Lasher (70 page)

What in the world did Beatrice and Aaron talk about with each other? She would say one minute, “Well, we ought to inject her with something, you know, to give her energy!” And all but clap her hands. And he would just stand there in the dim corridor, refusing to answer the questions put to him by the others, staring fixedly at Mona, and then at nothing, and then at Mona, and then at nothing, until the others simply started talking to one another and forgot he was there.

Nobody reported a strange fragrance in the rooms in Houston. But as soon as the first package had come, containing clothing and pillow slips, Mona had smelled the fragrance.

“Yeah, that’s it, that’s the smell of this being,” she had said. Randall had raised his eyebrows. “Well, I sure as hell don’t know what that’s got to do with it.”

Mona had defeated him cold by answering simply, “Neither do I.”

Two hours later he had wandered in and said, “You ought to go home and be with Ancient Evelyn.”

“There are seventeen different women in that house now, and six different men. What makes you think I ought to go there? I don’t want to be there now. I don’t want to see my mother’s stuff, and her things and all. I don’t want to. It’s illogical to go up there. It makes no sense for the daughter of the dead woman to go up there. Which I am. Why don’t you lie down and take a nap?”

One of the agencies had called directly after, but only to report that no one, absolutely no one, had seen the mysterious man leave the Houston building. Every single reported death in the entire Houston area was being investigated. None fitted the pattern of the deceased Mayfair women. Each had its own context, precluding the involvement of the mysterious man.

The net was huge; the net was fine-spun; the net was strong.

Then at five had come the first reports from the airlines. Yes, a person with long black flowing hair, beard and mustache had taken the three o’clock flight Ash Wednesday from New Orleans to Houston. First Class aisle seat. Exceptionally tall and soft-spoken. Beautiful manner, beautiful eyes.

Had he taken a taxi from the airport—a limo? A bus? Houston’s airport was enormous. But there were hundreds of people asking questions, proceeding quietly to one potential witness after another. “If he walked, we’ll find somebody who saw him.”

“What about planes from Houston to here? Last night? Yesterday?” Checking, checking, checking.

Finally Mona thought, I’m going up there. I’m going to go see my cousin Rowan Mayfair. I’m going to make my call. It made her choke up. She couldn’t speak or think for a minute. But she had to go.

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 unconscious 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.”