Lasher (95 page)

“And Stolov and Norgan? Will someone come looking for them?”

“No. Put that out of your mind too. Yuri will take care of it. There is no evidence here of either man. No one will come looking, asking. You’ll see.”

“You seem very resigned but you’re not happy,” said Michael.

“Well, I think it’s a bit early to be happy,” said Aaron softly. “But I’m a damned sight happier than I was before.” He thought for a moment. “I am not ready to sweep away all the beliefs of a lifetime because two men did evil things.”

“Lasher told you,” said Michael. “He told you it was the purpose of the Order.”

“Ah, he did. But that was long long ago. That was in another time when men believed in things that they do not believe in now.”

“Yes, I suppose it was.”

Aaron sighed and gave a graceful shrug.

“Yuri will find out. Yuri will come back.”

“But you’re not really afraid they’ll hurt you, if they are the bad guys, I mean.”

“No,” said Aaron. “I don’t think they will bother. I do know them…somewhat…after all these years.”

Michael made no answer.

“And I know I am no longer a part of them,” Aaron continued, “in any conceivable way. I know that this is my home. I know I am married and I will stay with Bea and this is my family. And perhaps…perhaps…as for the rest of it…the Talamasca, its secrets, its purposes…perhaps…I don’t care. Perhaps I stopped caring on Christmas when Rowan lost the first round of her battle. Perhaps I ceased to care altogether and for certain when I saw Rowan on the stretcher, and her face blank, her mind gone. I don’t care. And when I don’t care about something, in an odd way, I can be as determined about it as about anything else.”

“Why didn’t you call the police about Stolov and Norgan?”

Aaron seemed surprised. “You know the answer,” he said. “I owed you that much, don’t you think? Let me give you some of my serenity. Besides, Mona and Yuri made the decision, really. I was a bit too dazed to take credit. We did the simpler thing. As a rule of thumb, always do the simpler thing.”

“The simpler thing.”

“Yes, what you did to Lasher. The simpler thing.”

Michael didn’t answer.

“There is so much to be done,” said Aaron. “The family doesn’t realize that it is safe, but it soon will. There will be many subtle changes as people come to realize that it’s finished. That the blinds are really open and the sun can really come in.”

“Yes.”

“We will get doctors for Rowan. We will get the best. Ah, I meant to bring a tape with me, the Canon by Pachelbel. Bea said Rowan loved it, that one day they had played it when Rowan was at Bea’s. Bea’s. I’m speaking of my own home.”

“Did you believe all he said—about the Taltos, about the legends and the little people?”

“Yes. And no.”

Aaron thought for a long moment, then he added:

“I want no more mysteries or puzzles.” He seemed amazed
at his own calm. “I want only to be with my family. I want for Deirdre Mayfair to forgive me for not helping her; for Rowan Mayfair to forgive me for
letting
this happen to her. I want you to forgive me for letting you be hurt, for letting the burden of the killing fall upon you. And then I want, as they say, to forget.”

“The family won,” said Michael. “Julien won.”

“You won,” said Aaron. “And Mona has just begun her victories,” he said with a little smile. “Quite a daughter you have in Mona. I think I’ll walk uptown to see Mona. She says she is so in love with Yuri that if he doesn’t call by midnight, she may go mad! Mad as Ophelia went mad. I have to see Vivian and visit with Ancient Evelyn. Would you like to come? It’s a beautiful walk up the Avenue, just the right length, about ten blocks.”

“Not now. A little later perhaps. You go on.” There was a pause.

“They want you up at Amelia Street,” said Aaron. “Mona is hoping you will guide the restorations. The place hasn’t been tampered with in many a year.”

“It’s beautiful. I’ve seen it.”

“It needs you.”

“Sounds like something I can handle. You go on.”

The rain came again the next morning. Michael was sitting under the oak outside, near the freshly turned earth, merely looking at it, looking at the torn-up grass.

Ryan came out to talk to him, staying carefully to the path not to get mud on his shoes. Michael could see it was nothing urgent. Ryan looked rested. It was as if Ryan could sense that things were over. Ryan ought to know.

Ryan didn’t even glance at the big patch of earth above the grave. It all looked like the moist and sparse earth around the roots of a big tree where grass would not grow.

“I have to tell you something,” said Michael.

He saw Ryan stop—a sudden revelation of weariness and fear—then catch up with himself and very slowly nod.

“There’s no danger anymore,” Michael said. “From anyone now. You can pull off the guards. One nurse in the evenings. That is all we require. Get rid of Henri too, if you would. Pension him off or something. Or send him up to Mona’s place.”

Ryan said nothing, then he nodded again.

“I leave it to you, how you tell the others,” said Michael.
“But they should know. The danger’s past. No more women will suffer. No more doctors will die. Not in connection with this. You may hear again from the Talamasca. If you do, you can send them to me. I don’t want the women to go on being frightened. Nothing will happen. They are safe. As for those doctors who died, I know nothing that would help. Absolutely nothing at all.”

Ryan seemed about to ask a question, but then he thought better of it, obviously, and he nodded again.

“I’ll take care of it,” Ryan said. “You needn’t worry about any of those things. I’ll take care of the question of the doctors. And that is a very good suggestion, regarding Henri. I will send him uptown. Patrick will just have to put up with it. He’s in no condition to argue, I suppose. I came out to see how you were. Now I know that you are all right.”

It was Michael’s turn to nod. He gave a little smile.

After lunch, he sat again by Rowan’s bed. He had sent the nurse away. He couldn’t stand her presence any longer. He wanted to be here alone. And she had hinted heavily that she needed to visit her own sick mother at Touro Infirmary, and he said, “Things are just fine around here. You go on. Come back at six o’clock.”

She’d been so grateful. He stood by the window watching her walk away. She lit a cigarette before she reached the corner, then hurried off to catch the car.

There was a tall young woman standing out there, gazing at the house, her hands on the fence. Reddish-golden hair, very long, kind of pretty. But she was like so many women now, bone-thin. Maybe one of the cousins, come to pay her respects. He hoped not. He moved away from the window. If she rang the bell, he wouldn’t answer. It felt too good to be alone at last.

He went back to the chair and sat down.

The gun lay on the marble-top table, big and sort of ugly or beautiful, depending on how one feels about guns. They were no enemy to him. But he didn’t like it there, because he had a vision of taking it and shooting himself with it, and then he stared at Rowan, and thought: “No, not as long as you need me, honey, I won’t. Not before something happens…” He stopped.

He wondered if she could sense anything, anything at all.

The doctor had said this morning she was stronger; but the vegetative state was unchanged.

They had given her the lipids. They had worked her arms and legs. They had put the lipstick on her. Yes, look at it, very pink, and they had brushed her hair.

And then there’s Mona, he thought. “Yuri or no Yuri, she needs me too. Oh, it’s not really that she does,” he said aloud to the silence. “It’s that anything more would hurt her. It would hurt them all. I have to be here on St. Patrick’s Day, don’t I? To greet them at the door. To shake their hands. I am the keeper of the house until such time as…”

He lay back against the chair thinking of Mona, whose kisses had been so chaste since Rowan came home. Beautiful little Mona. And that dark, clever Yuri. In love.

Maybe Mona was already working out the scheme for Mayfair Medical. Maybe she and Pierce were working on it now uptown.

“Now, we are not handing the family fortune over to this juvenile delinquent!” Randall had said in a booming voice last night, when arguing with Bea outside Rowan’s door.

“Oh, do be quiet,” Bea had answered. “That’s ridiculous. It’s like royalty, you old idiot. She is a symbol. That’s all.”

He sat back, legs outstretched under the bedskirt, hands clasped on his chest, staring at the gun—staring at its silver-gray trigger, so inviting, and its fat gray cylinder full of cartridges, and the sheath of black synthetic closed over the barrel, oddly like a hangman’s noose.

No, sometime later, perhaps, he thought. Although he didn’t think he would ever do it that way. Maybe just drink something strong, something that crept through you and poisoned you slowly, and then crawl in bed beside her and hold onto her, and go to sleep with her in his arms.

When she dies, he thought. Yes. That’s exactly what I’ll do.

He had to remember to take the gun away and put it someplace safe. With all the children, you never knew what would happen. They had brought children to see Rowan this morning—and St. Patrick’s Day would draw the children, as well. Big parade on Magazine Street only two blocks away. Floats. People throwing potatoes and cabbages—all the makings of an Irish stew. The family loved it; they’d told him. He would love it too.

But move the gun. Do that. One of the children might see it.

Silence.

The rain falling. The house creaking as if it were populated when it was not. A door slamming somewhere as if in the wind. Maybe a door of a car outside, or the door of another house. Sound could play tricks on you like that.

Rain tapping on the granite windowsills, a sound peculiar to this octagonal and ornate room.

“I wish…I wish there was someone to whom I could…confess,” he said softly. “The main thing for you to know is that you never have to worry anymore. It’s finished, the way I think you wanted it finished. I just wish there was some kind of final absolution. It’s strange. It was so bad when I failed at Christmas. And now somehow it’s harder, that I’ve won. There are some battles you don’t want to fight. And winning costs too much.”

Rowan’s face remained unchanged.

“You want some music, darling?” he asked. “You want to hear that old gramophone? I frankly find it a comforting sound. I don’t think anybody else is listening to it now but you, and me. But I’d like to play it. Let me go get it.”

He stood up and bent down to kiss her. Her soft mouth gave no resistance. Taste of lipstick. High school. He smiled. Maybe the nurse had put on the lipstick. He could barely see it. She looked past him. She looked pale and beautiful and plain.

In the attic room, he found the gramophone. He gathered it up, along with the records of
La Traviata
. He stood still, holding this light burden, once again entranced by the simple combination of rain and sun.

The window was closed.

The floor was clean.

He thought of Julien again, the instantaneous Julien standing in the front doorway, blocking Lasher’s path. “And I haven’t even thought of you since that moment,” he said. “I guess I hope and pray you’ve gone on.”

The moments ticked by. He wondered if he could ever use this room again. He stared at the window, at the edge of the porch roof. He remembered that flashing glimmer of Antha gesturing for Lasher to come. “Make the dead come back to witness,” he whispered. “That you did.”

He walked down the steps slowly, stopping quite suddenly, in alarm, before he knew exactly why. What was this sound? He was holding the gramophone and the records, and now he set them carefully down and out of the way.

A woman was crying, or was it a child? It was a soft heartbroken crying. And it wasn’t the nurse. She wouldn’t be back for hours. No. And the crying came from Rowan’s room.

He didn’t dare to hope it was Rowan! He didn’t dare, and he knew as well as he knew anything else that it wasn’t Rowan’s voice.

“Oh, darling dear,” said the crying voice. “Darling dear, I love you so much. Yes, drink it, drink the milk, take it, oh, poor Mother, poor darling dear.”

His mind could find no explanation; it was empty and consumed with silent fear. He went down the steps, careful not to make a sound, and, turning, peered through the bedroom door.

A great tall girl sat on the side of the bed, a long willowy white thing, tall and thin as Lasher had been, with reddish-golden locks falling down her long graceful back. It was the girl he had glimpsed below in the street! In her arms the girl held Rowan, Rowan, who was sitting up and clinging to her, actually clinging to her, and nursing from the girl’s bare right breast.

“That’s it, dear Mother, drink it, yes,” said the girl, and the tears splattered right out of her big green eyes and down her cheeks. “Yes, Mother, drink, oh, it hurts but drink it! It’s our milk. Our strong milk.” And then the giant girl drew back and tossed her hair, and gave Rowan the left breast. Frantically, Rowan drank from it, her left hand rising, groping, as if to catch hold of the girl’s head.

The girl saw him. Her tear-filled eyes opened wide. Just like Lasher’s eyes, so big and wide! Her face was a perfect oval. Her mouth a cherub’s mouth.

A muted sound came from Rowan, and then suddenly Rowan’s back straightened, and her left hand caught the girl’s hair tight. She drew back away from the breast and out of her mouth came a loud and terrible scream:

“Michael, Michael, Michael!”

Rowan shrank back against the headboard, drawing up her knees, and staring and pointing to the girl, who had leapt up and put her hands over her ears.

“Michael!”

The tall thin girl wept. Her face crumpled like that of a baby, her big green eyes squeezing shut. “No, Mother, no.” Her long white spidery fingers covered her white forehead and her wet trembling mouth. “Mother, no.”

“Michael, kill it!” screamed Rowan. “Kill it. Michael, stop it.”

The girl fell back against the wall sobbing, “Mother, Mother, no…”