roots of the oaks. The cold wind bit at his naked fingers.
Cold wind. Yes. It was not summer after all, but winter, the sharp, freezing New Orleans winter, and they were rushing through the dark to see the last parade of Mardi Gras night, the Mystic Krewe of Comus.
Such a lovely name, he thought as he dreamed, but way back then he had also thought it wondrous. And far ahead, on St. Charles Avenue, he saw the torches of the parade and heard the drums which always scared him.
“Hurry, Michael,” his mother said. She almost pulled him off his feet. How dark the street was, how terrible this cold like the cold of the ocean.
“But look, Mom.” He pointed through the iron fence. He tugged on her hand. “There’s the man in the garden.”
The old game. She would say there was no man there, and they would laugh about it together. But the man was there, all right, just as he’d always been-way back at the edge of the great lawn, standing beneath the bare white limbs of the crepe myrtles. Did he see Michael on that night? Yes, it seemed he did. Surely they had looked at each other.
“Michael, we don’t have time for that man.”
“But Mom, he’s there, he really is … ”
The Mystic Krewe of Comus. The brass bands played their dark savage music as they marched by, the torches blazing. The crowds surged into the street. From atop the quivering papier-mache floats, men in glittering satin costumes and masks threw glass necklaces, wooden beads. People fought to catch them. Michael clung to his mother’s skirt, hating the sound of the drums. Trinkets landed in the gutter at his feet.
On the long way home, with Mardi Gras dead and done, and the streets littered with trash, and the air so cold that their breath made steam, he had seen the man again, standing as he was before, but this time he had not bothered to say so.
“Got to go home,” he whispered now in his sleep. “Got to go back there.”
He saw the long iron lace railings of that First Street house, the side porch with its sagging screens. And the man in the garden. So strange that the man never changed. And that last May, on the very last walk that Michael had ever taken through those streets, he had nodded to the man, and the man had lifted his hand and waved.
“Yes, go,” he whispered. But wouldn’t they give him a sign, the others who had come to him when he was dead? Surely they understood that he couldn’t remember now. They’d help him. The barrier is falling away between the living and dead. Come through. But the woman with the black hair said, “Remember, you have a choice.”
“But no, I didn’t change my mind. I just can’t remember.”
He sat up. The room was dark. Woman with the black hair. What was that around her neck? He had to pack now. Go to the airport. The doorway. The thirteenth one. I understand.
Aunt Viv sat beyond the living room door, in the glow of a single lamp, sewing.
He drank another swallow of the beer. Then he emptied the can slowly.
“Please help me,” he whispered to no one at all. “Please help me.”
He was sleeping again. The wind was blowing. The drums of the Mystic Krewe of Comus filled him with fear. Was it a warning? Why don’t you jump, said the mean housekeeper to the poor frightened woman at the window in the movie
I’ll fix up the house, he whispered. Let in the light. Estella, we shall be happy forever. This is not the school yard, not that long hollow hallway that leads to the cafeteria, with Sister Clement coming towards him. “You get back in that line, boy!” If she slaps me the way she slapped Tony Vedros, I’ll kill her.
Aunt Viv stood beside him in the dark.
“I’m drunk,” he said.
She put the cold beer in his hand, what a darling.
“God, that tastes so good.”
“There’s someone here to see you.”
“Who? Is it a woman?”
“A nice gentleman from England … ”
“No, Aunt Viv-”
“But he’s not a reporter. At least he says he’s not. He’s a nice gentleman. Mr. Lightner is his name. He says he’s come all the way from London. His plane from New York just landed and he came right to the front door.”
“Not now. You have to tell him to go away. Aunt Viv, I have to go back. I have to go to New Orleans. I have to call Dr. Morris. Where is the phone?”
He climbed out of the bed, his head spinning, and stood still for a moment until the dizziness passed. But it was no good. His limbs were leaden. He sank back into the bed, back into the dreams. Walking through Miss Havisham’s house. The man in the garden nodded again.
Someone had switched off the television. “Sleep now,” Aunt Viv said.
He heard her steps moving away. Was the phone ringing?
“Someone help me,” he whispered.
Three
JUST GO BY. Take a little walk across Magazine Street and down First and pass by that grand and dilapidated old house. See for yourself if the glass is broken out of the front windows. See for yourself if Deirdre Mayfair is still sitting on that side porch. You don’t have to go up and ask to see Deirdre.
What the hell do you think is going to happen?
Father Mattingly was angry with himself. It was a duty, really, to call on that family before he went back up north. He had been their parish priest once. He had known them all. And it had been well over a year since he’d been south, since he’d seen Miss Carl, since the funeral of Miss Nancy.
A few months ago, one of the young priests had written to say that Deirdre Mayfair had been failing badly. Her arms were drawn up now, close to the chest, with the atrophy that always sets in, in such cases.
And Miss Carl’s checks to the parish were coming in as regular as always-one every month now, it seemed- made out for a thousand dollars to the Redemptorist Parish, with no strings attached. Over the years, she had donated a fortune.
Father Mattingly ought to go, really, just to pay his respects and say a personal thank you the way he used to do years ago.
The priests in the rectory these days didn’t know the Mayfairs. They didn’t know the old stories. They’d never been invited to that house. They had come only in recent years to this sad old parish, with its dwindling congregation, its beautiful churches locked now on account of vandals, the older buildings in ruins.
Father Mattingly could remember when the earliest Masses each day were crowded, when there were weddings and funerals all week long in both St. Mary’s and St. Alphonsus. He remembered the May processions and the crowded novenas, Midnight Mass with the church jammed. But the old Irish and German families were gone now. The high school had been closed years ago. The glass was falling right out of the windows.
He was glad that his was only a brief visit, for each return was sadder than the one before it. Like a missionary outpost this was, when you thought about it. He hoped in fact that he would not be coming south again.
But he could not leave without seeing that family.
Yes, go there. You ought to. You ought to look in on Deirdre Mayfair. Was she not a parishioner after all?
And there was nothing wrong with wanting to find out if the gossip was true-that they’d tried to put Deirdre in the sanitarium, and she had gone wild, smashing the glass out of the windows before lapsing back into her catatonia. On August 13 it was supposed to have happened, only two days ago.
Who knows, maybe Miss Carl would welcome a call.
But these were games Father Mattingly played with his mind. Miss Carl didn’t want him around any more now
