'Leave it up to me,' he said. 'I'm to start taking care of you from the moment I wake up tomorrow until the day I die,' he said. 'Or as long as you'll have me around to do so,' he qualified. 'Be ready at seven. Just think,' he said, 'all the old biddies who have been quacking about us will finally stop.'
Paul remained with me talking about the house, the things we had to buy and do even after we moved in. He was so excited, I barely got in a word. He talked until I grew so tired, I couldn't keep my eyes from shutting.
'I'd better get going and let you get some sleep. We have a big day tomorrow.' He kissed me on the cheek and then I watched him go off toward the canal to take his boat home.
Before I went back into the house, however, I walked out to the mailbox and took back the letter to Daphne. I wouldn't mail it, but I couldn't get myself to tear it up. If I had learned anything in my short life, it was that nothing was forever, nothing was certain. I couldn't close all the doors. Not yet.
But at least tonight, I thought, I would go to sleep easily, dreaming of that great attic and my wonderful studio and all the exciting paintings I would do in the days to come. What a great place for Pearl to grow up in, I thought when I looked in on her. I fixed her blanket, kissed her cheek, and went to bed looking forward to my dreams.
3
My True Wonderland
Pearl's baby babble woke me. It was a heavily overcast day, so there was no warm sunlight to slip through the curtains and caress my closed eyelids until they fluttered open. As soon as I awoke, the significance of what I was about to do returned. I'm going to elope, I thought. Questions rained down from everywhere. When would I actually move Pearl and myself into Cypress Woods? How would we announce our marriage to the community? Had he informed his family by now? What, if anything, did I want to take from the shack? What kind of a wedding were we about to have?
I rose, but I had the strange sensation that I was caught in a dream. Even Pearl had a distant, quiet look in her eyes and was more patient than normally, not crying for her breakfast, not demanding to be plucked out of her crib and held.
'It's a big day for you, my precious,' I told her. 'Today I'm giving you a new life, a new name, and an entirely different future, one I hope is full of promise and happiness.
'We've got to pick out a nice dress for you to wear. First, let me feed you, and then you will help Mommy choose her own wedding dress, too.
'My wedding dress,' I muttered, my eyes suddenly filling with tears. It was in this shack, in this very room that Grandmere Catherine and I talked about my future wedding.
'I always dreamed,' she had said, coming over to me to sit beside me and stroke my hair, 'that you would have the magical wedding, the one in the Cajun spider legend. Remember? The rich Frenchman imported those spiders from France for his daughter's wedding and released them into the oaks and pines where they wove their canopy of webs. Over them, he sprinkled gold and silver dust and then they had the candlelight wedding procession. The night glittered all around them, promising them a life of love and hope.
'Someday you will marry a handsome man who could be a prince, and you, too, will have a wedding in the stars,' Grandmere had promised.
How sad she would be for the now. How much I was feeling sorry for myself. A young woman's heart should be filled with so much excitement on the morning of her wedding day that she would be afraid she would simply burst, I told myself. Every color should be brighter, every sweet sound, sweeter. It should seem like every single creature that lived around her was delighted, too. There should be happy, deliriously excited voices around her, and everywhere she looked, she should fix her eyes on some preparation, some activity related and solely de-voted to the wonderful ceremony she was about to undertake with the man she loved.
And love . . . it should have blossomed and overwhelmed her. She would stop for a moment and wonder if it was possible to ever again be as happy and content as she was. Could any event bring her as much joy? She should be surrounded by dozens of friends, each and every one electrified, thrilled, the whole bunch of them chattering away, no one particularly listening to anyone else, but everyone listening to everyone, a cacophony of laughter, giggles, shrieks, and exclamations.
The kitchen should be filled with the sounds of clanking pots, nervous cooks, aromas of wonderful fish and chicken dishes, cakes and pies. Orders should be shouted across rooms, cars pulling up and driving off, their drivers assigned various errands. Little children would be charged with some of the electricity, making mischief and being shooed from one place to another. The older women would be pretending to be annoyed and concerned but stopping every once in a while to recall their own special day, their own excitement, and now feeling overjoyed that they were sharing in hers, drawing from it like a bee drawing pollen from a flower and turning that excitement into honey-filled memories and moments of their own pasts. She should see it on every woman's face when they finally set eyes on her in her wedding dress.
I continued to envision my dream wedding. The limousine would be waiting outside, its engine idling like a horse anxious to get galloping. The door would be flung open. Everyone would start cheering and clapping as I made my way down the gallery steps and into the car. And then the whole entourage of friends and relatives would follow behind as I was brought to the steps of the church where inside, my wonderful, loving husband-to-be stood shifting his weight from one leg to the other nervously, flashing handsome smiles at his own parents and relatives but watching that doorway for signs of my arrival.
And then the music would begin and everyone would sit solemnly, but be eager to set eyes on me starting down the aisle toward the altar where the holy sacrament waited. My feet would never touch the ground. I would walk on a shelf of air and glide slowly toward the vows.
When I closed my eyes and thought of all this, my pictures were as vivid as my paintings, but I surprised myself when I saw myself in the wedding sequence I had conjured, and when I lifted my eyes, I saw not Paul waiting, but Beau . . . my precious love . . . Beau, at last.
I sighed deeply. It was not Beau who would be coming to fetch me shortly, I reminded myself. Another shivering thought came: I was probably not even in his thoughts this day, the day I would take the vows that would tear me away from him forever. Pearl's wail reminded me, however, that I was not doing this for myself. I was doing it for her and for the promising future and the security it would bring to her.
I chose a simple light pink cotton dress with a square collar and a skirt that fell an inch or so above my ankles. I still wore the locket Beau had given me more than a year ago just before I had left for the Greenwood School in
