Love Finds You in New Orleans(43)
“I am going to escort Charlotte to the cab,” he said, extending his arm for Lottie to hold.
“Good night, Grand-mère.” Lottie wanted to ask why she showed so little reaction to a dress whose fabric and design she’d selected. Didn’t Agnes say Grand-mère hoped I attracted attention? Perhaps her reaction reflected her disappointment. She was fortunate that her grandfather provided sufficient attention for both of them.
Grand-mère had resumed her sewing. “Good night, Charlotte. Enjoy the opera.” At least she looked up from her stitching long enough to convey her message.
As they walked to meet Justine, Lottie wished she could lay her head on her grandfather’s shoulder. She missed the coarse linen of his frock coat that bore the faintest smell of cigar smoke and ink. It was such a comforting place to be. Older now, she missed those times with him, so she appreciated even this small chance to be with him.
“Do you think the dress did not turn out the way Grand-mère expected?” They were almost to the carriage, and Lottie hoped for some understanding of her grandmother’s reaction.
He clutched her hand and shook his head. “P’tit, listen to me. I do not know what your grandmother expected. But this I do know. When you came into the parlor, you looked at us with your father’s eyes. But, for that, it was as if Mignon had walked into the room, you so resemble your mother.”
* * * * *
Whoever designed the four-person carriages either knew nothing about women’s fashions or did not care or never intended for more than two women to share one. Day dresses and visiting dresses easily measured four or five feet across, what with all the petticoats or wire cages worn as underpinnings. Evening dresses for operas and balls were often wider, with their swathes and swags of embellished silks and brocades. Travel often required patience and compromise and a sense of humor.
Fortunately, Lottie and Justine had all three qualities. They sat facing Isabelle, Justine’s sister, and her husband, François Honore, who married four years ago and now had three children. François told Madame Dumas, his mother-in-law, at dinner one Sunday afternoon that if he merely looked at Isabelle across the Place d’Armes, she would be carrying another child within weeks. Justine said that after they and the children left, her exhausted mother had said that maybe the only way to solve that baby problem was for one of them to poke the other’s eyes out. Tonight François’s parents entertained Raimond, Marceline, and Rosalie.
“Charlotte, that dress is as stunning as you are,” said Isabelle with a no-nonsense voice that echoed her mother’s. Even her questions sounded as if they were definitive statements. Isabelle’s face glistened, and she fanned herself with such intensity that her hair, parted in the middle and loosely gathered into a bun, billowed around her face with each sweep.
“How very kind of you,” Lottie replied and held her skirt down, hoping François did not mind being trapped by her tempest of red silk. “You look pretty as well.”
“Thank—”
“The two of you remind me of deportment class,” Justine interrupted, “and, quite frankly, you are boring us. Right, François?”
“Justine, François has been peering out the window since Charlotte joined us. I think he was bored before we started talking.”
François, whose round face made him look younger than his wife, clasped his hands around his walking stick and said, “I suggest instead of talking about ourselves, we discuss the opera.”
Isabelle snapped her fan closed, and for a moment, Lottie anticipated that she would swat her husband on the head with it. And she may have, had the carriage not bounced everyone inches off the seat when the back wheels pushed through one of the many deep holes in the street. In February, the ruts stayed mostly dry. But when the rains started every April, the road became sludge that seemed to suck in the wheels of every carriage that passed.
“It’s a love story. Everyone dies at the end.” Isabelle shrugged. “If we sat in the theatre and stared at an empty stage for hours, I would consider it an entertaining and peaceful night.”
“First, you revealed the ending, and Lottie is not familiar with Lucia di Lammermoor.” Justine held up her lace-gloved hand to count for her sister. “Second, you are so unromantic, I do not know…well, never mind. Third, I do not remember everyone dying at the end. François, would you please tell Lottie enough so that she can follow?”
Opera must have been François’s forte, because he spoke with the relaxed authority of someone familiar with its stories. “Lucia secretly marries the man she loves, an enemy to their family. When she later refuses to marry a man her family deems she should, her brother suspects what has happened. He forges a note from the secret husband, saying that he intends to marry another. Just as she signs the other marriage contract, the secret husband returns and, not understanding what has happened, leaves in a rage. Lucia goes mad and kills her new husband on their wedding night. In her state, she believes she is still married to her first love, deliriously believes she’s gone to heaven, and dies. Awaiting his duel with her brother, the first love witnesses her lifeless body carried past him and hears that she called for him with her last dying breaths. He stabs himself to join her in heaven.”