Taltos

Twenty

SHE STOOD IN the dark kitchen, deliciously full. All the milk was gone, every single drop of it, and the cream cheese, and the cottage cheese, and butter too. That’s what you call a clean sweep. Oops, forgot something, thin slices of yellow processed cheese, gag me with a spoon, full of chemicals and dye. Ugh, yuk. She chewed them up, gone, thank you.

“You know, darling, if you had turned out to be an idiot …” she said.

That was never a possibility, Mother, I am you and I am Michael. And in a very real way, I am everyone who has been speaking to you from the beginning, and I am Mary Jane.

She burst into laughter, all alone, in the dark kitchen, leaning against the refrigerator. What about ice cream! Shit, she almost forgot!

“Well, honey, you drew a good hand,” she said. “You couldn’t have drawn better. And am I to presume you did not miss a single syllable….”

Häagen-Dazs vanilla! Pints! Pints!

“Mona Mayfair!”

Who was that calling? Eugenia? Don’t want to talk to her. Don’t want her to disturb me or Mary Jane.

Mary Jane was still in the library, with the papers she’d sneaked out of Michael’s desk, or was it Rowan’s, now that Rowan was back in circulation? Never mind, it was all kinds of medical stuff and lawyer business, and papers relating to things that had happened only three weeks ago. Mary Jane, once introduced to the various files and histories, had proved insatiable. The history of the family was now her ice cream, so to speak.

“Now, the question is, do we share this ice cream with Mary Jane, in cousinly fashion, or do we gobble it?”

Gobble it.

It was time to tell Mary Jane! The time had come. When she’d passed the door just a few minutes ago, before the final raid on the kitchen, Mary Jane had been mumbling things about those dead doctors, God help them, Dr. Larkin and the one out in California, and the chemical autopsies on the dead women. The key thing was to remember to put that stuff back so that neither Rowan nor Michael was unduly alarmed. After all, these things were not being done casually, there was a purpose, Mary Jane was the one upon whom she had fully to depend!

“Mona Mayfair.”

It was Eugenia calling, what a nuisance. “Mona Mayfair, it’s Rowan Mayfair on the phone, all the way from England, calling you!”

Scold, scold. What she needed was a tablespoon for this ice cream, even if she had almost finished the entire pint. There was one more pint to go.

Now, whose were those little feet coming tippy-tap in the dark, someone running through the dining room? Morrigan clicked her tiny tongue in time with the tippy-tapping.

“Why, it’s my beloved cousin, Mary Jane Mayfair.”

“Shhhh.” Mary Jane put a finger to her lips. “She’s looking for you. She’s got Rowan on the phone. Rowan wants to talk to you, she said for us to wake you up.”

“Pick it up in the library and take the message, I can’t risk talking to her. You’ve got to fool her. Tell her we’re fine, I’m in the bathtub or something, and ask about everybody. Like how’s Yuri and how’s Michael and is she all right?”

“Got it.” And off went the teeny tiny feet, tippy-tapping on the floor.

She scraped up the last of that pint and threw the container in the sink. What a messy kitchen! And all my life I have been so neat, and now look, I’m corrupted by money. She tore open the next pint.

Once again came the magic feet. Mary Jane, ripping into the butler’s pantry, and flying around the edge of the door, with her corn-yellow hair and her long thin brown legs, and her teensy waist and her white lace skirts swinging like a bell.

“Mona!” she said in a whisper.

“Yeah!” Mona whispered back. What the hell. She ate another big spoon of the ice cream.

“Yes, but Rowan said she had momentous news for us,” said Mary Jane, very obviously aware of the import of this message. “That she would tell us all when she saw us, but that right now she had something she had to do. Same for Michael. Yuri’s okay.”

“You did a splendid job. What about the guards outside?”

“She said to keep them, not to change anything. Said she’d already called Ryan and told him. Said for you to stay inside and rest, and do whatever your doctor tells you.”

“Practical woman, intelligent woman. Hmmmmm …” Well, this second carton was empty already. Enough is enough. She started to shiver all over. So coooold! Why hadn’t she gotten rid of those guards?

Mary Jane reached out and rubbed Mona’s arms. “You okay, darlin’?” Then Mary Jane’s eyes dropped to Mona’s stomach and her face went blank with fear. She lowered her right hand, wanting to touch Mona’s stomach, but she didn’t dare.

“Listen, it’s time to tell you everything,” said Mona. “To give you your choice right now. I was going to lead you into it step by step, but that’s not fair and it’s not necessary. I can do what I have to do, even if you don’t want to help me, and maybe you’d be better off not helping. Either we go now and you help me, or I go alone.”

“Go where?”

“That’s just it. We’re clearing out of here, right now. Guards or no guards. You can drive, can’t you?”

She pushed past Mary Jane and into the butler’s pantry. She opened the key cabinet. Look for the Lincoln insignia. The limo was a Lincoln, wasn’t it? When Ryan had bought it for her, he’d said she should never be in a limousine that was not black and was not a Lincoln. Sure enough, there were the keys! Michael had his keys and the keys to Rowan’s Mercedes, but the keys to the limo were right here, where Clem was supposed to leave them.

“Well, sure, I can drive,” said Mary Jane, “but whose car are we taking?”

“Mine. The limousine. Only we’re not taking the driver with it. You ready? We’re counting on the driver being fast asleep out back. Now, what do we need?”

“You’re supposed to tell me everything, and give me my choice.”

Mona stopped. They were both in the shadows. The house was dark all around them, light pouring in from the garden, from the big zone of blue illumination that was the pool. Mary Jane’s eyes were huge and round, making her nose look tiny and her cheeks very smooth. Tendrils of her hair moved behind her shoulders, but mostly it was corn silk. The light struck the cleft of her breasts.

“Why don’t you tell me?” said Mona.

“OK,” said Mary Jane. “You’re going to have it, no matter what it is.”

“Right you are.”

“And you’re not lettin’ Rowan and Michael kill it, no matter what it is.”

“Right you are!”

“And the best place for us to go is where nobody will be able to find us.”

“Right you are!”

“Only the only place I know is Fontevrault. And if we cut loose every skiff at the landing, the only way they can get out there into the basin after us is to bring in their own boat, if they even think of coming down that way.”

“Oh, Mary Jane, you genius! Right you are!”

Mama, I love you, Mama.

And I love you too, my little Morrigan. Trust in me. Trust in Mary Jane.

“Hey, don’t faint on me! Lissen, I’m going to go get pillows, blankets, stuff like that. You got any cash?”

“Heaps, twenty-dollar bills in the drawer by the bed.”

“You sit down, come in here with me, and sit down.” Mary Jane led her through the kitchen and to the table. “Put your head down.”

“Mary Jane, don’t freak out on me, don’t, no matter what it looks like.”

“Just you rest till I come back.”

And away went the clicky high heels, running through the house.

The song started again, so sweet, so pretty, the song of flowers and the glen.

Stop, Morrigan.

Talk to me, Mother, and Oncle Julien brought you here to sleep with my father, but he didn’t know what would happen, but you understand, Mother, you said you understood, that the giant helix was in this case not allied to any ancient evil, but was purely an expression of a genetic potential in you and in Father that had always been there ….

Mona tried to answer, but it wasn’t necessary, the voice went on and on, singsong and soft and very rapid.

Hey, slow down. You sound like a bumblebee when you do that.

“… immense responsibility, to survive and to give birth, and to love me, Mother, don’t forget to love me, I need you, your love, above all things, without which I may lose in my frailty the very will to live….”

They were all gathered together in the stone circle, shivering, crying, the tall dark-haired one had come, trying to quiet them. They drew in close to the fire.

“But why? Why do they want to kill us?”

And Ashlar said, “It is their way. They are warlike people. They kill those who are not of their clan. It is as important as eating or drinking or making love is to us. They feast on death.”

“Look,” she said aloud. The kitchen door had just slammed. Be quiet, Mary Jane! Don’t bring Eugenia down here. But we’ve got to be scientific about this, I should have been recording all this on the computer, typing it in as I see it, but it’s almost impossible to accurately record when surrendering to a trance. When we reach Fontevrault, we will have Mary Jane’s computer. Mary Jane, the godsend.

Mary Jane had come back, shutting the kitchen door quietly this time, thank heaven.

“That is what the others have to understand,” said Mona, “that this is not from hell, but from God. Lasher was from hell, one could say that, you know, speaking metaphysically or metaphorically, I mean religiously or poetically, but when a creature is born this way of two human beings, both of whom contain a mysterious genome, then it’s from God. Who else but God? Emaleth was the child of rape, but not this child. Well, at least the mother wasn’t the one who got raped.”

“Shhh, let’s us get out of here. I told the guards that I’d seen somebody funny out front, and that I was driving you up to your house to get you some clothes and then to the doctor. Come on!”

“Mary Jane, you are a genius.”

But when she stood up, the world swam. “Holy God.”

“I have you, now you hold on to me. Are you in pain?”

“Well, no more than anybody would be, with a nuclear explosion going on in her womb. Let’s get out of here!”

They crept out down the alley, Mary Jane steadying her when she needed it, but she was doing all right hanging on to the gate and to the fence, and then they were in the carport. And there was the big sleek limousine, and bless her heart, Mary Jane had started the engine, and the door was open. Here we go.

“Morrigan, stop singing! I have to think, tell her about the gate-opener. You have to press the little magic twanger.”

“I know that! Get in.”

Roar of the engine, and the rusty, creaky sound of the gate rolling back.

“You know, Mona, I’ve got to ask you something. I’ve got to. What if this thing can’t be born without your dying?”

“Shhhh, bite your tongue, cousin! Rowan didn’t die, did she, and she gave birth to one and the other! I’m not dying. Morrigan won’t let me.”

No, Mother, I love you. I need you, Mother. Don’t talk of dying. When you talk of death, I can smell death.

“Shhhhhh. Mary Jane, is the best place Fontevrault? You’re sure? Have we considered all the possibilities, perhaps a motel somewhere …”

“Lissen, Granny’s there, and Granny can be completely trusted, and that little boy staying with her will light out of there soon as I give him one of these twenty-dollar bills.”

“But he can’t leave his boat at the landing, not for someone else to-”

“No, he won’t do that, honey, don’t be silly, he’ll take his pirogue up home to his place! He doesn’t come by the landing. He lives up near town. Now just you sit back and rest. We’ve got a stash of things at Fontevrault. We have the attic, all dry and warm.”

“Oh yes, that would be wonderful.”

“And when the sun comes up in the morning, it will come into all the attic windows….”

Mary Jane hit the brakes. They were already at Jackson Avenue.

“Sorry, honey, this car is so powerful.”

“You’re having trouble? God, I never sat up here before, with the whole damned stretch behind me. This is weird, like driving a plane.”

“No, I’m not having trouble!” Mary Jane took the turn onto St. Charles. “ ’cept with these creepy drunken New Orleans drivers. It’s midnight, you know. But this is a cinch to drive, actually, especially if you’ve driven an eighteen-wheeler, which I certainly have.”

“And where the hell did you do that, Mary Jane?”

“Arizona, honey, had to do it, had to steal the truck, but that’s another story.”

Morrigan was calling her, singing again, but in that rapid humming voice. Singing to herself, perhaps.

I can’t wait to see you, to hold you! I love you more for what you are! Oh, this is destiny, Morrigan, this eclipses everything, the whole world of bassinets and rattles and happy fathers, well, he will be happy eventually, when he comes to understand that the terms now have changed utterly ….

The world spun. The cold wind swept down over the plain. They were dancing in spite of it, trying desperately to keep warm. Why had the warmth deserted them? Where was their homeland?

Ashlar said, “This is our homeland now. We must learn the cold as well as we learned the warmth.”

Don’t let them kill me, Mama.

Morrigan lay cramped, filling the bubble of fluid, her hair falling around her and under her, her knees pressed against her eyes.

“Honey, what makes you think anyone will hurt you?”

I think it because you think it, Mama. I know what you know.

“You’re talking to that baby?”

“I am, and it’s answering me.” Her eyes were closing when they hit the freeway. “Just you sleep now, darlin’. We’re burning up the miles, honey, this thing does ninety and you can’t even feel it.”

“Don’t get a ticket.”

“Honey, don’t you think a witch like me can handle a policeman? They never finish writing the ticket!”

Mona laughed. Things couldn’t have worked out better. Really, they couldn’t have.

And the best was yet to come.