The Swan House (23 page)

I took her hand and pulled her after me, leaving poor Robbie standing in the field. “Show me where the hard liquor is hidden,” I demanded.

“Swan, for heaven's sake . . .”

So I left Rachel too, and I found Billy Martin, who was known to be practically an alcoholic, and begged him to fix me a drink. He led me to a yellow ice cooler, lifted the top, and I grabbed a bottle without bothering to read the label.

Robbie caught up with me. “Look, Mary Swan, I won't take you home drunk.”

“Then let someone else do it, Boy Scout!” I grabbed the glass from Billy and stomped off in a fury, feeling panicky inside. I gulped down the wretched liquid, coughing and sputtering as my eyes filled with tears. And I kept saying to myself,
Why are you reacting like this, idiot?
What in the world is the matter with you?

“Swan, come back here!” Rachel pleaded.

“Leave me alone! Both of you leave me alone!” I cried angrily. And then in a whimper, “Alone, please.”

I flopped down in the woods, out of sight of the festivities and moaned, low and doleful.
“Your mama was a lunatic. Raving crazy. No
one wanted you to know.”

Herbert's slurred words had triggered something painful in my memory. I knew Mama had had her dark moods, but I had never let myself think about what those dark moods meant. It had never mattered before. Daddy had called it her artistic “gift.” But Herbert had given it a different name.
“Lunatic.”
And suddenly, I wasn't at all sure that Herbert was wrong.

After I'd cried alone for a while, I went back to the yellow cooler and drank and drank that stinking stuff until my throat was burned red and I was ready to puke. I kept drinking with Robbie watching helplessly, begging me to let him take me home, and Rachel cursing at me and tugging on my arm.

So instead of being the best day of my life, my first dance ended up being the worst. The absolute worst. Even worse than when I learned about the plane crash. When Mama had perished in Paris, my memory of her had been sweet. Now her name had been slandered, and instead of shaking my head and calling Herbert a fool, something inside of me was exploding in pain.
“Crazy. A lunatic.”

Robbie did drive me home around midnight. I laughed horribly and cried and yelled, “My mama isn't crazy!” and “Why didn't you tell me she was crazy?”

The light to the front porch was on, and I stumbled out of the car and up the flagstone steps with Robbie holding my arm.

“I'm so sorry, Mary Swan,” he said miserably.

I hiccuped and said, “Don't worry about it, Boy Scout,” then fell in his arms, giggling and then crying.

“Are you gonna be all right?”

“Great. Just great, Robert H. Bartholomew. A greeeaaat time tonight. A real good time.” I fumbled for the doorknob, turned it, and left him standing there with his mouth hanging wide open.

Chapter 11

T
he next morning when I woke up I remembered the long night of vomiting, and my throbbing head told me immediately that a hangover felt a lot different than getting slapped in the eye by rednecks. Neither were very good memories. This one left me listless. But I had to talk to Trixie. Not Daddy or Ella Mae or Rachel, but Trixie. She'd tell me the truth.

So I dragged myself to the bathroom and threw a bunch of cold water on my face. I didn't bother to brush my hair, which was one tangled mass. I pulled on a pair of Bermuda shorts and a T-shirt and wobbled down the two flights of stairs and out the door, barefoot. I walked straight through the yard and crossed the street. The pavement was already hot. I banged on Trixie's door.

She answered it, her blond curls made blonder by the sun and her face tanned and her lips painted with bright pink lipstick.

“Swannee!” she sang out in several slow syllables. Then, “Swan-nee, you look aw-ful!”

I marched into the spick-and-span house, through the hall with its high ceiling and hardwood floors, and plopped on the Louis XIV sofa, as Mama had called it, that was covered in green chintz.

“Was Mama really crazy, Trixie? I have to know.” No hello, how are you. No hug. She got nothing from me except an exasperated groan and red eyes and those two sentences.

Trixie had followed me into her living room, her high heels clicking on the hardwood floor. She sat down beside me all ladylike and furrowed her brow. “What are you talking about, honey?”

I sniffled, ran my finger under my nose, and asked, “Do you have any orange juice, Trixie?” Every other adult I knew, I addressed as Mr. or Mrs. or Dr. or whatever. But not Trixie and not Ella Mae.

“Shore do, honey,” she sang out sympathetically.

So sipping on some orange juice, I told her the whole horrible story of the Back-to-School Ball and Herbert's drunken announcement and my reaction.

“It was the most awful thing. Poor Robbie. I was terrible to him. And I just kept drinking and drinking. Why did I act like that? If I'd just ignored Herbert's comment, everything would have been all right. But I couldn't, Trixie. I couldn't. Somehow I just knew he was saying something that his mother had sworn him to secrecy about years ago.” I leaned forward and pronounced the next words carefully. “It's true, then, isn't it, Trixie? Mama was crazy.”

When Trixie got nervous, she mashed her lips together several times, the way you do when you're putting on lipstick. Her tanned face, perfectly made up, showed a hint of perspiration. Her blue eyes, usually carefree, clouded. And those perfect lips that met in the center with two perfect peaks quivered slightly. “Mary Swan, people say all kinds of things. You can't pay any attention to it. You said he was drunk.”

“But it feels true.” That came out in a sob.

I could smell the delicate aroma of her perfume. She took my hand, the way she liked to do. I noticed the perfectly manicured nails, her pale yellow silk suit, everything about her in place, except her sad eyes and quivering lips. “Your mother was a wonderful woman whom I loved dearly.” Her voice caught. “Whom so many loved. Don't listen to careless words at a party, Mary Swan. People say all kinds of cruel things.” She reached for a pack of cigarettes, pulled one out, and lit it.

I felt a little shiver go through me, and I remembered the scandal from years and years ago. Trixie's scandal. Remembered her crying on Mama's floral couch and Mama shooing me upstairs when she caught me peeking around the corner. People had certainly said a lot of cruel things about Trixie when her husband had left her years ago for a nineteen-year-old brunette. Apparently Tony Hamilton had been having an affair with a co-ed for over a year when Trixie finally figured it out. Not that anyone was really surprised. Tony Hamilton had a reputation as long as his arm.

I was only six or seven at the time, but I clearly remembered how Trixie, pregnant with Lucy, would spend hours crying at our house. Of course, it wasn't until much later that I understood why she had been crying, and why Daddy and Mama had seemed so angry, and why Ella Mae kept saying “My, my. That poor woman.”

Divorced and well-off, Trixie had gotten to keep the house, stayed there, raised her daughter, and I guess she'd probably heard all the gossip that I had heard about her. That's how I knew that behind her appearance of a perfectly beautiful Southern belle, she really had a lot more substance to her. And that's what I thought of that morning as I cuddled on her couch with my glass of orange juice.

All those thoughts had taken no more than a couple of seconds, and now Trixie was saying something else. “You knew your mama, and you remember the way she was. Please don't let careless words tarnish that memory. Please don't, Swannee.” I noticed for the first time how crinkled the lines were beside Trixie's eyes.

“But I told you, Trixie. It feels true. You've got to tell me about Mama. I'm not stupid, you know. I remember how she locked herself in her room. I remember the time Ella Mae carried her downstairs and the blood on the carpet and how she went away for a ‘rest' and how Daddy took Jimmy and me to visit her in that big old house. I remember all the bottles of pills by her bed. If I try hard, I'll piece it all together, Trixie. But don't make me guess. Tell me the truth.”

“Swannee, there's really not much to say.”

“Please, Trixie. Daddy won't ever tell me. You know it. And Ella Mae will be loyal to death to whatever Daddy and Mama have sworn her to. It has to be you.”

She licked her lips and took a deep breath. “Yes, your mama struggled with depression. Sometimes severe depression. Usually at a certain time of the year. I think maybe it was the genius in her that made her so delicate and yet so strong. She had to be strong to deal with all those battles in her head. She saw doctors and she took pills, but she said the pills killed her inside so that she couldn't paint.

“It's a sickness, Swannee. I'm sure it is. But most people just take it for pure craziness. Your daddy was so careful with Sheila. We all did what we could to help. That day that you remember, well, it was then your father knew she needed more help than she was getting. The psychiatrist admitted her to a clinic. Poor Sheila. She had a heart for people who suffer. She understood. . . .”

By now Trixie's eyes were moist, and I felt as though her heart and mine might just break in two again. I knew right then that I didn't want to hear any more. Not yet. I grabbed her in a fierce hug and whispered through the tightness in my throat, “You don't have to say any more. Thank you for telling me.”

I left her house a little before eleven and walked back across the street, more resolved than ever to solve the Raven Dare. In the course of twenty-four hours the whole thing had become a lot more personal. Now the black bird spread his powerful wings out wide and cast his shadow like an omen, not just on an art museum or a plane crash or even an artist, but on a family.
My
family. I wasn't sure I wanted to find out things that Daddy and Ella Mae and Trixie had obviously tried to hide from me all of my life.

“You knew your mama, and you remember the way she was. Please
don't let careless words tarnish that memory. ...He was drunk, Mary
Swan. He had no idea what he was saying. ...You just let that whole thing
rest, Swannee. There's nothing you can learn about your mom from that
scandal.”

Why did my imagination push me along, past all reason? Why did I have to ignore the warnings of those I loved and who loved me? Was it the curse of the Raven? Or was it just fate? Fate that caused me to run headlong into the truth? Miss Abigail had said that the truth would make me free. It was even in the Bible. And so I determined I would know the truth, no matter what.

When I got back home that Saturday morning, Jimmy met me at the door. “Where've you been, Swan? Daddy just left to play golf and was all worried, and Ella Mae's been waiting on you for fifteen minutes, and Rachel has called twice, and Robbie just phoned too.”

“I was just at Trixie's.”

“Well, you look horrible. Anyway, call Rachel back.” Even though his words were insolent, I could tell that Jimmy had been scared for me too. In fact, as he left the room, I think he wiped his eyes.

I picked up the phone and dialed Rachel's number. When she answered, I simply said, “How awful was I last night?”

“Awful. Very awful. You need to apologize to Robbie.”

“I can't. I'm mortified. I'm sure he hates me anyway.”

“You're mean, Swan. Just plain ole mean.”

“It's not mean; it's despair. I've been sitting in Trixie's den hearing her tell me about my mother, and if you think that's fun, well, think again. I can't help it if that drunken Herbert said something that triggered a lot of memories.”

“Fine, then. Just explain that to Robbie. He deserves an explanation. He'll understand.”

“He's already called, but I wasn't here.”

“Well, call him back.”

“Impossible. I can't just call a boy on the phone!”

“Imbecile. Well, then don't count on me going with you to Grant Park today.” She hung up on me, really mad.

Ella Mae waddled into the kitchen and said, “Lawdy, chile, if you don't look like somebody done hit you over the head with a fryin' pan!”

Jimmy, who kept finding reasons to come back into the kitchen, added, “Yeah! You do, Mary Swan. You really do.”

“Oh, shut up!” I spat at Jimmy. “Ella Mae, can you get me some aspirin?” She showed me the whites of her eyes and a very crinkled forehead before she left the kitchen in search of aspirin. When she came back, Jimmy was gone.

“You done got yorese'f a hangover, Mary Swan? Did you git into the likker at that there party?”

“It's not what you think, Ella Mae,” I said as I swallowed the aspirin with the aid of a glass of water. “I'll be okay.”

“Well, you ain't gonna go downtown lookin' like that. No sir, you ain't.”

“Oh, come on, Ella Mae,” I said lamely, but in truth, the absolute last thing I felt like doing was serving up pots of spaghetti. Even with Carl. And my head started throbbing twice as hard at the thought of trying to play my flute or listen to Carl making his saxophone moan in its loud, jazzy way.

“Okay, I guess you're right. You go on, Ella Mae. I'll be here with Jimmy. Tell Miss Abigail I'll see her next week, and—” I almost said,
Tell Carl hi,
but stopped myself. It didn't matter. Ella Mae knew.

She smiled in her cross way and said, “I ain't gonna be leavin' you here like that, with yore daddy gone and you in one foul temper. Heaven knows what you'd do ta Jimmy. Un-unn.” And so it was decided.

I dragged myself up the stairs to my room and flung myself across my bed. After a while my headache subsided, and I drifted off to sleep.

When I woke, it was after three. I groggily got off my bed and made my way down to the kitchen, where I poured myself a tall glass of lemonade. Daddy was still playing golf, which I thought was a good sign that maybe he was feeling better, and Jimmy had left a note on the kitchen table saying he'd gone to play at Andy Bartholomew's. I groaned to myself, remembering Robbie. Poor Robbie. Then I called Rachel, but she had gone horseback riding, so I left a message with her brother, Jamie, for her to come over when she got back.