Chapter Twenty-Five

Dawn came with the incredibly raucous babble of a mockingbird staking out his territory as he perched on Laura’s windowsill. Slowly, the bride raised her eyelids. The early light pierced directly to the back of her skull rebounding inside her brain causing incredible pain. Laura shut her eyes and attempted to reclaim sleep, but now something else prodded her awake.

Men, she thought hazily. Why do they always have the urge at six a.m.? Just like David to want it now.

The prod moved down her buttocks and slipped between her legs where reluctantly she’d come wide awake. A hand slid beneath the barrier of her arm, captured a breast and fondled until it, too, grew alert.

Laura opened one eye. Something was wrong—the hand tanned even in February, wrong—the scattering of black hair on the back of that hand, wrong—the calloused, blunt fingers—wrong! David had the fair hands of an artist. David, her husband! Laura rolled away from the man trying to enter her, away from the rough, dark hands. She slipped from the bed and stood dizzy and naked among the crumpled clothes and stray studs discarded the previous night. Robert LeBlanc, staring at her from the bed, willed her back under the covers with his bittersweet brown eyes, his bedroom eyes. She gathered up a swath of silvery cloth from the floor and held it in front of her. “We can’t do this.”

“Even Tante Lil wouldn’t expect us to be doing anything else the morning after our wedding.” Robert grinned and ran his hands over the still warm spot next to him in Caroline Montleon’s big, canopied bed.

“Wedding?” Laura’s head throbbed, blocking out all recent memories.

“There’s the certificate.” Robert waved toward the dresser. He seemed very amused.

“But there have to be licenses and a ceremony and a ring,” Laura babbled like the mockingbird who would not shut up.

“Old Broussard kindly pre-dated one just for us and one lucky hundred dollar bill. Truly quite a bargain. We’ve had the ceremony and got the ring. Sorry you don’t remember it.” He glanced significantly at her left hand where the antique garnet ring gleamed. “I hope you haven’t forgotten all of last night though.”

He rose, still erect, from the bed and rubbed against the thin sheet of material separating them. Laura backed away. She suddenly felt sticky and unclean between her legs. “Let me alone. We aren’t legally married.”

“Then half of Chapelle isn’t legally married. Everyone the church won’t recognize goes to Old Broussard. Everyone in Chapelle accepts these marriages.” Robert no longer smiled.

“Goddammit, Laura, I waited. You took one step forward and two steps back so many times I didn’t know which way you were going, so I had to make up your mind for you before you could do something stupid like marry that guy back home. Last night, you said you were willing.”

“I was drunk out of my mind. And Benny Schweitzer is a jerk! I wouldn’t marry him in a million years! We never did—this.” She gestured feebly toward the bed.

Laura started laughing, even though it made her head ache, at the thought of Benny Schweitzer with his beach ball belly and toupee as an object of jealousy. When she couldn’t stop laughing, she realized she rode the fine edge of hysteria. Tears rolled down her cheeks, and she blotted them with a handful of silver silk. Robert didn’t get the joke. How could he? He snatched the marriage certificate from the dresser and left the bedroom, naked as he was, to retreat to his own room before her laughter woke the household.

Laura fell back across the bed and muffled her laughter until the tears took over completely. After they dried, only the throbbing in her skull remained along with the knowledge that something that should have been right had gone all wrong again. Exhausted, she slept.

****

Securely wrapped in her flannel nightgown and robe, Laura crept into the kitchen. Nearly noon according to a clock that ticked too loudly. No quiet digital timepieces for Chateau Camille, no sirree. She felt shaky and weak from a night of excess. Pearl, wearing her pink chenille bathrobe, sat at the breakfast table. Her hair lay in a grizzled, frizzy mess around her shoulders. She leaned over a glass full of tomato juice caged between her hands like the elixir of life. She toasted Laura.

“Hair of the dog. Can I get you a Bloody Mary?”

“Just coffee, very black.”

“That’s the only kind I make.” Pearl poured a cup from an insulated carafe and shoved it across to Laura. Some sloshed on the tablecloth, but Pearl only eyed the stain wearily.

“Miss Lilliane will be in bed all day. I took her a tray, but she only pecked at it.”

“Where’s—Angelle?” Laura covered her hesitation with a sip of coffee.

“At school. I swear I had to dress that child asleep and spoon feed her to get her on the bus at eight. Can’t figure out why anyone would put that holiday on a Tuesday. They must have lived different lives back then.”

“Yeah, why not Friday Gras or Saturday Gras? I’ll have to look that up at the library. The library. It’s Wednesday!”

“Just sit down, honey. I already phoned you in sick. ’Course, half your staff is sick this morning, but a few good Baptists showed up for work. Don’t matter. Won’t nobody be coming to the library today.” Pearl chuckled slowly as if it hurt her head to laugh.

“I picked up your room while you slept. Looked in to see if you wanted a tray, too, you know. That tux has to go back to the rental place today, and they sure ain’t gonna be happy about the tears where he couldn’t get the studs out fast enough.” Pearl waited with her usual patience for a comment and got no answer as Laura tried to drown her face in the coffee mug.

“Ain’t nothing wrong with what goes on between a man and a woman, especially when they been working up to it for over six months. You white folks sure are slow. So, when’s the wedding?”

“It’s over.”

“I’d say it just started.” Pearl chuckled again.

“No, I mean the wedding. I think we were married last night at Broussard’s Barn.” Laura peered shyly over the rim of her cup to assess Pearl’s reaction.

“Why some of the best marriages in Ste. Jeanne Parish had their start at Broussard’s Barn. My own sister, for one. Ruby coming from strict Catholics, and George Senegal from dyed in the wool Baptists, and him a shade too dark to suit our folks, they ran off to Broussard’s when old Tubbs Broussard had the place. Burned down under his care, but the family rebuilt. His son runs the Barn now. Don’t matter. All of them Broussards is interchangeable. Bands, booze and whores has always been their business. Anyhow, my sister has the best marriage I know of. I always did envy Ruby for knowing what she wanted.”

“Most of us don’t.”

“No, honey, most of us don’t,” Pearl agreed. “But I can tell you one man who does. He ate a mighty big breakfast today and went out to the barns. He seemed kind of cranky for a man who finally got what he itched for. He’ll be back in for lunch any time now.”

“I think he’s really, really mad at me, Pearl. I got a little confused this morning and sort of laughed him out of my bedroom.”

“Oh, Mr. Bob has a quick temper, but it flares up and then it’s gone. He ain’t one to rake over old coals to stir up the fire again. Give him half a chance. Give yourself one.”

“I think I’ll go get dressed.” Laura retreated to her room and hid out there for the rest of the day.

By dinnertime, she had sorted her thoughts and conceived a tentative plan. She would act casually as if nothing significant had happened. After all, Miss Lilliane and Angelle did not know about the pseudo-marriage for the moment. Acting calmly, she’d announce the time had come for her to stop intruding on the LeBlanc hospitality and find a place of her own. Then, she’d move out as soon as possible, away from the influence of Chateau Camille and the yearning eyes of Robert LeBlanc. A quiet annulment based on her inebriated state or the fake pre-dated license—that was her ticket out.

Of course, she would have to endure some embarrassment. In a town the size of Chapelle, the marriage at Broussard’s Barn had likely been discussed breakfast, lunch, and dinner at most of the tables in the parish. She could brush the event off as Mardi Gras madness and go about her duties quietly and efficiently until the gossip faded away. Perhaps, she would look for another job, far, far away. As soon as she entered the dining room, the bride knew her plan would fail.

Miss Lilliane occupied Laura’s place across from Angelle. The child beamed. Her first words were, “May I call you Mama now?”

Unable to answer, Laura smiled painfully at the girl who took that grimace as a yes and rushed to hug her new stepmother around the waist. Robert looked at his wife as if he expected more from her. When she appeared to be frozen in a tableau with Angelle clasped against her, he stood and held the chair at the head of the table for her. That gesture released Laura’s power of speech.

“Oh, no! That’s Miss Lilliane’s place.”

The old woman, who wore her dressing gown and slippers like a royal robe, declined grudgingly with a shake of her head, “You’re married to the head of the family now. The place opposite him is yours.”

Laura could guess the aged librarian’s true thoughts. “First you take my job; now you take my place at the table.”

Her own thoughts weren’t any kinder. She stared at Robert, who had taken his accustomed place, and willed him to understand—How could he? How could he tell the child! How could he use his precious daughter as a weapon against her?

He avoided her eyes and pretended to have a great appetite for a chicken leg resting on his plate in a nest of rice and gravy. Laura had no intention of pretending. After a few bites, she pushed her chair back and announced that last night’s festivities had been too much for her while looking pointedly at the other end of the table where Robert hid in the act of eating. She was going back to bed.

Angelle pleaded, “But Pearl and I have a surprise for you!”

“It will keep!” snapped Tante Lil, the only other person in the room besides Laura willing to admit anything was wrong.

Laura made her escape to remain sleepless in the night, her head filled with fruitless plans to retreat from Chateau Camille. Early in the evening, Angelle tapped on their adjoining door and asked “mama” to kiss her goodnight. Laura went to the child and tucked her in, though she’d heard Robert’s low voice a moment before as he carried out the same nighttime ritual. In the late hours, he tried her locked hall door very quietly and whispered “Laura” in that deep, strong voice of his. He left her undisturbed when she didn’t answer. All in all, she passed a torturous evening as unlike her wedding night as she could imagine.