pink cotton dress. Yet he’d seemed moved by her show of affection, an emotion quite entirely separate. His eyes had glassed over for a minute, and then he’d said he had to go walk outside. He’d said something about Mardi Gras Night, about passing this house once when he’d been a boy, on Mardi Gras Night, when they’d been on their way to see Comus.
No, nothing really wrong with his heart now at all, except that the doctors kept scaring him, and giving him much too much medicine, though he did now and then have those little pains, he’d told Ryan, which reminded him of what he could and couldn’t do. Well, Mona would find out what he could or couldn’t do.
She stood by the pool for a long moment, thinking of all the bits and pieces of the story-Rowan run off, some kind of miscarriage in the front hall, blood everywhere, and Michael bruised and knocked unconscious in the pool. Could the miscarriage account for the smell? She’d asked Pierce earlier if he could smell it. No. She’d asked Bea. No. She’d asked Ryan. Of course not. Stop going around looking for mysterious things! She thought of Aunt Gifford’s drawn face as she stood in the hospital corridor on Christmas Night, when they’d thought Michael was dying, and the way she had looked at Uncle Ryan.
“You know what’s happened!” she had said.
“That’s superstition and madness,” Ryan had answered. “I won’t listen to it. I won’t let you speak of it in front of the children.”
“I don’t want to talk about it in front of the children,” Aunt Gifford had said, her jaw trembling. “I don’t want the children to know! Keep them away from that house, I’m begging you. I’ve been begging you all along.”
“Like it’s my fault!” Uncle Ryan had whispered. Poor Uncle Ryan, the family lawyer, the family protector. Now that was a fine example of what conformity could do to one, because Uncle Ryan was in every respect a super- looking male animal, of the basically heroic type, with square jaw, and blue eyes, and good strong shoulders and a flat belly and a musician’s hands. But you never noticed it. All you saw when you looked at Uncle Ryan was his suit, and his oxford-cloth shirt, and the shine on his Church’s shoes. Every male at Mayfair and Mayfair dressed in exactly this fashion. It’s a wonder the women didn’t, that they had evolved a style which included pearls and pastel colors, and heels of varying height. Real wingdings, thought Mona. When she was a multimillionaire mogul, she would cut her own style.
But during that argument in the hallway, Uncle Ryan had showed how desperate he was, and how worried for Michael Curry; he hadn’t meant to hurt Aunt Gifford. He never did.
Then Aunt Bea had come and quieted them both. Mona would have told Aunt Gifford then and there that Michael Curry wasn’t going to die, but if she had she would have frightened Gifford all the more. You couldn’t talk to Aunt Gifford about anything.
And now that Mona’s mother was pretty much drunk all the time, you couldn’t talk to her either, and Ancient Evelyn often did not answer at all when Mona spoke to her. Of course when she did, her mind was all there. “Mentation perfect,” said her doctor.
Mona would never forget the time she’d asked to visit the house when it was still ruined and dirty, when Deirdre sat in her rocker. “I had a dream last night,” she’d explained to her mother and to Aunt Gifford. “Oncle Julien was in it, and he told me to climb the fence, whether Aunt Carlotta was there or not, and to sit in Deirdre’s lap.”
This was all true. Aunt Gifford had gotten hysterical. “Don’t you ever go near Cousin Deirdre.” And Alicia had laughed and laughed and laughed. Ancient Evelyn had merely watched them.
“Ever see anybody with your Aunt Deirdre when you pass there?” Alicia had asked.
“CeeCee, how could you!” Gifford had demanded.
“Only that young man who’s always with her.”
That had put Aunt Gifford over the edge. After that Mona was technically sworn to stay away from First and Chestnut, to never set eyes on the house again. Of course she didn’t pay much attention. She walked by whenever she could. Two of her friends from Sacred Heart lived pretty close to First and Chestnut. Sometimes she went home with them after school, just to have the excuse. They loved to have her help with their homework, and she was glad to do it. And they told her things about the house.
“The man’s a ghost,” her mother had whispered to her right in front of Gifford. “Don’t ever tell the others that you’ve seen him. But you can tell me. What did he look like?” And then Alicia had gone into shrieking laughter again until Gifford had actually begun to cry. Ancient Evelyn had said nothing, but she’d been listening to all of this. You could tell when she listened by the alert look in her small blue eyes. What in God’s name did she think of her two granddaughters?
Gifford had taken Mona aside later, as they walked to Gifford’s car (Jaguar sedan, very Gifford, very Metairie). “Please believe me when I tell you to stay away from there,” she’d said. “Nothing but evil comes out of that house.”
Mona had tried to promise. But it hadn’t interested her much at all; indeed, the die was cast for her. She had to know all about that place even then. And now, after the quarrel of Rowan and Michael, it was top priority: get inside and find out.
Finding the Talamasca document on Ryan’s desk downtown had only tripled her curiosity. The File on the Mayfair Witches. She’d scooped it up and hurried out to a lunch counter to read the whole thing, there had been no stopping her, before anybody caught on to what she’d done. Donnelaith, Scotland. Didn’t the family own property there still? Oh, what a history. The details about Antha and Deirdre of course were the real scandal. And it was perfectly clear to her that this document, in its original form, had gone on to include Michael and Rowan Mayfair. But it didn’t anymore.
Aaron Lightner had broken off “the narrative,” as he referred to it in those pages, before the birth of “the present designee.” This was not to violate the privacy of the living, though the Order feels that the family has every right to know its history, insofar as such a history is known by anyone and recorded anywhere.
Hmmmm. These Talamasca people were amazing. “And Aunt Bea is about to marry one of them,” thought Mona. That was like hearing that a juicy big fly had just been snared in one’s sticky web.
That Rowan Mayfair had slipped through Mona’s clutches, that Mona had never had five minutes alone with Rowan, that was a tragedy to be filed under WSMONADEFEAT.
But Mona had caught the very strong impression that Rowan was afraid of whatever power she had, just as the others were afraid.
Well, these powers didn’t scare Mona. More and more Mona felt like a dancer just coming into a time of perfect strength. So she was only five feet one inch tall, and not likely to grow much taller. Her body was maturing with every passing day.
She liked being strong and unusual. She liked reading people’s thoughts and seeing things that other people couldn’t see. The fact that the man she’d seen was a ghost thrilled her. And she hadn’t really been surprised to hear it. If only she had gotten into the house in those days.
Well, those days were gone, weren’t they? And now was now. And now was really quite terrific. The disappearance of Rowan Mayfair had stirred up the family; people were revealing things. And here was this great house, empty except for Michael Curry, and for her.
The smell by the pool had dissipated somewhat, or she’d gotten used to it. But it was still there.
And the moment was all hers.
She proceeded to the back screen porch and checked one by one the locks of the many kitchen doors. If only one door had been forgotten…but no, that stiff-necked Henri had locked up the place like a fort. Well, no problem. Mona knew how to get in this house.
She crept around to the very back of the house, to the end of the old kitchen, which was now a bathroom, and she looked up at the bathroom window. Who would lock a window that high? And how would she get to it? Pull up one of the big plastic garbage cans which weighed almost nothing at all. She went down the alley, caught the can by its handle, and what do you know, it rolled. How efficient! And then she climbed on top of it, knees first, then feet crushing down the flexible black plastic lid, and she pried open the green shutters, and pushed at the sash.
Up it went, just that easy. It didn’t jam until there was an opening quite big enough for her to get in. She was going to get her dress dirty on the dusty sill, but it didn’t matter. She gave herself a boost with both hands, and slipped through the window, and all but tumbled to the carpeted floor.
