"What is it, Wendy?"
"Monsieur Dumas sent me up to help her get started, but she won't listen to a word I say," she complained. "I plead with her and plead with her to get her body movin' and she lay there like a zombie, her eyes sewn shut, pretending she's asleep. What am I supposed to do?" she wailed. "Madame Dumas will yell at me, not her."
"No one's going to yell at you, Wendy. I'll get her up," I said. "Just give me a few moments."
She smiled through her tears and wiped them off her plump cheeks. Wendy wasn't much older than Gisselle and me, but she had stopped going to school when she was only in the eighth grade and become a maid for the Dumas family. Ever since Gisselle's car accident, Wendy was more like Gisselle's whipping boy, bearing the brunt of her rages and tantrums. Daddy had hired a private duty nurse to look after Gisselle, but she couldn't tolerate Gisselle's tantrums.
Neither could the second and third nurse, so the responsibility of looking to Gisselle's needs was unfortunately added to Wendy's chores.
"Don't know why you even care about her," Wendy said, her dark eyes as furious and bright as two shiny discs of black onyx.
I knocked on Gisselle's door, waited, and then entered when she didn't respond. She was as Wendy had described: still under the blanket, her eyes shut. I went to her window and looked out. Gisselle's room had a view of the street. The morning sunlight glittered off the cobblestone walk, and there was light traffic. Along our cornstalk fence, the azaleas, yellow and red roses, and hibiscus had all bloomed in a burst of breathtaking color. No matter how long I lived in this mansion, this estate in New Orleans's famed Garden District, I remained in awe of the homes and landscaping.
"What a beautiful day," I said. "Think of all the nice things we're going to see on the trip."
"It's a boring trip. I've been to Baton Rouge before," she said. "We'll see ugly oil refineries belching smoke."
"Oh my, she is alive!" I declared, slapping my hands together. "Thank heaven. We all thought you had passed on during the night."
"You all wished, you mean," she said angrily. She didn't pull herself to a sitting position. Instead, she turned and left her head sunk in the big, fluffy pillow, her arms at her sides, and sulked.
"I thought you finally agreed to go and not to make a fuss, as long as you could take everything you wanted along, Gisselle," I said with controlled patience.
"I just said I give up. I didn't say I agreed to go."
"You and I looked over the brochures. You admitted it looked like a beautiful place," I reminded her. She focused her gaze on me, her eyes small.
"How can you be so . . . so . . . agreeable? You'll have to leave Beau behind, you know," she reminded me. "And when the cat's away, the mice will play."
Beau had taken my going to Greenwood very hard when I first told him. We had been having a hard enough time as it as, continuing to see each other. Ever since Daphne had discovered my secret painting of Beau, we'd had to keep our romance quiet. He had posed nude for me and she had found the picture and told his parents. He was severely punished and we were forbidden to see each other. But time passed, and slowly his parents eased up, as long as Beau promised to see other girls as well. He really didn't, and even if he came to a school dance with someone else or took someone else for a ride in his sports car, he ended up with me.
"Beau's promised to visit as often as he can."
"But he didn't promise to become a monk," she stabbed back quickly. "I know half a dozen girls just waiting to sink their nails into him: Claudine and Antoinette for starters," she happily pointed out.
Beau was one of the most sought-after boys in our school, as handsome as a soap opera star. He merely had to turn his blue eyes on a girl and smile to make her heart pitter-patter so fast she lost her breath and said or did something foolish. He was tall and well built, one of our school's football stars. I had given myself to him and he had pledged his deep love for me.
Before I'd arrived in New Orleans, he was Gisselle's boyfriend, but she loved to tease and torment him by flirting and seeing other boys as well. She never realized how sensitive and serious he could be. All boys were the same to her anyway. She still saw them as playthings, not to be trusted and not worthy of loyalty. Her accident hadn't slowed her down, either. She still couldn't be in the company of young men and not torment them with a twist of her shoulder or a whispered promise to do something outrageous when and if she and the young man were ever alone.
"I don't have a collar around Beau," I told her. "He can do what he wants when he wants," I said with such nonchalance it made her eyes widen. Disappointment flooded her face.
"You don't mean that," she insisted.
"And he doesn't have a collar around me, either. If being apart for a while causes him to find another girlfriend, someone he likes better, than it was probably meant to be anyway," I said.
"Oh you and your damned faith in Destiny. I suppose you'll tell me Destiny meant for me to be a cripple for the rest of my life, won't you?"
"No."
"What, then?" she demanded.
"I don't want to speak badly about the dead," I said, "but you and I know what you and Martin were doing the day of the accident. You can't blame
Destiny."
She folded her arms under her breasts and fumed.
"We promised Daddy we would go and give the school a chance. You know how things are here now," I reminded her.
"Daphne doesn't hate me as much as she hates you," she retorted, her eyes flaming.
"Don't be so sure of that. She's eager to get both of us out of her life. You know why she resents us: We know she really isn't our mother and that Daddy was more in love with our mother than he could ever be with her. As long as we're around, she can't escape the truth."
"Well, she didn't resent me until you arrived," Gisselle flared. "After that my whole life went downhill, and now I'm being carted off to some girls' school. Who wants to go to a school where there are no boys?" she cried.
"It says in the brochure that the school arranges dances with a boys' school from time to time," I said. The moment the words left my lips, I regretted them. She was always eager to pounce on any opportunity to point up her paralysis.
"Dances! Can I dance?"
"I'm sure there are many other things for you to do with a boy at Greenwood on the days they're permitted to visit."
"Permitted to visit? It sounds dreadful, like a prison." She started to cry. "I do wish I was dead. I do, I do."
"Come on, Gisselle," I pleaded. I sat on her bed and took her hand in mine. "I promised you I would do everything I could to make it easier for you, help you with your homework, whatever you need, didn't I?"
She pulled her hand back and ground her eyes dry with her small fists before peering over them at me. "Everything I want?"
"Everything you need," I corrected.
"And if the school is terrible, you will side with me against Daddy and insist we come home?"
I nodded. "Promise."
"I promise, but it has to be really terrible and not just hard with rules you hate."
"Promise on . . . on Paul's life."
"Oh, Gisselle."
"Go on or I won't believe you," she insisted.
"All right, I promise on Paul's life. You're absolutely dreadful sometimes, you know."
"I know," she said, smiling. "Go tell Wendy I'm ready to get up and get washed and dressed for breakfast."
"I'm right here," Wendy said, coming around the door jamb. "I was here waitin'."
"You mean you were spying on us," Gisselle accused. "Listening in."
"No I wasn't.” Wendy looked at me, horrified. "I don't spy on you."
"Of course she doesn't spy on us, Gisselle."
"Of course she does, you mean. She likes listening in and living a romantic life through us," Gisselle teased. "It's that and your romance magazines, isn't it, Wendy? Or are you meeting Eric Daniels behind the cabana every night?"