Long Distance Life by Marita Golden

Author:Marita Golden
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Washington (D.C.), Social Science, African American families, African American Studies, Afro-Americans, Ethnic Studies, African Americans
ISBN: 9780345376046
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Published: 1992-01-28T01:48:45+00:00

He was never to know by what intricate grapevine this news had reached her, or what precisely she had heard. It was unthinkable that Philippe could have told her, no use even considering that. And Vincent and Aglae never spoke of it again. But sometimes in the weeks that followed, when she asked whether he took proper care of himself in New Orleans, might not be coming home too tired for his health and his rigorous schedule, he felt she was pleading with him. And he heard again that admonition, “learn by your mistakes.”

Without coyness, he gave her assurances at once. He needed the lights of the city now and then, he wasn’t ready after months abroad to settle into the country routine. And forfeiting an occasional plan to visit Anna Bella, he read stories to his nieces and nephews by the home fires instead. He would sit up late in the library, leave his brother-in-law alone to the pleasures of the bottle, and riding out early down along the gray mud beach of the river he looked at the cold sky like a man saying his prayers.

Bontemps had never been so beautiful, so rich. The death of Langlois, the old overseer who had succumbed in his absence, was a sadness. But there was the new man and the new harvest and when had the cane looked so high, so hardy, so green? He would break in this new overseer to his ways, he was home again, went out at night with his lantern to see the foal delivered of his favorite mare, and roaming through the rose garden in the early mist, drank thick soup for breakfast while Cook in her snow-white bandanna pouring the milk for him, said, “Michie, don’t you ever leave us again.”

Months later, Philippe from the carriage window pointed out the Ste. Marie cottage in the Rue Ste. Anne. The carriage had creaked to a stop. Vincent’s soul shriveled as he turned his head. At first he did not believe that he had understood, that here his brother-in-law kept a colored family! And would tell him this casually as they passed the gate!

But the morning after, stopping for Philippe again, he had seen the fruits of this alliance plain enough. There stood the blond-haired boy with the honey-colored skin staring at him with those shameless blue eyes. Kinky hair like that of a fieldhand, only it was the color of his father’s. Vincent’s cheeks burned.

He adored Aglae! Philippe knew this. But even if they had despised each other, brother and sister, this should never have been revealed to him, this little slope-roofed cottage under the magnolia tree and that oddly handsome blue-eyed quadroon in Sunday best at the gate.

It was more than Vincent could bear. He had ridden back to Bontemps in unyielding silence. And in the plantation library at night, he brooded on the promises he had made that very day. Anna Bella Monroe was his now. But by God, that alliance would end

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