Pearl in the Mist

7

So Many Rules

As she had promised, Mrs. Penny was waiting for me in the lobby of the dorm when I arrived. She jumped out of her chair and came rushing to greet me, her eyes full of excitement and expectation.

"How was your dinner?" she cried.

"It was very nice, Mrs. Penny," I said, looking over her shoulder at the girls from the A and B quads who were watching television. Most had turned my way curiously.

"Just nice?" she asked, with disappointment. She looked like a little girl who had been told she couldn't have any ice cream. I knew she wanted a list of superlatives from me, a flood of adjectives, but I wasn't in the mood. She lit up again with a new question: "What did Mrs. Clairborne serve?"

"A shrimp dish," I replied, without mentioning the Cajun recipe. "Oh, and an orange crème brûlèe for dessert," I added. That pleased her.

"I was hoping she would do something special. What did you do afterward? Did you sit and talk in the same sitting room in which we had tea, or did you go on to one of the glass-domed patios?"

"I listened to Louis play the piano. He grew tired and I came back," I summarized.

She nodded. "It was an honor," she said, still nodding "a very high honor. You should be proud of yourself."

For being invited to a dinner? Why wasn't it more of an honor to paint a beautiful picture or get high marks on a school test? I wanted to ask, but I simply smiled back instead and excused myself.

Gisselle, surrounded by Samantha, Kate, and Jacki, was holding court in the lounge when I arrived. From the pink flush in all the girls' faces, I imagined Gisselle had been describing one of her sexual exploits back in New Orleans. They all turned with some disappointment at my interruption, but I had no intention of joining them.

"Well, look who's back," Gisselle quipped, "the princess of Greenwood."

Everyone laughed.

"How was your evening, princess?"

"Why don't you stop making an ass of yourself, Gisselle," I retorted.

"Oh. I'm sorry, princess. I didn't mean to offend your royal bosom," she continued, the laughter of her r club following quickly. "We poor underlings had a rather uneventful dinner, except for the part where I accidentally spilled my hot soup on Patti Denning." They all laughed again. "How was Louis? At least tell us that much."

"Very nice," I said.

"Did you go groping in the dark with him?" she asked. Despite myself, I couldn't keep my blood from rushing into my cheeks. Gisselle's eyes widened. "Did you?" she pursued.

"Stop it!" I screamed, and crossed quickly to my room. I slammed the door shut to cut off the laughter behind me. Abby looked up from her textbook, surprised at my abrupt entrance.

"What's wrong?'

"Gisselle," I said simply, and she smirked with understanding. She sat up and closed the book on her lap.

"How was your evening?"

"Oh, Abby," I cried. "It was . . . so strange. Mrs. Clairborne didn't really want me there."

She nodded as if she had always known. "And Louis?"

"He's in great emotional pain. . . A very talented, sensitive person, as twisted and knotted inside as swamp grass in a boat motor's propeller," I said. And then I sat down and told her all that had happened. It made us both melancholy, and after we had gotten undressed and into our beds, we lay awake for hours, talking about our pasts. I told her more about Paul and the terrible frustration I had experienced when I learned that the boy I was so fond of was really my half brother. She compared this horrible joke Fate had played on me with her own discoveries about herself and her family lineage.

"It seems both of us have been wounded by events over which we have no control . . . like we're being made to pay for the sins of our parents and grandparents. It's so unfair. We should all have a fresh start."

"Even Louis," I remarked.

"Yes," she said thoughtfully, "even Louis."

I closed my eyes and fell asleep to the memory of his composition entitled "Ruby."

The week that followed began uneventfully, with the promise of being routine. Even Gisselle seemed to calm down and to do some real schoolwork. I noted a remarkable change in her behavior when she was at school. In the two classes we shared, she was quiet and attentive. She even surprised me by stopping her entourage in the hallway after English to have Samantha pick up some gum wrappers someone had discarded near the water fountain. Of course, she still held court in the cafeteria, sitting back like some grand duchess whose words were to be treated with royal respect and commenting on this one and that one, usually in a mocking fashion that stimulated choruses of laughter from the ever wing audiences she gathered around her.

But the sarcasm that had characterized her replies to questions in class and her ridicule of our teachers and our homework assignments were absent from her speech and behavior. Twice, when Mrs. Ironwood was standing in the corridors observing the students as they passed between periods, Gisselle had Samantha pause so she could greet the Iron Lady, who nodded back with approval.

But watching my sister's unusual good behavior made me feel like I was watching a pot of milk being boiled. It was bound to bubble up, lift the lid, and simmer over into the flames. I had lived with her long enough to know not to trust her promises, her smiles, and her kind words—whenever any spilled out from her cunningly twisted lips.

What happened next seemed at first totally unrelated. I would have to trace back the zigzag conniving that wrapped itself around my twin sister's evil mind before I could find her true purpose in all this. Ultimately, it stemmed from her initial anger over being brought to Greenwood. Despite her apparent good adjustments, she was still quite upset about it and, as I would learn, quite determined to get back to her old friends and her old ways.

On Wednesday morning, a message was sent into my social studies class, asking me to report to Mrs. Ironwood's office. Whenever anyone was called out of class to see the Iron Lady, the other students looked at the girl with pity and with relief that it wasn't any of them who had been summoned. After having experienced one session with our principal, I understood their fear. Nevertheless, I revealed no nervousness as I stood up and walked out. Of course, my heart was pounding by the time I arrived at the office. One look at the expression on Mrs. Randle's face told me I had trouble.

"Just a minute," she snapped, as if she was an emotional extension of Mrs. Ironwood, mirroring her moods, her thoughts, her angers and pleasures. She knocked on the door and this time whispered my name. Then she closed the door and went back to her desk, leaving me standing in anticipation. She kept her eyes down on her paperwork. I shifted my weight from one foot to the other and sighed deeply. Nearly a minute later, Mrs. Ironwood opened her door.

"Come in," she ordered, and stepped back. I threw a glance at Mrs. Randle, who lifted her eyes and then lowered them instantly, as if looking at me was as deadly as it was for Lot's wife when she looked back at Sodom and was turned into a pillar of salt.

I walked into the office. Mrs. Ironwood shut the door behind me and marched to her chair.

"Sit down," she commanded. I took my seat and waited. She threw me a hard look and began. "By this time it would not be unreasonable of me to expect that one of my new students had read the Greenwood School handbook, especially if that new student was scholastically outstanding," she said. "Am I correct?" she asked.

"Yes, I suppose so," I said.

"You've done so?"

"Yes, although I haven't committed it to memory," I added, perhaps too sharply, for her eyes narrowed into slits and her face whitened, especially at the corners of her mouth. Her frown deepened before she continued.

"I don't ask for it to be committed to memory so it can be recited word for word. I ask that it be read, understood, and obeyed." She sat back and snapped open a handbook tearing back the pages and then slapping the book open.

"Section seventeen, paragraph two, regarding leaving the Greenwood campus. Before a registered student can leave the school boundaries, she must have specific, written parental permission on file with the administrative office. This must be dated and signed.

"The reasoning behind this is simple," she went on, looking up from the manual. "We incur certain liabilities when we accept a student. If something terrible should happen to you while you are not under our supervision, we would bear the brunt of the blame if we permitted you to gallivant about at your every whim.

"Normally, I don't find it necessary to explain our reasoning, but in this case, with your particular history, I have done so just so that you understand I am not, as some of your type are bound to claim, picking on you.

"Your teacher should have known better than to take you in her automobile. She has already been reprimanded and her indiscretion noted in her file. When her renewal comes up, it will be one of the considerations."

I stared at her. It was difficult to breathe, to not be drowned by everything that was happening so fast. Mrs. Penny had obviously betrayed me, I thought, and after she had promised she wouldn't. Now she had gotten both me and Miss Stevens in trouble.

"That's not fair. She only wanted to provide me an opportunity to paint. We didn't go anyplace terrible. We . . ."

"She took you to lunch too, didn't she?" she demanded, her eyes hardened to rivet on me.

"Yes," I said. Something hard and heavy grew in my chest, making it ache.

"What if you had gotten sick from the food? Who do you think would be blamed? We would be blamed," she replied, answering her own question. "Why, we could even be sued by your parents!"

"It wasn't a dirty little restaurant. It was—"

"That's not the point now, is it?" She sat back again and fixed her gaze on me with those cold steel eyes. "I know your kind," she said disdainfully.

Daring her scorn, I fired back: "Why do you keep saying things like that? I'm not a 'kind.' I'm a person, an individual, just like anyone else who attends this school."

She laughed. "Hardly," she said. "You are the only girl with a rather depraved background. Not one of my other girls has a blemish on her family history. In fact, over eighty percent of the girls in this school come from families that can trace their lineage back to one of the hundred Filles a la Cassette or 'Casket Girls' who were originally brought to Louisiana."

"My father can trace his lineage back to them too," I said, even though I didn't place any value on such a thing.

"But your mother was a Cajun. Why, she was probably of questionable mixed blood. No," she continued, shaking her head, "I know your kind, your type. Your bad behavior is more insidious, subtle. You learn quickly who are the most vulnerable, who have certain weaknesses, and you play to those weaknesses, like some sort of swamp parasite," she added. My face flushed so hot I thought the top of my head would blow off. But before I could respond, she added what I realized was her real reason for calling me in.

"Just like you somehow managed to take advantage of my poor cousin Louis and get yourself a dinner invitation to my aunt's home."

The blood started to drain from my face.

"That's not true," I said.

"Not true?" She smiled coyly. "Many young women have dreamed of winning Louis's heart and becoming the one who would inherit this vast fortune, this school, all this property. A young blind man is hardly a catch otherwise, is he? But he is vulnerable. That's why we have been so careful about who he has as company up to this point.

"Unfortunately, you managed to make an impression on him without my aunt's knowledge, but don't think anything will come of it," she warned.

"That was never my intention. I didn't even want to go to dinner at the mansion," I added. She widened her eyes with surprise, her lips curled in a skeptical smile. "I didn't, but I felt sorry for Louis and . . . ″

"You felt sorry for Louis? You?" She laughed coldly. "Don't worry about Louis," she said. "He'll be just fine."

"No he won't. It's wrong to keep him encased in that house like a caterpillar in a cocoon. He needs to meet people . . . especially young women and—"

"How dare you have the impudence and audacity to suggest what is pod for my cousin and what is not! I will not tolerate another syllable from your lips about him, is that clear? Is it?" she shrilled.

I looked away, my eyes burning with tears of anger and frustration.

"Now then," she continued, "now that it is well known on this campus, I'm sure, that you have violated section seventeen of our behavior code, it is appropriate that you be punished. Such a violation carries twenty demerits, which automatically invokes a two-week denial of all social privileges. However, since this is your first real offense and since your teacher bears some of the blame, I will limit the punishment to one week. From today until the end of the sentence, you are to report directly back to your dorm after school hours and to remain there throughout the weekend. If you violate this for so much as one minute, I will have no alternative but to expel you from Greenwood, which I am sure will impact on your poor crippled sister as well," she said.

Icy tears streamed down my cheeks. My lips quivered and my throat felt as if I had swallowed a lump of coal.

"You can return to your class now," she concluded, slapping the handbook shut.

I stood up, my legs wobbly. I wanted to shout back at her, to defy her, to tell her what I really thought of her, but all I could see was Daddy's disappointed face and hear the deep sadness in his voice. This was just what Daphne would like, I thought. It would reaffirm her accusations about me and make life even more difficult for Daddy. So I swallowed back my indignation and pain and left her office.

For the remainder of the day, I felt numb. It was as if my heart had turned to cold stone. I went through the motions, did my work, took my notes, and walked from class to class with my eyes fixed ahead, not looking from left to right, not interested in any conversations.

At lunch I told Abby what had happened.

"I'm so disappointed in Mrs. Penny," I concluded. "She must have been frightened into it," Abby said. "I suppose I can't blame her. The Iron Lady could scare the tail off an alligator."

Abby laughed.

"I won't go anywhere this weekend either," she told me. "You don't have to do that: to punish yourself unfairly just because I'm being punished unfairly."

"I want to. I bet you'd do it for me," she added wisely. I tried to deny it, but she just laughed as if I were speaking gibberish. "Besides, I don't consider spending time with you a punishment," she put in. I smiled, my heart full at making such a good friend so quickly.

But when I entered the art studio for my last class of the day, I felt as if I had swallowed a cup full of tadpoles. Miss Stevens took one look at me and hurried over to my desk.

"Don't worry," she whispered. "I'll be all right. Actually, I'm sorrier that I got you in trouble than I am about myself."

"That's how I feel about you."

She laughed. "I guess we'll have to take Louis's advice and start painting the lake, since that's on school grounds. Until you get your parents' permission to leave, that is."

"Not for a week," I added.

"In the meantime, you still have the river picture you've started to complete." She squeezed my hand. "Anyway, artists aren't expected to behave and obey the rules. Artists are impulsive and unpredictable. We have to be in order to be creative."

She made me feel better again, and I didn't think about my punishment and my meeting with Mrs. Ironwood until I returned to the dorm and saw Mrs. Penny straightening the furniture in the dorm lobby. I pounced on her.

"I thought we had a deal," I snapped at her. "I thought we agreed."

"Deal?" She smiled in confusion. "What do you mean, Ruby dear?"

"I thought you weren't going to tell about me and Miss Stevens going to the river to paint," I said.

She shook her head. "I didn't tell. I've been worried about it, but I didn't tell. Why?" She pressed her palms to her bosom. "Did Mrs. Ironwood find out?"

"Yes. I'm confined to the dorm for a week. No social privileges. I'm sure you'll be told about it shortly."

"Oh dear, oh dear," she said, her hands fluttering from her bosom to her plump cheeks as if they were birds looking for a place to alight. "That means she's going to be calling me to find out why I didn't know and why I didn't tell her when I found out. Oh dear."

"Just say I snuck out," I said quickly. "Just say you never knew. I'll confirm that if she asks."

"I don't like lying. See: One falsehood leads to another and another."

"You didn't lie."

"I didn't do what I was supposed to do. Oh dear." She walked away in a daze.

It wasn't until later in the evening, when I had a chance to speak to Gisselle alone in her room, that I realized what had really happened.

"You hate it here now, don't you?" she asked me after I had told her about my meeting with Mrs. Ironwood. "Now maybe you'll tell Daddy we should leave and return to our own school." Her smile turned oily and evil. "I still want to leave, even though the Iron Lady likes me more than she likes you. Why, we're almost pals," she added with a laugh.

And then it came to me: why she had been pretending to be a good student, why she had been behaving. She had ingratiated herself with Mrs. Ironwood and then she had told on me and Miss Stevens.

"You're the one who ratted, aren't you, Gisselle? You got me and Miss Stevens in trouble."

"Why would I do that?" she asked, shifting her eyes away.

"Just so I would be punished and be unhappy and you could pressure me to ask Daddy to get us out of here. And because of your constant jealousy of me," I told her.

"Me? Jealous of you?" She laughed. "Hardly. Even though I'm in this wheelchair, I'm still head and shoulders above you. You've got years and years of swamp life to overcome. You and your Cajun family," she said contemptuously. "Now, are you going to call Daddy or not?"

"No," I said. "I won't break his heart and hand Daphne another victory over us."

"Oh, you and your stupid competition with Daphne. Why don't you want to get back to our school where there's no Iron Lady and none of these stupid rules, where we have boyfriends and fun?" she whined.

Unable to hold back, I flared. "From what I can see," I said, "you're having loads of fun here—and at my expense or someone else's every single day."

Samantha stepped into the room but hesitated when she saw my face and heard my loud voice.

"Oh, I'm sorry. Did you two want to be alone?"

"Hardly," I said, my face on fire. "And if I were you and your friends, I'd be very careful about what I said and did around here from now on."

"What? Why?" Samantha asked.

I gazed with fury upon my twin sister. "Things have a way of getting back to Mrs. Ironwood," I said, and pivoted to march out of the room.

But Gisselle almost had the victory she wanted when Beau phoned that night. He was very excited about his upcoming trip to Greenwood to see me on Saturday. I had forgotten for the moment because of all the trouble. My heart was breaking; the tears came pouring down my face as I told him.

"Oh Beau, you can't come this weekend. I can't see you. I've been punished and confined to my dorm."

"What? Why?"

Shuddering through my gasps and cries, I told him what had happened.

"Oh no," he said. "We've got an away game the following weekend. I won't be able to come for at least two more weeks then."

"I'm sorry, Beau. You have every right to forget me, to find yourself someone else," I said.

"I won't do that, Ruby," he promised. "I have your picture in the top pocket of my shirt every day, close to my heart. I take it out and gaze at it every now and then in school. Sometimes," he confessed, "I even talk to you through your picture."

"Oh Beau, I miss you?'

"Maybe if I come up, you can sneak out and—"

"No, that's just what she wants, Beau. Besides, Gisselle would love to reveal it even if no one else knew, just so she could get me expelled."

"I'm with Gisselle."

"I know, but it would break my father's heart and cause all sorts of new problems at home. Somehow, Daphne would find an even worse situation for me and for Gisselle. And that would be terrible, even though Gisselle deserves it," I added angrily.

Beau laughed. "All right," he said. "I'm going to call you then and I'm going to plead with Father Time to hurry along."

After I had hung up, I stood there sobbing. Mrs. Penny saw me and came hurrying down the corridor.

"What is it now, Ruby dear?" she asked.

"Everything, Mrs. Penny." I ground the tears from my eyes with my small fists and sighed. "Mostly, my boyfriend. He was coming to see me this weekend and I just had to tell him I can't see him."

"Oh. Oh!" she added, wide-eyed. "You spoke to him on the phone?"

"Yes. Why?"

She looked up and down the corridor and shook her head.

"You can't do that, Ruby. You're not permitted to use the phone for social calls for a week. Mrs. Ironwood has made that perfectly clear."

"What? I can't even use the phone?"

"Not for social calls. I'm sorry. All I need is for one more thing to happen that gets Mrs. Ironwood angry at me, and she might give me my discharge," she said sadly. "I'll post that restriction on the bulletin board so all the other girls will know not to call you to the phone. I'm sorry. If you get any social calls, I'll have to talk to the person and explain. I'll give you any messages, however."

I shook my head and then lowered it. Maybe Gisselle was right. Maybe we were better off fleeing from Greenwood and taking our chances with Daphne. My heart felt torn in two: One side was crying for Daddy and what would happen and the other crying for Beau and what had happened.

I returned to my room to bury my sobs in my pillow and do what Beau had said he would do: pray to Father Time and ask him to rush the minutes, the hours, and the days.

I plodded through the remainder of the week, preparing myself for a weekend of what amounted to house arrest, when the second unexpected event occurred. On Friday night after dinner, after most of the other girls in the dorm had gone to the auditorium to see a movie, Mrs. Penny came to my room. Abby and I were amusing ourselves with a game of Scrabble and listening to music. There was a light knocking on the door and I raised my eyes to see our housemother looking rather confused and troubled.

"You had a phone call," she announced. I imagined it had been Beau again. When Mrs. Penny didn't continue but instead wrung her hands and bit on her lower lip nervously, I glanced quizzically at Abby and then turned back to her.

"Yes?"

"It was Mrs. Clairborne's grandson, Louis."

"Louis! What did he want?"

"He wanted to speak to you. I told him why you couldn't come to the phone and he became very . . . "

"Very what, Mrs. Penny?"

"Nasty," she said, with obvious amazement. "I tried to explain how I had no control over the situation, how it wasn't in my power to change things, but he . . . ″

"But he what?"

"He just started to scream at me and accuse me of being part of some conspiracy headed by Mrs. Ironwood. Honestly," she declared, shaking her head, "I never heard such talk. Then he slammed the phone down on me. It's given me the shakes," she said, embracing herself.

"I wouldn't worry about it, Mrs. Penny. As you said, you don't have any say in the matter."

"Of course, I've never heard him speak before. I . . . ″

"Just forget about it, Mrs. Penny. After my period of punishment, I'll try to reach him and see what it was he wanted."

"Yes," she said, nodding. "Yes. Such anger. I feel . . . so shaken," she concluded and walked off.

"What do you suppose he wanted from you?" Abby asked.

I shook my head. "I can understand why he feels it's all a conspiracy. His grandmother and the Iron Lady control every moment of his life, especially whom he sees. Mrs. Ironwood made it clear to me she wasn't happy that I went up there for dinner," I said.

But whatever control Mrs. Clairborne and Mrs. Ironwood had enjoyed over Louis seemed to be weakening, for early the next morning, Mrs. Penny returned to my room to announce a new turn of events. She was obviously very impressed and excited about it. Abby and I had barely finished dressing for breakfast when she was at our door.

"Good morning," she said. "I had to come right down to tell you."

"Tell me what, Mrs. Penny?"

"Mrs. Ironwood has called me directly to tell me you will be permitted to go out for two hours this morning."

"Go out? Go where?" I asked.

"To the Clairborne plantation house," she said, her eyes wide.

"She will let me go out and she will let me go to the plantation?" I looked at Abby, who seemed just as amazed as I was. "But why?"

"Louis," Mrs. Penny replied. "I imagine he's insisting on seeing you today."

"But maybe I don't want to see him," I said, and Mrs. Penny's mouth dropped. "I could never get permission to see my boyfriend, who won't be able to come up here now for two weeks and who would have had to drive for hours, but I can be permitted to go up to the plantation house. These Clairbornes play pretty fast and loose with other people's feelings—picking people up and putting them back down again as though we're only pieces on their personal chessboards." I complained and sat back on my bed.

Mrs. Penny wrung her hands and shook her head. "But . . . but this must be very important if Mrs. Ironwood is willing to bend the punishment somewhat. How can you not want to go? It will only make everyone even angrier at you, I'm sure," she threatened. "They might even blame it on me."

"Oh, Mrs. Penny, they can't blame anything on you."

"Yes, they can. I'm the one who didn't tell them that you had left the campus in the first place, remember?" she reminded me. "That's what started all this," she wailed.

The cloud of fear under which everyone at Greenwood lived disgusted me. "All right," I relented. "When am I supposed to go?"

"After breakfast," she said, relieved. "Buck will have the car out front"

Still unhappy and annoyed, I changed into something more appropriate and went to breakfast with Abby. When Gisselle heard where I was going after breakfast, she threw one of her temper tantrums at the table, stopping all other conversation and drawing everyone's attention to us.

"No matter where you go or what you do, you become Little Miss Special. Even the Iron Lady makes special rules for you and not for everyone else," she complained.

"I don't think Mrs. Ironwood is doing anything for me or is very happy about it anyway," I replied, but Gisselle only saw one thing: I was being permitted to break out of my imprisonment. _

"Well, if any of us get punished, we're going to remind her about this," she threatened, firing her angry gaze at everyone around the table.

After breakfast I left the dorm and got into the car. Buck said very little, except to mutter about how his repair work kept getting interrupted. Apparently no one was happy about my command appearance at the Clairborne plantation. Mrs. Clairborne didn't even appear to greet me. It was Otis who led me through the long corridor to the music studio, where Louis waited at his piano.

"Mademoiselle Dumas," the butler announced, and left us.

Louis, dressed in a gray silk smoking jacket, white cotton shirt, and dark gray flannel slacks, raised his head. "Please, come in," he said, realizing that I was still standing in the doorway.

"What is it, Louis?" I asked, not disguising the note of annoyance in my voice. "Why did you ask that I be brought back here?"

"I know you're angry with me," he said. "I treated you rather shabbily and you have every right to be mad. I embarrassed you and then ran out on you. I wanted you to come up here so I could apologize to you face to face. Even though I can't see you," he added with a tiny smile.

"It's all right. I wasn't angry at you."

"I know. You felt sorry for me, and I guess I deserve that too. I'm pitiful. No," he said when I started to protest. "It's all right. I understand and accept it. I am to be pitied. I remain here, wallowing in my own self-pity, so why shouldn't someone else look at me pathetically and not want to have anything much to do with me?

"It's just that . . . I felt something about you that drew me a little closer to you, made me less afraid of being laughed at or ridiculed—so it was something I know most girls your age would do, especially Grandmother's precious Greenwood girls."

"They wouldn't laugh at you, Louis. Even the crème de la crème, the direct descendants of the Filles de la Cassette," I said with ridicule. He widened his smile.

"That's what I mean," he said. "You think like I do. You are different. I feel I can trust you. I'm sorry I made you feel as if you were summoned to appear in court," he added quickly.

"Well, it's not that, so much as I was punished and . . . ″

"Yes. Why were you punished? I hope it was something very naughty," he added.

"I'm afraid it's not." I told him about my painting trip off campus and he smirked.

"That was it?"

I wanted to tell him more—how his cousin Mrs. Ironwood had it in for me for meeting him—but I decided not to add fuel to the fire. He looked relieved.

"So I pulled a little rank, so what? My cousin will get over it. I've never asked her for anything before. Grandmother wasn't overjoyed, of course."

"I bet you did more than pull a little rank," I said, stepping closer to the piano. "I bet you pulled a little tantrum of your own."

He laughed. "Just a little." He was silent a moment, and then he handed me a few pages of notes. "Here," he said. "It's your song."

At the top of the page was the title "Ruby."

"Oh. Thank you." I put it into my purse.

"Would you like to take a walk through the gardens?" he asked. "Or rather, I should say, take me for a walk?"

"Yes, I would."

He stood up and offered me his hand.

"Just go through the patio doors and turn right," he directed. He scooped his arm through mine and I led him along. It was a warm, partly cloudy morning, with just a small breeze. With amazing accuracy, he described the fountains, the hanging fern and philodendron plants, the oaks and bamboo trees and the trellises erupting with purple wisteria. He identified everything because of their scents, whether it be camellias or magnolias. He had the surroundings memorized according to aromas and knew just when we had reached a set of patio doors on the west side of the house that, he said, opened to his room.

"No one but the maids, Otis, and my grandmother have ever been in my room since my parents died," he said. "I'd like you to be the first outsider, if you like."

"Yes, I would," I said. He opened the patio door and we entered a rather large bedroom, which contained a dresser, an armoire, and a bed made of mahogany. Everything was very neat and as clean and polished as it would be had the maid just left. A portrait of a pretty blond woman was hung over the dresser.

"Is that a painting of your mother?" I asked.

"Yes."

"She was very beautiful."

"Yes, she was," he said wistfully.

There were no pictures of his father or any pictures of his father and mother together. The only other paintings on the walls were of river scenes. There were no photographs in frames on the dresser either. Had he had all pictures of his father removed?

I gazed at the closed door that connected his room with the room I knew must have been his parents' bedroom, the room in which I had seen him curl up in emotional agonythat night.

"What do you think of my self-imposed cell?" he asked.

"It's a nice room. The furniture looks brand-new. You're a very neat person."

He laughed.

And then he turned serious, letting go of my arm and moving to his bed. He ran his hand over the footboard and the post. "I've slept in this bed since I was three years old. This door," he said, turning around, "opens to my parents' bedroom. My grandmother keeps it as clean and polished as any of the bedroom is still in use."

"This must have been a nice place to grow up in," I said. My heart had begun to pitter-patter, as if it sensed something my eyes had missed.

"It was and it wasn't," he said. His lips twisted as he struggled with his memories. He moved to the door and pressed his palm against it. "For years and years, this door was never locked," he said. "My mother and I . . . we were always very close."

He continued to face the door and speak as if he could see through it into the past. "Often in the morning, after my father had gotten up to get to work, she would come in and crawl up beside me in my bed and hold me close so I could wake up in her arms. And if anything ever frightened me . . . no matter how late or early, she would come to me or let me come to her." He turned slowly. "She was the only woman I have ever laid beside. Isn't that sad?"

"You're not very old, Louis. You'll find someone to love,' I said.

He laughed a strange, thin ugh.

"Who would love me? tt not only blind . . I’m twisted, as twisted and ugly as the Hunchback of Notre Dame?"

"Oh, but you're not. You're good-looking and you're very talented."

"And rich, don't forget that."

He walked back to the bed and took hold of the post. Then he ran his hand over the blanket softly.

"I used to lie here, hoping she would come to me, and if she didn't come on own, I would pretend to have been frightened by a bad dream just to bring her here," he confessed. "Is that so terrible?"

"Of course not."

"My father thought it was," he said angrily. "He was always bawling her out for spoiling me and for lavishing too much attention on me."

Having been someone who never knew her mother, I couldn't imagine being spoiled by one, but it sounded like a nice fault.

"He was jealous of us," Louis continued.

"A mother and her child? Really?"

He turned away and faced the portrait as if he could see it. "He thought I was too old for such motherly attention.

She was still coming to me and I was still going to her when I was eight . . . nine . . . ten. Even after I had turned thirteen," he added. "Was that wrong?" he demanded, spinning on me My hesitation put pain in his face. "You think so too, don't you?"

"No," I said softly.

"Yes you do." He sat on the bed. "I thought I could tell you about it. I thought you would understand."

"I do understand. Louis. I don't think badly of you. I'm sorry your father did," I added.

He raised his head hopefully. "You don't think badly of me?”

"Of course not. Why shouldn't a mother and a son comfort and love each other?"

"Even if I pretended to need the comfort just so she would come to me?"

"I guess so," I said, not quite understanding.

"I'd open the door a little," he said, "and then I would return to my bed and lay here, curled up like this." He spread himself out and folded into the fetal position. "And I'd start to whimper." He made the small sounds to illustrate. "Just go over to the door," he said. "Go ahead. Please."

I did so, the pitter-patter of my heart growing stronger, faster, as his actions and words became more confusing. "Open it," he said. "I want to hear the hinges squeak."

"Why?"

"Please," he begged, so I did so. He looked so happy. "Then I would hear her say, 'Louis? Darling? Are you crying, dear?'

"Yes, Mommy,' I would tell her.

“Don't cry, dear,' she would say." He hesitated and turned his head in my direction. "Would you say that to me? Please?" he asked me.

I was silent.

"Please," he pleaded.

Feeling foolish and a bit frightened now, I did so. "Don't cry, dear."

"I can't help it, Mommy." He held his hand out. "Take my hand," he begged. "Just take it."

"Louis, what . . ."

"I just want to show you. I want you to know and to tell me what you think."

I took his hand and he pulled me toward him.

"Just lay down beside me for a moment. Just a moment. Pretend you're my mother. I'm your little Louis. Pretend."

"But why, Louis?"

"Please," he said, holding my hand even tighter. I sat on the bed and he drew me down toward him.

"She would come just like this and I would stroke her shoulder as she would stroke my hair and kiss my face, and then she would let my hand run down over her breasts," he said, running his hand over mine, "so I could feel her heartbeat and be comforted. It was what she wanted me to do. I did only what she wanted me to do! Was that wrong? Was it?"

"Louis, stop," I pleaded. "You're torturing yourself with these memories."

"Then she would put her hand here," he said, seizing my right wrist and bringing it between his legs, where he had already begun to grow hard. I pulled my hand away as if I had touched fire.

The tears were streaming down his cheeks now.

"And my father. he came in on us one day and he grew very angry with both of us and then he had the door locked and if I should cry or complain, he would come in and beat me with a leather strap. Once he did it so much. I had welts over my legs and back and my mother had to put salve over my body afterward, and then she tried to make me feel good again.

"But I couldn't and she became very unhappy too. She thought I had stopped loving her," he said, his face changing into an expression of fury. Then his lips began to tremble as he struggled to bring the words out of them, words that had haunted him. In a gush, he blurted, "So she tried to make another boy her son and my father found out."

He seized my hand with both his hands and brought it to his lips and his face, caressing the back of my hand with his cheeks.

"I've never told anyone that, not even my doctor, but I can't stand keeping it all inside me anymore. It's like having a hive of bees in your stomach and chest. I'm sorry I brought you here and made you listen . I'm sorry."

"It's all right, Louis," I said, stroking his hair with my other hand. "It's all right."

His sobbing grew harder. I put my arms around him and held him close as he cried. Finally he grew quiet and still. I lowered his head to the pillow, but when I let go of his hand, he seized mine again.

"I'm afraid I've made a mess of this visit too, but just stay a little while longer," he said. "Please."

"All right. I will."

He relaxed. His breathing grew softer, more regular. As soon as he was asleep, I slipped of the bed and tiptoed out the patio door. I walked quickly through the garden and back through the studio. Hurrying down the corridor toward the front door, I glanced to my right when I saw a shadow move. It was Mrs. Clairborne, peering out of a doorway. I stopped and started to turn to her but she closed the door. I hesitated only a moment longer before fleeing the plantation full of shadows and pain.