Southern Ruby (5 page)

And:

Here is a picture of me and Amandine during Halloween. Everything fascinated her — all the ghouls, witches and ghosts. They go all out here — real skeletons and full on costumes. I've also enclosed a picture of her in her high-chair eating her grits. She's a true New Orleans baby.

I knew exactly what she was feeling. Nan was a good woman who would do anything for the people she loved. But if you displeased her, she could shut down on you in a way that made your blood turn cold. It took her a long time to forget a grudge. I didn't like to think anything but good about Nan, especially now she was gone. But I had to admit the truth, and the evidence was there in my mother's letters.

The last line in the final letter brought tears to my eyes again:

Please write to me, Mum. You can't stay mad about this forever!

I glanced at the date: 3 September 1982. One month before my parents died. Perhaps much of Nan's grief had been that she and my mother never reconciled before the accident.

‘Oh, Nan!' I cried out. ‘Why?'

I lay back on the bed and stared at the ceiling for a long time. The journey to the past was exhausting. Finally, I summoned the strength to gather my mother's letters into a pile and retied the ribbon around them. I was about to return them to the box when I noticed another letter inside. I was sure it hadn't been there when I'd looked in the box when I was fifteen because I would have remembered it.

The envelope was cream cotton fibre and had been closed with a wax seal. The writing wasn't my mother's loopy cursive,
but graceful calligraphy. I examined the postmark and saw that it was dated March 2001. The letter didn't smell musty like the others, but gave off a hint of jasmine and patchouli when I opened it.

Dear Cynthia,

This may be the last letter I ever write to you. I have been diagnosed with atrial fibrillation and will undergo electric shock treatment for it next month. Nobody knows how long I have got. I may last for years yet, or I might be gone tomorrow from a stroke or heart attack. The date for my surgery is the same as sweet Amandine's twenty-first birthday, April 12. Do you expect that I could have forgotten her? I think of her every day, and am sure my grief at not seeing her grow up is what is slowly killing me, not the irregular heartbeat that the doctors have diagnosed. It is as if you took my soul along with her to Australia.

I am sorry we fought over her. That was a dreadful mistake that has cost me dearly. But we were younger women then, foolish and selfish. We should have come to some better compromise than to involve lawyers and diplomats. Have the years and the ebbs and flows of life not brought you to feel any pity for me? Just as Amandine is your last contact with Paula, she is my last with my beloved Dale. Yet you have denied me not only all contact with her but any news of the young person she is becoming. As a mother yourself, you must understand the meaning of this?

You have a right to your anger, but by holding on to it you have also deprived Amandine of a large part of herself. She has a family here too: people who love her and miss her and always will. She also has a significant property that will come into her possession when I pass
away. This property is of great sentimental value to our family and I ask one more time that you will allow her to come here so I might show it to her myself and explain its history.

To get what you want is a responsibility: I have learned that in life. You won, Cynthia. Why then are you still afraid of me? What could I possibly do to harm you . . . or Amandine?

Yours truly,

Ruby (Vivienne Lalande)

I was stunned. All the excuses and rationalisations I'd made to justify Nan's behaviour collapsed. My father's family in New Orleans hadn't forgotten me. They'd wanted me to be part of their lives. And after the death of my parents, there'd been a dispute about whether I should remain with them or come to live with Nan in Australia. It went part of the way to explain Nan's secrecy and her denial of any details about my father. But as much as I tried to see everything in a detached manner, I was furious.

‘Nan!' I cried. ‘How could you have done that to me? You must have understood how badly you were hurting me!'

I paced the room, rereading the letter. And what was this about an inheritance? How could I inherit something from people I'd never known? Gradually my anger gave way to a deep sense of loss.

By the time the sun rose, my conflicting feelings had been overshadowed by questions. Was this woman — my Grandmother Ruby — still alive? And if so, what kind of woman was she?

L
ord, my Aunt Elva was evil and I wished her dead! But I smiled sweetly instead and offered her another piece of Doberge cake.

‘No, thank you,' she said, pursing those thin lips of hers and shaking her head so her double chin wobbled like a turkey's wattle. ‘It's rather dry. When my Millie makes it, it practically melts in your mouth.'

I glanced at Mae, who stood in the doorway in her faded uniform and watched us with her mahogany eyes. Her pride would be hurt. We'd eaten gravy on bread all week to put on a good show for Aunt Elva. It wasn't Mae's fault our oven was old and she'd had to go easy on the butter. I could have killed Aunt Elva with my bare hands right then if it didn't mean I would hang and then burn in hell.

It was my gracious mother who saved the moment. ‘More tea then, Elvie?' she offered, picking up the pot and pouring some into Aunt Elva's cup.

My heart sank at the sight of Maman's trembling hands. She was getting worse, and yet she had dressed up in her mauve-pink pleated dress, powdered her face and buffed her nails.

Aunt Elva studied the teacup with calculating rather than admiring eyes. It was Haviland Limoges France and had been a wedding gift to my grandparents. These days I usually hid anything of value when Aunt Elva visited, but Maman had insisted that we always offer our guests the best we had. I knew what Aunt Elva was thinking when she stared at the cup, and it wasn't how pretty the rose and violet pattern was.

What else does the old witch want?
I thought, looking at the bare walls of our parlour where the collection of Degas paintings used to hang.
Our blood?

I loved Maman fiercely and wanted to protect her like a lioness protects her cub. She was everything a Southern belle should be — pretty, unfailingly polite and always thinking of others. But she seemed to live in some time in the past and couldn't adapt to our present circumstances. Mae and I had been pawning things left and right the past year to keep us going, and Maman acted like she didn't even notice. In her mind, she was still living in a plantation mansion with a drive lined by oak trees.

‘Excuse me,' I said, rising from my chair. I grimaced at Mae as I passed her on my way to Maman's bedroom.

Mae followed me, and gripped my hands after I'd punched the bed viciously several times. I didn't know from whom I'd inherited my fierce ability to see reality as it was, but it certainly wasn't from Maman or any of my de Villeray ancestors, who had almost without exception perished through embarking on romantic but doomed ventures.

‘Miss Ruby,' Mae said in a hoarse whisper, ‘you control your temper now . . . for your mama's sake.'

‘I'm going to kill that old witch,' I said under my breath. ‘Why'd she come here without Uncle Rex? She's up to something! I can see it in her beady eyes.'

‘You kill her and who's gonna look after your mama when they lock you up?'

I pulled away from Mae and sat on the bed, catching my reflection in Maman's bevelled dressing-table mirror. My eyes looked wild.

Everyone called me Ruby, but that was my pet name. My real name was Vivienne — Vivienne de Villeray. Maman said she couldn't remember how I'd gotten the name Ruby and it must have been because of the pretty gemstone, but Mae said it was because when I was a baby I used to scream and turn ruby red until I got what I wanted. The name stayed, although I could no longer scream for my demands.

I turned away from my reflection. I was only seventeen and yet I felt worldly compared to Maman. Couldn't she see that Aunt Elva was a bad woman who would steal the food off a baby's plate if she wanted it? If I was a man I would have thrown her out, but I was a young woman who'd been brought up to ‘behave'. It was utterly ridiculous that I had to act like a charming and proper lady when we had no money to fund such genteel appearances.

My gaze fell to the row of medicine bottles lined up on the dressing table. When I was a child, enticing crystal perfume dispensers and a silver brush set used to sit there instead. The dresser and mirror would bring us a tidy sum, but I couldn't sell it. Maman loved beauty and I couldn't take every last vestige of it away from her, especially not now. She was one of those fragile, sensitive souls who needed beauty the way the rest of us needed food and water.

‘Aunt Elva wants to send me to the convent,' I told Mae. ‘I heard her talking about it to Uncle Rex. She said it was the only future for a “girl in my position”.'

Mae put her arm around me and stroked my hair the way she used to do when she was my nursemaid instead of our housekeeper. ‘Now, don't be silly,' she said, laughing gently.
‘You in a convent? Lord have mercy on the sisters! No, your Uncle Rex won't allow that. He likes you and your mama too much. Besides, you're the prettiest girl in town. You're going to find yourself a good man to marry.'

Dear Uncle Rex. While my father had been a gadabout Southern dandy who wore his jet-black hair slicked behind his ears, Uncle Rex was stocky and wore pin-striped suits like a man of business. He spoke in measured tones and was polite without ever resorting to my father's honeyed flattery. In my mind, he was the only reliable man in the de Villeray family and I loved him for it. After my father died, my uncle started discreetly putting money for housekeeping and living expenses in a jar on our mantelpiece. But now Maman was sick, that money wasn't enough and Aunt Elva was watching him like a hawk.

‘You don't give these people another cent,' she'd told him one day in front of us. ‘If Desiree can afford to make a debutante dress like that for Ruby, then she can afford to pay her own way.'

Never mind that we'd sold our last pieces of silverware to pay for the dress material. I hadn't wanted to debut, considering our circumstances, but Maman had insisted. ‘It's the most beautiful night of a young girl's life,' she'd told me.

‘It was only right for Ruby to debut,' Uncle Rex had replied to Aunt Elva. ‘She's beautiful and at the right age to marry.'

‘Well, I don't see any suitors from good families knocking down the door for her hand!' his wife had retorted.

I cringed at the memory. I loved Uncle Rex for his kindness, but Aunt Elva was correct in her summing up of the situation. To the chagrin of the other debutantes, especially Aunt Elva's own frumpy daughter, Eugenie, I had been the belle of the ball. My dress had indeed been exquisite, far more stunning than the other debutantes', because Maman herself had sewn the pearl embroidery onto the strapless silk bodice. But while the young
men all wanted to dance with me, their mothers had forbidden them to court me because I didn't have a dowry. The whole thing had been a humiliating disaster.

‘Listen,' said Mae, lifting me to my feet and smoothing my hair, ‘you go out there and help your mama put on a show for Mrs Elva. Remember what she always told you.'

‘If you must do a thing, then do it graciously,' I parroted, then returned to the parlour to find Aunt Elva talking to Maman about the beaus who were courting Eugenie.

‘That charming Leboeuf boy lights up whenever he's around Eugenie,' she was saying. ‘When I saw him talking to her at the Rombeaus' annual garden party, he looked positively smitten. Then there's Harvey Boiselle, a good catch indeed . . .'

I glanced at Maman. She used to be good friends with Lisette Rombeau; they'd grown up together. We hadn't been invited to the garden party this year and that was a snub if ever there was one. However, although Aunt Elva was doing her best to make a point of our fall in status, Maman took it all in serenely, firm in her belief that one day I would meet the right man and fall in love with him and all our misfortunes would be swept away.

I wished I could lose my worries about the future in romantic delusions. It would sure beat the humiliation I felt whenever Mae and I had to take something else to Mr Joseph's pawn shop.

Later in the afternoon, while Maman was taking her ‘lady's nap', I wandered around the apartment, trying to think clearly. Everything was going to pieces. What were we going to do? The de Villerays were one of the oldest Creole families. We could trace our ancestry to a naval officer who had accompanied Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville to found the city of New Orleans, and whose descendants had become wealthy plantation owners on the shores of Lake Pontchartrain. The apartment we now lived in had once been part of one of the many townhouses our family had owned, but lavish living by my forebears had gradually eroded the family's fortune. My great-grandfather had been famous for
his duelling, but had gotten himself killed at sixty years of age by a younger man's bullet on account of some scandal over a woman's honour. My grandfather's reckless disregard for money and expenditure had left the family with nothing but debts. I only had a few recollections of my own father, also a gambler and womaniser, because he was often away somewhere involved in some swashbuckling scheme to regain the family's fortune. His last attempt was in Brazil, where he was convinced he'd make his millions rediscovering an old gold mine that had been abandoned by the British. The only thing he achieved was to contract malaria, and he died ten days later on my twelfth birthday.

I could hear Mae in the bathroom, washing our clothes with a scrubbing board. Why did she stay with us? Other maids had modern appliances like vacuum cleaners and washing machines to help them with their work, while she had developed painful fluid on the knee from polishing floors. I couldn't stand it any more. After picking up my hat and gloves from the stand, I walked out the front door and quietly closed it behind me.

Often when I felt sad and frustrated, I would ride on one of the streetcar routes until I felt better. That day I decided to go to Audubon Park, but when I reached Uptown, instead of heading to the park as usual I walked onto Tulane's campus and sat under a large oak tree watching students hurry to and from classes. Each year there were more girls coming here. I studied them with curiosity. They looked so confident in their Peter Pan–collared sweaters and circle skirts.

‘What are you studying?' I asked one dark-haired girl. She wore light pink lipstick and her hair was cut fetchingly short.

‘Architecture,' she answered and then smiled apologetically. ‘I'm sorry, I can't stop to talk. I'm late for class.'

She's going to design buildings
, I thought as she hurried away
. How wonderful would that be?

I crossed over St Charles Avenue into Audubon Park as if in a dream. What was this strange curtain that separated me from
those confident, self-determined girls? I knew the answer: they were middle class and as such were free to develop their minds and use their bodies any way they pleased. They didn't carry the weight of the Creole aristocracy on their shoulders. I was sure they hadn't been taught from nursery age to recite their entire family tree.

I sat on a park bench and watched the ducks swimming on the pond. There had been some Creole women who'd run their own plantations and left them to their daughters, but the fortunes of the women of the de Villeray family had always been tied to their menfolk. And the men had squandered those fortunes and left us struggling to make ends meet. Well, except for prudent Uncle Rex; but he was twenty years older than Aunt Elva, and I was very aware that Maman, Mae and I would be out on the street the moment he drew his last breath.

Why is it this way?
I asked myself, gazing at the trees. Did I really have no choice but to watch our family slowly sink into destitution in the same way some geologists declared that New Orleans was gradually sinking into the ocean?

I looked about me and saw a young woman selling watermelon slices from a vending cart. People came to the cart, she gave them a slice of melon and they handed her some money. I kept staring at those coins. It seemed to me that she wasn't doing so badly with nothing more than watermelons to sell. I noticed how she spoke cheerfully to people as they purchased their fruit and that seemed to encourage them to buy more. Her stock moved quickly and she was done by the early afternoon.

How hard can it be?
I wondered. I'd been brought up to believe that women couldn't manage money, but that young woman seemed to be managing it very well.

On my trip home, it was as if my eyes had been opened: I noticed all the women vendors who worked in the French Quarter selling everything from alligator pears to jewellery to
yo-yos. There were women working in beauty parlours, and demonstrating kitchen devices in department stores, and even female artists selling their paintings in Jackson Square. Who said women couldn't handle money?

By the time I reached our apartment, I'd made a decision. It wasn't marriage that was going to save us. It was money — and I had to learn how to make some. I, Vivienne ‘Ruby' de Villeray, was going to do what no woman in my family had ever done before me. I was going to get a job.