by Rice, Anne
“Then she hopped up on the bed and leaned back on a huge nest of pillows, smiling playfully at me. And we both went into gales of laughter.
“Dr. Winn Mayfair stood by solemnly watching all these proceedings, and then he said in his soft respecting voice, a voice that always commanded respect in return:
“ ‘Very well now, Ophelia, are you ready for me to insert the line?’
“ ‘Go ahead, Doctor,’ she answered. ‘And be sure to understand, you can close that door afterwards. Quinn knows the line is the only thing that can be inserted, right, Quinn?’
“I think I blushed. ‘Yes, Doctor,’ I said.
“ ‘Do you fully understand the risk, Quinn?’ asked Dr. Winn.
“ ‘I do, sir,’ I replied.
“It was hard for me to look at the needle in the back of her hand, at the redness of her skin and the tape that overlay it, but I felt I had to, I had to experience it with her as best I could, and my eyes moved up the transparent tubing to the plastic sack of clear liquid which hung from its metallic hook at the top. At some uncertain juncture a tiny computer generated numbers and beeps. A larger machine sat near, ready for some more complex connection, but fortunately none seemed to be needed just now.
“There were so many questions I wanted to ask Dr. Winn Mayfair, but it wasn’t my place to do it, and so I had to rely on Mona’s assertion that her condition was indeed stable and I knew that I had to leave her the next morning with her word that Aunt Queen’s health was what mattered at this juncture in my life.
“Within moments after the doctor had left we were in each other’s arms, overly conscious of the sacred wiring, and I was kissing her with all the drama I could effortlessly muster, calling her my eternal love and seeking only to pleasure her as she pleasured me.
“It was a long night of tender kissing and lovemaking, and the quilts probably bear their testimony to this time.
“Dawn had come, vague and pink as twilight over the city, before I said my farewell to Mona, and if anyone had told me then that I would never see her again—this soft, drowsy child amid her lace and her flowers, and her gloriously disheveled hair—I wouldn’t have believed it. But then there were many things I would not have believed then.
“And there were more good times to come.
“I went straight from her hospital room, where I left her sleepy and beautiful and fresh as the flowers all around her in their moist baskets, to obtain the airline tickets, and from there to obtaining Tommy’s passport, where Aunt Queen and I were both able to ‘claim that we knew him as Tommy Blackwood,’ and then we were on our way by plane to Newark, with Goblin strong and visible and in his own expensive first-class seat, and from Newark we flew out to Rome.”
35
“Who can say how different my last few days in New Orleans might have been had I known that we would be gone on our European odyssey for a full three years?
“No one among our party knew that the festivities would go on so long, and indeed it was the spirit of living moment to moment which kept us going—forever checking Aunt Queen’s blood pressure and general stamina with her favorite physicians of Paris, Rome, Zurich and London—as we roved ever back and forth through the castles, museums, cathedrals and cities that Aunt Queen showed me with such love and enthusiasm, and with Nash’s wise instruction from which I drew constant overwhelming stimulation; always yielding to Aunt Queen’s desire to travel ‘a few more months,’ to yet another ‘little country’ or another great and grand ‘ruin’ that I should ‘never forget.’
“Aunt Queen’s health was failing, there was no doubt of it, or, to put it more truly, she was simply getting too old to do what she was doing, and that is what she would scarcely face.
“Cindy, our delightful nurse, was sent for and came to travel with us, which put everyone’s mind at ease somewhat, as Cindy could take vital signs and administer appropriate pills at appropriate hours, and also she was of that congenial brand of nurse who does not mind assisting with all sorts of personal tasks, and so became Aunt Queen’s secretary as well.
“Nash also fulfilled this function to a large extent for both of us, delivering our faxes to the concierges of the various splendid hotels in which we stayed, and taking care of all bills and gratuities so that we had never to worry with such things. Nash, also being something of a whizbang on his laptop computer, wrote out Aunt Queen’s letters to her friends.
“As to his commentary on all that we saw and visited, Nash took this very seriously, never failing to do his homework so that his observations were fresh and he could answer whatever questions we might have.
“He was a marvelous physical assistant to Aunt Queen, helping her in and out of limousines and up and down stairways, and was not above loosening and tightening the straps of her murderous shoes.
“But the point is, the more we traveled the more we enjoyed ourselves, the more Tommy and I visibly and joyfully marveled at everything—the little children of the group—the more I couldn’t bear the thought of saying to Aunt Queen, ‘Yes, you must terminate this, your last trip to all the wonderful places you have always loved. Yes, you will never see Paris or London or Rome again.’
“No, I could not bear it, no matter how much I loved Mona, no matter how much my heart yearned for her and no matter how much I feared that all her E-mails and faxes and letters to me asserting her ‘stable condition’ were not telling the truth.
“So for more than three years we meandered gloriously, and I will not try to recount our adventures, except for certain very specific things.
“Allow me to say for the record, if nothing more, that Tommy proved himself to be a genius, just as I had first believed him to be, in the precocity with which he absorbed all the beauty and knowledge around him; and, with no resistance to any adult authority, he gave back his written essays both to me and Nash with verve and appropriate pride.
“The fact that he so much physically resembled me obviously fed my vanity, I’m sure of it, but I would have loved him had he looked wholly different. What I found so purely virtuous in him was that he was curious. He had none of the sullen arrogance of ignorance and was forever asking questions of Nash, and purchasing cultural souvenirs of all sorts for his mother, brothers and sisters, which we sent off from every hotel by overnight express.
“Meantime, Grady Breen sent frequent packets of photographs of Terry Sue, her brood, her nanny, her maid, her yard man and the house, affirming that we had indeed preempted her doom.
“I knew, of course, without ever telling Tommy, that I would never surrender him to Terry Sue again, unless he himself madly insisted upon it, a condition I could hardly imagine and of which I got no inkling at all. On the contrary, by the second year he did not correct me or even go silent when I said, ‘When you come to live with us at Blackwood Manor,’ and that was good enough for me.
“Of course Aunt Queen made a total pet of him, buying him clothes he outgrew almost instantly, and nothing pleased her so much as to see people in the hotel lobbies or in the restaurants turning to look at him, the little gentleman in his black suit and tie, as we came in.
“As for me, I was so overwhelmed and so often in our travels that it would make tiresome reading here to recount it. It is enough to say that I drew intense enjoyment from everything I saw whether it was a tiny hamlet in England or the splendor of the Amalfi Coast.
“There is but one aspect of our Grand Tour that I want to recount, and that has to do with the ruins of Pompeii, outside of Naples.
“But let me first dispense with certain other matters, including the mystery of Goblin, because, as Goblin predicted, I lost him at some point on the first evening as we crossed the sea.
“I’m not even sure of how it happened or when. I sat beside him in the luxurious cabin of a newly designed model 800 jumbo jet , in which each seat swiveled and had its own private television set, and where a level of unparalleled privacy enabled me to talk to him and hold fast to his hand. And this I did, assuring him,
against his fears, that I would do everything I could to keep him with me, and that I loved him.…
“… And then, quite slowly, he began to fade. I heard his voice grow faint and then become telepathic, and then it was gone altogether, but in those last moments I said, ‘Goblin, wait for me. Goblin, I will return home. Goblin, guard the house for me against the mysterious stranger. I need you to do it. Make sure my beloved Jasmine and Big Ramona and Clem and Allen are all safe.’
“It was a song I had been singing to him ever since we took off, but now I put the case to him urgently, and then I saw him no more.
“The feeling of severance, the feeling of pure lonesome emptiness around me was shocking and awful, and it was as if someone had taken all my clothes from me and left me in a desert place. For a full hour, perhaps more, I said nothing to anyone. I lay back, hoping this feeling of misery would leave me, trying desperately to realize I was free of him, I mustn’t complain of it, I was free to go on with the tasks of Manhood, to be Tommy’s devoted nephew, to make Aunt Queen happy, to learn from Nash. All the world was quite literally waiting for me!
“But I was without Goblin. Utterly without. And I felt a quality of agony that I had never known.
“Strange that in this lengthening aftermath, as I lay back in the luxurious seat being served another glass of wine by the sweet stewardess, as the plane seemed enveloped in the silence of the engines, and I couldn’t even hear the voices of Tommy and Aunt Queen, no, couldn’t even see them, or Nash with his book—it was during this sudden long and cold interval that I realized I hadn’t said farewell to Patsy.
“I hadn’t even tried to find Patsy. None of us, to my knowledge, had tried to find Patsy. We hadn’t even thought of her. Not even Clem had asked what he should do should she want the limousine. Nor had Big Ramona said, What do we do if she brings her singers and her drummers into the house?
“No one had given her a thought either negative or positive, and now I lamented it, that I hadn’t tried to call her and say good-bye. A coldness stole over me. Did I miss her? No, I missed Goblin. I felt as if my skin had been peeled and the cold winds had me.
“Patsy, my Patsy. Would she have the sense to get the medical care she needed? I felt too weary suddenly to tackle the problem, and certainly too alienated and too far away.
“And then a fear gripped me, not just a fear but a certainty.
“And realizing that I couldn’t possibly be reached by phone on this plane but that I could phone Blackwood Manor, I broke out my new credit card and phoned home.
“I could hear the glass breaking in the background before I heard Jasmine’s voice.
“ ‘Thank God it’s you,’ she declared. ‘Do you know what he’s doing? He’s breaking every pane of glass in this place. He’s on a rampage!’
“ ‘Tell me exactly,’ I said. ‘Can you see him?’
“ ‘No, I can’t see him. It’s just the panes shattering. He went through the living room first. It was like a fist breaking them, one after another.’
“ ‘Listen to me. He’s not as strong as you think he is. Whatever you do, don’t look at the place where he’s breaking the glass. You don’t want to see him. That gives him power, and he’s going to run out of power altogether, working the way he does.’
“I could hardly understand her as she continued. He had apparently broken all the glass in the dining room. Right this very minute he was in the kitchen, where Jasmine was, but he had just stopped there, and she could hear the glass breaking on the second floor and the guests were running down the stairs.
“ ‘He stopped in the kitchen?’
“She confirmed it.
“ ‘He didn’t want to hurt you, then. You run get the guests out of the house. Let them go without a bill. Hurry. But don’t go up to where he is, except to get the guests. And whatever you do, don’t try to see him. That will only give him strength.’
“I hung on. It was hard to hear over the roar of the plane, yet the sound came to me over thousands of miles, the tinkling of that shattered glass as he worked his lonely fury. And I thought frantically, What do I do before I call Stirling. What do I do now at this minute as man of the house?
“After an eternity, Jasmine was back on the line. ‘He’s stopped,’ she said. ‘The guests have all gone. Boy, were they ever excited. They got their money’s worth and didn’t have to pay it! I’m telling you there’ll be tales told in Ruby River City and Mapleville tonight.’
“ ‘Are you hurt? Is anybody hurt?’
“ ‘No, it just all fell to the floor,’ she answered. ‘Quinn, we’ve got to close this place down.’
“ ‘Like hell, Jasmine,’ I said. ‘You don’t think he’s got the stamina to keep this up, do you?’ I asked her. ‘He doesn’t. Not without me to see him, don’t you get it? He’s run out. He took back what he could.’
“ ‘And who’s to say he won’t climb out of bed with a new bag of tricks tomorrow,’ she asked. ‘I wish you could see this place!’
“I held on while she had a big argument with Clem and Allen. One wanted all the glass replaced immediately, the other said Goblin would just break it. Then Big Ramona said it had to be fixed, as a thunderstorm was coming.
“ ‘Look, I’m the boss,’ I chimed in from the plane. ‘Fix the glass now. Tell them to get the best quality that the windows will hold. God knows we had some very weak glass in some of those windows.’ (She told them what I said.) ‘Now, Jasmine, I want you to put the phone on hold and go up to my room and pick it up at my computer desk.’
“It took her longer than I liked. I told her to switch on the computer.
“ ‘It’s already on,’ she told me. ‘And I know you turned it off when you left.’
“ ‘What’s on the screen?’
“ ‘ “QUINN, COME HOME” in big letters,’ she told me.
“ ‘All right, I want you to type in this response: “Goblin, I love you. But I can’t leave Aunt Queen now. You know how I love Aunt Queen.” ’ I heard the keys clicking. Then I spoke some more. ‘ “Please protect those I love from Petronia.” ’ (I had to spell that for Jasmine.) ‘ “Goblin, wait for me. Love me. Love, Quinn.” ’
“I waited a moment as I listened to her type. I thought of something, something that just might work. Now, years later, I wonder if wasn’t a disastrous thought. But all my love of Goblin seems now to have been full of disastrous thoughts.
“ ‘Jasmine, I want you to type another message,’ I said. ‘ “Dear Goblin, I can write to you through the computer. I can send you E-mail. I will send it regularly to you care of my computer name, King Tarquin. I’ll be using a new name to send. And you can send it to me as soon as I send that new name. You know the computer as well as I do, Goblin. Wait for my communication.” ’
“It took a good while for Jasmine to get this message straightened out, but it was typed in and then I instructed her from then on to leave the computer on. She was to put a note on it instructing everybody to keep hands off.
“ ‘Now we’ll see if Goblin isn’t happy,’ I told her. ‘And very soon you’ll be able to reach us at the Hotel Hassler in Rome.’
“I rang off. As Lord of Blackwood Manor I saw no reason to tell the others that almost every window of the house had been broken. I lay back thinking that my new E-mail name should be Noble Abelard, and I should insist Mona use the name Ophelia Immortal, and perhaps Goblin should be Goblin.
“And so these things did come to pass.
“By the time we left the Eternal City, I and Mona and Goblin had established these links for computer correspondence, and it happened that all of my travels fed into my loving letters to my treasure, Ophelia Immortal, and only slightly edited versions of these same epistles went to my beloved Goblin, whilst from Mona I received passionate and highly humorous letters and from Goblin weaker and weaker transmissions largely only confessing his need of me and his love.
“Whenever we hit a hotel which had good computer equipment I printed out all this material
, and it became my journal of the journey, and I was self-conscious enough not to write all of my erotic blandishments to Mona, and it was rather fun to try to speak in fractured Shakespearean tones.
“As for Goblin, his slow demise worried me intensely and ate at my soul as if a dark hand were scratching at my very heart, but I didn’t know what to do about it other than what I had done.
“Meantime, there were no more disturbances at Blackwood Manor.
“But the legend of the breaking glass was now known throughout Ruby River Parish, and guests were calling for bookings day and night. My impression over the phone was that Jasmine was having a wonderful time, despite her protests of anxiety, and we again raised her salary and that of everybody on the staff.
“Jasmine, of her own volition, began to accept new bookings, and, as it turned out, the place was filled for the whole time that we were gone. Soon Big Ramona was cut in for a percentage of the profits, and I believe, though I’m not sure, that Clem was too. That took care of Jasmine’s family. I drew the line when it came to Allen and the Shed Men, as they were making twice the wages of anybody similar in Ruby River Parish, with free drinks and lunch thrown in.
“Sugar Devil Island was giving rise to much gossip, as the marble tile for the floors was now being ferried through the swamps by slow motorless pirogue and people were asking over their coffee cups in Ruby River City and Mapleville whether or not Tarquin Blackwood had lost his mind.
“How glad I was to be in an ancient palazzo in Venice while all that was going on.
“It was some consolation to me that Sheriff Jeanfreau and his deputy Ugly Henderson had told everyone my tale of the man in the moonlight disposing of the two bodies. Because I hoped sincerely that people would take heed of it and not go boating around the island after dark.