The people around her nodded and extended their condolences. I thanked them for their kind words and finally got myself up to get something to drink and nibble on some food. It never occurred to me that simply sitting by the coffin and greeting mourners would be so exhausting, but the constant emotional strain took a greater toll than I had imagined it could.
Grandpère Jack, although he wasn't drinking, was holding court vociferously on the front galerie. Every once in a while, he would give out with a shout and rant and rave about one of his pet subjects. "Those damn oil derricks poking their heads above the swamps, changing the landscape from the way it's looked for more than one hundred years, and for what? Just to make some fat Creole oil man wealthy in New Orleans. I say we burn 'em all out. I say—"
I went out back and closed the door behind me. It was nice that all these people came to show their respect and comfort us, but it was beginning to get overwhelming for me. Every time someone came over to squeeze my hand and kiss my cheek, she or he would start up the tears behind my eyes and close-my throat until it ached worse than any sore throat ever made it ache. Every muscle in my body was still rope tight from the shock of Grandmère's passing. I took a short walk toward the canal and then felt my head begin to spin.
"Oh," I moaned, bringing my hand to my forehead. But before I could fall backward, a strong pair of arms caught me and held me upright and steady.
"Easy," a familiar voice said. I let myself rest against his shoulder for a moment and then I opened my eyes and looked up at Paul. "You'd better sit down, here, by this rock," he said, guiding me to it. He and I had often sat together on that same rock and thrown little stones into the water to count the ripples.
"Thank you," I said, and let him guide me to it. He sat beside me quickly and put a blade of marsh grass in his mouth.
"Sorry I didn't come yesterday, but I thought there would be so many people around you . . ." He smiled. "Not that there aren't today. Your grandmother was a very famous and beloved woman in the bayou."
"I know. I never fully appreciated how much until now," I said.
"That's usually the way it is. We don't realize how important someone is to us until he or she is gone," Paul replied, the underlying meaning of his words telegraphed through his soft eyes.
"Oh, Paul, she's gone. My Grandmère Catherine is gone," I cried, falling into his arms and really beginning to cry. He stroked my hair back and there were tears in his eyes when I looked, as if my pain were his.
"I wish I had been here when it happened," he said. "I wish I had been right beside you."
I had to swallow twice before I could speak again. "I never wanted to send you away from me, Paul. It broke my heart to say the things I said."
"Then why did you?" he asked softly. There was so much hurt in his eyes. I could feel what it must have been like for him and I could see the tears that had emerged. It wasn't fair. Why should the two of us suffer so horribly for the sins of our parents? I thought.
"Why did you, Ruby, why?" he asked again; he begged for the answer. I could understand his turmoil. My words, words spoken right near here, were so unexpected and so abrupt, they had to have made him question reality. Anger was the only way in which he could have dealt with such a surprise, such an unreasonable surprise.
I turned away from him and bit down on my lower lip. My mouth wanted to run away with the words and exonerate me from all blame.
"It's not that I didn't love you, Paul," I began slowly. Then I turned back to him. The memories of our short-lived kisses and words of promise flitted like doomed moths to the candle of my burning despair. "And not that I still don't," I added softly.
"Then what could it have been? What could it be?" he asked quickly.
My heart, so torn by sorrow and so tired of sadness, began to thump like an oil drum, heavy, ponderous, as slowly as the dreadful drums in a funeral procession. What was more important now, I questioned: that there be truth between Paul and me, truth between two people who care for each other with such a rare love, a love that demanded honesty, or that I maintain a lie that kept Paul from knowing the sins of his father and therefore kept peace in his family?
"What was it?" he asked again.
"Let me think a moment, Paul," I said and looked away. He waited impatiently beside me. I was sure his heart was beating as quickly as mine was now. I wanted to tell Paul the truth, but what if Grandmère Catherine had been right? What if, in the long run, Paul would hate me more for being the messenger of such devastating news?
Oh, Grandmère, I thought, isn't there a time when the truth must be revealed, when lies and deceptions must be exposed? I know that when we are little, we can be left to dwell in a world of fantasy and fabrication. Maybe, it's even necessary, for if we were told some of the ugly truths about life then, we would be destroyed before we had a chance to develop the had crusts we needed to shield us from the arrows of hardship, of sadness, of tragedy, and, alas, the arrows that carried the final dark truths: grandmothers and grandfathers, mommies and daddies die, and so do we. We have to understand that the world isn't filled only with sweet sounding bells, soft, wonderful things, delightful aromas, pretty music, and endless promises. It is also filled with storms and hard, painful realities, and promises that are never kept.
Surely, Paul and I were old enough now, I thought. Surely, we could face truth if we could face deception and live on. "Something happened here a long time ago," I began, "that forced me to say the words I said to you that day."
"Here?"
"In our bayou, our little Cajun world," I said, nodding. "The truth about it was quickly smothered because it would have brought great pain to many people, but sometimes, perhaps always, when the truth is buried this way, it has a way of coming out, of forcing itself upward into the sunlight again.
"You and I," I said, looking into his confused eyes, "are the truths that were once buried, we are in the sunlight."
"I don't understand, Ruby. What lies? What truths?"
"No one back then when the truth was buried ever dreamed you and I would come to love each other in a romantic sense," I said.
"I still don't understand, Ruby. How could anyone have known years ago about us anyway? And why would it matter then if they had?" he asked, his eyes squinting with confusion.
It was so hard to come right out and say it simply. Somehow, I felt that if Paul came to the understandings himself, if the words were formed in his mind and spoken by him instead of formed in my mind and coming from my lips, it would be less painful.
"The day I lost my mother, you lost yours, too," I finally said. The words felt like tiny, hot embers falling from my lips. The moment I uttered them, that feeling was followed by a chill so cold it was as if someone had poured ice water down the back of my neck.
Paul's eyes rushed over my face, searching for a clearer comprehension.
"My mother . . . died, too?"
His eyes lifted and he took on a far-off look as his mind raced from point A to point B. Then his face turned crimson and he gazed at me again, this time, his eyes more demanding, more frantic.
"What are you saying . . . that you and I . . . that we're . . . related? That we're brother and sister?" he asked, the corners of his mouth pulled up into his cheeks. I nodded.
"Grandmère Catherine decided to tell me only when she saw what was happening between us," I said. He shook his head, still skeptical. "It was very painful for her to do so. Now that I think back, it wasn't long afterward that age began to creep into her steps and into her voice and heart. Old pains that are revived sting sharper than when they first strike."
"This has got to be a mistake, an old Cajun folktale, some stupid rumor conjured up in a room filled with busybodies," Paul said, wagging his head and smiling.
"Grandmère Catherine never spread gossip, never fanned the flames of idle talk and rumors. You know she hated that sort of thing; she was someone who despised lies and more often than not made people face the truth. She made me do it even though she knew it would break my heart; it was something she had to do, even though it hurt her so much, too.