The Shadows of Foxworth Read online

  I looked at the mirror again as if it was really a window to the future, and then I went to sleep knowing I would surely dream about Malcolm Foxworth. Even dreams seemed like a forbidden world, which made it more exciting to go there.

  Once again, by the time I rose and went to breakfast, Yvon was gone. Aunt Pauline was at the table. She had remembered I had gone to the event and wanted to hear all about it.

  “She’s been on pins and needles waiting for ya,” Mrs. Trafalgar told me. “I swear. She’s more lively than I’ve seen her be in years. She wouldn’t eat nothin’ until ya came down, Miss Marlena. Ya better eat now, Miss Pauline,” she warned her.

  “My aunt Effie’s left?” I asked.

  “Yes’m. She left with yer brotha.”

  I sat and smiled at Aunt Pauline. She drank her orange juice when I had mine.

  “Tell me about the party. Where’s your corsage?” she asked.

  “It’s up in my room. I’ll give it to you later.”

  “You will?”

  “Absolument,” I said. I imagined she would put it on her wrist and parade around her room, fantasizing about herself getting dressed up to go out to a ball, too. How sad her life had been. How sad it was.

  I quickly described the event, especially the alligators. Then, although Yvon didn’t confirm it, I felt it was all right to tell her we were going to go on a picnic again soon, but with Yvon and his girlfriend.

  “And your boyfriend?” she asked.

  “I really don’t have a boyfriend yet, Aunt Pauline,” I said. “But I promise, I’ll tell you first when I get one.”

  She burst into a smile, and both of us ate Mrs. Trafalgar’s hearty breakfast of grits and eggs and homemade bread and jam with some fresh bacon. Before I left, the Brown twins promised to take her for a good walk and then let her do her giant jigsaw puzzle.

  “And I’ll wear the corsage,” she made sure to tell them.

  When I arrived at the Dawson offices, Doris was just as eager to hear about the event as Aunt Pauline had been. She also, however, wanted to know what I thought of Daniel Thomas now.

  “He was very nice. He tried to make it special. He bought me a corsage and had his father’s car. But…”

  “But what?”

  I thought about how to say it without creating any issues in the office. When the right answer came to me, I smiled.

  “What?” she asked, more interested.

  “For me, he doesn’t have sweet lips.”

  “What? He kissed you?”

  “No, Doris. I mean I don’t think any more will come of it.”

  “Oh,” she said. She looked thoughtful. “He’s not bad-looking, and he makes good money. My mother says I should have shopped more.”

  “Shopped? Is there a store selling husbands in America?”

  She laughed and then grew serious when Aunt Effie walked into Mr. Simon’s office, glancing first at us with those critical eyes.

  “There aren’t too many women like your aunt. Most need a good husband,” she said. “My man is good,” she continued. “We’re just going to struggle a bit once I stop working, too. I hope they let me work until I can’t,” she added, looking fearfully at me. In her mind, I was surely breathing down her neck.

  “They will. I don’t intend to be ready until you leave,” I said, and she smiled.

  A few minutes later, Yvon and Daniel returned to the office. Daniel went quickly into his, and Yvon stood just inside the main entrance looking at me for a few moments. I had started to say something to him when he put his hand up and then pointed to his office. He marched into it.

  “I wonder what that’s all about,” Doris said.

  I rose slowly. I feared that I knew.

  Yvon closed the door as soon as I entered and told me to sit. He went behind his desk.

  “Daniel says you were quite friendly last night with Malcolm Foxworth.”

  “I spoke to him, yes. I don’t know as I’d call it quite friendly. Why?”

  “He said he was flirting with you. Was he? Don’t tell me you aren’t sure, Marlena. You know what flirting means.”

  “I suppose so,” I said. “But I think he flirts with every girl he meets.”

  “You know he’s our competition sometimes, especially quite recently.”

  “Yes, Daniel told me that.”

  “Well, what went on between you? Why did you meet him in the first place?”

  I looked down, thinking.

  “What?” he asked sharply.

  “Have you ever met him?” I asked.

  “No. And I’m not eager to, either.”

  “Have you ever seen him?”

  “No. The deal he tried to get occurred before you and I arrived in Richmond. Why is that important, whether I saw him or not?”

  “He had his back to me, and when I first saw him, I thought it was you.”

  Yvon’s face quickly looked a shade or two redder. “Me? So what did you do?”

  “I thought you had pulled a joke on me, and you and Karen were there. I rushed across and tapped him on the shoulder, thinking it was you, and… and it was embarrassing. I mean, he has the same color hair, and I didn’t look closely enough. He’s bigger and taller, but he has beautiful blue eyes. Like yours, Yvon. He was surprised, of course.”

  “Surprised by what?”

  “That I thought he was you and I said… something in French.”

  “What did you say? Exactly?”

  “Why is this so important? Why are you getting so angry?”

  “Just tell me, Marlena? What did you say to him?”

  “It wasn’t to him. I thought it was to you. His back was still toward me and—”

  “Forget that. So? What?”

  “Très drôle, mon coeur.”

  He stared at me a moment and then leaned forward. “What did he say? His exact words. Think!” he ordered.

  “I don’t remember it word for word, Yvon. He thought it was amusing, especially when he learned my name. Daniel came over, and they met and had a little unfriendly banter, and then we walked away.”

  He nodded. I saw how upset he was and decided not to mention Malcolm’s coming over to me after the speeches were done or his invitation and promise of a train ticket.

  “Why didn’t you mention this last night?”

  “I didn’t tell him anything about the company, Yvon, if that’s what’s worrying you. Otherwise, I don’t know why you’re so upset.” I looked down and then up quickly. “Was Daniel upset I spoke to another man? Did he complain to you? Is that it?”

  “Forget about Daniel. You should have told me about all this,” he insisted.

  “All what? It was nothing.”

  He looked away a moment. “It’s not nothing. The man has a terrible reputation when it comes to how he treats young women. His father does, too. They’re arrogant and ruthless men and not only in their business dealings.”

  “How do you know all this? You just said we weren’t here when they were trying to get the same property in Richmond.”

  “I know. I listen. It’s a small community when it comes to business in Virginia. You can’t just walk up and speak to someone, especially someone like that. These are the sorts of men who take advantage of innocent girls.”

  “I’m not a child, and you shouldn’t talk to me as if I were. Our aunt Effie certainly doesn’t think so. She would marry me off next week to Daniel. You should have heard her.”

  “Don’t worry about that,” he said, waving his hand as if he could wave away words. Then he leaned over the desk toward me. “If you should ever see or hear from Malcolm Foxworth again, you’re to tell me immediately. You understand, Marlena? Immediately. I don’t care when or what time of the day.”

  “Why?”

  “I just told you. He’s not someone to play with.”

  “And I just told you that I don’t need you to hold my hand all day and all night, Yvon.”

  “Yes, you do, apparently,” he said. “And you’ll do as I tell you, Marlena.”

  I felt the tears welling in my eyes. He had never spoken to me like this. And he looked absolutely terrifying.

  “I don’t like arguing about it with you. I’m sorry, but I feel I have to do what I have to do. Let’s stop talking about it. Aunt Effie, Mr. Simon, and I are going to dinner tonight with a gentleman who is considering investing in Dawson Enterprises. You should be happy I’m included in the meeting.”

  I stood up. “You are getting just like her, Yvon. Papa would hate you for it,” I said, and I sucked in the cry that tried to accompany my tears and left his office.

  I paused to wipe my cheeks and then walked slowly to my desk. Before I sat, I saw Daniel peering at me through his doorway. I went up to it and looked in at him.

  “Hi,” he said. I was glaring in at him. He raised his hands. “I didn’t mean to say anything that would get Yvon angry. I don’t even know why he got so angry. I didn’t blame you for anything. I swear,” he said.

  “I want you to know that should you let Doris go before she wants to go, I will not work for you. In fact, I will never work for you,” I told him in a loud voice, turned, and started back toward my desk. Doris was sitting there aghast. I nodded at her and walked out of the offices and out of the building.

  I didn’t head for home. I went in the opposite direction, walking fast, my arms folded under my breasts, my eyes fixed on the street ahead. I even bumped into people, but I didn’t stop, and only one person bothered to say, “Where do you think you’re going?”

  Finally, I found a stoop and sat just so I would keep out of the way of pedestrians. Dust rose up from the street, automobiles bounced by, the drivers sounding horns that resembled dying animals. There were still a number of horse-drawn carriages confronting and conf
ronted by the automobiles. Some of the horses complained. One pair got up on their hind legs for a scary moment, but the driver had good control. After a few moments, I saw or heard none of it, because I was too submerged in my own thoughts.

  After our parents’ deaths, I had felt the world drop out from under my feet. No friends, not even Jean-Paul and Anne, could keep me from falling and falling, but I believed in and leaned heavily on my brother. He would somehow save us, make it possible for us to go on, and somehow find happiness for us both.

  I never told him outright, but I was very disappointed that he didn’t fight harder for us to remain in Villefranche. If anything, he kept more inside himself than ever, but I saw how he had shifted his thinking and his ambitions, and I thought, Maybe he’s right. Maybe we should think of a whole new life in America and put away anything and everything that caused us to hold on to Villefranche, a world we could never restore.

  But he was too different now. He had gone too far and left me feeling more alone than ever. As I looked at the crowds of people, the endless line of strangers around me, I thought I had started falling again. I was more lost than ever. What would my life be in America? As sweet as Aunt Pauline was, Aunt Effie was right about her. She was more of a burden as she grew older, perhaps more than she ever was, and I was certainly not the one to take care of her. At this moment, I didn’t think I was capable of taking care of myself.

  So much, if not all, of the love we had around us was gone. Perhaps I had to find my own way and not depend so much on Yvon anymore.

  I stood up and headed back toward the Dawson House. Twenty minutes later, I turned into the drive. The moment I opened the door, Minnie and Emma stepped out of the dining room as if they had been standing there waiting to hear the front door open. Emma approached me first and held out an envelope.

  “A Western Union messenger came by a little while ago with this,” she said, her face and voice full of excitement.

  I took it slowly. Was it bad news about Jean-Paul?

  “He wasn’t going to leave it without your signature,” Minnie said. “But I assured him we’d give it to you.”

  “I signed your name,” Emma said. “I hope that was all right.”

  “Yes, fine. Thank you.”

  I walked into the sitting room. If it was bad news, I didn’t want to read it in front of them, or anyone else for that matter.

  When I opened the envelope, I saw a ticket and a note beside it.

  It was a train ticket, good for any round trip between Richmond and Charlottesville, Virginia.

  The time for the first departure of the day tomorrow was listed first on the note and beneath it, it read:

  There will be a car waiting for you at the station, a black Cadillac. The driver’s name is Lucas. If you take this train, you’ll be at Foxworth Hall for lunch. I look forward to showing you an estate that would make King George V jealous. There will be plenty of time for your lunch and tour and then return on the train to Richmond.

  Please come, mon coeur.

  Malcolm Foxworth

  13

  I wasn’t the most perfect child in the world, but I never truly defied my parents or even Yvon as I was growing up in Villefranche. I might have pouted a little, but I didn’t have a temper tantrum over anything my parents or Yvon had forbidden me to do. If my friends were permitted to do something that I was not and I complained or whined, Mama would tell me she suffered more over my unhappiness than I did.

  But, Marlena, that is what makes it so hard to be a parent. You want your children to love and adore you, but you have to do what you think is best for them, even if they will resent you for a little while. Remember that for when you have children of your own, she would say.

  In the end, I always felt sorrier for my parents and even Yvon than I did for myself.

  But I wasn’t feeling this way about Yvon right now, and Aunt Pauline thankfully did not give me much time to feel sorry for myself. The moment she realized I was home, she was at me to read to her again. The idea that we would be alone for dinner obviously pleased her, too.

  “It will be like a party,” she said, clapping. I knew that what she really meant was that Aunt Effie wouldn’t be sitting at the table criticizing almost everything she did, whether it was eating too fast or using the wrong fork.

  Perhaps because of how trapped I was feeling, I welcomed that same air of liberation. With only the twins and Mrs. Trafalgar in the house, Aunt Pauline and I were free to do whatever we wanted. My conspiratorial laughter encouraged her when she touched an expensive Italian vase Aunt Effie had forbidden anyone to touch, even the twin maids. We sat without worrying about our posture, took off our shoes, and put our sockless feet on the edge of the table as we slouched. I brought peanuts into the sitting room, an act that qualified as a cardinal sin in Aunt Effie’s Bible of Behavior. Our laughter opened up the floodgates.

  I let Aunt Pauline ramble on and on about the past, citing anecdotes about her father and Aunt Effie that she had never even suggested. Apparently, my grandfather had some dirty habits, especially when it came to his cigar smoking, grinding them into ashtrays all over the house, even flower pots. Aunt Pauline said that when her mother was alive, she was constantly cleaning up after him and complaining. She had to sleep in a separate bedroom because he even dropped ashes in their bed, and the room reeked of bourbon and cigars. She said Aunt Effie often tried to cover up for him by getting to the mess before any maid or her mother could.

  “She wanted him to like her more. But he never brought her presents like he brought to me. She used to hide the jewelry he gave me. She even buried a ring he had bought me in New York in the backyard. I saw her do it. When I told her, she said she would never do such a thing. But I didn’t tell on her like she would tell on me.

  “When my mother died, she took all her jewelry into her room so my father couldn’t give anything to me. Effie said she had to take my mother’s things because she had to be the mother now. She said if she hadn’t had to be a mother, she might have gotten married and had children of her own.”

  “I’ve heard that before,” I said dryly.

  “But that’s not really why.”

  “What’s really why?”

  “She didn’t want a man’s smells and sweat in her bed. She once told me that,” she added with firm nods. “She’ll say she didn’t, but she did.”

  On and on Aunt Pauline went with her stories. Whatever dam Aunt Effie had created to keep her memories under control crumbled as I prodded her for recollections of her childhood and especially memories of my father. From what she was telling me, I realized that early on, Papa got into spats with his father constantly, but especially after my grandmother had died. The way Aunt Pauline described Aunt Effie standing beside their father when he bawled Papa out or criticized him for being lazy or uninterested in their business made it all so vivid for me. She was surprisingly visual with her descriptions, at one point saying Aunt Effie duplicated their father’s facial expressions as if “his growling lips hopped onto her face.”

  Maybe because I was so angry at Yvon and feeling so defiant, I asked her to tell me again about the fight my father had with his father in the bathroom while her father was giving her a bath.

  “Effie told me never to tell,” she said. “She said people would hate me more than they would be angry at my father.”

  “Why?”

  “Because… no one would believe me, and they’d think I was a mean liar.” Then she added, “But she promised me something.”

  “What?”

  “She would always help me with my bath, and Papa wouldn’t anymore.”

  “So she believed you,” I said, more to myself than her, but she had heard it.

  “Oh, yes. She was mad at him, too. I heard her yelling at him in his room. She made him stop buying me things. She even scowled at him if he kissed me. He never came in to kiss me at night anymore. Effie would stand in the hallway to be sure sometimes. Right after dinner, he would lock himself in his office anyway. Or he wouldn’t come home for dinner.” She leaned toward me to whisper. “Effie said he was visiting with those dirty women in some filthy place on Jackson Street. She said she once followed him and saw him go in.