by Rice, Anne
“The chorus of voices died away, as if it were a wave on the beach being sucked back into the ocean. Hail Mary Full of Grace and then nothing. Breeze and the flicker of the oil lamp in the shadows, and that smell of burning oil.
“I was too dizzy to stand. She clung to me.
“The silence crashed around us, and I wanted to say something, I wanted to ask something; I tried to form the thought, Virginia Lee had been here, but I was holding the woman again and kissing her—and I was so hard it was painful, I couldn’t keep it back much longer, it was worse than waking from a wet dream—and saying, ‘No, I won’t let it go on, I can’t do that. That’s a mortal sin.’ But she said,
“ ‘Quinn, my darling Quinn. Quinn, you are my destiny.’ It was so inexpressibly tender. ‘Take me to my room.’
“Smoke was rising behind the thick lace. A woman was crying softly, brokenheartedly. The child’s sobs came like coughs. But the woman beside me was smiling.
“ ‘I’m light, I’m little,’ she said. ‘See my small waist? See how small I am. Carry me up the stairs.’
“Round and round and up and up. You can’t fall down from dizziness if you are going up and up. Never in my life had I felt such exultation. Never had I felt so strong.
“We were in a bedroom, and though the configuration of the walls and the archway made it seem that it was my room, it wasn’t, it was hers, and we were lying under her lace canopy and the bed was airy and the breeze was coming in from the windows and the lace was moving in the air.
“ ‘Now, my big boy,’ she said as she opened my pants and pushed to get them down and lifted up her skirts. Her skin was hot. ‘It’s perfect now.’ I slid inside of her! First time! The heat, the pressure, the tight sheath. I came in her, I flooded into her, I came, and felt her shivering and pushing her hips up against me, and her sex holding me, and then she was dying back, spent, with a short gasping laugh coming from her lips.
“I lay back. It didn’t matter, the smell of smoke, the sight of it. It didn’t matter, people rushing. She turned to me, and, rising up on her elbow, she said,
“ ‘Find what’s left of me out there, Quinn. Find the island. Find what they did to me.’ How passionate and exquisite she was, how wronged and frail. The cameo earrings shivered beside her delicate face. I touched her ear. I touched the place where the gold pierced it. I touched the handsome black-and-white cameo at her throat.
“ ‘Rebecca,’ I said. Beyond her stood Goblin shaking his head No. Goblin was so vivid, Goblin was using all his power.
“ ‘Do that for me,’ she said. ‘Do that and I’ll come back to you, Quinn. And it will be sweet, always so sweet. I was a creature born to make others happy. That’s what I believe in, Quinn. I’ve given you your first time, Quinn. Don’t ever forget me. To give pleasure. That’s all I’ve ever tried to do.’
“The cameo at her throat, it was so like those in Aunt Queen’s collection yet it was different. But all of this made sense. She’d died out there wearing this cameo. Yes. I reached out to touch her soft brown hair.
“ ‘Tawquin, Tawquin, Taw-quin,’ Jasmine shouted. She was running up the steps. I could feel it, the vibration of the floorboards.
“I was alone.
“I sat up. My pants were open. The semen was all over my jeans and on the bedspread. I saw to myself immediately, and then, grabbing for a wad of paper tissue from the nightstand, I wiped up the evidence and stood staring at Jasmine as she came into the room.
“ ‘You crazy boy,’ Jasmine cried. ‘Why did you put those lamps on the windowsills? Are you stupid? You set the curtains on fire! What was going on in your mind?’
“I flew into action. On fire! Blackwood Manor! Never. But she grabbed my arm as I tried to pass her.
“ ‘We put it out!’ she said. ‘Why did you do it?’
“It could have been a disaster.
“As it was, Lolly and Big Ramona, with the help of the Shed Men, replaced the burnt lace panels that afternoon. The heavy draperies were all right. They hadn’t caught.
“I was in a state of terror. I sat numb in my room. I hadn’t answered a single question. Goblin had come around. Goblin sat in the other chair on the other side of the fireplace and wore a worried look on his face. The computer switched itself on. But I wouldn’t go to it. I didn’t want him to take my hand. I didn’t have answers for him.
“Finally, in pure weariness of his being there and staring at me, I said, ‘Why did she come? Where did she come from?’
“He couldn’t answer. He was confused.
“I went to the computer and let him take my left hand. He tapped out: ‘Rebecca was very bad. Burn down the house. Evil Rebecca.’
“I tapped out: ‘Tell me something I don’t know, like where did she come from?’
“Long silence. Nothing. I went back to brooding in my chair.
“Over supper, with Pops, Jasmine, Lolly and Big Ramona, I told them all pretty much what had happened. I told them the erotic part of it, that the ghost and I had been intimate. I tried to describe how very ‘real’ it had all seemed, and how reasonable to light those lamps as Rebecca had wanted, and I told them the things Rebecca said.
“I showed them a cameo that I had found in the attic trunk, one that I’d put in the case in the living room, one that had belonged to Rebecca Stanford, no doubt.
“ ‘Rebecca at the Well,’ don’t you see? And she was named Rebecca. Who was she, why did she come?’
“I felt a sudden dizziness. I looked down at the cameo on the kitchen table. It seemed I heard her saying something to me or I was remembering something. I tried to clear my head. I tried to remember. I strained to remember: Died out there with the cameo on, died out there. I shivered all over. So many pretty lace blouses. That’s what he had always liked, white lace.
“I tried to talk clearly. I told them what she said about me finding the island, and the promise that she drew from me, that I would find ‘what was left of her’ out there.
“Pops looked as grave as ever when he spoke. His voice was listless. ‘Don’t go looking for that island. You can pretty damn well gauge that by now that island’s gone. The swamp’s swallowed it, and if you see this damned ghost again, you make the Sign of the Cross.’
“ ‘That’s what you should have done, all right,’ said Big Ramona, ‘and she wouldn’t have had any power because she came from Hell.’
“ ‘But how could she get out of Hell to come to me?’ I asked.
“ ‘Those cameos of hers,’ said Jasmine, ‘you go put them back in the attic. Put everything back in that trunk just the way it was.’
“ ‘It’s too late for that,’ said Pops softly. ‘Just don’t let her get you again.’
“We sat there in silence. Then Big Ramona was boiling milk for our café au lait and it smelled good. I remember that, the smell of that hot milk.
“I just realized that Lolly was all dressed up because she was going out with her boyfriend, who was always trying to marry her and lure her away but never succeeded. She looked like a Hindu beauty, Lolly. And Jasmine, Jasmine in her plain shirtwaist dress of red silk was smoking in the kitchen, which was rare.
“The hot milk went into the coffee cups. I looked down into the steam.
“ ‘Everybody believes me,’ I said. ‘You all believe me.’
“Pops said to Jasmine, ‘Tell him.’
“ ‘Tell me what?’ I asked.
“Jasmine drew on her cigarette and crushed it out in her plate. Then she lit another one, just like that. ‘It was Goblin,’ she said, ‘who came in here and pointed and carried on about the curtains burning. It was Goblin, in a flash’—she snapped her fingers—‘as big as life.’
“ ‘Knocked the plate out of her hand,’ said Lolly.
“Jasmine nodded. ‘Knocked a plate off the drainboard there, too.’
“I was speechless. I was overwhelmed. All my life these very people had insisted Goblin didn’t exist, or I shouldn’t be talking to Goblin, or Goblin was my
subconscious, or Goblin was just an imaginary playmate, and now they were saying these things. I had no answer. I felt amazement more than anything else.
“ ‘How could that creature knock that plate off the drainboard?’ asked Pops.
“ ‘I’m telling you, it happened,’ said Jasmine. ‘I was rinsing the dishes in the sink, and that plate went crash, and then, when I turned, there he was, and he was pointing to the door, and he knocked the plate out of my hand.”
“Everybody went quiet.
“ ‘And this is why you believe me?’ I asked. ‘Because you saw Goblin with your own eyes?’
“ ‘I’m not saying I believe one word of what you said,’ Jasmine fired back. ‘I’m just saying I saw Goblin. That’s all I have to say.’
“ ‘You know who that Rebecca was, don’t you?’ I asked, glancing around at everyone. Nobody said a word.
“ ‘I’m going to have the priest out here,’ said Pops in the same lifeless fashion in which he’d said everything else. ‘I’m going to get Fr. Mayfair here. This is just too many ghosts, and I don’t care if one of them was Virginia Lee.’
“ ‘And you, you idiot boy,’ said Big Ramona, ‘stop glorying in the fact that everybody believes you and get it straight in your head that you nearly burned down this house.’
“ ‘That’s the damned truth,’ said Jasmine. ‘I’m not saying I don’t believe you saw this creature, this thing, this woman, but Mamma’s right, you damned near burnt down Blackwood Manor. You set the damned place on fire.’
“ ‘Look, I know that,’ I said defensively. I got real defensive. ‘But who was she? Why’d she want to burn down this house? Did she die out there on the island? That has to be it.’
“Pops raised his hand for silence. ‘Doesn’t matter who she was. If she did die out there, there’s nothing left of her. And you do what I tell you about making the Sign of the Cross.’
“ ‘Don’t you ever be caught up by her again,’ said Lolly.
“And on and on it went for a half hour, them castigating me and excoriating me and everything else in the book.
“When I left the kitchen, I was in a sort of daze. Memories of being with her were coming back to me and I didn’t dare tell the Kitchen Committee. I just wanted out.
“I went into the parlor, maybe to convince myself that it was the parlor I knew and not that strange apparition, and I found myself looking at the portrait of Manfred Blackwood. So distinguished. So much authority in his bulldog face. It is amazing, the varieties of beauty. His huge mournful eyes, his flattened nose, his jutting chin and turned-down mouth all seemed harmonious and silently grand. I found myself talking to him, murmuring to him that he knew who that Rebecca Stanford was, and I would find out.
“ ‘Why didn’t you come to try to stop her?’ I asked him, watching the play of light on the portrait. ‘Why did it have to be Virginia Lee?’
“I went into the dining room and looked up at the portrait of Virginia Lee. I had seen her, vital, in motion, I had heard her voice, I had seen her small blue eyes blazing with anger and outrage. The dizziness came again. I welcomed it, straining to catch the mumbled voices that were maddeningly beyond my hearing: Mean to my children. Crying, brokenhearted. I’m afraid I’ll die and someone will be mean to my children. The chorus of the Rosary came from the living room. She was crying. So mean to my poor children.
“ ‘Virginia Lee,’ I said. ‘I didn’t mean to do it.’ But only the silence came back at me, and her portrait was just a portrait, and there were no more prayers. I was struggling to remember things that hadn’t happened. I was sleepy all over. I had to lie down.
“When I reached my room I was utterly exhausted. I cleaned up the bedspread as best I could with a wet washcloth, and then I flopped down and went into a strange half sleep. I felt myself falling out of consciousness.
“Rebecca was talking to me. The room was her room again, and she explained again that things did not happen in a straight line. Everything was happening all the time. She was always here. I grow no older. I never escape. I wanted to ask her what she meant, but some arbitrary darkness crept in, and I turned over and fell into a deep sweet state somewhere between sleep and wakefulness, in which my body enjoyed its exhaustion and knew it was exhausted from having spent itself sexually, and she and her strange talk were all gone.
“I was deliciously drowsy when suddenly I realized Pops was in this room. Pops was standing at the foot of the bed.
“Pops started to talk to me in his dull, flat voice:
“ ‘All your life you’ve talked of ghosts and spirits, of Goblin, and seeing shades down there in the cemetery, and now this thing has come either into our house or into your imagination, I honestly don’t know which. But you have got to fight for your mind. You have got to fight for some direction of your brilliance, you, at the age of eighteen, have got to determine some ambition, and that ambition must never be clouded by these ghosts.’
“I sat up out of respect for him, and he went on.
“ ‘I’m angry,’ he said. ‘I’m real angry that you nearly burnt down this house. But I don’t know what to make of what happened to you, and as angry as I am I’m convinced that something clouded your reason because you love Blackwood Farm as much as I do.’
“I said at once that this was true.
“ ‘Well, you get your mind in order, you hear me?’ he went on. ‘And in the meantime, put this woman’s cameos back in her trunk. Close that trunk. Shut it up tight. That trunk is Pandora’s Box. You let her spirit out when you opened it, so put everything you took out of it back.’
“He paused for a moment, and then he turned and stared at me with his wan expression and his pale face.
“ ‘I’ve given you all I can give you,’ he said. ‘I don’t have anything more to teach you. Lynelle taught things that I could never teach you. She was better than school, I don’t argue with it. But you’re wasting your time now. You’re wasting everything. And I know perfectly well that you won’t go to any college right now, and maybe even at age eighteen that’s not the right thing. But Aunt Queen has got to come home and she’s got to find you a new teacher and she’s got to take you on.’
“I nodded. Aunt Queen wasn’t terribly far away at this time. She was attending a seminar in Barbados, and I knew that Pops would call her and that she’d be coming home. I hated it, hated that he would interrupt her, but after what had happened she’d definitely be called home.
“Pops stared at me for a long time, and then he went out of my room.
“I felt a dull shock because in all the years I had lived with Pops he had never spoken that many words to me at any one time. Also I had seen that he was weak and washed out, and no longer the hale and hearty individual that he had always been.
“That I had caused him worry upset me something fierce.
“I went down to the parlor and I got the cameos out of the display case which I had taken from the trunk. I brought them up to my room, and I resolved that tomorrow by daylight, I’d go up to the attic and put them back. Maybe. Maybe not. After all, the ghost hadn’t said anything to me about opening her trunk.
“Again I fell into a doze, and there was a delightful wicked sense of Rebecca being there. Just a thing for pleasure, that’s all I ever was, Quinn. That’s what I’ll be to you, Quinn. This is the time, Quinn, just a thing of pleasure, that’s all I ever wanted to be. Somebody’s jewel, somebody’s ornament, somebody’s pet, who knows?
“Sometime very late Big Ramona came and roused me and told me to dress for bed. I did what she told me, and when I came out of the bathroom in my long flannel nightshirt, she looked at me and said:
“ ‘You’re too old for me to be sleeping with you.’
“ ‘That’s not true,’ I protested at once. ‘I don’t want that ghost coming back. I don’t want that—what happened. If I need that, I’ll take care of that somewhere else. I need you to sleep with me,’ I said. ‘Come on, let’s say our prayers.’
“And we
did, and we hugged each other close as we slept, and I slept so deep that there seemed no dreams to it, only deep deep rest until the morning light astonished me coming through the windows and spilling into the room.
“It was early, hours before my usual lazy adolescent time, but I got up quietly, taking great pains not to wake Big Ramona, and I dressed in my jeans and boots and got my heavy garden gloves and my rifle and my hunting knife, and, stopping silently in the kitchen to get a big knife—the very knife that Patsy had waved at Pops—I stole out of the house down towards the landing and the pirogue tied there.
“The little cemetery was bleak in the sunshine and overgrown with weeds, and somewhere in the back of my distracted mind I knew that Pops in the natural course of things would never have let it get that way, and that he was not himself anymore; that grief was bringing real harm to Pops, and I had to do something about those weeds. I had to clean up the tombs. I had to take care of more things. I had to take care of Pops too.
“I also knew that Goblin was near me but not showing himself, and I knew that Goblin was afraid.
“I didn’t care about Goblin, and I thought perhaps that Goblin knew that too.
“As I look back on it now, I know that he knew it. He knew that once he had been the central mystery of my life and that he was that no longer—Rebecca had taken his place—and he was hanging back, weakened by my indifference and full of a panic which perhaps he had learned to feel from me.
“My heart was set on finding Sugar Devil Island, and so, with the pole in hand I pushed away from the bank and set out into the swamp.”
11
“Now, I had been in the swamp plenty as a youngster. I knew how to fire the rifle. I knew how to fish. And Pops and I had ranged quite far from the banks of the farm. But there was a territory to which we adhered, and it had always seemed spacious enough for us because we caught lots of fish in it, and the swamp itself seemed so unvarying in its morass of cypress, tupelo gum and wild oak, its giant palmetto and endless snags of vine.