Emilie Richards – Rising Tides (страница 9)

Cappy Gerritsen stopped on the third step from the top, her posture regal. Dawn envisioned a younger Cappy, the prewar New Orleans debutante, gliding across the floor of her family’s River Road home with a volume of Emily Post on her head.

Cappy’s body was still gracefully curved and firm, and though she was a size larger than the six she claimed, neither age nor an extra fifteen pounds could destroy her basic beauty. No silver showed in her pale gold hair, and only twin frown lines between perfectly shaped eye brows signaled her basic dissatisfaction with life.

“Don’t badger Dawn, Cappy,” Ferris warned. “Just be glad she’s home.”

Dawn went to the head of the stairs, but her mother had made it impossible to embrace her. Cappy had al ways been three impossible steps away. “You look wonderful,” Dawn said. “Daddy’s plan to become the next Huey Long must agree with you.”

Cappy didn’t attempt to be polite. “You could have called.”

“I know.”

“Your grandmother dies, and you can’t even call your father or me to tell us you’re sorry?”

“Cappy.” Ferris joined his daughter. “Dawn and I have already discussed this.”

Dawn dredged up a smile. “I’ll go on record. I’m a failure as a daughter. Okay? Now can we go on to some thing else?”

“You disappeared off the face of the earth for a year. You didn’t call. You didn’t write. You didn’t visit. What are we to you, anyway?”

The smile died. “Right now you’re a living reminder of why I didn’t do any of those things.”

“Well, your grandmother’s not a reminder anymore, is she? Where were you when she needed you here?”

“You know where I was. I was in England, trying to find out if there was anywhere in this world where I could be something more than a member of this family.”

“You don’t have to be part of this family at all!”

Ferris stepped between them. “I’m not going to listen to any more of this.” He turned to Dawn. “There’s enough happening here without you and your mother going after each other.”

She shook her head in wonder. “My God, I’m a kid again.”

“Both of you are tired,” Ferris said. “This is a difficult time. Wait until you’ve rested before you talk.”

“I found Pelichere. She has drinks out for us.” Cappy started down the steps.

Dawn accepted Ferris’s brief hug, but she didn’t re turn it. “I’ll be down in a little while,” she said. “Let me comb my hair.”

She waited until he was gone before she took up her station at the window again. A year ago she had journeyed to another continent to banish her emotions, but now she knew she hadn’t succeeded. The child who had summered in this room was still inside her. The teenager who had longed for the love of her parents dwelt there, too. And the young woman who had given herself body and soul to Ben Townsend still cried out for understanding and forgiveness.

By the faint glimmer of a cloud-hazed moon, Pelichere swept the cottage gallery until not one grain of sand was lodged between the weathered boards. Dawn had offered to do it for her, but Pelichere had refused.

“I doubt anyone will even notice the fine job I’m doing,” Pelichere said, “but your mama would notice if the job wasn’t so fine. Mais yeah. She’d notice, just like she noticed the water stains on her bedroom ceiling, under the spot where the shingles blew off last week.”

Dawn leaned against a pillar, not at all anxious to go inside again. After an evening that had seemed endless, the house was quiet now, as if everyone had scurried to their rooms like ghost crabs hiding from shadows. She hoped they all stayed in their individual holes, particularly her parents. “Did she give you trouble?”

“How was I to know that storm would pry off shingles that haven’t budged in a century? At fifty-seven I’m supposed to climb up on the roof and inspect, shingle by shingle, every time it rains? I’d be up on the roof more than I’d be down on the ground. So maybe your parents should make their home on Grand Isle now that your grandmother, she’s dead. What shingles would blow off with Senator and Mrs. Ferris Lee Gerritsen living here?”

“Is it going to be their house after the will’s read? Seems to me Grandmère always said she was going to leave the house to you.”

“She said that, yeah. But there was more she didn’t say.”

A shrill whistle cut through the air. Pelichere turned and raised a hand in greeting as a pickup rattled along the oak-lined drive. “Joe and Izzy Means from down the road. Do you remember them, chère?”

“A little.”

Joe and Izzy got out, and Joe went around to the back of the truck, while Izzy trundled her substantial bulk up the path to the house. “I been cooking,” Izzy said, be fore she’d even reached the steps. “And cooking, cooking, cooking. It’s not right you should have to cook for the next four days, you with guests.”

Dawn was sure Izzy knew the so-called guests weren’t Pelichere’s. She supposed that was half the reason Izzy had arrived. In South Louisiana, keeping up with neighbors was still the favored evening recreation.

Pelichere introduced Dawn, and Dawn leaned over for Izzy’s enthusiastic kiss. Then she watched Joe, one ton to Izzy’s two, stagger up the path, well behind his wife, his arms loaded with grocery bags.

“What’d you go and do, Izzy?” Pelichere asked. “Drain the Gulf and cook everything left wriggling on the bottom?”

Pelichere scolded her friend while Joe made several trips from the truck. He left when he had finished, announcing that he was going down to the water to see what the dedicated fishermen still lining the beach were pulling in.

“Pelichere, you sit out here with Izzy,” Dawn said. “I’ll bring you both some coffee.”

Pelichere demurred, but Dawn ignored her. She re turned in a moment with cups and a pot of coffee Pelichere had left to drip in the kitchen. The coffee was thick and rich, black as goddamn, just the way Pelichere and Izzy liked it. Strong dark-roast coffee was as much a part of the local culture as seagulls and fishing luggers.

“So tell me, Peli,” Izzy said, stirring three spoonfuls of sugar into her coffee—for energy, “how’s it going?”

Dawn left them to chat.

The kitchen was one of the more modern rooms in the house. The original kitchen had been built behind the house as protection against fire and summer heat. The foundation was still visible fifty feet away, and a portion of one wall remained, blanketed by an orange-flowering trumpet vine that was often alive with the frantic darting of hummingbirds.

The new kitchen was large and airy. Tonight the blue gingham curtains billowed to the opposing rhythms of the wind and two ceiling fans. More wind blew through a screen door, carrying with it the scents of the distant Gulf and a closer tangle of honeysuckle.

Dawn sorted through the bags Joe had carried in. Nothing was labeled, but she recognized much of it. There were two gallons of gumbo, thick with small crabs and okra, Tupperware containers of jambalaya with chunks of dark sausage and green pepper, pounds of cold spiced shrimp and, although it was the end of the season, several pounds of boiled crawfish, as well. There was a freshly caught redfish, inviting Pelichere’s master touches, and close to a half gallon of freshly shucked oysters. “Good news, Grandmère,” she said as she stowed the last of it in the refrigerator. “It’s hot as hell and twice as much fun at your little house party, but at least we’ll eat like royalty.”

A voice sounded behind her. “Has anything been left out?”

She didn’t turn, but she knew the voice was Ben’s. “Still one big appetite looking to be satiated, aren’t you?” She dug back into the refrigerator and took out the boiled shrimp, holding it behind her. “Cocktail sauce?”

“Please.”

She opened a jar and sniffed it after Ben took the shrimp. “Peli’s own remoulade. You’re a lucky man.” She straightened and faced him. “This is supposed to be for tomorrow and after. Peli had food on the stove for over an hour tonight. Didn’t anybody tell you?”

“I ate.”

“I rest my case.”

“Join me?”

She determined to be casual and beat him at his own game.

“I don’t think so. I’m going to clean the kitchen before Peli gets back in here. There’s no reason for her to be waiting on us hand and foot. She’s as much Grandmère’s guest as the rest of us.”

He pulled out a chair beside the round oak table under a trio of windows. “It’s nice of you to be concerned.”

“But then, I’m a nice person, basically.”

“That wouldn’t be the first adjective that came to mind when someone looked at you nowadays.”

She cleared the sink of dirty dishes and ran a dish cloth around it. Then she filled it with hot soapy water, rolling up the sleeves of her shirt while she waited for him to elaborate.

“Once upon a time, a lead-in like that would have had you brimming with curiosity,” Ben said.

“Once upon a time? In a fairy tale, you mean?”

“It probably was a fairy tale.”

“Without the traditional ending.”

He elaborated, since she had refused to pick up on his cue. “The adjective that comes to mind now is determined.”

“Neat choice. Not positive, not negative. Ambiguous enough to please anybody who likes to free-associate.”

“I’ll give it a whirl. Determined to get through this ordeal. Determined to be polite. Determined not to show any feelings. Determined to point out how much you’ve changed.”