The vacuum was racketing in the living room, a counterpoint to Reba’s work rhythm as she sang an old hymn. (“Oh, Beulah Land, sweet Beulah land, as on the highest mount I stand...”) Her tempo would get her through the living room in short order.
Seeing no one about, I went on to the secrets of the large, airy kitchen with its walk-in cooler, gas range, sinks of old-timey zinc, racked pots and pans of cast iron and copper. A work area centered the room and a sunny breakfast nook bay-windowed on the east.
Too late for breakfast, too early for lunch. I sure as hell had been out like a light once I tipped over the edge.
Hot coffee was in the urn, and I cut crusty Louisiana French bread for toast and found marmalade in the pantry.
I was munching, listening to the house, anxious to hear those little details Lissa might have left unsaid, when footsteps sounded and George appeared in the doorway.
A smile creased his hewn face. “Must have been the Louisiana air.”
“Someone should have called me.”
“Why? You got an appointment with the ambassador from Paraguay? How’s the coffee holding out?”
“Tastes like it was just made.”
He reached into the china cabinet for a big white mug that had his initial on it.
“Hate to eat and run, George.” I dropped my napkin beside the marmalade-smeared saucer. “But I want to talk to Lissa.”
He glanced as he turned the urn spigot. “She’s not here.”
“Oh?”
“She left about half an hour ago.”
“Did she say where she’s going?”
He shrugged. “Who asked? Whose business?”
He sat down opposite me at the breakfast nook table. “She did mention she wouldn’t be here for lunch — popping down to New Orleans and back. Something about a detail in some records that had spewed up in her mind. (Her words.) Whatever it was, she seemed a little put out with herself that it had escaped notice before. ‘Spewed up in her mind’... tendency to overwrite despite her brilliance, wouldn’t you say? She told Elva she’d be back long before dinner. My guess is that she’s gone off to buy a birthday-valentine gift for Valentina. Those two... they trinket-shop for each other as if they were buying for Saint Anne.”
He was looking at me over the top of the coffee mug. “Anything wrong, Cody?”
Was anything right? I shook my head. Nothing for it now, except to wait until Lissa got back. I said, “You’ve known Val a long time.”
“All her life. Her mother and I... everyone was sure we’d wind up married.”
“What happened?”
His lips made an ironic smile. “Career... I was hell-set on the army. Dedication to the ambition, you might say, got me in West Point despite the muscularity between the ears. Elva was hell-set against it. Radical kid in those days. Flower child, Saint Joan of the armies of righteousness. The saps do run high when you’re young, don’t they? We had attitudinal difficulties, it’s safe to say, estrangements based on noncompromise of principles, which are the worst estrangements of all, pigheaded stubbornness on the part of both, pride, and wounded hearts. I had my career and she ended up marrying Charles Marlowe. I’d like to call him a bastard, but he was a fine man, Cody. He passed on...”
“When Val was fifteen,” I said. “She’s told me about him. She was never close to him.”
“It happens with kids sometimes. They were cut in different dispositions, but she respected him, and he never had a moment’s trouble with her.”
“Val would never give anyone trouble, George. If the relationship was like that, then excise the relationship, however painful.”
“Like her mother,” he said.
“You never married?”
His beefish shoulders lifted, dropped. “Mistresses. Not cheap. Lived with three women all told. The relationships were nicer than most run-of-the-mill marriages. Difference between me and a lot of officers, I didn’t change mistresses at every post, with a wife back home. Very fond of all three, but the kind of love a man should have for a woman got stranded at the altar in Saint Louis Cathedral the day Elva married Charles Marlowe. I was a shavetail on duty in Panama that day.”
“Did you see Elva often after that?”
He laughed, brief belly laugh. “Son, I came back here on my first leave after her marriage, spit and polish, sabers at the ready. Ah, youth... I was full of fire to duel old Charlie or something like that and drag Elva off by the hair. She kept us apart. And after that meeting with her, I knew she was too Catholic to divorce him. Sure, I saw her now and then during my career years, small town, old family ties. You don’t move around much in Wickens without the bumping-into.”
He reached across to slap my shoulder. “You can bet your last franc I see her often nowadays.”
“Why don’t you marry her, George?”
“Hell, I intend to. I think she keeps stalling because of Val.”
My frown questioned.
He spread his hands. “It nettles me, I’ll admit, but no throwing down of the gauntlet this time. I can wait. It’s like she’s got some kind of notion she shouldn’t think solely of herself, but should wait to tie the knot until Val is safely married and the last shred of umbilical cord cut for good. What the devil’s wrong with you, Cody? Val’s the loveliest, most sensitive, intelligent woman on earth, and I can’t believe you’re a man with a stuck zipper. Heaven’s sake, Cody, marry the girl and get her the hell out of our hair.”
Before I responded, Reba came into the kitchen, pleasant, robust, giving me a sniff. “Had a special cut of country ham to go with the eggs and grits for you, Mr. Barnard, and you come sneaking down behind my back.”
“I’m sorry, Reba.”
She went to the dishwasher to remove crockery. “Now you know. No excuse.”
George stood and stretched, lazily and contentedly. “Well, Cody, what’s on for today? Name it, and I’ll tell you if I’m amenable or any good at it.”
“I really must talk to Lissa.”
“Then I’ll wander over to the country club and see if I can catch a foursome or try a hand at a penny-ante poker game. Come on over. You’ll meet likable people.”
“Thanks, George.”
As he went out, I said to Reba, “The house is very quiet. Did Val and Elva go out?”
She nodded. “They went downtown to do some last-minute shopping for the valentine-birthday party. You’ll have a ball! Real blowout every year, Val coming home and all, paper lanterns and people all over the lawn. Caterers are brought in so’s me and Clyde and Elva ain’t got a thing to do but have fun. Last year, Lissa hired a genuine Dixie band to come from New Orleans. Sakes alive, I wondered if those decrepit old blacks had played the processional for Noah to enter the ark. The old boys propped themselves up on the bandstand George had planked together on the lawn, and when that music started — day of miracles. Those fellows shed about thirty years apiece, first tune, and they got younger and stronger with every note. Lawdy, my blood is still singing from that music.”
“Any Louchards at the party, Reba?”
She stiffened, then slowly slipped the last plate from the dishwasher. “Where’d you hear that name?”
“Val’s part Louchard, isn’t she?”
“There ain’t no more Louchards, Mr. Barnard,” she said thinly. “The last to bear the name was Valentina’s great grandfather. He had but one daughter. The name ain’t gonna be found in any Wickens phone books.”
I didn’t press Reba. She’d let me know I was on verboten ground. Marie Louchard’s conspiracy to murder seven Yankee boys in 1865 was not a subject for conversation in a region where family trees still cast long shadows.
The respectful quality of my silence was the best ploy, though I’d used it inadvertently. Reba was thinking about it and as she stacked the dishes, she cleared her throat and said, “I reckon you’ll be part of the family and have a right to know. So to save you folks trouble, I’ll give you the Louchard bit — if you’ll take it as the meaningless bit of scandal it is, let it go at that, and keep your mouth shut on any further question.”