"Thank you again for dinner," I said.
Otis appeared at the door as if he'd popped out of thin air and opened it for me.
"Good night, mademoiselle," he said, bowing.
"Good night."
I hurried out and down the steps to the car. Buck hopped out quickly and opened the door.
"Have a good time?" he asked.
I didn't respond. I got in and he closed the door. As we drove off, I looked back at the mansion. Louis and his grandmother were about as rich and as powerful as any family I had known or would know, I thought, but that didn't mean that unhappiness stopped outside their door.
How I wished Grandmère Catherine were still alive. I would bring her up here secretly one night, and she would touch Louis and he would see again and put aside all his sadness. Years later, I would attend a concert in some magnificent hall to listen to him play. Before it was over, he would stand up and announce that the next piece was something he had written for someone special.
"It's called 'Ruby,'" he would say, and then he would begin and I would feel like someone who walked in the spotlights.
Grandmère would say it was all wishful thinking, dreams as thin as soap bubbles. But then she would shake her head sadly and add, "At least you can have dreams. That boy . . . he lives in a house without any dreams at all. He truly lives in darkness."
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.