by Anne Rice
“Metairie, ma’am. I already know. Others are calling.”
What was in Metairie? What? What was he saying? A huge truck had bounced and rattled across the intersection and down towards Carondolet. Nuisance. And look at those town houses over there! Good Lord, so they had torn down that beautiful house too, idiots. I am surrounded by idiots.
She pushed at her hair. The young man was pulling at her arm. “Get away from me,” she said, or tried to say. What had she been discussing with this young man? Indeed, she did not know. And what was she doing here of all places? Had he just asked her that very question?
“Let me put you in a cab for home, or I’ll take you there myself.”
“You will not,” she said, and as she looked at the flowers behind the glass she remembered. She walked on, past him, turning off the Avenue and going into the Garden District and towards the cemetery. Always been one of her favorite walks this way to see the Mayfair tomb when she passed the gates, and lo and behold, Commander’s Palace was still there. She could see the awnings all the way from here. How many a year had it been since she dined inside! Of course Gifford was always begging to take her.
Lunch with Gifford at Commander’s, and Ryan such a proper shiny-faced boy. Hard to believe a child like that was a Mayfair, a great-grandson of Julien. But more and more the Mayfairs had taken on that shiny look. Gifford always ordered the Shrimp Remoulade, and never spilt a drop of the sauce on her scarf or her blouse.
Gifford. Nothing really could have happened to Gifford.
“Young man,” she said.
He walked beside her holding her arm, perplexed, superior, confused, proud.
“What happened to my grandchild? Tell me. What did Fielding Mayfair tell you? I am so distraught. Don’t think me a forgetful old woman, and let go of my arm. I don’t need you. What happened to Gifford Mayfair, I’m asking you now.”
“I don’t know for sure, ma’am,” he said. “They found her in the sand. She’d lost a lot of blood, some kind of hemorrhage they said. But I don’t know any more than that. She was dead by the time they got her to the hospital. That’s all I know, and her husband is on his way there now to find out everything.”
“Well, of course he is on his way,” she said. She jerked her arm free. “I thought I told you to let me go.”
“I’m afraid you’ll fall, Ancient Evelyn. I’ve never seen you so far from home.”
“What are we talking about, son? Eight blocks? I used to make this walk all the time. Used to be a little drugstore there on the corner of Prytania and Washington. Used to stop for ice cream. Feed Laura Lee ice cream. Please, do, let go of my arm!”
He looked so crushed, so hurt, so frozen and sorry. Poor thing. But when you were old and weak, your authority was all you had left, and it could crumble in an instant. If she fell now, if her leg went out from under her-But no, she would not let that happen!
“Well, bless your soul, you are a sweet boy. I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings, but please don’t talk to me as if I were addle-brained, for I am not. Walk me across Prytania Street. It’s too wide. Then you go back and fix the flowers for my darling girl, won’t you, and how do you know who I am, may I ask?”
“I bring your flowers on your birthday, ma’am, lots and lots of flowers every year. You know my name. My name is Hanky. Don’t you remember me? I wave when I pass the gate.”
It wasn’t said with reproach, but he was highly suspicious now and very likely to take action, to force her into a cab, or worse, to go call someone to head her off, for it was perfectly obvious that she ought not to be able to make this trek alone.
“Ah, yes, Hanky, I do remember you of course, and your father was Harry who went in the Vietnam War. And then there was your mother, who moved back to Virginia.”
“Yes, ma’am, you’ve got it all right. You’ve got it perfect.” How delighted he was. That was the most maddening and annoying aspect of old age. If you could add two and two people clapped for you! They clapped. It was true. It was pathetic. Of course she remembered Harry. He’d delivered flowers to them for years and years. Or was that old Harry? Oh, Lord, Julien, why have I lived this long? For what? What am I doing?
There was the white wall of the cemetery.
“Come on, young Hanky, be a nice boy and cross me over. I have to go,” she said.
“Ancient Evelyn, please let me drive you home. Let me call your grandson-in-law.”
“That sot, you twit!” She turned on him full face. “I’m going to hit you with this walking stick.” She laughed in spite of herself at the idea of it, and he laughed too.
“But ma’am, aren’t you tired? Don’t you want to rest? Come back into the florist shop and rest.”
She felt too weary suddenly to say another word. Why speak? They never listened.
She planted her feet on the corner and held tight to her cane with both hands and stared down the leafy corridor of Washington Avenue. The best oaks in the city, she often thought, all the way to the river. Should she give up? Something was terribly wrong, terribly terribly wrong, and her mission, what had it been? Good God, she could not recollect.
An old white-haired gentleman stood opposite, was he as old as she? And he smiled at her. He smiled and he waved for her to come on. What a dandy he was! And at his age. It made her laugh to see such colorful clothes, the yellow silk waistcoat! By God, that was Julien. Julien Mayfair! It gave her such a great and pleasurable shock, she felt it all over her face, as if someone had touched her with a cool cloth and wakened her. Look at him. Julien! Waving to her to come on, hurry it up.
And then he was gone, simply gone, yellow waistcoat and all, the way he always did it, the stubborn dead, the crazy dead, the puzzling dead! But she had remembered everything. Mona was up at that house. Gifford had suffered a fatal loss of blood, and Ancient Evelyn had to go to First Street. Julien knew she must go on. That was good enough for her.
“You let him touch you!” Gifford had asked her, in amazement, CeeCee laughing in that snide, silly way.
“My dears, I adored it.”
If only she could have said such a thing to Tobias and to Walker. Nights before Laura Lee’s birth she’d unlocked the attic door and she had walked on her own to the hospital. The old men had not been told until the child was safe in her arms.
“Don’t you see what that bastard has done?” Walker had cried. “It’s to plant the witches’ seeds! This is a witch too!”
How frail was Laura Lee. Was that a witch’s seed? If it was, then only the cats had known it. Think of the way they had crowded about Laura Lee, arching their backs and rubbing themselves on her thin little legs. Laura Lee with the witch’s finger which she had not passed on to Alicia or Gifford, thank God!
The light turned green.
Ancient Evelyn began to walk across the street. The young man talked and talked, but she paid him no mind. She walked on, beside the whitewashed walls, next to the quiet and invisible dead, the properly buried dead, and by the time she reached the gates in the middle of the block, young Hanky-of-the-flowers was nowhere about, and she was not going to look back to see what he had done or where he’d gone or if he was rushing back to his flower shop to call the patrol for her. She stopped at the gates. She could just see the edge of the Mayfair tomb down there in the middle of the block, jutting out ever so slightly into the path. She knew everyone inside, she could knock on every rectangle of stone. “Hello in there, my darlings.”
Gifford wouldn’t be buried there, oh, no. Gifford would be buried out in Metairie. Country club Mayfairs, she thought. They had always called them that, even in Cortland’s time, or was it Cortland who started that expression to describe his own children? Cortland who had whispered in her ear once, “Daughter, I love you,” so quick the country club Mayfairs couldn’t hear.
Gifford, my darling Gifford.
She imagined Gifford in her lovely red wool suit, and white blouse with a soft silk bow at the neck. Gifford wore gloves, but only to drive. She had
been putting them on, very carefully, caramel leather gloves. She looked younger than Alicia now, though she was not. She cared for herself, groomed herself, loved other people.
“I can’t stay for Mardi Gras this year,” she’d said. “I just can’t.” She’d come to tell them she was driving to Destin.
“Well, I hope you don’t expect me to receive everybody here!” Alicia had cried. Utter panic. She’d dropped the magazine on the porch. “I can’t do all that. I can’t get the ham and the bread. I can’t. I won’t. I’ll lock up the house. I’m not well. And Aunt Evelyn just sits there and sits there. Where is Patrick? You should stay here and help me. Why don’t you do something about Patrick? Do you know Patrick drinks in the morning now? He drinks all morning. Where is Mona? Goddamnit, Mona went out without telling me. Mona is always going out without telling me. Somebody should put a leash on Mona. I need Mona! Board up the damned windows, will you, before you leave?”
Gifford had remained so calm.
“They’re all going to First Street this year, CeeCee,” Gifford had said. “You don’t have to do anything except what you always do, no matter how you plan to do otherwise.”
“Oh, you are so mean to me. Did you come uptown just to say this to me? And what about Michael Curry? They say he almost died on Christmas Day, may I ask why he is giving a party on Shrove Tuesday?” Alicia was by that time trembling with indignation and rage at the sheer madness of life, at the utter lack of logic to things, that anything could expect anything of her. After all, had she not practically killed herself just to secure that, from all responsibility she would be forever exempt? How much more liquor did it take?
“This Michael Curry nearly drowns and so what does he do? He gives a party? Doesn’t he know his wife is missing! His wife could be dead! What kind of man is he, this crazy Michael Curry! And who the hell said he could live in that house! What are they going to do about the legacy! What if Rowan Mayfair never comes back! Go on, go to Destin. Why should you care? Leave me here. It doesn’t matter! Go to hell.”
Wasted anger, wasted words, beside the point, always beside the point. Had Alicia said anything straightforward or honest in twenty years? Most likely not.
“They want to gather at First Street, CeeCee, it’s not my idea. I’m going away.” Gifford’s voice had been so soft that Alicia probably had not even heard, and those had been the last words her sister would ever speak to her. Oh, my darling, my darling dear, bend to kiss me again, kiss my cheek, now, hold my hand, even with your soft leather glove, I loved you my sweetheart, my grandbaby, no matter what I said. I did, I loved you.
Gifford.
Gifford’s car had driven away, as Alicia stood on the porch and swore. Barefoot and cold. She’d kicked the magazine. “So she just leaves. She just leaves. I can’t believe it. She just leaves. What am I supposed to do?”
Ancient Evelyn had spoken not a word. Words spoken to drunkards were truly words written in water. They vanished into the endless void in which the drunkard languished. Could a ghost be any worse off?
Gifford had tried and tried. Gifford was Mayfair through and through. Gifford had loved; fretted, yes, but loved.
Little girl with a conscience, on the floor of the library, “But should we just take these pearls?”
All doomed, that generation, the Mayfair children of the time of science and psychology. Better to have lived in the time of crinolines and carriages and voodooiennes. We are past our time. Julien knew.
But Mona wasn’t doomed, was she? Now that was a witch for this day and time. Mona at her computer, chewing gum and typing faster than any person in the universe. “If there was an Olympic race for typing, I’d win it.” And on the screen, all those charts and graphs. “See this? This is a Mayfair family tree. Know what I figured out?”
Art and magic will triumph in the end, Julien had said. I know it. Was the computer art and magic? Even the way the screen glowed in the dark, and that little voice box inside that Mona had programmed to say in an eerie flat way:
“Good morning, Mona. This is your computer talking to you. Don’t forget to brush your teeth.” It was perfectly frightening to see Mona’s room come alive at eight o’clock, what with the computer talking like that as the coffeepot gurgled and hissed, and the microwave oven went on to heat the rolls with a tiny beep, and CNN Headline News came alive and talking on the TV. “I like to wake up connected,” said Mona. The paperboy had learned to throw the Wall Street Journal up to the second floor porch outside her window.
Mona, to find Mona.
To find Mona, she was going to Chestnut Street. She had come so far.
Time to cross big Washington Avenue. She should have crossed it at the light back there, but then she might not have seen Julien. Everything works out. The morning was still and empty, and quiet. And the oaks made a church of the street. And there stood the old firehouse so deserted. Had the firemen gone away? But that was way off her course. She had to go down Chestnut Street now, and here would come the slippery sidewalks, the bricks and the stones, and it was best perhaps that she walked in the street itself, just along the parked cars, as she’d done years ago, rather than slip and fall. The cars came slow through these streets.
Soft and leafy as Paradise, the Garden District.
The traffic waited until she reached the curb, and then with a loud swoosh it moved on behind her. Yes, take to the street. And even here was the litter of Mardi Gras. What a shame, for shame.
Why doesn’t everyone come out and sweep the banquette? She felt sad suddenly that she had not done this herself this morning as was her plan. She had meant to go out. She liked to sweep. It took her forever. And Alicia would call down to her, “Come inside!” but she swept and swept.
“Miss Ancient Evelyn, you’ve been sweeping out here for hours,” Patricia would say.
But of course, why not? Will the leaves ever stop falling? Why, whenever she thought of Mardi Gras coming, all that entered her mind was that it was going to be fun to sweep the banquette after. So much rubble and trash. Sweep and sweep.
Only something this morning had come between her and the broom. What was it?
The Garden District was dead quiet. It really was as if no one had lived here. The noise of the Avenue was so much better. On the Avenue, you were never alone; even late at night the headlamps shone through the windows, and threw a cheery yellow glow into the mirrors. You could go outside in the very cool of the darkest morning, and stand on the corner and see the streetcar drift by, or a man strolling past, or a car creeping along with young men inside laughing and talking to each other, furtive yet happy.
On and on she walked. But they had destroyed the old houses here too, some of them. It was probably true, Mona’s observation, whatever it had been, something to do with architecture. A stunning lack of vision. A clash between science and imagination. “A misunderstanding,” Mona had said, “of the relationship of form and function.” Some forms succeed and some fail. Everything is form. Mona had said that. Mona would have loved Julien.
She came to Third Street now. Halfway there. It was nothing to cross these little streets. There was no traffic at all. No one was awake yet. On she walked, sure of herself on the asphalt that gleamed in the sun, with no evil cracks or crevices to trip her.
Julien, why don’t you come back? Why don’t you help me? Why are you always such a tease? Good God, Julien. I can play the Victrola now in the library. There is no one to stop me, just Michael Curry, that sweet man, and Mona. I can play the Victrola and say your name.
Ah, what a lovely perfume, the ligustrum in bloom. She had forgotten all about it. And there was the house, my Lord, look at the color of it. She had never known it to have much of a color at all, and now it was all bright and grayish violet, with shutters painted in green, and the fence very black against it.
Oh, it was restored! What a good thing Michael Curry had done.
And there, there on the upstairs porch he stood looking down at her. Michael Curry. Yes, that
was the man.
He was in his pajamas and very rumpled, robe open in front and he was smoking a cigarette. Like Spencer Tracy he looked, that chunky and Irish and rough, though his hair was black. Nice good-looking man with lots of black hair. And weren’t his eyes blue? Certainly seemed so.
“Hello there, Michael Curry,” she said. “I’ve come to see you. I’ve come to talk to Mona Mayfair.”
Good Lord, what a shock that gave him. How alarmed he was. But she sang it out loud and clear.
“I know Mona’s inside. You tell her to come out.”
And then there was her sleepy girl, in a white gown, all frazzled and yawning the way children do, as if no one is holding them accountable.
Up in the treetops they stood behind the black railing, and it struck her suddenly what had happened, where they had been together. Oh, good Lord, and Gifford had warned her about this, that Mona was “on the path” so to speak, and must be watched, and that child hadn’t been looking for the “Victrola at all, she’d been looking for Mary Beth’s style of Irish boy, Rowan Mayfair’s husband: Michael Curry.
Ancient Evelyn felt a lovely desire to laugh and laugh.
As Stella would have said, “What a scream!”
But Ancient Evelyn was tired and her fingers curled over the black wire of the fence and she was relieved as she bowed her head to hear the big front door open, to hear naked feet slap across the porch, that intimate unmistakable patter, and to see Mona standing there, until she realized what she had to tell Mona.
“What is it, Ancient Evelyn?” she asked. “What’s happened?”
“You didn’t see anything, child? She didn’t call your name? Think, my precious girl, before I tell you. No, it’s not your mother.”
And then Mona’s little-girl face crumpled and became wet with tears, and, opening the gate, she wiped at her eye with the back of her hand.
“Aunt Gifford,” she cried in a wee voice, so fragile and young and so unlike Mona the Strong, and Mona the Genius. “Aunt Gifford! And I had been so glad that she wasn’t here.”
