Iron Lace (3 page)

“You going to leave your little friends and come inside, too?”

“Amy, you done yet?” Belinda asked.

The oldest child, chubby-cheeked and sassy-eyed, giggled and slid down to the porch floor. “You gotta do what he say, Miss Belinda?”

“I never do what he says. You remember that.”

“Then you’re not going in?”

“Just ’cause I’m getting cold. You two scoot.”

The little girls scampered off, skipping down the walkway, then along the curb. The oldest took the youngest’s hand.

“Isn’t it kind of late for them to be outside?” Phillip asked.

“They stay with their aunt at night while their mama cleans office buildings down on Canal. Aunt’s got six kids of her own, and she has trouble keeping track. They’ll be okay. Amy’s an old lady at eight. But I’m going to follow behind them, just to be sure. You go on in.” She got to her feet.

“You know every kid in the neighborhood, not just the ones that have been in your classes.”

“Nah. But they all know me.”

Phillip put his hand on her shoulder and stopped her before she could descend the steps. “Were you an old lady at eight?”

“I was an old lady at three.”

“Come on, old lady. I’ll go with you.”

They walked hand in hand after the two little girls. New Orleans was a stoop-sitting kind of place, a place where the first puff of cool evening air was savored gratefully by the thousands of lungs that had waited patiently all day for it to arrive. Tonight, old people sat together reminiscing, and young people made their own memories, all in plain sight of their neighbors.

There was nothing special about Belinda’s neighborhood. Some of the small houses were well cared for, with neatly trimmed lawns and fresh coats of paint. Others showed an absence of hope and energy. The worst example was a block and a half away, on a wide corner lot. They stood in front of it and watched Amy and her sister cross the street, scamper through yards and up to a porch overflowing with children.

“This is the saddest house on the street,” Belinda said.

Phillip turned his attention to the house in question. “Why do you say that?”

“Because it’s got the most potential, but it’s been empty as long as I’ve been living here. It used to be for sale. Probably still is, but nobody wants to do the work to put up another sign. There were squatters here last month, before the cops ran them off. But they’ll be back. Rain’ll pour in through the broken windows, and pretty soon the wood’ll rot through. The city’ll condemn it and take it down, and then there’ll be a vacant lot here to dump trash on. And nobody’ll build.”

Phillip wasn’t attached to houses. As long as he had a roof over his head, he was content. He never stayed anywhere long enough to care about more. But he imagined that Belinda’s description of things to come was accurate, and it
seemed a shame. The house had once been the finest on the block, two-story, with elaborate cast-iron grillwork defining wide double galleries.

“Whoever built this house had dreams,” Belinda said.

“What do you mean?”

“See all that iron lace? You don’t see much of that on this street. A woman built this house. A strong woman who knew what she wanted.”

He put his arms around her and rested his chin against her ear. “You’re guessing? Or do you know the history?”

“You just have to look at the house to know.”

“Maybe it just takes a strong woman with a strong imagination to see it.”

“It takes a strong woman to make dreams come true.”

He thought of the strong woman he had met this evening. “I got the strangest phone call today.”

She turned so she could see his face. “Did you?”

Thunder rolled across the sky, drowning out the possibility of a reply. As they stood there waiting for it to pass, the first raindrops began to fall. He tugged her hand, and they loped back toward her house.

On her porch, he shook his head and sent raindrops flying. Then he put his arms around her again.

“It looks like I might be staying around for a while.”

“And just where do you think you’ll be living if you do?”

“I was thinking about here. If you’ll have me.”

She didn’t say yes, because she didn’t have to. Phillip knew he was welcome. More was unspoken than spoken between them, but some things were perfectly clear.

“So tell me about that call,” she said.

“I’ll tell you about it inside.”

“You do that, ’cause it’s getting cold out here, and your arms aren’t warm enough to take care of it.”

“They’re not?” He grinned down at her. “You’re sure about that?” He lowered his head and nuzzled her cheek until she sighed in defeat. Her lips were soft against his.

There had been other women in his life. More than he could probably remember. But none of them had been as seductive as this one. As her body melted into his, he listened to the New Orleans rain, and he thought he might not mind listening to it for a while longer.

A
urore chose the morning room for her first session with Phillip. The room was airy and open, warmed by sunlight and cooled by a soft breeze. There was a comfortable round table where they could sit, he with his notebook in hand and she with the one cup of real coffee she was allowed every day. As she spoke, she would hear birds outside the windows, and they would remind her that she was seventy-seven and the events she described had happened long ago.

She was ready by the time he arrived. She wore a comfortable lavender dress and no jewelry, hoping she could set a casual tone. But inside, she felt anything but casual.

When Phillip walked into the room, she was captivated once again by how handsome and confident he was. He wore a white shirt and a dark jacket, but no tie today, as if he planned to get right down to work and had no time to stand on ceremony. He carried a tape recorder, and held it up as he entered, as if in question.

“Yes,” she said. “I think that’s a good idea.”

He seemed surprised that she hadn’t put up a fight. “I’m glad. It will make things easier for me. But I’ll still be taking notes.”

“You can plug it in over here.”

He crossed the room and began to set up the recorder. “I’ll give you the tapes when I’m all finished.”

That wouldn’t be necessary, but she wasn’t going to explain that now. “I’ve asked Lily to bring us a pot of coffee and a plate of her calas. Have you had them before?”

He was bent over the electrical outlet. “Don’t think so.”

“They’re rice cakes. When I was a little girl they were sold in the Vieux Carré by women in bright tignons who carried them in woven willow baskets that they balanced on their heads. Sometimes I would shop at the French Market with our cook, and if I was particularly good, she would buy me one as a treat.”

“It sounds like a real piece of old New Orleans.”

“A piece I’m not really allowed to eat anymore, but sometimes Lily indulges me.”

“Do you do that often?”

“What?”

“Break the rules that were made to protect you?”

She laughed. “As often as I can. At my age, there’s very little to protect.” When he straightened and looked at her, she added, “May I call you Phillip? It seems easier. And I’d like you to call me Aurore. Almost no one does anymore. Most of my close friends are already dead, and the next generation is so afraid I’ll be offended without a title.”

He didn’t answer, he just smiled, as if she had asked the impossible and he was too polite to say so.

“Have you thought about how you’d like to start?” he asked.

She had thought of little else. She still wasn’t sure. “Perhaps
we can ease into it. Do you have questions you’d like to ask? Background? That sort of thing?”

“I’m a man with a million questions.”

“Good. I’ll try to be the woman with an answer or two.”

Lily, dark-skinned, white-haired, and too thin to look as if she enjoyed her own cooking, arrived with a platter of golden brown calas dusted liberally with confectioner’s sugar. She set them on the table and returned in a moment with a coffee service featuring a tall enameled pot, which she set on the table. “One,” she told Aurore firmly. “And one cup of coffee. I’ll be counting.” She left with a swish of her white nylon uniform.

“She means it,” Aurore said.

“Who hired who?”

“It’s a draw. We suit each other. I don’t listen to her, and she doesn’t listen to me.”

“Sort of like Mammy in
Gone with the Wind.
”

“Nothing like it. She does her job well, and I pay her well. We have nothing but respect for each other.”

“And at the end of the day, she probably goes home to a street without a white face on it.”

“If that’s true, I suspect it’s a tremendous relief, after taking care of me all day.”

He settled himself across the table from her. She poured him coffee. The stream wavered in rhythm to the tremor of her hands. “How do you take it?”

“Black.”

She smiled. “Segregation at the breakfast table, as well as everywhere else. I take mine white.”

His smile was a reluctant ray of sunshine. “So, what do I know about you already?”

“Have a cala.” She passed him a plate and a napkin, and edged the platter in his direction.

He helped himself. “I suspect you have something to prove here. That as your life winds to a close, you want to make a statement about who you were. And the statement is as important as your life story.”

“And the statement is?”

“That you were different from others of your class. That for this time and this place, you were a liberal. Am I correct?”

“Absolutely not.”

He worked on the cala, watching her as he did. “All right. What do I really know? Facts, not guesses.”

This answer interested her immensely. She poured milk into her cup and stirred. “What do you know, Phillip?”

“Not much yet, since I haven’t had time to do research. Gulf Coast Shipping is one of the city’s oldest and most well-established companies. I believe it was your ancestors who started it, not your husband’s, and that you were largely responsible for making it a million-dollar enterprise.”

“That, like everything else, is only part of the truth. Henry kept our heads above water for the first years of our marriage.” She laughed. “A good thing for a shipping company.”

“Henry was your husband?”

“Yes.”

“You had two children. Your youngest son is the state senator Ferris Gerritsen, and your oldest, Hugh, was a Catholic priest who was killed last year in Bonne Chance.”

She wasn’t smiling now. “Yes.” She waited for him to say more about that, but he didn’t.

“Do you have grandchildren?”

“A granddaughter. Her name is Dawn.”

“Does she live nearby?”

“She’s in England now, on an assignment. She’s a journalist, too, a photojournalist.”

“Oh? What’s she covering?”

“British musical groups, I believe. She’s in Liverpool.”

He was jotting down notes. He hadn’t turned on the tape recorder, as if he knew they were only marking time.

“Other living relatives?” he asked.

“Only some very distant ones that I haven’t seen in decades.”

“And that’s about all I know.” He looked up, squarely meeting her eyes. “Except that your son has consistently taken stands against integration, and he’s popular with his constituents because of it. There’s talk he may run for governor in the next race, and if he does, he’ll probably win.”

“That could happen. Or something might happen to prevent it.”

“Would you prefer one over the other?”

“Yes.”

“Which one?”

“The one that’s best for Louisiana.”

“And the hedging begins.”

She nodded. “Perhaps that’s because I don’t want to talk about Ferris. I suppose it might seem as if he’s the key to my asking you here. You might even believe that I’m trying to prove to the world that I’m not like my son. But that’s not what this is about at all.”

He tapped his pen against the stenographer’s pad in front of him. “Okay,” he said at last. “What is it about?”

“You haven’t asked me anything about my parents.”

“Is that where you’d like to start?”

She wanted to tell him that she didn’t want to start at all,
but that would require as much explanation as her life story. “No, I suppose it begins with my grandfather. His name was Antoine Friloux, and he was a Creole gentleman in the classic mold. With one exception. He was a talented businessman in a class that viewed work as something that others should do. Grand-père Antoine began Gulf Coast Shipping, although it was called Gulf Coast Steamship in those days. He was a rich man who became richer with every investment he made.”

He waited for her to go on, and when she didn’t, he turned on the tape recorder. “He was your mother’s father?”

“Yes. Perhaps if he’d had a son, none of what I’m about to tell you would ever have happened.”

Phillip settled back in his chair, propping his pad on the table’s edge. “And why is that?”

But she didn’t answer directly. As she had hoped, the story seemed to grow inside her, and she knew, for the first time, that she would be able to tell it all.

“There’s something you need to know,” she said.

“What’s that?”

“In order to understand my story, you have to understand the story of a man named Raphael.” She looked up at him and waited for his answer.

“And who was he?”

Again she didn’t answer directly. “Our stories are entwined, mine and Raphael’s. I can’t tell one without the other.”

“All right.”

“Have you seen much of Louisiana, Phillip?”

He shook his head.

“At the very south of the state, there’s a barrier island called Grand Isle. At the end of the last century, people of wealth used to go there to spend their summers. We went there
when I was a child. A young child. My mother was…ill, and there was hope that the climate there would make her better.”

“That seems like a good place to begin.”

She met his eyes, but she didn’t smile. “It is. Because everything else I’ll tell you is connected to that summer in 1893.”