“Our apologies,” Tug said, trying to appease the old crank. “Welcome to Crozat. Can we get you a drink? Some snacks?”
“We’ll take wine—red—cheese, and whatever else you’re offering, in our room.”
“We’re on our honeymoon,” Beverly Clabber added with a wink.
“Well, isn’t that marvelous, just marvelous,” Gran’ declared. Maggie bit her finger to keep from laughing. She knew that the more uncomfortable Gran’ felt, the thicker her accent became, and the Clabbers were inspiring a drawl so pronounced that Gran’ sounded like a hokey Southern dowager from a 1930s B movie.
Hal pushed his walker toward the front steps and stared at them. “The Americans with Disabilities Act prohibits discrimination based on disabilities.”
“Translation: get the ramp, Dad,” Maggie muttered to her father, who seemed uncharacteristically befuddled.
“Yes, right, of course.”
Tug and Bud pulled a wooden ramp out of its discreet hiding place in nearby bushes and placed it over the stairs. Hal carefully pushed himself up it onto the veranda.
“Do you need help, ma’am?” Maggie asked Beverly Clabber.
“I’m fine,” Beverly replied. As opposed to her grouchy husband, Beverly hadn’t stopped smiling since the couple arrived. To say she scampered up the steps would be an exaggeration, but she got to the top without a problem and waited for her husband, smile still plastered on her face. Maggie began to wonder if it was the result of nerve damage from a stroke.
“I’ll show you to your room,” Maggie said, relieved that Tug had serendipitously put them in the one bedroom located on the main floor.
“We requested the first floor,” Hal said.
“No you didn’t,” Maggie somehow managed not to say aloud as she led the Clabbers down the hall to the Rose Room. She opened the ornately carved walnut door and the Clabbers followed her in. With its deep pink walls, white cypress ceiling medallion, and museum-quality furnishings, the Rose Room was legendary among antebellum historians for its pristine Victorian beauty. Good luck finding something to complain about here, Maggie thought as the Clabbers took in their surroundings.
“It’s lovely,” Beverly acknowledged. Hal walkered himself into the en suite bathroom. When he came out, he didn’t look happy. He beckoned to Maggie, who gritted her teeth and followed him into the bathroom. Hal pointed to a roll of toilet paper on a vintage-style wrought iron holder.
“This is all wrong,” he said. “You unroll from the top, not the bottom. It’s much more efficient.”
“Thank you so much for pointing that out.” Maggie reversed the toilet paper, managing to hide the middle finger she was shooting Hal as she did it. “Marie’s on her way with your wine and appetizers. If you need anything else, my cell number’s on the information sheet. Please don’t hesitate to call.”
With that, Maggie backed out of the room, hoping against hope that Hal wouldn’t take her up on the offer. Beverly smiled her Joker smile. “You have to understand,” she said apologetically. “Hal has a leaky anus.”
Maggie couldn’t get to the kitchen fast enough. She pulled a bottle of white wine out of the refrigerator and poured herself a full glass. “Ohmygod, ohmygod, ohmygod, ohmygod.”
Ninette, who was stirring a large pot of jambalaya, watched with concern as Maggie took a big slug of wine. “Honey, are you okay? You never drink before dinner.”
“We never hosted the Clabbers before.” Maggie filled her mother in on the conversation, and Ninette burst out laughing.
“Oh, you poor thing, that is truly awful. I swear, there are days when I think we should just donate this place to the state, like my family did.”
“No, I think what you do—what we do here—is wonderful. It’s the first time that a guest ever brought up leaky anus in conversation. And hopefully the last, although I’ve learned not to assume anything when it comes to our guests.”
*
Maggie managed to avoid the Clabbers the rest of the afternoon. She took a long shower and stretched out the length of time she usually took to apply makeup. She dawdled as she poked through her closet, finally settling on sandals and a coral cotton sundress. Then, steeling herself for the long evening ahead, Maggie walked over to the main house.
She feared what dinner and a few drinks might bring, but the repositioned toilet paper seemed to have mellowed Hal. His nastiness had disappeared, replaced by a patronizing superiority that she often found characteristic of retired college professors—a bit of braggadocio Hal had already dropped into the conversation several times.
Predinner martinis had made Gran’ particularly loquacious, and by the time the main course of chicken and andouille sausage jambalaya was served, she’d enthralled her listeners with tales of Crozat tragedies and triumphs. Duels, star-crossed romances, yellow fever epidemics—Gran’ covered it all. “Legend even has it that the notorious pirate Jean Lafitte buried a casket of treasure somewhere deep in the Crozat woods and then stole Felix Crozat’s finest steed to escape the army battalion that was tasked with hunting him down,” she said in her most theatrical voice.
“It’s like a movie,” said an awestruck Debbie Stern, who, at somewhere around fifty, was the youngest of the Cajun Cuties. “Tell us more.”
“Everywhere around us, families were driven to sell their property or abandon it. And then, just when we at Crozat seemed to be pulling ourselves out of the depths of despair,” Gran’ intoned, her voice dropping theatrically, “we found ourselves facing the deprivations of war.”
“You mean the Civil War?” Debbie gasped.
A spoon clattered into a bowl. Kyle coughed as he tried to swallow a laugh. Gran’ instantly sobered up. “My goodness, the doctors are right. The sun really does age a person. No, dear, I’m old but not quite that old. I was referring to World War Two.”
“Oh, of course,” Debbie said, embarrassed. “I don’t know what to say. I just got lost in your stories.”
“Well then, that’s quite a tribute to my storytelling,” Gran’ said, kindly letting Debbie off the hook.
“Tell us about the pirate and his treasure again,” Sam begged. The other diners joined him in encouraging Gran’s return to the buried treasure legend.
The rest of the meal was uneventful. Poor Gran’ was held conversational hostage by Hal Clabber as he boasted of the expertise in twentieth-century American theater history that had won him tenure at Conway College, a small school in Nebraska. Maggie imagined that there were a lot of Conway parents who owed Hal thanks for being so boring that he propelled students out of theater and into more lucrative fields.
Hal finally dozed off in his chair and was helped to his room by Bud and Marie. Beverly followed, smiling as always. As soon as the last guest was gone, Maggie and the rest of her family retreated to the kitchen to clean up. Tug and Ninette then retired to bed, and Maggie walked Gran’ back to the house the two shared. It was a shotgun house, the name inspired by a layout where a bullet shot from the front door would go straight out the back door. Dating back to the 1820s, it was the oldest building on the property and the original residence of the Crozats before they decided to celebrate their sugarcane wealth with a fancy showplace.
Maggie kissed her grandmother good-night and then retrieved the oil paints and portable easel that she kept in her bedroom. With the help of a small flashlight, she made her way through the dark to woods at the east end of Crozat land, where a stream fed into Bayou Beurre. Green branches hung heavy over the lush waterway, and an occasional cypress popped out of the water like an arboreal jack-in-the-box.
As she set up her supplies, Maggie’s eyes adjusted to the dark. The outside world fell away as she focused on her canvas. She had taken to painting at all different hours, capturing the way light and dark played with the lush Louisiana landscape. She particularly loved the plantation grounds at night, when clouds, stars, and the moon competed for space in the sky. The evening’s full moon provided the scene with highlights and shadows; Maggie filled in the rest with her imagination.