Taltos (6 page)

“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.”