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
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.
