In a Heartbeat - Elizabeth Adler [77]
“Champagne?” Dorothea looked mystified.
Suddenly apprehensive, Mel thought maybe Camelia had been right, and she should have bought the Southern Comfort instead. But she needn’t have worried. Dorothea’s face lifted and then she laughed, the tinkling southerngentlewoman-style laugh this time.
“Champagne and French pastries. How delightful,” she said, once again the belle of Jefferson House. “Well, we certainly can’t drink this out of coffee mugs, I shall ring for the proper glasses. And plates, too.” She inspected the box of tiny jewellike pastries. “I remember this patisserie. My mother used to shop there,” she said, pleased. And Mel flashed Camelia a smile, glad they had hit the right spot for Mamzelle.
“We drank champagne at my coming-out ball,” Dorothea reminisced. “So delicious. And I remember, it went straight to my head. Of course, I did not partake of alcohol in those days,” she added primly. “Save for a glass of wine with dinner, Father being French and all. My, how Theo would enjoy this,” she added, nibbling on a creamy little fruit tart. “He always did have a sweet tooth.”
That was news to Mel, but she guessed time and a lot of growing up had taken care of that little vice.
“I gave him a room in the house, of course,” Mamzelle went on. “And I began to get rid of that mountain-man accent, taught him to speak properly. And Theo helped out. He cleaned up the place, threw away all those bottles, got rid of the dust, washed the floors, cleaned the windows, polished the furniture. He was like my valet, my butler, only there was no mistress-servant relationship between us.
“We were both outcasts from society, y’see,” she added with a wistful little smile. “I was drinking myself to death, with nothing to live for. And he was starving to death, with no one to live for. You could say we saved each other. And we looked out for each other. And we enjoyed each other’s company.
“We went for walks to the Battery. I took him shopping for food; we even dined, occasionally, in a café. I was not ashamed of my shabby young hick from the mountains, and he was not ashamed of his eccentric, alcoholic mentor. Ours was a relationship of equals. It was based on mutual need, a shared loneliness, and rejection.
“So you can see,” Dorothea added softly, “that it was inevitable that we came to care for one another. And when I found out his true age, I insisted he enroll in high school. And that, my dears,” she added with a tired, fluttery little sigh, “is when life began to change for Theo Rogan.
“It was not easy for him, being laughed at at school. Laughed at for his accent as well as laughed at for me, his weird ‘grandmother.’ That’s what Theo told everyone I was. His grandmother. What else could he say? That he was a vagrant and I an alcoholic who had given him shelter? He felt he owed it to me to make sure I had respect.”
She sighed again, remembering how tough it had been for him. “He fought his way through that school, but he left with a diploma and a scholarship to Duke. It was,” she added, smiling, “the first success of his life. The first time he had ever felt proud of himself.
“Theo Rogan is no name for a winner, I told him. It’s the name of a loser, a part of your past. It’s time you left all that behind.
“I decided on Edward, because it was a good, solid, princely name. And Jefferson, of course. I told him, a man could do no better than to have the name of a great president, and besides, it was my name and my gift to him. And then we needed a fine last name, one with no white-trashiness about it. One befitting a winner. ‘I think “Vincent” should do it,’ I said.
“So I took care of things legally, and Theo Rogan became Edward Jefferson Vincent. Ed Vincent, a Duke University freshman.”
42
Zelda, Zelda, you’ve left me. . . . I always wondered if you would go away—just the way you came, almost in a puff of smoke, leaving me bereft and forever wondering, Why? My golden girl, my Georgia peaches and cream, my honey . . . where are