The witching hour

Thirty-five

MONDAY MORNING MICHAEL and Rowan went downtown together to obtain their Louisiana driver’s licenses. You couldn’t buy a car here until you had the state driver’s license.

And when they turned in their California licenses, which they had to do in order to receive the Louisiana license, it was sort of ceremonial and final and oddly exciting. Like giving up a passport or citizenry, perhaps. Michael found himself glancing at Rowan, and he saw her secretive and delighted smile.

They had a light dinner Monday night at the Desire Oyster Bar. A searing hot gumbo, full of shrimp and andouille sausage; and ice-cold beer. The doors of the place were open along Bourbon Street, the overhead fans stirring the cool air around them, the sweet, lighthearted jazz pouring out of the Mahogany Hall bar across the street.

“That’s the New Orleans sound,” Michael said, “that jazz with a real song in it, a joie de vivre. Nothing ever dark in it. Nothing ever really mournful. Not even when they play for the funerals.”

“Let’s take a walk,” she said. “I want to see all these seedy joints for myself.”

They spent the evening in the Quarter, roaming away from the garish lights of Bourbon Street finally, and past the elegant shop windows of Royal and Chartres, and then back to the river lookout opposite Jackson Square.

The size of the Quarter obviously amazed Rowan, as well as the feeling of authenticity which had somehow survived the renovations and the various improvements. Michael found himself overwhelmed again by the inevitable memories-Sundays down here with his mother. He could not argue against the improvements of curbs and street lamps, and new cobblestones laid around Jackson Square. The place seemed if anything more vital now than it had been in its shabbier and more volatile past.

It felt so good after the long walk to sit on the bench at the riverfront, merely watching the dark glitter of the water, watching the dancing boats, strung with lights like big wedding cakes, as they swept past the distant indistinct shapes of the far bank.

A gaiety prevailed among the tourists who came and went from the lookout. Soft conversation and random bursts of laughter. Couples embraced in the shadows. A lone saxophonist played a ragged, soulful song for the quarters people tossed into the hat at his feet.

Finally, they walked back into the thick of the pedestrian traffic, making their way to the soiled old Café du Monde for the famous café au lait and sugared doughnuts. They sat for a while in the warm air, as the others came and went from the sticky little tables around them; then meandered out among the glitzy shops which now filled the old French Market, across from the sad and graceful buildings of Decatur Street with their iron-lace balconies and slender iron colonettes.

Because she asked him to, he drove her up through the Irish Channel, skirting the dark brooding ruin of the St. Thomas Project, and following the river with its deserted warehouses for as long as he could. Annunciation Street looked a little better in the night maybe, with cheerful lights in the windows of the little houses. They drove on, uptown, on a narrow tree-lined street, into the Victorian section where the rambling houses were full of gingerbread and fretwork, and he pointed out to her his old-time favorites, and those he would love to restore.

How extraordinary it felt to have money in his pockets in his old home town. To know he could buy those houses, just the way he’d dreamed of it in the long-ago hopelessness and desperation of childhood.

Rowan seemed eager, happy, curious about things around her. No regrets apparently. But then it was so soon …

She talked now and then in easy bursts, her deep grosgrain voice always charming him and distracting him slightly from the content of what she said. She agreed the people here were incredibly friendly. They took their time about everything they did; but they were so completely without meanness it was almost hard to figure out. The accents of the family members baffled her. Beatrice and Ryan spoke with a touch of New York in their voices. Louisa had a completely different accent, and young Pierce didn’t sound like his father; and all of them sounded just a little bit like Michael sooner or later on some words.

“Don’t tell them that, honey,” he cautioned her. “I’m from the other side of Magazine Street and they know it. Don’t think they don’t.”

“They think you’re wonderful.” she said dismissing his comment. “Pierce says you’re an old-fashioned man.”

He laughed. “Well, hell,” Michael said, “maybe I am.”

They stayed up late, drinking beer and talking. The old suite was as large as an apartment with its den and its kitchen, as well as the living room and the bedroom. He wasn’t getting drunk at all these days, and he knew she was aware of it, but she didn’t say anything, which was just as well. They talked about the house and all the little things they meant to do.

Did she miss the hospital? Yes, she did. But that wasn’t important right now. She had a plan, a great plan for the future, which she would disclose soon enough.

“But you can’t give up medicine. You don’t mean that?”

“Of course I don’t,” she said patiently, dropping her voice a little for emphasis. “On the contrary. I’ve been thinking about medicine in an entirely different light.”

“How do you mean?”

“It’s too soon to explain. I’m not sure myself. But the question of the legacy changes things, and the more I learn about the legacy the more things are going to change. I’m in a new internship with Mayfair and Mayfair. The subject is money.” She gestured to the papers on the table. “And it’s moving along pretty well.”

“You really want to do this?”

“Michael, everything we do in life, we do with certain expectations. I grew up with money. That meant I could go to medical school and proceed right through a long residency in neurosurgery. I didn’t have a husband or kids to worry about. I didn’t have anything to worry about. But now the sums of money have changed radically. With money like the Mayfair money, one could fund research projects, build whole laboratories. Conceivably one could set up a clinic, adjacent to a medical center, for work in one specialty of neurosurgery.” She shrugged. “You see what I mean.”

“Yeah, but if you become involved in that way, it will take you out of the Operating Room, won’t it? You’ll have to be an administrator.”

“Possibly,” she said, “The point is, the legacy presents a challenge. I have to use my imagination, as the cliché goes.”

He nodded. “I see what you’re saying,” he responded. “But are they going to give you trouble?”

“Ultimately, yes. But it’s not important. When I’m ready to make my moves, that won’t matter. And I’ll make the changes as smoothly and tactfully as I can.”

“What changes?”

“Again, it’s too early. I’m not ready yet to draw up a grand plan. But I’m thinking of a neurological center here in New Orleans, with the finest equipment obtainable and laboratories for independent research.”

“Good Lord, I never thought of anything like that.”

“Before now, I never had the remotest chance of inaugurating a research program and completely controlling it-you know, determining the goals, the standards, the budget.” She had a faraway look in her eye. “The important thing is to think in terms of the size of the legacy. And to think for myself.”

A vague uneasiness seized him. He didn’t know why. He felt a chill rise on the back of his neck as he heard her say:

“Wouldn’t that be the redemption, Michael? If the Mayfair legacy went into healing? Surely you see it. All the way from Suzanne and Jan van Abel, the surgeon, to a great and innovative medical center, devoted of course to the saving of lives.”

He sat there pondering and unable to answer.

She gave a little shrug and put her hands to her temples. “Oh, there’s so much to study,” she said, “so much to learn. But can’t you see the continuity?”

“Yeah, continuity,” he said under his breath.

Like the continuity he was so certain of when he woke in the hospital after he drowned-everything connected. They chose me because of who I was, and it’s all connected …

“It’s all possible,” she said, scanning him for reaction. A little flame danced in her cheeks, in her eyes.

“Very near to perfect,” he said.

“So why do you look like that? What’s the matter?”

“I don’t know.”

“Michael, stop thinking about those visions. Stop thinking about invisible people in the sky giving our lives meaning. There are no ghosts in the attic! Think for yourself.”

“I am, Rowan. I am. Don’t get angry. It’s a stunning idea. It’s perfect. I don’t know why it makes me uneasy. Have a little patience with me, honey. Like you said, our dreams have to be in proportion to our resources. And so it’s a little over my head.”

“All you have to do is love me and listen to me, and let me think out loud.”

“I’m with you, Rowan. Always. I think it’s great.”

“You’re having trouble imagining it,” she said. “I understand. I’ve only begun myself. But goddamn it, the money’s there, Michael. There is something absolutely obscene about the amount of that money. For two generations, these corporation lawyers have tended this fortune, allowing it to feed upon itself and multiply like a monster.”

“Yeah, I know,” he said.

“Long ago, they lost sight of the fact that it was the property of one person. It belongs to itself in some horrible way, it’s greater than any human being should have or control.”

“A lot of people would agree with you,” he said.

But he couldn’t shake that memory of lying in the hospital bed in San Francisco and believing that his whole life had meaning, that everything he’d ever done and been was about to be redeemed.

“Yes, it would redeem everything,” he said. “Wouldn’t it?”

So why did he see the grave in his mind, with its twelve slots, and the doorway above, and the name Mayfair inscribed in big letters, and the flowers withering in the suffocating heat?

He forced himself out of this, and went for the best distraction he knew. Just looking at her, just looking and thinking about touching her, and resisting the urge, though she was only inches from him, and willing, yes, almost surely, willing to be touched.

It was working. A little switch was suddenly thrown in the ruthless mechanism called his brain. He was thinking of how her naked legs looked in the lamplight, and how delicate and full her breasts looked beneath her short silk gown.

Breasts always struck him as miracles; when you touched them and suckled them, they seemed entirely too luscious to be more than momentary-like sherbet or whipped cream, you expected them to melt in your mouth. That they stayed there, day after day, just waiting for you, was part of the whole impossibility of the female sex for him. That was all the science he knew. He bent forward, pressed his lips against her neck, and gave a little determined growl.

“Now you’ve done it,” she whispered.

“Yeah, well, it’s about time,” he said in the same deep voice. “How would you like to be carried to bed?”

“I’d love it,” she purred. “You haven’t done that since the first time.”

“Christ! How could I have been so thoughtless!” he whispered. “What kind of an old-fashioned man am I?” He shoved his left arm under her hot silky thighs and cradled her shoulders with his right, kissing her as he picked her up, secretly exultant that he didn’t lose his balance and go sprawling. But he had her-light and clinging, and suddenly feverishly compliant. Making it to the bed was a cinch.

On Tuesday, the air-conditioning men began their work. There were enough gallery roofs for every piece of equipment. Joseph, the decorator, had taken away all the French furniture that needed restoration. The beautiful old bedroom sets, all dating from the plantation era, needed no more than polishing, and the cleaning women could take care of that.

The plasterers had finished in the front bedroom. And the painters sealed off the area with plastic drapery so that they could get a clean job in spite of the dust from the work going on in the rest of the house. Rowan had chosen a light champagne beige for the bedroom walls, and white for the ceiling and the woodwork. The carpet men had come to measure upstairs. The floor men were sanding the dining room where for some reason a fancy oak floor had been laid over the old heart pine, which needed only a fresh coat of polyurethane.

Michael had checked out the chimneys himself from the roof. The wood-burning fireplaces of the library and the double parlor were all in good condition with an excellent draft. The rest of the hearths had long ago been fitted for gas, and some of them were sealed. It was decided to change the heaters to the more attractive kind which looked like real coal fires.

Meantime the appliances in the kitchen had all been replaced. The old wooden butcher-block countertops were being sanded. They would be varnished by the end of next week.

Rowan sat cross-legged on the parlor floor with the decorator, surrounded by swatches of brilliant-colored cloth. It was a beige silk she chose for the front room draperies. She wanted something in darker damask for the dining room, something that would blend with the faded plantation murals. Upstairs, everything was to be cheerful and light.

Michael went through books of paint chips, choosing soft peach tones for the lower floor, a dark beige for the dining room which would pick up a major color in the murals, and white for the kitchen and pantries. He was soliciting bids from the window cleaners, and from the companies which cleaned chandeliers. The grandfather clock in the parlor was being repaired.

By late Friday morning, Beatrice’s housekeeper, Trina, had purchased all new bedding for the various upstairs rooms, including new down pillows and comforters, and the linens had been packed with sachets into the armoires and the dresser drawers. The duct work had been completed in the attics. The old wallpaper was down in Millie’s room and the old sickroom and Carlotta’s room, and the plasterers had almost completed the proper preparation of the walls for fresh paint.

The burglar alarm system had also been finished, including smoke detectors, glass protectors, and buttons to summon emergency medical help.

Meantime, another crew of painters was at work in the parlor.

The only flaw in the day perhaps was Rowan’s noontime argument by phone with Dr. Larkin in San Francisco. She had told him she was taking an extended vacation. He felt she had sold out. An inheritance and a fancy house in New Orleans had lured her away from her true vocation. Clearly her vague statements as to her purpose and her future only further inflamed him. Finally she became exasperated. She wasn’t turning her back on her life’s work. She was thinking in terms of new horizons, and when she wanted to talk about it with him, she’d let him know.

When she got off the phone, she was exhausted. She wasn’t even going back to California to close up the Tiburon house.

“It chills me even to think of it,” she said. “I don’t know why I feel so strongly. I just don’t ever want to see the place again. I can’t believe I’ve escaped. I could pinch myself to know for sure that I’m not dreaming.”

Michael understood; nevertheless he advised her not to sell the house until a certain amount of time had passed.

She shrugged. She’d put it on the market tomorrow if she hadn’t already rented the place to Dr. Slattery, her San Francisco replacement. In exchange for an extremely low rent and a waiver of deposits, Slattery had cheerfully agreed to box up everything personal in the house and ship it south. Ryan had arranged for warehouse storage.

“Those boxes will probably stay there unopened,” she said, “for twenty years.”

At about two on Friday, Michael went with Rowan to the Mercedes-Benz dealer on St. Charles Avenue. Now this was a fun errand. It was in the same block as the hotel. When he was a kid walking home from the old library at Lee Circle, he used to go into this big showroom and open the doors of the stunningly beautiful German cars and swoon over them for as long as he could get away with it before a salesman took notice. He didn’t bother mentioning it. The fact was, he had a memory for every block they passed, everything they did.

He merely watched with quiet amusement as Rowan wrote out a check for two cars-the jaunty little 500 SL two-seater convertible, and the big classy four-door sedan. Both in cream with caramel leather upholstery, because that is what they had there on the floor.

The day before, he himself had picked up a neat, shiny, and luxurious American van, in which he could stow anything he wanted, yet still speed around in comfort and ease with the air-conditioning and the radio roaring. It amused him that Rowan did not seem to find the experience of buying these two cars to be anything remarkable. She did not even seem to find it interesting.

She asked the salesman to deliver the sedan to First Street, drive it in the back carriage gates, and drop the keys at the Pontchartrain. The convertible they would take with them.

She drove it out of the showroom and up St. Charles Avenue, to a crawl in front of the hotel.

“Let’s get out of here this weekend,” she said. “Let’s forget about the house and the family.”

“Already?” he asked. He had been dreaming of taking one of the riverboats for the supper cruise tonight.

“I’ll tell you why. I made the interesting discovery that the best white beaches in Florida are less than four hours from here. Did you know that?”

“That’s right, they are.”

“There are a couple of houses for sale in a Florida town called Destin, and one of them has its own boat slip nearby. I picked up all this from Wheatfield and Beatrice. Wheatfield and Pierce used to go to Destin at spring break. Beatrice goes all the time. Ryan made the calls for me to the real estate agent. What do you say?”

“Well, sure, why not?”

Another memory, thought Michael. That summer when he was fifteen and the family drove to those very white beaches on the panhandle of Florida. Green water under the red sunset. And he’d been thinking about it the day he drowned off Ocean Beach, almost an hour exactly before he met Rowan Mayfair.

“I didn’t know we were so close to the Gulf,” she said. “Now, the Gulf is serious water. I mean like the Pacific Ocean is serious water.”

“I know.” He laughed. “I know serious water when I see it.” He really broke up.

“Well, look, I’m dying to see the Gulf.”

“Of course.”

“I haven’t been in the Gulf since I was in high school and we went to the Caribbean. If it’s as warm as I remember it-”

“Yes, that is definitely worth a trip.”

“You know, I can probably get somebody to bring the Sweet Christine down here, or better yet, buy a new boat. Ever cruise the Gulf or the Caribbean?”

“No.” He shook his head. “I should have known after I saw that house in Tiburon.”

“Just four hours, Michael,” she said, “Come on, it won’t take us fifteen minutes to pack a bag.”

They made one last stop at the house.

Eugenia was at the kitchen table, polishing up all the silver plate from the kitchen drawers.

“It’s a joy to see this place come back,” she said.

“Yes, it is, isn’t it?” said Michael. He put his arm lightly around her thin shoulder. “How about moving back into your old room, Eugenia? You want to?”

Oh, yes, she said she’d love to. She’d stay this weekend, certainly. She was too old for all those children at her son’s house. She was screaming too much at those children. She’d be happy to come back. And yes, she still had her keys. “But you don’t never need no keys around here.”

The painters were working late upstairs. The yard crew would be there until dark. Dart Henley, Michael’s second in command, gladly agreed to oversee everything for the weekend. No worry at all.

“Look, the pool’s almost finished,” Rowan said. Indeed, all the patchwork inside had been done, and they were applying the final paint.

All the wild growth had been cleared from the flagstone decking, the diving boards had been restored, and the graceful limestone balustrade had been uncovered throughout the garden. The thick boxwood had been taken out; more old cast-iron chairs and tables had been discovered in the disappearing brush. And the lower flagstone steps of the side screen porch had been uncovered, proving that before Deirdre’s time it had been open. One could once again walk out from the side windows of the parlor, across the flags, and down and onto the lawn.

“We ought to leave it that way, Rowan. It needs to be open,” Michael said. “And besides, we have that nice little screened porch off the kitchen in back. They’ve already put up the new screen back there. Come, take a look.”

“You think you can tear yourself away?” Rowan asked. She tossed him the car keys. “Why don’t you drive?” she asked. “I think I make you nervous.”

“Only when you run lights and stop signs at such high speeds,” he said. “I mean, it’s breaking two laws simultaneously that makes me nervous.”

“OK, handsome, as long as you get us there in four hours.”

He took one last look at the house. The light here was like the light of Florence, on that score she had been right. Washing down the high south façade, it made him think of the old palazzi of Italy. And everything was going so well, so wonderfully well.

He felt an odd pain inside him, a twinge of sadness and pure happiness.

I am here, really here, he thought silently. Not dreaming about it any longer far away, but here. And the visions seemed distant, fading, unreal to him. He had not had another flash of them in so long.

But Rowan was waiting, and the clean white southern beaches were waiting. More of his wonderful old world to be reclaimed. It crossed his mind suddenly that it would be luscious to make love to her in yet another new bed.