#violette duplanchier

[aheathen-conceivably]

Why are you with him? 

The question had dominated Jo’s mind the entire night. Now, it was still at the forefront of her thoughts, causing her to bristle in anger even in the full light of morning. Because really - how dare she? Val had no right to question her life or her choices. Not even he did that. And that was the whole point, wasn’t it? That she wasn’t Gio. That being with her meant being away from him. It meant the opportunity to entertain the idea that she had chosen a different path in life, one where she didn’t have to answer to anything or anyone. Especially not to her sanctimonious smirk or judgemental eyes.

But as indignance corroded the power-drunk tipsiness that had guided her hand only yesterday, she had to admit that at least the question was fair. She could practically hear every argument she and Gio had ever had echoing in her ears - her complaints and insults guiding her like stepping stones to Val’s door.

So at the bare minimum, wasn’t it fair that she would at least want to know? After circling around her for years, all the while pushing him away and then pulling him back again, wouldn’t Val wonder why the hell she was still there?

And even worse, haunting her from beneath the increasingly understandable question was the awareness that this was it. The moment she had been contriving for years. An out. Her moment to run away from her past and the way she feared he would moor her down like quicksand. She could leave this goddamn farm and the inevitable wedge she had now driven between Antoine and Zelda. All she had to do was pack a bag while they slept and make it to Val’s house by sunrise. Then her life could start over with a woman who understood her. All she had to say was one thing:

It doesn’t matter why I’m with him. I don’t want to be anymore. 

But that would be a lie, wouldn’t it?

The cigarette smoke in her mouth tasted like the cold metallic flavor of a long spoken lie tinged with just enough truth to make it believable. I’m with him because it makes sense. Because he owns the roof over my head and my family’s and leaving him would be too risky for us all. I’m with him because I’m my mother’s daughter. 

It was the hard line logic that had stayed her hand when she wanted to leave two years ago, and the same nagging voice that had guided her every calculated action since. Only it hadn’t been true for months. Because now she owned him - the majority of the farm was hers. She had told herself that once it was she could squash him like a bug the way she wanted to so many times before and then walk away without a worry in the world. Now she could; but yet she was still on his goddamn porch in this godforsaken town with the same goddamn question ringing in her ears. 

Why are you with him?

The constant haze of cigarette smoke in front of her face cleared and she hesitated before taking another drag. Instead she let her eyes focus on the farmyard in front of her, where Gio and Antoine were lost in easy conversation. The wasps buzzing in her mind quieted as the warmth in their voices rippled across the sun-soaked sand.

Goddamn it. Goddamn them. Because even if she walked out of this house at midnight armed with the one answer Val wanted, she could hear in their muffled voices that it would always be a lie. There were ten years of vines growing around her heart binding all four of them together; and although she had tried desperately to keep them trimmed and herself free from their grip, seeing them together made it seem so fruitless that she almost laughed out loud.

Logical. What good was logical when her heart swelled with pride and loyalty seeing him standing there next to her own flesh and blood? It was something stronger than logic, and it infuriated her to know that cutting him out of her life would never loosen these vines that had grown into every crevice of her being. For ten years he had walked alongside her - seeing her past and her ghosts in a way that was impossible for anyone else once certain chambers of your heart had been sealed off.

The sound of his laughter cut through the tears stinging her eyes. Did it even matter who’s it was? His or her brother’s or her own in a dozen memories starting to populate her mind. And goddamn him for that. For his warmth and how quickly he could make someone laugh. For how interested he had always been in the world and her dreams and her memories. Goddamn how willingly he had shouldered her pain so that she didn’t even realize she had opened herself up to him. Goddamn that softness and how much she admired him for it. She knew that it made him strong in a way she could never be, because it had never come easy for her - feeling this. Seeing past the curtains of her own self-ascribed logic to something that simply bubbled from her soul the way waves rise in the sea.

For so long the only thing she had allowed to rise from the depth was her anger. But really even that was just pulsing alongside the maddening flow of her love - because she couldn’t help but feel a sort of twisted sort of admiration for him and every lie he had told to get himself and her out here. Through it all she could see what she had always known - that under that softness and unyielding loyalty was a man who saw something just beyond the edges of every else’s myopic vision and went for it. Logic and sense be damned.

From somewhere to her right a storm of dust lifted from the ground. It was hard to even see Violette amidst the two fully grown horses - whether that was because she was dwarfed by their towering figures or because Jo could barely tear her eyes away to look sideways. Antoine turned toward the noise immediately, giving Gio a familiar tap on the arm as he started to call out instructions to Lottie. 

Then, as though in slow motion, Gio’s head turned toward her, and in that horrifying instant she knew that he saw the question swarming in her mind. Why are you with him?

Suddenly it was like she had spilled the contents of her purse in the middle of a busy train. Silently, without moving a muscle, she tried to hurriedly pack away the contents back to their shadowy pockets. But he was already moving across the sand, taking long purposeful strides toward her with the gait of a much taller man than he was.

In the moment he reached her the commotion of two saddled horses seemed to come from another world. He sank down onto his knees in front of her, looking up into her eyes without hesitation. Logic. Try and find it. Try and hold onto it. Hold back the vines.

“Mi raccomando?” The words felt like a knife to the heart. But not her own. To his. Like she had plunged the kitchen knife into ice, concealing it in the sleeve of her blouse until he fell into her arms and she drove it right into his back straight through to his heart. “Are you alright? I thought I saw you crying?”

“No it’s - it’s just the dust. I’m fine. I promise.”

“Are you sure?“ She shook her head while looking down at her hands - scared to meet his eyes as she mentally packed away all the thoughts still fighting to spill past the locked contents of her skull and into the small space between them. “Jo? Talk to me. Please.”

Finally, she looked up into his eyes and the ghost of a half smile tried to disguise her face. “I was just watching you and Antoine. And I - I was only thinking. About life. The past.”

An uncharacteristic pause interrupted her speech, spurred by a lump in her throat that she didn’t quite know how to deal with.

“I - I just love you, Gio. That’s all.”

His face only grew more concerned at the sudden display of tenderness. As his brows furrowed, his eyes attempted to search hers. But the look was more than she could bear, so she threw her hands around both his shoulders and shut her eyes tightly. Behind closed lids, she desperately tried to conceal the knife of betrayal invisibly angled only centimeters above his back - just hoping that he would never see it, and thus never feel its cold blade pierce the skin right behind his heart.

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[aheathen-conceivably]

Violette had a plan, and only the first step involved acquiring her mother’s permission. She had hoped that it would work, but after countless times of being told to stay in her room, she didn’t truly think that it would.

So near bedtime, she asked her Tante Marguerite to read her a story, knowing that the old woman would almost certainly doze off before the princess found her prince. Even once the book had been shut and her aunt’s eyes closed, Violette sat on the rug, innocently playing with her doll and waiting patiently.

Once the woman began to snore Violette knew that she was in a deep sleep. Still clutching her doll in case she needed to play innocent, Violette stood to count each snore: one, two, three, four, five. That was her cue, so she swiftly and confidently slipped on her shoes and snuck away from her charge.

Downstairs. You are never to go downstairs, Violette. Yet even from the top of the stairwell she could hear the music. It was faint from there, but with every step down the hallway it grew louder and clearer.

For as long as she could remember, she had heard the sound of music in the night moving through the hallways like waves, calling to her and fascinating her. She knew that it was her mother and father, since she heard them practicing, but she had never seen them play together, never knew what they were like or what this magical place that she only knew as downstairs could possibly look like.

Violette followed the sounds through the rooms, down one flight of stairs after another until she reached the door that led from their apartment to the street. Across from it was the stage door, the one that her parents had always told her was strictly forbidden. Violette reached her small hand forward to open it, and then worked her way down a dark hallway before she emerged through the beaded curtain into the red walled club.

The intensity of music there was louder than she had ever heard, seemingly deafening everyone in the club to her footsteps. A heavy cloud of smoke hung in the air, mingling with the adult's preoccupation to conceal her there, skirting along the walls until she could see her parents up on stage.

She stopped at the edge of the crowd, looking up toward her mother and father. As she gazed up her mother hit a note more clear and piercing than any she had ever heard on the radio; suddenly her voice tapered off into a soft but immensely sad hum, the sound almost low enough to be sorrowful, until her father began to play the piano again, the notes seemingly discordant but somehow perfectly arranged.

They were like stars in the night, shining atop the crowd of dancing bodies, setting the tempo of the whole room. She was fascinated, entranced, and riveted that they could be this way, so magnetic and raw. They were never like this upstairs, always reading or talking quietly with one another. Up there they seemed more real than ever before.

The heels scurried closer to her, the tempo growing faster. She moved toward the crowd, no longer caring if anyone were to notice her or push her aside as they danced.

“Lottie!” A voice suddenly hissed. Turning, Violette spotted her Aunt Josephine approaching. Before Jo could utter a stronger admonishment, Violette gave her a mischievous grin and ran away.

Now that she had seen them, her mission was complete. She could safely go back upstairs to listen to the show through the parquet floors as she always did. In the months since she had returned from England, she had placed her ear on every intricately designed floorboard to find exactly the spot where the music was the loudest. Now, as she listened to the muffled sounds from below, she could imagine what her mother must feel like up there on stage, shining like a star in the night.

[aheathen-conceivably]

Zelda was applying her makeup, consciously aware of the fact that she felt as though she were putting on a mask. When she first arrived in New Orleans she had found the powder and rouge strange, but after Josephine had painstakingly taught her how to apply each layer, it had become just another part of the ritual of performance.

It had always fascinated her, to apply this layer that separated her from the crowd, one that obscured her features and transformed her into someone else. That’s how she felt when she was on stage anyway: like someone else. But each night the feeling grew stronger, and her hand grew heavier as she drew the lines around her eyes and rouged circles on her cheeks.

Zelda was so intensely fixated on the strange figure looking back at her from the glass that she barely heard the small footsteps approach. Only as she leaned close to the mirror to perfect the exaggerated points of her lips did she realize there was a small pair of eyes staring at her.

She turned around not only in surprise, but in disappointment, as Violette was under strict orders to stay upstairs once her parents began getting ready for work. But as Zelda looked at her child’s face so full of wonder, her steadfast adherence to her own rules faltered for a moment and she called Violette to sit with her.

Violette immediately began to touch every trinket on the vanity, running her hands along the makeup brushes and bringing her nose close to the bottles of scented water. Much to her delight, Zelda picked up one of the brushes and sprinkled powder across her laughing cheeks.

The two of them stayed that way, talking about the pictures that Zelda had in the room and what bottle was used for what part of the face, when they stopped to look together in the mirror.

“I love you, my little flower, you know that right? Are you happy to be home?”

In answer Violette smiled widely and nodded her head yes. Zelda brushed a curl back from her face and planted a kiss on her forehead, “And you look very pretty, my dear. Always know that.”

Violette looked back at her mother in the glass, “You look pretty too, Momma. Is this how you always look when you go downstairs? Does everyone look like this down there?”

Zelda’s heart sank and she fell silent, still staring back at Violette in the mirror. As if knowing that her words had weakened her mother’s defenses Violette turned around to look into her eyes, “Can I go downstairs with you, momma? I’ll be quiet, I promise.”

“Violette, there is one rule in this house. You know that you cannot go downstairs. Not tonight, not ever.”

Violette’s expression changed as quick as the tide of the sea, and she swung her legs around to angrily planted her feet on the floor. Zelda reached out to reason with her, but she knew it was no use; so she let her stomp away, sullen and defiant as though her entire mission that evening had been thwarted.