Rising Tides (27 page)

He didn’t set the little girl down, as she had hoped. He took her coat off a chair and slipped it over her arms as he held her. Aurore was left with no choice but to put on her own and wrap a scarf around her neck.

The night air chilled her. Tendrils of fog wove between buildings and over the silent street that ran along the riverfront. Somewhere in the far distance, she heard the screeching of derricks as a ship was unloaded, but near Gulf Coast, the street and warehouses were deserted.

“I want to see a ship,” Dawn said.

“That’s what we’ll do,” Henry told her.

“No ships are in nearby,” Aurore said. “Most of the wharves are closed, and it’s cold. Maybe we should wait until tomorrow, when the sun’s out and I’m not wearing high heels.”

Henry ignored her and started toward the wharf. Through the fog, she could see the viaduct that led to the Canal Street Ferry. A car passed, then another, but the street, usually teeming with life, was eerily empty after the cars disappeared from view.

During the last century, the Bienville Street Wharf, now a modern complex of steel sheds, had been a sugar landing. All that remained of those days was the skeleton of the old American Sugar refining plant. Once the levee had been covered with old sugar sheds, and even at night the shouts of stevedores had been a harmonious accompaniment to the melody of the river.

Tonight there was silence. As they crossed the tracks, even the railroad yards seemed empty of life.

“Do you know about the
Louisiana?
It was one of the Morgan Line’s ships,” Henry told Dawn.

Aurore shivered. Henry’s voice was silky-smooth, and the
question was one any grandfather might ask his grandchild. But she sensed menace in every word.

“No,” Dawn said.

“Oh, she was a big ship, a fine ship. She went down over there.” He pointed beyond them to the river, and Dawn turned to look.

“Where’d she go?”

“The bottom of the river. It’s deep there. Some say more than a hundred feet. That’s taller than nearly any building in the city.”

“Oh.” Dawn sounded impressed.

“They tried to raise her after she sank, and they nearly had her. But at the last minute the hoists snapped, and she slid into the channel. The river doesn’t give up her dead, Dawn. She holds them to her and keeps them forever.”

“Henry!” Aurore grabbed his arm, but he shook her off. “Nobody was killed when the
Louisiana
went down,” she said.

“But people have died on the river.”

“Stop it! You’re going to scare her.”

“I wouldn’t want to do that.”

“I want you to give her to me and let me take her home. This is foolish. She’s going to catch cold out here.”

“I want to see where the ship went down,” Dawn said.

“She has more courage than you do,” Henry told Aurore. He kept walking, although his breathing was la bored. Dawn was small, but still a burden over such a distance.

“Let me carry her, then,” Aurore pleaded. “You’re tired.”

“We’re almost there.”

Henry weaved his way around sheds and obstacles with the skill of one long experienced on the riverfront. He ducked under a cable that barred access to the riverside platform running
in front of the wharf and followed a path through kegs, crates and machinery. She had been praying that a night watchman might stop them, but no one was in sight. At the edge of the platform, Henry leaned against a post, clutching Dawn to his chest. Aurore was afraid to move too close, for fear he might drop her.

“Nothing’s here,” Aurore said. “Now we’d better go before the watchman finds us.”

“Where’s the ‘ousisana?” Dawn asked.

“Do you know why I brought her here?” Henry ignored Dawn’s question and addressed his wife.

“Please! Put her down over here,” Aurore said. “I don’t like her so close to the water at night like this.”

“Don’t you? What else don’t you like, Rory? What about lying? Is that something you like?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She edged a little closer.

“I’m talking about lying. About lying to your own husband.”

“I don’t lie.” She edged closer still. “Maybe we just need to talk more often to clear up misunderstandings.”

“Like who Ferris’s father is?”

She stood very still. “Henry, have you been drinking? You are Ferris’s father.”

“Is that so?” He shifted his weight a little and balanced Dawn at the platform’s edge. “You must think I’m a complete fool.”

“No! It’s the truth. Think about it. He favors you. His eyes are the same color as yours. He’s talented in the same ways that you are.” She moved a little closer.

“He is not my son.”

“But he is! And you’ve been proud of him since the day he
was born. He’s your son in a way that he’s never been mine. It’s a little thing that he supported Morrison. He was just trying to show you that he could make his own decisions, just the way you taught him.” She searched wildly for anything she might be able to say to calm and convince him.

“Maestri lost tonight.”

“You can’t know that already. Maybe the early votes indicated—”

“Morrison won. Ferris won.”

“Dawn’s your granddaughter.” She stepped a little closer, but she was still an arm’s length from them both. “Ferris is your son, and Dawn’s your granddaughter. Put her down, Henry. Be angry at me, if you have to be angry at someone, but don’t punish her. You aren’t that cruel. I know you aren’t. You would never hurt a child.”

Dawn began to struggle. She might not understand exactly what was being said, but she did understand the underlying tone.

Henry pushed himself away from the pillar and swayed toward the water. “Wouldn’t I?” he asked, with triumph in his voice. “You’re wrong there, Rory. I would, and I have. I killed your daughter.”

She gasped. Dawn continued to struggle, and when Henry wouldn’t let her down, she began to wail.

“You don’t know what you’re saying,” Aurore said. “Put her down. Then we’ll talk.”

“Didn’t you ever wonder why your daughter and that creature who fathered her died in the riot in Chicago? There were thousands of niggers in that city, but your lover and daughter were among the few to die. Didn’t you ever wonder?”

She was afraid to move or to admit that she
had
wondered. Endlessly.

He swayed toward the water, and Dawn wailed louder. “The men who work for me have many talents,” Henry said. “One of them shot your Rafe point-blank and watched him die. Then he and his friend made sure the little girl was dead, too.”

“No…”

“I wasn’t there, but it gave me such pleasure. And then you gave birth to another child. I wondered about him. You were down on Grand Isle when the church was dedicated, and so was your lover. When the boy was born, I wondered if he was mine. But he looked a little like me, and I thought…”

She was gripped by horror. She couldn’t think about what he’d revealed. She could only plead with him. “Put her down, Henry.” She began to sob.

“‘Put her down, Henry,’” he repeated, imitating her. “Why should I, Rory? Ferris defeated me tonight, the little bastard. He proved he’s not my son, and this child isn’t my granddaughter.”

“Grandmère!”
Dawn made a desperate attempt to flee her grandfather’s arms. She flung herself toward her grandmother and succeeded in loosening Henry’s grip. Henry, caught off balance, swayed toward Aurore. Aurore lunged toward Dawn and grabbed her, jerking the screaming child from Henry’s arms.

He launched himself toward them and succeeded in grabbing Aurore’s scarf, but his foot caught on an exposed piling. As he tried to right himself, he stumbled toward the water, grabbing at the air for balance, but there was none to be found. He fell with a splash, and the river closed over him.

Aurore staggered away from the edge, clutching Dawn to her chest.

“Rory!” The water boiled angrily as Henry surfaced and
thrashed toward the platform. She closed her eyes. “Hush, Dawn. Hush!”

“Rory!”

The child in Aurore’s arms was past consolation. Dawn’s screams tore at Aurore’s heart. She forced her eyes open and saw a hand clinging to the platform’s edge. She found herself moving closer, although Dawn fought against it. She could see Henry’s entire body struggling against the current, but he had never learned to use the water to his advantage. He had never, even in his youth, learned how to swim.

As she watched, he managed to grab the platform with both hands. He was swept parallel to it, and he flung an arm along its edge, clawing at the planks.

She saw Rafe in his last moments, struggling against an enemy he couldn’t defeat. She stepped closer, and for a moment Henry’s face was exposed and she could see into his fear-crazed eyes. She raised her foot and stabbed the sharp heel of her shoe into his hand.

He screamed frantically in the seconds before he could scream no more. Then there was only a slight eddy as the current swept him under and carried his body downriver.

“Hush.” Aurore stepped away from the edge. “Hush. It’s all right, sweetheart. It’s all right, Nicky.”

The child in her arms, not her daughter but nearly as precious, continued to scream. Aurore fell to her knees, still clasping Dawn against her.

At the completion of his rounds, the watchman found a woman’s scarf on the riverfront platform in front of the wharf. He deposited it in a trash barrel and signed off for the night.

D
awn felt a hand enclosing hers. The room was stifling, and she found it hard to catch her breath. Her eyes were closed, but light pulsed against her retinas anyway. Somewhere in the distance, a siren wailed, growing louder and louder.

“Put your head between your legs.” She could feel someone pushing her head forward to rest in the folds of her skirt. “Take a deep breath, Dawn. Somebody get her a glass of water.”

The siren began to recede, and the light dimmed. Her stomach clenched, and for a moment she fought nausea. She swallowed once, then again, glad she still could.

“Just breathe deep.” She recognized the voice as Ben’s. Something cool touched the back of her neck. She tried to open her eyes, but the light hurt them. “Don’t sit up until you’re sure you can,” he said.

She began to cry. Quietly, so that no one would try to comfort her. She felt Ben’s arm around her shoulders. Her temperature had plummeted. The room was no longer hot, and although she wanted to push him away, she appreciated the warmth of his body. A softer hand stroked her bare knee,
and a woman murmured comforting words. For a moment she thought it was Peli; then she realized it was her mother.

“My poor sweetheart,” Cappy said. “Poor, poor girl. I never knew. I never even suspected.”

“It’s a goddamned lie!”

“Just shut up, Senator!” Dawn recognized Phillip’s voice.

“That woman’s lying through her teeth! My father’s body was found miles from the Gulf Coast headquarters. He was robbed and beaten while he was walking through the French Market. Somebody shoved him into the river.”

“No one ever knew that for sure,” Cappy said. “That was a guess. A lot more than his wallet was missing by the time the river was finished with him.”

Dawn tried to sit up, but Ben gently held her head in place. “It’s true,” she gasped. “It’s true.” She was sobbing audibly now. She struggled to sit up again, and he allowed it this time, but he pulled her to rest against his chest.

“It’s all right,” he whispered. “Take it slow.”

“I remember… I remember.” She saw the river, black as midnight, sucking at her, beckoning her.

“What do you remember?”

“It was dark. Someone held me over the water. It must have been my grandfather. I tried to reach
Grandmère,
but I couldn’t. Then I was in her arms, and some one was screaming. I turned, and I saw the river swallowing…swallowing…” That was all. The memory was a tiny particle of a whole she would never experience again.

“Peli’s just told you what to think!” Ferris said. “This is convenient, isn’t it? You’re terrified of water, so she makes up a story about my father drowning. She’s just trying to—”

“What is she trying to do?” Cappy asked. “Exactly what, Ferris? Why would Peli lie about this? Or your mother, for that
matter? Your father was anything but a saint. And at the end, he died trying to get even with you.”

“My father loved me,” Ferris said. “This is just more lies. He was angry that I supported Morrison, but he would have come around eventually. I was
his
son, his favorite. He wouldn’t have turned on me. He wouldn’t have made up stories—”

“But he wasn’t making up anything,” Pelichere said.

Ferris whirled and pointed his finger at her. “You’re a liar!”

“No.” Pelichere lifted the bell from her lap, and it tinkled softly. “You see, your mother didn’t know who your father was. What your father suspected may have been the truth. When Aurore came back to Grand Isle for the dedication of the bell, she made love to Rafe Cantrelle. She was never sure if you were Rafe’s child or Henry’s. Even when she died, she still wasn’t sure. She saw Henry in you, but Henry, he’d kept you to himself, hadn’t he? You imitated him, but were you really his seed? She never knew. She let Henry raise you because she was so frightened you might be Rafe’s. She was afraid to protest Henry’s plans for you, afraid he would suspect. She tried to protect you the way she hadn’t been able to protect her daughter.”

“I won’t listen anymore!” Ferris strode to Cappy’s side and grabbed her elbow. “We’re getting out of here right now. I don’t give a goddamn about this will. I’ll see you in court, Spencer, if you try to stop me from inheriting my share.”

Cappy shook him off. “I’m not leaving.”

“We’re leaving right now.”

“No. You may be, but I’m staying here with my daughter.”

Dawn straightened. She felt her mother’s hand on hers. She
turned and saw nothing but concern in Cappy’s eyes. “You don’t have to stay.” She squeezed her mother’s hand.

“No one’s going to make me leave here without you.”

Ferris stalked out of the room, leaving silence in his wake.

Spencer followed after a few moments, and the others gathered their things and left, too. Dawn felt Ben withdraw. She didn’t look at him. She was staring at her mother.

“Dawn, I never knew. I never had any idea,” Cappy said. “I noticed the change in you after the election. Believe it or not, I noticed everything about you, right from the beginning. But I didn’t understand children. I thought it was a phase you were going through. I talked to our family doctor, but he said that all children went through periods of being frightened, and that the best thing we could do was ignore it.”

“I had nightmares.” Dawn closed her eyes for a moment. “
Grandmère
would comfort me. She understood.”

“Yes, she would have, wouldn’t she?” Cappy fumbled in her purse for a cigarette. “She was there when your grandfather drowned. But I wasn’t, and she never told me. She let me flounder on, trying to be a mother without knowing what had happened.”

“Were you trying to be a mother?”

Cappy lit her cigarette with a monogrammed lighter. “I was,” she said. “And the harder I tried, the more your grandmother cut me off at the pass. She was always there. She always knew exactly what to do. Everything I did was wrong, and she didn’t even have to tell me. I could see that you preferred her, and nothing I did seemed to make a difference.”

“
You
were my mother.”

“I
am
your mother.” Cappy blew a smoke ring, then another. “But when you were born, I was a spoiled little princess. I didn’t know how to be a wife. I didn’t know how to be a
mother. I needed a mother to teach me, and mine abandoned me because she was furious that I’d married your father. I looked at you, and I saw the end of my life as I’d known it. You cried, and I didn’t know what to do. You got diaper rash, and I knew I’d caused it. I was terrified and so unhappy that all I wanted to do was sleep. Doctors have a name for it now. They call it postpartum depression. But in those days they had a war to worry about.”

“Depression?”

“I didn’t understand it until years later, when I read an article about it in a woman’s magazine. Funny, isn’t it, where revelation can come from?”

“Are you trying to blame your failings on
Grandmère?
”

“It was convenient to blame her when I was too immature to take the blame myself. Your grandmother truly thought you were in danger in my care. You weren’t. I was meeting your needs, although I still had a long way to go before I became mother of the year. I’d hired a woman who had come highly recommended, but she turned out to be incompetent, and I’d fired her the morning your grandmother arrived and took you home. You were napping, so I’d left you with one of the servants while I slipped out to a friend’s house to get some advice. I came back, and your grandmother told me she was taking you. I knew I was a miserable failure, so I let her. But it was the worst thing I could have done. From that day on, you were no longer my child. I visited you.”

“That’s the way I remember my childhood. Getting dressed up so you could visit me.”

“Imagine. Aurore was the one who saw you take your first steps, and I was the one who got to hear about it later.”

“You could have taken me home anytime.”

“By the time I was strong enough to try, you didn’t want to
go. Then I was convinced all over again that I had nothing to offer. Your grandmother criticized any efforts I made, subtly, of course, but I had no faith in my self, and I believed her.”

“I was a replacement for Nicky, and maybe for Uncle Hugh, wasn’t I? That’s why she wanted me.”

“Not entirely. She adored you as much for yourself as anything else.”

Dawn reached for the glass of water someone had put on the table beside her. Her hand was still shaking. Part of her wanted to retreat and think about everything that had been said, but part of her knew she had to discover the truth while she had the chance. “What about after the war, when Daddy came back?”

“Your father saw what a pathetic excuse for a parent I was and convinced me that I should turn my considerable talents toward his political career. So I threw my self into that, even though it took me further away from you. It was something I could do, something I knew I could be good at. And I have been.”

Dawn was feeling calmer, although her hands still trembled. “Daddy…” Her voice trailed off.

“Oh, I don’t think there’s much doubt your father is Henry Gerritsen’s child. He even looks like photographs of Henry at his age. But your grandmother has planted a seed in your father’s head. She’s trying one last time to make him see how little race matters and how destructive his kind of prejudices are. She won’t succeed, but she’s trying.”

“She could have told him this anytime.”

“She’s telling her story the only way she felt she could. It’s more than most of us will ever do.”

“She’s left us here to deal with the mess she made of her life!”

“She was a good woman with some very real flaws. She was no different than the rest of us.”

This was a Cappy Dawn didn’t know. “She hurt you, and you can still say that?”

“I haven’t had time, or made time, to think about my life in years. Aurore’s giving me that gift now. I’m learning things about myself, as well as about her.”

“What are you learning?”

“That I can still be your mother. That I have a life separate from your father’s.”

“If the things that are said here are made public, Daddy’s career could end.”

“That might be for the best.”

“He doesn’t think so.”

Cappy leaned forward and put her hand on Dawn’s knee. “You can’t make him understand anything he doesn’t want to. Worry about yourself now.”

“And who’s going to take care of you?”

Cappy smiled. “I stopped being a spoiled princess a long time ago. I’ll take care of myself. I’ve been doing it for years. And believe it or not, if you need me, I might even be there for you.”

In the days on Grand Isle, the
garconnière
had be come Dawn’s refuge. In the late afternoon, she made her way past the shrubs and the morning-glory vines. Once inside, she flung open the windows. With so little to do, she had cleaned and organized in the afternoons since her arrival. She had even mopped the floors and ruthlessly beaten the carpet in the corner nearest the windows. Now the room was welcoming, and, best of all, she was alone.

She had brought her Pentax to Grand Isle because Aurore
had given it to her. The approaching storm was a photographer’s delight, but she had never been as enthralled by nature as by humanity. She had charted Betsy’s progress with the occasional photo during the past days, but the subjects she was most interested in, the people at the cottage, had been off-limits. The days on Grand Isle had been too private for each person under going the trial of Aurore’s secrets.

Now, if she couldn’t express her pent-up emotions, she would explode. The light filtering in through the windows was as soft and as difficult to contend with as the humid air, but she liked challenges. She needed one now.

She had already formed a photograph in her mind. In the far corner were two dressmaker’s forms, one with the lush curves of a Gibson girl, the other with the straight, no-bosom shape of a twenties flapper. She left them where they were, positioned under a perfect spiderweb that she hadn’t had the heart to sweep away. The web glistened with raindrops blown in from the nearest window, but it remained whole and geometrically perfect.

She found the clothes she wanted in the armoire. She dressed the Gibson girl in her grandmother’s rotting lace and mouse-nibbled velvet. She topped the model with an old-fashioned garden hat whose wide straw brim was blooming with droopy silk flowers.

The flapper became a man. She wondered if the white duck trousers she found in a dresser drawer had once belonged to the grandfather who had been swept to his death in front of her eyes. She carefully adjusted the model so that they would fit over the frame. She added a yellowing shirt and a striped satin waistcoat that was missing all but a solitary brass button. She finished with a navy blue coat and a watch chain—minus the watch—and topped them with a panama hat so stretched out
of shape that it could have accommodated a man with multiple heads.

She was in no hurry to find the perfect angle for her shot. Ordinarily she would have snapped a roll of film quickly, choosing different angles and making her decision as to which was the best in the darkroom. But since she had the remainder of the day, she framed the photograph a hundred different ways in her viewfinder and waited patiently for the ray of sunshine that would make it perfect. Perched on a chair so that the models were positioned exactly under the spiderweb, she focused her lens so that the web itself seemed to be her only objective. She had placed the brim of the hat so that the woman seemed to be fleeing from the man. In return, the sleeve of his coat seemed to reach toward her, as if to beg her to reconsider.

“Caught in a web of deceit.” She spoke to the dress maker’s forms as if they could understand.

The sun glimmered; for the briefest moment, the light shimmered against the rain-dewed web, and she snapped the photograph. She set her camera on the floor. She was finished, absolutely sure that she could shoot a thousand more and not produce another as perfect. But she remained on the chair, staring at her own creations.

The woman was running away, as her grandmother had run from Rafe, and as she herself had run from Ben. The man was reaching toward the woman, but they were both perilously close to entanglement with something menacing and unforeseen.