Mona stared at the computer screen.
“We do not have a clue as to the man’s whereabouts. But all the women are protected. If another death is discovered, it will be an old death.”
Then she hit the key to save and close the file. She waited as the tiny lights flashed. Then she hit the off button. The low drone of the fan died away.
She stood up, groping for a purse, on instinct, her hand always going back at such a moment right to where she had dropped the purse, though she herself did not know where that was.
She slipped the strap over her shoulder. Her feet hurt just a little in her mother’s smooth grown-up leather shoes. The suit wasn’t all that bad. The blouse was pretty. But the shoes? Forget it. That part of being a woman held not the slightest charm.
A little memory came back to her. She was drifting. Aunt Gifford was telling her about buying the first pair of heels. “They would only let us have French heels. We went to Maison Blanche. Ancient Evelyn and I. And I wanted the high high heels, but she said no.”
Pierce gave a start. He had been almost asleep when he saw her standing behind the desk.
“I’m going uptown,” she said.
“Not by yourself, you’re not. You’re not even riding down in the elevator alone.”
“I know that. There are guards everywhere. I’m riding the streetcar. I have to think.”
Naturally he came with her.
He had not rested for one hour since his mother’s funeral and certainly not before that. Poor handsome Pierce, standing desolate and anxious on the corner of Carondolet and Canal, amid the common crowd, waiting for a streetcar. He’d probably never ridden it in his life.
“You should have called Clancy before you left,” she said to him. “Clancy called earlier. Did they tell you?”
He nodded. “Clancy’s all right. She’s with Claire and Jenn. Jenn is crying. She wanted you to be with her.”
“I can’t do that now.” Jenn. Jenn was still a little kid. You couldn’t tell any of this to Jenn. And protecting Jenn would be too much hard work.
The streetcar was jammed with tourists. Very few of the real people at all. The tourists wore bright, neatly pressed clothes because the weather was still cool. When the humid summer came on, they would be as disheveled and half-naked as everyone else. Mona and Pierce sat quiet together on a wooden seat as the car screeched and roared through lower St. Charles Avenue, the small Manhattan-style canyon of office buildings, then around Lee Circle and on uptown.
It was almost magical what happened at the corner of Jackson and St. Charles. The oaks sprang up, huge, dark and hovering over the Avenue. The shabby stucco buildings fell away. The world of the columns and the magnolias began. The Garden District. You could almost feel the quiet surround you, press against you, lift you out of yourself.
Mona got off the car in front of Pierce and crossed quickly over to the river side, cut across Jackson and started up St. Charles. It was not so cold right now. Not here. It was mild and windless. The cicadas were singing. It seemed early in the year for them, but she was glad, she loved the sound. She had never figured out if there was a season for cicadas. Seems they sang at all different times of the year. Maybe every time it got warm enough, they woke up. She had loved them all her life. Couldn’t live in a place that didn’t purr like this now and then, she thought, walking back the broken pavements of First Street.
Pierce walked along saying nothing, looking vaguely astonished whenever she glanced at him, as though he were falling asleep on his feet.
As they reached Prytania they could see people outside the big house, see the cars parked. See the guards. Some of the guards wore khaki and were from a private agency. Others were off-duty New Orleans policemen in their customary blue.
Mona couldn’t stand the high heels any longer. She took them off and walked in her stocking feet.
“If you step on one of those big roaches, you’re going to hate it,” Pierce said.
“Boy, you’re sure right about that.”
“Oh, that’s your new technique, Mona. I heard you use it on Randall. Just flat-out agree. You’re going to catch cold in your bare feet. You’re going to tear your stockings.”
“Pierce, the roaches don’t come out this time of year. But what’s the point of my telling you this? Are you going to listen? You realize our mothers are dead, Pierce? Our mothers? Both dead. Have I said this to you before?”
“I don’t remember,” he said. “It’s hard to remember that they’re dead, as a matter of fact. I keep thinking, my mother will know what to do about all this, she’ll be here any minute. Did you know that my father was not faithful to my mother?”
“You’re crazy.”
“No, there was another woman. I saw him with her this morning, down in the coffee shop in the building. He was holding her hand. She’s a Mayfair. Her name’s Clemence. He kissed her.”
“She’s a worried cousin. She works in the building. I used to see her all the time down there at lunch.”
“No, she’s a woman for my father. I’ll bet my mother knew all about it. I hope she didn’t care.”
“I’m not going to believe that about Uncle Ryan,” said Mona, instantly realizing that she did believe it. She did. Uncle Ryan was such a handsome man, so accomplished, so successful, and he’d been married so long to Gifford.
Best not to think of those things. Gifford in the vault, cleanly dead and buried before the slaughter. Mourned while there was still time to mourn. Of Alicia, what could you say, “Would she had died hereafter”? Mona realized she didn’t even know where her mother’s body had been taken. Was it at the hospital? At the morgue? She didn’t want to think it was in the morgue. Well, she can sleep now forever. Passed out for all time. Mona started to choke up again, and swallowed hard.
They crossed Chestnut Street, pushing through the small informal gathering of guards and cousins-Eulalee, and Tony, and Betsy Mayfair. Garvey Mayfair on the porch with Danny and Jim. Several voices rose at once to tell the guards that Mona and Pierce could come in.
Guards in the hallway. Guard in the double parlor. A guard in the door to the dining room, a dark hulking figure, with broad hips.
And only that faint old lingering smell. Nothing fresh, nothing new. Just faint, the way it had clung to the clothing from Houston. The way it had clung to Rowan when they brought her in.
Guards at the top of the stairs. Guard at the bedroom door. Guard inside at the long window to the gallery. Nurse in slick cheap nylon white with her arms raised, adjusting the IV. Rowan under the lace coverlet, small insignificant expressionless face against the big ruffled pillow. Michael sitting there, smoking a cigarette.
“There isn’t any oxygen in here, is there?”
“No, dear, they got on my case already about that.” He took another drag defiantly, and then crushed it out in the glass ashtray on the bedside table. His voice was beautifully low and soft, rubbed smooth by the tragedy.
In the corner opposite sat young Magdalene Mayfair, and old Aunt Lily, both very still in straight-backed chairs. Magdalene was saying her rosary, and the amber beads glinted just a little as she slipped one bead more through her hand. Lily’s eyes were closed.
Others in the shadows. The beam of the bedside lamp fell directly on the face of Rowan Mayfair. As if it were a keylight for a camera. The unconscious woman seemed smaller than a small child. Urchin or angelic. Her hair was all swept back.
Mona tried to find the old expression in her, the stamp of her personality. All gone.
“I was playing music,” Michael said, speaking in the same low thoughtful voice as before. He looked up at Mona. “I was playing the Victrola. Julien’s Victrola. And then the nurse said, perhaps she didn’t like that sound. It’s scratchy, it’s…special. You would have to like it, wouldn’t you?”
“The nurse probably didn’t like it,” said Mona. “You want me to put on a record? If you want, I can get your radio from the library downstairs. I saw it, yesterday, in there, by your chair.”
“No, that’s all right. Can you come here and sit for a little while? I’m glad to see you. You know I saw Julien.”
Pierce stiffened. In the corner, another Mayfair, was his name Hamilton, glanced suddenly at Michael and
