The Shadows of Foxworth Page 9

  I looked at Yvon, anticipating his disappointment.

  “It doesn’t matter, Marlena. I’m sure any of these rooms is almost as big as our house.”

  The twins paused at the second door down on the right and turned back to us. The first door down had a lock dangling on a round hook. The key was in it.

  “Whose room is this?” I asked, pointing to it.

  “That’s Miss Pauline’s room,” Minnie said.

  “You’re in this one,” Emma said.

  “Why is there a lock on the outside of her door?” I asked.

  They looked at each other, but neither answered.

  “You each have a bathroom in your room. The next room is your brother’s,” Emma said, nodding.

  “Let us know if y’all need anything. We have to unpack Miss Effie’s things and Miss Pauline’s,” Minnie said.

  “And get back to our other duties,” Emma said.

  “Dinner will be at seven tonight,” Minnie added.

  “You’re the cooks, too?” I asked.

  “Oh, no, miss,” Minnie said. “Mrs. Trafalgar is the chef.”

  “She’s been for nearly twenty years now,” Emma said. “But we do help serve and clean up.”

  “Off we go,” Minnie sang. She continued down the hallway, but Emma turned and walked back to Pauline’s room. She paused to look at us as if she wanted to be sure we didn’t follow or look into the room. Then she entered and quickly closed the door behind her. It was instantly followed by the sound of Minnie closing the door to Aunt Effie’s room behind her after she had entered. We stood there in silence for a moment.

  “Do you think they think the same thoughts at the same time?” Yvon asked.

  “Maybe, but I’m not going to ask them, because I’ll get the same answer.”

  He laughed.

  “Why did Aunt Effie rush Aunt Pauline in so fast?” I asked.

  “I’m not going to start second-guessing why she does what she does, especially regarding Aunt Pauline. I’m tired,” Yvon said, yawning. “Let’s unpack what we have and get some rest. I have the feeling this place is run by the clock, and General Effie will be having a marching drill or something in an hour.”

  He headed for his room, and I entered mine. He was right. My bedroom was easily as big as half our house in France, with two large windows that almost reached the ceiling. The bed was at least three times as big as my bed in France. A darker oak had been used for the frame and low bedposts. The pillows were the size of sofa pillows to me, and there was a rich-looking brown comforter. Beside the bed was a small matching dresser with three drawers, and on the left was a large dresser with a square gilded mirror. The windows were draped in a light brown with gold edging. I wondered if Aunt Effie had named it the Gold Room to avoid calling it her brother’s.

  On my immediate right was a cushioned rocker, but it looked like no one had sat in it since it had been brought here. I sat in it; it was very comfortable. Papa had always enjoyed sitting in Jean-Paul’s rocker and talking. I gazed around, studying every detail, looking for something that suggested my father had lived here. There was nothing I could see. Probably Aunt Effie had cleared out any reminder of him and had sold or given away whatever he had left. There were certainly no pictures.

  However, there was nothing particularly feminine about the room, so I believed the twins when they said it had been his. There were fresh flowers in a vase on top of the dresser. I looked up at the beautiful teardrop chandelier that sparkled so, making it look brand-new. Probably was, I thought.

  The bedroom walls were paneled in a lighter wood, and there were two large paintings of what I imagined were early Richmond streets and homes. That was not the sort of art Papa favored. He would have found them boring. Maybe that’s why she had hung them here.

  The bathroom was off to the left, where there was a claw-foot tub, a sink, and a toilet. Everything looked spotlessly clean. The floor was covered in large beige tiles with a matching rug at the tub. Thick-looking towels and hand cloths were on a rack, and there was a narrow closet on the right with bathroom accessories and more towels and cloths. I had the feeling that everything in the bathroom was brand-new, too. It couldn’t have been like this when Papa was a young boy. In fact, despite the generally masculine feel, now that I saw more of it, I couldn’t imagine him living in this room. Even now, I didn’t think he would like it, despite how rich and new it all looked. I was convinced that because of how angry she had been at him, Aunt Effie had the room completely redone to remove even a suggestion that he had once been here.

  Because of the absence of anything suggesting Papa, Yvon wouldn’t be particularly happy about being in his room, either, but if it was anything like mine, I expected he was surely as overwhelmed as I was by the size and the newness of it all. I recalled my mother once telling me that everything in America was bigger, even the teacups.

  I decided I would take a bath and change into the few clean clothes I had. My dress did look worn and dirty. Aunt Effie was right about it, of course. It wasn’t a dress meant for long travel. I had worn it too many days. There were stains, too, despite my having washed it once on the ship. When I gazed at myself in the bathroom mirror, I saw that my hair looked almost as disheveled as my clothes. Some strands were curling like broken piano strings. I hadn’t been able to wash it properly. Mama would be so upset, I thought. She spent so much time brushing my hair and telling me that I must keep after it the way a princess or a queen keeps after her crown. I didn’t feel particularly like either right now, but as Mama would tell me, that didn’t mean I shouldn’t try to.

  Everything I would need, even something I rarely had, perfumed bath oils, were on a shelf by the tub. Despite how cold the house felt to me, or maybe because of it, I did feel as if Yvon and I had been brought to a castle. No one, not even the richest person in Villefranche-sur-Mer, had a home like this and everything that came with it. Should I feel like Cinderella? Anything that made me happy made me sad, too. And guilty! Even for an instant, I didn’t want any of it to cause me to forget my home, my family, and the world I once knew.

  “America will seduce you,” Anne had half-jokingly warned.

  After I filled the tub and sat in it, soaking and enjoying the bath oils, I washed my hair. Then I fell asleep for a few minutes. When I opened my eyes, I nearly leaped out. Standing there in the doorway and staring at me was Aunt Pauline. Her mouth was oddly twisted, and she had a grip on her dress as if she wanted to pull it apart and off her.

  It occurred to me that there was no way to lock my door. But again, I wondered, why was there a lock outside hers?

  “I’m supposed to take a bath, too,” she said, “but Minnie and Emma are still too busy.”

  “Can’t you take a bath yourself?”

  “I once did and almost drowned, so Effie says I can’t. Effie doesn’t let me do anything much myself, you know,” she added in a loud whisper, her eyes on the bedroom door. “Effie is perfect, and I’m not.”

  “Aunt Effie is not perfect, Aunt Pauline. No one is, but especially not her.”

  She widened her eyes and then smiled. “If she heard you say that, she’d threaten to put a candle to your lips.”

  “A candle? You mean a lit candle?”

  The strange woman stared without answering.

  “She never did that to you, did she?” I asked.

  Again, she didn’t answer. Her silence was chilling for a moment. I shrugged it off. Surely, this was part of her wild imagination. If Aunt Effie was that cruel to her, someone would have noticed and reported her.

  “How did you almost drown?”

  “I slipped and slid down under the water and bumped my head when I was ten,” she said. “Little kids fall, don’t they? Effie says I don’t pay attention to the important things. She says I’m always daydreaming and breaking things and hurting myself, which is why I have to be helped all the time. Do you daydream?”

  “Everyone daydreams.”

  “Not Effie.”

  “Oui, très probablement pas,” I said.

  “Oooh,” she said, bringing her hands to her throat. “That’s French in the house, and Effie said we can’t hear that.”

  “I can’t help it. Aunt Effie will have to understand. It’s my native language.” I thought a moment. “You haven’t taken a bath yourself since you were ten? Is that what you’re saying? That’s stupid.”

  She smiled. “You’re upset about it. That’s good.”

  She paused and stared at me, making me feel self-conscious. I covered my budding breasts.

  “I forgot who you are,” she said. “Exactly, I mean. I remember your name, Marlena.”

  “I’m your niece, Aunt Pauline. And Yvon is your nephew. My father was your brother, Beau.”

  “Oooooh, Beau. He disappeared like snow in spring. When it snows and I say Beau is coming back, Effie gets very mad. She shut me in my room for saying it once.”

  “Is that why there’s a lock on your door, so she can shut you in there to punish you?”

  “I don’t know. Effie gets very angry. Sometimes.”

  “How old were you when he left?”

  She thought. “I have to ask Effie,” she said. “I useta ask for him every day until Effie said she’d put me in the cellar forever if I didn’t stop.”

  “Then don’t bother to ask her. You’ll only get her started.”

  “Started?”

  “Complaining. I think she’s an expert.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “She’s good at it. Could you hand me my towel, please?”

  “Oh. Yes, yes,” she said, excited.

  She gave it to me, and I wrapped it around myself as I stood to step out of the tub. I reached for another towel and vigorously dried my hair before
wrapping it around my head. Pauline stood by, fascinated with everything I was doing.

  I wondered if she ever had a friend.

  “Did you go to school in Richmond?”

  She shook her head.

  “Who taught you how to read and write?”

  “Effie taught me a little but then stopped. She said the mud between my ears dried up.”

  “Not a nice thing to say. Maybe I can help you learn now.”

  She smiled but was obviously more intrigued with how I was drying my hair.

  “I could do all that, too, if they let me,” she said.

  “Of course you can. As soon as I’m dried and dressed, I’ll go with you to your room and help run your bath.”

  “You will?”

  “Why not?”

  “Did you ask Effie?”

  “We’ll surprise her,” I said. Then I mumbled to myself, “She might need a few of those.”

  I dressed as quickly as I could and then followed her out to her room. She was behaving as if this was the most exciting thing she had ever done, giggling, with her eyes bright. When we entered her room, I stopped and gazed in awe.

  The whole room was still more of a nursery. It was done in pink and blue, and everything I saw on the shelves was something more for a little girl than a woman her age. She couldn’t use some of the furniture like a chair and a desk because it was too small. There was a music box on the desk and what looked like coloring books. Her bed was much smaller than mine, and her pinkish-white area rug looked like it had been stained a number of times. It was probably as old as she was, I thought.

  On her bed between the pillows was a stubby-looking little doll with most of its hair gone. The skin of the doll looked yellowed like old paper, and there was what appeared to be a bandage over the left knee. One of the feet was in a shoe, and the other wasn’t.

  “How old is that doll?” I asked her.

  “She’s only six months old,” Pauline said.

  “No, I mean… never mind,” I said.

  “She fell and scraped her knee just like I did. Mama was very sick then, so Effie had to help me. She didn’t like doing it. She hates looking at blood.” She leaned toward me to whisper. “Effie won’t drink tomato juice. She says it looks like blood.”

  “Brilliant,” I said. “I don’t understand this room,” I muttered, mostly to myself.

  Off in the corner was surely what had once been her crib, with baby toys still in it. Why did Aunt Effie want to keep all that still here?

  “Don’t you like my room?” she asked, looking like she might burst into tears. I guess I had a look of disapproval on my face.

  “It’s very nice,” I said, and then noticed a picture in a silver frame pushed a little to the side on the dresser.

  “That’s Effie and me,” she said when I lifted it to look. Aunt Pauline looked no more than four or five. Aunt Effie was already tall, with a face that didn’t look much different from how it was now. But Pauline was absolutely beautiful. She looked more like a doll Papa had shown me in a newspaper once. It was called a Kewpie doll, created from a comic strip. In the picture, Aunt Pauline was beaming with her smile, but Aunt Effie looked like someone had stolen her knickers.

  “You were beautiful,” I said.

  “There are more pictures of me, but they’re all in the attic.”

  “What? Why?”

  “I don’t know.”

  I put the picture back. “I think I do,” I said, and looked at her bathroom.

  Everything in it was older than what was in my bathroom.

  The tub was about the same size but had what looked like rust stains. When I turned on the water, the faucet sounded like it would break. It took a lot longer to get the hot water.

  Why was her sister treating her so poorly? I thought, but smiled at her. “Do you want me to wash your hair, too?” I asked.

  “Oh, yes.” She thought a moment. “But I don’t know if it’s time.”

  “Time?”

  “Effie tells me when it’s time to wash my hair and when it’s time to cut my nails. Look,” she said, and pointed to a calendar on the bathroom wall. I stepped up to it.

  Days were marked with an H and an N, and another had an M. H was surely for hair and N for nails.

  “What’s the M?” I asked, and put my finger on it.

  “M means monthlies,” she said, and pressed her left hand over her mouth. “Shame on me for saying it,” she muttered through her fingers. “Shame, shame, shame.”

  “What?” I thought a moment. “Oh. But you don’t have to be ashamed. All women have monthlies. My mother never made me feel ashamed of it. It’s only natural.”

  “It’s Eve’s fault,” she said.

  “What did you say?” My eyes nearly popped. “Who told you that?”

  “Effie.”

  “She must be related to Monsieur Appert. Aunt Effie shouldn’t have frightened you about it. It’s not a bad thing. It’s uncomfortable and sometimes painful, but when you bleed—”

  “Oooooh,” she moaned, and shook her head. “Don’t.”

  I stared at her. She was absolutely terrified.

  “Effie washed my mouth out with soap and put me in the wine closet whenever I said it in front of people until those people left.”

  She was actually shaking.

  “Okay, okay. We won’t say it. I promise.”

  She relaxed and then smiled. “I have to have a dress for dinner,” she said. “Effie always tells me what to wear.”

  “I’ll look in your closet and pick something out for you,” I said, “while the tub fills up.”

  From what I could see, there was nothing very new hanging. I sifted through and picked out what I thought was the nicest. When I turned with it, we heard, “What are you doing?”

  Aunt Effie was in the doorway, her hands on her hips. With her shoulders hoisted, she looked like she had grown two or three inches.

  “I was helping Aunt Pauline get ready for dinner.”

  “You should be looking after yourself. That’s not your job. Minnie and Emma are on their way here.”

  She crossed to Pauline’s closet, practically ripped what I had chosen out of my hand, and hung it up.

  “She doesn’t need anything that fancy.”

  “Fancy?” It was hardly that.

  “No matter what, she’ll spill something on herself. All these clothes have been washed to death,” she said, running her hand through the hanging garments. She plucked a dull, faded pink dress off the rack and tossed it onto Pauline’s bed. Then her eyes widened. She rushed past me into the bathroom, where Pauline was standing and staring at the water running into the tub. Some of it had already overflowed.

  “You idiot!” Aunt Effie cried. “Why are you just standing there?”

  She shut the water off just as Emma and Minnie entered.

  “Clean all this up, and get her ready for dinner,” Aunt Effie ordered. Then she turned to me. “Go back to your room. Go! You’ve already made extra work for us.”

  I looked at Pauline, who, despite all the criticism, was smiling.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I was just trying to help.”

  “I’ll tell you what to do and what not to do, and that will be the way you help. Go.”

  I stepped out quickly.

  Yvon was in the hallway, wearing a faded dull brown bathrobe and a pair of old black slippers with a tear on the side of the left one.

  “Where did you get that?”

  “Hanging in the closet with a few other things. What’s all the commotion?”

  I described what I saw in Pauline’s room and what had happened.

  “You’d think I had set the house on fire.”

  “We’d better tread softly for a while,” he said.

  “She’s very mean to her, Yvon. You saw how she treated her on the trip. She never says a kind thing to her. No wonder she’s the way she is. You know she stopped her learning how to read and write.”

  “We can’t solve everything in days, Marlena. Aunt Effie is right. We have to look after ourselves for a while first. Just let me know if she’s ever cruel to you.”

  “She hasn’t exactly been too sweet to either of us,” I said. “How is your room?”

  He shrugged, so I stepped into it. Unlike in mine, everything in his looked quite old and worn. There were no flowers to brighten it up. It didn’t have the rich paneling on the walls, nor were there any area rugs. The curtains that looked like they hadn’t been washed for years were a dark green, thus the name for this room. His bathroom looked even worse than Pauline’s.