St. Charles at Dusk: The House of Crimson and Clover Series Prequel Read online

  "You're not making any sense."

  "Oz, I've known for a long time there was a darkness in me-"

  "Ana, it's in me too. That's why we related the way we-"

  "No," she gently corrected. "There's a beauty within you. A kindness. Neither of us felt the world could understand us, but we never realized our afflictions had different sources. I was terrified of hurting you, and somehow… squashing that light in you." She took a long sip of her drink, and then added, “And despite what now brings us together, I think you can agree you ended up with the right woman. Eventually, you'll move on and find someone else who deserves you. Someone else with your beauty and goodness."

  I had no argument for any of this, or at least none I could find voice for. I wanted to disagree, but did it matter the reasons? Life turned out the way it turned out, and we were but spokes on the mighty wheel of fate. Those wheels would keep turning, and who was to say what direction they would take us?

  Ana reached across the table and slipped her hand over mine, giving it a gentle squeeze. "You're the best man I know, Oz. Wherever she is, she would want you to be at peace. It would break her heart to see you like this."

  She followed me to the bedroom, turning off the house lights behind me. I slipped under the covers, not bothering to remove my heavy mourning attire. Ana crawled in beside me, still wearing hers too, then wrapped her arms around me in a comforting silence. I felt the warmth from her face against my back, and neither of us said anything, as we drifted into exhausted rest.

  Wherever she is, she would want you to be at peace. It would break her heart to see you like this.

  Like a guardian angel, Ana appeared to remove the invisible arms strangling me from moving on.

  Passing the bar exam ended up being the catalyst to my future.

  The moment I set foot on the old green carpet in Sullivan & Associates, not as the son of the senior partner, but as a fellow attorney, I became a new person. I was neither the man looking for himself in the wrong places of my youth, nor the man pining for the ideals of true love. I was not even a mix of these things. I was entirely different than any former version of myself.

  I started by slowly rekindling the relationships with many of my college buddies. Instead of giving away my season tickets to the Saints games, I attended. I picked up running again, and even found a running buddy in the neighborhood; a young woman named Nora whom I might have dated if her youth did not remind me so much of someone else. I was back on the market, going on dates with both interesting and non-interesting females. As I started to reintroduce myself to society, many doors I had not realized were closed, re-opened to me.

  I had a good life. Finally.

  This was why, no matter what I found in Abbeville, I could not let whatever I still felt for Adrienne take control.

  5- Oz

  Oz Reminisces…

  I grew up watching the Deschanels the way some people watched the Cleavers. As a young boy, I heard my father recant the latest in their family saga to my mother over dinner. I listened to him talk about what new committees Cordelia had joined, how Nathalie’s art instructor was overrated. I remember when Giselle lost her first tooth and Lucienne got her first period (“Lucie has, er, begun her journey into womanhood, Catherine. Perhaps you could go assist,” my father said delicately). When Giselle broke up with her high school sweetheart, I waited patiently each night for the next installment, to see if they would get back together, hoping they wouldn’t so I could finally ask her out.

  I listened, and watched, as Nathalie, Giselle, and Lucienne came of age. Adrienne was never on the front of my mind. I was far too occupied watching her older sisters to notice the subtle changes in her, year after year.

  Even at eleven she was developed, but her pert breasts, and a waistline that flowered into a swell of hips, were gauche on a child’s frame. By the time she was eleven I was compelled to discourage her proclivity for jumping into my lap.

  I liked her well enough. She was a little spitfire, always asking me questions about the craziest things like, what did I think of Thoreau’s experiences at Walden Pond? Could Anne Bradstreet be considered the first American feminist despite being a Puritan? Why on earth did Jay Gatsby pursue Daisy so relentlessly when she was such an obvious bitch?

  It’s a wonder I didn’t make the connection between us, and our interests, but her age was ever the barrier between what I thought of her, and what I would have thought, had she been my contemporary.

  “Later, Ade, okay?” I treated her like a little sister. Truth was, I didn’t have an answer for many of her questions, but would never let her know it.

  It was a little terrifying, the way she absorbed information. Everything held her curiosity. If she didn’t know the answer, she would research it. She used to sit in her father’s study poring over medical almanacs until he would find her, asleep with her face in a book, and carry her off to bed. She had her driver bring her into town once to ask my father if she could borrow his copy of the tax codes for Orleans Parish. By eleven, she had enough filled notebooks to be considered an encyclopedia. I was positive she would end up like one of those genius kids on television who finished medical school at fifteen.

  The summer she was eleven, I passed my driver's test and loved the freedom of driving out to Ophélie, the farthest distance my father would allow. I hugged the curves on River Road in my father's little vintage Ferrari and blasted Metallica past all the old plantations. Charles noted, with a hidden smile, he could always hear me coming.

  On one particular afternoon, I had gone to visit Nicolas to trade baseball cards. He found a box in the storage shed, and promised he would not open it until I arrived. I thought I might remind Nicolas how much I had helped him pass his classes this past year. Perhaps it would open up his giving heart, sending me home with a rare card or two.

  When I arrived, I saw feet flying over the garden’s sculpted bushes. Feet, then hair, then feet again, like a blur.

  "Good morning Ade," I called as I walked past. She was doing one-handed cartwheels down the parterre path, free hand holding a large book. I could see her latest weathered spiral notebook folded and tucked into the back of her shorts. All business.

  "Good morning Oz," she panted. She came to a stop, and turned around to face me, her red hair a wild mess around her face. She met my gaze evenly and looked annoyed. "I made thirty full wheels before you arrived, you know."

  "Sorry, did I mess you up?" I dutifully apologized. I looked past her, up toward the old garçonierre, where Nicolas stayed. Not for the first time, I wished my parents would let me have my own private building. I could imagine the parties. The girls. Nicolas was so lucky.

  "Yes," Adrienne scolded with a quick flip of her messy hair. The back of her small hand brushed it back and aside. "But it couldn't be helped. I was at the end of the path anyway." She bit her lip and watched me, the annoyance gone from her eyes. Her little fingers worked to push her hair behind her ears and make herself presentable. She opened her eyes wide, tilted her head, and batted her eyelashes twice. This amused me.

  I looked down at the book in her hand. "Hey, you weren't attempting to read that, were you?" I reached to grab her wrist and flipped it over. "The Canterbury Tales? Do you actually understand this?"

  She pulled back her wrist and clutched the book to her chest, completely offended. "Yes, for your information, I was. I speak fluent Middle English, and I understand it perfectly. In fact, I understand it better when I'm upside down, hence the cartwheels."

  "Of course. That makes perfect sense." I was paying little attention to her now. I saw the light go on up in the garçonierre and knew Nicolas was waiting for me. With those old baseball cards. She noticed my shift in interest and made a small, exasperated grunt.

  I touched her lightly on the shoulder and started to walk away. "See ya later, Ade. Maybe if you keep up the cartwheels for the next twenty years you'll finish your book."

  "Screw you," she called as I walked away. When I reach
ed the garçonierre, I turned back and saw she was still watching me.

  "Your sister is up to no good," I told Nicolas as I closed the door behind me. Inside, the room was not very large, but the ceiling was high, which gave the impression of a bigger space. The room itself was circular, with no corners. Nicolas had only a few pieces of furniture: a bed, a dresser, and a desk. He had restored the bottom floor and turned it into a small guest room, including a bathroom with a sauna.

  Anasofiya lay on the bed, reading. With only the overhead fan running, she was wearing a thin tank and boy shorts, knees drawn to her chest where she balanced her book. Her bare legs were slightly spread, showing a flash of thin white cotton between her thighs, reminding me of my potent desire for her that I'd never found the courage to admit. Pull it together, Sullivan, I admonished myself.

  When I walked in, she raised a hand in hello, smiling quietly from behind her book. One day, I thought.

  "Which sister?” Nicolas already had the cards spread out across the wool rug on the floor, promise broken. They were separated into neat piles, sorted by last name from what I could see.

  "Adrienne. She told me to screw myself."

  "Did you take her advice?"

  "You're an ass," I told him.

  "At least I'm not a little bitch."

  Nicolas gestured towards the piles before I could continue our usual banter. He was good-looking in the way of any rich boy with heaps of confidence. Tall, with dark hair always a little too long in the front (which girls, for some reason I could never explain, loved), deep-bedded dimples. He never wore his Brother Martin uniform any way but un-tucked, tie askance, rebelling against everything all at once. Of the two of us, I was told I was the better looking one, traditionally, but Nicolas had the Deschanel confidence that kept him the constant center of everyone’s attention. There was no possibility of standing out when you were standing next to Nicolas Deschanel.

  "I checked every card in the Beckett before you arrived. Nothing in here worth more than a couple of dollars." Nicolas kicked at several of the piles, scattering them. "Not even a second-string rookie card. We got cheated, Ozzy."

  "So that's it, that's all of them?" I couldn't hide my disappointment. A box of long-lost baseball cards was every boy’s ultimate fantasy. "You aren't holding out on me, are you?"

  Nicolas looked up at me, eyebrows cocked. "No, Ozzy, I'm not holding out on shit." He was on his knees, pushing the cards back into the box. On the bed, Ana was still reading, oblivious to our shattered hopes and dreams. “On your way out, perhaps after you go screw yourself, can you find Adrienne again? She told my father, to tell me, to tell you, to help her with some research project for school."

  "Thanks for volunteering me. I still don't understand why she sends Charles as the messenger instead of coming straight to you."

  "Beats the hell out of me too, Ozzy. See you later."

  I found Adrienne in Brigitte's Garden doing cartwheels again. She was halfway down the path this time, perhaps a good fifteen "wheels," as she called them, under her belt.

  "Adrienne, did you need help with something?" I beckoned, with an impatient wave. I was really looking forward to racing my father’s car back down River Road. She stopped with a tumble this time, gravel dust pluming up around her in a haze. I expected one of her fine rants, but she looked up from where she was sitting in the pile of dirty rocks and smiled.

  "I'm doing a research paper on the oldest families of Louisiana," she started to tell me as we walked toward the house. She reached back with both hands to dust off her bottom as she talked. "Sort of an overview on genealogy. I guess it's supposed to make us understand the profundity of history as it relates to us individually. Whatever." With this last, she made a dismissive gesture with her dirty hand. "My family was out of the question, since we aren't allowed to write about ourselves, so I thought you might be a suitable subject."

  “A ‘suitable subject?’ Sounds appealing.”

  She sighed, putting her whole body into it. “Oz, work with me here.”

  "My family's been here since the early 1800's, but there are others who have been here much longer," I told her, then paused. As an only child, it was nice to have someone who looked up to me. I enjoyed having knowledge that might interest someone.

  On second thought, I added, “But I’m sure you won’t find anyone who has more information than I do. Where should we go?”

  “Okay, Oz. I want to read all of this back to you,” Adrienne directed after we spent the better part of two hours talking, street racing forgotten. Her lips were twisted around the tip of her tongue, off to the right side of her mouth. She had her hair pushed back into a headband, but her hand strayed up to push it aside from habit. Her serious gaze assessed me, eleven going on thirty.

  She wrote her paper as I talked, the free flow conversation forming the rough draft in the exact same manner as I had spoken it.

  “Your focus of heritage appears to center around the inception and succeeding events of your family’s law firm,” she told me in her usual adult-speak, before laying the pencil aside. She calmly steadied it with her hand when it threatened to roll away. “So, I decided to capitalize on your touching devotion. The paper will follow the same sequence of events.”

  Touching devotion. I couldn’t decide if she said things like that to demonstrate how inferior I actually was to her, or if it came naturally. And how an eleven-year-old could make plans to knowingly capitalize on anything was beside me. Show-off.

  “So let’s hear it, Miss Eyre.”

  She cleared her throat and thrust the paper out in front of her with arms extended outward. “Sullivan: A Family’s Devotion to Law and the Family Name,” she began.

  “That’s the title?”

  “Yes. Do you want to discuss an alternative, or can I read the paper?”

  How she always made me retreat like a dog with my tail tucked ashamedly between my legs, I wished I knew. Perhaps it was her confidence. She was so much more poised than I had ever been, exuding it in everything she did. She was not afraid to be who she was, while I cowardly gave up my passions for popularity. Her self-assured nature carried into even the simplest tasks, like eating (oblivious, or perhaps uncaring, of her family’s reaction to her unladylike tendencies) or doing her “wheels” (sloppy, but all her own). She was unapologetic in everything.

  “Why apologize for what I am?” she told me later, when I asked her why she was not more delicate with those she loved, more sensitive to the insecurities of others. Conversely, I apologized for things I was responsible for as well as the things I wasn’t. I was stuck in a perpetual pattern of second-guessing everything I did.

  “Go on,” I encouraged, retreating yet again.

  She cleared her throat twice, and started to read:

  “The humble beginnings of the Sullivan family of New Orleans can be said to correspond with the foundation of their family law firm. The youngest member of the direct line of descent in the family, and future member of the firm, Colin Austin Sullivan, or Oz as he is referred to by those intimate with the family, is living proof that family bonds breed success and stature.

  “The law firm was founded in 1839 by Oz’s fourth great grandfather, Aidan O’Súilleabháin of Ireland, who came first to Savannah and then to New Orleans. The O’Súilleabháin family dropped the Gaelic form of their name soon after arriving in New Orleans and thereafter became known by the Anglicized version, Sullivan. The firm’s original name was Sullivan & Belafonte.

  “Aidan and all four of his sons, Aidan Jr., Tadhg, Padraig, and Liam, Oz’s third great grandfather, and the remaining male Sullivan cousins and uncles all served The Cause under General Beauregard. Having been Irish landowners, they were no strangers to fighting for their land and were more than eager to have the opportunity to protect that which they had only recently gained. All but Liam died doing so.

  “After what was later referred to as the Sullivan Disaster, the Sullivan men stayed off the battlefields. In both World Wa
rs, only two cousins enlisted and none were drafted for the Vietnam War. Leaving a legacy for the next generation and family honor, those became the principles of the Sullivans. That left no room for fighting, despite what was in the blood. Oz has been known to remark upon how fascinating it is to observe how quickly and swiftly war can rearrange a family. Their numbers decreased and as a result, so had the very traditions that drove them to the fields to fight.”

  “Don’t you think this is a bit melodramatic,” I interrupted. “’Oz has been known to remark upon?’ ‘Despite what was in the blood?’ ‘The very traditions that drove them to the fields to fight?’ Adrienne, that isn’t what I said.” I felt like I was listening to an excerpt from Gone with the Wind. The way I always heard it, the Sullivan men were ashamed of their quickness to fighting. A dead Irishman is good to no one, my grandfather said.

  “Melodrama sells, Oz. Get with the program.” She looked at me like I was a lost cause.

  “This is a paper for sixth grade history, Ade.”

  “Yeah, so?”

  “Far be it from me to dissuade you from your sensationalist journalism. Go on.”

  “When the Civil War ended, Liam was twenty-five. The matrons of the family left widowed by the war looked to him as the only remaining male of the family, responsible for keeping alive the Sullivan name in all matters proper. “

  I laughed at her attempted discretion. “’All matters proper?’ Adrienne, why don’t you just say the guy sired the rest of my family?”

  “Because it’s a sixth grade research paper, Oz.”

  “In 1890, when his only son Seamus turned eighteen, he too joined the firm. The name Belafonte was dropped and henceforth became known as Sullivan & Associates.

  “From Seamus came Patrick, and then Colin Sr,. and finally Oz’s father Colin Jr. Each had other sons and grandsons as well. All lawyers for the firm, all loyal to their calling.