Lasher

by Anne Rice

  "My dears, I adored it."

  If only she could have said such a thing to Tobias and to Walker. Nights before Laura Lee's birth she'd unlocked the attic door and she had walked on her own to the hospital. The old men had not been told until the child was safe in her arms.

  "Don't you see what that bastard has done?" Walker had cried. "It's to plant the witches' seeds! This is a witch too!"

  How frail was Laura Lee. Was that a witch's seed? If it was, then only the cats had known it. Think of the way they had crowded about Laura Lee, arching their backs and rubbing themselves on her thin little legs. Laura Lee with the witch's finger which she had not passed on to Alicia or Gifford, thank God!

  The light turned green.

  Ancient Evelyn began to walk across the street. The young man talked and talked, but she paid him no mind. She walked on, beside the whitewashed walls, next to the quiet and invisible dead, the properly buried dead, and by the time she reached the gates in the middle of the block, young Hanky-of-the-flowers was nowhere about, and she was not going to look back to see what he had done or where he'd gone or if he was rushing back to his flower shop to call the patrol for her. She stopped at the gates. She could just see the edge of the Mayfair tomb down there in the middle of the block, jutting out ever so slightly into the path. She knew everyone inside, she could knock on every rectangle of stone. "Hello in there, my darlings."

  Gifford wouldn't be buried there, oh, no. Gifford would be buried out in Metairie. Country club Mayfairs, she thought. They had always called them that, even in Cortland's time, or was it Cortland who started that expression to describe his own children? Cortland who had whispered in her ear once, "Daughter, I love you," so quick the country club Mayfairs couldn't hear.

  Gifford, my darling Gifford.

  She imagined Gifford in her lovely red wool suit, and white blouse with a soft silk bow at the neck. Gifford wore gloves, but only to drive. She had been putting them on, very carefully, caramel leather gloves. She looked younger than Alicia now, though she was not. She cared for herself, groomed herself, loved other people.

  "I can't stay for Mardi Gras this year," she'd said. "I just can't." She'd come to tell them she was driving to Destin.

  "Well, I hope you don't expect me to receive everybody here!" Alicia had cried. Utter panic. She'd dropped the magazine on the porch. "I can't do all that. I can't get the ham and the bread. I can't. I won't. I'll lock up the house. I'm not well. And Aunt Evelyn just sits there and sits there. Where is Patrick? You should stay here and help me. Why don't you do something about Patrick? Do you know Patrick drinks in the morning now? He drinks all morning. Where is Mona? Goddamnit, Mona went out without telling me. Mona is always going out without telling me. Somebody should put a leash on Mona. I need Mona! Board up the damned windows, will you, before you leave?"

  Gifford had remained so calm.

  "They're all going to First Street this year, CeeCee," Gifford had said. "You don't have to do anything except what you always do, no matter how you plan to do otherwise."

  "Oh, you are so mean to me. Did you come uptown just to say this to me? And what about Michael Curry? They say he almost died on Christmas Day, may I ask why he is giving a party on Shrove Tuesday?" Alicia was by that time trembling with indignation and rage at the sheer madness of life, at the utter lack of logic to things, that anything could expect anything of her. After all, had she not practically killed herself just to secure that, from all responsibility she would be forever exempt? How much more liquor did it take?

  "This Michael Curry nearly drowns and so what does he do? He gives a party? Doesn't he know his wife is missing! His wife could be dead! What kind of man is he, this crazy Michael Curry! And who the hell said he could live in that house! What are they going to do about the legacy! What if Rowan Mayfair never comes back! Go on, go to Destin. Why should you care? Leave me here. It doesn't matter! Go to hell."

  Wasted anger, wasted words, beside the point, always beside the point. Had Alicia said anything straightforward or honest in twenty years? Most likely not.

  "They want to gather at First Street, CeeCee, it's not my idea. I'm going away." Gifford's voice had been so soft that Alicia probably had not even heard, and those had been the last words her sister would ever speak to her. Oh, my darling, my darling dear, bend to kiss me again, kiss my cheek, now, hold my hand, even with your soft leather glove, I loved you my sweetheart, my grandbaby, no matter what I said. I did, I loved you.

  Gifford.

  Gifford's car had driven away, as Alicia stood on the porch and swore. Barefoot and cold. She'd kicked the magazine. "So she just leaves. She just leaves. I can't believe it. She just leaves. What am I supposed to do?"

  Ancient Evelyn had spoken not a word. Words spoken to drunkards were truly words written in water. They vanished into the endless void in which the drunkard languished. Could a ghost be any worse off?

  Gifford had tried and tried. Gifford was Mayfair through and through. Gifford had loved; fretted, yes, but loved.

  Little girl with a conscience, on the floor of the library, "But should we just take these pearls?"

  All doomed, that generation, the Mayfair children of the time of science and psychology. Better to have lived in the time of crinolines and carriages and voodooiennes. We are past our time. Julien knew.

  But Mona wasn't doomed, was she? Now that was a witch for this day and time. Mona at her computer, chewing gum and typing faster than any person in the universe. "If there was an Olympic race for typing, I'd win it." And on the screen, all those charts and graphs. "See this? This is a Mayfair family tree. Know what I figured out?"

  Art and magic will triumph in the end, Julien had said. I know it. Was the computer art and magic? Even the way the screen glowed in the dark, and that little voice box inside that Mona had programmed to say in an eerie flat way:

  "Good morning, Mona. This is your computer talking to you. Don't forget to brush your teeth." It was perfectly frightening to see Mona's room come alive at eight o'clock, what with the computer talking like that as the coffeepot gurgled and hissed, and the microwave oven went on to heat the rolls with a tiny beep, and CNN Headline News came alive and talking on the TV. "I like to wake up connected," said Mona. The paperboy had learned to throw the Wall Street Journal up to the second floor porch outside her window.

  Mona, to find Mona.

  To find Mona, she was going to Chestnut Street. She had come so far.

  Time to cross big Washington Avenue. She should have crossed it at the light back there, but then she might not have seen Julien. Everything works out. The morning was still and empty, and quiet. And the oaks made a church of the street. And there stood the old firehouse so deserted. Had the firemen gone away? But that was way off her course. She had to go down Chestnut Street now, and here would come the slippery sidewalks, the bricks and the stones, and it was best perhaps that she walked in the street itself, just along the parked cars, as she'd done years ago, rather than slip and fall. The cars came slow through these streets.

  Soft and leafy as Paradise, the Garden District.

  The traffic waited until she reached the curb, and then with a loud swoosh it moved on behind her. Yes, take to the street. And even here was the litter of Mardi Gras. What a shame, for shame.

  Why doesn't everyone come out and sweep the banquette? She felt sad suddenly that she had not done this herself this morning as was her plan. She had meant to go out. She liked to sweep. It took her forever. And Alicia would call down to her, "Come inside!" but she swept and swept.

  "Miss Ancient Evelyn, you've been sweeping out here for hours," Patricia would say.

  But of course, why not? Will the leaves ever stop falling? Why, whenever she thought of Mardi Gras coming, all that entered her mind was that it was going to be fun to sweep the banquette after. So much rubble and trash. Sweep and sweep.

  Only something this morning had come between her and the broom. What was it?

  The Garden District wa
s dead quiet. It really was as if no one had lived here. The noise of the Avenue was so much better. On the Avenue, you were never alone; even late at night the headlamps shone through the windows, and threw a cheery yellow glow into the mirrors. You could go outside in the very cool of the darkest morning, and stand on the corner and see the streetcar drift by, or a man strolling past, or a car creeping along with young men inside laughing and talking to each other, furtive yet happy.

  On and on she walked. But they had destroyed the old houses here too, some of them. It was probably true, Mona's observation, whatever it had been, something to do with architecture. A stunning lack of vision. A clash between science and imagination. "A misunderstanding," Mona had said, "of the relationship of form and function." Some forms succeed and some fail. Everything is form. Mona had said that. Mona would have loved Julien.

  She came to Third Street now. Halfway there. It was nothing to cross these little streets. There was no traffic at all. No one was awake yet. On she walked, sure of herself on the asphalt that gleamed in the sun, with no evil cracks or crevices to trip her.

  Julien, why don't you come back? Why don't you help me? Why are you always such a tease? Good God, Julien. I can play the Victrola now in the library. There is no one to stop me, just Michael Curry, that sweet man, and Mona. I can play the Victrola and say your name.

  Ah, what a lovely perfume, the ligustrum in bloom. She had forgotten all about it. And there was the house, my Lord, look at the color of it. She had never known it to have much of a color at all, and now it was all bright and grayish violet, with shutters painted in green, and the fence very black against it.

  Oh, it was restored! What a good thing Michael Curry had done.

  And there, there on the upstairs porch he stood looking down at her. Michael Curry. Yes, that was the man.

  He was in his pajamas and very rumpled, robe open in front and he was smoking a cigarette. Like Spencer Tracy he looked, that chunky and Irish and rough, though his hair was black. Nice good-looking man with lots of black hair. And weren't his eyes blue? Certainly seemed so.

  "Hello there, Michael Curry," she said. "I've come to see you. I've come to talk to Mona Mayfair."

  Good Lord, what a shock that gave him. How alarmed he was. But she sang it out loud and clear.

  "I know Mona's inside. You tell her to come out."

  And then there was her sleepy girl, in a white gown, all frazzled and yawning the way children do, as if no one is holding them accountable.

  Up in the treetops they stood behind the black railing, and it struck her suddenly what had happened, where they had been together. Oh, good Lord, and Gifford had warned her about this, that Mona was "on the path" so to speak, and must be watched, and that child hadn't been looking for the "Victrola at all, she'd been looking for Mary Beth's style of Irish boy, Rowan Mayfair's husband: Michael Curry.

  Ancient Evelyn felt a lovely desire to laugh and laugh.

  As Stella would have said, "What a scream!"

  But Ancient Evelyn was tired and her fingers curled over the black wire of the fence and she was relieved as she bowed her head to hear the big front door open, to hear naked feet slap across the porch, that intimate unmistakable patter, and to see Mona standing there, until she realized what she had to tell Mona.

  "What is it, Ancient Evelyn?" she asked. "What's happened?"

  "You didn't see anything, child? She didn't call your name? Think, my precious girl, before I tell you. No, it's not your mother."

  And then Mona's little-girl face crumpled and became wet with tears, and, opening the gate, she wiped at her eye with the back of her hand.

  "Aunt Gifford," she cried in a wee voice, so fragile and young and so unlike Mona the Strong, and Mona the Genius. "Aunt Gifford! And I had been so glad that she wasn't here."

  "You didn't do it, darling child," she said. "Blood in the sand. Happened this morning. Maybe she didn't suffer. Maybe she's in heaven this very minute looking down on us and wondering why we are sad."

  Michael Curry stood at the top of the marble steps, robe properly closed, with slippers on his feet, hands in his pockets, hair even combed.

  "Why, that young man isn't sick," she said.

  Mona broke into sobs, staring helplessly from Ancient Evelyn to the ruddy dark-haired man on the porch.

  "Who said he was dying of a bad heart?" asked Ancient Evelyn as she watched him come down the steps. She reached out and clasped the young man's hand. "There's nothing wrong with this strapping young man at all!"

  Nine

  HE HAD ASKED them to gather in the library. The little brown portable gramophone was in the corner and that splendid necklace of long pearls, and the little packet of pictures of Stella and Ancient Evelyn when they had been young together. But he didn't want to talk about that now. He had to talk about Rowan.

  It made Mona happy that these things had been found, very happy, in the middle of her grief for the death of Gifford, but Mona was not his concern. He was suffering agonies over his indiscretion with Mona; well, one minute he was, and the next he had other things to think about. Like that two months had passed, and he had lived in this house like one of its ghosts, and that was over, and he had to search for his wife.

  They had just come back from Ryan's house, from the two hours of drinking and talking after Gifford's funeral. They had come back to the house--come for this conference, and come merely to be with each other a little longer, crying for Gifford as it was the family custom to do.

  All during last night's wake and the funeral today he had seen the looks of amazement on their faces as they shook his hand, as they told him he looked "so much better," as they whispered about him to one another. "Look at Michael! Michael's come back from the dead."

  There was the awful raucous shock of Gifford's untimely death on the one hand--a perfect wife and mother removed from life, leaving behind a brilliant and beloved lawyer husband and three exquisite children. And then there was the shock that Michael was OK, that the legendary abandoned husband, the latest male victim of the Mayfair legacy, was not actually wasting away. Michael was fine. He was up and dressed and driving his own car in the funeral procession. And he wasn't short of breath, or dizzy or sick to his stomach.

  And he and Dr. Rhodes had fought it out about the drugs in the foyer of the funeral home, and Michael had won. He wasn't experiencing any bad withdrawal. He had emptied the bottles, and then put them away. Later he would check the labels. He would discover what he had been taking, but not now. The sickness was over. He had work to do.

  And there was Mona always in the corner of his eyes, staring at him, and now and then whispering, "I told you so." Mona with her slightly chubby cheeks and pale pale freckles, and her long rich red hair. No one ever called that kind of redhead a carrot top. People always turned to stare.

  And then there was the house. How explain about the house? That the house felt alive again. That the moment he'd wakened in Mona's arms, he'd known the old awareness--of something unseen, and present, and watching. The house creaked as it had before. It looked as it had before. Then of course there was the entire mystery of the music in the parlor and what he had done with Mona. Had his powers to see the invisible actually returned?

  He and Mona had never talked for one moment about what had happened. Nor had Eugenia ever said a word. Poor old soul. Undoubtedly she thought him a rapist and a monster. And technically he was both, and he had apparently gotten away with it. But he would never forget the sight of her, so real, so familiar, standing before a small portable gramophone that had not been there, a gramophone that looked exactly like the one later found in the library wall.

  No, they had talked about none of it yet. The death of Gifford had swept everything in its path.

  Ancient Evelyn had held Mona in her arms all yesterday morning as Mona cried over Gifford, struggling to remember a dream in which she felt she had struck down her aunt, deliberately and hatefully. Of course it was all irrational. She knew that. They all knew
that. Finally he had taken Mona's hand, and said, "Whatever happened here, it was my fault, and you didn't kill your aunt. It wasn't you. It was a coincidence. How could what you were doing here kill her?"

  And Mona, indeed, had seemed to snap back with the fierce exuberance of the very young--and something else too, a steadiness he had sensed in her from the beginning, the cold self-sufficiency of a drunkard's child, of which he knew a great deal on his own account. She was no ordinary little girl, Mona. But it still had been wrong, a man of his age with a girl of thirteen. How could he have done it? But the strange thing was this--the house did not despise him for it, and it seemed that the house knew.

  For the moment, however, the sin had been lost in the shuffle. Just lost. Last night, before the wake, Mona and Ancient Evelyn had taken out the books from the shelf and discovered the pearls and the gramophone and Violetta's waltz on a shiny old RCA Victor record. The same gramophone. He had wanted to ask--but they had talked in rushed, excited voices. And Gifford had been waiting for them.

  "We cannot play it now," said Ancient Evelyn, "not with Gifford dead. Close the piano. Drape the mirrors. Gifford would have wanted it that way."

  Henri had driven Mona and Ancient Evelyn home to change for the wake, and then out to the funeral parlor. Michael had gone with Bea, Aaron, his Aunt Vivian and several others. The world had baffled him and confronted him and shamed him in its vivid beauty, the night alive with new flowers, trees laden with new leaves. The gentle nighttime of spring.

  Gifford looked all wrong in the coffin. Short hair too black, face too thin, lips too red, too sharply pointed all over, even to the tips of her folded fingers, and her small breasts beneath the austere wool of her suit. One of those mannequins upon which they have skimped that does not wear clothes well in its stiffness, but makes even fashion look like junk. Frozen. You would have thought it was a deep-freeze, the coffin. And the Metairie funeral home was just like any one anywhere in the nation, carpeted in gray, with grand plaster ornament beneath a low ceiling, and packed with flowers and middling Queen Anne chairs.

  But it had been a Mayfair wake for sure, with lots of wine and talk and crying, and several Catholic dignitaries come to pay their respects, and flocks of nuns like birds in their blue and white, and dozens of business friends and lawyer friends, and Metairie neighbors, who might as well have been blue-birds in their blue suits, also.