Those evenings her husband was home when she hosted meetings, Mrs. Delacourt would call, “Snitchy”—his given name was Richard—“come say hello to the ladies.” Mr. Delacourt was a fruit importer, for the most part, whose travels to South America and Florida kept him bronze as an overripe pear. Obligingly, he wished the roomful a good evening, blinked his sunspot eyes, and departed with a flick of a wave.
After women won the vote, Mrs. Delacourt committed herself to a cause as controversial as her former passion. Mrs. Sanger’s materials were strewn about the house, mixed with issues of The Saturday Evening Post and The Times-Picayune. Whenever I could, I stole peeks at the articles, piecing together complications of the human body, the struggles between and the mysteries behind them. Each time before Mother and I left, Mrs. Delacourt always offered a stack of booklets, urging Mother to pass them along to other women.
“Gertrude,” Mother said, “all the ladies I know understand such things.”
“Or so they would have you think, Claire, dear.”
Because Mother wouldn’t take them, I secreted a pamphlet within the book I was reading and took it home. The anatomical names I knew from medical books and my mother’s instruction. I understood how babies came to be, so clinically had my mother explained the phenomenon. What the pamphlet described were simple methods to avoid creating them at all, something Mother must have thought was not yet important for me to know. Mother also had not mentioned pleasure, not precisely. The act that can create a child is special and private, to be shared within the bonds of love, she had said. In Mrs. Sanger’s pamphlet, I read that a woman should expect and feel satisfaction, physical and emotional. I wasn’t entirely sure what sensations were involved and where a woman felt them, but I knew, instinctively, that Mrs. Sanger was absolutely right.
Now, as I wait for Mrs. Delacourt to answer my knock, I think of the well-worn pamphlet and how many typed carbon copies I have hidden in Newcomb’s library.
The door opens, and she hugs me. “Razi, dear, come in.”
We exchange small talk for a while over beef and vegetable soup.
“Still planning to attend medical school, yes?” She dips a toast triangle into the broth.
“I plan to practice in gynecology.”
“Only women understand women’s needs and pains.”
“Speaking of which. Do you still receive those pamphlets from New York?”
“You remember them?”
“I have a confession. I took one when I was twelve.”
Mrs. Delacourt didn’t flinch. “Good. Did your mother know?”
“She never mentioned it.” I pause. “Are you ever afraid of being caught with them?”
Mrs. Delacourt spoons the last bite into her wide mouth. The back of her hand swirls with veins. Silver hair mingles brightly within the black still remaining. She never seemed older than my mother, although there is a seventeen-year difference between them. I realize Mrs. Delacourt is old enough to be my grandmother.
“Afraid?” she replies, dabbing a napkin at her lips. “No. I’m appalled that this information is as illegal as alcohol. But I’m also aware that I am a woman of privilege. My husband could easily keep my name out of the papers.”
“What do you think would happen to me?”
“You’d have your picture on the front page. I think the world of your father, but he hasn’t the power to protect you.”
“Do you think I’d go to jail?”
“It depends on whether the city is in the mood for a good scandal.”
“It’s always ready for that.”
“True.” She fixes her strange eyes on mine. “Why are you asking me such questions?”
“I’ve been copying pages of the old pamphlet and leaving them in certain books at Newcomb’s library. Whenever I overhear a girl talk about these matters, I mention that I’ve seen the answers she needs.”
“Well, well.” She disappears into the butler’s pantry and comes out with a crate marked Apples. “Save time for your studies and distribute these instead.” She places several pieces of fruit on the table, reaches into the space, and pulls out a stack of pamphlets. When I thumb through one, the paper is crisp. Mrs. Delacourt sits down again, polishing an apple on the napkin near her bowl.
“Thank you,” I say. “We’re officially in cahoots. You’re my booklegger now.”
She laughs. “When you’re a doctor, use that power wisely, Razi. Don’t let it corrupt your principles. Don’t forget why you chose that vocation.” She pauses. “I do hope you will give part of your time to help ladies unlike yourself. The ones who haven’t much money, many of whom couldn’t read what’s in that box.”
“Of course.”
“Claire is so very proud of you, dear.” Mrs. Delacourt clamps her large incisors into the apple and slowly grinds the pulp. “This is a new era altogether. What I wouldn’t give to be your age now. To be able to decide one’s future based on one’s own will, not on the whims or demands of her father or husband.”
“People still look hard at girls with minds of their own. A girl has to be tough as an eight-minute egg to take it, Mrs. Delacourt.”
“You’re making me feel old. Call me Gertrude, please, dear.”
“Well, then, Gertrude,” I hear myself begin, “there is something I’ve been thinking about. You’re the only person I know who could help me. I’ve had an idea for something I call Boyless Parties.”
MY FRIEND and favorite pupil, Lionel, died four days before 1999 ended. He recalled falling back on his bed when a dull burst spread under his skull. He thought the light that appeared was a particularly bad migraine announcing itself. He dismissed his father’s voice as part of a dream. I found him two weeks after the aneurysm killed him.
Word spread quickly in the Garden District about the strange occurrences in a particular apartment. Rarely did one of us lose control and do the damage I’d heard described. I assumed that I would be dealing with someone who didn’t know he was between. When I went to investigate, the apartment was a wreck. Even the doorknobs were out of place. Everything that could ignite had tiny burn marks.
“Hey, there. What’s your name?” I asked. His blurry figure was in front of a window with a torn blind.
“Well, twenty-three skidoo. I’m Lionel Mulberry. Who are you?”
“Razi Nolan.” I moved closer to him. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine, thank you. How are you?”
“Fine, thanks. Do you know where you are?”
“I’m in my apartment.”
“Who made this mess?”
“A ghost.”
I smiled. Perhaps he knew he was dead after all, but dangerous if the destruction was done on purpose. “How do you know?”
“Well, I didn’t see the S.O.B. who did it, so it must have been a ghost.”
“Am I a ghost?”
“You could be. I dream the craziest things after a migraine.”
“How did your dream start?” This was one of my warm-up questions.
“I heard my father’s voice say, ‘Lionel, come with me, son.’ And I told him to leave me alone. He insisted that I go with him. He used this nice tone of voice he hadn’t used since I was twelve.” His features hadn’t settled yet, but it was obvious from what was there that his eyes were squinting with suspicion. I could see the contours of him with the help of the sunlight. He had been a tall man with sloping shoulders. Long hands and feet.
“How did you feel?”
“Peaceful. The way I do when the pain is gone. Then I felt as if I were falling up. Better than falling down. You know, if you hit the ground in a dream, you die.” He smiled again.
“Why do you think you dreamed your father’s voice? How do you know he wasn’t calling you somewhere? Maybe you’re dead.”
“My father barely spoke ten words to me in my entire adult life. You’d think God would be smarter than to send him to get me.”
“What happened exactly four months before your fourth birthda
y at four in the afternoon?”
“I had a snack at the kitchen table. Twinkies and milk. Mom read Atlas Shrugged again over the stove. She was making pork chops.”
“Date and year?”
“May 3, 1958.”
“The weather?”
“Sunny. But a rainstorm was coming. Why are you asking me these questions?”
“Don’t you find it strange that you can remember that much detail?”
“The human mind’s a funny library.” His gauzy form agitated, started to swirl like drops of cream stirred slowly into black coffee.
The room was getting hot. I quizzed him on more dates until the air snapped.
“I want to wake up. I want to wake up now.”
“You’re awake, Lionel. You’re between.”
“Between what?”
“Life and whatever comes next. You’re dead.”
“No, I’m not.”
“You are.”
“Prove it.”
“Did someone take your body earlier in this dream?”
“Yes.”
“Can you tell me everything that has happened since then?”
“Yes, but you can do all kinds of things in a dream.”
Lionel wasn’t in denial. He simply didn’t know he was dead, and because he didn’t know, he had tried to go about the business of living as usual. That’s why his apartment was in a shambles. He had become more powerful and dangerous without meaning to be as his new form started to reconfigure. It was time for the moment of reality. This question never failed.
“When was the last time you had a bowel movement?” I asked.
“Fifteen days ago.” He looked at me. His eyes had been hazel. His mouth was a connect-the-dots oval. “Oh, shit.”
PART TWO
AMY DIDN’T WATCH the rest of the DVD Chloe had sent her, but I did. There were only a few minutes left. The footage was taken at a party. People waved at the camera and talked to Chloe, the voice behind the lens. The microphone hummed with music and chatter. The shot moved through a dining room next to a narrow kitchen doorway. On the wall behind Amy was a calendar, August 1992. She hugged the dark-haired young man, and he clearly didn’t want them to be interrupted. They shared a strangely intimate moment for such a celebratory atmosphere. He was talking, but his voice did not come through. I strained through the noise and read his lips—It’ll be okay, he said. We’ll have the whole drive up. Sex in at least one strange bed. He nudged her, and she smiled. Thanksgiving will be here before you know it. This is only temporary.
For several days after she hid the disc, the essence of another man billowed intermittently throughout the house. More often, she snapped her head toward doorways and furniture corners for no discernible reason. Amy was not reacting to me, I knew. There was another reason for her jitters.
Within that time, Amy stopped watching Scott as he slept before she left for work. Then one morning, and another, and each one after, she didn’t kiss him good-bye. The only habit she kept was to keep him warm.
Scott didn’t notice the change immediately. Amy’s kiss had been a gentle alarm that nudged him closer to consciousness. He never needed the ticking Big Ben that he set in case he didn’t wake up on his own. But once the kisses stopped, Scott woke up to the old-fashioned brriinnng of the clock.
Each morning, he raised himself out of bed, scratched appropriately, stretched, and went into the kitchen. He had a small glass of juice and a few peanuts before he put on some clothes he had casually ironed. He ran at least four times a week, every Saturday morning with a group. When the Big Ben started to wake him up, he began to take vitamins, run a little longer, and read less at night. Within a couple of weeks, he was grumpy and frustrated.
“Something’s wrong with me.” Scott clicked off the lamp near the bed.
I could hear him from my favorite spot in the house, the rocking chair.
“Hmm?” Amy said.
“The alarm clock’s been waking me up in the morning. It’s like my body forgot how to wake up on its own.”
“Take some vitamins.”
“I am taking vitamins.”
“You’ve been working late shifts again. Maybe that’s it.”
“It’s like I’m sleeping too hard to hear your alarm. You know, like it wakes me up before I wake up?”
“Could be.”
Sheets rustled, and flesh whispered against flesh.
“I’m tired, Scott.”
“A quickie.”
“Too much trouble.”
“Then we don’t have to do that.” Elastic snapped, and the sound pitch dropped.
“Honey, please. Maybe tomorrow. I’m really tired.”
For a couple of minutes, all was quiet.
“What are you doing?” Amy asked.
“What?”
“That breathing. Opposite mine.”
“I’m just trying to relax here. You like it when I pull you into me.”
“That’s fine. But the other thing— Breathe on your own. Good night.”
The bedsheets rustled, and a pillow poofed. “Love you.” Scott’s voice had projected into the front of the house. He was facing their bedroom door, not her, when he said it.
“Love you, too.”
A metallic smell—hot steel, blood—startled me. The odor wafted into the room where I watched moth shadows flit across the floor. There was violence connected to whatever memory had released it. For a moment, I was distracted from Andrew’s scent, then reminded again. I thought of his bloodstains on the inside of the bookcase’s left drawer and wondered how the wound had healed. Clean cut, jagged scar. He could never be aired completely from the possession he loved so much, the oil of his hands rubbed deep into the patina, dead skin cells caught in dark, draftless crevices.
ANDREW’S BLOOD drips on the floor, from the straight cut in his right palm down to his elbow. He narrows his eyes when he turns on the desk lamp. With no sign of pain, he pulls the glass from his hand. Blood surges toward his wrist. He takes his fine-woven white shirt and twists it around the wound. I stare at his eyes. That missing crescent of blue through his iris, an illusion, a trick of light, isn’t it? I reach to hold the place where he’s hurt, then pull back. I cannot help, not now. Not after what I’ve done.
PART OF ME wants to find Noble. I’ve been between six weeks, and he’s told me some of the pertinent facts. He has explained how to handle circumstances like this, but we never discussed how to release a child. There is no reason to take her home, even if this naked three-year-old near my hand could tell me where she lived. The grieving parents could not welcome their daughter home, and little Donna could not understand why they’d ignore her. Instead, I lead her to the only place I can think to go.
I keep her attention by reciting nursery rhymes she doesn’t know. I am grateful that the repetition is so automatic because this calms me. It is familiar and requires no thought.
“Carry me,” the child says. “No more walking. It’s raining.”
“Donna, you’re a big girl. We don’t have much farther.”
For a moment, we slip into a tiny garden. Thunder rumbles several miles away. Donna no longer seems to mind the rain and begins to sniff the flowers. I ask her questions about how she was feeling the last time she saw her momma. Donna tells me that her throat hurt and she couldn’t breathe.
“Come here. Open your mouth.” She obliges. When I look into the space, the back of her throat is a thick black membrane. Diphtheria.
Is what I am about to do, in the next few moments, few hours, perhaps few days, the right thing? I pause and pat the air near my hip. She sits with her flower. She shifts it from one hand to the other as if the stem irritates her fingertips. “Now, this is hard to explain, so I want you to listen. That flower in your hand, we are very much like flowers. We need air and food and water. Your flower can’t get these things anymore because, see here, the stem is broken. That’s how it got what it needed to grow and stay pretty. And you, when you stopped breat
hing, your little heart stopped beating. That happened to me, too. Now we need our breath and our hearts to be alive. That’s when we can eat and cry and go to the potty and—hug our daddies tight. But when those things stop, that means we’re dead. Do you know what ‘dead’ is?”
She looks at me as if I’m stupid. “It means you go to heaven.”
“Is that where you are now?”
“No. That’s where Daddy is. Momma said Daddy would meet me in heaven.”
“Did she tell you who else you would see?”
“Angels.”
I deliberately lead us through a back entrance of St. Elizabeth’s. I don’t want Donna to even glimpse the two beautiful, lifeless white angels that flank the front porch. They would only confuse her. Quickly, I move Donna through the orphanage to find the infirmary. I realize we are close when a desperate antiseptic smell fills a hallway.
I search the room. In a corner, past a row of beds, I see two dolls. Donna cannot be expected to heed the last rule of being between, so I point out the toys. “Play-pretties!” She cradles a ragged doll in her arms and begins to sing a strangely melodic little tune of her own. “I can’t find my dollies, dollies, dollies, with hair of gold and hair of black. I can’t find Momma, Momma, Momma, with hands not soft but kiss that is.”
Down the long corridor between the beds, a Daughter of Charity bends toward a table. Her starched white linen cornette hovers like great butterfly wings; the deep blue habit that drapes from her shoulders to her feet is nothing but a shadow in the dark.
I don’t know whether the sick girls have any of the diseases that devastate neighborhoods and orphanages so often. I think of Donna’s black throat and know it’s likely that diphtheria has made its mysterious way throughout the city. What mimics nausea fills my form as I allow myself to do what Noble told me—find the one nearest to death and wait.
The Mercy of Thin Air Page 7
