"I promise, Mother," Gisselle pledged, "that I will work hard at regaining my ability to walk and be right behind you when you go down the aisle to marry Bruce."

"That would be . . . just fantastic." She looked at Bruce. "Think of how the wedding guests will react. Why, it's as if . . . as if my new marriage restored the health of this family."

"So you see, Mother," Gisselle said, "I can't go back to Greenwood now. I need daily rehabilitation work and Nina's good cooking instead of that dormitory slop. Just get me a tutor and let me stay here."

Daphne pondered for a moment. "Let me think about it," she said.

Gisselle beamed. "Thank you, Mother."

"Now then, I'm really hungry this morning. This has been a far better Christmas than I had anticipated," Daphne said, rising. "Santa?" She held out her arm and Bruce rushed to take it. I watched them leave and then turned to Gisselle. She was beaming from ear to ear.

"She'll let us stay home now. You'll see."

"Maybe she'll let you stay home, but not me," I said. "I don't have a handicap to miraculously overcome."

Gisselle shrugged. "Anyway, thanks for keeping your mouth shut and going along."

"I didn't go along. I just stood to the side and watched you two fill each other with lies," I said.

"Whatever. Here," she said, thrusting Paul's gift at me. "You probably have so many secret thoughts, you can fill two of these in a day."

I took the diary and started to follow as she wheeled herself out, but at the doorway, I paused to look back at the tree and the obese pile of open gifts. How I longed for a real Christmas morning again, when the truly important gift was the gift of love.

Beau arrived shortly after his own family had exchanged gifts, and I gave him my present, which was a gold identification bracelet I had bought him the day after Gisselle and I arrived home. Underneath I had the jeweler inscribe, "With all my love, always, Ruby."

"I have three of these that lay in my drawer at home," he said, putting it on, "but none of them had any meaning until now." He kissed me quickly on my lips before anyone came into the parlor.

"Now I have a favor to ask of you," I said. "And you can't laugh."

"What could that be?" He smiled widely in anticipation.

"Nina's going to burn some brimstone for us, to bless our love and keep the evil spirits from destroying it."

"What?"

"Come on," I said, taking his hand. "It doesn't hurt to be safe."

He laughed as we hurried down the corridor to Nina's room. I knocked on the door and entered when she said for us to come in. Beau nearly gasped at the sight of the small room cluttered with voodoo paraphernalia: dolls and bones, chunks of what looked like black cat fur, strands of hair tied with leather string, twisted roots, and strips of snakeskin. The shelves were crowded with small bottles of multicolored powders, stacks of yellow, blue, green, and brown candles, jars of snake heads, and a picture of the woman I knew to be Marie Laveau sitting on what looked like a throne. Nina often burned white candles around it at night when she chanted her prayers.

"Who's that?" Beau asked.

"You be New Orleans boy and you don't know that be Marie Laveau, Voodoo Queen?"

"Oh yes. I've heard of her." He glanced at me and bit down on his lower lip.

Nina went to her shelves to fetch a small ceramic jar. She and I had performed a similar ceremony when I had first arrived from the bayou.

"You both hold it," she commanded. She lit a white candle and mumbled a prayer. Then she brought the candle to the ceramic jar and dipped the flame toward the contents so the brimstone would burn, but it didn't catch on. She glanced at me and looked worried and then tried again, holding the candle longer until a small stream of smoke twisted its way up. Beau grimaced because the stench was unpleasant, but I had been expecting it and held my breath.

"Both close your eyes and lean over so the smoke touches your faces," she prescribed. We did so. We heard her mumble something.

"Hey, this is getting hot," Beau complained. His fingers slipped and I fumbled with the jar to keep from dropping it. Nina plucked it from my hand and held it firmly.

"The heat be nothing," she chastised, "compared to the heat of evil spirits." Then she shook her head. "Nina hope it be enough brimstone smoke."

"It's enough," Beau assured her.

"Thank you, Nina," I said, seeing how uncomfortable he was. She nodded, and Beau urged me toward the door.

"Yes, thank you, Nina," he added. He pulled me out. "Don't laugh, Beau Andreas."

"I'm not laughing," he said, but I saw he was very happy we had left and were returning to the parlor.

"My Grandmère taught me never to laugh at anyone's beliefs, Beau. No one has a monopoly on the truth when it comes to spiritual things."

"You're right," he said. "And anyway, whatever makes you comfortable and happy makes me comfortable and happy. I mean that," he promised, and kissed me.

A moment later Gisselle wheeled herself in, looking very full of herself. All the talk at breakfast had been about her wonderful recuperation. Edgar and Nina were told, but both looked so unimpressed Gisselle suspected I had told them.

"Am I interrupting anything?" she asked Beau coyly.

"As a matter of fact, you are," he replied, smiling.

"Too bad. Did you tell him yet?" she asked me.

"Tell me what?"

"I guess you haven't, because it's not as important to you as it is to everyone else." She turned to Beau, took a dramatic breath, and announced, "I'm regaining the use of my legs."

"What?" Beau looked at me, but I said nothing.

"That's right. My paralysis is going away. Soon I will be competition for Ruby again, and she's not too happy about that, are you, Sister dear?"

"I've never been in competition with you, Gisselle," I retorted.

"Oh no? What do you call your hot romance with my old boyfriend here?" she snapped.

"Hey, I think I might have something to say about all this," Beau told her. "And besides, Ruby and I were seeing each other way before the accident."

She smirked and then laughed her thin, sardonic laugh. "Men think they've made a decision, but the truth is, we have them wound around our little finger. You were always a bit too conservative for me, Beau. It was my decision to leave you behind. I was the one who made it possible for you two to meet and . . ."—she twisted her lips into her condescending smile—"get to know each other."

"Yeah, right," Beau said, peeved.

"Anyway, New Year's Eve, I’ll be dancing again and I expect to dance with you. You won't mind, will you, Sister dear?"

"Not in the least," I said. "That is, if Beau doesn't." She didn't like my tone, and her smile evaporated quickly. "I've got to call John and give him the good news. It might break his heart. He so enjoyed my helplessness last night."

"Just don't recuperate that fast then," I suggested, but instead of getting angry, she laughed.

"Maybe I won't. Don't knock it unless you try it," she added with narrowed eyelids. Then she laughed again and wheeled herself out.

"Is she telling the truth about her recovery?"

"No."

"She can't move her legs?"

"Yes, but she could do it weeks, maybe even months ago." I quickly related the incident at school and why I was blamed.

"Well, I’ll be damned. You've had your share of surprises," Beau said.

"There's more."

"Oh?"

"Daphne is permitting me to take Uncle Jean his Christmas gift. She said you could go with me, if you like."

"Really?" He shook his head in amazement and sat back. Then I told him why she was being so nice to Gisselle and me. "Married? So soon?" he said.

"She said after a proper period of mourning, but who knows what she considers proper."

"My parents had suspicions," he told me in a whisper.

"The two of them have been seen everywhere together." He looked down and then up again to add, "There were suspicions even before your father's death."

"I don't doubt it. I don't care what she does with herself now, and I don't want to talk anymore about it," I said angrily.

"Well then, why don't we just go visit Jean today and have lunch at one of the roadside restaurants on the way back," he suggested.

I went to get Uncle Jean's gift and told Daphne we were leaving.

"Make sure he knows that's from me," she said.

But when we arrived at the institution and were brought to him in the lounge, I knew immediately that not only wouldn't he understand who the gift was from, he wouldn't even realize he had visitors. Uncle Jean had become little more than a shadow of his former self. Like one of Nina's zombies, he sat staring blankly ahead, his eyes turned inward, where he could revisit all the places and times he had formerly experienced. When I spoke to him and held his hand, there was only a slight blinking and a tiny light in his eyes.

"He's like a clam closing its shell!" I moaned to Beau. "He barely hears me."

We sat in the lounge. It had started raining on our trip out, and the rain built a frantic tattoo on the window we now gazed through. It matched the rhythm of my heart. Uncle Jean looked so much thinner, the bones in his nose and cheeks more prominent, He looked like someone who was dying slowly from within.

I tried again, talking about Christmas, some of the things I had done at school, the decorations at the house. But his expression didn't change, and he wouldn't turn his eyes to me. After a while, I gave up. I leaned over and kissed him goodbye on the cheek. His eyelids fluttered and his lips trembled, but he said nothing, nor did he really look at me.

On the way out, I stopped to talk to his nurse.

"Does he ever speak?"

"He hasn't for a while now," she admitted. "But sometimes," she added, smiling, "they do return. There are new medications coming out every day."

"Would you see that he puts on his new shirts? He used to be so proud of his clothes," I said sadly. She promised she would, and Beau and I retreated. Visiting Uncle Jean had made this Christmas Day even more gloomy than the dark clouds and rain. I barely spoke, and I had little appetite when we stopped for lunch. Beau carried most of the conversation, describing plans for us for the near future.

"I've already decided: We'll both apply to Tulane. That way we'll be in New Orleans and together. My teachers think I should look toward a career in medicine because I do so well in the biological sciences. Doctor Andreas . . . how does that sound?"

"It sounds wonderful, Beau."

"Well, your Grandmère was a healer. We've got to keep up the tradition. practice medicine and you'll paint and become one of New Orleans's leading artists, People will come from everywhere to buy your pictures. On Sundays after church, we'll walk along the streets in the Garden District and I'll brag to our baby that his mother has a picture in that house and that, and two more in that. . . ."

I smiled. Grandmère Catherine would have liked Beau, I was sure.

"Good. You're smiling again. You're ravishingly beautiful when you're happy, Ruby. I want to keep you continuously happy for as long as I live," he said. His words brought the blood to my face again and the warmth to my heart.

When he brought me home, I found Daphne in Daddy's office, talking on the phone. Apparently, even on Christmas Day, she was all business. She was dressed in a smart, light blue tweed skirt and vest with a white lace silk blouse and had her hair tied in a French knot.

"And how is Jean?" she asked with half interest as she moved some papers around.

"He's become a vegetable," I said. "Won't you reconsider and put him back in his own room?"

She sat back and stared at me a moment. "I'll make you a trade," she said.

"Trade?" What could I possibly have that she wanted? I wondered.

"I'll move Jean back into private quarters if you convince Gisselle to return to Greenwood. I don't want her in my hair during this particularly difficult period."

"She won't listen to me," I moaned. "She hates the restrictions and the rules."

Daphne gazed down at her paperwork again.

"That's my offer," she said coldly. "Find a way."

I stood there for a moment. Why should Uncle Jean's welfare be tied to Gisselle's selfish wishes? How could anything be more unfair? More pessimistic than a nutria locked in the jaws of an alligator, I lowered my head and left her, never missing Daddy more.

I spent the remainder of Christmas Day in my art studio, working on the drawing and painting for Miss Stevens. The studio and my artistic work was the only refuge in this house of deceit. I had chosen to draw the view from my studio, to capture the sprawling oak tree and the gardens. I decided to have a red-winged blackbird strutting proudly on the wall in the background. It was good to lose myself in my work. While I painted I played Louis's symphony, and I didn't hear Bruce come in behind me.