by Anne Rice
It was now dark.
A fax had just come in, a copy of the boarding ticket issued to the mysterious man by the airlines when he had flown back to Houston on Ash Wednesday. He had used the name Samuel Newton. He had paid for the ticket with cash. Samuel Newton. If there was such a person in any public record anywhere in the continental United States, he would surely be found.
But then he might have made up the name on the spur of the moment. He had drunk milk on the plane, glass after glass of milk. They had had to go back to coach to get him more milk. Not much happens on a flight between New Orleans and Houston. It isn’t long enough. But they had given him his milk.
Mona stared at the computer screen.
“We do not have a clue as to the man’s whereabouts. But all the women are protected. If another death is discovered, it will be an old death.”
Then she hit the key to save and close the file. She waited as the tiny lights flashed. Then she hit the off button. The low drone of the fan died away.
She stood up, groping for a purse, on instinct, her hand always going back at such a moment right to where she had dropped the purse, though she herself did not know where that was.
She slipped the strap over her shoulder. Her feet hurt just a little in her mother’s smooth grown-up leather shoes. The suit wasn’t all that bad. The blouse was pretty. But the shoes? Forget it. That part of being a woman held not the slightest charm.
A little memory came back to her. She was drifting. Aunt Gifford was telling her about buying the first pair of heels. “They would only let us have French heels. We went to Maison Blanche. Ancient Evelyn and I. And I wanted the high high heels, but she said no.”
Pierce gave a start. He had been almost asleep when he saw her standing behind the desk.
“I’m going uptown,” she said.
“Not by yourself, you’re not. You’re not even riding down in the elevator alone.”
“I know that. There are guards everywhere. I’m riding the streetcar. I have to think.”
Naturally he came with her.
He had not rested for one hour since his mother’s funeral and certainly not before that. Poor handsome Pierce, standing desolate and anxious on the corner of Carondolet and Canal, amid the common crowd, waiting for a streetcar. He’d probably never ridden it in his life.
“You should have called Clancy before you left,” she said to him. “Clancy called earlier. Did they tell you?”
He nodded. “Clancy’s all right. She’s with Claire and Jenn. Jenn is crying. She wanted you to be with her.”
“I can’t do that now.” Jenn. Jenn was still a little kid. You couldn’t tell any of this to Jenn. And protecting Jenn would be too much hard work.
The streetcar was jammed with tourists. Very few of the real people at all. The tourists wore bright, neatly pressed clothes because the weather was still cool. When the humid summer came on, they would be as disheveled and half-naked as everyone else. Mona and Pierce sat quiet together on a wooden seat as the car screeched and roared through lower St. Charles Avenue, the small Manhattan-style canyon of office buildings, then around Lee Circle and on uptown.
It was almost magical what happened at the corner of Jackson and St. Charles. The oaks sprang up, huge, dark and hovering over the Avenue. The shabby stucco buildings fell away. The world of the columns and the magnolias began. The Garden District. You could almost feel the quiet surround you, press against you, lift you out of yourself.
Mona got off the car in front of Pierce and crossed quickly over to the river side, cut across Jackson and started up St. Charles. It was not so cold right now. Not here. It was mild and windless. The cicadas were singing. It seemed early in the year for them, but she was glad, she loved the sound. She had never figured out if there was a season for cicadas. Seems they sang at all different times of the year. Maybe every time it got warm enough, they woke up. She had loved them all her life. Couldn’t live in a place that didn’t purr like this now and then, she thought, walking back the broken pavements of First Street.
Pierce walked along saying nothing, looking vaguely astonished whenever she glanced at him, as though he were falling asleep on his feet.
As they reached Prytania they could see people outside the big house, see the cars parked. See the guards. Some of the guards wore khaki and were from a private agency. Others were off-duty New Orleans policemen in their customary blue.
Mona couldn’t stand the high heels any longer. She took them off and walked in her stocking feet.
“If you step on one of those big roaches, you’re going to hate it,” Pierce said.
“Boy, you’re sure right about that.”
“Oh, that’s your new technique, Mona. I heard you use it on Randall. Just flat-out agree. You’re going to catch cold in your bare feet. You’re going to tear your stockings.”
“Pierce, the roaches don’t come out this time of year. But what’s the point of my telling you this? Are you going to listen? You realize our mothers are dead, Pierce? Our mothers? Both dead. Have I said this to you before?”
“I don’t remember,” he said. “It’s hard to remember that they’re dead, as a matter of fact. I keep thinking, my mother will know what to do about all this, she’ll be here any minute. Did you know that my father was not faithful to my mother?”
“You’re crazy.”
“No, there was another woman. I saw him with her this morning, down in the coffee shop in the building. He was holding her hand. She’s a Mayfair. Her name’s Clemence. He kissed her.”
“She’s a worried cousin. She works in the building. I used to see her all the time down there at lunch.”
“No, she’s a woman for my father. I’ll bet my mother knew all about it. I hope she didn’t care.”
“I’m not going to believe that about Uncle Ryan,” said Mona, instantly realizing that she did believe it. She did. Uncle Ryan was such a handsome man, so accomplished, so successful, and he’d been married so long to Gifford.
Best not to think of those things. Gifford in the vault, cleanly dead and buried before the slaughter. Mourned while there was still time to mourn. Of Alicia, what could you say, “Would she had died hereafter”? Mona realized she didn’t even know where her mother’s body had been taken. Was it at the hospital? At the morgue? She didn’t want to think it was in the morgue. Well, she can sleep now forever. Passed out for all time. Mona started to choke up again, and swallowed hard.
They crossed Chestnut Street, pushing through the small informal gathering of guards and cousins-Eulalee, and Tony, and Betsy Mayfair. Garvey Mayfair on the porch with Danny and Jim. Several voices rose at once to tell the guards that Mona and Pierce could come in.
Guards in the hallway. Guard in the double parlor. A guard in the door to the dining room, a dark hulking figure, with broad hips.
And only that faint old lingering smell. Nothing fresh, nothing new. Just faint, the way it had clung to the clothing from Houston. The way it had clung to Rowan when they brought her in.
Guards at the top of the stairs. Guard at the bedroom door. Guard inside at the long window to the gallery. Nurse in slick cheap nylon white with her arms raised, adjusting the IV. Rowan under the lace coverlet, small insignificant expressionless face against the big ruffled pillow. Michael sitting there, smoking a cigarette.
“There isn’t any oxygen in here, is there?”
“No, dear, they got on my case already about that.” He took another drag defiantly, and then crushed it out in the glass ashtray on the bedside table. His voice was beautifully low and soft, rubbed smooth by the tragedy.
In the corner opposite sat young Magdalene Mayfair, and old Aunt Lily, both very still in straight-backed chairs. Magdalene was saying her rosary, and the amber beads glinted just a little as she slipped one bead more through her hand. Lily’s eyes were closed.
Others in the shadows. The beam of the bedside lamp fell directly on the face of Rowan Mayfair. As if it were a keylight for a camera. The uncons
cious woman seemed smaller than a small child. Urchin or angelic. Her hair was all swept back.
Mona tried to find the old expression in her, the stamp of her personality. All gone.
“I was playing music,” Michael said, speaking in the same low thoughtful voice as before. He looked up at Mona. “I was playing the Victrola. Julien’s Victrola. And then the nurse said, perhaps she didn’t like that sound. It’s scratchy, it’s…special. You would have to like it, wouldn’t you?”
“The nurse probably didn’t like it,” said Mona. “You want me to put on a record? If you want, I can get your radio from the library downstairs. I saw it, yesterday, in there, by your chair.”
“No, that’s all right. Can you come here and sit for a little while? I’m glad to see you. You know I saw Julien.”
Pierce stiffened. In the corner, another Mayfair, was his name Hamilton, glanced suddenly at Michael and then away. Lily’s eyes opened and veered to the left to fix upon Michael. Magdalene went on with her rosary, eyes taking in all of them slowly, and then returning to Michael as he went on.
It was as if Michael had forgotten they were there. Or he didn’t give a damn anymore.
“I saw him,” he said in a raw ragged whisper, “and ah…he told me so many things. But he didn’t tell me this would happen. He didn’t tell me she was coming home.”
Mona took the small velvet chair beside him, facing the bed.
She said in a low voice, resenting the others, “Julien probably didn’t know.”
“Do you mean, Oncle Julien?” asked Pierce in a small timid whisper from across the room. Hamilton Mayfair turned and looked directly at Michael as though this was the most fascinating thing in the world.
“Hamilton, what are you doing here?” asked Mona.
“We’re all taking turns,” said Magdalene in a little whisper. Then Hamilton said, “We just want to be here.”
There was something decorous about all of them, yet despairing. Hamilton must have been about twenty-five now. He was good-looking, not beautiful and sparkling like Pierce, but very handsome in his own too narrow way. She couldn’t remember the last time she had spoken to him. He looked directly at her as he rested his back against the mantel.
“All the cousins are here,” he said.
Michael looked at her as if he hadn’t heard these others speaking. “What do you mean,” asked Michael, “that Julien didn’t know? He must have known.”
“It’s not like that, Michael,” she said, trying to keep it a whisper. “There’s an old Irish saying, ‘a ghost knows his own business.’ Besides, it wasn’t really him, you know. When the dead come, they aren’t there.”
“Oh no,” said Michael in a small, weary but very sincere voice. “It was Julien. He was there. We talked together for hours.”
“No, Michael. It’s like the record. You put the needle in the groove and she sings. But she’s not in the room.”
“No, he was there,” Michael said softly, though not argumentatively. He reached over almost absently and picked up Rowan’s hand. Rowan’s arm resisted him slightly, the hand wanted to be close to the body. He gripped it gently and then he leaned over and kissed it.
Mona wanted to kiss him, to touch him, to say something, to apologize, to confess, to say she was sorry, to say don’t worry, but she couldn’t think of the right words. She had a deep terrible fear that he hadn’t seen Oncle Julien, that he was simply losing his mind. She thought about the Victrola, about the moment when she and Ancient Evelyn had sat on the library floor with the Victrola between them, and Mona had wanted to crank it, and Ancient Evelyn said, “We cannot play music while Gifford is waiting. We cannot play radios or pianos while Gifford is laid out.”
“What did Oncle Julien actually tell you?” asked Pierce, in his baffled innocent fashion. Not making fun. Truly wanting to know what Michael would say.
“Don’t worry,” said Michael. “There’ll be a time. Soon, I think. And I’ll know what to do.”
“You sound so sure of yourself,” said Hamilton Mayfair in a low voice. “I wish I had an inkling of what was going on.”
“Forget about it,” said Mona.
“Now we should all be quiet,” said the nurse. “Remember Dr. Mayfair might be listening.” She nodded vigorously to them, a silent signal that they must pay attention. “You don’t want to say anything…disruptive, you know.”
The other nurse sat at a small mahogany table, writing, her white stockings stretched tight over her chubby legs.
“You hungry, Michael?” asked Pierce.
“No, son. Thank you.”
“I am,” said Mona. “We’ll be back. We’re going downstairs to get something to eat.”
“You will come back, won’t you?” asked Michael. “Lord, you must be so tired, Mona. Mona, I’m sorry about your mother. I didn’t know until afterwards.”
“That’s OK,” said Mona. She wanted to kiss him. She wanted to say I stayed away all day because of what we did. I couldn’t bring myself to come under her roof with her like this and me doing it with you, and I wouldn’t have done it with you if I’d known she was coming home so soon and like this. I thought…I thought…
“I know, baby doll,” he said, smiling at her brightly. “She doesn’t care about that now. It’s OK.”
Mona nodded, threw him her own secret passing smile.
Just before she went out the door, Michael lit another cigarette. Snap, flash, and both the nurses turned and glared at him.
“Shut up,” said Hamilton Mayfair.
“Let him smoke!” said Magdalene.
The nurses looked at each other, obdurate, cold. Why don’t we get some other nurses? thought Mona.
“Yes,” said Magdalene softly, “we’ll see to that right away.”
Right on, thought Mona. She went out with Pierce and down the steps.
In the dining room sat a very elderly priest who must have been Timothy Mayfair from Washington. Clean and old-fashioned in his unmistakable suit, black shirtfront and gleaming white Roman collar. As Mona and Pierce passed, the elderly priest said in a loud echoing whisper to the woman next to him:
“You realize when she dies…there won’t be a storm! For the first time, there won’t be a storm.”
Twenty-seven
AARON WASN’T BUYING it either. They stood together, the three men, out on the lawn. Yuri wondered if later this would rank as one of the worst days of his life. Searching for Aaron, finding him at last in the evening, at this big pink house on this avenue, with the noisy streetcars passing, and with all those people weeping inside. And Stolov with him, every moment, an overbearing and confusing presence, uttering formal and soft words constantly as they had gone from the hotel to the Mayfair house on First Street and finally uptown to “Amelia,” as this sprawling mansion was apparently called.
Inside dozens of people wept, the way gypsies weep and wail at a funeral. There was much drinking. Clusters of persons stood outside smoking and talking. It was convivial yet tense. Everyone was waiting for something.
But no bodies were coming here. One was in the vault already, Yuri had learnt, and the others were in the freezer of the hospital very nearby. This was not a gathering to mourn; it was a defensive coming together, as if all the serfs had fled to the shelter of the castle, only these people had never been serfs.
Aaron didn’t seem tense. He looked good, all things considered, as robust as Yuri had ever seen him, of good color, and with a sharpening to his face which came from his cold suspicion of Stolov as Stolov talked on and on. It seemed as if Aaron had become younger here, less his aging bookish self and more the energetic gentleman of years before. His white curly hair was longish and fuller around his face, and his eyes had their characteristic brightness. Whatever had happened here had not weakened him, or aged him. There was that deep tone of discouragement in him but it was now turning to anger.
Yuri knew because he knew Aaron so well. If Stolov knew he didn’t show it. Stolov was too busy talking, tryin
g to persuade them to his point of view.
They stood far away on the close-clipped grass, beneath what Aaron called a magnolia. It had no blossoms, this tree. Too early. But it had the largest shiniest green leaves.
On and on Stolov talked, in his quiet persuasive entirely sympathetic manner. And Aaron’s eyes were two pieces of cold gray stone. Reflecting nothing. Revealing nothing except the anger. Aaron looked at Yuri. What did he see? Yuri shot a meaningful glance towards Stolov, but this was as narrow and quick as a splinter of light, a spark.
Aaron’s eyes moved back to Stolov. Stolov had not glanced at Yuri. Stolov’s attentions were entirely fixed upon Aaron, as if this was a victory he must have.
“If you won’t leave tonight, then surely tomorrow,” said Stolov.
Aaron said nothing.
Stolov had poured out everything now, at least two complete times. A beautiful elderly woman with dark smooth gray hair stood at the end of the wooden porch and called to Aaron. He waved and gestured that he would be coming. He looked at Stolov.
“Good God, man, say something,” said Stolov. “We know how hard this has been for you. Go on home to London. Take a well-deserved rest.”
Just wrong. Everything the man was saying, his manner, his words.
“Right you are,” said Aaron softly.
“What?” said Stolov.
“I’m not leaving, Erich. It’s been a pleasure to finally make your acquaintance, and I know better than to try to deter you from obeying your orders. You’re here to do something. You will try to do it. But I’m not leaving. Yuri, will you stay with me?”
“Now, Aaron,” said Stolov, “that is very simply out of the question for Yuri. He is already…”
“Of course I will stay,” said Yuri. “It was for you that I came.”
“Where are your lodgings, Erich? Are you at the Pontchartrain with the rest of us?” Aaron asked.
“Downtown,” said Stolov. He was getting impatient again, flustered. “Aaron, you are no help to the Talamasca now.”