by Anne Rice
“Glad to see you too, Grandma,” he said coming up, though Mary Jane once again shoved right past him, with the firm admonition that he was to hold tight to the baby. Four more steps and he’d be glad to set this bundle down. How come he was the one who’d wound up carrying it, anyway?
At last he reached the warm, dry air of the attic, the little old lady standing on tiptoe to press her lips to his cheeks. He did love Grandma Mayfair, he had to admit that much.
“How you doing, Grandma, you taking all your pills?” he asked.
Mary Jane picked up the ice chest as soon as he set it down, and ran off with it. This wasn’t such a bad place, this attic; it was strung with electric lights, and clean clothes hanging on the lines with wooden clothespins. Lots of comfortable old furniture scattered around, and it didn’t smell too much like mold; on the contrary, it smelled like flowers.
“What is that ‘clickety-clickety’ sound I’m hearing on the second floor down there?” he asked as Grandma Mayfair took his arm.
“You just come in here, Dr. Jack, and do what you got to do, and then you fill out that baby’s birth certificate. We don’t want any problems with the registration of this baby’s birth, did I ever tell you about the problems when I didn’t register Yancy Mayfair for two months after he was born, and you wouldn’t believe the trouble I got into with the city hall and them telling me that …”
“And you delivered this little tyke, did you, Granny?” he asked, patting her hand. His nurses had warned him the first time she came in that it was best not to wait till she finished her stories, because she didn’t. She’d been at his office the second day he opened up, saying none of the other doctors in this town were ever going to touch her again. Now that was a story!
“Sure did, Doctor.”
“The mama’s over there,” said Mary Jane, pointing to the side gable of the attic, all draped in unbleached mosquito netting as if it were a tent with its peaked roof, and the distant glowing rectangle of the rain-flooded window at the end of it.
Almost pretty, the way it looked. There was an oil lamp burning inside, he could smell it, and see the warm glow in the smoky glass shade. The bed was big, piled with quilts and coverlets. It made him sad, suddenly, to think of his own grandmother years and years ago, and beds like that, so heavy with quilts you couldn’t move your toes, and how warm it had been underneath on cold mornings in Carriere, Mississippi.
He lifted the long, thin veils and lowered his head just a little as he stepped under the spine of the gable. The cypress boards were bare here, and dark brownish red and clean. Not a leak anywhere, though the rainy window sent a wash of rippling light over everything.
The red-haired girl lay snug in the bed, half asleep, her eyes sunken and the skin around them frighteningly dark, her lips cracked as she took her breaths with obvious effort.
“This young woman should be in a hospital.”
“She’s worn out, Doctor, you would be too,” said Mary Jane, with her smart tongue. “Why don’t you get this over with, so she can get some rest now?”
At least the bed was clean, cleaner than that makeshift bassinet. The girl lay nestled in fresh sheets, and wearing a fancy white shirt trimmed in old-fashioned lace, with little pearl buttons. Her hair was just about the reddest he’d ever seen, and long and full and brushed out on the pillow. The baby’s might be red like that someday, but right now it was a bit paler.
And speaking of the baby, it was making a sound at last in its little ice-chest bed, thank God. He was beginning to worry about it. Granny Mayfair snatched it up into her arms, and he could tell from the way she lifted it that the baby was in fine hands, though who wanted to think of a woman that age in charge of everything? Look at this girl in the bed. She wasn’t even as old as Mary Jane.
He drew closer, went down with effort on his knees, since there was nothing else to do, and he laid his hand on the mother’s forehead. Slowly her eyes opened, and surprised him with their deep green color. This was a child herself, should never have had a baby!
“You all right, honey?” he asked.
“Yes, Doctor,” she said in a bright, clear voice. “Would you fill out the papers, please, for my baby?”
“You know perfectly well that you should-”
“Doctor, the baby’s born,” she said. She wasn’t from around here. “I’m not bleeding anymore. I’m not going anywhere. As a matter of fact, I am fine, better than I expected.”
The flesh beneath her fingernails was nice and pink. Her pulse was normal. Her breasts were huge. And there was a big jug of milk, only half drunk, by the bed. Well, that was good for her.
Intelligent girl, sure of herself, and well bred, he thought, not country.
“You two leave us alone now,” he said to Mary Jane and the old woman, who hovered right at his shoulders like two giant angels, the little baby whining just a little, like it had just discovered again that it was alive and wasn’t sure it liked it. “Go over there so I can examine this child, and make sure she’s not hemorrhaging.”
“Doctor, I took care of that child,” said Granny gently. “Now do you think I would let her lie there if she was hemorrhaging?” But she went away, bouncing the baby in her arms, pretty vigorously, he thought, for a newborn.
He thought sure the little mother was going to put up a fuss, too, but she didn’t.
There was nothing to do but hold this oil lamp himself, if he wanted to make sure everything was all right. This was hardly going to be a thorough examination.
She sat up against the pillows, her red hair mussed and tangled around her white face, and let him turn back the thick layer of covers. Everything nice and clean, he had to hand it to them. She was immaculate, as though she’d soaked in the tub, if such a thing was possible, and they had laid a layer of white towels beneath her. Hardly any discharge at all now. But she was the mother, all right. Badly bruised from the birth. Her white nightgown was spotless.
Why in the world didn’t they clean up the little one like that, for God’s sake? Three women, and they didn’t want to play dolls enough to change that baby’s blankets?
“Just lie back now, honey,” he said to the mother. “The baby didn’t tear you, I can see that, but it would have been a damned sight easier for you if it had. Next time, how about trying the hospital?”
“Sure, why not?” she said in a drowsy voice, and then gave him just a little bit of a laugh. “I’ll be all right.” Very ladylike. She’d never be a child again now, he thought, pint-sized though she was, and just wait till this story got around town, though he wasn’t about to tell Eileen one word of it.
“I told you she was fine, didn’t I?” asked Granny, pushing aside the netting now, the baby crying a little against her shoulder. The mother didn’t even look at the baby.
Probably had enough of it for the moment, he thought. Probably resting while she could.
“All right, all right,” he said, smoothing the cover back. “But if she starts to bleed, if she starts running a fever, you get her down into that limousine of yours and get her into Napoleonville! You go straight on in to the hospital.”
“Sure thing, Dr. Jack, glad you could come,” said Mary Jane. And she took his hand and led him out of the little tent enclosure, away from the bed.
“Thank you, Doctor,” said the red-haired girl, softly. “Will you write it all out, please? The date of birth and all, and let them sign it as witnesses?”
“Got a wooden table for you to write on right here,” said Mary Jane. She pointed to a small makeshift desk of two pine boards laid over two stacks of old wooden Coke bottle crates. It had been a long time since he’d seen Coke crates like that, the kind they used to use for the little bottles that used to cost a nickel. Figured she could probably sell them at a flea market these days to a collector. Lots of things around here she could sell. He spied the old gas sconce on the wall just above him.
It broke his back to lean over and write like this, but it wasn’t worth complaining about. He
took out his pen. Mary Jane reached up and tipped the naked light bulb towards him.
There came that sound from downstairs, clickety-clickety-clickety. And then a whirring sound. He knew those noises.
“What is that sound?” he asked. “Now let’s see here, mother’s name, please?”
“Mona Mayfair.”
“Father’s name?”
“Michael Curry.”
“Lawfully wedded husband and wife.”
“No. Just skip that sort of thing, would you?”
He shook his head. “Born last night, you said?”
“Ten minutes after two this morning. Delivered by Dolly Jean Mayfair and Mary Jane Mayfair. Fontevrault. You know how to spell it?”
He nodded. “Baby’s name?”
“Morrigan Mayfair.”
“Morrigan, never heard of the name Morrigan. That a saint’s name, Morrigan?”
“Spell it for him, Mary Jane,” the mother said, her voice very low, from inside the enclosure. “Two r’s, Doctor.”
“I can spell it, honey,” he said. He sang out the letters for her final approval.
“Now, I didn’t get a weight….”
“Eight pounds nine ounces,” said Granny, who was walking the baby back and forth, patting it as it lay on her shoulder. “I weighed it on the kitchen scale. Height, regular!”
He shook his head again. He quickly filled in the rest, made a hasty copy on the second form. What was the point of saying anything further to them?
A glimmer of lightning flashed in all the gables, north and south and east and west, and then left the big room in a cozy, shadowy darkness. The rain teemed softly on the roof.
“Okay, I’m leaving you this copy,” he said, putting the certificate in Mary Jane’s hand, “and I’m taking this one to mail it into the parish from my office. In a couple of weeks you’ll get the official registration of your baby. Now, you should go ahead and try to nurse that child a little, you don’t have any milk yet, but what you have is colostrum and that …”
“I told her all that, Dr. Jack,” said Granny. “She’ll nurse the baby soon as you leave, she’s a shy little thing.”
“Come on, Doctor,” said Mary Jane, “I’ll drive you back.”
“Damn, I wish there was another way to get home from here,” he said.
“Well, if I had a broom, we’d fly, now, wouldn’t we?” asked Mary Jane, gesturing for him to come on as she started her thin-legged march to the stairway, loose sandals clopping on the boards.
The mother laughed softly to herself, a girl’s giggle. She looked downright normal for a moment, with a bit of rosy color in her cheeks. Those breasts were about to burst. He hoped that baby wasn’t a snooty little taster and lip-smacker. When you got right down to it, it was impossible to tell which of these young women was the prettiest.
He lifted the netting and stepped up again to the bed. The water was oozing out of his shoes, just look at it, but what could he do about it? It was running down the inside of his shirt, too.
“You feel all right, don’t you, honey?” he asked.
“Yes, I do,” she said. She had the jug of milk in her arms. She’d been drinking it in big gulps. Well, why not? But she sure as hell didn’t need it. She threw him a bright schoolgirl smile, just about the brightest he’d ever seen, showing a row of white teeth, and just a sprinkle of freckles on her nose. Yes, pint-sized, but just about the prettiest redhead he’d ever laid eyes on.
“Come on, Doctor,” Mary Jane positively shouted at him. “Mona’s got to get her rest, and that baby’s going to start yowling. ’Bye now, Morrigan, ’Bye, Mona, ’Bye, Granny.”
Then Mary Jane was dragging him right through the attic, only stopping to slap on her cowboy hat, which she had apparently taken off when they’d come in. Water poured off the brim of it.
“Hush, now, hush,” said Granny to the baby. “Mary Jane, you hurry now. This baby’s getting fussy.”
He was about to say they ought to put that baby in its mother’s arms, but Mary Jane would have pushed him down the steps if he hadn’t gone. She was all but chasing him, sticking her little breasts against his back. Breasts, breasts, breasts. Thank God his field was geriatrics, he could never have taken all this, teenage mothers in flimsy shirts, girls talking at you with both nipples, damned outrageous, that’s what it was.
“Doctor, I’m going to pay you five hundred dollars for this visit,” she said in his ear, touching it with her bubble-gum lips, “because I know what it means to come out on an afternoon like this, and you are such a nice, agreeable …”
“Yeah, and when will I see that money, Mary Jane Mayfair?” he asked, just cranky enough to speak his mind after all this. Girls her age. And just what was she likely to do if he turned around and decided to cop a feel of what was in that lace dress that she had just so obligingly mashed up against him? He ought to bill her for a new pair of shoes, he thought, just look at these shoes, and she could get those rich relatives in New Orleans to pay for it.
Oh, now wait a minute now. If that little girl upstairs was one of those rich Mayfairs come down here to-
“Now don’t you worry about a thing,” Mary Jane sang out, “you didn’t deliver the package, you just signed for it.”
“What are you talking about?”
“And now we have to get back in that boat!”
She hurried on to the head of the lower steps, and he sloshed and padded right behind her. Well, the house didn’t tilt that much, he figured, once you were inside of it. Clickety, clickety, clickety, there it was again. Guess you could get used to a tilted house, but the very idea of living in a place that was half flooded was perfectly-
The lightning let go with a flash like midday, and the hall came to life, wallpaper, ceilings, and transoms above the doors, and the old chandelier dripping dead cords from two sockets.
That’s what it was! A computer. He’d seen her in the split second of white light-in the back room-a very tall woman bent over the machine, fingers flying as she typed, hair red as the mother up in the bed, and twice as long, and a song coming from her as she worked, as if she was mumbling aloud whatever she was composing on the keyboard.
The darkness closed down around her and her glowing screen and a gooseneck lamp making a puddle of yellow light on her fluttering fingers.
Clickety, clickety, clickety!
Then the thunder went off with the loudest boom he’d ever heard, rattling every piece of glass left in the house. Mary Jane’s hands flew to her ears. The tall young thing at the computer screamed and jumped up out of her chair, and the lights in the house went out, complete and entire, pitching them all into deep, dull afternoon gloom that might as well have been evening.
The tall beauty was screaming her head off. She was taller than he was!
“Shhhh, shhhh, Morrigan, stop!” shouted Mary Jane, running towards her. “It’s just the lightning knocked out the power! It will go back on again!”
“But it’s dead, it’s gone dead!” the young girl cried, and then, turning, she looked down and saw Dr. Jack, and for one moment he thought he was losing his faculties. It was the mother’s head he saw way up there on this girl’s neck, same freckles, red hair, white teeth, green eyes. Good grief, like somebody had just pulled it right off the mother and plunked it down on this creature’s neck, and look at the size of this beanpole! They couldn’t be twins, these two. He himself was five foot ten, and this long, tall drink of water was at least a foot taller than that. She wasn’t wearing anything but a big white shirt, just like the mother, and her soft white legs just went on forever and ever. Must have been sisters. Had to be.
“Whoa!” she said, staring down at him and then marching towards him, bare feet on the bare wood, though Mary Jane tried to stop her.
“Now you go back and sit down,” said Mary Jane, “the lights will be on in a jiffy.”
“You’re a man,” said the tall young woman, who was really a girl, no older than the pint-sized mother in the bed, or Mar
y Jane herself. She stood right in front of the doctor, scowling at him with red eyebrows, her green eyes bigger than those of the little one upstairs, with big curling lashes. “You are a man, aren’t you?”
“I told you, this is the doctor,” said Mary Jane, “come to fill out the birth certificate for the baby. Now, Dr. Jack, this is Morrigan, this is the baby’s aunt, now Morrigan, this is Dr. Jack, sit down now, Morrigan! Let this doctor get about his business. Let’s go, Doctor.”
“Don’t get so theatrical, Mary Jane,” declared the beanpole girl, with a great spreading smile. She rubbed her long, silky-looking white hands together. Her voice sounded exactly like that of the little mother upstairs. Same well-bred voice. “You have to forgive me, Dr. Jack, my manners aren’t what they should be yet, I’m still a little rough all over at the edges, trying to ingest a little more information, perhaps, than God ever intended for anyone of my ilk, but then we have so many different problems which we have to solve, for example, now that we have the birth certificate, we do have that, do we not, Mary Jane, that is what you were trying to make plain to me when I so rudely interrupted you, was it not, what about the baptism of this baby, for if memory serves me right, the legacy makes quite a point of the matter that the baby must be baptized Catholic. Indeed, it seems to me that in some of these documents which I’ve just accessed and only skimmed, that baptism is a more important point actually than legal registration.”
“What are you talking about?” asked Dr. Jack. “And where in God’s name did they vaccinate you, RCA Victor?”
She let out a pretty peal of laughter, clapping both of her hands together, very loudly, her red hair rippling and shaking out from her shoulders as she shook her head.
“Doctor, what are you talking about!” she said. “How old are you? You’re a fairly good-sized man, aren’t you, let me see, I estimate you are sixty-seven years old, am I right? May I see your glasses?”
She snatched them off his nose before he could protest, peering through them into his face. He was flabbergasted; he was also sixty-eight. She became a fragrant blur before his naked eyes.