The Unloved (10 page)

Once more Helena seemed to rally. “I
am
dying,” she gasped. “Don’t you want to watch me, Marguerite? Isn’t that what you’ve been waiting for all these years?” Then her body
contracted once more and her hands flew again to her breast. Writhing in pain now, she clutched at Kevin, her breathing reduced to short rasping gasps. “Promise me …” she managed once again.

Kevin drew a sharp breath as he heard his mother’s words, but as her hands closed like twin vises on his, he could do nothing but nod.

“Marguerite,” the old woman gasped. “Watch out for Marguerite.…”

Her eyes met his, and for the last time in his life Kevin felt the strange power of his mother’s will reach out to close around him.

Even as she lay dying, he wanted to pull away from her, wanted to escape from her influence. But he couldn’t. He couldn’t escape her as a child, and he couldn’t escape her now.

The last mighty stroke of the seizure took Helena then, and she screamed out loud as a searing pain exploded from her chest into every extremity of her body. A vein exploded in her forehead and an angry purplish stain spread beneath the skin. And then, as the scream died on her lips, her grasp on Kevin’s hands relaxed, her hands fell away, her mouth dropped open, and her head lolled back on Kevin’s lap. The anger drained from her eyes, and she stared sightlessly upward until her son gently closed their lids.

Marguerite, whimpering softly against the wall by the door, seemed to sense the change.

“M-Mama?” she asked, her voice uncertain now, and almost childlike. “Mama?”

Kevin looked helplessly up at his older sister. “She’s gone, Marguerite.”

“Noooo …”

The word was wrenched from Marguerite’s lips in an anguished wail, and she pulled herself away from Anne’s supporting grip to lurch across the room. Her lame leg twisted oddly sideways, she dropped to the floor and gathered her mother into her arms. “No, Mama,” she whispered. “You can’t leave me. You can’t—You can never leave me, Mama. I won’t let you! I won’t let you!” Sobbing brokenly, she
buried her face in Helena’s still chest, then hugged her body tighter, as if trying to lend her own warmth to Helena’s corpse.

Kevin started to reach out to her, but suddenly Ruby appeared at the door. She stepped forward quickly, her hand stopping his own. Their eyes met, and Kevin found his gaze held by the deep dark eyes of the old servant. “Leave her be, Mr. Kevin,” Ruby said quietly. “She’s got to deal with this in her own way. And she will, Mr. Kevin. She will.”

Kevin tried to protest, but Ruby shook her head. “I know her, Mr. Kevin. I know her a lot better than you do. I been here all her life and know how she is. We got to leave her be.”

Sighing heavily, she shifted to look down at the still, frail body that was all that was left of her mistress. “It’ll be all right,” she said almost to herself. “I’ll make sure it is, Miz Helena. I’ll make sure.” Then, taking Kevin by the hand, she led him out of the ruined nursery.

Anne, who had stood stunned near the door through it all, stared numbly at Marguerite and Helena for a moment, then turned to go. But before she was quite out of the room, Marguerite spoke, her voice bleak and empty.

“She’s left me, Anne,” she said quietly.

Anne turned back then, and found Marguerite looking at her, her eyes unblinking and filled with a pain Anne had never seen before.

“How could she do that?” Marguerite asked then. “How could she leave me? I needed her, Anne. I
needed
her.”

Anne had watched in amazement as the cars streamed across the causeway on the afternoon of Helena Devereaux’s funeral, but upon reflection, decided she really shouldn’t have been surprised at the turnout. After all, even in the face of the obvious depression of the area, the Devereauxes had still been the first family of the county for nearly two centuries, and certainly the death of the matriarch would be considered an event of some note. And, she also realized, most of the people who came over to the island for the service hadn’t actually seen Helena in better than a decade, and in all likelihood had no idea of what an evil-tempered harridan she had become. Certainly Marguerite would never have complained, and unless Anne had thoroughly misjudged Ruby, the old servant would have been just as discreet as Marguerite herself.

Now, standing in the suffocating heat of the July afternoon, Anne let her attention wander as the local parish priest droned on in what she considered to be an entirely fictional eulogizing of Helena’s soul. Certainly the Helena Devereaux the priest was talking about bore no resemblance to the woman Anne had known during the last week. Finally, she tuned the priest out altogether, letting her eyes wander over the faces of the people whose own fortunes had been tied to those of the Devereauxes over so many generations. The group gathered in the small family graveyard a hundred yards below the house was nearly evenly divided between whites and blacks, and there were many faces that showed features of both the races. Nor, so far as Anne could see, were there
any strains between them as white and black stood side by side at the grave.

To Anne’s further surprise, the villagers didn’t look nearly as poor as she had expected. Though a few of the men’s faces reflected the deep lines of worry endemic to the very poor, for whom old age begins to show early in life, most of them seemed to be middle-class people who had fallen on hard times but expected their condition to be temporary. They were dressed in their best suits, and though the clothing was not expensive nor quite up to the latest styles, neither was it ragged or shining with age. Most of the village men wore dark suits similar to the one Kevin himself was wearing.

The women, for the most part, were reflections of their husbands. Their faces, too, had the weathered look of those for whom life had not been particularly easy, but she saw none of the hopeless bitterness created by the stark poverty of the hill country of West Virginia, through which she and Kevin had driven on their way to New Orleans ten years before. Indeed, as Anne felt the sun beating down, it occurred to her that in this part of the country anyone who spent much time outdoors was going to take on a weathered look.

There was also, she noticed, an odd similarity among the faces she was looking at. That, too, was understandable, for over the years these families must have intermarried to the point where most of the people at the funeral were cousins of one degree or another. She suppressed a small smile as she silently speculated on how many of them actually had Devereaux blood running somewhere in their veins, and suspected it was a far higher percentage than anyone in town ever admitted.

The priest fell silent, and Anne refocused her attention on the ornate coffin that rested on a small catafalque before the open door in the large marble crypt holding the remains of four generations of Devereauxes. Anne had studied the crypt earlier, reading the names of Devereauxes long gone. The earliest of them all had French names, but over the years some Scottish and Irish names had begun to creep in. Anne had been unable to read some of the inscriptions, for the marble mausoleum was deeply pitted by its exposure to the
elements. But Helena’s name was crisply clear, chiseled only the day before by a monument carver who had driven up from Charleston specifically to match Helena’s epitaph to that of her husband Rafe, already entombed in the crypt.

The crowd murmured in whispered prayer as the pallbearers lifted the coffin from the catafalque and slid it into the dark recess of marble. Then Marguerite stepped forward, her slim figure swathed in a cascade of black chiffon, and placed a single rose on her mother’s coffin. She stood still a moment, then reached out, touched the coffin with the tips of her fingers, and stepped back.

Kevin repeated the ritual, then; one by one, the mourners filed past the open crypt, speaking a soft word of encouragement to Marguerite, then moving on, drifting out of the cemetery and up the low rise to the mansion itself, where a cold buffet was already spread on the veranda. Anne, with Julie and Jeff flanking her, hung back until the last of the villagers had paid their respects, then stepped forward. First she, then each of the children, placed a flower on the coffin inside the crypt, amidst the other flowers. When they were done, Marguerite reached out to the crypt’s heavy door, then hesitated. Her eyes damp, she turned to Kevin. “I can’t,” she said quietly. “I just can’t do it, Kevin.”

Understanding, Kevin moved to his sister’s side, swung the door closed, and locked it with a silver key. Putting his arm around Marguerite, he led her toward the house.

“Is it all over?” Jeff asked in a loud whisper as Anne and the children, too, left the cemetery.

“It’s all over,” Anne assured her son, who somehow had managed to stand relatively still through the half hour of the service. “And I’ll bet if you can find Toby, the two of you can get at that food before it’s all gone.” His face lighting up, Jeff raced ahead and disappeared into the crowd, then reappeared a second later with Toby Martin in tow. The two of them flew up the steps to the veranda and began piling food onto their plates. Anne grinned ruefully at Julie. “I have a feeling we might have trouble convincing Jeff to go home,” she remarked. “Did you ever see anyone make such a close friend so fast?”

“Toby’s nice,” Julie replied. “In fact, most of the kids here are nice. They’re not like the people we know in Connecticut.”

Anne gazed at her daughter with mild surprise. “I thought you liked your friends.”

“I do,” Julie said quickly, flushing. “But everyone’s different down here. They don’t worry about who has the nicest house, or the most money, or any of that stuff.”

“It’s hard to worry about money if you don’t have any,” Anne pointedly observed.

“They’re not that poor,” Julie said. “Jennifer’s father works in Charleston, and most of her friends’ fathers do too.”

Anne’s expression turned uncertain. “But if they’re all working, why don’t they do something about their homes? The whole town looks like it’s falling apart.” When Julie’s eyes clouded and she looked away from her mother, Anne’s uncertainty deepened. “Julie? What is it? Is something wrong?”

Julie shrugged elaborately, then saw Jenny Mayhew, who was standing with another girl and three boys. “There’s Jenny,” she said, waving. “I’d better go say hello to her.” She started away, but Anne stopped her.

“Julie, what’s wrong? What is it?”

Julie hesitated once more, then her eyes, darkened by anger, met her mother’s. “Maybe you’d better ask Daddy,” she said. “Ask him why the town looks the way it does!” Before Anne could reply, Julie hurried up the slope and was swallowed up by the group of teenagers.

Anne stayed where she was for a moment, wondering what Julie could have been talking about. Still pondering the question, she, too, started walking up the gentle hill. But that afternoon she was not to find out what Julie’s strange words had meant, for as she moved among the crowd of mourners clustering in the shade of the trees on the front lawn, she increasingly felt like an outsider. And, of course, she was.

All the people here—even her husband—shared a common heritage of which she knew nothing. And as she spoke to them, or tried to speak to them, she felt the chasm between herself and the people of Devereaux widening.

Not that anyone was rude to her. Indeed, she felt that most of them were going out of their way to be kind to her. But it was the kindness a native shows to an alien, not the kindness one friend shows to another.

Within thirty minutes Anne was certain that no matter how long a time she spent in Devereaux—even if it was the rest of her life—she would never fit in.

Long before the first of the mourners had gone home, she had slipped away to the shelter of the room she shared with Kevin.

And that, she decided as she stretched out on the bed, was the crux of the matter. This wasn’t her room, and never would be. It was only the room she shared with Kevin, who, unlike herself, was a real Devereaux.

That was the way it was, and always would be.

But it doesn’t matter, she told herself, closing her eyes against the afternoon sun. It doesn’t matter, because in a few more days we’ll be going home.…

“Did you ever see a dead person before?” Toby asked, staring mournfully at the plate of potato salad for which he suddenly had no appetite.

Jeff shook his head silently.

“It kind of made me feel funny,” Toby admitted.

“Me too,” Jeff agreed. But it had done more to him than just make him feel funny. He’d stood as quietly as he could all through the service, wondering what would happen when it was all over. He’d been glad they hadn’t opened the coffin again before they put it into the crypt—it had been bad enough having it sitting in the library for three days, while everyone in town came by to peer down at the strange white mask that didn’t quite look like his grandmother. He’d looked at the body a lot—whenever nobody came along to chase him out of the library—trying to figure out why his grandmother looked so much different now that she was dead. But even now that they’d buried her—if that was what you called it when you put the body in a stone box above the ground—he
still wasn’t quite sure. But he knew that looking at the body had been scary.