Felicia is decidedly better. I miss her illness, which provided so many excuses to intrude on their privacy. I would see Jean Luze in his pajamas, lying under the sheets, dreaming or sleepy. Once, on purpose, I opened the door of their bedroom without knocking. He was in boxer shorts.
“Hey, watch it, Claire,” he cried out with glee, “or your eyes will melt.”
And laughing, he threw on some pants.
That very day, in fact, Felicia talked to me about Annette.
“There are things that went on here,” she told me, “that my husband and I wish to keep to ourselves, Claire darling, and besides, it is useless to trouble you with such secrets… Annette worries me. The life she leads scandalizes even Jean. Because you have been a mother to her, I think it falls to you to question and advise her. Did you know she comes home every night after two?”
“She goes out with her friends, at least that’s what she tells me.”
“She gets drunk. She’s too young to lead such a life. Madame Audier, with all the tact she could muster, has told me that her reputation is compromised. If there were to be a scandal, God forbid, it would also reflect on us. Our parents left us an unblemished name, and Annette is sullying it.”
I took all of this in without adding anything. She must have thought this was more than I could handle.
So it was for fear of scandal that she has agreed to reconcile with Annette! It was for fear of scandal that she turned the page so quickly and that she tolerated the rival in her midst? It is true that we have equal title to this house and it would fall to her to leave this house, since Jean Luze has a good job. But she’s practical and she must have thought of everything: her health is fragile and she’s a bad housekeeper. Leaving the house would mean losing her housekeeper, the godmother-to-be she had planned on wringing like a sponge, the all-purpose old maid who will wipe her son’s ass while she pets her man. She’s thought things through. She is so afraid to aggravate things between her and Annette that she wants to use me as a screen. I will not be anyone’s screen. Annette is free. Let her float her own boat where she pleases. I won’t say a word to her. I’d rather lecture that hypocrite Mme Audier. No one can ever please her. She has a forked tongue that’s grown more venomous with age, though Father Paul lays the body of Christ on it once a month. A true pillar of the church, always devoted to the Holy Virgin or to Saint Jude, always airing everybody’s dirty laundry or simply inventing things to make conversation. She has always been a public menace, a seemingly harmless monster in great demand in idle circles. I have heard stories about her that are not so funny and behind closed doors my mother accused her of writing anonymous letters to cuckolded husbands to open their eyes. With Felicia, she plays the respectable woman condemning this one or the other. But a woman like her, overflowing with vitality and imagination even at sixty-five, it’s hard to see her settling only for her Jules. Or if she did settle it was only for fear of scandal.
From my room, I can hear the Creole mutterings of our Augustine, who has served the Clamonts for thirty years-the past ten of them for me, Claire the abolitionist, who claims to be restoring justice to the kingdom of this world, at least in my own modest way. I pay her, whereas she worked for my parents for free. What more can she possibly want? Perhaps she finds solace in talking to herself, but I don’t want her spittle on my dishes. We are both crabby. Does she also live without a man? What’s bothering this poor ignorant black woman from the hills? We live with daggers drawn. She is careless and I am obsessive. A character flaw in old maids-although I know that a few of us do live like pigs. I am enraged by a speck of dust. I sniff the tableware and the dishes with suspicion, something that exasperates her; I ignore her petty thefts. I am not naive: a servant is faithful when it is in her interest.
“You’re poisoning everything,” Felicia protests when I chase mosquitoes from the nooks and corners of the house with DDT.
Like all idle women, she is a member of the live-and-let-live school of housekeeping, and thinks that everything is in order just because she’s embroidering clothes for her future child.
The truth is that tracking down dust distracts me. And what’s more, I take pride in being an impeccable housekeeper. When Jean Luze’s ash falls on the carpet, I go down on my knees to pick it up. Since his wife’s pregnancy I am the one who mends all of his clothes, and he turns to me for this more and more.
“Claire, can you sew this button, please?”
And there I am, caressing the fly of his pants where I am sewing the button. He thanks me by letting his gaze linger on me. His eyes are like precious stones in a velvet box. I will adore the wee one if he ends up looking like him, and that will be my cross, to fight a feeling I would rather suppress out of pride.
“Drink less and try to lead a decent life,” Felicia said severely to Annette this morning.
“What do you mean by a decent life?” she replied with impertinence.
“Felicia is giving you advice for your own good,” I added for good measure.
“Ah!”
Her butterfly-wing eyes flashed and she took the bottle of rum to pour herself another glass.
Jean Luze looked at her coldly, as if making an effort to conceal his disapproval, his contempt! He does not love her, it’s unmistakable. It’s true she has been acting like a little whore. Beautiful as she is, a man like him will never love her. And yet, how many love affairs he must have had! Maybe that’s what has made him choosy. All the easy conquests probably made him wary. He knows what he can expect from women. Maybe that’s why he picked the blandest of the three, the least interesting sister.
It was two in the morning and I was in deep sleep when someone knocked on my door. It was Jean Luze. Worried and distressed, he begged me to come help Felicia. She was wet with sweat and writhing in pain.
“We need Dr. Audier,” I said to him.
Jean Luze left, and in silence I put away the clothes draped on the furniture. Felicia moaned, crying and calling out to me:
“It hurts, Claire, oh how it hurts!”
A moment later, Dr. Audier, hurrying as much as his bent little feet and paunch permitted, was leaning over my sister.
“She’s in labor,” he declared to Jean Luze.
“But she’s only seven months along!” Jean Luze exclaimed without hiding his anxiety.
Audier tilted his head before responding:
“Many a powerful man was born before term!”
Jean Luze bent over his wife. He pressed her against him with infinite tenderness and wiped her brow:
“Be brave,” he said to her.
“Boil some water, Claire,” the doctor ordered me, “and have some clean linen ready.”
And turning to Jean Luze:
“You leave the room,” the doctor said softly. “She’ll hold up better if you are not here. The husband’s presence always complicates things.”
“Claire, don’t leave her,” he begged me.
“What’s going on?” Annette yelled from the landing.
“Felicia is having the baby,” Jean Luze answered.
“The baby!” she exclaimed, appalled.
I ran to the pantry to wake up Augustine. We boiled water and we took out sheets and bath towels from the armoires.
“Poor Madame Luze!” Augustine sighed. “How she suffers!”
Does she love us? Does she at least love my young sisters, who came into the world and grew up before her very eyes? In a prominent family, what is the place of a house slave who called the babies
She came and went, her black face sullen, responding to Felicia’s moans.
“Here, Mademoiselle Claire,” she told me, “here is the boiling water; it must be taken to Madame’s room.”
Holding Felicia’s hand, wiping her sweaty face, I felt my heart contract with bitterness: she was the one bringing Jean Luze’s son into the world.
In the living room, he and Annette were alone. That thought helped me forgive Felicia, who, instead of me, was about to bring the man I loved one of the greatest joys in his life.
