Paula Morris (19 page)

That sounded way too eager,
she thought. She didn't want
Anton to think she was some giggling Pleb, desperate for a St. Simeon's
boyfriend.

"What I mean is, I really want to, you know, go to the party.
To see the house and everything. I didn't mean -- ah, anything else."

"Oh," he said, frowning a little and drumming his
fingers on the steering wheel. "OK."

Now she was worried she'd offended him. It was so much easier to
talk when they were walking down St. Charles, Rebecca thought. Sitting here
together in this confined space was way too hard. It felt like ... well, a real
date.

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People were going to see them in public together for the first
time, if you didn't count that day at the café. A wave of anxiety washed over
her.

"Well, this is it," Anton said at last, parking on a
quiet block of Fourth Street, in a pool of yellow cast by the antique
streetlight.

A lot of people were parking nearby, on that block and the next,
hurrying toward the Bowmans' mansion on Prytania. Most of them were older,
Rebecca noted as Anton locked her bulging shoulder bag in the Audi's trunk: The
women wore long dresses and carried pashmina wraps; the men wore elegant
jackets. She wished
she
had some kind of wrap or jacket -- the night was
clear and getting colder. Rebecca didn't recognize the younger people ahead of
them on the sidewalk, but that might have been because she was used to seeing
everyone in a school uniform.

Beyond its tall wrought-iron gate, the Bowman house quivered with
light: Miniature storm lanterns, each sporting a tiny, flickering candle, lined
the pathway and dangled the full length of the front porch. Very little
progress seemed to have been made on the dug-up side yard, and lumber was still
stacked at the foot of the broad side gallery, draped with a giant canvas. But
the construction didn't detract from the imposing grandeur of the house, and
once she was inside the double doors -- opened by the dignified elderly black
man Rebecca had seen on her first day of school -- she soon forgot about the
less-than-perfect garden. There was so much else to take in: the spacious
central hallway with its black-and-white tiled floor; the towering Christmas
tree, every decoration glinting silver or pristine white; and,

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sweeping up to the next floor, the long dark swirl of the
staircase.

Rebecca stood at its foot, one hand caressing the ornate post,
ignoring the rush of people around her. This was it: the spot where Lisette had
been killed, her head smashed open on the blunt edge of one of these steps.
Rebecca was transfixed. The house looked so elegant, as though nothing bad
could ever happen there. How many of its guests knew about this terrible guilty
secret?

Anton's hand was on her arm, drawing her toward the doors of the
double parlor: Those were the doors where Lisette had hunched, listening!
Rebecca reluctantly followed him into the long, high-ceilinged room -- two
rooms, really, the edges of their tall dividing pocket doors just visible. The
sofas and some of the art on the walls were modern, but Rebecca doubted that
much had changed in these rooms in the last century and a half. The looming windows
with their open shutters, the ceiling rosettes from which sparkling chandeliers
hung, the ornate carved fireplaces, the wide, creaky floorboards -- they were
all relics of the house Lisette must have known.

Rebecca had been to adult parties before in New York -- her father
insisted on dragging her to them, so she could learn, he said, how to be
"civilized." But rooms were smaller in New York; everyone they knew
lived in an apartment. In the Bowmans' house, everything was larger than life.
Rebecca wondered how they even got a Christmas tree so large into their foyer.

A waiter approached, and Anton picked up two glasses of champagne.
Rebecca took a sip of hers, wincing when the

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bubbles rushed up her nose, and followed him through the crowd and
its miasma of perfume. He led her through the front rooms and through another
set of double doors, into an even bigger, grander space. Silk curtains puddled
on the floor at each window; the only furnishings were a few dark,
red-cushioned chairs, and some indoor palms splayed against the windows.

A makeshift bar was set up in one bend of the curving room,
waiters in white shirts and black pants pouring out glasses of champagne and
juice. In another bend, a jazz trio -- also dressed in black and white --
played in front of the marble fireplace, though nobody seemed to be listening
to them. Everyone was talking and laughing and shouting and drinking. The only
black people at the party, as far as Rebecca could see, were the men serving
drinks and the musicians. It was just like one of those quadroon balls, Rebecca
thought: She'd been doing some more reading in the library at lunchtimes. The
only black men allowed to attend those were the musicians. Most of the women at
the balls looked white -- they were quadroons, which meant a quarter black, or
octoroons, which meant an eighth.

These fractions mattered back in those days, when mixed-race
marriages were strictly forbidden. Perhaps here, tonight, there were women who
wouldn't have been allowed to marry their husbands. Or perhaps that was why
everyone was so obsessed with names, and bloodlines, and keeping marriages
within a select group of families. They didn't want any skeletons in the closet
-- though at least, Rebecca thought, laughing midsip and accidentally inhaling
a glug of champagne, all skeletons were white.

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Anton led her around, whispering to her about various older guests
who were friends of his parents, and in no hurry, apparently, to go off in
search of his friends. She could see several girls she recognized from Temple
Mead, all from the grade above hers. Julie Casworth Young was wearing a
jade-green taffeta cocktail dress, her fair hair tightly wound in a chignon.
When she spotted Rebecca, she looked bemused, then annoyed, darting off to
whisper in Marianne Sutton's ear. Marianne frowned and looked a little confused
for a moment. But soon, Rebecca noticed, Marianne had started acting up; she
stood with a gaggle of her friends, shrieking with laughter, or was busy
draping herself over a boy Anton identified as Paul Robichon. Paul had
graduated from St. Simeon's that spring and had just arrived back from his
freshman semester at Duke.

Maybe Marianne was trying to make Anton jealous, Rebecca thought,
but it didn't seem to be working. He seemed more affected by the way Toby
Sutton and the other guys from his year at school were keeping their distance.
It was pretty clear they were avoiding him. In the dining room, where platters
of crab cakes, deep-fried oysters, stuffed figs, garlic shrimp, and delicious
cornbread muffins were crowded onto a dining table that seated twelve, Anton
and Rebecca lingered for a while, standing by the windows to eat. But nobody
came over to talk to them. They might have been as invisible as Lisette.

Helena flitted in and out of every room, wearing a floaty short
dress of silver and white. She looked like one of the Christmas decorations,
Rebecca thought, surreptitiously licking garlic butter off her fingers and
picking her champagne

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flute off the windowsill. When Helena brushed past them without
even a glance in Anton's direction, Rebecca realized the gang was all intent on
snubbing him. This was her fault, she knew. By taking her as his date to the
party, Anton was a social pariah.

Rebecca didn't care on her own account, but she felt awful for
Anton. He was looking more and more preoccupied, more uncomfortable, as the
evening went on. She squinted over at the clock on the mantel, trying to check
the time, but the guests swarming the buffet table kept getting in the way.

"We can go any time you like," Anton told her; he must
have seen her looking at the clock. "I know you have to get home and
all."

He sounded depressed, and Rebecca couldn't blame him. She was here
tonight to see the house, and to see Lisette, not to hang out with friends, but
for Anton, this was one of the biggest events in his annual social calendar. He
knew practically everyone here -- in fact, most of their conversation tonight
had involved her asking about people on some sofa or standing in a cluster and
Anton telling her their life stories. Lots of the adults had come over to chat
with him and to smile politely when he introduced her as "Rebecca Brown,
who's visiting from New York." It sounded so glamorous and sophisticated,
as though she'd just flown in for the party.

"Oh, really?" one lady with a plastic surgery--tight
face asked her. "Aren't you just precious? Where are you staying while
you're here?"

"With my aunt," Rebecca told her. "On Sixth Street.
Her name is Claudia Vernier."

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"Oh!" The lady's face would have registered surprise,
Rebecca thought, if it were possible, but her face was too fixed in place for
her expression to change. Instead, all she could do was sound icy and take a
step back. "Well, well."

And that was the end of the conversation. Rebecca wasn't sure if
the woman knew Aunt Claudia and thought she was a weirdo --very possible -- or
if she'd never heard of such a person and knew, instinctively, that this meant
Aunt Claudia had to be a social untouchable. Also, all this talk of her aunt being
descended from a voodoo queen had made Rebecca wonder: Most of those olden-days
voodoo queens were black women, French speakers who fled the turmoil in Haiti
during the revolution there. Maybe Aunt Claudia was an octoroon.

"We should stick around until ten or so," Rebecca told
Anton. "I don't have to be home until ten-thirty."

"How about we go sit out on the porch?" Anton asked her,
handing his empty plate to a waiter. "If you get cold, I can give you my
jacket."

"Sure," Rebecca agreed. Poor Anton -- all he wanted to
do was get away. Out on the porch, she'd still be able to see Lisette dropping
in. And before they left, she could squeeze in a "powder room" break
or two --just to get another good look at that staircase. At some point in the
future, Anton would make up with all his snobby friends, she was sure, but
Rebecca had a feeling she would never cross the threshold of the Bowman house
-- by invitation or by choice -- ever again.

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***

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

***

Outside, anton and rebecca sat close together on a wooden porch
swing that faced the ballroom, its back to the broad side yard. They could
still hear the band, which was playing some jaunty call-and-response number in
French called "Eh, La-Bas," and hear the high-pitched talk and
laughter from inside the house. Some guy in a pinstriped suit was dancing with
Helena over by the closed French doors, spinning and dipping her out of time to
the music. She was giggling theatrically and leaping about with more energy
than anyone would expect from a girl who'd been too sick to come to school half
the semester.

It was nicer outside, away from the clamor. Tea lights sparkled
along the curving gallery railings, brighter than the muted moonlight. Anton
pulled off his jacket and draped it around Rebecca's bare shoulders, and the
slight rock of the porch swing tilted them together.

"You shouldn't have brought me," she said softly. The
champagne had gone to her head: She felt kind of dizzy. "You're not having
a good time."

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"I'm having the best time," he said, turning his head
toward her, and they both laughed. "That's a
big
lie," Rebecca
said.

"What I mean is, I'm having the best time right now. We
should have come out here earlier."

"We should have just stayed out here the whole time, you
mean? "

"That's exactly what I mean. We could have sent in for
champagne, and told the band to play louder."

Their shoulders were brushing and, with every lilting swing of the
seat, Rebecca felt Anton leaning closer.

"And I should have worn ... a sweater," she whispered.

"A snowsuit, maybe," he said, and when he laughed,
Rebecca didn't know where to look: He was so close, his face angular and
chiseled, his chest rising and falling a little with every breath.

"A fur coat," she said, but the words could barely get
themselves out, because Anton's face was brushing hers now -- his hair tickling
her forehead, his nose knocking hers.

His lips pressing hers.

Anton was kissing her, so softly, so sweetly....

And someone was standing right there.

Rebecca gasped, and Anton pulled away quickly.

"There's someone ..." She stopped. There
was
somebody
there, just a foot away, staring straight at them, but it wasn't anyone Anton
could see. It was Lisette, standing very still, looking as startled as Rebecca.

"What's wrong?" Anton asked her, scanning the gallery.
"Who was here? Where?"

"Oh ... nobody. I mean, they must have left."

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Lisette turned away, stepping up to the French doors and gazing
into the busy room. Anton was still looking around, up and down the gallery,
out into the yard. The moment between them was broken, Rebecca knew. Maybe
Anton thought she'd done it on purpose, invented some excuse to stop the kiss.
But she hadn't wanted the kiss to stop. She
really
hadn't ...