe forgot to put it out ’fore you went to bed, but since the house still standing and we still here, then it’s something else. Some mornings I come here, like this one, and that foolscap still on your desk. That quill a-yours all dis away and dat.” She moved her hand up and down as if holding the quill. Agnes walked over to the desk, picked up the blank sheet of writing paper, tucked it into a drawer, and closed the inkwell.
Lottie sat up in bed as her stomach plummeted, hitting bottom like a carriage wheel in a sinkhole. Could there have been times she forgot to put her letters away? Suppose Grand-mère had read one? If so, that might explain why her grandmother soured in her presence. She wanted to simultaneously leap out of bed to inspect the bundle hidden in her armoire and also slink under the bedcovers. Agnes could know about the letters. Lottie could accept that. Even her grandfather… Lottie trusted that he would not only understand, but he would respect her privacy. But her grandmother? Given a choice, she would rather wear only her petticoat to church. “Agnes, could you close the window, please? There’s a chill in the room.” Lottie rubbed her arms while she thought of a response.
“No window open, Miss Lottie, but I close this curtain.” Agnes picked up the candle stub. “Just so you remember. Agnes is the first person that comes in this room every morning. And you don’t have nothin’ to worry ’bout with me. Even if I could read those words you write, I’d never tell.”