Wildest Dreams (The Contemporary Collection) (2 page)

There was a family legend that said that Le Jardin de Cour, under a different name, had been the favorite fragrance of the Empress Eugénie of France in the days of the Second Republic. Eugénie, so the story went, had gotten it from a former serving woman of the Empress Joséphine, an elderly woman who had taken it when her mistress died. Josephine had received it from Napoléon Bonaparte himself, who was known to be addicted to fine perfume. The scent was supposed to have been discovered by Napoléon during his Egyptian campaign, and prized by him because it was said to be the perfume with which Cleopatra had ensnared Mark Antony, one that had come to her from the Far Eastern deserts where it had been used in ancient times by the priestesses of the Moon Goddess.

This special formulation had always been closely guarded by the Fossier women, its exact ingredients known only to the owner of the shop in each generation and passed down from mother to daughter over the years. Mimi had been the last of the line to be entrusted with it. However, Mimi had failed to pass it on.

They had all watched Mimi make the perfume many times; they knew most of the different essences that went into it. Le Jardin de Cour, however, was no simple blend. To put this one perfume together could take an hour or more of careful measuring and mixing. One tiny slip, a minute droplet too much of a single flower or plant essence, and the process would have to be begun again from scratch. The ruined batch might be perfume of a sort, might even be marketed at a reduced price, but it would not be Le Jardin de Cour.

Mimi had tried desperately to give them the information they needed as she lay in ICU during the short hours between the time of her fall on the stairs and the moment when her heart stopped beating. It was impossible. She had sustained a stroke that paralyzed the left side of her body, including her facial muscles, so that her speech was croaking and slurred beyond recognition. The all-important formula was far too complicated, required too much detail and precision, to be communicated in the few sounds Mimi could manage.

One by one they had tried to understand — Estelle, Natalie, Timothy, and Joletta herself. One by one the others had turned away, exhausted by the useless effort. Then, near the end, Joletta had made out a single word, just three difficult and uncertain syllables.

Diary.
That was what it sounded as if Mimi had said.

Joletta had told the others what she had heard, though she told them, too, that she could not remember ever seeing Mimi keep any sort of diary. Aunt Estelle and Natalie had practically run from the hospital. The doctors had warned them Mimi could not hold on much longer, but they would not wait.

Timothy had stayed behind to be with Joletta. He sat with his hands between his knees, interminably cracking his knuckles and sweeping his shock of overlong blond hair out of his eyes while he talked in a rambling fashion. He was loose-limbed and athletic, and might have been considered handsome if his personality had been more forceful. But he left the aggressiveness to his mother and his sister. Only a year younger than Joletta, he seemed less because he was so much under his mother’s thumb. His manner was breezy, and his hazel eyes glinted with humor. He tried to distract Joletta, but saw it was useless after a time and slouched off down the hospital hallway in search of the cafeteria and an evening meal.

Joletta had been alone with her grandmother as the evening shadows closed in on the hospital and the hush of the dinner hour invaded ICU. She had been alone as Mimi’s pulse grew weaker, as her breathing slowed, stopped, began again, then ceased in the unbroken silence of death. For long moments afterward, Joletta stood in the isolation of the curtain-enclosed cubicle, holding her grandmother’s lax fingers with their bony knuckles and fine white skin marred by age spots, fingers that had baked and cleaned and soothed her childish hurts. She smoothed the soft silver strands of hair from Mimi’s temples, hair that still seemed so alive. And warm tears pooled in her own eyes and slid slowly down her face.

Aunt Estelle had made a scene in the corridor outside ICU when she returned to find that Mimi was gone. She claimed Joletta had sent her on a fool’s errand, that she had wanted her and her children out of the way at the last so she could be the only one to hear Mimi’s final words.

Joletta had been so angry and heartsick at the commotion that she could not speak even to defend herself against such vicious accusations. Still, it would be a long time before she could forgive her aunt for making them.

Joletta didn’t like to think of that moment, even now. Moving past the ledger cabinet, she continued on toward the heavy door in the far end of the mixing room. She reached for the iron bar that closed off entry to the courtyard beyond.

With the heavy bar in her hand, she hesitated, thinking of the man on the sidewalk. The courtyard was completely walled in, but there were two other entrances. One was a locked doorway in the great iron grate that closed off the porte cochère, or old carriage way, that led from the street, and the other was a small, wooden gate connecting to the courtyard of the building next door.

Joletta shook her head as she pushed up the bar and stepped outside. No one had used the other door or gate in years; Mimi had preferred that everyone come and go through the shop so she could keep an eye on them. They were probably rusted shut, but even if they were not, only someone thoroughly familiar with the place could find their way inside.

Joletta made her way along the arcaded loggia that protected the shop’s back door toward the staircase that led up to the rear balcony of the rooms above. She smoothed her hand over the worn top of the newel post of the mahogany stair as she began to climb upward. Looking out over the courtyard beyond, she thought for a moment about Violet Fossier, the woman who had first established the perfumery.

Violet had taken as her shop the ground floor of the town house that had been built for her as a bridal gift from her husband. This town house, located on one of the most famous streets in the Quarter, had been designed by James Gallier at the height of his fame as an architect to Louisiana planters. The rooms were spacious and airy, with finely carved moldings. Their furnishings — the marble mantels, the paintings and sculptures, mirrors and costly silk-tasseled draperies, silver, crystal, and fine china ornaments — had been brought back from a grand tour of Europe taken as a bridal journey of sorts by Violet and Gilbert Fossier. It had been during this two-year ramble around Europe that Violet had conceived her passion for perfume. It was also there that she had come upon the formula for the special fragrance she had called Le Jardin de Cour.

This perfume, as Mimi was fond of telling customers, had actually taken its name from the courtyard behind the shop. Unlike the house, which had been commissioned and furnished by her husband, the courtyard had been the creation of Violet Fossier. To Joletta it had always been the most serene and satisfying place in New Orleans. The high walls of cream plaster with Roman arches under the loggias along the lower floor of the house blended harmoniously with the geometric-shaped flower and herb beds lined with boxwood in the French style. These, with the paths radiating from a central fountain and a stone arbor covered with ancient grapevines, showed the influence of that long-ago tour of Europe. The plants chosen by Violet years ago were all scented, from the climbing roses and wisteria on the walls and huge old sweet olive and cape jasmine shrubs that filled the corners to the groupings of petunias, nicotiana, and early lilies in the beds. Their sweet fragrance, along with the gaslights that cast flickering shadows across the center fountain while leaving secret alcoves of pleasure here and there in darkness, gave the impression of a sensual, even seductive, retreat.

Joletta had always been curious about Violet, what she was like, what she had been thinking of when she built her courtyard garden, what had happened to her to cause her to open her shop with this fragrant haven behind it. As a historian, Joletta had a special interest in the Victorian period with its momentous events as well as its strict mores and conventions. Violet’s conduct in that time had seemed so unusual, especially among the aristocratic Creoles of French and Spanish descent in the Vieux Carré, where trade was repugnant as an occupation for a man, much less a woman.

Joletta had asked Mimi about it several times, and her grandmother always promised to tell her the whole story when the time was right. Somehow, that time had never come, just as the moment had never been right to pass on the formula.

There were moving shadows in the far end of the courtyard. A whispering sound could be heard above the clatter and tinkle of the fountain, as if branches were scraping against the old bricks of the wall in the night wind. Or as if there were phantom lovers whispering in one of the shrubbery alcoves.

It was definitely eerie to be there alone in the dark; she should have waited until morning, Joletta thought. Even then, it would not have been the same with the shop closed for the funeral and the weekend afterward. There would be no cheerful ringing of the shop bell, no new perfume being mixed, no laughing greeting or loving scolding from Mimi, no smell of something rich with onions, celery, and garlic in a well-browned roux simmering in the upstairs kitchen. Strange to think that it would never be that way again.

Joletta really didn’t want to enter the emptiness of the upper rooms. It was an intrusion, or so it seemed. And yet, what was one more? The others had already been there looking, thumbing through Mimi’s books and papers, rummaging in her closets and drawers. Her own search could be no more of an invasion. Passing along the upper gallery to the narrow entrance doors, Joletta used her key to let herself into the town house.

She switched on the light in the parlor, but did not hesitate among the formal furnishings of rosewood and gilt, marble and ormolu. Skirting a square table centered under a Baccarat chandelier, she walked into the connecting bedroom.

It looked like something from a museum, with a Louis XIV scrolled bed, a dressing table of similar design, and faded draperies of old rose satin over curtains of yellowed lace. Here, as in the parlor, was a fireplace mantel of Carrara marble that surrounded an ornate cast-iron coal grate. Against one wall was a tall chest of carved and gilded wood. In the bottom section of it were drawers of different sizes, but the top was made up of a series of small compartments hidden behind double doors painted in the style of Boucher, with pastoral scenes of amorous shepherds and shepherdesses and hovering cherubs.

Mimi had called this piece of furniture her memory chest. In it were the items she particularly cherished: a seashell she had picked up at Biloxi on her first trip there as a child; the gifts of fans and silver-backed mirrors and other tokens received from members of the Mardi Gras krewes who had called her out to dance at balls during her coming-out season; the red glass buttons from the dress she had been wearing the night her husband had proposed; a dried and disintegrating carnation from his funeral wreath, and many other such treasures. Somewhere among them, Joletta knew, was what she sought.

She found it in the third compartment, stuffed behind a baby’s christening robe. It was in a bundle tied up with a frayed black ribbon, along with a miniature in a frame so heavy and iridescent with tarnish that it had to be made of solid silver.

What Mimi had called a diary was a boxlike book covered with worn maroon velvet and finished with discolored brass-bound edges that made square corners. Actually a Victorian traveling journal, it was thick with pages of heavy acid-free paper, each page covered with closely spaced lines of looping Spenserian script interspersed with sketches of dainty flowers, and a few small-scale figures and landscapes. Joletta had seen it once before, years ago. She stood now with the bundle in her hands, fingering the brass corners of the journal while she gazed down at the miniature that was uppermost.

The small painting, done in oil colors that were soft and delicate yet as clear as the day they had come from the brush, showed the head and shoulders of a young woman. She appeared on the verge of a smile, the look in her wide, pansy-brown eyes diffident yet inquiring, guarded but vulnerable. Her brows were delicately arching, her lashes long and full. Her nose was slightly tip-tilted and her mouth formed with gentle curves tinted a natural coral. Her soft brown hair was drawn back in a low chignon from which short tendrils escaped to curl at her temples and cheekbones. There were garnet-and-seed-pearl eardrops in her ears and a matching brooch at the throat of her flat lace collar. She was not beautiful in a classic sense; still, there was something intriguing about her that made it difficult to look away from her. The artist had drawn his subject with care and precision, and also with a talent that made it seem she might complete her smile at any moment, might tilt her head and answer some question whose echo had long since ceased to sound.

Violet Fossier.

Joletta remembered the day she had first seen the miniature and the journal tied up with it. Mimi had been in bed with a chest cold. Joletta, thirteen or fourteen at the time, had been trying to take care of her. Mimi, who always scorned inactivity, had declined to nap or read. She had directed Joletta to the chest across the bedroom to get her tatting. As Joletta searched, taking out the treasures one by one in her quest for the tatting bobbin, Mimi had told her about each item.

“Bring that to me,
chère,
” her grandmother had commanded as Joletta pulled out the journal.

The brass-bound book had been heavy, and its ornate hasp and small dangling lock and key attached with a piece of black ribbon had rattled as Joletta walked. Mimi took the book from her, handling it with care, smoothing the worn places on the velvet. In answer to Joletta’s plea to see inside, her grandmother had carefully opened the lock and lifted the frontpiece to expose the yellowed pages with their beautiful handwriting and delicate sketches marred with small ink blotches.