by Rice, Anne
A soft rustling sound broke my concentration. The person in the servants’ quarters had awakened, and was rushing down the wooden steps. The screen door banged shut, and there came the skittering feet through the rattling foliage.
It might have been a tiny gnome, this creature that emerged from the elephant ears and the ferns, but it was simply a very old woman—a tiny bit of a thing with a small completely wrinkled face, black eyes and white hair in two long neat braids tied at the ends with pink ribbon. She was dressed in a stiff flowered robe, and clumsy padded fuzzy pink slippers.
Mona rushed to greet her, crying out: “Dolly Jean!” and picked up the bit of a creature in her arms and spun around with her.
“Lord, God in Heaven,” cried out Dolly Jean, “but it’s true, it’s Mona Mayfair. Child of Grace, you set me down right now and tell me what’s gotten into you. Look at those shoes. Rowan Mayfair, why didn’t you tell me this child was here, and you, Michael Curry, giving me that rum, you think your mother in Heaven doesn’t know the things you do, you thought you had me down for the count, I know, don’t think I don’t, and look at Mona Mayfair, what did you pump into her?”
Mona had no awareness that with her vampiric strength she was holding the woman in the air, and how perfectly abnormal it looked.
The spectators were speechless.
“Oh, Dolly Jean, it’s been so long, so terribly long,” Mona sobbed. “I can’t even remember the last time I saw you. I was all locked up and taped up and dreaming. And when they told me Mary Jane Mayfair had run away again I think I just went into a stupor.”
“I know, my baby,” said Dolly Jean, “but they wouldn’t let me in the room, they had their rules, but don’t you think for a moment I wasn’t saying the rosary every day for you. And one of these bright days Mary Jane’ll run out of money and come home, or turn up dead in the morgue with a tag on her toe, we’ll find her.”
By this time we had all risen, except for Rowan, who remained sunk in her thoughts as if none of this was taking place, and Michael quickly took the apparently weightless Dolly Jean from Mona and set her in a chair between himself and Rowan.
“Dolly Jean, Dolly Jean!” Mona sobbed as Quinn led her back to her place at the table.
Rowan had never once even looked at either Mona or Dolly Jean. She was murmuring, her narrative moving along in her head, unbroken, and her eyes probing the dark for nothing.
“All right, settle down Dolly Jean, and you too Mona, and let Rowan talk,” said Michael.
“Who in the world are you!” Dolly Jean demanded of me. “Holy Mother of God, where did you come from?”
Rowan turned suddenly and stared at Dolly Jean with apparent wonder. Then she turned back into her solitude and crowded reminiscence.
The old woman went quiet and still. Then muttered: “Oh me, poor Rowan, she’s off again.” Then, staring at me again, she let out a huge gasp and cried: “I know who you are!”
I smiled at her. I couldn’t help it.
“Please, Dolly Jean,” said Michael, “there are issues we have to settle here.”
“Jesus, Mary and Joseph!” cried Dolly Jean, staring this time at Mona, who was hastily wiping away her latest tears. “My baby, Mona Mayfair, is a Blood Child!” Then her eyes discovered Quinn, and there came another huge gasp, and she cried out, “It’s the black-haired one!”
“No, it’s not!” Rowan declared in a furious rasping whisper, turning to the old woman again. “It’s Quinn Blackwood. You know he’s always loved Mona.” She said it as if it was the answer to every question in the universe.
Dolly Jean made a jerky little turn in her chair, and with two dips or bobs of her head made a thorough examination of Rowan, who was looking at her with gleaming eyes as if she hadn’t even seen her before.
“Oh, my girl, my poor girl,” Dolly Jean said to Rowan. She put her tiny hands on Rowan and smoothed her hair. “My darling girl, don’t you be so sad, always so sad on account of everybody. That’s my girl.”
Rowan stared at her for a long moment as though she didn’t understand a word Dolly Jean spoke, and then she looked away again at nobody, half dreaming, half thinking.
“At four o’clock this very afternoon,” Dolly Jean said, still stroking Rowan’s hair, “this poor little soul was digging her own grave in this very yard. I noticed how well you covered it up, Michael Curry, you think you can cover everything up, and when I came down here to ask her what she was doing standing in a hole of wet mud she asked me to pick up the shovel and bury her while she was still breathing.”
“Be quiet, be still,” whispered Rowan, looking far off as if at the night sounds. “It’s time now for a larger vision. The Initiates have multiplied, and this is the inner circle. Be worthy of it, Dolly Jean. Be quiet.”
“All right, my girl,” said Dolly Jean, “then you just talk on as you were, and you, my sparkling Mona, I’ll say my rosary all day long for you, and you too Quinn Blackwood. And you, the blond one, you gorgeous creature! You think I don’t know you, but I do!”
“Thank you, Madam,” I said quietly.
Quinn spoke up: “So all of you will keep our secret? This grows more dangerous for us by the moment. What can come of this?”
“The secret can be kept,” said Stirling. “Let us talk this out. There’s no going back now, anyway.”
“Why, you think we’re going to try to make the whole Mayfair clan believe in Blood Children!” Dolly Jean laughed and slapped the table with both her hands. “That’s just hilarious! We can’t even get them to believe in the Taltos! This brilliant doctor, here, she can’t make them believe in the giant helix, she can’t get them to behave themselves on account of the risk of having another Walking Baby! And you think they’d listen to us if we told them all about the Blood Children? Honey, they just take the phone off the hook when we call.”
For a moment, I thought that Rowan was going to start raving. She glared at Dolly Jean. She was trembling violently. Her face had gone white, and her lips were moving but she was not forming words.
Then the strangest laugh came out of Rowan. A soft free laugh. Her face became girlish and full of delight.
Dolly Jean went into ecstasy.
“Don’t you know it,” she cried to Rowan. “You can’t get them to believe in pneumonia! You can’t get them to believe in the flu!”
Rowan nodded and the laugh slowly but sweetly died in a smile. I had never seen such expressions in Rowan, obviously, and they were glorious to behold.
Mona was crying and trying to talk at the same time.
“Dolly Jean, please simmer down,” said Mona. “We’ve got to get some things settled here.”
“Then get me a drink of rum,” said Dolly Jean, “for Heaven’s sakes, go on your young legs, you know where it is, no, tell you what, bring me the Amaretto, go get it with a shot glass. That’ll make me real happy.”
Mona went off at once, darting across the lawn and towards the pool, high heels clicking when they hit the flagstones, and off around the bend on her errand.
Michael sat there musing and shaking his head. “You drink that on top of all that rum and you’re going be sick,” he murmured.
“I was born sick,” said the old woman.
Stirling stared at Dolly Jean as though she was something perfectly horrible. I almost burst out laughing.
Rowan continued to smile at Dolly Jean. It was sweet and secretive and honest.
“I’m going to pour that bottle of Amaretto down your throat,” Rowan said gently in her husky confidential voice. “I’m going to drown you with it.”
Dolly Jean bobbed up and down in the chair with squeals of laughter. She grabbed Rowan’s face and held her tight.
“Now, I made you laugh, I did, you’re all right, my genius girl, my doctor, my boss lady, my mistress of the house, I love you, girl, I’m the only one in the entire Mayfair clan that’s not afraid of you.” She kissed Rowan on the mouth and then let her go. “You just keep on taking care of everybody, that�
��s what God put you here to do, you understand, you take care of everybody.”
“And I fail and fail again,” said Rowan.
“No, you don’t, darlin’,” said Dolly Jean. “Put another wing on that hospital. And don’t you fret anything, you sweet girl.”
Rowan sank back in her chair. She looked dazed. Her eyes closed.
Across the lawn, Mona came flying, silver tray in hand, with several bottles of liqueurs and bright shiny glasses. She set this down on the iron table.
“Now, let me see,” she said. “We have three human beings.” She put the glasses in front of Stirling, Michael, Dolly Jean, and Rowan. “Oh, no, four human beings. Okay, now here you are, all human beings have glasses.”
I thought Quinn would perish from mortification on the spot. I merely cringed.
Michael picked up the bottle of Irish Mist and poured himself a small amount. Dolly Jean took the bottle of Amaretto for herself and swallowed a good mouthful. Stirling poured a shiny nugget of cognac and sipped it. Rowan ignored the proceedings.
A silence ensued in which Mona took her old place.
“Rowan,” I said, “you were trying to explain how you knew about us. You were talking about Merrick Mayfair, about when she disappeared from the Talamasca.”
“Oh, that’s a good one,” said Dolly Jean. She drank more of the Amaretto. “I can’t wait for this. Go on, Rowan, if you’ve a mind to talk for once, I want to hear it. Carry on as if I wasn’t here to cheer you along.”
“You have to understand what the Talamasca meant to us,” Rowan said. She paused. Then went on in a low voice, filling the quiet completely. “The Talamasca has known the Mayfair family through all its thirteen generations. Mona understands. Quinn, I don’t know that you ever understood, but we could tell them anything. They knew all about the Taltos. They knew. It was like going to Confession to go to them. They have the solidity and the eternal self-confidence of the Roman Church. And Stirling was so patient. Mona loved him.”
“Don’t talk about us as if we’re not here,” said Mona.
“Patience, Mona,” I said.
Rowan continued as if she hadn’t even heard:
“Then it was Dolly Jean, our precious Dolly Jean Mayfair from Fontevrault Plantation, who said that Merrick Mayfair had become a Blood Child: ‘Sure enough! That’s what happened to that one!’ Dolly Jean knew it. She’d called Tante Oscar. Tante Oscar had told her.”
Rowan smiled at Dolly Jean, who nodded and took another huge mouthful of Amaretto. Rowan leaned over and so did Dolly Jean and their foreheads touched, and then they kissed tenderly on the mouth. It was as if these two women were lovers.
“You do right by me, now,” Dolly Jean retorted. “Or I’ll shout you down. Truth is I can’t recollect what happened.”
“Hush up,” said Rowan softly, with another tender smile.
Dolly Jean nodded and took another drink.
Rowan sat back and went on:
“Dolly Jean had Henri take her and me downtown in the big car to visit Tante Oscar. It was the French Quarter, off the beaten path. Tante Oscar’s an elderly colored Mayfair who lives up three flights of stairs in a flat with a balcony from which you could see the River. Tante Oscar was over one hundred years old. Still is.”
Rowan’s words were gaining speed.
“Tante Oscar was wearing at least three sets of clothes, dresses over dresses, and at least four fancy worked scarves around her neck, and topped by a long maroon coat with golden fur along the collar, I think it was foxes, little foxes with heads and tails, I don’t know, and she had a ring on every bony finger, and a long oval face, and jet black hair, and huge egg-shaped yellow eyes. And there was wall-to-wall furniture in the flat, three buffets in a row, and three desks in a row, and dining room tables in three rooms, and couches and chairs all over, and carpets laid on carpets, and little tables with doilies and bisque figurines and photographs in frames, and sterling silver tea services everywhere you looked. Armoires were bulging with clothes and all askew.”
Dolly Jean began to cackle as she took another drink, and Mona laughed under her breath. Rowan continued as if she didn’t hear them.
“Gorgeous little twelve-year-old mulatto children were running everywhere, getting us coffee and cake, and getting the mail, and running downstairs for the newspapers. There was a TV on in every room and an overhead fan blowing. I’ve never seen such beautiful children as I’ve seen in New Orleans. The colors of these children were simply indescribable.
“Tante Oscar went to the refrigerator, which she called the ice box though it was brand-new, and opened it to show us that the telephone was in there because she never talked on it, and there was the telephone all right, right there in the middle of the milk and the yogurts and the jars of jam, but when Dolly Jean had called, Tante Oscar had heard the ring through the refrigerator door because it was Dolly Jean, and she had answered.
“Tante Oscar told us that Blood Children had been living in the Quarter for two hundred years, feeding off the blood of the riffraff, and Merrick Mayfair was now one of them. It was meant to be. Merrick Mayfair’s old Oncle Vervain had foreseen it, that his beloved little Merrick Mayfair would one day walk with the Blood Children, and he had told Tante Oscar and no one else. Oncle Vervain had been a great Voodoo doctor, and everyone respected him, but when he saw that in the future, it broke his heart. Tante Oscar said that now Merrick Mayfair would live forever.”
I winced. If only I had seen that Light.… But how many chances would God give me?
“Of course Oncle Julien had tried to prevent this catastrophe—I think Oncle Julien is paying for his sins by wasting his time on earth—.”
“I like that very much,” I uttered before I could stop myself.
Her words flowed right on.
“—Tante Oscar explained to us. Oncle Julien had come in a dream to Merrick Mayfair’s Great Nananne when she was dying and told Great Nananne to give Merrick Mayfair to the Talamasca. But Tante Oscar said it was the curse of Oncle Julien that his interference in the world of the living always failed.”
“Did she really say such a thing?” I asked.
Michael smiled and shook his head. He looked at Mona and Mona was looking at him.
Rowan continued her tale:
“When I described the black-haired one, the one I’d seen walking, Tante Oscar knew him. She called him Louis. She said the Sign of the Cross would drive him off, though it had no power over him. He merely respected it. She said the one to fear was the blond-haired one who had a strange name and who, ‘talked like a gangster and looked like an angel.’ I never forgot those words, I thought they were so strange.”
She fixed me in her gaze. I was lost to her.
“And then years later and only days ago, you came into the double parlor at Blackwood Farm and Jasmine called you ‘Lestat’ and you talked like a gangster and looked like an angel. I knew what you were deep, deep down in my mind where I didn’t want to know. I knew. I could remember the camphor-ball smell of Tante Oscar’s apartment and the way she said, ‘the black-haired one will never drink if it means a struggle, but the blond-haired one, he’ll do terrible things to you. He’s the one to fear.’ ”
“It’s not true,” I said softly. “Even the damned can learn. It isn’t like it says in our prayer books. Even vampires and angels can learn. God has to be an all-merciful God. Nobody is beyond redemption.”
“Redemption!” she whispered. “How can I ever be redeemed?”
“Darling, don’t say that,” said Michael.
“You can never love this girl enough,” said Dolly Jean. “Every morning she gets up, eats breakfast and goes to Hell, I swear it.”
Rowan smiled at me. In the pale light she looked girl-like, the lineaments of her face so refined and smooth, her gray eyes resting for the moment before they began their feverish searching again.
Oh to know the kiss of your lips, for your love is better than blood.
A pause. Her lawfully wedded husb
and distracted, unaware, and Rowan’s eyes fixed on mine.
Forgive me.
“But I’m skipping all around in time,” she said. “This is not an orderly story, is it?” She looked around herself, as if surprised to discover the garden and the dark, and the bottles glimmering in the light and the pretty shine of the glasses.
“Go on, Rowan, please,” I said.
“Yes. Let me go back,” she said, “to when Merrick Mayfair disappeared, yes.” She nodded. “But overall, you see, I had heard and I had seen, and I told Michael these things, and Michael just listened as he always does to terrible things, with that ominous yet charming Celtic gloom growing ever greater in him year by year, but when I talked to Stirling I could see in his face that he understood everything. He wanted to meet Tante Oscar. And he did. He would only say, however, that they missed Merrick Mayfair, and nothing more than that.
“Then Lauren Mayfair, you know, the great lawyer of the firm of Mayfair and Mayfair, who knows all things legal and therefore knows nothing, she took it into her arid little mind to find out about this strange disappearance of a Mayfair who might just need her white family. Crap.”
“Right on,” said Dolly Jean. She took another slug from the bottle. “Lauren was just up in arms to find out a Mayfair of any kind was in the Talamasca, that’s what she didn’t like.”
“She knew the house where Merrick Mayfair had been born,” Rowan said, “and she checked it out and found that Merrick Mayfair still owned it. She went downtown. And whatever she saw frightened her. She called me. She said, ‘It’s renovated like a palace down there in a dangerous neighborhood, and all the neighbors are terrified to go near it. I want you to come with me.’ And so I said I would. I was still laughing from that strange encounter with Tante Oscar. I thought, why not go downtown? I only have a hospital and research center to finish. Who am I to say that I’m too busy to do it?
“Dolly Jean said that we were fools to do such a thing—you just don’t go near a Blood Child, specially if you know what it is, but if we were determined to go then do it after nightfall. A Blood Child only walked in the dark, and Dolly Jean said furthermore that we were to go by the front gate, very strictly, and knock on the front door, and not to do an untoward thing that would give a Blood Child legitimate cause to hurt us. (Dolly Jean was nodding and cackling all through this speech.) Then we rang up Tante Oscar, who heard our ring through the refrigerator door, and said all the same things all over again. Lauren Mayfair was fit to be tied, as they say here. She said she had had a bellyful of congenital insanity in the Mayfair family before her twenty-first birthday. She said if one more person used the words ‘Blood Child’ to her she would sue. So I said, naturally, ‘Well, why don’t we call them vampires?’ ”
