'I know, Beau. I'm so worried.'
'Maybe now that it's over, that she's gone, he'll snap out of it,' Beau suggested, but neither of us was filled with any confidence.
We returned to Cypress Woods, mainly to see how Paul was. The doctor went up to the suite to examine him, and when he came down, he told us he had given Paul something to help him sleep.
'It will take time,' he said. 'These things take time. Unfortunately, we have no drug, no medicine, no treatment, to cure grief.' He pressed Gladys's hand between his, kissed her on the cheek, and left. She turned and glared at me in the strangest way, shooting icicles out of her eyes. Then she went upstairs to be with Paul.
Toby and Jeanne went off in a corner to comfort each other. People began to leave, anxious to put this dreadful sadness behind them. Paul's mother remained in the suite with him, so I couldn't get to see him even if I had wanted. Octavious came down to speak to us. He directed himself at Beau as if he, too, couldn't fix his eyes on my face.
'Gladys is as bad as Paul is,' he muttered. 'It's the way she is about him. Whenever he was sick, even as a child, she was sick. If he was unhappy, so was she. Dreadful, dreadful thing, this,' he added, shaking his head and walking off. 'Dreadful.'
'We should leave now,' Beau said softly. 'Give him a day or two and then call. After he comes back to himself somewhat, we'll invite him to New Orleans and work out everything sensibly.'
I nodded. I wanted to say good-bye to Jeanne and Toby, but they were like two clams who had closed their shell of grief tightly around themselves. They wouldn't look at or talk to anyone. And so Beau and I started out. I paused at the door. James was holding it open, waiting impatiently, but I wanted to gaze around at the grand house once more before leaving. I was filled with a sense of termination. This was the end of so many things. lut it wasn't until late in the afternoon of the next day that I was to discover just how many.
15
Farewell to My First Love
Early in the evening of the following day, just as Beau and I were about to take our seats for dinner, Aubrey appeared in the dining room doorway, his face pale, to inform me I had a phone call. Since returning from the funeral and Cypress Woods, both Beau and I had been moving like two sleepwalkers, eating little, doing little, talking in low voices. The clouds of gloom that hovered over the bayou followed us back to New Orleans and now lay over us like a ceiling of oppression, darkening every room, filling our very souls with shadows. It had rained all the way back from Cypress Woods. I fell asleep to the monotonous wagging of the wipers on the windshield and woke with a chill that a pile of blankets and a dozen sweaters couldn't chase from my bones.
'Who is it?' I asked. I was in no mood to talk to any of Gisselle's friends, who I imagined had heard about my death and wanted to gossip, and I had left instructions with Aubrey to tell any of them who did call that I was unavailable.
'She wouldn't say, madame. She's speaking in a coarse whisper, however, and she is very insistent,' he explained. From the way he couched his words and shifted his eyes, I understood that whoever it was, she had spoken to him roughly. I was positive now that it was one of Gisselle's bitchy, spoiled girlfriends who wouldn't take no as an answer from a servant.
'Do you want me to take it?' Beau asked.
'No. I'll take care of it,' I said. 'Thank you, Aubrey. I'm sorry,' I added, apologizing for the ugliness he had to experience.
I went into the study and seized the receiver, my heart pumping, my face flush with anger.
'Who is this?' I demanded. For a moment there was no reply. 'Hello?'
'He's gone,' a raspy voice replied. 'He's gone away and we can't find him and it's all because of you.'
'What? Who is this? Who's gone?' I asked with machine-gun speed. The voice had sent an icicle down my spine and nailed my feet to the floor.
'He's gone into the canals. He went there last night and he hasn't returned and no one has been able to find him. My Paul,' she sobbed, and I knew it was Gladys Tate.
'Paul . . . went into the canals last night?'
'Yes, yes, yes,' she cried. 'You did this to him. You did all this.'
'Madame Tate . . .'
'Stop!' she screamed. 'Stop your pretending,' she said, and lowered her voice into that scratchy old witch's voice again. '1 know who you really are and I know what you and your . . . lover did. I know how you broke my poor Paul's heart, shattered it until there was nothing left for him to feel. I know how you made him pretend and be part of your horrible scheme.'
I felt as if I had stepped into ice water and sunk down to my knees in it. For a moment I couldn't speak. My throat closed and all the words jammed up in my chest, making it feel as if it would burst.
'You don't understand,' I finally said, my voice cracking.
'Oh, I understand, all right. I understand better than you know. You see,' she said, her voice now full of arrogance, 'my son confided in me far more than you ever knew. There were never secrets between us, never. I knew the first time he paid a visit to you and your Grandmere. I knew what he thought of you, how he was falling head over heels in love with you. I knew how sad and troubled he was when you left to live with your upper-class New Orleans Creole parents, and I knew how happy he was when you returned.
'But I warned him. I warned him you would break his heart. I tried. I did all that I could,' she said, and sobbed. 'You enchanted him. Just as I told you that day, you and your witch mother put a spell on my husband and then my son, my Paul. He's gone, gone,' she said, her voice faltering, her hatred running out of steam.
