Rice, Anne - The Witching Hour

by Greyspid

  Rita turned away ashamed. She shouldn’t have been listening. And she, too, ran away, all the way up the four flights of wooden stairs from the basement to the attic.

  It was an hour before Deirdre came. Rita was miserable to have spied on her like that.

  But late that night when she lay in bed, Rita repeated those words: My beloved. Only want to make you happy, my beloved. Oh, to think that a man would say such things to Deirdre.

  All Rita had ever known were the boys who wanted to ’feel you up,’ if they got a chance. Clumsy, stupid guys like her boyfriend Terry from Holy Cross, who said, ‘You know, I think I like you a lot, Rita.’ Sure, sure. ‘Cause I let you ’feel me up.’ You ox.

  ‘You tramp!’ Rita’s father had said. ‘You’re going to boarding school, that’s where you’re going. I don’t care what it costs.’

  My beloved. It made her think of beautiful music, of elegant gentlemen in old movies she saw on the late night television. Of voices from another time, soft and distinct, the very words like kisses.

  And he was so handsome too. She hadn’t really seen his face, but she saw he was dark-haired with large eyes, and tall, and he wore fine clothes, beautiful clothes. She’d seen the white cuffs of his shirt and his collar.

  Rita would have met him in the garden too, a man like that. Rita would have done anything with him.

  Oh, Rita couldn’t really figure it out, the feelings it gave her. She cried but it was a sweet, silent kind of crying. She knew she’d remember the moment all her life — the garden under the dark purple twilight sky with the evening stars out already and the man’s voice saying those words.

  When they accused Deirdre, it was a nightmare. They were in the recreation room and the other girls were made to stay in the dormitory, but everybody could hear it. Deirdre burst into tears, but she wouldn’t confess anything.

  ‘I saw the man myself!’ Sister Daniel said. ‘Are you calling me a liar!’ Then they took Deirdre down to the convent to talk to old Mother Bernard but even she couldn’t do anything with Deirdre.

  Rita was broken-hearted when the nuns came to pack up Deirdre’s clothes. She saw Sister Daniel take the emerald necklace out of its box and stare at it. Sister Daniel thought it was glass, you could tell by the way she held it. It hurt Rita to see her touch it, to see her snatch up Deirdre’s nightgowns and things and stuff them into the suitcase.

  And later that week, when the terrible accident happened with Sister Daniel, Rita wasn’t sorry. She never meant for the mean old nun to die the way she did, smothered in a closed-up room with a gas heater left on, but so be it.

  Rita had other things on her mind than weeping for somebody who’d been mean to Deirdre.

  That Saturday she got together all the nickels she could and called and called from the pay phone in the basement. Somebody must know the Mayfairs’ phone number. They lived on First Street

  only five blocks down from Rita’s house but it might as well have been across the world. It wasn’t the Irish Channel there. It was the Garden District. And the Mayfair house was a mansion.

  Then Rita got into a terrible fight with Sandy. Sandy said Deirdre had been crazy. ‘You know what she did at night? I’ll tell what she did. When everybody was asleep she pushed the covers off and she moved her body just like somebody was kissing her! I saw her, she’d open her mouth and she’d move on the bed — you know, move — just like, you know, she was really feeling it!’

  ‘Shut your filthy mouth!’ Rita screamed. She tried to slap Sandy. Everybody got on Rita. But Liz Conklin took Rita aside and told her to calm down. She said that Deirdre had done worse than meet that man in the garden.

  ‘Rita Mae, she let him into the building. She brought him right upstairs to our floor, I saw him.’ Liz was whispering, looking over her shoulder as if somebody was going to overhear them.

  ‘I don’t believe you,’ Rita said.

  ‘I wasn’t following her around,’ Liz said. ‘I didn’t want her to get in trouble. I had just gotten up to go to the bathroom. And I saw them by the window of the recreation room - her and him together, Rita Mae — not ten feet from where we were all sleeping.’

  ‘What did he look like?’ Rita demanded, sure it was a lie. Rita would know because she’d seen him.

  But Liz described him all right — tall, brown hair, very ‘distinguished,’ Liz said, and he’d been kissing Deirdre and whispering to her.

  ‘Rita Mae, imagine her opening all the locks, bringing him up the stairs. She was just crazy.’

  ‘All I know is this,’ Rita said later to Jerry Lonigan when they were courting. ‘She was the sweetest girl I ever knew in my life. She was a saint compared with those nuns, I tell you. And when I thought I’d go crazy in that place, she held my hand and told me she knew how I was feeling. I would have done anything for her.’

  But when the time came to do something for Deirdre May-fair, Rita hadn’t been able to do it.

  Over a year had passed. Rita’s teenaged life was gone and she never for a second missed it. She had married Jerry Lonigan, who was twelve years older than her and nicer than any boy she’d ever met - a decent and kind man who made a good living from Lonigan and Sons’ Funeral Home, one of the oldest in the parish, which he ran with his daddy.

  Jerry was the one who gave Rita news about Deirdre. He told her Deirdre was pregnant by a man who’d been killed already in a highway accident, and those aunts of hers, those crazy Mayfair women, were going to make her give up her baby.

  Rita was going by that house to see Deirdre. She had to. Jerry didn’t want her to go.

  ‘What the hell you think you can do about it! Don’t you know that aunt of hers, Miss Carlotta, she’s a lawyer? She could get Deirdre committed if she didn’t give up that baby.’

  Red Lonigan, Jerry’s dad, shook his head. ‘That’s been done plenty a time, Rita,’ he said. ‘Deirdre will sign the papers or wind up in the nuthouse. Besides, Father Lafferty’s got a hand in this thing. And if there’s any priest at St Alphonsus I trust, it’s Tim Lafferty.’

  But Rita went.

  It was the hardest thing she’d ever done, walking up to that enormous house and ringing the bell, but she did it. And naturally it was Miss Carl who came to the door, the one everybody was afraid of. Jerry told her later that if it had been Miss Millie or Miss Nancy it might have been different.

  Still Rita walked right in, just sort of pushed past Miss Carl. Well, she had opened the screen door a crack, hadn’t she? And Miss Carl really didn’t look mean. She just looked businesslike.

  ‘Just want to see her, you know, she was my best friend at St Ro’s

  Every time Miss Carl said no in her polite way, Rita said yes in some other way, talking about how close she’d been to Deirdre.

  Then she’d heard Deirdre’s voice at the top of the steps.

  ‘Rita Mae!’

  Deirdre’s face was wet from crying and her hair was all in straggles over her shoulders. She ran down the steps barefoot towards Rita, and Miss Nancy, the heavy set one, came right behind her.

  Miss Carl took Rita firmly by the arm and tried to move her towards the front door.

  ‘Wait just a minute!’ Rita said.

  ‘Rita Mae, they’re going to take my baby!’

  Miss Nancy caught Deirdre around the waist and lifted her off her feet on the stairway.

  ‘Rita Mae!’ Deirdre screamed. She had something in her hand, a little white card it looked like.

  ‘Rita Mae, call this man. Tell him to help me.’

  Miss Carl stepped in front of Rita:

  ‘Go home, Rita Mae Lonigan,’ she said.

  But Rita darted right around her. Deirdre was struggling to get free of Miss Nancy, and Miss Nancy was leaning against the banister, off balance. Deirdre tried to throw the little white card to Rita, but it just fluttered down on the stairs. Miss Carl went to get it.

  And then it was just like fighting for Mardi Gras trinkets thrown from the parade floats. Rita pushed Miss Carl to t
he side and snatched the card up, just the way you snatched a junk necklace off the pavement before anybody else could get it.

  ‘Rita Mae, call that man!’ Deirdre screamed. Tell him I need him.’

  ‘I will, Dee Dee!’

  Miss Nancy was carrying her back up the steps, Deirdre’s bare feet swinging out, her hands clawing at Miss Nancy’s arm. It was awful, just awful.

  And then Miss Carl grabbed Rita’s wrist.

  ‘Give me that, Rita Mae Lonigan,’ said Miss Carl.

  Rita pulled loose and ran out of the front door, the little white card clutched in her hand. She heard Miss Carl running across the porch right after her.

  Her heart was pounding as she ran down the path. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, this was a madhouse! And Jerry was going to be so upset. And what would Red say?

  Then Rita felt a sharp, ugly pain as her hair was jerked from the back. The woman pulled her almost off her feet.

  ‘Don’t you do that to me, you old witch!" Rita said, her teeth clenched. Rita couldn’t stand to have her hair pulled.

  Miss Carl tried to tear the little white card out of her fingers. This was almost the worst thing that had ever happened to Rita. Miss Carl was twisting and tearing off the corner of the card as Rita held on to it, and with the other hand Miss Carl was still yanking Rita’s hair as hard as she could. She was going to pull it out by the roots.

  ‘Stop it!’ Rita screamed. ‘I’m warning you now, I’m warning you!’ She got the card away from Miss Carl and she crumpled it in her fist. You just couldn’t hit an old lady like this.

  But when Miss Carl jerked her hair again, Rita did hit her. She hit Miss Carl across the chest with her right arm, and Miss Carl fell into the chinaberry trees. If there hadn’t been so many chinaberry trees, she would have fallen on the ground.

  Rita ran out the gate.

  A storm was blowing up. The trees were all moving. She could see the big black branches of the oaks swaying in the wind, hear that loud roar that big trees always made. The branches were lashing the house, scratching at the top of the upstairs porch. She heard the sound of breaking glass suddenly.

  She stopped and looked back, and she saw a shower of little green leaves falling all over the property. Tiny branches and twigs were falling. It was like a hurricane. Miss Carl was standing on the path staring up at the trees. At least her arm or leg wasn’t broken.

  Good Lord, the rain would come any minute. Rita was going to be soaked before she even got to Magazine Street

  -that on top of everything else, her hair torn to pieces and the tears streaming down her face. She was a sight all right.

  But there was no rain. She made it back to Lonigan and Sons without getting wet. And when she sat down in Jerry’s office, she broke down completely.

  ‘You shouldn’t have gone there, you should never have gone!’ he said. He had a funeral going on out front. He should have been helping Red out there. ‘Honey, they could turn everybody against us, old family like that!’

  Rita couldn’t do anything but cry. Then she looked at the little white card. ‘But will you look at this, Jerry! Will you look at it!’

  It was all mashed and damp from the sweat of her palm. She broke down again.

  ‘I can’t read the numbers on it!’

  ‘Now, just a minute, Rita,’ Jerry said. He was patient as always, just a really good-hearted man the way he’d always been. He stood over her, unfolding the little card on the desk blotter. He got his magnifying glass.

  The middle part was clear enough:

  THE TALAMASCA

  But you couldn’t read anything else. The words below that were just tiny little specks of black ink on the pulpy white cardboard. And whatever had been written along the bottom edge was completely ruined. There was just nothing left of it.

  ‘Oh, Dee Dee!’ Rita cried.

  Jerry pressed it out under two heavy books, but that hadn’t helped. His dad came in and took a look. But he couldn’t make anything out of it. Name Talamasca didn’t mean anything to Red. And Red knew just about everybody and everything. If it had been an old Mardi Gras society, for instance, he would have known it.

  ‘Now look, you can see something here written on the back in ink,’ Red said. ‘Look at that.’

  Aaron Lightner. But there was no phone number. The phone numbers must have been printed on the front. Even pressing the card with a hot iron didn’t help matters.

  Rita did what she could.

  She checked the phone book for Aaron Lightner and the Talamasca, whatever that was. She called information. She begged the operator to tell her if there was an unlisted number. She even ran personals in the Times-Picayune and in the States-Item.

  ‘The card was old and dirty before you ever got it,’ Jerry reminded her. Fifty dollars spent on personal ads was enough. Jerry’s daddy said he thought she might just as well give up. But one thing she could say for him, he hadn’t criticized her for it.

  ‘Darlin’, don’t go back to that house,’ Red said. ‘I’m not scared of Miss Carlotta or anything like that. I just don’t want you around those people.’

  Rita saw Jerry look at his father, and his father look at him. They knew something they weren’t saying. Rita knew Lonigan and Sons had buried Deirdre’s mother when she fell from that window years ago, she’d heard that much, and she knew Red remembered the grandmother who had ‘died young’ too the way Deirdre told Rita.

  But those two were closemouthed the way morticians had to be. And Rita was too miserable now for hearing about the history of that horrible old house and those women.

  She cried herself to sleep the way she had at boarding school. Maybe Deirdre had seen the ads in the papers, and knew that Rita had tried to do what she wanted.

  Another year passed before Rita saw Deirdre again. The baby was long gone. Some cousins out in California took it. Nice people, everybody said, rich people. The man was a lawyer like Miss Carl. That baby would be looked after.

  Sister Bridget Marie at St Alphonsus told Jerry the nuns at Mercy Hospital said the baby was a beautiful little girl with blond hair. Not like Deirdre’s black curls at all. And Father Lafferty had put the baby in Deirdre’s arms and said to Deirdre, ‘Kiss your baby,’ then taken it away from her.

  Gave Rita the shivers. Like people kissing the corpse right before they closed up the coffin. ‘Kiss your baby,’ then taking it like that.

  No wonder Deirdre had had a complete breakdown. They took her right from Mercy to the sanitarium.

  ‘Not the first time for that family,’ Red Lonigan said as he shook his head. ‘That’s how Lionel Mayfair died, in a strait-jacket.’

  Rita asked what he meant, but he didn’t answer.

  ‘Oh, but they didn’t have to do it like that,’ Rita said. ‘She’s such a sweet thing. She couldn’t hurt anybody.’

  Finally Rita heard Deirdre was home again. And that Sunday Rita decided to go to Mass at the Mother of Perpetual Help Chapel in the Garden District. That’s where the rich people went mostly. They didn’t come to the big old parish churches - St Mary’s and St Alphonsus - across Magazine Street

  .

  Rita went up there to the ten o’clock Mass, thinking, Well I’ll just pass by the Mayfair house on the way back. But she didn’t have to, because Deirdre was there at Mass, sitting between her great-aunts Miss Belle and Miss Millie. Thank the Lord no Miss Carlotta.

  Deirdre looked dreadful to Rita, like Banquo’s Ghost as Rita’s mother would have said. She had dark circles under her eyes and her dress was some old shiny gabardine thing that didn’t fit her. Padded shoulders. One of those old women in that house must have given her that.

  After Mass, as they were going down the marble steps, Rita swallowed, took a deep breath, and ran after Deirdre.

  Deirdre at once gave her that beautiful smile. But when she tried to talk, almost nothing came out. Then in a whisper she said: ‘Rita Mae!’

  Rita Mae leaned over to kiss her. She whispered:

  ‘Dee Dee,
I tried to do what you asked me. I could never find that man. The card was too ruined.’

  Deirdre’s eyes were wide, vacant. She didn’t even remember, did she? At least Miss Millie and Miss Belle didn’t notice. They were saying their hellos to everybody passing. And poor old Miss Belle never noticed anything anyway.

  Then Deirdre did seem to recall something. ‘It’s OK, Rita Mae,’ she said. She had the beautiful smile again. She squeezed Rita Mae’s hand and leaned forward and kissed her this time, on the cheek. Then her Aunt Millie said, ‘We should go now, sweetheart.’

  Now, that was Deirdre Mayfair to Rita. It’s OK, Rita Mae. The sweetest girl she ever knew.

  Deirdre was back at the sanitarium before long. She’d been walking barefoot on Jackson Avenue

  talking out loud to herself. Then they said she was in a mental hospital in Texas, and after that Rita only heard that Deirdre Mayfair was ’incurably ill’ and was never coming home again.

  When old Miss Belle died, the Mayfairs called Jerry’s dad as they’d always done. Maybe Miss Carl didn’t even remember the fight with Rita Mae. Mayfairs came from all over for that funeral, but no Deirdre.

  Mr Lonigan hated opening the tomb in Lafayette No. 1. That cemetery had so many ruined graves with rotting coffins plainly visible, even the bones showing. It sickened him to take a funeral there.

  ‘But those Mayfairs have been buried there since 1861,’ he said. ‘And they do keep up that tomb, I’ll give them that. They have the wrought-iron fence painted every year. And when the tourists come through there? Well, that’s one of the graves they always look at - what with all the Mayfairs in there, and those little babies’ names, going back to the Civil War. It’s just the rest of the place is so sorry. You know they’re going to tear that place down someday.’

  They never did tear down Lafayette No.1. The tourists liked it too much. And so did the families of the Garden District. Instead they cleaned it up, repaired the whitewashed walls, planted new magnolia trees. But there were still enough broken-down tombs for people to get their peek at the bones. It was a ’historical monument.’