Lasher

Twenty-nine

IT WAS FOUR a.m. They were gathered in the double parlors-Mona, Lauren, Lily and Fielding. Randall was also there. Soon Paige Mayfair from New York would come. Her plane had arrived on schedule. Ryan had gone to get her from the airport.

They sat quietly and waited. Nobody believes in it, thought Mona. But we have to try it. What are we if we don’t give it a try?

Earlier, Aunt Bea had come from Amelia Street, to lay a midnight buffet out on the table. And she had put thick votive candles in the two fireplaces. They were only half melted away and the hearths still gave a warm and dancing light.

Upstairs, the nurses on standby talked in low voices-having made a station, so to speak, with their coffee and their charts in Aunt Vivian’s room. Aunt Vivian had graciously gone up to stay at Amelia Street, yielding to the firm attachment of Ancient Evelyn, who had gestured and murmured all evening to Vivian, though no one was sure that Evelyn really knew who Vivian was.

“Two old ladies meant for each other,” said Aunt Bea. “Let’s call them Tweedledee and Tweedledum. Ancient Evelyn isn’t speaking again. It’s a cinch, she’s Tweedledum.”

Throughout the house, in other rooms, even up on the third floor, in makeshift beds, cousins slept. Pierce and Ryan and Mandrake and Shelby were all here, somewhere. Jenn and Clancy were in the front bedroom upstairs. Other Mayfairs were out in the guest house beyond Deirdre’s oak.

They heard the car stop in front of the gate.

They did not move. Henri opened the door, admitting the woman whom none of them had ever seen in their lives. Paige Mayfair, great-granddaughter of Cortland and his wife, Amanda Grady Mayfair, who had left Cortland years before and gone north.

Paige was a lithe little woman, not unlike Gifford and Alicia in face and form, and only a little more birdlike, with long thin legs and wrists. That type of Mayfair, thought Mona. The woman’s hair was sharply bobbed, and she wore those huge dazzling clip-on earrings which a woman must remove before answering a phone.

She was matter-of-fact in her entrance. All but Fielding rose to greet her, to bestow the kisses that were customary even with a cousin whom no one had ever seen before.

“Cousin Paige. Cousin Randall. Cousin Mona. Cousin Fielding.

Paige sat down finally in the gold French chair with her back to the piano. Her little black skirt rode up on her thighs, revealing that they were almost as slender as her calves. Her legs looked painfully naked compared to the rest of her, swaddled in wool, even to a cashmere scarf which she unwound now from around her neck. It was very cold in New York.

She stared at the long mirror at the far end of the room. Of course it reflected the mirror behind her, and the illusion of endless chambers, each fitted with its own crystal chandeliers.

“You didn’t come from the airport alone, did you?” demanded Fielding, startling the woman as usual with his youthful and vigorous voice. Mona realized she didn’t know who was older-Fielding or Lily-but Fielding looked so old with his translucent yellow skin and the spots on the backs of his thin hands that you had to wonder what was keeping him alive.

Lily had vigor to her, though her body seemed all ropes and tendons beneath her severe silk suit.

“I told you, Great-granddaddy,” said Mona, “we had two policemen with her. They’re outside. Everybody in New York is together. They’ve been told. There isn’t a single member of this family anywhere who is alone now. Everyone has been told.”

“And nothing further has happened,” said Paige politely, “isn’t that so?”

“Correct,” said Lauren. She had managed to remain her well-groomed corporate-style self even through the long day and night. Not a single silver hair out of place. “We haven’t found him,” she said as if trying to soothe a hysterical client. “But there has been no further trouble of any sort. There are people working on this investigation as we speak.”

Paige nodded. Her eyes veered to Mona. “And you’re the legend, Mona,” she said. She gave the indulgent smile one gives to pretty children. “I’ve heard so much about you. Beatrice is always talking about you in her letters. And you are the designee if we cannot get Rowan to come back.”

Shock.

No one had said such a thing to Mona. She had not picked up the slightest vibe of it from any of them, either here, or downtown, or anywhere. She couldn’t stop herself from glancing at Lauren.

Lauren didn’t meet her gaze.

You mean this has already been decided?

No one would look at her. Closed minds. She realized suddenly that only Fielding was staring at her. And she also realized none of them had been shocked by Paige’s words, except for her. It had been decided, but not in her presence, and no one wanted to explain or amplify or clarify now. It was too much to discuss just now. Yet it was enormous, the designee of the legacy. And some very sarcastic little phrase went through Mona’s mind suddenly, “You mean crazy little Mona in her sash and bow, drunken Alicia’s vagabond kid?”

She didn’t say it. Inside, she felt the tightest most strangling pain. Rowan, don’t die. Rowan, I’m sorry. Some vicious and perfectly luscious memory came back to her of Michael Curry’s chest looming over her, and his cock slipping out of her so that she saw it for an instant, the shaft descending out of the nest of hair. She shut her eyes tight.

“Let’s believe we can help Rowan,” said Lauren, though the voice sounded so low and so hopeless that it contradicted its own words. “The legacy is a vast question. There are three lawyers going over the papers now. But Rowan is still alive. Rowan is upstairs. She has survived the surgery. It was the least of her worries. The doctors have done their magic. Now it’s time for us to try.”

“You know what we want to do?” asked Lily, whose eyes were glazed still from crying. Lily had assumed a defensive posture, arms over her breasts, one hand resting right below her throat. For the first time ever, thought Mona, Lily’s voice sounded shaky, old.

“Yes, I know,” said Paige. “My uncle told me everything. I understand. All these years. I’ve heard so much about you, all of you, and now I am here. I’m in this house. But let me say this: I don’t know that I’ll be of any help to you. It’s a power others feel. I myself do not feel it. I don’t really know how to use it. But I am always willing to try.”

“You’re one of the strongest,” said Mona. “That is what matters. We are the strongest here. None of us know how to use these gifts.”

“Then let’s go. Let’s see what we can do,” said Paige.

“I don’t want there to be any mumbo jumbo,” said Randall. “If anybody starts saying crazy words-”

“Certainly not,” said Fielding, eyes sunken, hands folded on his cane. “I have to go up in the elevator. Mona, you take me. Randall, you should ride in the elevator too.”

“If you don’t want to come with us,” remarked Lauren in a steel-cold voice, “you do not have to, either of you. We will do this ourselves.”

“I’m coming,” said Randall grumpily. “I want it noted for the record that this family is now following the advice of a thirteen-year-old girl!”

“That’s not true,” said Lily. “We all want to do it. Randall, please help us. Please don’t be trouble at this time.”

They went out en masse, moving through the shadowy hall. Mona had never liked this elevator. It was too small, too dusty, too old and too powerful and it went too fast. She followed the two old men inside, helping Fielding to the one chair in the corner, a small wooden antique chair with a cane seat. Then she pulled shut the door, clanged the gate and pressed the button. She put her hand on Fielding’s shoulder. “Remember, it stops with a jolt.”

There came the slamming halt as predicted.

“Damn thing,” muttered Fielding. “Typical of Stella, to get an elevator strong enough to take people to the top of the American Bank.”

“There is no more American Bank,” said Randall.

“Well, you know what I mean,” said Fielding. “Don’t be short-tempered with me. This isn’t my idea. I think it’s ridiculous. Why don’t we go out to Metairie and try to raise Gifford from the dead?”

Mona helped Fielding to stand and position his cane. “The American Bank used to be the tallest building in New Orleans,” he said to Mona.

“I know,” she answered. She hadn’t known, but that was the best way to stop that line of conversation cold.

When they came into the master bedroom, the others were already assembled. Michael was with them, standing with arms folded in the far corner looking down at Rowan’s unchanged face.

The blessed candles were burning on the bedside table nearest the door. The Virgin was there. Probably Aunt Bea did this, thought Mona-these candles, this Virgin with her bowed head, white veil, tiny plaster hands outstretched. Gifford certainly would have done it, if she had been around.

No one said a word. Finally Mona spoke.

“I think the nurses need to go out.”

“Well, just what are you going to do in here,” said the younger nurse crossly, a sallow woman with blond hair parted in the middle beneath her stiff starched cap. She was nunlike in her sterility and cleanliness. She glanced at the older nurse, a dark-faced black woman who spoke not a word.

“We’re going to lay hands on her and try to heal her,” said Paige Mayfair. “It probably won’t do any good, but we all have this gift. We are going to try.”

“I don’t know if you should do this!” said the young nurse distrustfully.

But then the older black woman shook her head negatively, and gestured to let it all go by.

“Go on out, both of you,” said Michael in a quiet commanding voice.

The nurses left.

Mona closed the door.

“It’s so strange,” said Lily. “This is like being from a family of great musicians, yet not knowing how to read music, not even knowing how to carry a tune.”

Only Paige Mayfair seemed unembarrassed, the one from away, the one who hadn’t grown up in the shadow of First Street, hearing people answer each other’s thoughts as easily as each other’s words.

Paige laid her small leather pocketbook on the floor, and came to the bed. “Turn out the lights, except for the candles.”

“That’s nonsense,” said Fielding.

“I prefer it that way,” said Paige. “I prefer that there will be no distractions.” Then she looked down at Rowan, studying her slowly from her smooth forehead down to the feet poking straight up beneath the sheet. Paige’s face looked sad, deliberately sad and thoughtful.

“This is useless,” said Fielding. He was obviously finding it difficult to remain standing.

Mona tugged him over closer to the bed. “Here, lean on the mattress,” she said, trying not to be impatient. “I’ve got your arm. Lay your hand on her. One hand will do it.”

“No, both hands, please,” said Paige.

“Absolute idiocy!” said Fielding.

The others closed in around the bed. Michael stepped back but then Lily gestured that he must join them too. They all laid their hands on Rowan, Fielding tilting forward at a precarious angle, his labored breathing audible, a little cough collecting in his wattled throat.

Mona felt Rowan’s soft pale arm. She had laid her fingers right on the bruises. What had caused them? Had he grabbed Rowan and shaken her? You could almost see the marks of the fingers. Mona laid her own fingers on top of the marks.

Rowan, heal! She hadn’t waited for the others, and now she saw that all had made the same silent unceremonious decision. She heard the communal prayer rising; she saw that Paige and Lily had closed their eyes. “Heal,” whispered Paige. “Heal,” whispered Mona.

“Heal, Rowan,” said Randall in a deep decisive voice.

Finally the disgruntled murmur came from Fielding. “Heal, child, if the power is within you. Heal. Heal. Heal.”

When Mona opened her eyes again she saw that, Michael was crying. He was holding Rowan’s right hand tight in both of his. He was whispering the word along with all of them. Mona closed her eyes and said it again.

“Come on, Rowan! Heal!”

Moments passed as they remained there. Moments passed in which this or that one whispered, or stirred, or clasped the flesh more tightly or patted it. Lily laid her hand on Rowan’s forehead. Michael bent to kiss Rowan’s head.

It was Paige finally who said that they had done what they could do.

“Has she had the Last Sacraments?” asked Fielding.

“Yes, at the hospital, before the surgery,” said Lauren. “But she is not going to die. She is holding steady. She is in a deep coma. And she could go on like that for days.”

Michael had turned his back on the assembly. Silently, they slipped out of the room.

In the living room, Lauren and Lily poured the coffee. Mona set out the sugar and the cream. It was still pitch-dark outside, wintry, still.

The great clock chimed five. Paige looked at it, as if startled. And then dropped her eyes.

“What do you think?” asked Randall. “She’s not dying,” said Paige. “But there is absolutely no response. At least none that I could feel.”

“None,” said Lily.

“Well, we tried it,” said Mona. “That’s the important thing. We tried.”

She went out of the double parlor into the hallway. For a moment she thought she saw Michael at the top of the stairs. But it was just the nurse passing. The house creaked and rustled as it always did. She hurried up, deliberately on tiptoe, trying not to play the stairs like musical keys.

The bedside lamp had been lighted again. The candle flames were lost in the brash yellow illumination.

Mona wiped her eyes and took Rowan’s hand. Her own hand was snaking. “Heal, Rowan!” she said. “Heal, Rowan! Heal! You’re not dying, Rowan! Heal!”

Michael put his arms around her, kissed her cheek.

She didn’t turn away. “Heal, Rowan,” she said. I’m sorry I did it with him. I’m sorry. “Heal, please,” she whispered, “what good is it all…the heritage, the money, any of it…if we can’t…if we can’t heal?”

It must have been six-thirty when Mona made the resolve. There would be a Mayfair Medical. It would happen just as Rowan had planned.

Mona had taken a wool blanket with her out under the oak tree, before the guest house, and she was sitting there on the dry blanket, watching the morning shimmer in the wetness around her, the fresh light green leaves of the bananas, the crinkled elephant ears, the ginger lilies, the green moss on the bricks. The sky was violet now just as it might be at sunset, something she witnessed far more often than dawn.

A guard slept in a straight-backed chair at the garden gate. Another walked back and forth on the other side of the picket gates along the flagstones beside the pool.

The house seemed to grow brighter, more distant against the deepening violet. A deep blood-red aurora began to rise slowly to the far right. You never really knew east from west in New Orleans, until the sun came, or the sun went. Well, here it was coming, glorious and not altogether silent. It seemed the birds heard it; the birds were incited; and all the thick shaggy leaves around her were rattling and alive.

It made her happy to see it, incompletely and impatiently happy. It made her feel alone. Designee of the legacy. Lauren had said in a low whisper, “This shouldn’t come as much of a surprise to you. It’s a matter of lineage. You traced it yourself in your computer. We’ll explain it all. I cannot talk about it while Rowan lives and breathes.”

There will be a Mayfair Medical, Rowan. That will be your legacy, and we will take our secrets with us into our own private and ultimately dispensable history, but the stones of Mayfair Medical will stand firm for all to see.

She felt dizzy suddenly. Kind of sick. She really hated being awake at this time of morning. Always had. And when Mona was little, Alicia had always wanted to go to Mass. Drunk or sober the night before, didn’t matter. Alicia had to get up and go to Mass. They went uptown to Holy Name on the streetcar. Mona always felt bad like this, headachy with a bad taste in her mouth. That had only stopped in the last few years when Alicia was drinking in the morning, finally, and was already with a beer in her hand, sitting on the back steps, when Mona came down.

But it wasn’t so bad being awake now, seeing this deep red color rising miraculously, seeing it turn to gold. The sheer excitement of the last few days rendered things so precious, so clear. Look at this garden, never forget to look at it. The legacy. Christ, Mona, this is your garden! Or soon will he!

No wonder she couldn’t sleep. She had tried. Best to use this time for thinking, for planning, for laying out in orderly fashion the thing that had begun to obsess her, the location and the structure of Mayfair Medical, where the word Heal would be written. In stone? In stained glass?

Pierce would be her strongest ally; he was of the same conservative ilk as Ryan, but the idea was dear to him; he wanted it to work. The last two months, he had kept the plan alive. With a little pushing, he could be made to formulate, imagine, envision. It would all work out, the conservatives in the firm holding them back a little, and their insistence to be bold, to think big, to dream.

Pierce lay asleep not very far away in one of the many scattered lounge chairs, his jacket over his shoulder. He had wanted the bracing air, he said. He was near the pool. He couldn’t take the stuffiness of indoors. He had looked like a baby when she passed him.

We’ll do it, thought Mona. It’s more than a childish resolve to go around the world before I am twenty, or dig a tunnel to China, or start the most successful mutual fund in the international stock market. Designee of the legacy. All things are possible, that is the key thing to remember.

Not Alicia’s view as she sat with her beer on the step. “I’m too tired to do anything anymore.” Don’t think about her in a freezer drawer. They don’t really freeze people in the morgue, do they? Don’t they just keep them cold?

All those books on hospitals, where had Mona seen them? In Rowan’s room, when Mona had been plotting to seduce Michael. Those books were in the nightstand by the bed. Mona would read them later, study the entire project. That was important-have an advanced scheme before you bring them to the table; run the meeting like an ad for new computers, with all those shiny laser printouts of floor plans, and spreadsheets and lists.

Finally she closed her eyes. She could feel the sun now. Didn’t have to see it.

She would play a little trick on herself that always made her sleep. Her mind was going a mile a second, and so she made it do something: decorate the lobbies and offices of Mayfair Medical-made it pick colors, made it hang drapes, made it choose paintings for the interior, paintings that would make waiting patients happy, paintings that would give overworked doctors and nurses a moment of illumination when they stepped into a corridor or into a stairwell, or came in the front doors.

Representations of healing, something like that beautiful painting by Rembrandt of the Anatomy Lesson. She opened her eyes with a start. No, they wouldn’t want to see that, nothing that terrible. Think of other things, the passive and beautiful faces of Piero Delia Francesca, the soft sweet eyes of Botticelli’s women, soothing fancies. Things that were better than real.

She was so sleepy. She was trying to remember all the people in that big Medici painting in Florence, the one with Lorenzo looking out of the corner of his eye. She’d been five when Gifford took her to Europe the first time.

“Mothers and babies!” she’d said as they went through the Palazzo Vecchio. She’d so loved to skip and twirl on the stone floors. She had never seen so many pictures of that one grand theme. Gifford had whispered sternly, “Madonna with Child.”

Gifford bent down to kiss her. Go to sleep for a while.

Yes, think I will. I didn’t mean to, I mean with Michael, I never meant to…

They know that. It doesn’t matter now. It’s small. You are so like a Mayfair, to want to be fierce and reckless, and then be guilt-ridden! Don’t you know that’s how it is with us? Nobody gets off light.

Are you certain she wouldn’t hate me for it? That it was so small? I didn’t think you would think it was small. That’s the whole trick of it, deciding what is small and large.

It’s small.

Finally, her head against the rough bark of the oak, she slept.