that look stunning on Anna-Maria? And rubies are her birthstone.”
With an impatient shake of her head, Jeanne walked around to the side of the bed and pulled back the covers. “I don’t know why you insist on watching those shows. Now, come along. I have a special treat for you today.”
Though Clarice allowed Jeanne to help her to the side of the bed, her expression grew hard and resentful. “How else is an old crippled woman supposed to shop?”
While Jeanne was busy assisting Clarice into a terry robe, Charlotte opened the French doors leading out onto the upper gallery.
“Besides,” Clarice continued, “with July only a couple of months away, I don’t have that long to find her a birthday present.”
Outside on the gallery, Charlotte quickly wiped the dust off the top of a small glass-topped wicker table. But even from outside, Charlotte could hear Jeanne’s exasperated sigh.
“Mother, I’ve told you that anytime you want to shop, all you have to do is agree to a wheelchair and I’ll take you anywhere you want to go.”
When Charlotte returned for the breakfast tray, Clarice’s lower lip was protruding into a pout. “I refuse to be seen in one of those things,” she said. “I’m not that crippled.”
Charlotte picked up the wicker tray and took it out to the table.
“Come along, then,” Charlotte heard Jeanne tell Clarice. “It’s such a beautiful day, I thought we could have breakfast out on the gallery.”
“I’ll get cold out there,” the old lady complained.
“No, you won’t,” Jeanne argued. “Besides, if you don’t come outside, you won’t get breakfast.”
Within moments, Charlotte heard the slide-thump of Clarice’s walker, and she quickly slipped back inside before the old lady reached the doorway.
Charlotte retrieved clean sheets and pillowcases for Clarice’s bed from the hallway linen closet. As she stripped the bed, she could hear the murmur of Jeanne’s and Clarice’s voices coming from the gallery. Clarice was complaining again, only this time she was grumbling about having oatmeal for breakfast for the third day in a row.
“I want eggs—fried eggs over easy,” she whined. “And bacon—lots of bacon fried nice and crisp. Why can’t I ever have bacon?”
“Mother, you know fried foods are bad for your cholesterol.”
Once Charlotte had dusted in the bedroom, she began wiping down the sink and countertop in the bathroom. From outside, the murmurs between the two women grew louder.
Charlotte did her best to ignore what was being said. Instead, she concentrated on replacing each item on top of the counter once she’d cleaned beneath it, especially Clarice’s numerous prescription bottles. By the time she’d cleaned the toilet and started on the shower stall, the loud murmurs had turned into a shouting match that was hard to ignore.
“He’s stealing you blind!”
“Now, Mother, how could you know that?”
“Leopards don’t change their spots. That’s how I know. You mark my words, missy. He’s a no-good scoundrel, and what’s worse, he’s smart. And if you weren’t such a namby-pamby, you’d see him for what he is.”
“Mother, stop it!”
“I won’t stop it. It’s time—past time—you grew a backbone. If you’d had the guts to refuse to marry him in the first place, your father might still be alive today.”
“That’s not true, and you know it.”
“Don’t you walk away from me!
“I’m not listening to any more of this.”
“Jeanne, you come back here!”
Charlotte had just finished scrubbing the scuff marks off the bathroom floor made by Clarice’s walker and was mopping the bathroom floor when Jeanne stalked across the bedroom.
At the hallway door, Jeanne hesitated, then turned toward Charlotte. Tears filled her eyes, and her voice shook with emotion. “Would you please make sure that she gets back to bed okay?”
Before Charlotte had time to answer, Jeanne fled through the doorway. Seconds later, Charlotte heard a door farther down the hall slam shut.
“Charlotte!” Clarice called out. “Are you still in there?”
Charlotte set the mop aside and hurried out onto the gallery. There she found the old lady struggling to get out of her chair. “I’m cold,” she told Charlotte. “I want to go back inside.”
“Here, let me help you.” Clarice wasn’t much bigger in size than Charlotte, but it was like lifting dead weight. As she struggled to get the old lady to a standing position, she wondered how on earth Jeanne managed day in and day out by herself.
“I swear, I don’t know what gets into that daughter of mine,” Clarice said as she aimed her walker toward the open French doors. Then, without so much as a please or thank you, she began her arduous journey back inside.
Charlotte simply shook her head and wondered yet again about the strange relationship between the two women. Why did Jeanne continue to put up with her mother’s rudeness, a rudeness that at times bordered on abuse?
By the time that Charlotte cleared off the outside table and set the tray on the floor in the hallway, Clarice was entering the bathroom. Except for vacuuming, Charlotte was finishing cleaning Clarice’s suite. Even so, she waited a few minutes before leaving the room just in case Clarice needed more help.
“Be careful, Miss Clarice,” she told her. “I just mopped that floor, and it might still be a bit damp.”
Clarice stopped, turned her head, and glared at Charlotte. “I’m not going to mess up the floor, Charlotte. I just want to rinse my teeth.”
Messing up the floor was the least of Charlotte’s concerns, but she figured trying to explain that she only feared Clarice might slip and fall wouldn’t do a bit of good. The old lady only heard what she wanted to hear.
Once Clarice was safely back in her bed, Charlotte gathered her supplies and started on the bedroom next to Clarice’s. Within the hour, she’d cleaned all of the bedrooms except the master suite. Since the door to that room was still firmly shut and she hadn’t heard Jeanne come out, she decided she would wait and clean it later.
After dusting the small tables in the hallway, Charlotte moved to the staircase. The handrail and balusters were fashioned from antique mahogany, but the steps were of oak, sanded and finished to a high gloss.
It was rumored that when the original owners of the Dubuissons’ house had built it, they had procured the handrail and balusters from a house that was reputed to have been the temporary headquarters for Andrew Jackson when he had defended New Orleans against the British. Just thinking about the historical significance of the staircase gave Charlotte a lot of pleasure, and she took a great deal of pride in the polishing and upkeep of the old wood.
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