Rising Tides (12 page)

There were enough francs to last three or four months, the diamond stickpin, which she could pawn to get her through an extra month or two, and a photograph of a lovely dark-eyed woman who had carefully penned Mamie across the corner. Nicky had known Clarence all her life, but he had never mentioned the woman or the photograph. Nicky made sure it was placed in his casket, along with locks of her hair and Phillip’s, and three of Clarence’s favorite recordings.

A month after his death, she awoke from a malaise of grief and knew that she had to do something quickly to support her son. Clarence’s letter had contained a warning. She was to be very careful if she returned to the United States. Clarence had strongly believed that he had removed her from harm’s way when he brought her to Paris. She should remain Nicky Valentine, not Nicolette Cantrelle, no matter what else she did.

She didn’t want to return to Chicago. What money she had wouldn’t stretch far enough for tickets on a ship home and a place to stay once she and Phillip reached the U.S. And since she had no proof that she was Rafe’s daughter, she suspected that approaching anyone who had been connected to her father would be useless. Paris was her home, and the French were her adopted people. Now she had only to find a job.

That turned out to be more difficult than she had imagined. Those club owners who knew her claimed they weren’t interested in a new hostess. They made excuses, but she sensed that in their minds, she was still the bouncy ingenue of Les Américains. Those who didn’t know her weren’t even willing to give her a trial. The wave of affection for American Negroes had already peaked.

The francs continued to disappear, even though she hoarded them with a Frenchwoman’s parsimony. She applied for a variety of jobs and found one as a shopgirl in a bakery. But the small amount she earned barely covered what she had to spend for Phillip’s care. She found a garret in a seedier section of Montmartre, where the rent was only half as much as Clarence’s. But despite the move, her francs dwindled and her anxiety grew.

One evening, after she put Phillip to bed for the night, she rearranged storage boxes under the eaves. A rat had chewed through several before making itself known. She had trapped
the rat—the first of many, she was afraid—and disposed of it. Now she was assessing the damage.

She opened the first box. It was filled with books, none of which looked much the worse for the experience. The second contained scarves and handbags. She removed a filigreed silver mesh bag and remembered the night she had last carried it, the night she had sung her warning to Gerard. She opened it and stared at the slip of paper that was still inside. Then she closed it and went to the humidor to count her francs.

The following night, a widow in the apartment below watched Phillip. Nicky squeezed him tightly before giving him over. He smiled, as if to wish her luck. Her own smile was a great deal less confident.

She had taken the day off to alter the gown she wore. Clarence had given it to her on her nineteenth birthday. Of gold lace with long fringes of beads, it was her most eye-catching outfit, but the neckline was demure and the length several inches too long. With great care, she had adapted both, until now it hung seductively from beaded shoulder straps and caressed her legs just below her knees. She wore bangle bracelets and sparkling earrings that dangled like clusters of grapes. Her lipstick was a vivid red, and she had rouged her cheeks.

Using precious francs, she arrived by taxi at an address just blocks from the Folies-Bergere. Bruno Brunet hadn’t seemed surprised to hear from her. When she walked through the door and found him waiting, she gave only a listless, disinterested smile.

“Ah, much more what I had hoped for,” he said, pulling out a chair for her. “Completely charming.”

She glanced around the nightclub, which, to its credit, was large and surprisingly airy. She would not have come here if she weren’t desperate. She knew that Brunet’s was the kind of
place where working-class men came to find women. Neither Americans nor wealthy Frenchmen would find much of interest here. Couples on the dance floor moved slowly to the flat notes of a bored quintet who played strictly on the beat. Brunet probably paid the dancers to make the place look alive.

“What kind of money are we talking about?” she asked. “Because I don’t want to waste my time.”

“I’ll pay you what you make in the
boulangerie.
” He paused for a moment. “Only I’ll pay for one night what you make in a week.”

She rose, unfolding from the chair with calculated seductive grace. She wasn’t surprised that he had checked his facts. “So you know something about me. So what? That just shows you’re interested.”

“I’m interested. What exactly are you selling?” He took her arm so she wouldn’t walk away. His fingers pressed into her flesh.

“Exactly what you want me to sell,” she said, looking down at him. “Only not and never to you, Brunet. To the people out there who come to hear me.” She motioned to the nearly empty tables. “I’ll sell sex, but only in my music. I’ll sing hot enough to make their greasy hair curl and I’ll pack this place. But if you ever try to touch me, I’ll walk out.”

He shrugged carelessly. His hand dropped to his side. “Too bad. I might have paid more.”

“You’ll pay more. In six weeks, when business is roaring, I’ll take what I make at the bakery, but not for a night. I’ll take it for every hour I spend here. And I’ll take a percentage of every bottle of champagne you sell.”

“Six weeks?” He raised a brow.

“If I decide to stay that long.”

“You won’t stay a week if my customers don’t like you. I’ll find someone better.”

“I’ll need a real band. No singer’s good enough to make up for that noise.” She inclined her head toward the stage.

“You can choose your own, if I decide I want you after all.”

“Oh?”

“I need my—how do you Americans say it—my memory freshened?”

“I can do that.”

He motioned to the front.

When the band had finished their selection, she introduced herself. There wasn’t a molecule of interest among them, not even when she explained that this was their audition, as well, since she would need a band if she took the job. They claimed to be unacquainted with the song she had chosen until she hummed a few bars. Then the pianist grudgingly nodded, and the others lifted their instruments to follow along.

She took her place in front of them and waited for the introduction. When they had finished, she turned to them.
“Assez!”
She continued, still in French, “Play it right and play it in tune, or I swear I’ll come back there and show you how.”

For a moment, she thought they might leave the stage. The pianist muttered, but not loudly enough for her to hear. Now, to a man, they knew that her French was excellent and her ear even better. They started again and surprised her.

“Good,” she said. “Very, very good.”

She turned back to the front. No one in the audience was paying attention to the music or the lack of it. Two couples hadn’t stopped dancing during the lull. They were plastered so close together that parting them would require the precision of a surgeon. A middle-aged man in a black beret sat in full view at the closest table, his hand poised at his crotch.

She swallowed her disgust and took a deep breath. She began the lyrics to “Someone To Watch Over Me,” sustaining tones to wring emotion from each phrase. She liked the song; it had been a sensation not too long before. But she could have picked nearly anything slow and potentially provocative. It wasn’t the song, but her interpretation, that would carry this moment.

There was a conscious sensuality in her presentation. She moved as she sang, with a seductive sway that thrust her hips and breasts forward in a rhythmic appeal. She lightly caressed her hips with her palms as she moved. The man in the beret massaged his cock and rolled his eyes in pleasure.

She let herself think of Clarence only once, Clarence who had been one of the finest ragtime and jazz pianists of his generation. Clarence who had never prostituted his talent, who had performed only when he could play exactly what and the way he chose. Then she thought of Phillip, and she thrust out her breasts more provocatively.

By the time she finished, the old man had reached his climax, the band was almost swinging, and Bruno Brunet had signaled that she should follow him to his office.

B
en found Dawn late in the afternoon, even though she’d left no trail to follow. The door to the
garconnière
was closed, but the knob turned when he tried it. She was sitting cross-legged on the floor, sifting through the contents of an old trunk, and she didn’t look up when he walked in. She had pried open the windows, but the heat was so intense it seemed like a third presence in the room.

“How’d you know where I’d be?” she asked. “Or are you here to do some snooping of your own?”

“I remembered the woman I used to know, the one who always retreated to lick her wounds in private. I don’t think you’ve changed as much as you pretend.”

“What wounds am I supposed to be licking?”

“That seems obvious. Your family’s falling apart in front of your eyes.”

“Now that’s interesting.” She looked up, just one brief glance, then went back to work.

“You don’t believe the story Phillip told you?”

“Did I say that?” She shook her head. “You’ve lost a journalist’s instincts, Ben. Power does that to people. It makes them
think they understand what they don’t. I suggest you quit trying to run
Mother Lode
and get back to the grassroots.”

“What do you believe?”

“I believe in the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. I believe that Nicky is my aunt, world without end, amen.”

“Have you talked to her?”

“She showed me a locket my grandmother gave her as a child. But she didn’t know
Grandmère
was her mother. Not until today.”

He heard the small catch in her voice. “How do you feel about that?”

She sorted through some photographs, making two piles in front of her before she spoke. “Is this where my secret racism is supposed to slip out? What do you want to hear? That I’m upset a black woman is related to me? I’ll tell you the truth, and you can do anything with it you want. Having Nicky as my aunt is a tremendous honor. Having Phillip as my cousin could be a challenge. But I’m up to it.”

He crossed the room and squatted beside her. “Look, I’m not here to pass judgment. I just thought you might need to talk to somebody.”

“What makes you think that somebody might be you?”

“The field of candidates is fairly limited. And we used to be friends.”

“I don’t think we were ever friends.”

He dropped his hand and stood, but he didn’t move away. “The field of candidates is still limited.”

She went back to shuffling through photographs. “Do you need to talk? Have you found something in my uncle’s journal?”

“No great revelations. The writing’s small and faded, and it’s taking me time to decipher it. So far, I’ve learned more
than I ever wanted to know about the Catholic school system in New Orleans and Father Hugh’s struggles to be top in his class.”

“He was tops in everything he ever did.”

“But he had to work hard to get there, and apparently he was willing to do it from the time he was a little boy. He was almost fanatically loyal to his family, and he wanted to make them proud. I think he adored his mother. There’s almost a reverence in the way he wrote about her.”

“And the others? My father? His father?”

“He was afraid of his father, I think. And he thought your father was a pest. I fell asleep late last night be fore I even reached his adolescence. I’m just getting there now.”

“Well, I guess I got the more interesting story, didn’t I? Who would have expected the letters to lead where they have?”

“How do you feel about your grandmother?”

“I don’t know. On one hand, I understand what she did. She was alone and frightened, and she was a victim of her times. Every time she looked at Nicky, she probably saw the man who had betrayed her. She didn’t even know why, not then.”

“On the other hand, you can’t imagine how a woman could give away her own baby.”

“Not to a man she despised. No. Do you suppose underneath her fury she sensed he would take good care of their child? Or do you think she was so distraught she handed Nicky over like a sack of potatoes?”

“What do you think?”

“I don’t know. That bothers me. If anything bothers me, that’s what does. I always believed in my grand mother.”

“Do you think there are more revelations to come?”

“We have time for my bequests.”

He lowered himself to the dusty floor to lounge at her side. He lifted the top photograph from one of her piles. “What are you doing here?”

“Looking for answers.”

“What’s the significance of the piles?”

“These are people I know. These are people I don’t.”

“Who’s this?”

She squinted at the faded photograph, then laughed a little. “Can’t you tell?”

He liked the laughter. It reminded him of distant nights and a woman with fewer sharp edges. He held the photograph closer. “Father Hugh? What, at fifteen or so? And who, your father?”

“My father’s the one with the biggest fish. No surprise.”

“I never realized you looked so much like Father Hugh.”

“Maybe you were too busy trying to see the differences between us.”

“You never miss a chance, do you?”

“A talent I inherited from my father, the king of the Krewe of Predators.” She handed him a photograph of an older Hugh. She looked even more like her uncle in this one. “My father always said that, priest or not, if Uncle Hugh hadn’t been out of the country when I was conceived, he would have taken a shotgun to him.” She handed him another photograph. “This is my grandfather, Henry Gerritsen. And my grandmother beside him.”

Ben stared at the images of two formally clad, un smiling adults. Aurore Gerritsen had the slender waist and tiny hips of a woman who hadn’t yet borne children. Now, of course, he knew that was only an illusion. Somewhere in the world outside this photograph, a little girl had been growing up without her mother.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen a photograph of my grandparents where
Grandmère
is smiling. Do you see the way my grandfather has his hand on her shoulder? It almost looks like he’s holding her there by force.”

“When do you think this was taken?”

“Fairly early in their marriage. See, her hair is still long. She told me once that she bobbed it just after my father was born. She was one of the first society women in New Orleans to do it, and my grandfather locked her in her room for weeks.”

Ben had determined from Father Hugh’s journal that Henry Gerritsen had been a poor choice for a woman like Aurore. “Nice guy,” he said carefully.

“Apparently not. I’ve heard rumors about him, of course. Little snippets people passed on to me when I was growing up. He drank too much, and gambled. He was the kind of businessman no one else could ever turn their back on. He had grandiose visions of running for political office and taking Louisiana by storm.” She shrugged. “I suppose that’s where my father got his interest in politics. His father was always working behind the scenes. In fact, I think he was appointed to some important committee during the days of Huey Long. Phillip says my grandmother married Henry Gerritsen because she needed his help with Gulf Coast. I imagine she regretted that decision.”

“Do you remember him?”

“I’m not sure. He died when I was little. But some times…” She shook her head. “I don’t know. But with the genes I was bequeathed, let’s hope they settle this nature-nurture controversy in favor of nurture.”

Ben took the next photograph out of her hand, a large, softly tinted studio portrait, and used it to fan himself. “And your nurturing made you the woman you are?”

“My nurturing had its moments.”

“Tell me about them.”

She looked up. “Why?”

“Because you never have. Not really. And now that I’ve been plunged into the middle of the Gerritsen family whirlwind, I’d like to understand.”

“If I never talked about my childhood, it’s because you never wanted to listen.”

“You keep telling me people change.” He held out the photograph. “This is you, right? And your mother?”

“I hate that picture.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s such a lie. Look at us.” She took the photograph and held it up as evidence. “Perfect mother and daughter, in prim blue sailor dresses and patent-leather shoes. I’ve got a red bow in my hair, and mother has hers tied back with a red ribbon. What’s the message there? That we’re two of a kind? That we lived in harmony?”

“I think the message is just that you’re mother and daughter.”

She sent the photograph spinning back into the trunk. “I think Daddy had that taken for one of his campaigns.”

“I was watching your mother’s face this morning as she maneuvered your father out of the room. I got the feeling that she wants your understanding and support.”

“Like hell.”

“Why do you hate her?”

“I don’t hate her. She doesn’t exist for me in any significant way.”

“Your anger seems significant.”

“You know, this is very strange, coming from you. I’ve
never heard you discuss feelings before. Are you warming up with everybody else’s?”

He turned to his side and stretched his legs out. “In my family, talking about feelings was like dancing or drinking, something the heathen did and the saved only wanted to.”

“And when did you start doing what you wanted?”

“When a woman made me see the truth.”

“Oh, please!”

“Not you, Dawn.”

“Of course it wasn’t,” she said after a moment. “I should have known better. I couldn’t make you see the nose in front of your face.”

“I wish you’d stayed around long enough to try.”

She looked away. “That wasn’t my responsibility.”

“Is that why you left? Because you didn’t feel any responsibility to me or to us?”

“No. It was simpler than that. I ran because I didn’t want to think about what had happened to Uncle Hugh or what I might have been able to do to stop it. I loved him.”

He wanted to touch her. He struggled to put the same kind of comfort in his voice. “I know you did.”

“I’ve searched my heart for a year. Since the moment Uncle Hugh died. Have you searched yours for even a minute? Have you ever asked yourself if you learned any of the things Uncle Hugh tried to teach you?”

“You haven’t cornered the market on reflection.”

She put the pile of photographs she could identify back in the trunk and closed the lid. Her movements were jerky, as if her brain and body were no longer smoothly connected. When she gathered up the other pile and stood, he stood, too.

“I’m done. I’ve got what I came for,” she said.

“And I got some of what
I
came for.”

Her eyes sparkled with anger. “And what was that?”

“Answers.”

“Next time, do me the courtesy of sharing the questions.”

Despite his best instincts, he couldn’t let the after noon end this way. This time he made no pretense of brushing away a lock of hair. He touched her cheek, petal-soft and lightly dewed from the heat. “I’ll tell you one. I came to find out if there was anything left between us.”

“Maybe something’s left, but the names for it aren’t very pretty.”

He slid his fingers into the damp hair above her ear. She didn’t move away, almost as if she were daring him. He could just detect the shallow rise and fall of her breasts under the thin cotton of her shirt and the beads of perspiration nestled where the top two buttons were unfastened.

“Do you ever think about the way lovemaking used to be between us?” he asked.

Her eyes narrowed. “All the time. I can’t help my self. I never think about anything else.”

He smiled. “I think about it a lot.”

“My mother always did say a man is nothing more than a sex organ on two legs.”

He wove his fingers deeper into her hair. “At least we get credit for having legs, too.”

“And wonderfully handy they are, for running away after the sex is over.”

“You’re the one who ran.”

“You’re the one who opened the door and gave me the shove.”

“My worst mistake.” He pulled her slowly toward him. When she tried to turn her head, he cradled it against his shoulder.

He wrapped his arms around her and held her against him. He wanted to kiss her, had wanted to ever since he saw her standing under the water oaks in her vinyl slicker. But even then, he had wanted to hold her more.

She stiffened, as if she were expecting him to make demands.

“I should have held you after your uncle died,” he said against her hair. “No matter what else was between us, I should have held you.”

She wrenched herself from his arms. “I don’t need to be held, Ben. Not by you. If that’s what you came for, you’re wasting your time. And if you need answers, find them somewhere else. There aren’t any answers in the whole state of Louisiana that would be good enough for you.”

“There’s your grandmother’s will. Maybe there’s an answer of sorts there.”

She turned away, as if she couldn’t bear the sight of him another moment. “Here’s hoping it puts you on the road back to California.”

She was still standing with her back to him when Ben closed the
garconnière
door behind him. The air was as thick and unappealing as sweat, and he knew the house wouldn’t be any cooler. He followed a path to the beach and watched the waves slapping and remolding the shoreline in the same spot where he had watched the fishermen on his first day on the island.

The sun had nearly set, and no one was around when he finally returned to the cottage. He filled a plate from the food that was still on the stove, then headed upstairs to take up the next part of Father Hugh’s journal.

He hadn’t been completely honest with Dawn. He hadn’t told her how strange it felt to be reading the boy hood secrets of a man he had nearly worshiped. He wondered if that was the
reason Aurore had willed the journal to them. Had she hoped he would read it and see that Father Hugh had been nothing but a man?

If she had, the gesture had been wasted. Ben had al ways known that Hugh Gerritsen was fallible, that he had his own fears, his own conflicts. Father Hugh had shared his faults easily, just as he had shared the courageous and most honorable parts of himself. He had never been a saint, but that had made him even more appealing, and even more worthwhile to know.