This One and Magic Life

by Anne C. George

  Donnie and Hektor were both in awe of her. She was so tiny, each of them could easily have picked her up with one hand. And yet, there was never any question after their parents died as to who the leader was. Hektor, who helped out at Dr. Barnes’s veterinary clinic after school, announced to Donnie that the loudest female was always the leader of the pack. But Artie wasn’t necessarily loud. Only once had she gotten so mad at Donnie that she had screamed at him, “You piss-poor excuse for a bastard’s ass!” They both had been so startled they had begun to laugh.

  “I think I need to go write that down,” Artie said.

  They had simply wanted to make her happy, to keep her from being hurt. Each boy knew what her relationship had been with their mother; each knew the vulnerability that was so close to the independent, sometimes aloof exterior. They yearned for her to let them take care of her; they gave her to Carl and then to the world with a sense of loss, knowing she would have been incensed at the idea of someone “giving” her at all.

  Donnie stops for the sign, waves at old Mrs. Hawkins, and wonders once more why Mariel has always been overwhelmed by Artie. By his whole family, even his dead mother. Mariel’s brothers and sisters, with a couple of exceptions, have turned out to be perfectly nice people, hardworking, good company. Her mother is one of Donnie’s favorite people. And yet, Mariel has always been preoccupied with Sarah Sullivan. “Your mother would have done it this way,” she tells Donnie when decorating a room or planning a party. But Donnie knows good and damn well that his mother would have been walking along the beach with the job turned over to someone like Mariel. “Do it your way, honey,” he tells Mariel.

  And yet, he can imagine what it had been like for Mariel to be taken under his mother’s wing. Mariel saw her when she was at her best, giving parties, attending church. The dark side was never evident then. What Mariel saw was a secure, beautiful woman who knew the social graces, who was charming and kind. That was the memory the town had of her. Thomas Sullivan they saw as the absentminded professor who had in some inexplicable way captured a radiant, beautiful wife.

  Donnie turns onto the shell road and sees Hektor’s pickup and Mariel’s car in Artie’s driveway. No one else is there, and he’s glad. His stomach is still unsettled, and he wants to take Artie’s ashes into the house.

  The house. Donnie loves Artie’s house with a passion. He loves the way the closet under the stairs smells of mothballs, the way pecans falling on the roof would wake them up when they were children, signifying the season’s change. Sometimes he still catches the scent of his father’s Prince Albert tobacco, of his mother’s L’Aire du Temps. He wants nothing to happen to this house. He wants Dolly to live here and put the Christmas tree in the parlor and tie pine boughs along the banisters. He wants his grandchildren’s stockings hung by the chimney with care.

  Maybe he and Mariel could move out here. He could ease out of the company. They could sit on the porch and listen to the creak of the swing.

  And kill each other they would be so bored. Still, it wasn’t an unreasonable thought. It was only a forty-minute drive to Mobile.

  “Donnie?” Mariel is sitting in the den looking through a New Yorker.

  “It’s me.”

  Mariel sees Donnie’s package. “Artie?”

  “Yes.” He goes over and puts it on the mantel. His hand feels very empty.

  Mariel gets up and hugs him. She needs to know how he is. She needs to know about the trip. “I’m glad you’re back,” she says.

  “I’m glad to be back.” He lets himself rest against her for a moment, his cheek against her hair that smells of shampoo and perspiration. He moves his hands against the familiar back, the rib cage that sinks to the knobby spine. How frail, he thinks. How frail. And he holds her closer.

  “We are all armadillos,” he hears Hektor say. But armadillos have armor. We have nothing but these thin bones.

  Mariel, her head pressed against Donnie’s chest, is looking at the package on the mantel. This is it, she thinks. This is all there is. The body. Such a little thing to make such a big fuss over.

  “I don’t understand a damn thing,” she says.

  “I don’t either.”

  They move apart and smile at each other.

  “How’s Dolly?”

  “Miserable.” Mariel sits back down, closing the magazine and putting it on the table.

  “You sounded funny on the phone,” Donnie says.

  “Two—well, actually, three—big bourbons chugalugged. They hit me.”

  “You okay now?”

  “Better. I was so loopy at one point, I decided the funeral thing was stupid and called Father Carroll and told him it was off. I just told him part of the truth, not that Artie was cremated. Anyway, he came barreling out here to find out what was going on. But by that time, I’d already decided I was right to begin with, that we ought to go ahead with the funeral. Other than thinking I was crazy and more than a little hysterical, he didn’t suspect anything.”

  Donnie sits beside her on the couch. “Honey, having the funeral is fine. In fact, I’ve been thinking you’re right. I’ve done what Artie wanted done with her body. The funeral is for us.”

  Dear God, Mariel thinks. She eyes the package on the mantel. It is quiet which surprises her. “Tell you what, Donnie,” she says. “We’ve got an hour or so before the rosary. Why don’t you stretch out here for about twenty minutes and I’ll fix you something to eat.”

  “Something light,” Donnie says.

  Mariel plumps the pillow and helps Donnie pull off his shoes.

  “Something light,” she agrees, spreading the summer afghan over him. But his eyes are already closing.

  Hektor is lying in his old bedroom right above the kitchen when he hears his mother and father talking. The voices are faint, but so familiar, that he gets out of bed, kneels, and puts his ear to the vent.

  “The potato salad is delicious,” he hears Mariel say.

  “I had some,” Father Audubon answers. “Peach pie, too.”

  “Shit,” Hektor mumbles. What on God’s earth had he been thinking of? His knees creak as he gets up and walks a little stiffly back to bed.

  The voices follow him. Unable to distinguish words, he can still detect tone, rise, and inflection. It was the music of his childhood, soothing, comforting, his mother’s laugh and the deepness of his father’s voice. It was what he had fallen asleep to, imagining them sitting at the kitchen table drinking coffee. And on nights when the music was missing, or was discordant, he would pull his pillow over his head and remember the nice sounds.

  Hektor sits on the side of the bed and thinks about the voices, how none of them had known what to expect from one day to another. There would be days on end when their mother would lock herself in her room. And then, one morning, they would awake to the smell of blueberry pancakes and bacon, and everything would be fine. There would be days of partying, of walks on the beach. And then one day, their mother would start criticizing Artie, the way she looked, walked, ate. Everything about her. Sometimes Sarah would leave home. Once she was gone for almost six weeks. His father had found her, somehow, in New Orleans and had gone to get her. When she came home, she had brought them presents and they had awakened the next morning to the smell of bacon. She had brought Hektor a kite that was shaped like a dragon. It was red and gold, and it snapped and curled in the wind like a live thing. They had sat down and eaten breakfast as if nothing had happened. Except for Artie. She had taken an apple and walked down the beach. When Hektor went to fly his kite, he had seen her sitting against the dune, her head down on her knees. Running down the beach with the dragon soaring into the air behind him, he had felt guilty for being so happy his mother was home. For Hektor there was always the beach to run to, the water to swim and fish in, and the bicycle to jump on and whirl away down the shell road. Donnie, he knew, felt the same way. But Donnie was more caught between their mother and Artie.

  Hektor has often wondered if the good times out-weighe
d the bad for their father. It had seemed so to the child Hektor. He had seen Thomas’s hand reaching for Sarah’s in church. He had seen him standing in the dining room looking at the table his mother had readied for a party. “Come look, son,” he had said. “Have you ever seen prettier flowers?” And Hektor knew he never had. Nor had he ever seen shinier silver or a whiter tablecloth. His father’s hand had reached out and touched the lavender and yellow flowers. “Your mother is an artist,” he said.

  “Artie is, too,” Hektor said. “She can draw anything.”

  “I know she is,” Thomas Sullivan agreed. “Your mother knows it, too. They’re a lot alike, you know.”

  “Mama and Artie?” Hektor didn’t think they were alike at all.

  “More than they realize.” And his father had taken Hektor into the kitchen where they both tasted some of the tomato biscuits and cheese puffs Sarah had fixed for the company. “Mmmm. Good,” they agreed.

  “Mess it up, I’ll wring both your necks,” Sarah had said, standing in the kitchen doorway, smiling at them. In Hektor’s memory, she is always dressed in a black velvet dress. High-necked, proper in front, it was cut extremely low in the back, ending in a white taffeta bow. Her back was lightly freckled, smooth. Hektor has always thought it the most beautiful dress he ever saw. Someday, he wants May to have one just like it. When she is thirty years old. No use tempting fate.

  He hears Father Audubon laughing in the kitchen. He’s glad he found him. Delmore Ricketts. God. Worse than Hektor Sullivan for sure. What will he do with him now he’s here, though? Why did it seem such an imperative thing to have a priest who knew Artie was cremated, who would accept all of them as they were? Who would say a funeral mass over her ashes? He, Hektor, hadn’t thought the logistics out. Should they take the ashes out to the beach or on the front porch? Would Donnie then take them out to sprinkle them on the bay?

  Hektor hears Father Audubon laugh again. It doesn’t matter, Hektor thinks. We need him to bless us. Bless us all.

  “Papa?”

  “What, sweetheart?”

  “Father Audubon and I saw a whopping crane on the beach.” May climbs up on the bed beside him. “He says there are only a few in the world. He nearly had a fit.”

  “A whopping crane?”

  “It was real big.”

  “You mean a whooping crane?”

  “I guess.”

  “That’s wonderful. I’ll bet he did nearly have a fit.”

  “He did a dance. Like this.” May gets off the bed and does the Watusi-type jump Father Audubon had executed on the beach. Her chunky short legs hit the floor solidly. For a moment, in the late afternoon sun’s shadows, Hektor sees a woman with black hair, whirling, dancing. Ana? But the image disappears.

  “He must have been very happy.”

  “He was. He went to call somebody to tell them.”

  “Whopping crane headquarters,” Hektor says.

  But May knows he is teasing. “No,” she says, frowning at Hektor.

  Hektor is sufficiently chastised. He changes the subject quickly. “Your blue dress ironed?”

  “Didn’t need it. Aunt Mariel looked at it.” May sits down again. “Uncle Donnie’s back.”

  “I know. I heard him drive in.”

  “He has Aunt Artie in a package but he said it wasn’t her.”

  “Well, why would he say that?”

  “Because I’m a child.” She examines a mosquito bite on her leg, decides to scratch it vigorously.

  Hektor catches her hand. “You’re going to make it bleed.”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “Yes, you are. Now quit that.”

  May gives him her frown.

  “Have you had any supper?” Hektor asks.

  “No.”

  “Well, let’s go get some. We have to get ready soon.” He sits up and realizes how tired he is. “You need a mother,” he says.

  “Because I scratch my legs?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “A mother couldn’t stop me.”

  “No, but she could help me worry. I’m going to start investigating the possibilities as soon as we get back to New Orleans.”

  “Well, I’ll tell you what,” May says. “Don’t marry that old Marny Naftel or I’ll run away from home.”

  “I’ll give you the last say-so. Okay?”

  “Okay.” May thinks for a moment. “I like Kelly Stuart,” she says. “She’s letting me read all her old Nancy Drews.”

  “But I thought she was taken.”

  “I’ll find out for sure,” May says. “I’ll ask her tonight.”

  “Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  Donnie is drooling on the sofa cushion. He sits up, blinking, wiping the side of his face when Mariel pats his shoulder.

  “Here,” she says. “Eat some of this. You’ll feel better.”

  Donnie takes the plate and stares at it.

  “Drink the tea. That will wake you up.”

  He reaches for the tea obediently. For a moment, he had thought she was Artie waking him to go to school. Things click back into place.

  “I’m going to go on and get ready.”

  “Okay.” Donnie looks at the food. He doesn’t think he can eat. But he takes a bite of fruit salad, and suddenly he’s starving. He eats everything, sopping his roll in the poppy seed dressing. He finishes the tea, gets up, stretches, and walks to the window. Late August sun is making everything shimmer, blur like a ghost image on TV.

  “Mama said you were back.” In shorts and ponytail and no makeup, Dolly is his child. She comes to hug him. “Did it go all right?”

  “Okay.” He feels how hot she is. “I’m sorry you’re sick.”

  “So am I. I don’t think I’d better try the rosary. I hope I can go to the funeral tomorrow, though.” She sees the package on the mantel. “Artie?”

  Donnie nods.

  Dolly goes over to it. “Not much, is it?”

  “You and I’ll take her out on the bay, maybe tomorrow, and sprinkle the ashes.”

  “She said on the day you deemed perfect.”

  “Maybe every day is perfect.”

  Dolly smiles. “You are becoming a philosopher in your old age.”

  “Dangerous, isn’t it?”

  “Well, different, anyway.” Dolly touches the package.

  But Donnie stays at the window, looking out at the sun, the beach, and the golden-green water of the bay.

  TWENTY-NINE

  Hektor and the Devil

  I KNEW THE DEVIL WHEN HE WALKED IN THE CHURCH THAT Sunday. I was only six years old, but I recognized him right off. He came down the aisle like any man would and sat across from us. He had blond hair and a reddish, freckled face. He looked right at me with eyes yellow and quick as Susie’s, Artie’s cat. I hid behind Papa.

  “Papa,” I whispered, “the Devil is here. What’s he doing at mass?”

  “Shhh,” Papa said. I peeped around him at the Devil. The Devil smiled at me. It scared me so bad, I put my face against Papa’s arm. The material in his suit scratched; he smelled like Prince Albert tobacco and soap. I must have gone to sleep, because the next thing I remember is being led down the aisle and seeing Father Carroll shaking hands with the Devil. Then he was introducing him to everyone.

  “Sarah and Thomas Sullivan, Zeke Pardue. Our new neighbor. Just bought the Simonton place.”

  Mama and Papa shook hands with the Devil. So did Artie and Donnie. But I ran and got in the car.

  On the way home I asked Donnie if the hand was hot or cold but he acted like he didn’t know what I was talking about. He had a game he played where he’d lean out of the car far as Mama would let him and count buzzards. That’s what he was doing.

  “The Devil’s hand. Was it hot or cold?”

  Artie said it was hot, burning-up hot.

  “I knew it!” But then I saw Donnie and Artie were laughing.

  Mama wanted to know what I was talking about.

  “The De
vil. I wanted to know if his hand was hot or cold.”

  Papa said there was no such thing as the Devil.

  “Then why does Father Carroll say there is?”

  “Well, everyone is capable of doing evil things. That’s what the Devil is,” Mama said, “the part of us that isn’t good, that makes us misbehave. That’s what Father is warning us about.”

  Artie kicked me and said it was the Devil made me throw rocks at school and hit Jenny Walker.

  But Papa told her for goodness sakes not to tell me that, that I’d use it as an excuse, that the Devil would be causing all sorts of problems and I wouldn’t be to blame at all. And they all laughed. That was when I decided not to tell them about Zeke Pardue.

  We didn’t see him again until the next Sunday. I kept thinking about those yellow eyes, though, and knew they would be right where they were, looking at me like we had a big secret together. Which we did. Again, after mass, I ran and got in the car. But this time Mama and Papa stayed longer talking. And when we started home, Papa said Mr. Pardue had invited us out to his place that afternoon, that he had two buffaloes, real buffaloes he was thinking about raising. Lord knows he’d do better with Herefords. But it would be fun seeing them.

  I didn’t want to see a buffalo. Besides, I knew who would be there.

  The Devil was waiting for us, looking at me with those yellow eyes. I tried to stay behind Papa but he pulled me away from his leg wanting to know what on God’s earth I was doing. Zeke Pardue smiled at me. He had big teeth, white, shiny.

  “Come on, I’ll show you Bill and Sadie,” the Devil said. “I hope you brought your camera.”

  Mama had it slung over her shoulder, said we didn’t want to miss a thing.

  We all got into Zeke Pardue’s pickup, Mama, Papa, and the Devil in the front and Artie, Donnie, and me in the back. We headed down a road that was full of mud holes. The Devil would hit one of them and nearly throw us out of the truck. I held on to the sides hard as I could. Artie and Donnie were laughing like crazy.