The Wolves of Midwinter

by Anne Rice

  “Sounds like you did everything you could,” said Reuben.

  “I’m haunted by her and that child,” Jim said. “When I think of all the things I might have done for that child. Whether I wanted it or not, think what I might have done for it. Sometimes I just can’t be around children. I don’t want to be any place where there are children. I thank God I’m at St. Francis in the Tenderloin and that I don’t have to minister to families with children. It eats at me, what I could have provided for that child.”

  Reuben nodded. “But you’re going to love this little nephew of yours who’s coming down the pike.”

  “Oh, absolutely,” Jim said, “with all my heart. Yes. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to say those things about children. It’s just …”

  “Believe me, I understand,” said Reuben. “Maybe I shouldn’t have put it that way.”

  Jim looked off into the fire again for a long moment, as if he hadn’t heard.

  “But all my life I’ll be haunted by Lorraine and that child,” he said. “And what might have been for that child. I don’t expect to ever not be haunted. I deserve to be haunted.”

  Reuben didn’t answer. He wasn’t sure at all that Jim was right about all these many things. Jim’s life seemed shaped by guilt, by remorse, by pain. There were so many questions he wanted to ask, but he couldn’t figure how to ask them. He felt closer to Jim, immeasurably closer, and at a loss as to what to say. He was also very aware that he himself thrived in a realm in which he took human life without a particle of regret. He knew this. He saw all this. And it provoked no real crippling emotion.

  “And several times in the last couple of years,” Jim continued, “I’ve seen Lorraine. I think I have at any rate. I’ve seen Lorraine in church. It’s never more than a glimpse, and it’s always during Mass when I cannot possibly leave the altar. I see her, way to the back, and then of course by the time I give the last blessing, she’s gone.”

  “You don’t think you’re imagining it?”

  “Well, I would except for her hats.”

  “The hats?”

  “Lorraine loved hats. She loved vintage clothes and vintage hats. I don’t know whether it’s a British thing, or what, but Lorraine was always a very stylish person, and she positively loved hats. At any University function in the day, she’d have on some big brimmed hat, usually with flowers. And in the evening, she wore those black cocktail hats with veils, you know, that women used to wear years ago. Actually you probably don’t know. She collected vintage clothes and vintage hats.”

  “And the woman you see at church is wearing a hat.”

  “Always and it’s a real Lorraine Maitland hat. I mean, you know, a Bette Davis or Barbara Stanwyck hat. And then there’s her hair, her long blond hair, straight hair, and her face, and the shape of her head and shoulders. You’d recognize me at a distance. I’d recognize you at a distance. And I’m sure it’s Lorraine. Maybe she’s living here now. Or maybe it’s all something I’m imagining.”

  He paused, looking into the flames of the gas fire, and then he went on.

  “I’m not in love with Lorraine now. I think I was once, booze or no booze. Yes, I was in love with her. But not now. And really I have no right to track her down if she is living here, no right to meddle in her life, to bring all those bad memories back to her. But selfishly, I’d love to know that she’s happy, remarried, and maybe with children. If I could only know that for certain. She so wanted that baby! She wanted that baby more than she wanted me.”

  “I wish I knew what to say to you,” Reuben said. “It breaks my heart to think of you going through this. And believe you me, I will go out to get Celeste pineapple at midnight if that is what it takes.”

  Jim laughed. “I think it’s going to go well with her, if you just don’t challenge her. Let her believe all the bad things she has to believe.”

  “I hear you.”

  “It’s taking more courage for Celeste to give up this baby than she’s admitting. So let her dump her anger on you.”

  “I’m with the program,” said Reuben putting up his hands.

  Jim was looking at the fire again, at the blue and orange flames licking the air.

  “When was the last time you think you saw Lorraine?”

  “Not that long ago,” Jim said. “Maybe six months? And one of these days I’m going to catch up with her outside of church. And that will be when she decides it’s time. And if she tells me that I hurt her so bad she couldn’t have children anymore, well that will be exactly what I deserve to hear.”

  “Jim, if she’d been hurt that bad, she might volunteer it on her own. She could take you down even now for what happened, couldn’t she?”

  “Yes,” said Jim. He nodded and looked at Reuben. “She certainly could. I was straight with my superiors about all of it, always, as I told you. But they were straight with me about it too. They knew that what I’d done had happened in a drunken brawl. I was a debilitated alcoholic. They didn’t see it as premeditated murder. A man who murders cannot be a priest. But any scandal at any time could take me down. One letter to the archbishop, one threat of going public, that would do it. Lorraine could indeed take me down, and Jim’s great personal mission in the slums of San Francisco would blink out like that.”

  “Well, she probably knows that,” said Reuben. “Maybe she just wants to talk to you and she’s building up the nerve.”

  Jim was pondering. “It’s possible,” he said.

  “Or, you feel so guilty about it all that you think any pretty woman you see who’s wearing a hat is Lorraine.”

  Jim smiled and nodded. “That could be true,” he conceded. “If it is Lorraine, she’ll probably try to protect me from the full truth about what I did to her. That was the tone of her letters. She is sweet, just so very sweet. She was the kindest person I ever met. I can only imagine what it was like for her when she left me that last day. How did she stand it? Going home sick, hemorrhaging, losing a baby and having to tell Maitland about that.” He shook his head. “You don’t know how protective she was with Maitland. No wonder he took her right out of there, and went back to England. Stroke. I don’t believe his mother had a stroke. Boy, did I ever let him down. He brought me in to be a comfort to his wife, and I beat her within an inch of her life.”

  Reuben was at an utter loss.

  “Well, listen, here’s the second lesson,” said Jim. “I’m no saint. I never was. I have a mean streak in me and always did, of which you know nothing. I work with addicts at my church because I am an addict. And I understand them and the things they’ve done. So stop thinking you have to protect me from the things that are happening to you now. You can come to me and tell me what’s going on with you! And I can handle it, Reuben. I swear that to you.”

  Reuben felt he was gazing at Jim across a huge divide.

  “But there isn’t much you can do to help,” said Reuben. “I’m not running away from what I am now.”

  “Have you thought about running away from it?” Jim asked.

  “No. I don’t want to,” said Reuben.

  “Have you thought about trying to reverse it?”

  “No.”

  “You’ve never asked your august mentors whether or not it can be reversed?”

  “No,” Reuben admitted. “They would have told us, Stuart and me both, if it could be reversed.”

  “Would they?”

  “Jim, it’s … that’s not possible. That’s not discussable. You’re not grasping the power of the Chrism. You’ve seen a Man Wolf with your own eyes, but you’ve never seen one of us experience the change. This isn’t something that can be reversed in me. No.”

  Give up eternal life? Give up being immune to disease, to aging, to …?

  “But please,” said Reuben. “Please know that I’m doing the best I can to use the Wolf Gift in the best way possible.”

  “The Wolf Gift,” said Jim with a faint smile. “What a lovely little phrase that is.” It was not sarcastic. He seemed to be dreami
ng for a moment, his eyes moving over the shadowy room, and fixing on the rainy windowpanes perhaps. Reuben could not quite tell.

  “Remember, Jim,” said Reuben. “Felix and Margon are doing all in their power to guide me and guide Stuart. This isn’t a lawless realm, Jim. We’re not without our own laws and rules, our own conscience! Remember, we can sense evil. We can smell it. We can pick up the scent of innocence and suffering. And if I’m ever to get to the bottom of what we are, what our powers are, what they mean, well, it will be through others like Margon and Felix. The world isn’t going to help me with all this. It can’t. You know it can’t. You can’t. It’s impossible.”

  Jim appeared to consider this for a long moment and then he nodded. “I understand why you feel that way,” he murmured. And then he seemed to slip off into his thoughts. “God knows, I haven’t been a help so far.”

  “Now you know that’s not true. But you know what my life is like at Nideck Point.”

  “Oh, yes, it’s grand. It’s marvelous. It’s like nothing I ever imagined, that house, and those friends of yours. You’ve been embraced by some kind of monstrous aristocracy, haven’t you? It’s like a royal court, isn’t it? You’re all Princes of the Blood. And how can ‘normal life’ compete with that?”

  “Jim, remember the movie Tombstone? Remember what Doc Holliday says to Wyatt Earp when Doc is dying. You and I saw that movie together, remember? Doc says to Wyatt: ‘There’s no such thing as normal life, Wyatt. There’s just life.’ ”

  Jim laughed softly under his breath. He closed his eyes for a brief moment and then again looked at the fire.

  “Jim, whatever I am, I’m alive. Truly and completely alive. I’m part of life.”

  Jim gazed at him with another one of those faint winsome smiles of his.

  Slowly, Reuben told him the story of what had happened with Susie Blakely. He didn’t present it in a boasting or exuberant fashion. Leaving out all mention of Marchent’s ghost, he explained that he’d gone out hunting, needing to hunt, breaking the rules set up by the Royal Felix and Margon, and how he’d rescued Susie and taken her to Pastor George’s little church. Susie was now home with her parents.

  “That’s the kind of thing we do, Jim,” he said. “That’s who the Morphenkinder are. That’s our life.”

  “I know,” Jim responded. “I get it. I’ve always gotten it. I read about that little girl. You think I’m sorry you saved her life? Hell, you saved a busload of kidnapped kids. I know these things, Reuben. You forget where I work, where I live. I’m no suburban parish priest counseling married couples on common decency. I know what evil is. I know it when I see it. And in my own way I can smell it too. And I can smell innocence and helplessness, and desperate need. But I know the challenge of confronting evil without playing God!” He broke off, frowning slightly, pondering, and then he added, “I want to love like God, but I have no right to take life like God. That right belongs to Him alone.”

  “Look, I told you when I first came to Confession, you’re free to call me about this anytime, you’re free to bring up the subject. When you need to talk—.”

  “Do we have to make this about my needs? I’m thinking of you, I think of you slipping further and further from ordinary life. And now you want to take this child of yours up there to Nideck Point. Even the miracle of this child is not bringing you back to us, Reuben. Perhaps it can’t.”

  “Jim, it’s where I live. And this is the only human child I’ll ever have.”

  Jim winced. “What do you mean?”

  Reuben explained. Any children he fathered now would be with another Morphenkind and they too would be Morphenkinder, almost without exception.

  “So Laura cannot conceive with you,” Jim said.

  “Well, she will be able to soon. She’s becoming one of us. Look, Jim, I’m sorry. I’m sorry I brought all this to you, because there isn’t anything you can do to help me, except keep my secrets, and keep on being my brother.”

  “Laura made this decision? On her own?”

  “Of course she did. Jim, look at what the Chrism offers. We don’t age. We’re invulnerable to disease or degeneration. We can be killed, yes, but most injuries don’t affect us at all. Barring accidents and mishaps, we can live forever. You can’t guess the age of Margon, or Sergei, or any of the others. You know what I’m talking about. You know Felix. You’ve spent hours talking to these men. Did you think Laura would turn down everlasting life? Who has the strength to do that?”

  Silence. The obvious question was, would Jim turn it down if it was offered to him, but Reuben was not going to go there.

  His brother seemed dazed, crestfallen.

  “Look, I want some time with my little boy,” said Reuben. “A few years, anyway. And maybe after that he’ll go to school in San Francisco and live with Mom and Dad, or maybe he’ll go to some school in England or Switzerland. You and I never wanted that, but we could have had it. And my little boy can have it. I’ll protect him from what I am. Parents always try to protect their kids from … something, from many things.”

  “I understand what you’re saying,” Jim murmured. “How could I not understand? I figure my son, he’d be what, twelve years old now, don’t know …”

  Jim looked tired, and old, but he didn’t look defeated. His Roman collar and black clerics seemed a form of armor as they always had. Reuben tried to put himself in Jim’s place. But it just didn’t work. And the story about Lorraine and the baby only made him ache for Jim’s well-being all the more.

  How different this was from that night when in lupine form Reuben had entered the Confessional at St. Francis Church so desperately needing Jim in his pain and confusion. Now he only wanted to protect Jim from all this and he didn’t know how to do it. He wanted to tell him about Marchent’s ghost, but he couldn’t do that. He couldn’t add to the burden he’d already placed on Jim.

  When Jim rose to leave, Reuben didn’t stop him. He was startled when Jim came towards him and kissed him on the forehead. Jim murmured something softly, something about love, and then he left the room, closing the door behind him.

  Reuben sat there quietly for a long time. He was fighting the need to cry. He wished he was at Nideck Point. And a crowd of worries descended on him: What if Celeste did abort the child? And how in the hell was Phil going to live under this roof with Celeste here, Celeste who couldn’t conceal her perfect disdain for him? Hell, this was his father’s house, wasn’t it? Reuben had to support his father. He had to call, to visit, to spend time with Phil. If only the guesthouse at Nideck Point was finished! As soon as it was, he would call his father and urge him to come up for an indefinite stay. He had to find some way to show Phil how much he loved him and always had.

  Finally he lay down and fell asleep, exhausted by the twists and turns of the races he was running in his mind, and only now did the submerged images of Nideck Point rise; only now did he hear Felix’s reassuring voice, and reflect in that half world before sleep and dream that his time in this house was really over, and the future held bright and beautiful things. And maybe it would be that way for Celeste, too. Maybe she’d be happy.

  The wedding was scheduled for eleven in the judge’s chambers. Laura was waiting under the rotunda at City Hall when they came in. She at once kissed Celeste and told her that she looked good. Celeste warmed to her and told her she was glad to see her again, all this a bit breezy and predictable and ridiculous, Reuben thought.

  They went immediately to the judge’s chambers, and within five minutes it was finished. The whole affair was cheerless, and rather grim as far as Reuben was concerned, and Celeste ignored him as if he didn’t exist even when she said, “I do.” Jim stood in the corner of the room with his arms folded and his eyes down.

  They were almost to the front doors of the building when Celeste announced that she had something to say, and asked that they all step to one side.

  “I’m sorry for all I said yesterday,” she said. Her voice was flat and unfeeling. “You were ri
ght. None of this is your fault, Reuben. It’s my fault. And I’m sorry. And I’m sorry about what I said to Phil. I never should have gone off on Phil like that.”

  Reuben smiled and nodded gratefully, and once again, as he’d done last night, he kissed her on the cheek.

  Laura was visibly confused and a little anxious, glancing from one of them to the other. But Grace and Phil were remarkably calm, as if they’d had some warning that this was coming.

  “We all understand,” said Grace. “You’re carrying a child and your nerves are on edge. And everyone knows this. Reuben knows this.”

  “Anything I can do to make this easier, I’ll do it,” said Reuben. “You want me in the delivery room? I’ll be there.”

  “Oh, don’t be so damned obsequious,” Celeste responded sharply. “I’m not capable of aborting a baby just because it’s inconvenient. Nobody has to pay me to have a baby. If I could abort a baby, the baby would be gone by now.”

  Jim came forward at once and put his right arm around Celeste. He clasped Grace’s hand with his left hand. “St. Augustine wrote something once, something I think about often,” he said. “ ‘God triumphs on the ruins of our plans.’ And maybe that is what is happening here. We make blunders, we make mistakes, and somehow new doors open, new possibilities arise, opportunities of which we’ve never dreamed. Let’s trust that that is what is happening here for each of us.”

  Celeste kissed Jim quickly, and then embraced him and laid her head against his chest.

  “We’re with you every step of the way, darling,” Jim said. He stood there like an oak. “All of us.”

  It was a masterly performance, done with conviction, thought Reuben. It was plainly obvious to him that Jim loathed Celeste. But then again, maybe Jim was simply loving her, really loving her as he tried to love everybody. What do I know, Reuben thought.