brave at heart. It saddens me that any member of my family or an associate of my family would offend his granddaughter in any fashion.”
Timothy Abelard’s voice and diction were as melodic and hypnotizing as branch water flowing over stone. The syllabic emphasis created an iambic cadence, like lines taken from an Elizabethan sonnet, and the
“How can I help you?” she found herself saying.
“Jewel is only a couple of blocks from you. Let her drive you to my home. My son and his friend Robert are away right now. We’ll have a cup of tea, and I promise Jewel will return you to New Iberia before dark.”
“I don’t know how that will serve any purpose, Mr. Abelard.”
“I’m elderly and bound to a wheelchair, and I don’t have many possessions I consider of value except the honorable name of my family. I feel, in this instance, it’s been sullied. I ask you to visit me for no more than a few minutes. I will have no peace until you do so.”
She thought about driving herself to the Abelard home, but her car was being serviced at the Texaco station down the street. “I’d be happy to come out,” she said.
Moments later, the nurse pulled a Lincoln Town Car into the driveway, the oak leaves drifting out of the sunset onto the shiny black surface.
TIMOTHY ABELARD was on the lawn in his wheelchair when Alafair arrived on the island where his home seemed to rise out of its own elegant decay. He was dressed in a beige suit and an open-necked crimson shirt, one that had a metallic sheen to it, his black tie-shoes buffed to a dull luster. Since Alafair’s last visit there, a landscape architect had hung baskets of flowers from the upstairs veranda and lined the walks and pathways with potted palms and orchid trees and flaming hibiscus, as though trying to import the season to a place where it would not take hold of its own accord. Against the backdrop of stricken trees in the lagoon and the termite infestation of the house, the transported floral ambience on the property made Alafair think of flowers scattered on a grave in an isolated woods.
“I’m so glad you could come,” Mr. Abelard said, extending his hand.
Someone had already placed a beach umbrella in a metal stand on the lawn, and under it a chair for her to sit in. Timothy Abelard was sitting in the shade of the umbrella, a photo album open on his lap. When Alafair sat down, she found herself unconsciously pinching her knees together, her hands folded. Mr. Abelard smiled, his eyes examining her, one eye a bit smaller and brighter than the other. “I was just looking at some photos taken when I was a bit younger,” he said. “In Banff and at Lake Louise, in Alberta. Here, take a look.”
He turned the scrapbook around so she could see the photos in detail. In one, Abelard was standing on a great stone porch of some kind, perhaps on the back of a hotel. Behind him were banks of flowers that were so thick and variegated in color that they dazzled the eyes. In the distance were dark blue mountains razored against the sky, their snowcapped tops so high they disappeared into the clouds. In another photo, Abelard was eating on a terrace not far from a green lake surrounded by golden poppies. A glacier stood at the headwaters of the lake, and at the table where Abelard was dining sat a man with patent-leather-black hair. He was suntanned and wearing shades and a black shirt unbuttoned on his chest.
“That’s Robert Weingart,” she said.
Abelard turned the scrapbook back around on his lap. “No, you’re mistaken. That fellow is someone else.”
Before she could speak again, he said, “You have your father’s features.”
“Dave is my foster parent. He pulled me from a submerged airplane when I was very small,” she said. “I think I was born in El Salvador, but I can’t be sure. My mother died in the plane crash.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. Are you a citizen today?”
“In my opinion, I am.”
“Legality and morality are not always the same thing, is that it? That’s an interesting perception. How is your novel progressing?”
“Fine. Thank you for asking. What is all this about, Mr. Abelard?”
When he grinned, his mouth exposed an incisor tooth, and the sunlight seemed to pool in the eye that was smaller and more liquid than the other. “In part, it’s about what I just mentioned-morality as opposed to legality. This man named Vidor Perkins, a past associate of Robert Weingart, was hanging around the island. I had to run him off. Now Robert has informed me that Mr. Perkins is writing a book containing fabrications about my family. In the eyes of the law, this man has completed his prison sentence in the state of Texas, and legally, he has every right to be in our community. But in my view, he does not have the moral right, particularly when he slanders others. What are your feelings about that, Miss Robicheaux?”
“I don’t have any feelings about it at all. I have nothing to say about this man except that I didn’t bring him here.”
“But I did?”
She looked at the sunlight on the dead cypress trees in the lagoon and didn’t reply.
“Well, reticence is a statement in itself,” Abelard said. “My grandson is weak. But I suspect you’ve learned that.”
“Sir?”
“It’s not his fault. His parents died when he was a teenager, and I protected and spoiled him. He’s worked with his hands in the oil field and championed all kinds of leftist causes, but inside he’s always been a scared little boy. So he attached himself to Robert and thought that would give him the masculine dimension he doesn’t possess in his own right. Unfortunately for him, his dependency on Robert cost him his relationship with you, didn’t it?”
“I don’t dwell on it. I don’t think you should, either.”
“My hearing isn’t all that it should be. Would you repeat that?”
“No.”
“Beg your pardon?”
“No, I won’t repeat it. And I won’t talk about Kermit. You said your family’s honor had been sullied and you would have no peace unless you set something straight. If you’re telling me that somehow your family name has been tarred because of an offense committed against me, you’re seriously overrating the importance of your family. I couldn’t care less about what Kermit or Robert Weingart did or didn’t do. I feel sorry for Kermit, but he made his choice. As far as Robert Weingart is concerned, if you wanted him out of this community, he’d be gone in twenty-four hours. Why don’t you deal with your own culpability and stop demeaning your grandson?”
“You’re speaking to me as though I’m benighted. Or perhaps condemned by God for my sins and unworthy of respect.”
“I don’t know what your sins are.”
“Be assured they are many. But not of the kind you think-greed and misuse of power and all the kind of nonsense that liberals like to rave on and on about. If there is a great sin in my life for which I’ll be held to account, it lies in not accepting the rules of mortality.”
“Sir?”
“You’re not deaf, are you?” he said, smiling, leaning forward in his wheelchair. “Paul Gauguin wrote, ‘Life is merely a fraction of a second. An infinitely small amount of time to fulfill our desires, our dreams, our passions.’ I’ve tried to buy back my youth, with various degrees of success. They say it can’t be done, but they’re wrong. Youth isn’t a matter of physical appearance. It resides in one’s deeds. It doesn’t die until the heart and the brain and the glands die. Those who say different not only give up the joy of living but seek the grave.”
“You’ve found the secret to eternal youth?”
“No, it’s not eternal. But its pleasures can be magnified with age rather than surrendered.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Because my grandson is a fool and didn’t know what he had.”
His mouth flexed slightly, and she saw the tip of his tongue wet his lip. An odor like menthol rub and dried perspiration seemed to rise from his clothes.
“I think I’ll go now.”
