Queen of the Mardi Gras Ball Read online

  Roz’s knees bucked under the tray, spilling café au lait across its surface. “Please put that dress away, Lucille,” she snapped. “Come get this tray.”

  The maid rushed over and mopped up the coffee with the linen napkin that had covered Mrs. Boylan’s lap. “Sorry if I upset you, Miss Roz, but you have other pretty things. I bet if we dressed you real nice, Mr. Boylan might stay home in the evenings or take you out to the Yacht Club for dancing now that you feel better. You could tell him about the baby, and I bet he’d be real proud.”

  Roz gestured for the china chamber pot she kept under the bed. Lucille got it to her mouth just in time as her mistress lost all her breakfast. The maid hurried off and returned with a wet cloth by the time Roz finished heaving over the picture of the hated Beast Butler in its bottom.

  “I think I’ll stay in bed today. No need to fuss over me.” Rosamond rolled to her side and curled her knees up around her belly.

  Lucille backed out of the room with the bed tray and chamber pot and made her way carefully down the stairs, which still lacked a railing. Miss Roz swore it would be put up in the next two weeks. “Sure, before someone like me breaks their neck,” muttered the maid.

  She set her load down on the kitchen table. Oralee raised the lid of the chamber pot. “What my good breakfast doin’ in here? You take that back upstairs and flush it down the commode, you hear? Ain’t my job. I jus’ cooks. She spittin’ up again?”

  “I do suppose. All I said was she might dress up nice for Mr. Boylan, and here it comes. She could have give me that blue dress with the stains on it if she didn’t like it no more, but no, she too busy puking to make the offer.”

  “Girl, two weeks ago, she don’t even want his baby. I’m guessin’ once it come, she gonna keep that bedroom door locked for good. Mr. Boylan, he a scary man. Wilbert say he come home some nights with blood on his clothes. That poor chile done make a big mistake when she marry him.”

  “Mr. Boylan seems big and handsome to me. Rich, too. Look at that car he drives. Guess he’s no worse than any other man.”

  “He gots des yeux goueres, evil eyes.”

  “No such thing as the evil eye.”

  “Sho’ is. Ain’t that so, Wilbert?”

  Wilbert, who had just walked into kitchen, looked from Lucille to Oralee. “Well, if there was such a thing as the evil eye, Mistah Boylan would have it. Give here, Lucille, I empty that pot fo’ you.” Taking the chamber pot, he got out of the room. As he started up the stairs, the doorbell rang. Wilbert set the pot on the edge of the open staircase, straightened his white jacket, and went to do his duty. “Good day, Mistah Laurence.”

  “Is my daughter up and about, Wilbert?”

  “No suh, she feelin’ poorly this mornin’.”

  “Hmmm, well, I brought Roxie for a visit. I thought Rosamond might like some company this fine Saturday morning, first without rain in a long time.”

  “That so, suh.”

  “They could get out, go shopping. Perhaps, Mr. Boylan would take them to Audubon Park if Rosie feels better after lunch. My wife always felt better later in the day.”

  “He lef’ early, suh, for his boxing club befo’ Miz Boylan got up. Didn’t say when he be back.”

  “They can have a girls’ day out, then.” Mr. St. Rochelle beckoned to Roxanne who sat in the car. As full of energy as her sister had once been, Roxie bounded up the walk.

  “Nothing strenuous, now. Your sister might want to just sit and talk, but if she feels well enough to go out, I’ve given you enough money to treat her to lunch at Holmes Department Store. Give her a kiss for me and say I hope she will feel better.”

  “You got it, Pops.”

  Laurence St. Rochelle grimaced at his daughter’s language. He returned to his car, concerned for one daughter and upset by the cheeky young woman the other was becoming.

  Without waiting for Wilbert to announce her presence, Roxie, totally unconcerned about the missing railing, dashed up the stairs to her sister’s room. Rosamond sat at her dressing table with its skirt of tulle and its array of perfume bottles where Buster sometimes squatted to put on his shoes. She wasn’t primping, merely staring into the mirror, running her fingers through her long hair, when Roxie burst in.

  “Hey, Sis. Pops gave me shopping money. I’m supposed to take you to lunch at Holmes.”

  “That would be nice, but my stomach is very upset today. When did you start calling our father Pops?”

  “Oh, a few months ago while you were gone. That’s what Artie calls his father. I sort of missed you, so Mama allowed Artie to come visit. We had to sit on the porch or in the parlor, but sometimes Mama let him play funny songs on the piano. Are you going to have a baby?”

  “Why do you ask that?”

  “Mama says she suspects that’s why you’re sick and moody, but not to say anything about it. You’ll tell us in your own good time.”

  “But you’re asking?”

  “Yes. I started my monthlies while you were gone. I need to know how you can tell if you are going to have a baby now that I’m a woman. Mama won’t say. Odette says your monthlies stop coming.”

  “Odette told the truth. But honey, Artie hasn’t touched you in a way he shouldn’t, has he?”

  “No,” Roxie said sadly. “He won’t even kiss me on the lips. I get these little pecks on the cheek, or he pats my head.”

  Rosamond exhaled. In her own misery, she had given no thought to her baby sister. She could see now how small breasts budded under the flat-fronted dress the girl wore, that Roxie’s childish roundness had fallen away as her waist slimmed and her hips flared. And, she had her first crush—on Artie Delamare of all hopeless people.

  “Artie is a twenty-four-year-old man who still lives off his parents and never wants to finish college. Even if he weren’t too old for you, Papa would not be pleased about your interest.”

  “I know.” Roxie exhaled a world-weary sigh. “Mama and Papa don’t understand Artie. He wants to be an actor, you see. He says talkies are the future of motion pictures, and it won’t be long before someone makes a flicker with its own sound, but his family won’t let him go to Hollywood. About this baby…”

  “Okay, I’m telling you and only you. I am expecting, I guess. I haven’t been to a doctor yet.”

  “So I’ll be an aunt. You wouldn’t want to tell me how you got to be expecting, would you?” Roxie opened the perfume bottles and sniffed the contents, lily and gardenia. She dabbed a sophisticated fragrance purchased in Paris from the peacock bottle behind her ears while watching herself in the mirror.

  Roz gave an exasperated sigh. “No, I wouldn’t care to tell you. Let’s say, keep your knees together, and don’t let any guy in your drawers, and leave it at that.”

  “Well, that’s more than Mama would tell me. Please, don’t you want to go shopping? You haven’t been out in ever so long and never come to visit us.”

  Roz put her blonde head against Roxie’s dark hair and looked at them both in the mirror. “You know what, we need a change. We need to do something for ourselves. Let me get dressed. We’re going to the beauty parlor, then out to lunch. By the time we’re finished, people will think we’re movie stars.”

  ****

  “You look just like Carol Lombard. I swear you do,” Roxie said in awe of her older sister. “Who do I look like?”

  Roxie had chosen an Eton crop, so short and shingled and plastered to her head she could have passed for a boy if she hadn’t been wearing a dress. Again, Roz thought, a young and willful woman was emerging from that round, childish face.

  “You look like a total stranger. Remember, you tell Mama I’m to blame so you don’t get in trouble.”

  “Will you get in trouble with Burke for cutting your hair, Roz? But how could you when you look so glamorous?”

  Roz smiled. Her hair had been lightened to a striking platinum blonde and marcelled in waves close to her head. The beautician carefully crafted one spit curl in the center of her forehead.
A makeup girl made her pallor and shadows disappear with light rouge and an artful smudging of eye shadow both above and below her baby blues. With a daring red lipstick, she looked quite the vamp. The stylist handed the sisters two little round boxes with silk cords.

  “Your braids. If you should like to wear them for a special occasion, I can attach them for you, though yours, Mrs.Boylan would have to be bleached to the same shade.”

  “I don’t believe I will ever want to wear long hair again, even temporarily. I feel so much lighter now, so free.” She tipped the woman generously.

  “Let’s go buy red cloche hats, Roxie. For once they’ll fit properly. But lunch is on you.”

  ****

  “My, oh my!” exclaimed Emmaline St. Rochelle, her double chin wobbling, when her daughters finished modeling their new hats and lifted them from their shorn heads. “What will Papa say! All your beautiful hair, gone.”

  Roxie twirled her hat with is perky upturned brim and cluster of artificial cherries on one finger. “May I invite Artie to dinner? I want to show him my new hairdo.”

  “As if Mr. Delamare hasn’t eaten enough of our food in the last month.”

  “Please, please, please.”

  “Very well, call him. A few more morsels won’t make any difference.”

  As soon as Roxie left the room for the telephone in the hallway, Mrs. St. Rochelle turned to her other daughter, who regarded a more simple hat ornamented with only a wide black grosgrain ribbon resting in her lap.

  “Won’t Buster be upset? He was taken with your hair from the very first.”

  “He’s rarely home, Mama, and probably won’t notice for days. As for me, I haven’t felt so good in ages.”

  Madame St. Rochelle glanced toward the hallway where Roxie could be heard chattering to Artie Delamare. “No, it’s not Greta Garbo, silly.”

  “One always feels better in the fourth month,” Emmaline said to her elder daughter in a low-pitched voice.

  “Mama, no!”

  “My darling girl, I know young women are not as chaste as they were in my day, and Buster was very—ardent. Even those old biddies who count the months from the marriage to the birth won’t be able to quibble about a week or two. It’s going to be all right. Have you discussed names yet? Buster will want a junior, I suppose.”

  “If there is a child, a boy, I want to call him Laurence Gilbert after Papa and Uncle. Maybe Emma Roxanne if I have a daughter.”

  “But won’t the Boylans feel slighted?” Emmaline asked even as she exuded pleasure over the choices.

  “I don’t believe I was put on this earth to please the Boylans, Mama. Am I invited to dinner, too?”

  “Of course. Oh, Rosamond, it’s so good to have you home and feeling better.”

  While Roz called her house to tell Oralee and Lucille that they could leave for the day, Artie Delamare showed up in his father’s car. Her new hat pulled hastily over her haircut, Roxie ran to greet him at the door,

  “Do you like my new hat, Artie?” She twirled so he could see the chapeau from all angles.

  “Sure do, kiddo. It’s da berries.” He flicked the artificial cherries with a fingertip.

  “And my new hairdo?” Roxie carefully raised the hat so as not to muss the styling.

  “Say, everyone will think you’re my kid brother,” Artie joked until he noticed the girl’s crestfallen expression. “No, I didn’t mean that. It’s the latest thing, and you look great. Give me a smile, now.” He chucked her under the chin, and Roxie turned and ran halfway down the hall. She crossed her arms under her small chest and pouted.

  “I’m not a baby any more, Artie.”

  “Yes sir, that’s my baby. No sir, I don’t mean maybe. Yes sir, that’s my baby nooow!” Artie slid across the waxed boards of the hallway on his knees, his hat across his heart, stopping at Roxie’s feet.

  Roz put down the telephone and applauded as Roxie giggled and blushed. Madame St. Rochelle snorted and said, “Please get up off the floor, Mr. Delamare. Dinner will be served momentarily.”

  At dinner, Artie continued his banter, offering to take Rosamond dancing because she looked so different no one would know he was with another man’s wife.

  “Yes, she’s blooming now. Our Rosie is blooming,” Laurence St. Rochelle said with a catch in his voice. “It’s too bad Buster couldn’t join us.”

  “Oh, Buster rarely comes home this early.”

  “He leaves you home alone in the evenings? No wonder you’ve been distraught.”

  “I don’t mind, Papa, truly. Don’t say anything to him, please.”

  “Look, I’ll drive her home this evening since Pops let me have the car,” Artie offered. “But first, we will dance.”

  They did, but in the parlor where Roxie could join in taking turns on the piano. Even the older St. Rochelles did a stately waltz around the room when Roz played Three O’Clock in the Morning for them. Artie followed after, holding Roxanne at a proper arm’s length while she held up a corner of her pleated skirt in one hand in gentle mockery of old-fashioned ways. When Roz suffered a dizzy spell after demonstrating a vigorous Black Bottom dance step, the evening was declared over.

  As Artie helped Roz to the car, her parents stood in the doorway. They waved cheerily. Their words wafted to their daughter’s ears as her escort helped her into the borrowed vehicle.

  “I always thought I wanted Rosamond to settle down, but I’ve missed her spirit, Emmaline. I thought things had gone badly wrong on the honeymoon, she was so subdued.”

  “Nothing is wrong at all, Laurence. We’re going to be grandparents. Things couldn’t be more right.”

  In the darkness of the car, Roz asked Artie why he wasn’t out carousing with Buster.

  “Oh, I kind of enjoyed hanging around with the kid while you were gone. It’s nice to have one person who admires you and doesn’t laugh at your dreams. You know, Roz, Burke always had the best hooch, the best cigars, and the best girl, but going around with him can be hazardous to a man’s health. I’d like to live to see thirty. Again, so sorry I ever introduced you to him.”

  “The fault is all mine, Artie. I got myself into this marriage. I’ll have to get myself out.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Feeling newly reborn from the ashes of her honeymoon, Roz sat at her dressing table debating whether she should put on the hairnet the beautician suggested to keep her waves in place. She drew the stopper out of the peacock glass bottle and let the seductive Parisian fragrance wash over her. Her senses seemed more acute these days, she suspected because of the baby, her baby, not Burke’s child.

  She heard him come in, mumble something to Wilbert, and tread heavily up the stairs, tripping and cursing to the top. When he entered their bedroom, Roz continued to fidget with the objects on her dressing table, the silver-backed brush and comb with the matching and monogrammed hand mirror to check the back of her hair, gifts Buster had given her for a wedding present, items she would hardly need any more. His hulking shadow fell across the looking glass.

  “What have you done to yourself, Rosie?”

  “I cut my hair. I had my face done. For the first time in a long while, I like what I see in the mirror.”

  “I don’t.” Burke snatched up the round box and cloche hat sitting on the dainty French empire chair where he usually threw his clothes. He dumped out the long, honey-blonde braid and twisted it around his fist.

  “When you leave the house, Rosamond, you will pin this at the back of your neck and wear your hat pulled down over the rest of your hair until it grows out. Mrs. Burke Boylan does not go about looking like a cheap whore, or smelling like one either.” Buster knocked over the peacock bottle. Expensive perfume soaked the tabletop and filled the air with its exotic essence.

  “That’s true Buster, because Mrs. Burke Boylan doesn’t go out at all, does she? She doesn’t get paid to say, ‘Oh Buster, you’re so big, you’re so strong’ like the prostitutes who endure your abuse.”

  Buster gripped h
er shoulders and spun her around to face him on the dressing table stool. He moved one hand as if to seize her hair and pull her head back, but his fingers fumbled in the shingled ends where her bun used to rest.

  Roz laughed in his face. “I’m leaving you, Buster.”

  Burke drew back his right fist still entangled in the severed braid and lashed out. Roz turned her face aside, but he clipped the top of her cheekbone, the edge of her eye. Groping for a way to defend herself, she fell back against the dressing table. Her hand closed over the peacock bottle. She smashed it against the bridge of Buster’s nose. Blood spurted over both of them.

  Rosamond struggled past the stool and the bulk of her husband who covered his nose with both hands. She nearly made it to the door. Then, he fell upon her, turning her with his grip, smashing a fist into her stomach, hitting her again lower as she crumbled to the floor and curled around her belly. He drew back his foot and kicked his wife hard, twice in the ribs, as he’d wanted to kick Kid Pesci when the wop made a fool of him in the ring.

  He wanted to work over her pretty face until no man would look at her again, but Wilbert called from the kitchen, “Everything all right up there, Mistah Boylan? You done had an accident? I gets the broom and the dustpan.”

  An accident, of course, this was an accident. At the least, he’d get the house and sympathy if his wife did not survive. The best idea would be to get rid of the bitch entirely. Burke picked up Roz as if she were no more than a piece of trash to be taken out to the alley. She gasped but did not become fully conscious. He carried her to the head of the unguarded stairs and flung her over the edge. She should have hit hard, maybe hard enough to kill her, but that old fool darkie came along down the hall with his cleaning supplies.

  Wilbert dropped the broom and held out his arms. Miss Roz fell right on top of him, and they both went down on the hardwood floor.

  “Lordy, Mistah Boylan. I think I done broke my arm, and Miss Roz, she bleedin’ down below. Gots to call the doctor right now.”