Wildest Dreams (The Contemporary Collection) Read online

  Joletta had asked Mimi about it several times, and her grandmother always promised to tell her the whole story when the time was right. Somehow, that time had never come, just as the moment had never been right to pass on the formula.

  There were moving shadows in the far end of the courtyard. A whispering sound could be heard above the clatter and tinkle of the fountain, as if branches were scraping against the old bricks of the wall in the night wind. Or as if there were phantom lovers whispering in one of the shrubbery alcoves.

  It was definitely eerie to be there alone in the dark; she should have waited until morning, Joletta thought. Even then, it would not have been the same with the shop closed for the funeral and the weekend afterward. There would be no cheerful ringing of the shop bell, no new perfume being mixed, no laughing greeting or loving scolding from Mimi, no smell of something rich with onions, celery, and garlic in a well-browned roux simmering in the upstairs kitchen. Strange to think that it would never be that way again.

  Joletta really didn’t want to enter the emptiness of the upper rooms. It was an intrusion, or so it seemed. And yet, what was one more? The others had already been there looking, thumbing through Mimi’s books and papers, rummaging in her closets and drawers. Her own search could be no more of an invasion. Passing along the upper gallery to the narrow entrance doors, Joletta used her key to let herself into the town house.

  She switched on the light in the parlor, but did not hesitate among the formal furnishings of rosewood and gilt, marble and ormolu. Skirting a square table centered under a Baccarat chandelier, she walked into the connecting bedroom.

  It looked like something from a museum, with a Louis XIV scrolled bed, a dressing table of similar design, and faded draperies of old rose satin over curtains of yellowed lace. Here, as in the parlor, was a fireplace mantel of Carrara marble that surrounded an ornate cast-iron coal grate. Against one wall was a tall chest of carved and gilded wood. In the bottom section of it were drawers of different sizes, but the top was made up of a series of small compartments hidden behind double doors painted in the style of Boucher, with pastoral scenes of amorous shepherds and shepherdesses and hovering cherubs.

  Mimi had called this piece of furniture her memory chest. In it were the items she particularly cherished: a seashell she had picked up at Biloxi on her first trip there as a child; the gifts of fans and silver-backed mirrors and other tokens received from members of the Mardi Gras krewes who had called her out to dance at balls during her coming-out season; the red glass buttons from the dress she had been wearing the night her husband had proposed; a dried and disintegrating carnation from his funeral wreath, and many other such treasures. Somewhere among them, Joletta knew, was what she sought.

  She found it in the third compartment, stuffed behind a baby’s christening robe. It was in a bundle tied up with a frayed black ribbon, along with a miniature in a frame so heavy and iridescent with tarnish that it had to be made of solid silver.

  What Mimi had called a diary was a boxlike book covered with worn maroon velvet and finished with discolored brass-bound edges that made square corners. Actually a Victorian traveling journal, it was thick with pages of heavy acid-free paper, each page covered with closely spaced lines of looping Spenserian script interspersed with sketches of dainty flowers, and a few small-scale figures and landscapes. Joletta had seen it once before, years ago. She stood now with the bundle in her hands, fingering the brass corners of the journal while she gazed down at the miniature that was uppermost.

  The small painting, done in oil colors that were soft and delicate yet as clear as the day they had come from the brush, showed the head and shoulders of a young woman. She appeared on the verge of a smile, the look in her wide, pansy-brown eyes diffident yet inquiring, guarded but vulnerable. Her brows were delicately arching, her lashes long and full. Her nose was slightly tip-tilted and her mouth formed with gentle curves tinted a natural coral. Her soft brown hair was drawn back in a low chignon from which short tendrils escaped to curl at her temples and cheekbones. There were garnet-and-seed-pearl eardrops in her ears and a matching brooch at the throat of her flat lace collar. She was not beautiful in a classic sense; still, there was something intriguing about her that made it difficult to look away from her. The artist had drawn his subject with care and precision, and also with a talent that made it seem she might complete her smile at any moment, might tilt her head and answer some question whose echo had long since ceased to sound.

  Violet Fossier.

  Joletta remembered the day she had first seen the miniature and the journal tied up with it. Mimi had been in bed with a chest cold. Joletta, thirteen or fourteen at the time, had been trying to take care of her. Mimi, who always scorned inactivity, had declined to nap or read. She had directed Joletta to the chest across the bedroom to get her tatting. As Joletta searched, taking out the treasures one by one in her quest for the tatting bobbin, Mimi had told her about each item.

  “Bring that to me, chère,” her grandmother had commanded as Joletta pulled out the journal.

  The brass-bound book had been heavy, and its ornate hasp and small dangling lock and key attached with a piece of black ribbon had rattled as Joletta walked. Mimi took the book from her, handling it with care, smoothing the worn places on the velvet. In answer to Joletta’s plea to see inside, her grandmother had carefully opened the lock and lifted the frontpiece to expose the yellowed pages with their beautiful handwriting and delicate sketches marred with small ink blotches.

  “This belonged to your great-great-great-great-grandmother,” Mimi said. “She once held it in her own hands, wrote in it every day for the two years of her journey to Europe. She put her thoughts and feelings onto the pages, so that to read them is to know who and what she was. What a shame it is that we don’t do these things anymore.”

  Joletta, enthralled by the ornate script and faint mustiness that rose from the paper, had tilted her head to read the first line.

  “No, no, ma chère,” her grandmother had said, snapping the journal closed. “This isn’t for you.”

  “But why, Mimi?”

  “You’re young yet, maybe someday when you’re older.”

  “I’m old enough now! I’m nearly grown, not some little kid.” The frustration she felt was strong in her voice.

  Mimi looked at her and smiled. “So ancient, then, yes? But there are still things that you do not know, nor should you until you are of an age to understand.”

  Joletta had looked at her with her lips pressed together. “When will that be?”

  Mimi sighed. “Who can say? For some it never comes, this understanding. But put the book away for me now, then come back and let me tell you something.”

  Joletta had obeyed, though without grace. At her grandmother’s gesture, she had climbed up to perch on the side of the high bed. Mimi reached out to touch her face, cupping her pointed chin in a smooth, timeworn hand.

  “You were named for your grandmother Violet, did you know? Joletta is a Latin form of Violet. You are also very like her. Your eyes are not so brown and have little flecks of rust; your hair is a shade or two lighter, I expect from the sun — Violet probably never went into the sun in her life without her hat and parasol. Still, you have the same bone structure, the same brows and nose — especially the nose. Le nez, the nose of the perfumer.”

  “Do I? Do I, really?” Joletta was breathless with pleasure at the idea.

  Mimi gave a slow nod. “I have noticed it. One day you will look almost exactly like her.”

  “But she’s so pretty.”

  “So are you, chère; haven’t I always told you so?” Mimi’s tone was faintly scolding.

  “Yes, but you would say it anyway.” It was not Mimi’s love Joletta doubted, but herself.

  Mimi reached out then to smooth her hair. “Don’t worry, one day you will see it. And you will have Violet’s spirit, too, I think. You are such a quiet little thing most of the time, but you have wild dreams inside that will s
omeday burst free. You can be led, easily persuaded with reason, but not pushed. You will give and give until it’s that last tiny bit too much, and then you will turn and fight, fight without counting the cost, perhaps even without mercy. I fear for you sometimes, little one. You need so much to have happiness and a heart at ease, and you can be hurt so badly if you are not careful.”

  Looking at the miniature now, Joletta could not quite remember everything her grandmother had said, but she recalled enough to make her stare hard at the features of Violet Fossier.

  Thinking back, she wondered, too, if there had not been more to Mimi’s refusal to let her read the journal than she suspected at the time. She wondered if there wasn’t something a bit shameful in the pages, some dark family secret that Mimi thought she was too innocent to see. Mimi had been like that. Because she had been convent school taught and gone chaste to her marriage bed, she assumed her daughters and granddaughters were just as pure. It was sweet of her, but an impossible image to live up to.

  Was she really like Violet Fossier? Joletta tilted her head as she considered it. She was near the same age now as Violet had been when the miniature was done. There might be some resemblance, but the difference in the hairstyle, the clothes, and the expression made it difficult to be sure. If the resemblance was there, it was only superficial. Joletta knew with wry acceptance that she had never been so fascinating as the woman in the miniature. She was an independent female with a job she enjoyed, her own apartment, and no steady man anywhere in sight. The only thing definitely the same was the nose.

  She stood still, breathing gently in and out, testing the accumulated scents of the room. Yes, she had the nose.

  There was never a time when she had not been aware of the infinite variety of smells in the space around her. She had thought everyone must inhale them as easily as she did, must note them, catalog them, sometimes turn their heads to follow them. She knew differently now. Some people recognized the majority of the scents about them but not all, some caught no more than half, while still others seemed to notice only those smells that were actively bad or good.

  Here in this room were the accumulated scents of dust and ancient coal smoke, furniture polish, and floor wax, plus the dry and acrid base notes of old silk and leather and wool and cotton from the contents of the memory chest. Overlying all these, however, were the myriad scents rising from the shop below, drifting in the damp stillness of the air.

  The strongest of these was rose, that most ancient of perfumes and still the world’s most popular. It was the one Mimi had let Joletta measure first, all those years ago, holding her hands steady around the decanter, wiping up the small spill with a tissue she had tucked into Joletta’s pocket. “For luck,” she had said with a wink and a kiss, “and for love.”

  Lavender, muguet, cinnamon: these came from the potpourri that was mixed fresh in the shop each morning. Joletta’s mother had used it often in her own home, and Joletta associated the clean, faintly old-fashioned sweetness with memories of her.

  A fruitiness mixed with orris root was an unwelcome reminder of Aunt Estelle. The older woman had a tendency to douse herself and her clothing in whatever perfume was newest and most highly advertised, so had moved these last few days in a miasma of some designer scent that smelled remarkably like imitation grape drink.

  The blending of orange and other citrus scents conjured up Joletta’s dorm room at college. She had used their freshness in that period of her life to cover the smells of old paint and gym socks. The smells had seemed brisk and modern yet with an undertone of wedding orange blossoms. She had lost her taste for them, abruptly, when her engagement ended.

  The undertone of musk brought back the winter day when she and her cousin Natalie had knocked a full bottle of that essence from a shelf to the stone floor of the mixing room. Natalie claimed Joletta had done it. She had, but it had been Natalie who had pushed her into the shelf. Regardless, Joletta had had to clean up the broken glass, sop up the cloying liquid by herself. The smell, sickeningly strong in excess, had clung to her for days, lingering in the pores of her skin, hovering in the back of her nose. The worst of it, though, was that Mimi had been afraid to trust her in the mixing room again for months.

  Joletta had tried to explain what happened that day, but Natalie had been louder, had burst into tears and screams when accused. Joletta had finally stopped trying to make herself heard. After all these years, Joletta was used to being overpowered by her older cousin. She still admired her cousin’s forthright ways, her brash display of stylish clothes and expensive jewelry, her determination to have her own way and hang the consequences. Joletta knew that she had her own understated style, one based on a few pieces of quality clothing in neutral tones that could be put together in infinite combinations and made interesting by bright accessories and a few pieces of antique jewelry. Regardless, Natalie’s display of the latest from Saks and Neiman Marcus made her feel dowdy, and somehow diminished by comparison.

  The fragrance of cloves was a reminder of Timothy; the men’s cologne he wore was heavy with it. He had a preference for strong scents, rather than the simple outdoorsy blends Joletta would have expected. Timothy’s disposition was laid-back with an easy charm that came from extended summers around country-club pools or else taking part in some high-risk sport such as hang gliding or white-water rafting. Mimi’s only grandson, the only male child to be born in the immediate family in the last two generations, he had been spoiled, but seemed to have grown out of it.

  There were other scents, dozens of them. The most dominant of these, vying with the rose, was vetiver. The green, woodsy note, one not unlike eucalyptus, was used in many of the fragrances in the shop. Brought to New Orleans during the French colonial period, vetiver was native to India and had for many years taken the place of lavender in tropical climes where that English herb was difficult to cultivate. Lavender was a plentiful import these days, but New Orleanians were still partial to the distinctive fragrance blends that could be achieved with their old favorite.

  Yes, she had the nose. For what good it might do her.

  Taking the things she held to the bed, Joletta put them down and slipped the journal free of the ribbon tie. Unlocking it, she quickly flipped through the pages, scanning the faded paragraphs and sketches that went on and on, paying particular attention to the frontpiece and endpiece pages. There was no sign of a listing of numbers and measurements that might be a formula.

  The corners of her mouth tightened with disappointment, then she took a deep breath. She should have known it wouldn’t be that easy. She would have to go through the journal page by fragile page.

  That would take time, and it was too late to start now. She would need to take the journal home with her, possibly make a photocopy so she wouldn’t damage it, then do a thorough study. She could well have been wrong about what Mimi was trying to say, what she meant. The chance she was right was a slim one at best.

  Joletta tucked the journal into her shoulder bag, then let herself out of the town house, turning the lights off as she went.

  There was a spring wind stirring the trash in the street, one off Lake Pontchartrain with a smell of rain in its coolness. Joletta settled the strap of her shoulder bag higher on the shoulder pad of her jacket, pushed her hands into her pockets, and started walking in the direction of the parking lot where she had left her car.

  The streets were nearly empty; the hour was late. Across the street were a pair of lovers with arms intertwined. The slow clip-clop of hooves signaled the passing of a tourist carriage in a cross street not far away. She met a group of college boys who whistled and yelled catcalls, drunk on beer and freedom and too young to be quiet about it. In the distance the wail of a jazz trumpet made a lament in the night.

  New Orleans was winding down, finishing off the evening. She had been longer at the shop than she expected. The sounds trailed away behind her as she left the main streets of the quarter. All that was left was the clatter of her own heels on the une
ven pavement.

  She thought at first that it was an echo. Even after she realized the footsteps were heavier than her own, she hoped whoever was behind her would turn down a side street, enter a building, or else fall back as she increased her speed.

  It didn’t happen. The treads continued, steady, purposeful, so closely coordinated with her own it could mean only one thing.

  She had almost forgotten the man who had followed her earlier. He had departed so easily. Besides, she had nearly convinced herself that she had been mistaken about him.

  She had, apparently, been right after all.

  Her throat was dry. There was an ache beginning in her side from the quick pace she was keeping. She could think of a dozen things she might have done to prevent this situation, from calling the police to staying at Mimi’s place overnight. None of them was of any use now.

  There were two possibilities: either the man wanted money or he was a weirdo who got his kicks from terrifying women. She could drop her shoulder bag and run, hoping that would satisfy him. On the other hand, if she hung on to the purse, the weight of the journal inside would make it a formidable weapon.

  Without pausing in her stride, she swung to look back. The footsteps stopped. She could see the shape of a man in the shadow of one of the many balconies that overhung the sidewalk, but could not make out his face or enough of his clothing to tell anything about him. His general height seemed to match that of the man who had followed her earlier, though she could not be sure.

  She faced forward, walking faster. The footsteps began again. The sound of them seemed to rattle among the buildings, fading and growing louder, coming and going in a curious, uneven rhythm. Or it could be the jolting pound of her pulse in her ears that made her think it.