The witching hour

Five

SO THEY HAD tried to put Deirdre Mayfair away again after all these years. With Miss Nancy gone and Miss Carl getting more feeble by the day, it was best. That was the talk, anyway. On August 13, they’d tried. But Deirdre had gone wild, and they had left her alone, and now she was going down badly, just real badly.

When Jerry Lonigan told his wife Rita, she cried.

It had been thirteen years since Deirdre came home from the sanitarium a mindless idiot who couldn’t tell you her own name, but that didn’t matter to Rita. Rita would never forget the real Deirdre.

Rita and Deirdre were sixteen when they went to boarding school at St. Rose de Lima’s. It was an ugly old brick building, on the very edge of the French Quarter. And Rita was sent there because she was “bad,” had been out drinking on the riverboat The President with boys. Her dad had said St. Ro’s would straighten her out. All the girls slept in an attic dormitory. And they went to bed at nine o’clock. Rita had cried herself to sleep down there.

Deirdre Mayfair had been at St. Ro’s for a long time. She didn’t mind that it was old and gloomy and strict. But she held Rita’s hand when Rita cried. She listened when Rita said it was like a prison.

The girls watched “Father Knows Best” on an old television set with a round six-inch screen, swear to God! And the creaky old wooden radio that stood on the floor under the window was no better. You couldn’t get to the phonograph. The South American girls always had it, playing that awful “La Cucaracha,” and doing those Spanish dances.

“Don’t mind them,” Deirdre said. She took Rita with her down to the play yard in the late afternoon. They swung on the swings under the pecan trees. You wouldn’t think that was much fun for a sixteen-year-old girl, but Rita loved it when she was with Deirdre.

Deirdre sang when they were on the swings-old Irish and Scotch ballads, she called them. She had a real true soprano voice, delicate and high, and the songs were so sad. It gave Rita chills to hear them. Deirdre loved to stay out until the sun was gone and the sky was a “pure purple” and the cicadas were really going in the trees. Deirdre called it twilight.

Rita had seen that word written out, all right, but she’d never heard anyone really say it. Twilight.

Deirdre took Rita’s hand and they walked along the brick wall, right under the pecan trees, so that they had to duck under the low leafy branches. There were places you could stand where you were completely hidden by the trees. It was crazy to describe it, but it had been such a strange and lovely time for Rita-standing there in the half dark with Deirdre, and the trees swaying in the breeze and the tiny leaves showering down on them.

In those days, Deirdre had looked like a real old-fashioned girl from a picture book, with a violet ribbon in her hair and her black curls tumbling down her back. She could have been real sharp if she’d wanted to be. She had the build for it, and new clothes in her locker she never bothered to try on. But it was easy to forget about things like that when you were with Deirdre. Her hair had been so soft. Rita had touched it once. So soft.

They walked in the dusty cloister beside the chapel. They peeped through the wooden gate into the nuns’ garden. Secret place, Deirdre said, full of the loveliest flowers.

“I don’t ever want to go home,” Deirdre explained. “It’s so peaceful here.”

Peaceful! Alone at night, Rita cried and cried. She could hear the jukebox of the Negro bar across the street, the music rising over the brick walls and all the way up to the fourth-story attic. Sometimes when she thought everybody was asleep, she got up and went out on the iron balcony and looked towards the lights of Canal Street. There was a red glow over Canal Street. All New Orleans was having fun out there, and Rita was locked up, with a nun sleeping behind a curtain at either end of the dormitory. What would she do if she didn’t have Deirdre?

Deirdre was different from anybody Rita had ever known. She had such beautifully made things-long white flannel gowns trimmed in lace.

They were the same kind she wore now thirty-four years later on the side screen porch of that house where she sat “like a mindless idiot in a coma.”

And she had showed Rita that emerald necklace she always wore now, too, right over the white nightgown. The famous Mayfair emerald necklace, though Rita had not heard of it then. ’Course Deirdre had not worn it at school. You couldn’t wear jewelry at all at St. Ro’s. And no one would have worn a big old-fashioned necklace like that anyway, except to a Mardi Gras ball perhaps.

It looked just awful now on Deirdre in her nightgown. All wrong, a thing like that on an invalid who just stared and stared through the screens of the porch. But who knows? Maybe somehow Deirdre knew it was there, and Deirdre sure had loved it.

She let Rita touch it when they sat on the side of the bed at St. Ro’s. No nuns around to tell them not to rumple the bedspread.

Rita had turned the emerald pendant over in her hands. So heavy, the gold setting. It looked like something was engraved on the back. Rita made out a big capital L. It looked like a name to her.

“Oh, no, don’t read it,” Deirdre said. “It’s a secret!” And she’d looked frightened for a moment, her cheeks suddenly red and her eyes moist, and then she took Rita’s hand and squeezed it. You couldn’t be mad at Deirdre.

“Is it real?” Rita asked. Must have cost a fortune.

“Oh, yes,” Deirdre said. “It came from Europe years and years ago. It belonged to a great-great-great-great-grandmother back then.”

They both laughed at all the greats.

It was innocent the way Deirdre said it. She never bragged. It wasn’t like that at all. She never hurt anybody’s feelings. Everybody loved her.

“My mother left it to me,” Deirdre explained. “And someday I’ll pass it on, that is … if I ever have a daughter.” Trouble in her face. Rita put her arm around Deirdre. You just wanted to protect Deirdre. Deirdre brought out that feeling in everybody.

Deirdre said she’d never known her mother. “She died when I was a baby. They say she fell from the upstairs window. And they said her mother died when she was young, too, but they never talk about her. I don’t think we’re like other people.”

Rita was stunned. Nobody she knew said such things.

“But how do you mean, Dee Dee?” she asked.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Deirdre said. “We feel things, sense things. We know when people don’t like us and mean to hurt us.”

“Who could ever want to hurt you, Dee Dee?” Rita asked. “You’ll live to be a hundred and you’ll have ten children.”

“I love you, Rita Mae,” Deirdre said. “You’re pure of heart, that’s what you are.”

“Oh, Dee Dee, no.” Rita Mae shook her head. She thought of her boyfriend from Holy Cross, the things they had done.

And just as if Deirdre had read her mind, she said:

“No, Rita Mae, that doesn’t matter. You’re good. You never want to hurt anybody, even when you’re really unhappy.”

“I love you, too,” Rita said, though she did not understand all that Deirdre was telling her. And Rita never ever in her whole life told any other woman that she loved her.

Rita almost died when Deirdre was expelled from St. Ro’s. But Rita knew it was going to happen.

She herself saw a young man with Deirdre in the convent garden. She had seen Deirdre slip out after supper when no one was looking. They were supposed to be taking their baths, setting their hair. That was one thing Rita really thought was funny about St. Ro’s. They made you set your hair and wear a little lipstick because Sister Daniel said that was “etiquette.” And Deirdre didn’t have to set her hair. It hung in perfect curls. All she needed was a ribbon.

Deirdre was always disappearing at that time. She took her bath first and then snuck downstairs, and didn’t come back till almost lights out. Always late, always hurrying in for night prayers, her face flushed. But then she’d give Sister Daniel that beautiful innocent smile. And when Deirdre prayed she seemed to mean it.

Rita thought she was the only one who noticed that Deirdre slipped out. She hated it when Deirdre wasn’t around. Deirdre was the only one that made her feel all right there.

And one night she’d gone down to look for Deirdre. Maybe Deirdre was swinging on the swings. Winter was over and twilight was coming now after supper. And Rita knew about Deirdre and twilight.

But Rita didn’t find Deirdre in the play yard. She went to the open gate of the nuns’ garden. It was very dark in there. You could see the Easter lilies in the dark, shining white. The nuns would cut them on Easter Sunday. But Deirdre would never break the rules and go in there.

Yet Rita heard Deirdre’s voice. And gradually she made out the figure of Deirdre on the stone bench in the shadows. The pecan trees were as big and low there as they were in the play yard. All Rita could see was the white blouse at first, and then she saw Deirdre’s face and even the violet ribbon in her hair, and she saw the tall man seated beside her.

Things were so still. The jukebox of the Negro bar wasn’t playing just then. No sound came from the convent. And even the lights in the nuns’ refectory looked far away because there were so many trees growing along the cloister.

The man said to Deirdre: “My beloved.” It was just a whisper, but Rita heard it. And she heard Deirdre say: “Yes, you’re speaking, I can hear you.”

“My beloved!” came the whisper again.

Then Deirdre was crying. And she said something else, maybe a name, Rita would never know. It sounded as if she said: “My Lasher.”

They kissed, Deirdre’s head back, the white of the man’s fingers very clear against her dark hair. And the man spoke again:

“Only want to make you happy, my beloved.”

“Dear God,” Deirdre whispered. And suddenly she got up off the bench and Rita saw her running along the path through the beds of lilies. The man was nowhere in sight. And the wind had come up, sweeping through the pecan trees so that their high branches crashed against the porches of the convent. All the garden was moving suddenly. And Rita was alone there.

Rita turned away ashamed. She shouldn’t have been listening. And she, too, ran away, all the way up the four flights of wooden stairs from the basement to the attic.

It was an hour before Deirdre came. Rita was miserable to have spied on her like that.

But late that night when she lay in bed, Rita repeated those words: My beloved. Only want to make you happy, my beloved. Oh, to think that a man would say such things to Deirdre.

All Rita had ever known were the boys who wanted to “feel you up,” if they got a chance. Clumsy, stupid guys like her boyfriend Terry from Holy Cross, who said, “You know, I think I like you a lot, Rita.” Sure, sure. ’Cause I let you “feel me up.” You ox.

“You tramp!” Rita’s father had said. “You’re going to boarding school, that’s where you’re going. I don’t care what it costs.”

My beloved. It made her think of beautiful music, of elegant gentlemen in old movies she saw on late night television. Of voices from another time, soft and distinct, the very words like kisses.

And he was so handsome too. She hadn’t really seen his face, but she saw he was dark-haired with large eyes, and tall, and he wore fine clothes, beautiful clothes. She’d seen the white cuffs of his shirt and his collar.

Rita would have met him in the garden too, a man like that. Rita would have done anything with him.

Oh, Rita couldn’t really figure it out, the feelings it gave her. She cried but it was a sweet, silent kind of crying. She knew she’d remember the moment all her life-the garden under the dark purple twilight sky with the evening stars out already and the man’s voice saying those words.

When they accused Deirdre, it was a nightmare. They were in the recreation room and the other girls were made to stay in the dormitory, but everybody could hear it. Deirdre burst into tears, but she wouldn’t confess anything.

“I saw the man myself!” Sister Daniel said. “Are you calling me a liar!” Then they took Deirdre down to the convent to talk to old Mother Bernard but even she couldn’t do anything with Deirdre.

Rita was broken-hearted when the nuns came to pack up Deirdre’s clothes. She saw Sister Daniel take the emerald necklace out of its box and stare at it. Sister Daniel thought it was glass, you could tell by the way she held it. It hurt Rita to see her touch it, to see her snatch up Deirdre’s nightgowns and things and stuff them into the suitcase.

And later that week, when the terrible accident happened with Sister Daniel, Rita wasn’t sorry. She never meant for the mean old nun to die the way she did, smothered in a closed-up room with a gas heater left on, but so be it.

Rita had other things on her mind than weeping for somebody who’d been mean to Deirdre.

That Saturday she got together all the nickels she could and called and called from the pay phone in the basement. Somebody must know the Mayfairs’ phone number. They lived on First Street only five blocks down from Rita’s house but it might as well have been across the world. It wasn’t the Irish Channel there. It was the Garden District. And the Mayfair house was a mansion.

Then Rita got into a terrible fight with Sandy. Sandy said Deirdre had been crazy. “You know what she did at night? I’ll tell what she did. When everybody was asleep she pushed the covers off and she moved her body just like somebody was kissing her! I saw her, she’d open her mouth and she’d move on the bed-you know, move-just like, you know, she was really feeling it!”

“Shut your filthy mouth!” Rita screamed. She tried to slap Sandy. Everybody got on Rita. But Liz Conklin took Rita aside and told her to calm down. She said that Deirdre had done worse than meet that man in the garden.

“Rita Mae, she, let him into the building. She brought him right upstairs to our floor, I saw him.” Liz was whispering, looking over her shoulder as if somebody was going to overhear them.

“I don’t believe you,” Rita said.

“I wasn’t following her around,” Liz said. “I didn’t want her to get in trouble. I had just gotten up to go to the bathroom. And I saw them by the window of the recreation room-her and him together, Rita Mae-not ten feet from where we were all sleeping.”

“What did he look like?” Rita demanded, sure it was a lie. Rita would know because she’d seen him.

But Liz described him all right-tall, brown hair, very “distinguished,” Liz said, and he’d been kissing Deirdre and whispering to her.

“Rita Mae, imagine her opening all the locks, bringing him up the stairs. She was just crazy.”

“All I know is this,” Rita said later to Jerry Lonigan when they were courting. “She was the sweetest girl I ever knew in my life. She was a saint compared with those nuns, I tell you. And when I thought I’d go crazy in that place, she held my hand and told me she knew how I was feeling. I would have done anything for her.”

But when the time came to do something for Deirdre Mayfair, Rita hadn’t been able to do it.

Over a year had passed. Rita’s teenaged life was gone and she never for a second missed it. She had married Jerry Lonigan, who was twelve years older than her and nicer than any boy she’d ever met-a decent and kind man who made a good living from Lonigan and Sons’ Funeral Home, one of the oldest in the parish, which he ran with his daddy.

Jerry was the one who gave Rita news about Deirdre. He told her Deirdre was pregnant by a man who’d been killed already in a highway accident, and those aunts of hers, those mean crazy Mayfair women, were going to make her give up her baby.

Rita was going by that house to see Deirdre. She had to. Jerry didn’t want her to go.

“What the hell you think you can do about it! Don’t you know that aunt of hers, Miss Carlotta, she’s a lawyer? She could get Deirdre committed if she didn’t give up that baby.”

Red Lonigan, Jerry’s dad, shook his head. “That’s been done plenty a time, Rita,” he said. “Deirdre will sign the papers or wind up in the nuthouse. Besides, Father Lafferty’s got a hand in this thing. And if there’s any priest at St. Alphonsus I trust, it’s Tim Lafferty.”

But Rita went.

It was the hardest thing she’d ever done, walking up to that enormous house and ringing the bell, but she did it. And naturally it was Miss Carl who came to the door, the one everybody was afraid of. Jerry told her later that if it had been Miss Millie or Miss Nancy it might have been different.

Still Rita walked right in, just sort of pushed past Miss Carl. Well, she had opened the screen door a crack, hadn’t she? And Miss Carl really didn’t look mean. She just looked businesslike.

“Just want to see her, you know, she was my best friend at St. Ro’s … ”

Every time Miss Carl said no in her polite way, Rita said yes in some other way, talking about how close she’d been to Deirdre.

Then she’d heard Deirdre’s voice at the top of the steps.

“Rita Mae!”

Deirdre’s face was wet from crying and her hair was all in straggles over her shoulders. She ran down the steps barefoot towards Rita, and Miss Nancy, the heavyset one, came right behind her.

Miss Carl took Rita firmly by the arm and tried to move her towards the front door.

“Wait just a minute!” Rita said.

“Rita Mae, they’re going to take my baby!”

Miss Nancy caught Deirdre around the waist and lifted her off her feet on the stairway.

“Rita Mae!” Deirdre screamed. She had something in her hand, a little white card it looked like.

“Rita Mae, call this man. Tell him to help me.”

Miss Carl stepped in front of Rita:

“Go home, Rita Mae Lonigan,” she said.

But Rita darted right around her. Deirdre was struggling to get free of Miss Nancy, and Miss Nancy was leaning against the banister, off balance. Deirdre tried to throw the little white card to Rita, but it just fluttered down on the stairs. Miss Carl went to get it.

And then it was just like fighting for Mardi Gras trinkets thrown from the parade floats. Rita pushed Miss Carl to the side and snatched the card up, just the way you snatched a junk necklace off the pavement before anybody else could get it.

“Rita Mae, call that man!” Deirdre screamed. “Tell him I need him.”

“I will, Dee Dee!”

Miss Nancy was carrying her back up the steps, Deirdre’s bare feet swinging out, her hands clawing at Miss Nancy’s arm. It was awful, just awful.

And then Miss Carl grabbed Rita’s wrist.

“Give me that, Rita Mae Lonigan,” said Miss Carl.

Rita pulled loose and ran out of the front door, the little white card clutched in her hand. She heard Miss Carl running across the porch right after her.

Her heart was pounding as she ran down the path. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, this was a madhouse! And Jerry was going to be so upset. And what would Red say?

Then Rita felt a sharp, ugly pain as her hair was jerked from the back. The woman pulled her almost off her feet.

“Don’t you do that to me, you old witch!” Rita said, her teeth clenched. Rita couldn’t stand to have her hair pulled.

Miss Carl tried to tear the little white card out of her fingers. This was almost the worst thing that had ever happened to Rita. Miss Carl was twisting and tearing off the corner of the card as Rita held on to it, and with the other hand Miss Carl was still yanking Rita’s hair as hard as she could. She was going to pull it out by the roots.

“Stop it!” Rita screamed. “I’m warning you now, I’m warning you!” She got the card away from Miss Carl and she crumpled it in her fist. You just couldn’t hit an old lady like this.

But when Miss Carl jerked her hair again, Rita did hit her. She hit Miss Carl across the chest with her right arm, and Miss Carl fell into the chinaberry trees. If there hadn’t been so many chinaberry trees, she would have fallen on the ground.

Rita ran out the gate.

A storm was blowing up. The trees were all moving. She could see the big black branches of the oaks swaying in the wind, hear that loud roar that big trees always made. The branches were lashing the house, scratching at the top of the upstairs porch. She heard the sound of breaking glass suddenly.

She stopped and looked back, and she saw a shower of little green leaves falling all over the property. Tiny branches and twigs were falling. It was like a hurricane. Miss Carl was standing on the path staring up at the trees. At least her arm or leg wasn’t broken.

Good Lord, the rain would come any minute. Rita was going to be soaked before she even got to Magazine Street-that on top of everything else, her hair torn to pieces and the tears streaming down her face. She was a sight all right.

But there was no rain. She made it back to Lonigan and Sons without getting wet. And when she sat down in Jerry’s office, she broke down completely.

“You shouldn’t have gone there, you should never have gone!” he said. He had a funeral going on out front. He should have been helping Red out there. “Honey, they could turn everybody against us, old family like that!”

Rita couldn’t do anything but cry. Then she looked at the little white card. “But will you look at this, Jerry! Will you look at it!”

It was all mashed and damp from the sweat of her palm. She broke down again.

“I can’t read the numbers on it!”

“Now, just a minute, Rita,” Jerry said. He was patient as always, just a really good-hearted man the way he’d always been. He stood over her, unfolding the little card on the desk blotter. He got his magnifying glass.

The middle part was clear enough:

THE TALAMASCA

But you couldn’t read anything else. The words below that were just tiny little specks of black ink on the pulpy white cardboard. And whatever had been written along the bottom edge was completely ruined. There was just nothing left of it.

“Oh, Dee Dee!” Rita cried.

Jerry pressed it out under two heavy books, but that hadn’t helped. His dad came in and took a look. But he couldn’t make anything out of it. Name Talamasca didn’t mean anything to Red. And Red knew just about everybody and everything. If it had been an old Mardi Gras society, for instance, he would have known it.

“Now look, you can see something here written on the back in ink,” Red said. “Look at that.”

Aaron Lightner. But there was no phone number. The phone numbers must have been printed on the front. Even pressing the card with a hot iron didn’t help matters.

Rita did what she could.

She checked the phone book for Aaron Lightner and the Talamasca, whatever that was. She called information. She begged the operator to tell her if there was an unlisted number. She even ran personals in the Times-Picayune and in the States-Item.

“The card was old and dirty before you ever got it,” Jerry reminded her. Fifty dollars spent on personal ads was enough. Jerry’s daddy said he thought she might just as well give up. But one thing she could say for him, he hadn’t criticized her for it.

“Darlin’, don’t go back to that house,” Red said. “I’m not scared of Miss Carlotta or anything like that. I just don’t want you around those people.”

Rita saw Jerry look at his father, and his father look at him. They knew something they weren’t saying. Rita knew Lonigan and Sons had buried Deirdre’s mother when she fell from that window years ago, she’d heard that much, and she knew Red remembered the grandmother who had “died young” too the way Deirdre told Rita.

But those two were closemouthed the way morticians had to be. And Rita was too miserable now for hearing about the history of that horrible old house and those women.

She cried herself to sleep the way she had at boarding school. Maybe Deirdre had seen the ads in the papers, and knew that Rita had tried to do what she wanted.

Another year passed before Rita saw Deirdre again. The baby was long gone. Some cousins out in California took it. Nice people, everybody said, rich people. The man was a lawyer like Miss Carl. That baby would be looked after.

Sister Bridget Marie at St. Alphonsus told Jerry the nuns at Mercy Hospital said the baby was a beautiful little girl with blond hair. Not like Deirdre’s black curls at all. And Father Lafferty had put the baby in Deirdre’s arms and said to Deirdre, “Kiss your baby,” then taken it away from her.

Gave Rita the shivers. Like people kissing the corpse right before they closed up the coffin. “Kiss your baby,” then taking it like that.

No wonder Deirdre had had a complete breakdown. They took her right from Mercy to the sanitarium.

“Not the first time for that family,” Red Lonigan said as he shook his head. “That’s how Lionel Mayfair died, in a straitjacket.”

Rita asked what he meant, but he didn’t answer.

“Oh, but they didn’t have to do it like that,” Rita said. “She’s such a sweet thing. She couldn’t hurt anybody.”

Finally Rita heard Deirdre was home again. And that Sunday Rita decided to go to Mass at the Mother of Perpetual Help Chapel in the Garden District. That’s where the rich people went mostly. They didn’t come to the big old parish churches-St. Mary’s and St. Alphonsus-across Magazine Street.

Rita went up there to the ten o’clock Mass, thinking, Well, I’ll just pass by the Mayfair house on the way back. But she didn’t have to, because Deirdre was there at Mass, sitting between her great-aunts Miss Belle and Miss Millie. Thank the lord no Miss Carlotta.

Deirdre looked dreadful to Rita, like Banquo’s Ghost as Rita’s mother would have said. She had dark circles under her eyes and her dress was some old shiny gabardine thing that didn’t fit her. Padded shoulders. One of those old women in the house must have given her that.

After Mass, as they were going down the marble steps, Rita swallowed, took a deep breath, and ran after Deirdre.

Deirdre at once gave her that beautiful smile. But when she tried to talk, almost nothing came out. Then in a whisper she said: “Rita Mae!”

Rita Mae leaned over to kiss her. She whispered:

“Dee Dee, I tried to do what you asked me. I could never find that man. The card was too ruined.”

Deirdre’s eyes were wide, vacant. She didn’t even remember, did she? At least Miss Millie and Miss Belle didn’t notice. They were saying their hellos to everybody passing. And poor old Miss Belle never noticed anything anyway.

Then Deirdre did seem to recall something. “It’s OK, Rita Mae,” she said. She had the beautiful smile again. She squeezed Rita Mae’s hand and leaned forward and kissed her this time, on the cheek. Then her Aunt Millie said, “We should go now, sweetheart.”

Now, that was Deirdre Mayfair to Rita. It’s OK, Rita Mae. The sweetest girl she ever knew.

Deirdre was back at the sanitarium before long. She’d been walking barefoot on Jackson Avenue talking out loud to herself. Then they said she was in a mental hospital in Texas, and after that Rita only heard that Deirdre Mayfair was “incurably ill” and was never coming home again.

When old Miss Belle died, the Mayfairs called Jerry’s dad as they’d always done. Maybe Miss Carl didn’t even remember the fight with Rita Mae. Mayfairs came from all over for that funeral, but no Deirdre.

Mr. Lonigan hated opening the tomb in Lafayette No. 1. That cemetery had so many ruined graves with rotting coffins plainly visible, even the bones showing. It sickened him to take a funeral there.

“But those Mayfairs have been buried there since 1861,” he said. “And they do keep up that tomb, I’ll give them that. They have the wrought-iron fence painted every year. And when the tourists come through there? Well, that’s one of the graves they always look at-what with all the Mayfairs in there, and those little babies’ names, going back to the Civil War. It’s just the rest of that place is so sorry. You know they’re going to tear that place down someday.”

They never did tear down Lafayette No. 1. The tourists liked it too much. And so did the families of the Garden District. Instead they cleaned it up, repaired the whitewashed walls, planted new magnolia trees. But there were still enough broken-down tombs for people to get their peek at the bones. It was a “historical monument.”

Mr. Lonigan took Rita through there one afternoon, showing her the famous yellow fever graves where you could read a long list of those who had died within days of each other during the epidemics. He showed her the Mayfair tomb-a big affair with twelve oven-size vaults inside. The little iron fence ran all the way around it, enclosing a tiny strip of grass. And the two marble vases stuck to the front step were full of fresh-cut flowers.

“Why, they keep it up real nice, don’t they?” she said. Such beautiful lilies and gladiolus and baby’s breath.

Mr. Lonigan stared at the flowers. He didn’t answer. Then after he’d cleared his throat, he pointed out the names of those he knew.

“This one here-Antha Marie, died 1941, now that was Deirdre’s mother.”

“The one who fell from the window,” Rita said. Again he didn’t answer her.

“And this one here-Stella Louise, died 1929-now that was Antha’s mother. And it was this one over here, Lionel, her brother-‘died 1929’-who ended up in the straitjacket after he shot and killed Stella.”

“Oh, you don’t mean he murdered his own sister.”

“Oh, yes, I do,” Mr. Lonigan said. Then he pointed out the other names going way back. “Miss Mary Beth, now that was the mother of Stella, and of Miss Carl, and now, Miss Millie is actually Rémy Mayfair’s daughter. He was Miss Carl’s uncle, and he died at First Street, but that was before my time. I remember Julien Mayfair, however. He was what you call unforgettable, Julien was. Till the day he died, he was a fine-looking man. And so was Cortland, his son. You see, Cortland died that year that Deirdre had that little baby. Now I didn’t bury Cortland. Cortland’s family lived in Metairie. They say it was all that ruckus over the baby that killed Cortland. But that don’t matter. You can see that Cortland was eighty years old besides. Old Miss Belle was Miss Carl’s older sister. But Miss Nancy, well, she is Antha’s sister. It will be Miss Millie next, you mark my words.”

Rita didn’t care about them. She was remembering Deirdre on that long-ago day at St. Ro’s when they sat on the side of the bed together. The emerald necklace had come to her through Stella and Antha.

She told Red about it now, and it didn’t surprise him at all. He just nodded, and said, yes, and before that the emerald necklace had belonged to Miss Mary Beth and before that to Miss Katherine who had built the house on First Street, but Miss Katherine was really before his time. Monsieur Julien was as far back as he could recall …

“But you know, it’s the strangest thing,” Rita said. “Them all carrying the Mayfair name. Why don’t they take the names of the men they marry?”

“Can’t,” Mr. Lonigan said. “If they do, then they don’t get the Mayfair money. That’s the way it was set up long ago. You have to be a Mayfair to get Mayfair money. Cortland Mayfair knew it; knew all about it; he was a fine lawyer; never worked for anybody except the Mayfair family; I remember once he told me. It was legacy, he said.”

He was staring at the flowers again.

“What is it, Red?” Rita asked.

“Oh, just an old story they tell around here,” he said. “That those vases are never empty.”

“Well, it’s Miss Carl who orders the flowers, isn’t it?” Rita asked.

“Not that I know of,” Mr. Lonigan said, “but somebody always puts them there.” But then he went quiet again the way he always did. He would never really tell you what he knew.

When he died a year after that, Rita felt as bad as if she’d lost her own father. But she kept wondering what secrets he’d taken with him. He’d always been so good to Rita. Jerry was never the same. He was nervous afterwards whenever he dealt with the old families.

Deirdre came home to the house on First Street in 1976, a mindless idiot, they said, on account of the shock treatments.

Father Mattingly from the parish went by to see her. No brain left at all. Just like a baby, he told Jerry, or a senile old lady.

Rita went to call. It had been years since she and Miss Carlotta had that awful fight. Rita had three children now. She wasn’t scared of that old lady. She brought a pretty white silk negligee for Deirdre from D. H. Holmes.

Miss Nancy took her out on the porch. She said to Deirdre:

“Look what Rita Mae Lonigan brought, Deirdre.”

Just a mindless idiot. And how awful to see that beautiful emerald necklace around her neck. It was like they were making fun of her, to put it on her like that, over her flannel nightgown.

Her feet looked swollen and tender as they rested on the bare boards of the porch. Her head fell to one side as she stared through the screens. But otherwise she was still Deirdre-still pretty, still sweet. Rita had to get out of there.

She never called again. But not a week went by that she didn’t walk back First just to stop at the fence and wave to Deirdre. Deirdre didn’t even notice her. But Rita did it nevertheless. It seemed to her Deirdre got stooped and thin, that her arms weren’t down in her lap anymore, but drawn up, close to her chest. But Rita was never close enough to make certain. That was the virtue of just standing at the fence and waving.

When Miss Nancy died last year, Rita said she was going to the funeral. “It’s for Deirdre’s sake.”

“But, honey,” Jerry had said, “Deirdre won’t know you’re doing this.” Deirdre hadn’t spoken a single syllable in all these years.

But Rita didn’t care. Rita was going.

As for Jerry, he didn’t want to have anything to do with the Mayfairs. He missed his daddy more than ever.

“Why the hell can’t they call some other funeral home?” he had said under his breath. Other people did it now that his daddy was dead and gone. Why didn’t the Mayfairs follow suit? He hated the old families.

“Least this is a natural death, or so they tell me,” he said.

Now that really startled Rita. “Well, weren’t Miss Belle and Miss Millie ‘natural deaths’?” she asked.

After he’d finished work that afternoon on Miss Nancy, he told Rita it had been terrible going into that house to get her.

Right out of the old days, the upstairs bedroom with the draperies drawn and two blessed candles burning before a picture of the Mother of Sorrows. The room stank of piss. And Miss Nancy dead for hours in that heat before he got there.

And poor Deirdre on the screen porch like a human pretzel, and the colored nurse holding Deirdre’s hand and saying the rosary out loud, as if Deirdre even knew she was there, let alone heard the Hail Marys.

Miss Carlotta didn’t want to go into Nancy’s room. She stood in the hallway with her arms folded.

“Bruises on her, Miss Carl. On her arms and legs. Did she have a bad tumble?”

“She had the first attack on the stairs, Mr. Lonigan.”

But boy, had he wished his dad was still around. His dad had known how to handle the old families.

“Now, you tell me, Rita Mae. Why the hell wasn’t she in a hospital? This isn’t 1842! This is now. Now I’m asking you.”

“Some people want to be at home, Jerry,” Rita said. Didn’t he have a signed death certificate?

Yes, he did. Of course he did. But he hated these old families.

“You never know what they’re going to do,” he swore. “Not just the Mayfairs, I mean any of the old ones.”

Sometimes the relatives trooped into the viewing room and started right in working on the corpse with their own powder and lipstick. Now, nobody with any sense did that kind of thing anymore.

And what about those old Irish guys who’d laugh and joke while they were acting as pallbearers. One would let his end of the coffin go just so his brother would get the full weight of it-prancing around on the graveyard path like it was Mardi Gras.

And the stories the old ones told at the wake could make you sick. Old Sister Bridget Marie the other night downstairs telling about coming over on the boat from Ireland: The mama said to the baby in the bassinet, “If you don’t stop crying, I’ll throw you overboard.” Then she tells her little boy to watch the baby. Little while she comes back. The baby’s gone out of the bassinet. The little boy says, “He started crying again. So I threw him overboard.”

Now, what kind of a story is that to tell when you’re sitting right beside the coffin?

Rita smiled in spite of herself. She had always liked old Sister Bridget Marie.

“The Mayfairs aren’t Irish,” she said. “They’re rich and rich people don’t carry on like that.”

“Oh, yes they are Irish, Rita Mae. Or Irish enough anyway to be crazy. It was the famous Irish architect Darcy Monahan who built that house, and he was the father of Miss Mary Beth. And Miss Carl is the daughter of Judge McIntyre and he was Irish as they come. Just a real old-timer. Sure they’re Irish. As Irish as anybody else around here in this day and age.”

She was amazed that her husband was talking this much. The Mayfairs bothered him, that was clear enough, just as they had bothered his daddy, and nobody had ever told Rita the whole story.

Rita went to the Requiem Mass at the chapel for Miss Nancy. She followed the procession in her own car. It went down First Street to pass the old house, out of respect for Deirdre. But there was no sign Deirdre even saw all those black limousines gliding by.

There were so many Mayfairs. Why, where in the world did they come from? Rita recognized New York voices and California voices and even southern voices from Atlanta and Alabama. And then all the ones from New Orleans! She couldn’t believe it when she went over the register. Why, there were Mayfairs from uptown and downtown, and Metairie, and across the river.

There was even an Englishman there, a white-haired gentleman in a linen suit who actually carried a walking stick. He hung back with Rita. “My, what a dreadfully warm day this is,” he said in his elegant English voice. When Rita had tripped on the path, he’d steadied her arm. Very nice of him.

What did all these people think of that awful old house, she wondered, and of the Lafayette Cemetery with all the moldering vaults. They were crowded all through the narrow aisles, standing on tiptoe trying to see over the high tombs. Mosquitoes in the high grass. And there was one of the tour buses stopped at the gates right now. Those tourists sure loved it, all right. Well, get an eyeful!

But the big shock was the cousin who’d taken Deirdre’s baby. For there she was, Ellie Mayfair from California. Jerry pointed her out while the priest was saying the final words. She had signed the register at every funeral for the last thirty years. Tall, dark-haired woman in a sleeveless blue linen dress, with beautiful suntanned skin. She wore a big white hat. like a sunbonnet, and a pair of dark glasses. Looked like a movie star. How they gathered around her. People clasping her hand. Kissing her on her powdered cheek. When they bent real close, were they asking her about Deirdre’s daughter?

Rita wiped her eyes. Rita Mae, they’re going to take my baby. Whatever had she done with that little fragment of white card with the word Talamasca on it? Was probably right here in her prayer book somewhere. She never threw anything away. Maybe she should speak to that woman, just ask her how to get in touch with Deirdre’s daughter. Maybe some day that girl ought to know what Rita had to tell. But then what right had she to meddle like that? Yet if Deirdre died before Rita did, and Rita saw that woman again, well, then she’d go and ask. Nothing would stop her.

She had almost broken down right then and there, and imagine, people would have thought she was crying for old Miss Nancy. That was a laugh. She had turned around, trying to hide her face and then she’d seen that Englishman, that gentleman, staring at her. He had a real strange expression on his face, like he was worried about her crying, and then she did cry and she made a little wave to him to say, It’s all right. But he came over to her anyway.

He gave her his arm, the way he had before, and helped her to walk just a little ways away and there was one of those benches so she sat down on it. When she looked up, she could have sworn Miss Carl was staring at her and at the Englishman, but Miss Carl was real far away, and the sun was shining on her glasses. Probably couldn’t see them at all.

Then the Englishman had given her a little white card and said he would like to talk to her. Whatever about, she had thought, but she took the card and put it in her pocket.

It was late that night when she found it again. She had been looking for the prayer card from the funeral. And there it was, that little card from the man and there were the same names after all these years-Talamasca and Aaron Lightner.

For a minute Rita Mae thought she was going to faint dead away. Maybe she’d made a big mistake. She hunted through her prayer book for the old card or what was left of it. Sure enough, they were the same, and on this new one, the Englishman had written in ink the name of the Monteleone Hotel downtown and his room number.

Rita found Jerry sitting up late, drinking, at the kitchen table.

“Rita Mae, you can’t go talking to that man. You can’t tell him anything about that family.”

“But Jerry, I have to tell him what happened before, I have to tell him that Deirdre tried to get in touch with him.”

“That was years and years ago, Rita Mae. That baby is grown up. She’s a doctor, did you know that? She’s going to be a surgeon, that’s what I heard.”

“I don’t care, Jerry.” Then Rita Mae had broken down, but even through her tears, she was doing a strange thing. She was staring at that card and memorizing everything on it. She memorized the room number of the hotel. She memorized the phone number in London.

And just as she figured, Jerry suddenly took the card and slipped it in his shirt pocket. She didn’t say a word. She just kept crying. Jerry was the sweetest man in the world, but he never would understand.

He said, “You did a nice thing, going to the funeral, honey.”

Rita said no more about the man. She wasn’t going to go against Jerry. Well, at least at this moment her mind was not made up yet.

“But what does that girl out there in California know about her mother?” Rita said. “I mean, does she know Deirdre never wanted to give her up?”

“You have to leave it alone, honey.”

There had never been a moment in Rita’s life quite like that one years ago in the nuns’ garden-hearing Deirdre with that man, hearing two people talk of love like that. Twilight. Rita had told Jerry about it all right, but nobody understood. You had to be there, smelling the lilies and seeing the sky like blue stained glass through the tree branches.

And to think of that girl out there, maybe never knowing what her real mother was like …

Jerry shook his head. He filled his glass with bourbon and drank about half of it.

“Honey, if you knew what I knew about those people.”

Jerry was drinking too much bourbon all right. Rita saw that. Jerry was no gossip. A good mortician couldn’t be a gossip. But he started to talk now and Rita let him.

“Honey,” he said, “Deirdre never had a chance in that family. You might say she was cursed when she was born. That’s what Daddy said.”

Jerry had been just a grade-school kid when Deirdre’s mother, Antha, died, in a fall from the porch roof outside the attic window of that house. Her skull had broken open on the patio. Deirdre was a baby then and so was Rita Mae, of course. But Jerry was already working with his daddy.

“I tell you we scraped her brains up off the flagstones. It was terrible. She was only twenty years old, and pretty! She was prettier even than Deirdre got to be. And you should have seen the trees in that yard. Honey, it was like a hurricane was happening just over that house, the way those trees were blowing. Even those stiff magnolia trees were bending and twisting.”

“Yeah, I’ve seen them like that,” Rita said, but she was quiet so he would go on talking.

“The worst part was when we got back here and Daddy had a good look at Antha. He said right away, ‘See these scratches around her eyes. Now that never happened in the fall. There were no trees under that window.’ And then Daddy found out one of the eyes was torn right out of the socket. Now Daddy knew what to do in those situations.

“He got right on the phone to Dr. Fitzroy. He said he thought there ought to be an autopsy. And he stood his ground when Dr. Fitzroy argued with him. Finally Dr. Fitzroy came clean that Antha Mayfair had gone out of her mind and tried to scratch her own eyes out. Miss Carl tried to stop her and that’s when Antha had run up to the attic. She fell, all right, but she was clean out of her head when it happened. And Miss Carl had seen the whole thing. And there was no reason in the world for people to be talking about it, for it to get into the newspapers. Hadn’t that family had enough pain, what with Stella? Dr. Fitzroy said for Daddy to call over to the priest house at St. Alphonsus and talk to the pastor if he still wasn’t sure about it.

“ ‘Sure doesn’t look self-inflicted to me,’ Daddy said, ‘but if you’re willing to sign the death certificate on this one, well, I guess I’ve done what I can.’ And there never was any autopsy. But Daddy knew what he was talking about.

“ ’Course he made me swear I’d never tell a living soul about it. I was real close to Daddy then, already a big help to him. He knew he could trust me. And I’m trusting you now, Rita Mae.”

“Oh, what an awful thing,” Rita whispered, “to scratch her own eyes out.” She prayed Deirdre had never known.

“Well, you haven’t heard all of it,” Jerry said, taking another drink of his bourbon. “When we went to cleaning her up, we found the emerald necklace on her-the same one Deirdre wears now-the famous Mayfair emerald. The chain was twisted around her neck, and the thing was caught in her hair in back. It was covered with blood and God knows what else was on it. Well, even Daddy was shocked, with all he’d seen in this world, picking the hair and the splinters of bone out of that thing. He said, ‘And this is not the first time I’ve had to clean the blood off this necklace.’ The time before that, he’d found it around the neck of Stella Mayfair, Antha’s mother.”

Rita remembered the long-ago day at St. Ro’s, the necklace in Deirdre’s hand. And many years later, Mr. Lonigan showing her Stella’s name on the gravestone.

“And Stella was the one shot by her own brother.”

“Yes, and that was a terrible thing, to hear Daddy tell it. Stella was the wild one of that generation. Even before her mother died, she filled that old house with lights, with parties going on night after night, with the bootleg booze flowing and the musicians playing. Lord only knows what Miss Carl and Miss Millie and Miss Belle thought of all that. But when she started bringing her men home, that’s when Lionel took matters into his own hands and shot her. Jealous of her is what he was. Right in front of everybody in the parlor, he said, ‘I’ll kill you before I let him have you.’ ”

“Now what are you telling me,” Rita said. “It was brother and sister going to bed together?”

“Could have been, honey,” Jerry said. “Could have been. Nobody ever knew the name of Antha’s father. Could have been Lionel for all anybody knew. They even said … But Stella didn’t care what anybody thought. They said when she was carrying Antha, she invited all her lady friends to come up there for a big party. Never bothered Stella that she had that baby out of wedlock.”

“Well, that’s the damnedest thing I ever heard,” Rita Mae whispered. “Especially in those days, Jerry.”

“That’s the way it was, honey. And it wasn’t just from Daddy I heard about some of those things either. Lionel shot Stella in the head, and everybody in the house went just plain wild, breaking out the windows to the porches to get out of there. Regular panic. And don’t you know that little Antha was upstairs, and she came down during all that commotion, and seen her mother lying there dead on the living room floor.”

Rita shook her head. What had Deirdre said on that long-ago afternoon? And they said her mother died when she was young, too, but they never talk about her.

“Lionel ended up in a straitjacket after he shot Stella. Daddy always said the guilt drove him out of his mind. He kept screaming the devil wouldn’t leave him alone, that his sister had been a witch and she’d sent the devil after him. Finally died in a fit, swallowed his own tongue, and no one there to help him. They opened up the padded cell and there he was, dead, and turning black already. But at least that time the corpse came all neatly sewn up from the coroner. It was the scratches on Antha’s face twelve years later that always haunted Daddy.”

“Poor Dee Dee. She must have known some of it.”

“Yeah,” Jerry said, “even a little baby knows things. You know they do! And when Daddy and I went to get Antha’s body out of that yard, we could hear little Deirdre just wailing away in there as if she could feel it that her mother was dead. And nobody picking up that child, nobody comforting her. I tell you, that little girl was born under a curse. Never had a chance with all the goings-on in that family. That’s why they sent her baby daughter out west, to get her away from all that, and if I were you, honey, I wouldn’t meddle in it.”

Rita thought of Ellie Mayfair, so pretty. Probably on a plane right this minute for San Francisco.

“They say those California people are rich,” Jerry said. “Deirdre’s nurse told me that. That girl’s got her own private yacht out there on San Francisco Bay, tied right up to the front porch of her house on the water. Father’s a big lawyer out there, a real mean son-of-a-bitch, but he makes plenty. If there’s a curse on the Mayfairs, that girl got away from it.”

“Jerry, you don’t believe in curses,” Rita said, “and you know it.”

“Honey, think about the emerald necklace just for a minute. Two times Daddy cleaned the blood off it. And it always sounded to me like Miss Carlotta herself thought there was a curse on it. First time Daddy cleaned it up-when Stella got shot, you know what Miss Carlotta wanted Daddy to do? Put the necklace in the coffin with Stella. Daddy told me that. I know that for a fact. And Daddy refused to do it.”

“Well, maybe it’s not real, Jerry.”

“Hell, Rita Mae, you could buy a block of downtown Canal Street with that emerald. Daddy had Hershman from Magazine Street appraise it. I mean here he was with Miss Carlotta telling him things like ‘It is my express wish that you put it in the coffin with my sister.’ So he calls Hershman, I mean he and Hershman were always good friends, and Hershman said it was real, all right, the finest emerald he’d ever laid eyes on. Wouldn’t even know how to put a price on it. He’d have to take a jewel like that to New York for a real evaluation. He said it was the same with all the Mayfair jewels. He’d cleaned them once for Miss Mary Beth before she even passed them on to Stella. He said jewels like that ended up on display in a museum.”

“Well, what did Red say to Miss Carlotta?”

“Told Miss Carlotta no, he wasn’t putting any million-dollar emerald in a casket. He cleaned it all off with rubbing alcohol and got a velvet case for it from Hershman and then he took it over to her. Same as we did together years later when Antha fell from the window. Miss Carl didn’t ask us to bury it that time. And she didn’t demand to have the funeral in the parlor neither.”

“In the parlor!”

“Well, that’s where Stella was laid out, Rita Mae, right there in that house. They always did that in the old days. Old Julien Mayfair was buried from the parlor and so was Miss Mary Beth and that was 1925. And that’s the way that Stella had said it was to be done. She’d left that word in her will, and so they did it. But with Antha nothing like that happened. We brought that necklace back, Daddy and me together. I came in with Daddy and there Miss Carl was in that double parlor with no lights on and it being so dark in there with the porches and the trees and all, and there she was just sitting there, rocking little Deirdre in the cradle beside her. I went in with Daddy and he put the necklace in her hand. And you know what she did? She said, ‘Thank you, Red Lonigan.’ And she turned and put that jewel case in the cradle with the baby.”

“But why did she do that?”

“ ’Cause it was Deirdre’s, that’s why. Miss Carl never had no right to any of those jewels. Miss Mary Beth left them to Stella, and Stella named Antha to get them, and Antha’s only daughter was Deirdre. It’s always been that way, they all pass to one daughter.”

“Well, what if the necklace is cursed,” Rita said. Lord, to think of it around Deirdre’s neck and Deirdre the way she was now. Oh, Rita could hardly stand to think of it.

“Well, if it’s cursed, maybe the house is too,” Jerry said, “because the jewels go with the house, and lots of other money.”

“You mean to tell me, Jerry Lonigan, that house belongs to Deirdre?”

“Rita, everybody knows that. How come you don’t know that?”

“You’re telling me that house is hers, and those women lived in it all those years when she was locked up and then they brought her home like that, and she sits there and-”

“Now, don’t get hysterical, Rita Mae. But that’s what I’m telling you. It’s Deirdre’s, same as it was Antha’s and Stella’s. And it will pass to that California daughter when Deirdre dies, unless somebody managed to change all those old papers and I don’t think you can change a thing like that. It goes way back, the will-back to times when they had the plantation, and times before that, when they were in the islands, you know, in Haiti, before they ever came here. A legacy is what they call it. And I remember Hershman used to say that Miss Carl started law school when she was a girl just to learn how to crack the legacy. But she never could. Even before Miss Mary Beth died, everybody knew Stella was the heiress.”

“But what if that California girl doesn’t know about it?”

“It’s the law, honey. And Miss Carlotta, no matter whatever else she is, is a good lawyer. Besides, it’s tied with the name, Mayfair. You have to go by the name or you can’t inherit anything from the legacy. And that girl goes by the name of Mayfair. I heard that when she was born. So does her adopted mother, Ellie Mayfair, the one that came today and signed the register. They know. People always know when they’re coming into money. And besides, the other Mayfairs would tell her. Ryan Mayfair would tell her. He’s Cortland’s grandson and Cortland loved Deirdre; he really did. He was real old by the time Deirdre had to give up the baby, and the way I heard it, he was against it all the way, lot of good it did. I heard he really took on Miss Carlotta about that baby, said it would drive Deirdre crazy to give it up, and Miss Carlotta said Deirdre was already crazy. A lot of good it did.”

Jerry finished his bourbon. He poured another glass.

“But Jerry, what if there are other things that Deirdre’s daughter doesn’t know?” Rita asked. “Why didn’t she come down here today? Why didn’t she want to see her mother?”

Rita Mae, they’re going to take my baby!

Jerry didn’t answer. His eyes were bloodshot. He was over the hill with the bourbon.

“Daddy knew a lot more about those people,” he said, his words slurred now. “More than he ever told me. One thing Daddy did say, though, that they were right to take Deirdre’s baby away from her and give it to Ellie Mayfair, for the baby’s sake. And Daddy told me something else too. Daddy told me Ellie Mayfair couldn’t have babies of her own, and her husband was real disappointed over that, and about to leave her when Miss Carl rang her up long distance and asked if they wanted to have Deirdre’s baby. ‘Don’t tell Rita Mae all that,’ Daddy said, ‘but for everybody it was a blessing. And old Mr. Cortland, God rest his soul, he was wrong.’ ”

Rita Mae knew what she was going to do. She had never lied to Jerry Lonigan in her life. She just didn’t tell him. The next afternoon, she called the Monteleone Hotel. The Englishman had just checked out! But they thought he might still be in the lobby.

Rita Mae’s heart was pounding as she waited.

“This is Aaron Lightner. Yes, Mrs. Lonigan. Please take a taxi down and I shall pay the fare. I’ll be waiting.”

It made her so nervous she was stumbling over her words, forgetting things as she rushed out of the house and having to go back for them. But she was glad she was doing this! Even if Jerry had caught her then, she would have gone on with it.

The Englishman took her round the corner to the Desire Oyster Bar, a pretty place with ceiling fans and big mirrors and doors open along Bourbon Street. It seemed exotic to Rita the way the Quarter always had. She almost never got to go down there.

They sat at a marble-top table, and she had a glass of white wine because that’s what the Englishman had and it sounded very nice to her. What a good-looking man he was. With a man like that it didn’t matter about his age, he was handsomer than younger men. It made her slightly nervous to sit so close to him. And the way his eyes fixed her, it made her melt as if she was a kid again in high school.

“Talk to me, Mrs. Lonigan,” he said. “I’ll listen.”

She tried to take it slow, but once she started it just came pouring out of her. Soon she was crying, and he probably couldn’t understand a word she was saying. She gave him that old, twisted little bit of card. She told about the ads she’d run, and how she’d told Deirdre that she could never find him.

Then came the difficult part. “There are things that girl in California doesn’t know! That property’s hers, and maybe the lawyers will tell her that, but what about the curse, Mr. Lightner? I’m putting my trust in you, I’m telling you things my husband doesn’t want me to tell a living soul. But if Deirdre put her trust in you back then, well, that’s enough for me. I’m telling you, the jewels and the house are cursed.”

Finally, she told him everything. She told him all that Jerry had told her. She told him all that Red had ever said. She told him anything and everything she could remember.

And the funny thing was that he was never surprised or shocked. And over and over again, he assured her that he would do his best to get this information to the girl in California.

When it was all said, and she sat there wiping her nose, her white wine untouched, the man asked her if she would keep his card, if she would call him when there was any “change” with Deirdre. If she could not reach him she was to leave a message. The people who answered the phone would understand. She need only say it was in connection with Deirdre Mayfair.

She took her prayer book out of her purse. “Give me those numbers again,” she said, and she wrote down the words, “In connection with Deirdre Mayfair.”

Only after she had written it all out, did she think to ask, “But tell me, Mr. Lightner, how did you come to know Deirdre?”

“It’s a long story, Mrs. Lonigan,” he said. “You might say I’ve been watching that family for years. I have two paintings done by Deirdre’s father, Sean Lacy. One of them is of Antha. He was the one who was killed on the highway in New York before Deirdre was born.”

“He was killed on the highway? I never knew.”

“It’s doubtful anyone down here ever did,” he said. “Quite a painter he was. He did a beautiful portrait of Antha with the famous emerald necklace. I came by it through a New York dealer some years after both of them were dead. Deirdre was probably ten years old by that time. I didn’t meet her until she went off to college.”

“That’s a funny thing, about Deirdre’s father going off the road,” she said. “It’s just what happened to Deirdre’s boyfriend too, the man she was going to marry. Did you know that? That he went off the river road when he was driving down to New Orleans?”

She thought she saw a little change in the Englishman’s face then, but she couldn’t be sure. Seemed his eyes got smaller for just a second.

“Yes, I did know,” he said. He seemed to be thinking about things he didn’t want to tell her. Then he started talking again. “Mrs. Lonigan, will you promise me something?”

“What is it, Mr. Lightner?”

“If something should happen, something wholly unexpected, and the daughter from California should come home, please don’t try to talk to her. Call me instead. Call me any time day or night, and I promise I shall be here as soon as I can get a plane out of London.”

“You mean I shouldn’t tell her these things myself, that’s what you’re saying?”

“Yes,” he answered, very serious-like, touching her hand for the first time but in a very gentlemanly way that was completely proper. “Don’t go to that house again, especially not if the daughter is there. I promise you that if I cannot come myself, someone else will come, someone else who will accomplish what we want done, someone quite familiar with the whole story.”

“Oh, that would be a big load off my mind,” Rita said. She sure didn’t want to talk to that girl, a total stranger, and try to tell her all these things. But suddenly the whole thing began to puzzle her. For the first time she started wondering-who was this nice man? Was she wrong to trust him?

“You can trust me, Mrs. Lonigan,” he said, just as if he knew what she was thinking. “Please be certain of it. And I’ve met Deirdre’s daughter, and I know that she is a rather quiet and-well, shall we say-forbidding individual. Not an easy person to talk to, if you understand. But I think I can explain things to her.”

Well, now, that made perfect sense.

“Sure, Mr. Lightner.”

He was looking at her. Maybe he knew how confused she was, how strange the whole afternoon seemed, all this talk of curses and things, and dead people and that weird old necklace.

“Yes, they are very strange,” he said.

Rita laughed. “It was like you read my mind,” she said.

“Don’t worry anymore,” he said. “I’ll see that Rowan Mayfair knows her mother didn’t want to give her up; I’ll see she knows all that you want her to know. I owe that much to Deirdre, don’t you think? I wish I’d been there when she needed me.”

Well, that was plenty enough for Rita.

Every Sunday after that, when Rita was at Mass, she flipped to the back of her prayer book and looked at the phone number for the man in London. She read those words “In connection with Deirdre Mayfair.” Then she said a prayer for Deirdre, and it didn’t seem wrong that it was the prayer for the dead, it seemed to be the right one for the occasion.

“May perpetual light shine upon her. O Lord, and may she rest in peace, Amen.”

*

And now it was over twelve years since Deirdre had taken her place on the porch, over a year since the Englishman had come and gone-and they were talking of putting Deirdre away again. It was her house that was tumbling down all around her in that sad overgrown garden and they were going to lock her away again.

Maybe Rita should call that man. Maybe she should tell him. She just didn’t know.

“It’s the wise thing, them putting her away,” Jerry said, “before Miss Carl is too far gone to make the decision. And the fact is, well, I hate to say it, honey. But Deirdre’s going down fast. They say she’s dying.”

Dying.

She waited till Jerry had gone to work. Then she made the call. She knew it would show on the bill, and she probably would have to say something eventually to Jerry. But it didn’t matter. What mattered now was getting the operator to understand that she had to call a number all the way across the ocean.

It was a nice woman who answered over there, and they did reverse the charges just as the Englishman had promised. At first Rita couldn’t understand everything the woman said-she spoke so fast-but then it came out that Mr. Lightner was in the United States. He was out in San Francisco. The woman would call him right away. Would Rita care to leave her number?

“Oh, no. I don’t want him to call here,” she said. “You just tell him this for me. It’s real important. That Rita Mae Lonigan called in connection with Deirdre Mayfair. Can you write that down? Tell him that Deirdre Mayfair is very sick; that Deirdre Mayfair is going down fast. That maybe Deirdre Mayfair is dying.”

It took the breath out of Rita to say that last word. She couldn’t say any more after that. She tried to answer clearly when the woman repeated the message. The woman would call Mr. Lightner right away at the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco. Rita was in tears when she put down the phone.

That night she dreamed of Deirdre, but she could remember nothing when she woke up, except that Deirdre was there, and it was twilight, and the wind was blowing in the trees behind St. Rose de Lima’s. When she opened her eyes, she thought of wind blowing through trees. She heard Jerry tell of how it had been when they went to get the body of Antha. She remembered the storm in the trees that horrible day when she and Miss Carl had fought for the little card that said Talamasca. Wind in the trees in the garden behind St. Rose de Lima’s.

Rita got up and went to early Mass. She went to the shrine of the Blessed Virgin and lighted a candle. Please let Mr. Lightner come, she prayed. Please let him talk to Deirdre’s daughter.

And she realized as she prayed that it was not the inheritance that worried her, or the curse upon that beautiful emerald necklace. For Rita did not believe Miss Carl had it in her to break the law, no matter how mean Miss Carl was; and Rita did not believe that curses really existed.

What she believed in was the love she felt in her heart of hearts for Deirdre Mayfair.

And she believed a child had a right to know that her mother had once been the sweetest and kindest of creatures, a girl that everybody loved-a beautiful girl in the spring of 1957 when a handsome, elegant man in a twilight garden had called her My beloved.