by Anne Rice
Afterwards little visions of him came so fast they were like the pop of flashbulbs. Julien on the streetcar passing by. Julien in a car. Julien in the cemetery at Antha’s funeral. All make-believe perhaps. Why, she could have sworn she glimpsed him for one precious second at Stella’s funeral.
Is that why she’d spoken so to Carlotta, accusing her outright, as they stood together amongst the graves?
“It was the music, wasn’t it?” Evelyn had said, trembling as she made her verbal assault, fired with hatred and grief. “You had to have the music. When the band was playing loud and wild, Lionel could come up on Stella and shoot her with the gun. And ‘the man’ didn’t even know, did he? You used the music to distract ‘the man.’ You knew the trick. Julien told me the trick. You tricked ‘the man’ with music. You killed your sister, you were the one.”
“Witch, get away from me,” Carlotta had said, seething with anger. “You and all your kind.”
“Ah, but I know, and your brother’s in the straitjacket, yes, but you’re the killer! You put him up to it. You used the music, you knew the trick.”
It had taken all her strength to say those words, but her love for Stella had demanded it. Stella. Evelyn had lain alone in the bed in the little French Quarter apartment, holding Stella’s dress in her hands, crying against it. And the pearls, they would never find Stella’s pearls. She had turned inward after Stella, she had never dared to want again.
“I’d give them to you, ducky,” Stella had said of the pearls, “you know, I really would, but Carlotta will raise hell! She’s read me the riot act, ducky, I cannot give away the heirlooms and things! If she ever knew about that Victrola-that Julien let you take it-she’d get it away from you. She’s an inventory taker that one. That’s what she ought to do in hell, make sure nobody’s gotten out to purgatory by mistake, or is not suffering his fair share of fire and brimstone. She’s a beast. You may not see me again so soon, ducky dear, I may run away with that Talamasca person from England.”
“No good can come of that!” she said. “I feel afraid.”
“Dance tonight. Have fun. Come on. You cannot wear my pearls if you won’t dance.”
And never again had they even spoken together, she and Stella. Oh, to see the blood oozing on the waxed floor.
Well, yes, Evelyn had answered Carlotta later, she did have the pearls but she’d left them there at the house that night, and after that she would never answer another question about them.
Over the decades, others asked. Even Lauren came in time and asked. “They were priceless pearls. You don’t remember what happened to them?”
And young Ryan, Gifford’s beloved, and her beloved, even he had been forced to bring up the unpleasant subject.
“Ancient Evelyn, Aunt Carlotta will not drop the question of these pearls.” At least Gifford had kept her counsel then, thank heaven, and Gifford had looked so miserable. Never should have showed the pearls to Gifford. But Gifford had said not a word.
Well, if it hadn’t been for Gifford, the priceless pearls would have stayed in the wall forever. Gifford, Gifford, Gifford, Miss Goody-two-shoes, Miss Meddler! But then they were in the wall again, weren’t they? That was the lovely part. They were in the wall right now.
All the more reason to walk straight, to walk slow, to walk sure. The pearls too are up there, and surely they must be given to Mona, for Rowan Mayfair was gone and might never return.
My, so many houses on this long avenue had vanished. It was too sad, really. Whatever made up for a magnificent house, full of ornament and gay shutters and rounded windows? Not these, these mock buildings of stucco and glue, these dreary little tenements all got up for the middle class as if people were fools after all.
You had to hand it to Mona, she knew. She said quite flatly that modern architecture had been a failure. You had only to look around to see, and that was why people loved the old houses now. “You know, I figure, Ancient Evelyn, that probably more houses were built and torn down between 1860 and 1960 than ever before in human history. Think about the cities of Europe. The houses of Amsterdam go back to the 1600s. And then think about New York. Almost every structure on Fifth Avenue is new; there is hardly a house left standing on the whole street from the turn of the century. I believe there is the Frick mansion, and I can’t think of another one. Of course I’ve never been to New York, except with Gifford, and it wasn’t Gifford’s thing to go examining old buildings. I think she thought we went there to go shopping, and shop we did.”
Evelyn had agreed, though she hadn’t said so. On all accounts, Evelyn always agreed with Mona. Though Aunt Evelyn never said.
But that was the great thing about Mona; before her computer had drawn off all her love, Mona had used Ancient Evelyn as her sounding board, and it had never been necessary to say anything to Mona. Mona could make a long conversation all on her own, proceeding with manic fire from one topic to another. Mona was her treasure, and now that Gifford was gone, why, she would talk to Mona and they could sit alone, and they could play the Victrola. And the pearls. Yes, she would wrap them around Mona’s neck.
Again came that wicked and terrible relief. No more Gifford of the haggard face, and frightened eyes, speaking of conscience and right in a hushed voice, no more Gifford to witness Alicia’s decay and death with horror in her face, no more Gifford standing watch over all of them.
Was the Avenue still the Avenue? Surely she would come to the corner of Washington soon, but there were so many of these new buildings that she had lost her bearings.
Life had become so noisy. Life had become crude. Garbage trucks roared as they devoured the trash. Trucks clattered in the street. The banana man was gone, the ice cream man was gone. The chimney sweeps came no more. The old woman no longer came with the blackberries. Laura Lee died in pain. Deirdre went mad, and then Deirdre’s daughter, Rowan, came home, only one day too late to see her mother alive, and a horror happened on Christmas Day and no one wanted to speak of it. And Rowan Mayfair was gone.
What if Rowan Mayfair and her new man had found the Victrola and the records? But no, Gifford said they had not. Gifford kept watch. Gifford would have snatched them away again, if she had to do it.
And Gifford’s hiding place had been Stella’s own, known only to Gifford because Evelyn had revealed it to her. Stupid thing to have done, to have ever wasted a tale or a song or a verse upon Gifford or Alicia. They were mere links in a chain and the jewel was Mona.
“They won’t find them, Ancient Evelyn, I put the pearls back in the very same secret place in the library. The Victrola with them. The whole kit and caboodle will be safe there forever.”
And Gifford, the country club Mayfair, had gone up to that dark house and hidden those things away on her own. Had she seen the man on that dark journey?
“They’ll never be found. They’ll rot with that house,” Gifford had said. “You know. You showed me the place yourself the day we were in the library.”
“You mock me, you evil child.” But she had shown little Gifford the secret niche on the very afternoon of Laura Lee’s funeral. That must have been the last time Carlotta opened the house.
It was 1960, and Deirdre was already very sick, and having lost her baby, Rowan, Deidre had gone back for a long time in the hospital. Cortland had been dead a year.
But Carlotta had always pitied Laura Lee, always pitied her that she had Evelyn for a mother. And then there were Millie Dear and Belle, both saying, Carlotta, can’t we bring them all back here? And Carlotta looking sadly at Evelyn, trying to hate her, yet feeling so sorry for her that she had buried her daughter. And perhaps that she, Evelyn, had been buried alive, herself, since the day of Stella’s death.
“You can bring the family here,” Millie Dear had said, and Carlotta had not dared to contradict her. “Yes, indeed,” said Belle, for Belle had always known that Laura Lee was Julien’s child. Everyone had known. “Yes, indeed,” said Belle, sweet Belle. “Come back to the house with us, all of you.”
/> Why she had gone? She did not really know! Maybe to see Julien’s house again. Maybe she had intended all along to slip into the library and see if the pearls were still there, if anyone had ever found them.
And as the others gathered, as they whispered of Laura Lee’s suffering and poor little Gifford and poor little Alicia, and all the sad things that had befallen them all, Evelyn had taken Gifford by the hand and led her into the library.
“Stop your crying for your mother,” Evelyn had said. “Laura Lee’s gone to heaven. Now come here, and I’ll show you a secret place. I’ll show you something beautiful. I have a necklace for you.”
Gifford had wiped her eyes. She had been in a daze since her mother’s death, and that daze wouldn’t break until she married Ryan many years later on. But with Gifford there had always been hope. On the afternoon of Laura Lee’s funeral, there had been plenty of hope.
Indeed, Gifford had had a good life, one had to admit, fretting it away as she did, but still she had her love of Ryan, she had her beautiful children, she had heart enough to love Mona and leave her alone, though Mona frightened the life out of her.
Life. Gifford dead. Not possible. Should have been Alicia. All a mix-up. Horse stopped at the wrong gate. Did Julien foresee this?
It was like just a moment ago-Laura Lee’s funeral. Think again about the library-dusty, neglected. Women talking in the other room.
Evelyn had taken little Gifford to the bookcase, and pushed the books aside. She’d drawn out the long string of pearls. “We’re taking this home now. I hid it thirty years ago, the day that Stella died here in the parlor. Carlotta never found it. And these, these are pictures of Stella and me too. I’m taking them too. Someday I will give these things to you and your sister.”
Gifford, leaning back on her heels, had looked at the long necklace in amazement.
It made Evelyn feel so good to have beaten Carlotta, to have kept the pearls when all else seemed lost. The necklace and the music box, her treasures.
“What do you mean, the love of another woman?” Gifford had asked her many nights after that, when they sat on the porch talking over the cheerful noise of the Avenue traffic.
“I mean the love of a woman, that’s what I mean, that I kissed her mouth, that I sucked her breasts, that I went down and put my tongue between her legs and tasted her taste, that I loved her, that I drowned in her!”
Gifford had been shocked and afraid. Had she married with her hair down? Very very likely. A horrid thing, a virgin girl. Though if anyone could make the best of such a thing, it had probably been Gifford.
Ah, this was Washington Avenue. It was. No doubt of it. And behold, the florist shop was still here, and that meant that Ancient Evelyn could go carefully up these few little steps and order the flowers herself for her precious girl.
“What did you do with my treasures?”
“Don’t tell those things to Mona!”
Ancient Evelyn stared in bafflement at the florist blossoms crowding against the glass, like flowers in prison, wondering where to send the flowers for Gifford. Gifford was the one who had died.
Oh, my darling…
She knew what flowers she wanted to send. She knew what flowers Gifford liked.
They wouldn’t bring her home for the wake. Of course not. Not the Metairie Mayfairs. They would never never do such a thing. Why, her body was probably already being painted in some refrigerated funeral home.
“Don’t try to put me on ice in such a place,” Evelyn had said after Deirdre’s funeral last year, when Mona stood describing the whole thing, how Rowan Mayfair had come from California to lean over the coffin and kiss her dead mother. How Carlotta had keeled over dead that very night into Deirdre’s rocker, like she wanted to be dead with Deirdre, leaving that poor Rowan Mayfair from California all alone in that spooky house.
“Oh, life, oh, time!” Mona had said, stretching out her thin pale arms, and swinging her long red hair to the left and the right. “It was worse than the death of Ophelia.”
“Probably not,” Ancient Evelyn had said. For Deirdre had lost her mind years before, and if this California doctor, Rowan Mayfair, had had any gumption at all, she would have come home long before now, demanding answers of those who drugged and hurt her mother. No good could come of that California girl, Ancient Evelyn knew, and that was why they’d never brought her up to Amelia Street, and Ancient Evelyn had therefore seen her only once, at the woman’s wedding, when she wasn’t a woman at all, but a sacrificial creature for the family, decked out in white with the emerald burning on her neck.
She’d gone to that wedding not because Rowan Mayfair, the designee of the legacy, was marrying a young man named Michael Curry in St. Mary’s church, but because Mona would be the flower girl, and it had made Mona happy for Ancient Evelyn to come, to sit in the pew and see, and nod as Mona passed.
So hard it had been to enter the house after all those years, and see it beautiful once more the way it had been in those times when she had been with Julien. To see the happiness of Dr. Rowan Mayfair and her innocent husband, Michael Curry. Like one of Mary Bern’s Irish boys, he was big and muscular, and very frank and kind in his brusque and ignorant way, though he was educated they said, and affected the common air, so to speak, because he’d come from the back streets, and his father had been a fireman.
Oh, so like the boys of Mary Beth, Ancient Evelyn had thought, but that was all she remembered of that wedding, all she remembered of Deirdre’s daughter. They’d taken Ancient Evelyn home early when Alicia had been too drunk to stay. She hadn’t minded. She’d sat by Alicia’s bed as always, saying her beads, and dreaming, and humming the songs that Julien used to play in the upstairs room.
And the bride and groom of last year had danced in that double parlor. And the Victrola was hidden in the library wall, and no one would ever find it. She herself did not think of it, or maybe she would have gone to it, as all the others sang and drank and laughed together. Maybe under that roof, she would have wound it again and said “Julien,” and to the wedding he would have come, an unexpected guest!
Hadn’t even thought of it then. Too afraid Alicia would stumble.
That night, late, Gifford had come upstairs to Alicia’s room at Amelia Street. She’d put her hand on Ancient Evelyn’s shoulder. “I’m glad you came to the wedding,” she’d said so kindly. “I wish you would come out again, more often.” And then she had asked. “You didn’t go to the secret place. You didn’t tell them?”
Ancient Evelyn had not bothered to answer.
“Rowan and Michael will be happy!” Gifford had kissed her cheek and gone off. The room stank of drink. Alicia moaned as her mother had moaned, determined to die at all costs, be with Mother.
Washington Avenue. Yes, indeed this was it. Over there, the white-shingled Queen Anne house same as always. It was the only one left on any of the four corners, of course, but it was the same, very same.
And here the florist. Yes, she had been about to buy the flowers, hadn’t she? For her darling girl, her darling…
And look, the strangest thing was happening. A little bespectacled young man had appeared in the doorway of the florist, and he was speaking to her, was he not? Time to listen over the rumble of the traffic.
“Ancient Evelyn. That’s you. I hardly recognized you. What are you doing so far from home, Ancient Evelyn, come inside. Let me call your granddaughter.”
“My granddaughter’s dead,” she said. “You can’t call her.”
“Yes, ma’am, I’m sorry, I know.” He came to the edge of the little porch. He wasn’t so young, really, she could see that now, and she did know this young man, didn’t she?
“I’m so sorry about Miss Gifford, ma’am. I’ve been taking orders for flowers all morning long. I meant I’d like to call Miss Alicia to come and get you and take you home.”
“You think Alicia could come to pick me up, shows what you know, poor boy.” But why speak? Why speak at all? She had given up this sort of fei
sty foolishness long ago. She would wear herself crazy today going back to this sort of chatter.
But what was this man’s name? What on earth was he saying now? Oh, she’d remember if she tried, who he was, and where she’d seen him last, or most, and that he’d come with a delivery or two, or that he’d waved to her in the evening as he walked along, but was it worth it to remember such things? Like following the string back through the labyrinth. Oh bother! Oh stupid bother!
The young man came down the steps.
“Ancient Evelyn, won’t you let me help you inside? How pretty you look today, with that lovely pin on your dress.”
I’m sure I do, she thought dreamily. Hiding in the body of this old woman. But why say such things to hurt the feelings of an innocent man, an unimportant man, even if he was hairless and anemic? He didn’t know how long she’d been an old woman! Why it had started not long after Laura Lee was born, in a way, her walking the wicker baby carriage all the way up here and round and back around the cemetery. Might as well have been old.
“How did you know my granddaughter died! Who told you?” It was astonishing. She wasn’t certain now how she herself knew.
“Mr. Fielding called. He said to fill that room with flowers. He was crying when he called. It’s oh, so sad. I’m sorry, Ancient Evelyn, truly I am. I don’t know what to say at such times.”
“Well, you ought to, you sell people flowers. Flowers for the dead more often probably than flowers for the living. You ought to learn and memorize some nice things to say. People expect you to talk, don’t they?”
“What was that, ma’am?”
“Listen, young man, whoever you are. You send flowers for me for my grandchild Gifford.”
He’d heard that right enough but it was a dollars and cents order.
“You make it a standing spray of white gladiolus and red roses and lilies, and you put a ribbon on it. You write Grandchild on the ribbon, do you hear? That’s all. Make sure it’s big and beautiful and they put it beside her coffin. And where is that coffin to be, by the way, did my cousin Fielding have the decency to say, or are you supposed to call funeral parlors on your own until you discover it?”