"Yes. She's always jolly." After a moment I said, "I switched roommates."
"Oh?"
"I was rooming with my twin sister, Gisselle."
"You don't get along?" she asked, and then she smiled. "If you think I'm getting too personal . . ."
"Oh no," I said, and I meant it. I remembered Grandmère Catherine used to tell me your first impressions about people usually prove to be the truest because your heart is the first to react. Right from the beginning I felt comfortable with Miss Stevens, and I believed I could trust her, if for no other reason than the fact that we shared a love of art.
"No, I don't get along with her," I admitted. "And not because I don't want to or I don't try. Maybe if we had been brought up together, things would be different."
"If?" Miss Stevens's smile melted with confusion.
"We've only known each other a little more than a year," I began, and I told her my story. I was still talking by the time we arrived at the place that overlooked the river. She hadn't said a word the whole time; she just listened quietly.
"And so I agreed to come to Greenwood with Gisselle," I concluded.
"Remarkable," she said. "And I used to think my life was complicated because I was brought up by nuns at an orphanage, St. Mary's in Biloxi."
"Oh? What happened to your parents?"
"I never really knew. All the nuns would tell me was that my mother gave me over to them shortly after I was born. I tried to find out more about myself, but they were very strict about keeping confidences."
I helped her set up our easels and put out paper and drawing utensils. The sky had begun to clear, just as the weatherman had promised, and the thick layers of clouds separated to reveal a light blue sky behind them. Here at the river, the breeze was stronger. Behind us the branches of some red oak and hickory trees shuddered and swayed, sending a flock of chirping sparrows off over the riverbank and then into a quieter section of cottonwoods.
An oil barge and a freighter moved rapidly downriver, while off in the distance, a replicated steamboat carrying frolicking tourists churned its way lazily toward St. Francisville.
"Do you think you'll ever find out about your parents?" I asked.
"I don't know. I've sort of accepted that I won't?' She smiled. "It's all right. I have an extended family: all the other orphans I knew, some of the nuns." She gazed around. "It's pretty here, isn't it?"
"Yes."
"What catches your eye?"
I studied the river, the boats, and the shore. Downstream I saw the spiraling smoke from the oil refinery stacks get caught in the wind and disappear against the clouds, but it was a pair of brown pelicans bobbing on the water that held my attention. I told her, and she laughed.
"You're like me. You like to put some animal in your settings. Well, let's begin. Let's work on perspective and see if we can capture the feel of movement in the water."
We started to draw, but our conversation didn't stop as we worked.
"How was your tea with Mrs. Clairborne?" she inquired. I described it and how impressed I was with the house. Then I told her about Louis.
"You actually spoke to him?" she asked, pausing.
"Yes."
"I've heard a great deal about Mrs. Clairborne and her grandson from the other teachers, but there are teachers who have been here for years and never set eyes on him. What's he look like?"
I described him and his beautiful piano playing.
"After I told him I was an artist, he suggested I go down to the lake at twilight and try to paint that scene. He wasn't always blind, and he remembers it vividly," I told her.
"Yes. What a tragic story."
"I don't know it."
"You don't? Yes, I understand why. It is one of the unspoken tales, one of those secrets everyone knows but pretends not to," she said. "It has been made clear to me by the old-timers here on more than one occasion not to be caught gossiping about the Clairbornes."
I nodded.
"But I can tell you the story," she said with a smile. "Even if it does seem like gossip. We're simpatico artists and we're permitted little indiscretions." She grew serious for a moment as she focused on the river. Then she began. "It seems Mrs. Clairborne's daughter, Louis's mother, was having an affair with a younger man." She paused and swung her eyes to me. "A much younger man. Eventually her husband discovered it and was so emotionally wounded and embarrassed, he committed what is known as a murder-suicide. He smothered his wife to death a la Othello, using a pillow in their bedroom, and then he shot himself in the head. Poor Louis somehow witnessed it all, and the traumatic effect put him into a coma, from which he eventually emerged blind.
"From what I've been told, there was a major effort to cover it all up, but the story leaked out over time. To this day, Mrs. Clairborne refuses to accept the actual facts, choosing instead to believe her daughter died of heart failure and her son-in-law, unable to accept her death, took his own life." She paused and then widened her eyes when she looked at me.
"After orientation for the new members of the faculty, we were all invited to a tea at the Clairborne mansion. When you were there, did you notice anything unusual about the clocks in the house?"
"Yes. They're all stopped at two-oh-five."
"That's when Mrs. Clairborne's daughter supposedly died. When I asked one of the older teachers about it, he told me Mrs. Clairborne thinks of time as having stopped for her and makes it appear symbolically that way in her home. It's really a very sad story."
"Then there is nothing physically wrong with Louis, nothing wrong with his eyes?"
"From what I've been told, no. He rarely emerges from that dark section of the mansion. Over the years he's been treated and tutored there, and as far as I know, there have been only a handful of people with whom he has carried on any sort of conversation. You made history," she said, and smiled warmly. "But after knowing you only a short time, it's not hard for me to understand why someone reluctant to talk would talk to you."
"Thank you," I said, blushing.
"All of us have trouble communicating with each other. I know I do. I'd rather communicate through my artwork. I'm especially bashful when it comes to men," she confessed. "Maybe because of how I was brought up." She laughed. "I suppose that's why I feel so comfortable at Greenwood, why I wanted to teach at an all-girls school."
She smiled at me again.
"There. We've traded secrets about ourselves, just like sisters in art should. Actually," she continued, "I've always longed for a sister, someone in whom I could confide and someone who would confide in me. Your twin sister doesn't know what she's missing, treating you the way she does. I envy her."
"Gisselle would never believe anyone envied her. She doesn't want envy anyway; she wants pity."
"Poor dear. A severe handicap after being so active would be devastating. I suppose you'll just have to put up with her. But if there is ever anything I can do to help . . ."
"Thank you, Miss Stevens."
"Oh please, Ruby. Call me Rachel when we're not in class.
I really would like to feel we're more friends than simply a teacher and her student. Okay?"
"Okay," I said, surprised but not displeased.
"Oh, look: We've been talking so long we've hardly done anything. Come on. Let's shut our mouths and put our fingers to work," she said. Her soft, happy laughter caught the attention of the pelicans, who looked up at us with what seemed to me to be expressions of annoyance. After all, they were here to fish so they could eat.
"Animals know when you sincerely respect them," Grandmère Catherine once told me. "Too bad people don't."
We worked for about two and a half hours, after which Miss Stevens thought we should go for lunch. She took me to a small restaurant just outside the city. Even before we entered, we could smell the delicious aromas of the crab-boil, sautéed shrimp, and salami, fried oysters, sliced tomatoes, and onions that went into a po'boy sandwich. We had a wonderful time talking, comparing the things we liked and disliked about styles and fashions, food and books. I did feel as if I were with an older sister.