Ruby (16 page)

Grandpere repaired some small things around the house, but left most of his other promises of work unfulfilled. He didn't patch the roof where it leaked or replace the cracked floorboards, and despite my not so subtle suggestions, he didn't improve his hygienic habits either. A week would go by before he would take a bar of soap and water to his body, and even then, it was a quick, almost insignificant rinse. Soon, there were lice in his hair again, his beard was scraggly, and his fingernails were caked with grime. I had to look at something else whenever we ate or I would lose my appetite. It was hard enough
contending with the variety of sour and rancid odors that reeked from his clothes and body. How someone could let himself go like that and not care or even notice was beyond me. I imagined it had a lot to do with his drinking.
Every time I looked at the portrait I had done of Grandmere Catherine, I thought about returning to my painting, but whenever I set up my easel, I would just stare dumbly at the blank paper, not a creative thought coming to mind. I attempted a few starts, drawing some lines, even trying to paint a simple mosscovered cypress log, but it was as if my artistic talent had died with Grandmere. I knew she would be furious even to hear such a thought, but the truth was that the bayou, the birds, the plants and trees, everything about it in some way made me think of Grandmere and once I did, I couldn't paint. I missed her that much.
Paul came by nearly every day, sometimes just to sit and talk on the galerie, sometimes to sit and watch me work on the loom. Often, he helped with some chore, especially a chore Grandpere should have completed before going out in the swamp for the day.
"What's that Tate boy doin' around here so much?" Grandpere asked me late one afternoon when he returned just as Paul was leaving.
"He's just a good friend, coming around to be sure everything is all right, Grandpere," I said. I didn't have the courage to tell Grandpere I knew all the ugly truths and the terrible things he had done when my mother was pregnant with Paul. I knew how Grandpere's temper could flare, and how such revelations would just send him sucking on a bottle and then ranting and raving.
"Those Tates think they're special just because they make a pile of money," Grandpere muttered. "You watch out for people like that. You watch out," he warned. I ignored him and went in to prepare supper.
Every day, before Paul left, he made a promise to talk to his father about the past, but every day he returned, I could see immediately that he hadn't worked up the courage yet. Finally, one Saturday night, he told me he and his father were going fishing the next day after church.
"It will just be him and me," he said. "One way or the other, get it all discussed," he promised.
That morning I tried to get Grandpere Jack to go to church with me, but I couldn't shake him out of his deep sleep. The harder I shook him, the louder he snored. It would be the first time I had gone to church without Grandmere Catherine and I wasn't sure I could manage it, but I set out anyway. When I arrived, all of Grandmere's lady friends greeted me warmly. Naturally, they were full of questions concerning how I was getting along living in the same house with Grandpere. I tried to make it sound better than it was, but Mrs. Livaudis pursed her lips and shook her head.
"No one should have to live with such a burden, especially a young girl like Ruby," she declared.
"You sit with us, dear," Mrs. Thibodeau said, and I sat in the pew and sang the hymns alongside them.
Paul and his family had arrived late so we didn't talk, and then he and his father wanted to get back as soon as they could and get their boat in the bayou. I couldn't stop thinking about him all day, wondering every other minute whether or not Paul had brought up the past with his father. I expected to see him shortly after dinner, but he didn't come. I sat on the galerie and rocked and waited. Grandpere was inside listening to some Cajun music on the radio and kicking up his heels from time to time as he swung a jug up to his lips. Anyone walking by would have thought a hoeing bee or a shingling party was going on.
It got late; Grandpere Jack settled down into his usual unconscious state, and I grew tired. Without a moon, the sky was a deep black, making the twinkling stars that much brighter. I tried to keep my eyes from closing, but the lids seemed to have a mind of their own. I even dozed off and woke with a start at the cry of a screech owl. Finally, I gave up and went up to bed.
I had just settled my head on the pillow and closed my eyes again, when I heard the front door open and close and then heard soft footsteps on the stairs. My heart began to thump. Who had come into our house? With Grandpere Jack in a stupor, anyone could enter and do what he wanted. I sat up and waited, barely breathing.
First, a tall silhouette appeared on the walls and then the dark figure stepped into my doorway.
"Paul?"
"I'm sorry to wake you, Ruby. I wasn't going to come tonight, but I just couldn't sleep," he said. "I knocked, but I guess you didn't hear and when I opened the door, I saw your grandfather sprawled out on the settee in the sitting room, his mouth wide open, the snoring so loud, it's making the walls vibrate."
I leaned over and turned on the light. One look at Paul's face told me he had learned the truth.
"What happened, Paul? I waited for you until I got too tired," I told him, and sat up, holding the blanket against my flimsy nightgown. He came farther into the room and stood at the foot of my bed, his head bowed. "Did you have the discussion with your father?" He nodded and then lifted his head.
"When I got home from fishing, I just ran into the house and up to my room and shut the door. I didn't go down for dinner, but I just couldn't lie there anymore. I wanted to put my pillow over my face and keep it there until I couldn't breathe," he told me. "I even tried twice!"
"Oh, Paul. What did he tell you?" I asked. Paul sat on the bed and gazed at me silently for a moment. His shoulders slumped and he continued.
"My father didn't want to talk about it; he was surprised by my questions and for a long while just sat there, staring at the water, not speaking. I told him I had to know the truth, that it was important to me, more important than anything else. Finally, he turned to me and said he was going to tell me about it someday; he just didn't think the time had come.
"But I told him it had and I repeated my need to know the truth. At first, he was angry I had found out. He thought Grandpere Jack had told me. He said your grandfather. . I guess I got to get used to it, even though it makes me sick to the stomach . Our grandfather," he said, pronouncing the words with a grimace that made it look as if he had swallowed castor oil. "Our grandpere Jack had blackmailed him once before and was trying to figure a way to get money out of him again. Then I told him what Grandmere Catherine had told you and why she had told you, and he nodded and said she was right to do so."
"I'm glad, Paul, glad he told you the truth. Now--"
"Only," Paul added quickly, his eyes growing narrow and dark, "my father's version of the story is a lot different from Grandmere Catherine's version."
"How?"
"According to him your mother seduced him, and he didn't take advantage of her. He claims she was a wild young woman and he wasn't the first to be with her. He said she was hounding him, following him everywhere, smiling and teasing him all the time, and one day, when he was out in the bayou fishing by himself, she came upon him, poling a pirogue. She tore off her clothing and dove into the water naked and then climbed into his boat. That's when it happened. That's when I was made," Paul said bitterly.
My silence bothered him, but I couldn't help it. I was speechless. One part of me wanted to laugh and shout and ridicule such a story. No daughter of Grandmere Catherine's could be such a creature; but another part of me, that part of me that had fantasized such things with Paul told me it might be true.
"I don't believe him of course," Paul said quickly. "I think it happened the way your grandmother told it. He came around here and he seduced your mother, otherwise, why would he have owned up to it so quickly when Grandpere Jack confronted him and why did he pay him any blackmail money?"
I took a deep breath.
"Did you say that to your father?" I asked.
"No. I didn't want to have any arguments about it."
"I don't know how we'll ever know the whole truth about it," I said.
"What's the difference now?" Paul muttered angrily. "The result is the same. Oh, my father complained again and again about how Grandpere Jack came to him and blackmailed him, and how he had to pay him thousands of dollars to keep the matter secret. He said Grandpere was the lowest of the low who belonged with the slimy things in the swamp. He told me how my mother felt sorry for him, especially because of Grandpere Jack, and how she agreed to pretend to be pregnant so my birth would be accepted by the community as the legitimate birth of a Tate. Then he made me promise I wouldn't say anything to my mother. He told me it would break her heart if she knew I discovered she wasn't really my mother."
"I'm sure it would," I said. "He's not wrong about that, Paul. Why hurt her any more than she has been hurt?"
"What about me?" he cried. "What about . . . us?"
"We're young," I said, thinking about Grandmere Catherine's words of wisdom.
"That doesn't mean it hurts any less," he moaned.
"No, it doesn't, but I don't know what else we can do about it, but go on and try to find other people who we can love and care for as strongly as we love and care for each other now."
"I can't; I won't," he said defiantly.
"Paul, what else can we do?"
He fixed his eyes on me, the defiance in his face, the anger and the pain, too.
"We'll just pretend it isn't so," he said, reaching out to take my hand.
I couldn't stop the tingle that had begun around my heart and then shot through my blood to fly through my stomach and my legs and make my breath quicken. Suddenly everything about him, everything about us was forbidden. Just his merely sitting on my bed, holding my hand, gazing at me with such longing was taboo, and just like most anything prohibited, it carried an elevated excitement along with it. It was like teasing fate, testing, exquisitely tormenting our own souls.
"We can't do that, Paul," I said, my voice barely a whisper.
"Why not? Let's ignore that half of ourselves and think only about the other half. It won't be the first time such a thing happened, especially in the bayou," he said. His hand moved up my wrist, the fingers sliding softly over my skin as he lifted himself to sit closer. I shook my head gently.
"You're just upset and angry now, Paul. You're not thinking about what you're saying to me," I told him. My heart was pounding so hard, I thought I would lose my breath.
"Yes, I am. Who knows about us anyway? Just your grandpere Jack and no one would believe anything he would say, and my father and mother who wouldn't want anyone to know the truth. Don't you see? It doesn't matter."
"But we know; it matters to us."
"Not if we don't let it matter," Paul said. He leaned forward to kiss my forehead. Now that we both knew the truth of his origin, his lips felt as hot as a branding iron. I backed away abruptly and shook my head, not only trying to refuse his advances, but refusing the excitement that was building in my own heart.
My blanket fell away and my nightgown dropped so low most of my bosom was visible. Paul's eyes lowered and rose, climbing slowly back to my neck and shoulders and my face.
"Once we do it, once we ignore the ugly past and make love, we will be able to do it easier and easier every time afterward, Ruby," he said. "Don't you see? Why should the other half of ourselves, the better half be denied? We haven't been brought up as brother and sister; we've never thought of ourselves as related.
"If you just close your eyes and forget, if you just let your lips touch mine," he said, drawing close again.
I shook my head, closed my eyes, and sat back as far as I could, but Paul's lips touched mine. I tried to deny him, to slide myself out from under, but he pressed onward, more demanding, his hands finding the bare flesh of my exposed bosom, his fingers turning so the tips would touch my nipples.
"Paul, no," I cried. "Please, don't. We'll be sorry," I said, but I felt myself slipping as the tingle grew into a wave of warm desire. After so much sorrow and so much hardship, my body craved his warm touch, forbidden as it was.
"No, we won't," Paul insisted. His lips grazed my fore-head and moved down the side of my face as his hand slipped completely under my nightgown to fully cup my breast. He lifted it to bring his lips to my nipple and I felt myself weaken. I couldn't open my eyes. I couldn't speak. I continued to slide under him and he pressed forward, insistent, driven, unrelenting in his determination to batter down not only my feeble resistance, but all the morals and laws of church and man that not only forbid our erotic touching, but looked down on it with disgust.
"Ruby," he whispered in my ear, sending my mind spinning, my heart racing, "I love you."
"What the hell in tarnation is goin' on here!" we suddenly heard. Paul snapped back and I gasped. Grandpere Jack was standing in the hallway gazing in at us, his hair sticking up and out, his eyes wide and bloodshot, his body swaying as if a wind were tearing through the house.
"Nothing," Paul said, and stood up, quickly straightening his clothes.
"Nothing! You call that nothing?" Grandpere Jack focused his gaze and stepped through the doorway. He was still drunk, but he recognized Paul. "Who the hell. . you're the Tate boy, ain't you? The one who's always comin' around here?"
Paul looked down at me and then nodded at Grandpere.
"Figures you'd come around here at night and sneak into the house and into my granddaughter's room. It's in the Tate blood," Grandpere said.
"That's a lie," Paul snapped.
"Humph," Grandpere said and combed his long fingers through his disheveled hair. "Yeah, well, you got no business bein' in my granddaughter's bedroom this time of night. My advice to you, boy, is to tuck in your tail and git."
"Go on, Paul," I said. "It's better if you go," I added.
He looked down at me, his eyes swimming in tears.
"Please," I whispered. He bit down on his lower lip and then charged out the door, nearly bowling Grandpere Jack over in the process. Paul pounded his way down the steps and out the door.
"Well now," Grandpere Jack said, turning back to me. "Looks like you're a lot older than I thought. Time we thought about finding you a proper husband."