Taltos

Two

AFTER THE FIRST day, Rowan didn’t talk. She spent her time out under the oak, in a white wicker chair, her feet propped on a pillow, or sometimes merely resting on the grass. She stared at the sky, eyes moving as if there were a procession of clouds above, and not the clear spring blue, and the bits of white fleece that blew silently across it.

She looked at the wall, or the flowers, or the yew trees. She never looked down at the ground.

Perhaps she’d forgotten that the double grave was right beneath her feet. The grass was growing over it, quick and wild, as it always does in spring in Louisiana. There had been rain aplenty to help it, and sometimes the glory of the sun and rain at the same time.

She ate her meals-approximately a fourth to one-half of what they gave her. Or so Michael said. She didn’t look hungry. But she was pale, still, and her hands, when she did move them, would shake.

All the family came to see her. Groups came across the lawn, standing back as if they might hurt her. They said their hellos, they asked about her health. They told her she looked beautiful. That was true. Then they gave up and they went away.

Mona watched all this.

At night Rowan slept, Michael said, as if she were exhausted, as if she’d been hard at work. She bathed alone, though this scared him. But she always locked the bathroom door, and if he tried to stay inside with her, she merely sat there on the chair, looking off, doing nothing. He had to leave before she’d get up. Then he’d hear the lock turn.

She listened when people spoke, at least in the beginning. And now and then when Michael pleaded with her to speak, she clasped his hand warmly as if comforting him, or pleading with him to be patient. This was sad to watch.

Michael was the only one she touched, or acknowledged, though often this little gesture was made without a change in her remote expression or even a movement of her gray eyes.

Her hair was growing full again. It was even a little yellow from her sitting in the sun. When she’d been in the coma, it had been the color of driftwood, the kind you can see on the muddy riverbanks. Now it looked alive, though if memory served Mona correctly, hair was dead, wasn’t it? Already dead by the time you brushed it, curled it, did stuff to it.

Every morning Rowan rose of her own accord. She would walk slowly down the stairs, holding the railing to the left, and leaning on her cane with the right hand, placing it firmly on each tread. She didn’t seem to care if Michael helped her. If Mona took her arm, it didn’t matter.

Now and then Rowan stopped at her dresser before she went down, and put on a bit of lipstick.

Mona always noticed. Sometimes Mona was waiting for Rowan in the hallway, and she saw Rowan do this. Very significant.

Michael always remarked on it too. Rowan wore nightgowns and negligees, depending upon the weather. Aunt Bea kept buying them and Michael would wash them, because Rowan only wore new clothes after they had been washed, or so he had remembered, and he laid them out for her on the bed.

No, this was no catatonic stupor, Mona figured. And the doctors had confirmed it, though they could not say what was wrong with her. The one time one of them, an idiot Michael had said, stuck a pin in her hand, Rowan quietly withdrew the hand and covered it with her other one. And Michael went into a rage. But Rowan didn’t look at the guy or say a word.

“I wish I’d been here for that,” said Mona.

Of course Mona had known he was telling the truth. Let the doctors speculate and stick pins in people. Maybe when they went back to the hospital, they stuck pins in a doll of Rowan-voodoo acupuncture. Mona wouldn’t have been surprised.

What did Rowan feel? What did she remember? Nobody was sure anymore. They had only Michael’s word that she had awakened from the coma fully aware, that she had spoken with him for hours after, that she knew everything that had happened, that in the coma she had heard and understood. Something terrible on the day of her awakening, another one. And the two buried together beneath the oak.

“I never should have let her do it,” Michael had said to Mona a hundred times. “The smell that came out of that hole, the sight of what was left … I should have taken care of things.”

And what had the other one looked like, and who had carried it down, and tell me all the things that Rowan said-Mona had asked him these questions too often.

“I washed the mud from her hands,” Michael had told Aaron and Mona. “She kept looking at it. I guess a doctor doesn’t want her hands to be soiled. Think about it, how often a surgeon washes her hands. She asked me how I was, she wanted …” And there he had choked up, both times that he told this story. “She wanted to take my pulse. She was worried about me.”

Wish to God I had seen it, what they buried! Wish to God she had spoken to me!

It was the strangest thing-to be rich now, the designee at thirteen, to have a driver and a car (vulgate translation: flashy black stretch limo with disc, tape player, color TV, and lots of room for ice and Diet Coke), and money in her purse all the time, like twenty-dollar bills, no less, and heaps of new clothes, and people patching up the old house on St. Charles and Amelia, catching her on the fly with swatches of “raw silk” or handpainted “wall coverings.”

And to want this, to want to know, to want to be part of, to want to understand the secrets of this woman and this man, this house that would one day come to her. A ghost is dead beneath the tree. A legend lies under the spring rains. And in its arm, another one. It was like turning away from the sure, bright glitter of gold, to take dark trinkets of inestimable power from a small hiding place. Ah, this is magic. Not even her own mother’s death had so distracted Mona.

Mona talked to Rowan. A lot.

She came on the property with her own key, the heiress and all that. And because Michael said she could. And Michael, no longer looking at her with lust in the eye, had practically adopted her.

She went back to the rear garden, crossed the lawn, skirting the grave if she remembered, and sometimes she didn’t, and then she sat at the wicker table and said, “Rowan, good morning.” And then talked and talked.

She told Rowan all about the development of Mayfair Medical, that they had chosen a site, that they had agreed upon a great geothermal system for the heating and cooling, that plans were being drawn. “Your dream is coming into being,” she told Rowan. “The Mayfair family knows this city as well as anybody. We don’t need feasibility studies and things like that. We’re making the hospital happen as you wanted it.”

No response from Rowan. Did she even care anymore about the great medical complex that would revolutionize the relationship between patients and their attending families, in which teams of caretakers would assist even the anonymous patients?

“I found your notes,” said Mona. “I mean, they weren’t locked up. They didn’t look private.”

No answer. The giant black limbs of the oak moved just a little. The banana leaves fluttered against the brick wall.

“I myself have stood outside Touro Infirmary, asking people what they wanted in an ideal hospital, you know, talking to people for hours.”

Nothing.

“My Aunt Evelyn is in Touro,” Mona said quietly. “She’s had a stroke. They ought to bring her home, but I don’t think she knows the difference.” Mona would cry if she talked about Ancient Evelyn. She’d cry if she talked about Yuri. She didn’t. She didn’t say that Yuri had not written or called for three weeks now. She didn’t say that she, Mona, was in love, and with a dark, charming, British-mannered man of mystery who was more than twice her age.

She’d explained all that several days ago to Rowan-the way that Yuri had come from London to help Aaron Lightner. She’d explained that Yuri had been a gypsy and he understood things that Mona understood. She even described how they’d met together in her bedroom the night before Yuri went away. “I worry all the time about him,” she had said.

Rowan had never looked at her.

What could she say now? That last night, she had some terrible dream about Yuri that she couldn’t remember.

“Of course, he’s a grown man,” she said. “I mean he’s past thirty and all, and he knows how to take care of himself, but the thought that somebody in the Talamasca might hurt him.” Oh, stop this!

Maybe this was all wrong. It was too easy to dump all these words on a person who couldn’t or wouldn’t answer.

But Mona could swear there was a vague acknowledgment in Rowan that Mona was there. Maybe it was only that Rowan didn’t look annoyed, or sealed off.

Mona didn’t sense displeasure.

Her eyes swept Rowan’s face. Rowan’s expression was so serious. Had to be a mind in there, just had to be. Why, she looked twenty million times better than she had looked in the coma. And look, she’d buttoned her negligee. Michael swore he didn’t do those things for her. She’d buttoned three buttons. Yesterday it had only been one.

But Mona knew that despair can fill up a mind so completely that trying to read its thoughts is like trying to read through thick smoke. Was it despair that had settled on Rowan?

Mary Jane Mayfair had come this last weekend, the mad country girl from Fontevrault. Wanderer, buccaneer, seer, and genius, to hear her tell it, and part old lady and part fun-loving girl, at the ripe old age of nineteen and a half. A fearsome, powerful witch, so she described herself.

“Rowan’s just fine,” Mary Jane had declared after staring and squinting at Rowan, and then pushing her own cowboy hat off her head so it laid against the back of her neck. “Yep, just brace yourself. She’s taking her time, but this lady here knows what’s happening.”

“Who is this nut case?” Mona had demanded, though she’d felt a wild compassion for the child actually, never mind that she was six years older than Mona. This was a noble savage decked out in a Wal-Mart denim skirt no longer than the middle of her thighs, and a cheap white blouse that was much too tight across her egregious breasts, and even missing a crucial button. Severely deprived, and playing it off beautifully.

Of course, Mona had known who Mary Jane was. Mary Jane Mayfair actually lived in the ruins of Fontevrault Plantation, in the Bayou Country. This was the legendary land of poachers who killed beautiful white-necked herons just for their meat, alligators that could overturn your boat and eat your child, and crazy Mayfairs who’d never made it to New Orleans and the wooden steps of the famous New Orleans Fontevrault outpost, otherwise known as the house on St. Charles and Amelia.

Mona was actually dying to see this place, Fontevrault, that stood still with its six columns up and six columns down, even though the first floor was flooded with three feet of water. Seeing the legendary Mary Jane was the next best thing, the cousin only recently returned from “away” who tethered her pirogue to the newel post, and paddled across a stagnant pool of treacherous slime to get to the pickup truck she drove into town for her groceries.

Everybody was talking about Mary Jane Mayfair. And because Mona was thirteen, and the heiress now, and the only legacy-connected person who would talk to people or acknowledge their presence, everybody thought Mona would find it especially interesting to speak about a teenaged hick cousin who was “brilliant” and “psychic” and wandered about the way Mona did, on her own.

Nineteen and a half. Until Mona laid eyes on this brilliant bit of work, she had not considered someone of that age a true teenager.

Mary Jane was just about the most interesting discovery they had made since they’d started rounding up everyone for genetic testing of the entire Mayfair family. It was bound to happen, finding a throwback like Mary Jane. Mona wondered what else might crawl out of the swamps soon.

But imagine a flooded plantation house of Greek Revival grandeur, gradually sinking into the duckweed, with globs of plaster falling off “with a splash” into the murky waters. Imagine fish swimming through the stairway balusters.

“What if that house falls on her?” Bea had asked. “The house is in the water. She can’t stay there. This girl must be brought here to New Orleans.”

“Swamp water, Bea,” Celia had said. “Swamp water, remember. It’s not a lake or the Gulf Stream. And besides, if this child does not have sense to get out of there and take the old woman to safety-”

The old woman.

Mona had all of this fresh in her memory this last weekend when Mary Jane had walked into the backyard and plunged into the little crowd that surrounded the silent Rowan as if it were a picnic.

“I knew about y’all,” Mary Jane had declared. She’d addressed her words to Michael too, who stood by Rowan’s chair as if posing for an elegant family portrait. And how Michael’s eyes had locked onto her.

“I come over here sometimes and look at you,” said Mary Jane. “Yeah, I do. I came the day of the wedding. You know, when you married her?” She pointed to Michael, then to Rowan. “I stood over there, ’cross the street, and looked at your party?”

Her sentences kept going up on the end, though they weren’t questions, as though she was always asking for a nod or a word of agreement.

“You should have come inside,” Michael had said kindly, hanging on every syllable the girl spouted. The trouble with Michael was that he did have a weakness for pubescent pulchritude. His tryst with Mona had been no freak of nature or twist of witchcraft. And Mary Jane Mayfair was as succulent a little swamp hen as Mona had ever beheld. Even wore her bright yellow hair in braids over the top of her head, and filthy white patent leather shoes with straps, like a little kid. The fact that her skin was dark, sort of olive and possibly tanned, made the girl look something like a human palomino.

“What did the tests say on you?” Mona had asked. “That’s what you’re doing here, isn’t it? They tested you?”

“I don’t know,” said the genius, the mighty powerful swamp witch. “They’re so mixed up over there, wonder they got anything right. First they called me Florence Mayfair and then Ducky Mayfair, finally I says, ‘Look, I’m Mary Jane Mayfair, looky there, right there, on that form you got in front of you.’ ”

“Well, that’s not very good,” Celia had muttered.

“But they said I was fine and go home and they’d tell me if anything was wrong with me. Look, I figure I’ve probably got witch genes coming out the kazoo, I expect to blow the top off the graph, you know? And, boy, I have never seen so many Mayfairs as I saw in that building.”

“We own the building,” said Mona.

“And every one of them I could recognize on sight, every single person. I never made a mistake. There was one infidel in there, one outcast, you know, or no, it was a half-breed type, that’s what it was, ever notice that there are all these Mayfair types? I mean there are a whole bunch that have no chins and have kind of pretty noses that dip down just a little right here and eyes that tilt at the outside. And then there’s a bunch that look like you,” she said to Michael, “yeah, just like you, real Irish with bushy brows and curly hair and big crazy Irish eyes.”

“But, honey,” Michael had protested in vain, “I’m not a Mayfair.”

“-and the ones with the red hair like her, only she’s just about the most pretty one I’ve seen. You must be Mona. You have the gleam and glow of somebody who’s just come into tons of money.”

“Mary Jane, darling,” said Celia, unable to follow up with an intelligent bit of advice or a meaningless little question.

“Well, what does it feel like to be so rich?” Mary Jane asked, big, quivering eyes fastened still to Mona. “I mean really deep in here.” She pounded her cheap little gaping blouse with a knotted fist, squinting up her eyes again, and bending forward so that the well between her breasts was plainly visible even to someone as short as Mona. “Never mind, I know I’m not supposed to ask that sort of question. I came over here to see her, you know, because Paige and Beatrice told me to do it.”

“Why did they do that?” asked Mona.

“Hush up, dear,” said Beatrice. “Mary Jane is a Mayfair’s Mayfair. Darling Mary Jane, you ought to bring your grandmother up here immediately. I’m serious, child. We want you to come. We have an entire list of addresses, both temporary and permanent.”

“I know what she means,” Celia had said. She’d been sitting beside Rowan, and was the only one bold enough to wipe Rowan’s face now and then with a white handkerchief. “I mean about the Mayfairs with no chins. She means Polly. Polly has an implant. She wasn’t born with that chin.”

“Well, if she has an implant,” declared Beatrice, “then Polly has a visible chin, doesn’t she?”

“Yeah, but she’s got the slanty eyes and the tipped nose,” said Mary Jane.

“Exactly,” said Celia.

“You all afraid of the extra genes?” Mary Jane had thrown her voice out like a lasso, catching everybody’s attention. “You, Mona, you afraid?”

“I don’t know,” said Mona, who was in fact not afraid.

“Of course, it’s nothing that’s even remotely likely to happen!” Bea said. “The genes. It’s purely theoretical, of course. Do we have to talk about this?” Beatrice threw a meaningful look at Rowan.

Rowan had stared, as she always did, at the wall, maybe at the sunshine on the bricks, who could possibly know?

Mary Jane had plunged ahead. “I don’t think anything that wild will ever happen to this family again. I think the moment for that kind of witchcraft is past, and another eon of new witchcraft-”

“Darling, we really don’t take this entire witchcraft thing too seriously,” said Bea.

“You know the family history?” Celia had asked gravely.

“Know it? I know things about it you don’t know. I know things my granny told me, that she heard from Old Tobias, I know things that are written on the walls in that house, still. When I was a little child, I sat on Ancient Evelyn’s knee. Ancient Evelyn told me all kinds of things that I remember. Just one afternoon, that’s all it took.”

“But the file on our family, the file by the Talamasca …” Celia had pressed. “They did give it to you at the clinic?”

“Oh, yeah, Bea and Paige brought that stuff to me,” said Mary Jane. “Look here.” She pointed to the Band-Aid on her arm that was just like the Band-Aid on her knee. “This is where they stuck me! Took enough blood to sacrifice to the devil. I understand the entire situation. Some of us have a whole string of extra genes. You breed two close kins with the double dose of double helix, and wham, you’ve got a Taltos. Maybe! Maybe! After all, think about it, how many cousins have married and married, and it never happened, did it, till … Look, we shouldn’t talk about it in front of her, you’re right.”

Michael had given a weary little smile of gratitude.

Mary Jane again squinted at Rowan. Mary Jane blew a big bubble with her gum, sucked it in, and popped it.

Mona laughed. “Now that’s some trick,” she said. “I could never do that.”

“Oh, well, that might be a blessing,” said Bea.

“But you did read the file,” Celia had pressed. “It’s very important that you know everything.”

“Oh, yeah, I read every word of it,” Mary Jane had confessed, “even the ones I had to look up.” She slapped her slender, tanned little thigh and shrieked with laughter. “Y’all talking about giving me things. Help me get some education, that’s about the only thing I could really use. You know, the worst thing that ever happened to me was my mama taking me out of school. ’Course, I didn’t want to go to school then. I had much more fun in the public library, but-”

“I think you’re right about the extra genes,” Mona said. And right about needing the education.

Many, many of the family had the extra chromosomes which could make monsters, but none had ever been born to the clan, no matter what the coupling, until this terrible time.

And what of the ghost this monster had been for so long, a phantom to drive young women mad, to keep First Street under a cloud of thorns and gloom? There was something poetic about the strange bodies lying right here, beneath the oak, under the very grass where Mary Jane stood in her short denim skirt with her flesh-colored Band-Aid on her little knee, and her hands on her little hips, and her little filthy white patent leather buckle shoe rolled to one side and smeared with fresh mud-with her little dirty sock half down in her heel.

Maybe Bayou witches are just plain dumb, Mona thought. They can stand over the graves of monsters and never know it. Of course, none of the other witches in this family knew it either. Only the woman who won’t talk, and Michael, the big hunk of Celtic muscle and charm standing beside Rowan.

“You and I are second cousins,” Mary Jane had said to Mona, renewing her approach. “Isn’t that something? You weren’t born when I came to Ancient Evelyn’s house and ate her homemade ice cream.”

“I don’t recall Ancient Evelyn ever making homemade ice cream.”

“Darlin’, she made the best homemade ice cream that I ever tasted. My mama brought me into New Orleans to-”

“You’ve got the wrong person,” said Mona. Maybe this girl was an impostor. Maybe she wasn’t even a Mayfair. No, no such luck on that. And there was something about her eyes that reminded Mona a little of Ancient Evelyn.

“No, I got the right person,” Mary Jane had insisted. “But we didn’t really come on account of the ice cream. Let me see your hands. Your hands are normal.”

“So what?”

“Mona, be nice, dear,” said Beatrice. “Your cousin is just sort of outspoken.”

“Well, see these hands?” said Mary Jane. “I had a sixth finger when I was little, on both hands? Not a real finger? You know? I mean just a little one. And that’s why my mother brought me to see Ancient Evelyn, because Ancient Evelyn has just such a finger herself.”

“Don’t you think I know that?” asked Mona. “I grew up with Ancient Evelyn.”

“I know you did. I know all about you. Just cool off, honey. I’m not trying to be rude, it’s just I am a Mayfair, same as you, and I’ll pit my genes against your genes anytime.”

“Who told you all about me?” Mona asked.

“Mona,” said Michael softly.

“How come I never met you before?” said Mona, “I’m a Fontevrault Mayfair. Your second cousin, as you just said. And how come you talk like you’re from Mississippi when you say you lived all that time in California?”

“Oh, listen, there’s a story to it,” said Mary Jane. “I’ve done my time in Mississippi, believe you me, couldn’t have been any worse on Parchman Farm.” It had been impossible to crack the kid’s patience. She had shrugged. “You got any iced tea?”

“ ’Course we do, dear, I’m so sorry.” Off Beatrice had gone to get it. Celia had shaken her head with shame. Even Mona had felt negligent, and Michael had quickly apologized.

“No, I’ll git it myself, tell me where it is,” Mary Jane had cried.

But Bea had disappeared already, conveniently enough. Mary Jane popped her gum again, and then again in a whole side-mouth series of little pops.

“Awesome,” said Mona.

“Like I said, there’s a story to it all. I could tell you some terrible things about my time in Florida. Yeah, I been there, and in Alabama for a while, too. I had to sort of work my way back down here.”

“No lie,” said Mona.

“Mona, don’t be sarcastic.”

“I seen you before,” Mary Jane had said, going on as if nothing at all had happened. “I remembered you when you and Gifford Mayfair came out to L.A. to go to Hawaii. That’s the first time I was ever in an airport. You were sleeping right there by the table, stretched out on two chairs, under Gifford’s coat, and Gifford Mayfair bought us the best meal???”

Don’t describe it, Mona had thought. But Mona did have some hazy memory of that trip, and waking up with a crick in her neck in the Los Angeles airport, known by the snappy name of LAX, and Gifford saying to Alicia that they had to bring “Mary Jane” back home someday.

Only thing, Mona had no memory of any other little girl there. So this was Mary Jane. And now she was back home. Gifford must be working miracles from heaven.

Bea had returned with the iced tea. “Here it is, precious, lots of lemon and sugar, the way you like it, isn’t that right? Yes, darling.”

“I don’t remember seeing you at Michael and Rowan’s wedding,” said Mona.

“That’s ’cause I never came in,” said Mary Jane, who took the iced tea from Bea as soon as it entered the nearest orbit, and drank half of it, slurping it and wiping it off her chin with the back of her hand. Chipped nail polish, but what a gorgeous shade of crape myrtle purple.

“I told you to come,” said Bea. “I called you. I left a message for you three times at the drugstore.”

“I know you did, Aunt Beatrice, ain’t nobody who could say that you didn’t do your level best to get us to that wedding. But, Aunt Beatrice, I didn’t have shoes! I didn’t have a dress? I didn’t have a hat? See these shoes? I found these shoes. These are the first shoes that are not tennis shoes that I have worn in a decade! Besides, I could see perfect from across the street. And hear the music. That was fine music you had at your wedding, Michael Curry. Are you sure you aren’t a Mayfair? You look like a Mayfair to me; I could make let’s say seven different points about your appearance that’s Mayfair.”

“Thank you, sweetheart. I’m not a Mayfair.”

“Oh, you are in your heart,” said Celia.

“Well, of course,” said Michael, never taking his eyes off the girl even once, no matter who spoke to him. And what do men see when they look at bundles of charm like this?

“You know when we were little,” Mary Jane had gone on, “we didn’t have anything out there, we just had an oil lamp and a cooler with some ice in it and a lot of mosquito netting hung all over the porch and Granny would light the lamp every evening and …”

“You didn’t have electricity?” Michael had asked. “How long ago was this? How long ago could it have been?”

“Michael, you’ve never been in the Bayou Country,” said Celia. And Bea gave a knowing nod.

“Michael Curry, we were squatters, that’s what we were,” said Mary Jane. “We were just hiding out in Fontevrault. Aunt Beatrice could tell you. Sheriff would come to throw us out periodically. We’d pack and he’d take us into Napoleonville and then we would go back and he’d give up on us, and we’d be in peace for a while, till some goody-two-shoes passed by in a boat, some game warden, somebody like that, and called in on us. We had bees, you know, on the porch for honey? We could fish right off the back steps? We had fruit trees all around the landing then, before the wisteria got them like a giant boa constrictor, you know, and blackberries? Why, I’d just pick all I wanted right there where the road forks. We had everything. Besides, now I have electricity! I hooked it up myself from the highway, and I did the same thing with the cable TV.”

“You really did that?” asked Mona.

“Honey, that’s against the law,” said Bea.

“I certainly did. My life’s far too interesting for me to ever tell lies about it. Besides, I’ve got more courage than imagination, that’s always been the case.” She drank the iced tea with another noisy slurp, spilling more of it. “God, that’s good. That’s so sweet. That’s artificial sweetener, isn’t it?”

“I’m afraid so,” said Bea, staring at her in mingled horror and embarrassment. And to think she had said “sugar.” And Bea did hate people who ate and drank sloppily.

“Now, just think of it,” said Mary Jane, wiping the back of her hand across her mouth and then wiping her hand on her denim skirt. “I’m tasting something now that is fifty times sweeter than anything anybody ever tasted on earth until this very time. That’s why I’ve bought stock in artificial sweetener.”

“You’ve bought what?” asked Mona.

“Oh, yeah. I have my own broker, honey, discount broker but that’s the best kind, since I do the picking most of the time anyway. He’s in Baton Rouge. I’ve got twenty-five thousand dollars sunk in the stock market. And when I make it rich, I’m draining and raising Fontevrault. I’m bringing it all back, every peg and board! You wait and see. You’re looking at a future member of the Fortune Five Hundred.”

Maybe there was something to this dingbat, Mona had thought. “How did you get twenty-five thousand dollars?”

“You could be killed, fiddling with electricity,” declared Celia.

“Earned every penny of it on the way home, and that took a year, and don’t ask me how I did it. I had a couple of things going for me, I did. But that’s a story, now, really.”

“You could be electrocuted,” said Celia. “Hooking up your own wires.”

“Darling, you are not in the witness box,” said Bea anxiously.

“Look, Mary Jane,” said Michael, “if you need anything like that, I’ll come down there and hook it up for you. I mean it. You just tell me when, I’ll be there.”

Twenty-five thousand dollars?

Mona’s eyes had drifted to Rowan. Rowan was frowning just a little at the flowers, as if the flowers were talking to her in a quiet and secret tongue.

There followed a colorful description from Mary Jane of climbing swamp cypresses, of knowing just what electric wires to touch and not to touch, of purloined work gloves and boots. Maybe this girl was some kind of genius.

“What other stocks do you own?” asked Mona.

“What do you care at your age about the stock market?” asked Mary Jane with blithering ignorance.

“Good heavens, Mary Jane,” Mona had said, trying to sound as much as she could like Beatrice, “I’ve always had a great obsession with the stock market. Business to me is an art. Everyone knows that about me. I plan someday to run my own mutual fund. I assume you know the term, mutual fund?”

“Well, sure I do,” said Mary Jane, laughing at herself in an utterly agreeable and forgiving manner.

“I have, in the last few weeks, already completely designed my own portfolio,” Mona said, and then she’d broken off, feeling dumb for having been baited like that by someone who probably was not even listening to her. Derision from the firm of Mayfair and Mayfair was one thing-and it would not last long-but from this girl it was another.

But the girl had really looked at her, and stopped just using her for a sounding board, while taking little peeping glances in between her own hasty words.

“Is that so?” asked Mary Jane. “Well, let me ask you something now. What about this Shopper’s Channel on TV? I think this is going to go over like crazy? You know? I’ve put ten grand in the Shopper’s Channel. You know what happened?”

“The stock’s nearly doubled in the last four months,” said Mona.

“You got it, that’s right, now how did you know that? Well, you’re some strange kid, aren’t you now? And I thought you were one of those uptown girls, with that ribbon in your hair, you know, that you always wore, and going to Sacred Heart, you know? And I figured you wouldn’t even talk to me.”

A little pain had flared in Mona at that moment, pain and pity for this girl, for anybody who felt that cast out, that snubbed. Mona had never in her life suffered that lack of confidence. And this girl was interesting, putting it all together on her own, with far less nuts and bolts than Mona had.

“Hold it, please, darlings, let’s not talk Wall Street,” said Beatrice. “Mary Jane, how is Granny? You haven’t told us a word. And it’s four o’clock, and you have to leave soon if you’re going to drive all the way back-”

“Oh, Granny’s fine, Aunt Beatrice,” said Mary Jane, but she had been looking straight at Mona. “Now, you know what happened to Granny after Mama came and got me and took me away to Los Angeles? I was six years old then, you know. Did you hear this story?”

“Yeah,” said Mona.

Everybody had. Beatrice was still embarrassed about it. Celia stared at the girl as though she were a giant mosquito. Only Michael seemed uninformed.

What had happened was this: Mary Jane’s grandmother, Dolly Jean Mayfair, had been slapped in the parish home after her daughter left with six-year-old Mary Jane. Dolly Jean was supposed to have died last year and been buried in the family tomb. And the funeral had been a big affair, only because when somebody called New Orleans, all the Mayfairs drove out there to Napoleonville, and beat their chests in grief and regret that they had let this old woman, poor Dolly Jean, die in a parish home. Most of them had never heard of her.

Indeed, none of them had really known Dolly Jean. Or at least they had not known her as an old lady. Lauren and Celia had seen her many times when they were all little girls, of course.

Ancient Evelyn had known Dolly Jean, but Ancient Evelyn had never left Amelia Street to ride to a country funeral, and no one had even thought of asking her about it.

Well, when Mary Jane hit town a year ago, and heard the story of her grandmother dying and being buried, she’d scoffed at it, even laughing in Bea’s face.

“Hell, she’s not dead,” Mary Jane had said. “She came to me in a dream and said, ‘Mary Jane, come get me. I want to go home.’ Now I’m going back to Napoleonville, and you have to tell me where that parish home is.”

For Michael’s benefit, she had now repeated the entire tale, and the look of astonishment on Michael’s face was becoming unintentionally comic.

“How come Dolly Jean didn’t tell you in the dream where the home was?” Mona had asked.

Beatrice had shot her a disapproving look.

“Well, she didn’t, that’s a fact. And that’s a good point, too. I have a whole theory about apparitions and why they, you know, get so mixed up.”

“We all do,” said Mona.

“Mona, tone it down,” said Michael.

Just as if I’m his daughter now, thought Mona indignantly. And he still hasn’t taken his eyes off Mary Jane. But it had been said affectionately.

“Honey, what happened?” Michael had pushed.

“Well, an old lady like that,” Mary Jane had resumed, “she doesn’t always know where she is, even in a dream, but she knew where she was from! This is exactly what happened. I walked into the door of that old folks’ home, and there, slap-bang in the middle of the recreation room, or whatever they called it, was my grandmother and she looked up at me, right at me, and after all those years she said, ‘Where you been, Mary Jane? Take me home, chère, I’m tired of waiting.’ ”

They had buried the wrong person from the old folks’ home.

The real Granny Dolly Jean Mayfair had been alive, receiving but never laying eyes upon a welfare check every month with somebody else’s name on it. A royal inquisition had taken place to prove it, and then Granny Mayfair and Mary Jane Mayfair had gone back to live in the ruins of the plantation house, and a team of Mayfairs had provided them with the basic necessities, and Mary Jane had stood outside, shooting her pistol at soft-drink bottles and saying that they’d be just fine, they could take care of themselves. She had some bucks she’d made on the road, she was kind of a nut about doing things her own way, no thank you kindly.

“So they let the old lady live with you in this flooded house?” Michael had asked so innocently.

“Honey, after what they did to her in the old folks’ home out there, mixing her up with some other woman and putting her name on a slab and all, what the hell are they going to say to me about her living with me? And Cousin Ryan? Cousin Ryan of Mayfair and Mayfair? You know? He went down there and tore that town apart!”

“Yeah,” said Michael. “I bet he did.”

“It was all our fault,” said Celia. “We should have kept track of these people.”

“Are you sure you didn’t grow up in Mississippi and maybe even Texas?” Mona had asked. “You sound like an amalgam of the whole South.”

“What is an amalgam? See, that is where you have the advantage. You’re educated. I’m self-educated. There’s a world of difference between us. There are words that I don’t dare pronounce and I can’t read the symbols in the dictionary.”

“Do you want to go to school, Mary Jane?” Michael had been getting more and more involved by the second, his intoxicatingly innocent blue eyes making a head-to-toe sweep about every four and one-half seconds. He was far too clever to linger on the kid’s breasts and hips, or even her round little head, not that it had been undersized, just sort of dainty. That’s how she’d seemed, finally, ignorant, crazy, brilliant, a mess, and somehow dainty.

“Yes, sir, I do,” said Mary Jane. “When I’m rich I’ll have a private tutor like Mona here is gettin’ now that she’s the designee and all, you know, some really smart guy that tells you the name of every tree you pass, and who was president ten years after the Civil War, and how many Indians there were at Bull Run, and what is Einstein’s Theory of Relativity.”

“How old are you?” Michael had asked.

“Nineteen and a half, big boy,” Mary Jane had declared, biting her shiny white teeth into her lower lip, lifting one eyebrow and winking.

“This story about your granny, you’re serious, this really happened? You picked up your granny and …”

“Darling, it all happened,” said Celia, “exactly as the girl says. I think we should go inside. I think we’re upsetting Rowan.”

“I don’t know,” said Michael. “Maybe she’s listening. I don’t want to move. Mary Jane, you can care for this old lady all by yourself?”

Beatrice and Celia had immediately looked anxious. If Gifford had still been alive, and there, she too would have looked anxious. “Leaving that old woman out there!” as Celia had said so often of late.

And they had promised Gifford, hadn’t they, that they would take care of it? Mona remembered that. Gifford had been in one of her hopeless states of worry about relatives far and wide, and Celia had said, “We’ll drive out and check on her.”

“Yes, sir, Mr. Curry, it all happened, and I took Granny home with me, and don’t you know that the sleeping porch upstairs was just exactly the way we’d left it? Why, after thirteen years, the radio was still there, and the mosquito netting and the ice chest.”

“In the swamps?” Mona had demanded. “Wait a minute.”

“That’s right, honey, that’s exactly right.”

“It’s true,” Beatrice had confessed dismally. “Of course, we got them fresh linen, new things. We wanted to put them in a hotel or a house or …”

“Well, naturally,” said Celia. “I’m afraid this story almost made the papers. Darling, is your granny alone out there right now?”

“No, ma’am, she’s with Benjy. Benjy’s from the trappers live out that way-real crazy people, you know??? The kind that live in those shacks all made out of pieces of tin, and windows from salvage and even cardboard? I pay him below minimum wage to watch Granny and to cover the phones, but I don’t take out any deductions.”

“So what?” said Mona. “He’s an independent contractor.”

“You sure are smart,” said Mary Jane. “Don’t you think I know that? I was actually biting my lip on another little tidbit right at that point, you know??? That Benjy, bless his heart, has already discovered how to make some easy money in the French Quarter down here, you know?? Peddling nothing but what God give him.”

“Oh my Lord,” said Celia.

Michael laughed. “How old is Benjy?” he asked.

“Twelve years old this September,” said Mary Jane. “He’s all right. His big dream is to be a drug dealer in New York, and my big dream for him is to go to Tulane and become a medical doctor.”

“But what do you mean, cover the phones?” asked Mona. “How many phones have you got? What are you actually doing down there?”

“Well, I had to spring for some money for the phones, that was an absolute necessity, and I’ve been calling my broker, naturally enough. Who else? And then there’s another line that Granny can talk on to my mother, you know, my mother is never getting out of that hospital in Mexico.”

“What hospital in Mexico?” asked Bea, utterly aghast. “Mary Jane, you told me two weeks ago how your mother died in California.”

“I was trying to be polite, you know, save everybody the grief and the trouble.”

“But what about the funeral?” Michael had asked, drawing close enough most likely to sneak a look down Mary Jane’s tightly laced junk polyester blouse. “The old lady. Who did they bury?”

“Darlin’, that’s the worst part of it. Nobody ever found out!” said Mary Jane. “Don’t worry about my mother, Aunt Bea, she thinks she’s on the astral plane already. She might be on the astral plane for all I know. Besides, her kidneys are shot.”

“Now, that’s not exactly true about the woman in the grave,” said Celia. “They believe it was …”

“Believe?” asked Michael.

Maybe big breasts are markers of power, Mona had thought as she watched the girl bend nearly double and laugh and laugh as she pointed at Michael.

“Look, that’s all very sad about the woman in the wrong grave,” said Beatrice. “But, Mary Jane, you have to tell me how to reach your mother!”

“Hey, you don’t have a sixth finger,” said Mona.

“Not now, precious,” said Mary Jane. “My mother had some doctor in Los Angeles chop it off. That’s what I was going to tell you. They did the same thing to-”

“Enough of this talk, really,” said Celia. “I’m so worried for Rowan!”

“Oh, I didn’t know,” said Mary Jane. “I mean-”

“Same thing to whom?” asked Mona.

“Now that’s another thing. When do you say ‘whom’ instead of ‘who,’ exactly?”

“I don’t think you’re at that stage yet,” Mona had replied. “There are a lot of other basic things….”

“Enough, ladies and gentlemen!” Bea had declared. “Mary Jane, I’m going to call your mother.”

“You’re going to be so sorry, Aunt Bea. You know what kind a’ doctor cut off my sixth finger in L.A.? It was a voodoo witch doctor from Haiti, and he did it on the kitchen table.”

“But can’t they dig up the wrong woman and find out once and for all who she was?” Michael asked.

“Well, they have a very good suspicion, but …” Celia had started.

“But what?” Michael had asked.

“Oh, it has to do with welfare checks,” Beatrice had declared, “and that’s none of our business. Michael, please forget about that dead woman!”

How could Rowan just ignore these proceedings? And here he was, calling Mary Jane by name, doing everything but eating Mary Jane up with a spoon. If this didn’t snap Rowan to, then a tornado wouldn’t do it.

“Well, Michael Curry, come to find out they’d been calling that dead lady Dolly Jean for some time before she passed on. Wasn’t anybody in that place with a lick a’ sense, if you ask me. I think one night they just started putting Granny in the wrong bed, and what do you know, the old lady in Granny’s bed died, and there you have it. They buried some poor old stranger in the Mayfair grave!”

At that point Mary Jane had flashed her eyes on Rowan.

“She’s listening!” Mary Jane had cried. “Yes, she is, swear to God. She’s listening.”

If it was true, no one else could see it or sense it. Rowan had remained oblivious to the eyes turning to her. Michael had flushed as though hurt by the kid’s outburst. And Celia had studied Rowan, doubting, and grim.

“There’s nothing wrong with her,” Mary Jane had declared. “She’ll snap right out of it, you watch. People like her, they talk when they want to. I can be like that.”

Mona had wanted to say, Why don’t you start now?

But in truth, she had wanted to believe that Mary Jane was right. This girl might just be some powerful witch after all, Mona had figured. If Mary Jane wasn’t, she would still make it, somehow or other.

“Don’t you worry none now about Granny,” she said as she was “fixin’ to go.” She’d smiled and slapped her naked brown thigh. “Let me tell you something, it may have turned out for the best.”

“Good Lord, how?” Bea had asked.

“Well, in all those years in that home, you know, they said she never said much of anything, just sort of talked to herself and acted like people were there who weren’t and all that, and well now?? She knows who she is, you know??? She talks to me and she watches the soaps, and never misses ‘Jeopardy’ or ‘Wheel of Fortune’?? I think it was all that commotion as well as anything else, and coming back to Fontevrault and finding things up in the attic? Did you know she could climb those steps?? Listen, she’s fine, don’t you worry about her, I’m getting cheese and graham crackers for her when I get home, and her and me will watch the late show, or the country-western channel, she likes that too, you know, ‘Achy Breaky Heart’ and all that stuff. Why, she can sing those songs. Never you mind. She’s terrific.”

“Yes, precious, but really …”

Mona had even sort of liked her for five minutes, a kid who could take care of an old woman like that, making it up every day with Band-Aids and hot wires.

Mona had walked out to the front with her, and watched her hop in her pickup truck, which had bare springs sticking out of the passenger seat, and roar off in a cloud of blue exhaust.

“We’ve got to take care of her,” Bea had said. “We’ve got to sit down and talk about the Mary Jane situation very soon.”

True, Mona had agreed. The Mary Jane Situation was a good label for it.

And though this girl clearly had evinced no remarkable powers on the spot, there was something exciting about her.

Mary Jane was spunky and there was something irresistible about the idea of showering her with Mayfair money and benefits, and trying to improve her. Why couldn’t she come in and study with this tutor who was going to free Mona from the boredom of regular school forever? Beatrice had been chomping at the bit to buy Mary Jane some clothes before she left town, and no doubt had been sending her the crème de la crème of once-worn hand-me-downs.

And there was one other little secret reason why Mona liked Mary Jane, a reason which nobody would ever understand. Mary Jane had been wearing a cowboy hat. It was small and made of straw, and she’d let it fall down behind her shoulders on its strings, but it had been there for two minutes when she first walked up. And she’d popped it back on her head before she pulled hard on the stick shift of that old truck and rushed off, waving at everybody.

A cowboy hat. It had always been Mona’s dream to wear a cowboy hat, especially when she was really rich and in control of things, and flying about the world in her own plane. Mona had for years pictured herself as a mogul in a cowboy hat, entering factories and banks and … well, Mary Jane Mayfair did have a cowboy hat. And with her braids on top of her head, and her slick, tight denim skirt, there was something all together about her. She had, in spite of everything, a sort of deliberate and successful style. Even her chipped and peeling purple fingernail polish had been part of it, giving her a kind of earthy seductiveness.

Well, it wouldn’t be hard to verify that, would it?

“And those eyes, Mona,” Beatrice had said as they walked back into the garden. “The child is adorable! Did you look at her? I don’t know how I could ever … And her mother, her mother, oh, that girl always was insane, nobody should have ever let her run away with that baby. But there had been such bad blood between us and those Fontevrault Mayfairs.”

“You can’t take care of all of them, Bea,” Mona had reassured her, “any more than Gifford could.” But they would, of course. And if Celia and Beatrice didn’t, well, Mona would. That had been one of the keenest revelations of that afternoon, that Mona was now part of the team; she wasn’t going to let that kid not fulfill her dreams, not while she had breath in her little thirteen-year-old body.

“She’s a sweet thing in her own way,” Celia had admitted.

“Yeah, and that Band-Aid on her knee,” Michael had muttered under his breath, not thinking. “What a girl. I believe what she said about Rowan.”

“So do I,” said Beatrice. “Only …”

“Only what?” Michael had asked desperately.

“Only what if she never makes up her mind to speak again!”

“Beatrice, shame on you,” Celia had said, glancing pointedly at Michael.

“You think that Band-Aid’s sexy, Michael?” Mona had asked.

“Well, er, yeah, actually. Everything about that girl was sexy, I guess. What does it matter to me?” He’d seemed sincere enough, and sincerely exhausted. He’d wanted to get back to Rowan. He’d been sitting with Rowan and reading a book, by himself, when they’d all come together.

For a while after that afternoon, Mona could have sworn, Rowan looked different, that her eyes were tighter now and then, and sometimes more open, as though she were posing a question to herself. Maybe Mary Jane’s big gush of words had been good for Rowan. Maybe they ought to ask Mary Jane back, or maybe she’d just come back. Mona had found herself actually looking forward to it, or maybe just asking the new driver to fire up the monstrous stretch limo, pack the leather pockets with ice and drinks, and drive down there to that flooded house. You could do that when you had your own car. Hell, Mona had not gotten used to any of this.

For two or three days Rowan had seemed better, showing that little frown more and more, which was, after all, a facial expression.

But now? On this quiet, lonely, sticky sunny afternoon?

Mona thought that Rowan had slipped back. Even the heat did not touch her. She sat in the humid air, and the droplets of sweat appeared on her brow, with no Celia to boldly wipe them away, but Rowan didn’t move to wipe them herself.

“Please, Rowan, talk to us,” Mona said now in her frank, almost brash girlish voice. “I don’t want to be the designee of the legacy! I don’t even want to be the heiress if you don’t approve of it.” She leaned on her elbow, her red hair making a veil between her and the iron gates to the front garden. Felt more private. “Come on, Rowan. You know what Mary Jane Mayfair said. You’re in there. Come on. Mary Jane said you could hear us.”

Mona reached up for her own hair ribbon, to adjust it, to make her head stop itching. There was no hair ribbon. She hadn’t worn her bow since her mother died. It was a little pearl-studded barrette, holding a clump of her hair too tight. Hell with it. She loosened it and let her hair slip down.

“Look, Rowan, if you want me to go, give me a sign. You know, like just do something weird. And I’ll be out of here that quick.”

Rowan was staring at the brick wall. She was staring at the bacon-’n’-eggs lantana-the wildly grown hedge of little brown and orange flowers. Or maybe she was just staring at the bricks.

Mona gave a sigh, a pretty spoiled and petulant thing to do, really. But then she had tried everything except throwing a tantrum. Maybe that’s what somebody ought to do!

Only it can’t be me, she thought dismally.

She got up, went to the wall, pulled off two sprigs of the lantana and brought them back, and put them before Rowan like an offering to a goddess who sits beneath an oak listening to people’s prayers.

“I love you, Rowan,” she said. “I need you.”

For one moment her eyes misted. The burning green of the garden seemed to fold into one great veil. Her head throbbed slightly, and she felt some tightening in her throat and then a release that was worse than crying, some dim and terrible acknowledgment of all the terrible things that had come to pass.

This woman was wounded, perhaps beyond repair. And she, Mona, was the heiress who could bear a child now, and must indeed try to bear one, so that the great Mayfair fortune could be passed on. This woman, what would she do now? She could no longer be a doctor, that was almost certain; she seemed to care for nothing and no one.

And suddenly Mona felt as awkward and unloved and as unwelcome as she ever had in her life. She ought to get out of here. It was shameful that she had stayed so many days at this table, begging for forgiveness for once lusting after Michael, begging for forgiveness for being young and rich and able someday to have children, for having survived when both her mother, Alicia, and her Aunt Gifford, two women she loved and hated and needed, had died.

Self-centered! What the hell. “I didn’t mean it with Michael,” she said aloud to Rowan. “No, don’t go into that again!”

No change. Rowan’s gray eyes were focused, not dreaming. Her hands lay in her lap in the most natural little heap. Wedding ring so thin and spare it made her hands look like those of a nun.

Mona wanted to reach for one of her hands, but she didn’t dare. It was one thing to talk for half an hour, but she couldn’t touch Rowan, she couldn’t force a physical contact. She didn’t dare even to lift Rowan’s hand and put the lantana in it. That was too intimate to do to her in her silence.

“Well, I don’t touch you, you know. I don’t take your hand, or feel it or try to learn something from it. I don’t touch you or kiss you because if I was like you, I think I’d hate it if some freckle-faced, red-haired kid came around and did that to me.”

Red hair, freckles, what had that to do with it, except to say, Yes, I slept with your husband, but you’re the mysterious one, the powerful one, the woman, the one he loves and has always loved. I was nothing. I was just a kid who tricked him into bed. And wasn’t as careful that night as I should have been. Wasn’t careful at all, in fact. But not to worry, I’ve never been what anyone would call regular. He looked at me the way he looked later at that kid, Mary Jane. Lust, that was all. Lust and nothing more. And my period will finally come, like it always does, and my doctor will give me yet another lecture.

Mona gathered up the little sprigs of lantana there on the table, next to the china cup, and she walked away.

For the first time, as she looked up at the clouds moving over the chimneys of the main house, she realized it was a beautiful day.

Michael was in the kitchen, fixing the juices, or “brewing the concoction” as they had come to call it-papaya juice, coconut, grapefruit, orange. There was lots of undefinable slop and pulp all over.

It occurred to her, though she tried not to process the thought, that he looked healthier and handsomer with every passing day. He’d been working out upstairs. The doctors encouraged him. He must have gained fifteen good pounds since Rowan had woken up and climbed out of bed.

“She does like it,” he said now, as if they’d been discussing this concoction all along. “I know she does. Bea said something about its being too acid. There’s no evidence she finds it too acid.” He shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said.

“I think,” said Mona, “that she stopped talking because of me.”

Mona stared at him, and then the tears came, wet and frightening. She didn’t want to break down. She didn’t want to make such a demand or display. But she was miserable. What the hell did she want from Rowan? She scarcely knew Rowan. It was as if she needed to be mothered by the designee of the legacy who had lost her power to carry on the line.

“No, honey,” he said with the softest, most comforting smile.

“Michael, it’s because I told her about us,” she said. “I didn’t mean to. It was the first morning I spoke to her. All this time, I’ve been scared to tell you. I thought she was just being quiet. I didn’t … I don’t … She never spoke after that, Michael. It’s true, isn’t it? It was after I came.”

“Honey chile, don’t torture yourself,” he said, wiping up some of the sticky gunk from the counter. He was patient, reassuring, but he was too tired for all this, and Mona was ashamed. “She’d stopped talking the day before, Mona. I told you mat. Pay attention.” He gave her a little smile to mock himself. “I just didn’t realize it then, that she’d quit talking.” He stirred the juice again. “Well, now comes the big decision. Egg or no egg.”

“Egg! You can’t put an egg in fruit juice.”

“Sure I can. Honey, you’ve never lived in Northern California, have you? This is a first-rate health-food special. And she needs the protein. But a raw egg can give you salmonella. Old problem. The family is split right down the middle on the subject of the raw egg. I should have asked Mary Jane her opinion last Sunday.”

“Mary Jane!” Mona shook her head. “Damn the family,” she said.

“I don’t know about that,” said Michael. “Beatrice thinks raw eggs are dangerous, and she has a point. On the other hand, when I was in high school, playing football, I used to pop a raw egg into a milkshake every morning. But Celia says …”

“Lord deliver me,” said Mona, imitating Celia perfectly. “What does Aunt Celia know about raw eggs?”

She was so sick of the family discussing Rowan’s tiny likes and dislikes, and Rowan’s blood count, and Rowan’s color, that if she found herself in one more pointless, ineffectual, and tiresome discussion, she would start screaming to be let out.

Maybe she had just had too much of it all, from the day they’d told her she was the heiress-too many people giving her advice, or asking after her as though she were the invalid. She’d written mock headlines on her computer:

GIRL KNOCKED ON HEAD BY WHOLE LOAD OF MONEY. Or, WAIF CHILD INHERITS BILLIONS AS LAWYERS FRET.

Naaah, you wouldn’t “fret” in a headline today. But she liked the word.

She felt so terrible suddenly as she stood here in the kitchen that the tears spilled out of her eyes like they would from a baby, and her shoulders began to shake.

“Look, honey, she stopped the day before, I told you,” he said. “I can tell you the last thing she said. We were sitting right there at the table. She’d been drinking coffee. She’d said she was dying for a cup of New Orleans coffee. And I’d made her a whole pot. It was about twenty-two hours from the time she woke up; and she hadn’t slept at all. Maybe that was the problem. We kept talking. She needed her rest. She said, ‘Michael, I want to go outside. No, stay, Michael. I want to be alone for a while.’ ”

“You’re sure that was the last thing she said?”

“Absolutely. I wanted to call everyone, tell them she was all right. Maybe I scared her! I’m the one, making that suggestion. And after that, I was leading her around, and she wasn’t saying anything, and that’s the way it’s been since then.”

He picked up what appeared to be a raw egg. He cracked it suddenly on the edge of the plastic blender and then pulled open the two halves of shell to let loose the icky white and yolk.

“I don’t think you hurt her at all, Mona. I really, really doubt you did. I wish you hadn’t told her. If you must know, I could have done without your telling her that I committed statutory rape on the living room couch with her cousin.” He shrugged. “Women do that, you know. They tell afterwards.” He gave her a bright reproving look, the sunlight glinting in his eyes. “We can’t tell, but they can tell. But the point is, I doubt she even heard you. I don’t think … she gives a damn.” His voice trailed off.

The glass was foamy and faintly disgusting-looking.

“I’m sorry, Michael.”

“Honey, don’t-”

“No, I mean I’m okay. She’s not okay. But I’m okay. You want me to take that stuff to her? It’s gross, Michael, I mean gross. Like it is absolutely disgusting!”

Mona looked at the froth, the unearthly color.

“Gotta blend it,” he said. He put the square rubber cap on the container, and pressed the button. Then came the ghastly sound of the blades turning as the liquid jumped inside.

Maybe it was better if you didn’t know about the egg.

“Well, I put lots of broccoli juice in it this time,” he said.

“Oh God, no wonder she won’t drink it. Broccoli juice! Are you trying to kill her?”

“Oh, she’ll drink it. She always drinks it. She drinks anything I put before her. I’m just thinking about what’s in it. Now listen to me. If she wasn’t listening when you made your confession, I’m not sure it came as a surprise. All that time she was in the coma, she heard things. She told me. She heard things people said when I was nowhere about. Of course, nobody knew about you and me and our little, you know, criminal activity.”

“Michael, for chrissakes, if there is a crime of statutory rape in this state, you’d have to get a lawyer to look it up to be sure. The age of consent between cousins is probably ten, and there may even be a special law on the books lowering the age to eight for Mayfairs.”

“Don’t kid yourself, sweetheart,” he said, shaking his head in obvious disapproval. “But what I was saying is, she heard the things you and I said to each other when we sat by the bed. We’re talking about witches, Mona.” He fell into his thoughts, staring off, brooding almost, looking intensely handsome, beefcake and sensitive.

“You know, Mona, it’s nothing anybody said.” He looked up at her. He was sad now, and it was very real, the way it is when a man of his age gets sad, and she found herself just a little frightened. “Mona, it was everything that happened to her. It was … perhaps the last thing that happened….”

Mona nodded. She tried to picture it again, the way he’d so briefly described it. The gun, the shot, the body falling. The terrible secret of the milk.

“You haven’t told anyone, have you?” he said in a serious whisper. God help her if she had, she thought, she would have died at this moment, the way he was looking at her.

“No, and I never will,” she said. “I know when to tell and when not to tell, but …”

He shook his head. “She wouldn’t let me touch the body. She insisted on carrying it down herself, and she could hardly walk. Long as I live, I’m not going to get that sight out of my mind, ever. All the rest of it-I don’t know. I can take it in stride, but something about the mother dragging the body of the daughter …”

“Did you think of it that way, like it was her daughter?”

He didn’t answer. He just continued to look off, and gradually the hurt and trouble slipped away from his face, and he chewed his lip for a second, and then almost smiled.

“Never tell anyone that part,” he whispered. “Never, never, never. No one needs to know. But someday, perhaps, she’ll want to talk about it. Perhaps it’s that, more than anything else, that’s made her silent.”

“Don’t ever worry that I’ll tell,” she said. “I’m not a child, Michael.”

“I know, honey, believe me, I know,” he said with just the warmest little spark of good humor.

Then he was really gone again, forgetting her, forgetting them, and the huge glass of gunk, as he stared off. And for one second he looked as if he was giving up all hope, as if he was in a total despair beyond the reach of anyone, even maybe Rowan.

“Michael, for the love of God, she will be all right. If that’s what it is, she’ll get better.”

He didn’t answer right away, then he sort of murmured the words:

“She sits in that very place, not over the grave, but right beside it,” he said. His voice had gotten thick.

He was going to cry, and Mona wouldn’t be able to stand it. She wanted with all her heart to go to him and put her arms around him. But this would have been for her, not him.

She realized suddenly that he was smiling-for her sake, of course-and now he gave her a little philosophical shrug. “Your life will be filled with good things, for the demons are slain,” he said, “and you will inherit Eden.” His smile grew broader and so genuinely kind. “And she and I, we will take that guilt to our graves of whatever we did and didn’t do, or had to do, or failed to do for each other.”

He sighed, and he leaned on his folded arms over the counter. He looked out into the sunshine, into the gently moving yard, full of rattling green leaves and spring.

It seemed he had come to a natural finish.

And he was his old self again, philosophical but undefeated.

Finally he stood upright and picked up the glass and wiped it with an old white napkin.

“Ah, that’s one thing,” he said, “that is really nice about being rich.”

“What?”

“Having a linen napkin,” he said, “anytime you want it. And having linen handkerchiefs. Celia and Bea always have their linen handkerchiefs. My dad would never use a paper handkerchief. Hmmm. I haven’t thought about that in a long time.”

He winked at her. She couldn’t stop herself from smiling. What a dope. But who the hell else could play off a wink like that with her? Nobody.

“You haven’t heard from Yuri, have you?” he asked.

“I would have told you,” she said dismally. It was agony to hear Yuri’s name.

“Have you told Aaron that you haven’t heard from him?”

“A hundred times, and three times this morning. Aaron hasn’t heard anything, either. He’s worried. But he’s not going back to Europe, no matter what happens. He’ll live out his days with us right here. He says to remember that Yuri is incredibly clever, like all the investigators of the Talamasca.”

“You do think something has happened?”

“I don’t know,” she said dully. “Maybe he just forgot about me.” It was too dreadful to contemplate, it couldn’t have been that way. But one had to face things, didn’t one? And Yuri was a man of the world.

Michael looked down into the drink. Maybe he would have the brains to see it was flat-out undrinkable. Instead he picked up a spoon and started to stir it.

“You know, Michael, that just may shock her out of her trance,” Mona said. “I mean, while she’s drinking it, right at that very moment, when half the glass is sliding down her throat, just tell her in a clear voice what’s in it.”

He chuckled, his deep-chested, fabulous chuckle. He picked up the jug of slop and poured a full, egregious glass of it.

“Come on, come out there with me. Come and see her.”

Mona hesitated. “Michael, I don’t want her to see both of us together, you know, standing side by side.”

“Use a little of your own witchcraft, honey. She knows I am her slave till the day I die.”

His expression changed again, very slowly. He was looking at her in a calm but almost cold fashion. And again there came over her a sense of how bereft he really was.

“Yeah, bereft,” he said, and there was something almost mean in his smile. He didn’t say anything more. He picked up the glass and went out the door.

“Let’s go talk to the lady,” he said over his shoulder. “Let’s go read her mind together. Two heads, you know, and all that. Maybe we should do it again, Mona, on the grass, you know, you and me, and maybe she’d wake up.”

Mona was shocked. Did he mean that? No, that wasn’t the question. The question was, How could he say that?

She didn’t answer him, but she knew what he felt. Or at least she thought she did. On some level she knew she couldn’t really know, that things were painful for a man of his age in a different way from what they were for a young girl. She knew this in spite of so many people having told her this, more or less. It was a matter not of humility but logic.

She followed him out onto the flagstones and along the pool and then into the rear gates. His jeans were so tight, she could hardly stand it. His natural walk was a seductive swagger. This is nice, think sexy thoughts! No way! And his polo shirt wasn’t exactly loose-fitting either. She loved the way it moved over his shoulders and back.

Can’t stop it. She wished he hadn’t made that bitter little joke. Do it on the grass! An awful restlessness took hold of her. Men were always complaining about how the sight of sexy women aroused them. Well, with her it was words as well as images. His tight jeans, and the sharp images that had invaded her mind after what he’d said.

Rowan was seated at the table, the way she’d been when Mona left her; the lantana was still there, the sprigs scattered a little, as if the wind had stirred them with one finger and then let them alone.

Rowan was frowning slightly, as if weighing something in her mind. Now that was always a good sign, Mona thought, but she would get Michael’s hopes up if she talked about it. Rowan didn’t seem to know that they were there. She was still looking at the distant flowers, at the wall.

Michael bent to kiss her on the cheek. He set the glass on the table. There was no change in her, except the breeze caught a few strands of hair. Then he reached down and he lifted her right hand and he placed her fingers around the glass.

“Drink it, honey,” he said. He used the same tone he’d used to Mona, brusque and warm. Honey, honey, honey means Mona, Rowan, or Mary Jane, or any female being perhaps.

Would “honey” have been appropriate for the dead thing, buried in the hole with its father? Christ, if she had only laid eyes on one of them, for just a precious second! Yeah, and every Mayfair woman who laid eyes on him during his little rampage had paid with her life for it. Except Rowan….

Whoa! Rowan was lifting the glass. Mona watched with a fearful fascination as she drank without ever moving her eyes from the distant flowers. She did blink naturally and slowly as she swallowed, but that was all. And the frown remained. Small. Thoughtful.

Michael stood watching her, hands in his pockets, and then he did a surprising thing. He talked about her to Mona, as if Rowan couldn’t hear. This was the first time.

“When the doctor spoke to her, when he told her she should go in for tests, she just got up and walked off. It was like a person on a park bench in a big city. You’d think someone had sat down beside her, maybe too close to her. She was isolated like that, all alone.”

He collected the glass. It looked more disgusting than ever. But to tell the truth, Rowan looked like she would have drunk anything that he’d put in her hand.

Nothing registered on Rowan’s face.

“I could take her to the hospital for the tests, of course. She might go along. She’s done everything else I’ve wanted her to do.”

“Why don’t you?” asked Mona.

“Because when she gets up in the morning she puts on her nightgown and her robe. I’ve laid out real clothes for her. She doesn’t touch them. That’s my cue. She wants to be in her nightgown and her robe. She wants to be home.”

He was angry suddenly. His cheeks were red, and there was a frank twisting to his lips that said it all.

“The tests can’t help her anyway,” he continued. “All these vitamins, that’s the treatment. The tests would only tell us things. Maybe it’s none of our business now. The drink helps her.”

His voice was tightening. He was getting angrier and angrier as he looked at Rowan. He stopped speaking.

He bent down suddenly and set the glass on the table, and laid his hands flat on either side of it. He was trying to look Rowan in the eye. He drew close to her face, but there was no change in her.

“Rowan, please,” he whispered. “Come back!”

“Michael, don’t!”

“Why not, Mona? Rowan, I need you now. I need you!” He banged the table hard with both hands. Rowan flinched, but did not otherwise change. “Rowan!” he shouted. He reached out for her as if he was going to take her by the shoulders and shake her, but he didn’t.

He snatched up the glass and turned and walked away.

Mona stood still, waiting, too shocked to speak. But it was like everything he did. It had been the good-hearted thing to do. It had been rough, though, and sort of terrible to watch.

Mona didn’t come away just yet. Slowly she sat down in the chair at the table, across from Rowan, the same place she’d taken every day.

Very slowly, Mona grew calm again. She wasn’t sure why she stayed here, except it seemed the loyal thing to do. Perhaps she didn’t want to appear to be Michael’s ally. Her guilt just hung all over her all the time these days.

Rowan did look beautiful, if you stopped thinking about the fact that she didn’t talk. Her hair was growing long, almost to her shoulders. Beautiful and absent. Gone.

“Well, you know,” Mona said, “I’ll probably keep coming until you give me a sign. I know that doesn’t absolve me, or make it okay to be the pest of a shocked and mute person. But when you’re mute like this, you sort of force people to act, to make choices, to decide. I mean, people can’t just let you alone. It’s not possible. It’s not really kind.”

She let out her breath, and felt herself relax all over.

“I’m too young to know certain things,” she said. “I mean, I’m not going to sit here and tell you I understand what happened to you. That would be too stupid.” She looked at Rowan; the eyes looked green now, as if picking up the tint of the bright spring lawn.

“But I … ah … care about what’s happening to everybody, well, almost everybody. I know things. I know more than anybody except Michael or Aaron. Do you remember Aaron?”

That was a dumb question. Of course Rowan remembered Aaron, if she remembered anything at all.

“Well, what I meant to say was, there’s this man, Yuri. I told you about him. I don’t think you ever saw him. In fact, I’m sure you didn’t. Well, he’s gone, very gone, as it stands now, and I’m worried, and Aaron’s worried, too. It’s like things are at a standstill now, with you here in the garden like this, and the truth is, things never stand still-”

She broke off. This was worse than the other approach. There was no way to tell if this woman was suffering. Mona sighed, trying to be quiet about it. She put her elbows on the table. Slowly she looked up. She could have sworn that Rowan had been looking at her, and had only just looked away.

“Rowan, it’s not over,” she whispered again. Then she looked off, through the iron gates, and beyond the pool and down the middle of the front lawn. The crape myrtle was coming into bloom. It had been mere sticks when Yuri left.

She and he had stood out there whispering together, and he had said, “Look, whatever happens in Europe, Mona, I am coming back here to you.”

Rowan was looking at her. Rowan was staring into her eyes.

She was too amazed to speak or move. And she was frightened to do either, frightened that Rowan would look away. She wanted to believe this was good, this was ratification and redemption. She had caught Rowan’s attention, even if she had been a hopeless brat.

Gradually Rowan’s preoccupied expression seemed to fade as Mona stared at her. And Rowan’s face became eloquent and unmistakably sad.

“What’s the matter, Rowan?” Mona whispered.

Rowan made a little sound, as if she were clearing her throat.

“It’s not Yuri,” Rowan whispered. And then her frown tightened, and her eyes darkened, but she didn’t drift away.

“What is it, Rowan?” Mona asked her. “Rowan, what did you say about Yuri?”

It appeared for all the world as if Rowan thought she was still speaking to Mona, and didn’t know that nothing was coming out.

“Rowan,” Mona whispered. “Tell me. Rowan-” Mona’s words stopped. She’d lost the nerve, suddenly, to speak her heart.

Rowan’s eyes were still fixed on her. Rowan lifted her right hand and ran her fingers back through her pale ashen hair. Natural, normal, but the eyes were not normal. They were struggling….

A sound distracted Mona-men talking, Michael and someone else. And then the sudden, alarming sound of a woman crying or laughing. For one second, Mona couldn’t tell which.

She turned and stared through the gates, across the glaring pool. Her Aunt Beatrice was coming towards her, almost running along the flagstone edge of the water, one hand to her mouth and the other groping as if she were going to fall on her face. She was the one who was crying, and it was most certainly crying. Bea’s hair was falling loose from her invariably neat twist on the back of her head. Her silk dress was blotched and wet.

Michael and a man in ominous plain dark clothes followed quickly, talking together as they did.

Great choked sobs were coming from Beatrice. Her heels sank into the soft lawn, but on she came.

“Bea, what is it?” Mona rose to her feet. So did Rowan. Rowan stared at the approaching figure, and as Beatrice rushed across the grass, turning her ankle and righting herself immediately, it was to Rowan that she reached out.

“They did it, Rowan,” said Bea, gasping for breath. “They killed him. The car came up over the curb. They killed him. I saw it with my own eyes!”

Mona reached out to support Beatrice, and suddenly her aunt had put her left arm around Mona and was near crushing her with kisses while the other hand still groped for Rowan, and Rowan reached to take it and clasp it in both of hers.

“Bea, who did they kill, who?” Mona cried. “You don’t mean Aaron.”

“Yes,” Bea answered, nodding frantically, her voice now dry and barely audible. She continued to nod, as Mona and Rowan closed against her. “Aaron,” she said. “They killed him. I saw it. The car jumped the curb on St. Charles Avenue. I told him I’d drive him over here. He said no, he wanted to walk. The car deliberately hit him, I saw it. It ran over him three times!”

As Michael, too, put his arms around her, Bea slumped as if she would faint, and let herself fall to the ground. Michael collected her and held her and she sank, crying, against his chest. Her hair fell in her eyes, and her hands were still reaching, trembling, like birds that couldn’t light.

The man in the ominous clothes was a policeman-Mona saw the gun and the shoulder holster-a Chinese American, with a tender and emotional face.

“I’m so sorry,” he said with a distinct New Orleans accent. Mona had never heard such an accent from such a Chinese face.

“They killed him?” Mona asked in a whisper, looking from the policeman to Michael, who was slowly soothing Bea with kisses and a gentle hand that straightened her hair. In all her life Mona had never seen Bea cry like this, and for one moment two thoughts collided in her: Yuri must be dead already; and Aaron had been murdered, and this meant perhaps that they were all in danger. And this was terrible, unspeakably terrible above all for Bea.

Rowan spoke calmly to the policeman, though her voice was hoarse and small in the confusion, in the clattering of emotion.

“I want to see the body,” said Rowan. “Can you take me to it? I’m a doctor. I have to see it. It will take me only a moment to dress.”

Was there time for Michael to be amazed, for Mona to be flabbergasted? Oh, but it made sense, didn’t it? Horrible Mary Jane had said, “She’s listening. She’ll talk when she’s ready.”

And thank God she had not sat still and silent through this moment! Thank God that she couldn’t or didn’t have to, and was with them now.

Never mind how fragile she looked, and how hoarse and unnatural her voice sounded. Her eyes were clear as she looked at Mona, ignoring the policeman’s solicitous answer that perhaps it was better she did not see the body, the accident having been what it was.

“Bea needs Michael,” said Rowan. She reached out and clasped Mona’s wrist. Her hand was cool and firm. “I need you now. Will you go with me?”

“Yes,” said Mona. “Oh yes.”