The Shadows of Foxworth Page 18

  However, although Daniel Thomas obviously had the outgoing personality to enable him to be a good promoter of their properties, he was not what I would even generously call a good-looking man. His best quality was his green eyes, but they were set too closely together, which to me emphasized his slightly crooked nose and thin lips. He had an almost square jaw and prominent jawbones. However, he was loquacious and friendly. Everyone did like him. He had a new joke to tell almost daily and dressed sharply, his clothes always looking right off the rack. With wide shoulders and a height of almost six feet, he could overcome his plain looks and make a good impression on anyone, I thought. He was dedicating a lot of his time to me to do just that.

  Even though I complained to her about him, Doris Munday was careful about what she said about Daniel. Nevertheless, I would have had to be made of stone not to realize how much she disliked working for him. She was the only person he talked down to. He pounced on any error she made, no matter how small, to the point one day of complaining about a comma that should have been a period in a letter he had dictated to a prospective buyer. He made it seem as if the buyer would reject his sales pitch because of that punctuation mistake. I found her off in a corner crying about it. I had duplicated her translation of the shorthand and not made that error. He hadn’t failed to point that out. Lately, he was contrasting her more and more with me, which only made me feel terribly guilty. I debated deliberately making mistakes to help her look better.

  After I had calmed her down, I marched into Daniel’s office, just the way Mama would have to express her indignation. As beautiful as she was, she could draw in the heat of the devil and put a fire behind her eyes that would singe the face of anyone, no matter how powerful and important he or she was in the village.

  He looked up from his desk with that twinkle in his eyes and smiled. Before he could say a word, I began.

  “What you did to Doris just now was not only beneath the behavior of a real gentleman, it was cruel and deplorable. You know she is pregnant and sensitive. Your parents and your sister will be ashamed of you. Your actions betray a streak of meanness that would make a shark jealous,” I said, turned, and walked out before he could respond.

  My heart was pounding, and my face felt like it was on fire. I hurried into the ladies’ powder room to escape. Although I had put on a good show and felt justified in doing so, I was trembling. Daniel would surely go to Yvon to complain. Or he might even go right to Aunt Effie!

  I buried my face in my hands and sat, looking up when I heard the door open and close.

  Here it goes, I thought.

  Doris appeared before me. Had Aunt Effie punished me by firing her?

  “You won’t believe what just happened,” she said.

  “What?” I asked softly, tightening myself for an ugly blow.

  “Daniel Thomas apologized for yelling at me. I was so shocked that I couldn’t speak. I could only nod. He said I could leave an hour earlier today, and once again he apologized. He said he had no excuse except a slight tummy ache that had made him unfairly irritable.”

  “Tummy ache?” She nodded. I couldn’t help it. I started to laugh.

  “What?” she asked, smiling.

  “Men,” I said.

  She lifted her eyebrows, waiting for the rest of it, but all I did was shake my head.

  “Are you all right?” she asked.

  “Yes, yes, I am.”

  When we stepped out, we saw that all the salesmen were in a meeting with Mr. Simon and Aunt Effie. Later, Daniel approached me while Doris was busy writing another letter.

  “Thank you,” he said, and walked away before I could respond.

  It wasn’t until we were on our way home that Yvon told me Daniel had told him I was even more beautiful when I was angry. That was something we both remembered was true about Mama.

  “He asked me if he could continue to make it up to you by taking you to the real estate convention at the Jefferson Hotel Saturday night. I’d take you with Karen, but I forgot about it and have already bought us tickets to a play.”

  “A convention?”

  “Well, it’s a buffet dinner with a couple of speakers talking about the future of Richmond property development. Not the most exciting thing, but you’ll learn a lot. I told him he could ask you as long as he promises not to permit you to drink hard liquor. You could buy a new dress for it,” he added.

  “You want me to go with him?”

  “He’s harmless,” Yvon said, laughing. “Give him another chance.”

  Why was Yvon pushing Daniel on me like this? I wondered. Was he thinking more seriously about Karen? Everything seemed to be happening so fast, but one of the things Aunt Effie had told us on the trip here was that in America things happen a lot faster. Did he then think if I was occupied with someone, especially Daniel, I wouldn’t mind his becoming seriously involved with his sister Karen?

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  A buffet dinner? All those executives? Dropping me into Richmond’s business society like this was like dropping a baby into the ocean to teach her to swim. What if I said stupid things and everyone started laughing at me?

  “I don’t know,” I said again, but with more hesitation in my voice.

  “You should get out now, Marlena,” Yvon said firmly. “I don’t like it that you spend all your free time with Aunt Pauline. It’s very nice of you to care for her and all, but you have yourself to look after, too. We’re an important family here,” he continued, now actually sounding like Aunt Effie and not only repeating her words. “We’ll be involved in charity events, openings of businesses, chamber of commerce events, and whatever. This is no time to be hiding yourself away.”

  “I’m not hiding myself away, Yvon.”

  “You’re afraid of this city. I know it. It’s all so big compared to Villefranche, but we’re just as important as anyone else here, including our royal aunt. I’d like to feel you will be okay, too.”

  He paused and took my hand.

  “Let’s take control of our own lives, Marlena. I can’t do all this if I don’t think you’ll be happy.” He looked into my eyes with such urgency.

  “Okay, Yvon. I’ll go with him.”

  “And buy a new dress with new shoes, too. Do you want me to go along with you?”

  “If you want, but I doubt you know anything about women’s clothing.”

  He laughed. “I have a better idea,” he suddenly said. “I’ll ask Karen to go with you. You’d like that, right?”

  “Of course,” I said.

  “I’m giving you money, too. You haven’t made enough to get the kind of dress you need, and I don’t want us to go hat in hand to Aunt Effie.”

  “Oui, Yvon.” I hugged him. Surely, he’s right again, I thought. He knows so much more than I do. And he’s only doing what Mama and Papa would have wanted him to do, look after me.

  Two days later, I met Karen at Miller & Rhoads.

  “Let’s not pick the first thing we see for you or the first thing the saleslady shows us,” she declared. She was more excited than I was, and she didn’t want this to end quickly.

  We went through the rack of new dresses, holding some up, laughing and spinning around with one or another in hand, which we could see was annoying the two salesladies hovering around us. Finally, I pulled out a dress of rich sequined silk in what the saleslady called Copenhagen blue. It was a one-piece with a shallow lace yoke and collar. The back and front of the waist were finished with groups of fine pin tucks. It had long sleeves and trimmed cuffs with an invisible side closing. The gathered skirt had a wide button-trimmed self-belt.

  When I came out of the dressing room wearing it, Karen’s eyes widened with glee.

  “It’s beautiful on you and so in style.”

  I turned to look at myself. I could hear Mama whispering in my ear: Vanity leads to disaster, Marlena. Humility keeps us safe.

  “I guess it will do,” I said, as if it were little more than a sack.

  “Will do? You’ll command every young man’s eye,” Karen said. “I’m going to want to borrow that.”

  “Absolutely,” I said, laughing. I really liked her and understood why Yvon did, too.

  The saleslady showed us the matching high-heeled shoes. They added at least two inches to my height. I did appear to be much older than I was. However, when I looked at what I would be spending, I saw it ate up everything Yvon had given me less a few pennies. I really felt guilty about it, but I think Karen would have been heartbroken if I decided not to spend it.

  “I wish,” she whispered as we were leaving, “that Yvon had forgotten about his play tickets and we were going together. But,” she sang with a wave of her right hand, “there will be plenty of other times, for sure. N’est-ce pas?”

  “French?”

  “I’ve been studying it. For Yvon,” she said. “I’m going to need your help from time to time.”

  “Absolument,” I said.

  We hugged when we parted, and I headed back to Dawson House.

  Although Aunt Effie claimed she was our legal guardian now, I did not feel I needed her permission to go to the business buffet dinner with Daniel. However, before I could even consider that, she stopped at my bedroom while I was putting away the dress and shoes to tell me she had heard I was attending the convention with Daniel.

  How had she heard? Yvon wouldn’t have asked her permission or told her, would he? It had to be Daniel. But why did everyone at the company believe that Aunt Effie had to know their personal business, too?

  She let me know why it was necessary for her to know by saying, “You realize, of course, that when you are out at social events, especially ones involving government people and businesspeople, you represent Dawson Enterprises, the Dawson family. In fa
ct, whenever you’re in public, even a walk to that park, you are a Dawson.”

  “I’ve never done anything that embarrassed my family,” I said.

  She smirked. “You’ve never had the opportunity. Misbehaving in a backward little French village would hardly qualify. I don’t know what little indiscretions you’ve committed, and frankly, I don’t care. That’s in the past. The present and the future are what we must concern ourselves with.”

  She pulled her shoulders up and stood more erect to continue.

  “You are not to drink hard liquor. You may have a glass of champagne, but only one, and you are not to smoke. If you are asked any questions about our business, you are to say, ‘I haven’t been working there long enough to know.’ Period. Understood?”

  For a few moments, I regretted agreeing to go. She made it sound like I’d be navigating through a swamp. Maybe she was hoping to discourage me from going, I thought.

  She surprised me, however, when she added, “I’d like to see you in your new dress and shoes. I’m not saying I have to approve anything,” she added before I could protest. “I’m just curious as to what you chose. Can you do that?” she asked when I just stared.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Good. I’ll return in ten minutes or so. I look forward to it.”

  She walked off. Was the shell she had so successfully built around herself beginning to crack? I still couldn’t imagine myself feeling anything like family to her, but for the first time since I had met her, I sensed some pain in her. Either no one had offered to take her, or she was ashamed to go by herself. Her life had surely been quite empty, the business not being enough, and perhaps, just perhaps, she saw both Yvon and me as a path to some deeper feelings, not only for us but for herself.

  Give a little, I could hear Mama say. Let out a little more line, and let the timid fish begin to nibble.

  I put on the new dress and even repaired my hair somewhat. While I was gazing at myself in the mirror, she returned. I hadn’t heard her come in. I was doing the forbidden thing. I was admiring myself.

  “Quite appropriate,” I heard her say. “The color is perfect for you.”

  I turned. She continued to look at me and nod.

  “You look more like your mother,” she said. I almost exploded with surprise.

  “How do you know what my mother looked like? Did you meet her? Did my father introduce you?”

  “All in good time,” she said. Before I could ask another question, she walked out.

  I couldn’t wait to share her comment with Yvon. When I heard him coming up the stairs, I rushed out to greet him, wearing my new dress.

  “Wow,” he said. “Maybe I should not have been so quick to give Daniel permission.”

  “Forget this for a moment,” I said, practically gasping, and then I told him what Aunt Effie had said.

  He stared at me, not looking surprised, curious, or upset.

  “Well?” I coaxed.

  He shrugged. “Maybe there was a wedding picture back then. Maybe they met before he left. The dress is beautiful on you. You do look like Mama,” he said. He started away, but I reached out to seize his hand.

  “Papa was angry at her for what happened to Aunt Pauline and the way she had accepted it. He wouldn’t have introduced Mama to her.”

  “We don’t know that, Marlena. We don’t know any of that. You only have the babbling of an—”

  “She wasn’t babbling. I forced it out of her.”

  He sighed deeply. “Stop tormenting yourself. Just enjoy what we have now,” he said, and continued on.

  “But—”

  “I don’t have any answer for you. Forget it,” he ordered.

  “I don’t believe you,” I whispered, more to myself, as he walked away. I watched him go into his room, and then I returned to mine.

  Every day, I felt the light expanding in the Dawson house, inching and creeping toward those shadows.

  Right now, it terrified me to realize they would soon be gone.

  11

  I had read about them in the newspapers that came to Villefranche from Paris, but I had never seen or attended a real gala held in a ballroom, with everyone formally dressed, the men in tuxedos and the women in gowns bedecked with jewels, many wearing tiaras. There were big street parties, of course, but nothing like this in our small village. People would bake and cook their own food. It was as if we were all one big family.

  If I had any doubt that this would be a glamorous event, it was ended when late in the afternoon, hours before he was going to pick me up, Daniel Thomas had a wrist corsage of white roses delivered to the Dawson house, with a card that said, “Please help these flowers look beautiful. Daniel.” I couldn’t help but be excited.

  For the first time since we had arrived here, Aunt Effie looked pleasantly amused. The way she gazed at the corsage gave me the feeling she was dreaming some man had sent it for her or perhaps recalling a time when one had. I wondered if I could venture to ask her if she had ever gone to a gala, even had a formal date, but I was too afraid she would tell me it was none of my business and insert an ugly blotch into this bright and exciting moment.

  Yvon kidded about it. “Well, he’s not as clumsy around women as he appears to be.”

  Aunt Pauline thought it was all so fascinating. She was more excited about it than I was, so I let her carry the corsage box up to my room to watch me prepare to go out.

  “I once almost had a boyfriend,” she suddenly said.

  “Really? How old were you?”

  She thought a moment and then smiled.

  “As old as you.”

  “Well, who was he? How did you meet him? What do you mean by ‘almost’?”

  “His name was Edgar Fish. He took care of my father’s horses, Belle and Poppy. He slept in the barn and was sent on errands to get this or that. I wanted to go with him into the city, but I wasn’t allowed. And he wasn’t allowed to stay in the house long, just long enough to get his orders, deliver whatever it was, and then he had to go. But he always made sure to smile at me first and say, ‘G’day, Miss Pauline. How are you, Miss Pauline?’

  “I’d sneak around and watch him care for Belle and Poppy, brush them down and feed them. Sometimes he let me brush them, and while I watched him, he told me stories about where he grew up. He said when his sister was eleven, she had to go live and work in a house in Alexandria. There were too many mouths to feed.

  “When I came back into the house, Effie said I smelled from the horses and told my father what I had been doing, and then my father sent him away and hired an older man, Mr. Longstreet, who was old enough to be Edgar’s father. He could have been,” she said, nodding. “He was African, too.”

  I turned. “Edgar was an African boy?”

  “I liked his eyes. They were like candles sometimes.”

  I laughed to myself imagining Aunt Effie’s fears and outrage. What would happen to the precious Dawson name?

  “The man I’m going with is not exactly my boyfriend, Aunt Pauline. He’s okay,” I said, “but he’s not what I want in a boyfriend, a real boyfriend.”

  “Oh,” Aunt Pauline said. She laughed. “I know what you want.”

  “What’s that, Aunt Pauline?”

  “You want someone with sweet lips,” she said. Her eyes were wide and bright with the idea.

  I started to laugh and then stopped. “Did Edgar have sweet lips?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Did you tell Aunt Effie that?”

  “No. Effie doesn’t know what sweet lips are.”

  I laughed. “I think you’re right,” I said.

  I decided to wear Mama’s pearl necklace and matching earrings. I hadn’t taken them out of the small sack I had put them in the day we left Villefranche. I was afraid that once I looked at them or touched them, I would start to cry uncontrollably. But the jewelry did seem to highlight what I was wearing.

  Aunt Pauline thought I looked like a princess when I was fully dressed and slipped the corsage over my wrist. Then she followed me down like a lady in waiting. Yvon had already left to pick up Karen for their show. Aunt Effie stepped out of the sitting room and stood there inspecting me. I saw pleasure and appreciation in her eyes, but then they quickly became stern and cold again.