Free Feast of All Saints by Anne Rice Page B

yet she knew he was Cecile’s son! Her words went on, but Marcel did not hear them. For one vain moment, it occurred to him there might be something to say, some magnificent explanation. But it died before it was born.
    “And this school, he talks of this school…” she was saying. “And wants to meet you so, of course…”
    A short ironic laugh came from Christophe’s lips, and with an icy smile, he extended his hand. “Indeed? And so we meet.”
    Marcel took his hand mechanically. It felt powerful and somewhat cold. Perfect enough, Marcel was thinking and convulsively he drewback too soon while Christophe let his hand drop rather slowly again to his mother’s waist.
    “You know what I think of this school?” she was saying, wiping at her eyes with the edge of the sheet. She had loosened it slightly over her breasts. Marcel looked away. “I think this is the reason you have come back here, this school. Not your mother, I am not the reason…”
    “Ah, Maman!” he said, shaking his head. He kissed her. It was the first spontaneous thing that he had said, and he looked at her now as if he were seeing her for the first time. And then taking her in his arms he held her as if he were doing this for the first time.
    Marcel murmured quickly that he should take his leave. And had started for the door when she said “I’ll talk to him about the school,
cher
. Christophe listen to me, he wants to go to your school.”
    “He seems a bit precocious for school,” came the rich-voiced sarcastic reply beside the upturned innocent gaze of the mother.
    “Ah!” she waved away words she didn’t understand. “Go
cher
, come tomorrow.”
    “Oh, yes, do come again,” said the man with a purely malignant smile.
    Marcel could feel the tears just behind his eyes. But again, as he turned, she reached out for him, and tugging him gently close to her, she put her cheek against his chest.
    He broke away slowly and with a gentlemanly murmur, went swiftly through the dark house, clattering down the hollow stairway and blundering out into the shadowy street. The sky was red with the sunset over the river, and he was crying now, so that as he reached the banana grove inside his gate, he stopped and choked back his tears, resolutely refusing to let them flow any longer, to let anyone see them, to let anyone know where he had been and what he had done.
V
    I T WAS DARK . The breeze was damp from the river and carried with it the scent of rain. All the day’s heat was lessened now, and the long loose lace curtains rose and fell against the back window of Marcel’s room, and the sounds of the evening meal below were just past. The lamp on the desk flickered dimly. Then there came Lisette’s familiar steps up from the kitchen, and he heard her quick tread along the porch.
    “Better eat something, Michie,” she coaxed lightly in the Creole French. “Come on now, Michie, open up this door.”
    He lay still staring at the shadowy ceiling. She had moved to the window. So let her try to see him through the blinds, he didn’t care.
    “All right, then Michie! Starve to death!” she shouted at him and was gone.
    “Mon Dieu!”
he sighed, his teeth biting into his lip. He was going to cry again if he didn’t get a hold on himself. His mother had flown at him as he ran up the stairs to his room. She had beat against his door while he stood inside, his hand trembling on the bolt. “How could you do it, how could you do it!” she had shrieked until he covered his ears. It had taken him a moment to realize that she couldn’t have known what he had
really
done, any of it. It was the school that mattered to her. He’d been expelled, so be it. And now Lisette shouting at him as if he were a child. She’d burn his bacon in the morning and serve his coffee cold. He was becoming completely furious about it when he realized with a dry laugh that he was very shortly scheduled to die.
    And then that familiar oppression descended upon him, that