Taltos (8 page)

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

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

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

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

“Good Lord, how?” Bea had asked.

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

“Yes, precious, but really …”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“So do I,” said Beatrice. “Only …”

“Only what?” Michael had asked desperately.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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