The Condor Passes

by Shirley Ann Grau

  Robert said: “Are you ready?”

  “Oh, yes, yes.” The black veils around her fluttered again, this time to open the huge oak doors.

  Anna handed her heavy bouquet to the Mother Superior. “Will you? For me.”

  The nun nodded and with a swirl of white Anna moved out the door and down the steps, blinking a little in the sunshine and the bright blue sky.

  Robert asked: “Why did you leave the flowers?”

  “They put them on the altar in their private chapel.”

  Robert grinned. “That’s really the bride of Christ for you.”

  “It’s just a custom,” Anna said, “all the girls do it.” She waved back to the convent’s door. In answer, one of the black shapes lifted the white bouquet, holding it high, triumphantly.

  The little finger on her right hand began to ache, fiercely. It did that only when she was upset.

  “Look,” Robert said, “did I say something wrong?”

  She turned deliberately away from the group of nuns. He was her husband, and she was off to her wedding reception. She stared into his eyes and she felt her irritation slip away. It was the same feeling she got sometimes during chapel when the Gregorian was particularly well done. A sensation like softly flowing water up and down the spine, over the bump of each vertebra, all the way into the skull, to circulate in small neat waves there.

  “You’re adorable,” he said, holding her hand with the new rings on it.

  She went on studying the color of his eyes. She was, she told herself, fulfilling her life. She was completely happy.

  BY THE middle of the afternoon, she floated with happiness. At the country club (the decorations were perfect, she noted, exactly right) she drank two glasses of champagne, stood in the reception line for hours, danced with Robert, then with her father.

  The day, according to her plan, proceeded smoothly, like a well-oiled machine. To the orchestra’s gentle violins, she danced with her uncles and her cousins, the ones who were eighty and shaky on their feet, the ones who were twelve and so short that she stared down into their brilliantined hair. She had more champagne; her head began to sing lightly, gaily. A pink powder mark appeared on her white satin shoulder. She brushed at it briefly. “I know who that was,” she said to Robert. “Cousin Loretta. Nobody else wears that shade of powder. She’s that gaga old lady, with the purple flowers on her hat. Over there. See, that color powder makes her skin look green.”

  Robert said: “Are all these people related to you?”

  “Well, some are Papa’s business. …”

  “I know those,” Robert interrupted, waving his arm to include the crowded room, the endless reception line, “but what about the rest?”

  “Relatives, I suppose, one way or the other.” She felt a sudden surge of concern for him. He had no family at the wedding; he’d wanted none. Not for me, he said; ones I’ve got I don’t want. … So he stood alone.

  He would have a family and a home now. She would make it for him.

  She was feeling something—what was it?—and the intensity of the emotion was upsetting. Almost as if there were something she should be explaining to him, some words, some phrases inside her that would not come to life.

  “Robert,” she said seriously, “I love you.”

  He winked back his answer.

  HALF AN hour later little Peter Gondolfo stumbled into the fishpond. His head hit the tiled side, his skin split, melon-like, and blood poured down the side of his face. The other children stood in perfect silence, openmouthed and watching. He climbed from the pool, too dazed to cry; he walked into the largest pavilion, dripping blood across the polished dance floor. His mother screamed, somebody else shouted, the orchestra stopped.

  “What’s that?” Robert jumped.

  “One of the children,” Anna said calmly. “I was sure one of them would get hurt, but it’s all taken care of.”

  The screams got fainter and then stopped entirely. The orchestra began again.

  “Sounds like they died.”

  “Papa’s car was waiting at the side drive. Just in case. I arranged with Aunt Cecilia to go along to the doctor’s. To take care of things, if the mother’s too upset.”

  “You’ve thought of everything,” Robert said. “You really have.”

  “You haven’t even seen the circus we put together for the children.”

  The golf course directly behind the country club was filled with striped tents, and the ammonia stench of animals was thick in the June heat.

  “Where,” Robert said, “did you get this?”

  “I told you. A circus.” She added, “Just the harmless animals, Robert.”

  Two elephants, in procession, lurched across the space beyond the tents. They were painted gold and white, and their trappings flashed with rhinestones; mahouts in gold satin rode their heads, and from the palanquins on their backs children laughed and waved wildly.

  “Elephants?”

  “For the children now. Later, when it’s dark, I thought they would be fun for a romantic ride. We can have the first.”

  “If we stay. … What else is out there?”

  “Well, the usual clowns and trapeze acts. And there’s a juggler to show them how to juggle.”

  “A sword swallower too?”

  “You’re teasing.”

  “Yes, ma’am. … It’s quite a wedding.”

  “Robert, I wanted everybody to remember this. It’s easy with grownups—mounds of caviar and flowers and music. But I wanted the children to remember too.”

  Robert threw out his hands in that gesture he disliked and couldn’t help making. “They’ll remember.”

  In the soft late afternoon, the party became drunken and noisy. Margaret and some of her friends (“Who are they?” Anna asked) dragged a piano out on the veranda and a black-haired boy began banging on it. His knuckle-edged jazz clashed with the smooth strings from the pavilion ballroom. Margaret was dancing, all by herself, her face flushed, her pink gown wilting in the heat.

  “Robert,” Anna said, “look at that child. She was in my room at five o’clock this morning.”

  “Child? She’s not two years younger than you.”

  He wouldn’t have the memory of the grinning upside-down face, and she couldn’t explain. “Well,” she said, “I’m a married woman.”

  “Not quite,” he said, “not quite.”

  She thought it more proper not to hear him.

  WITH THE first dark they quietly left the celebration. Their car was a new Studebaker. Anna had selected it—Packard or Buick was not suitable for them.

  Margaret caught them at the door. “Best wedding you’ll ever have,” she said, her grin a little lopsided. “Did you know the Bishop’s drunk?”

  “Oh, really,” Anna said.

  “Don’t be condescending with me.” Margaret did a quick Charleston step. “I’m a good Catholic. … You going to float that veil out the window as you drive away into the sunset?”

  “Have another drink, little sister-in-law,” Robert said. “You’re in pretty good shape now.”

  “Just champagne.” Margaret’s grin widened, flickered. “And it’s a good holy Catholic drunk. Just look at all the priests. The bar back there looks like High Mass.”

  Robert helped Anna into the car, folded her veil and train after her.

  “Hey,” Margaret yelled. She twirled around and around, arms stuck straight out. “I’m a whirling crucifix. Look at me.”

  In a way she did look like that, Anna thought.

  ANNA CAME to her first house a bride in white satin, just as she had planned. There was pain where she had expected it, and pleasure where she looked for it, and there was blood to prove her worth to her husband. She fell asleep, completely content. Robert was restless; he turned and tossed all night, jabbing her with elbows and outflung arms. He’s not used to sleeping in a double bed, she thought reasonably, but he will learn.

  She was wrong, she decided years later, wrong about so many things. F
or all her piety, the Lord did not correct her ignorance.

  Margaret

  MARGARET STOPPED WHIRLING TO watch the car drive away. No veil fluttered from the window; only a faint trail of summer dust hung for an instant, then disappeared. She pulled a handkerchief from her belt, scrubbed at her perspiring face. It was hot, and the tight-fitting dress was very uncomfortable. It shrank on me, she thought, it feels like it shrank on me. Innocent young girl found strangled to death in mysterious crime. The poor victim was strangled to death over her entire body. The police are at a loss to explain. …

  Maybe I should just take off my clothes. Naked bridesmaid runs amuck. My father would laugh, Anna would never speak to me again. … I guess I should get married pretty soon. If there was anybody I wanted to marry. I’m waiting for Prince Charming to ride out of the sunset. I could do what Anna did: mountains of linen, warehouses of furniture. Poor guy in whose honor it’s all done. He ought to die of fright or suffocation. … I won’t do that. Not me. I’ll just be my sweet little old self. Prince Charming will have to go for that. …

  Margaret smoothed out her heat-rumpled skirts. Why did she feel like crying? She never cried; the nuns taught their girls that. Blink quickly, they said, and think about the goodness of Jesus.

  The nuns … I’ve gone to their school for eleven years and what did I learn? The Greek alphabet. Caesar’s wars in Latin. To crochet lacy shawls for the Little Sisters of the Poor. To chant the daily Office. To read the novels of Dickens and Scott, but never Hardy. That’s what I learned. To add a column of figures. To write an English letter. … That’s eleven years of school. … That and learning to curse in Spanish. …

  She’d learned during Spring Retreat, sitting in the chapel with her small black copy of The Imitation of Christ. Margaret managed to read the chapter headings: “Of Resisting Temptations,” “Of Prudence in Our Undertakings,” “Of the Love of Solitude and Silence.”…She gave up. Thérèse García, sitting next to her, offered to teach her Spanish. In proper convent manner they sat looking straight ahead, abstracted expressions on their faces, talking almost without moving their lips, almost inaudibly. The first words Margaret learned were “Tu puta madre.”

  Those words, Margaret thought, were likely to come in handier than all the prayers she’d learned. Her class once made four separate simultaneous novenas: St. Jude, St. Joseph, Sacred Heart, and Our Lady of Prompt Succor. … Only one trouble with prayers and prayer books, she thought. They never gave you any foolproof tricks; they never really said: Now, this one will work. You had to try them all, and hope. Like a lottery: pick a number, lose, try again. Too bad, your luck, have another go. … And like a lottery, it wasn’t fair.

  Nothing was fair, she thought. Like that girl in school, in the third grade. Her name was—it was a long time ago—Rosalie; yes, Rosalie. She was crippled; infantile paralysis had fused her spine and given her a hump on one shoulder. The other girls always followed her to the bathroom and teased her, poking their small fingers into her bony excrescence, laughing. They had her in tears every day, though she never complained to the nuns. She just stopped going to the bathroom entirely. One day there was a puddle of urine under her desk and the following day she did not come to school. She never did again.

  We probably would have killed her, Margaret thought. If we’d had enough time. Like we were going to do with Matthew.

  He was her fourth or fifth cousin, and her age exactly. He was always at the children’s parties and picnics, a large fat effeminate boy with breasts like a woman’s. They—Margaret and six or eight other children—tried to drown him in the pond in Aunt Cecilia’s rose garden. He had almost stopped struggling when Aunt Cecilia happened to come out. … Margaret still remembered her scream. …

  All kids were mean, Margaret thought. Like that crazy big girl in school who’d yanked her hair so hard, one day while she sat on the toilet, that there was a bare patch left at the nape of her neck. After that, Margaret carried a spring knife with a four-inch blade that shot out at the push of a button. “I will cut you up wop-fashion,” she threatened, “so that your own mother wouldn’t recognize you.”

  And the nuns went their way, not knowing what their girls were doing. That wasn’t fair either.

  And Anna getting all the family’s looks. … That really wasn’t fair. … I’m short and square and I’ve got kinky hair and stupid brown eyes. While Anna is slender with straight black hair like an Indian, and soft melting eyes like a cocker spaniel.

  She’d complained once to her father. He answered seriously: “Margaret, you are attractive in your way. Unlike Anna, you can also think.”… “Gee, thanks,” Margaret muttered. “I’m dying to be Jean Harlow, and you tell me I can think. Thanks a lot.”

  THE CAR with Robert and Anna had vanished. Margaret stared at an empty street. My sister is married and gone; so much for my sister. Pity. Pity.

  Her father stood beside her; he put one arm around her sweat-soaked shoulders. “Did they manage to sneak away, honey?”

  She nodded, thinking that her father had special names for each of his daughters. He called her “honey,” but never Anna. Anna was always “sweetie” or “child.”

  “Pa, these shoes are killing me.”

  The vague sadness of his face changed to a smile. “You’ve been standing for hours.”

  “Satin never does fit right, but Anna had to have it.”

  “Anna knew exactly how she wanted things.”

  Margaret kicked her pink satin shoes into a potted gardenia bush. “Marvelous!” She picked a single white flower, sniffed it dramatically, then tossed it away. “Incredible.”

  Behind them the sound of glass breaking and then shouts of laughter—her father lifted an eyebrow. “The real party seems to have begun.”

  “You remember Uncle Harry’s birthday when A. J. and Joseph started to fight and everybody threw things?”

  “You expect another one of those? I suppose so. Honey, liquor has a very bad effect on your mother’s family.”

  They walked slowly inside. In the ballroom the sedate orchestra had disappeared; in its place, a dance band sweated away under blue lights. Her father said, wearily, “Honey, I’m having a whiskey. Do you want one?”

  Her close-set brown eyes snapped. “First time you ever asked me that. I’ve been drinking champagne.”

  “You are now grown up. You can change from wine to whiskey.”

  “What if I got drunk, real drunk?”

  “In the bosom of your mother’s family?”

  “Something like that.”

  “You could all lie down together.” He pointed to a black-clothed man stretched on a pale green couch. “There’s Ambrose. The lion and the lamb lie down together.”

  “Where’s that come from?”

  “Damned if I know,” he said. “I read it somewhere years ago.”

  He’d never said damn with her before.

  He handed her a highball. “For the bridesmaid.”

  She sipped warily. “I am so damn thirsty in this heat.” She hesitated a little over the word, uncertain of his reaction, but he seemed to hear nothing. He lifted his glass in a mocking toast to her. Then in a formal toast and a bow to Aunt Harriet, who had appeared at his elbow.

  She saw her father once more during the evening. He was sitting alone in the corner of one of the smaller pavilions. (They all had names according to their decorations: “Kismet,” “Ivanhoe,” “The Sultan’s Tent,” “The Ice Palace.” Margaret didn’t remember which it was.) He was almost completely hidden behind a mass of palms with white peonies wired to their branches. There was a highball on the small table beside him, and he was smoking a cigar while staring up at the ceiling.

  “You look just the way you do at home.” Margaret dropped into a second chair. She crossed her legs; the dust-streaked hem of her pink skirt flipped up, showing a pair of dirty white tennis shoes. Her father stared. She followed his eyes. “Oh, them. … I sent home for them, Papa. I kept stubbing my toe when I walke
d barefoot.”

  He took another puff and went back to staring at the ceiling.

  “You tired, Papa?”

  He arched back in the chair, stretching. “Your mother’s family has always tired me, but no more than usual today.”

  “Did you know that Tootsie’s new father-in-law went to the hospital? He said it was his heart.”

  “Tootsie’s father-in-law …” He paused, trying to remember. Tootsie was a third cousin who had just married a girl from Houston. “Which one was he? The dress business or the night-club business?”

  “I forget. You know, Anna’s ambulance service wasn’t so silly.”

  Her father smiled. “Anna is never silly.”

  “Can I have a cigarette?”

  He shook his head. “Tonight you are drinking, and that’s enough.”

  She giggled. “I don’t feel a thing.”

  He shook his head. “You do.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “You look older.”

  She leaned toward him and, deliberately crossed her eyes over her shiny nose. “I want to grow up to look like Greta Garbo and have men go mad over me.”

  Just outside the silk walls of the pavilion an argument started—three or four voices shouting unintelligible words.

  “You know,” her father said, “with this one party, I have married a daughter and paid my social obligations for the last ten years.”

  Margaret said: “Papa, do you miss not having any family?”

  He shook his head.

  “You never talk about yours.”

  “There isn’t anything to talk about. I never saw my father and my mother was like any other old lady when she came to live with me.”

  “That isn’t what I wanted to know.” She teased the ice around in her glass with her tongue.

  He shrugged and went back to his drink and his cigar. Margaret wandered away, leaving her drink unfinished. She did not really like the taste, even if it was real Scotch and very expensive and completely illegal.

  THE GARDENS bloomed with soft colored lights. A pale moon hung over the golf course, stuck in the sky like a bit of paper. She stared into the fishpond looking for a flick of tail among the lily pads, but all she saw was the moon—shivering and swinging back and forth between the circles of green.