Taltos lotmw-3 Page 56

  Thirty-three

  PIERCE HAD COLLECTED them from the airport, far too polite to inquire about the owner of the plane, or where they had been, and only too eager to take them to the site of the new medical center.

  It was so warm as to be stifling, Michael thought. My kind of town. So glad to be back, and yet so utterly uncertain of anything-whether grass will continue to grow, whether Rowan will become warm and trusting again in his arms, whether he could stay away from the tall man in New York with whom he had known the most extraordinary friendship.

  And the past; the past was not fun anymore and never would be, but something inherited with its burdens, its curses, its secrets.

  Take your eyes off the bodies of the dead; forget the old man crumpling to the floor; and Aaron, Where has Aaron gone? Did his spirit rise into the light, were all things clear finally, and forgiven? To forgive is such a gift to us.

  They got out at the edge of the huge rectangle of churned earth. Signs read MAYFAIR MEDICAL with a dozen names and dates. And something too small for his aging eyes to read. He wondered if they’d stop being so blue when they couldn’t really see anymore. Did that happen? Or would he have that last claim to fame even when he couldn’t see the girls giving him a second look, or Rowan melting slightly, lips curled at the edges.

  He tried to focus on the construction site, to realize what his mind told him, that the progress had been amazing, that some hundred men were working out here in these four blocks, that Mayfair Medical had truly begun.

  Were those tears in Rowan’s eyes? Yes, the smooth lady with the bobbed hair and the slim tailored suit of supple cloth was crying silently. He moved closer, what the hell was all this distance about, all this respecting of one another’s privacy, feelings? He hugged her tight and, finding the softest part of her neck, placed his kisses there, until he felt her rustling against him, bending slightly, and a nice quiver running through her hands as she clasped his head, and said:

  “You went on with it, all of you. I could never have expected such a thing.” Her eyes moved to Pierce, shy Pierce, who was blushing now under these compliments.

  “It’s a dream you gave to us, Rowan. And now it’s our dream too, and since all our dreams are coming true-since you’re here and with us again-well, this one also will be realized.”

  “Now that’s a lawyerly speech, with pacing and just enough force,” Michael said. Was he jealous of this young kid? Women did tend to dote when their eyes fell upon Pierce Mayfair. If only Mona could see it, see perhaps that he was the one for her, especially now that in the wake of Gifford’s death, her son had drifted away from his fiancée, Clancy. More and more Pierce came to sit some distance from Mona and stare. Yeah, maybe a little interest in Mona was brewing….

  Michael reached for Rowan’s cheek. “Kiss me.”

  “This is a vulgar display,” she purred, “and you know it. All those workmen are staring at us.”

  “I hope so,” he said.

  “Let’s go home,” she whispered.

  “Pierce, how’s Mona, you’ve got an update?” Michael asked. They climbed into the car. He had forgotten what it meant to ride in normal automobiles, live in normal houses, have normal dreams. Ash’s voice sang to him in his sleep. He heard the musical whisper in his ear even now. And would they ever truly see Ash again? Or would Ash vanish behind all those bronze doors, shutting them out, insulated by his company, his billions, remembering them only perhaps with occasional notes, though they might call, come to New York, press his bell in the very dead of night. “I need you!”

  “Ah, Mona, yes,” said Pierce. “Well, she’s acting strange. When Dad talks to her, she sounds like she’s high as a kite. But she’s okay. She’s hanging around with Mary Jane. And yesterday a team started work on Fontevrault.”

  “Oh, I’m so glad to hear that,” Michael said. “So they’re going to save that place.”

  “Well, it had to be done, obviously, since neither Mary Jane nor Dolly Jean will stand to see it demolished. Oh, I think Dolly Jean is with them too. Now Dolly Jean looks like a withered apple, but they say she is very quick.”

  “I’m glad she’s there,” he said. “I like old people.” Rowan laughed softly, resting her head on his shoulder. “Maybe we’ll ask Aunt Viv to come over,” he said. “And how is Bea? What is happening with Bea?”

  “Well, now,” said Pierce with a little tilt of his head. “Ancient Evelyn has worked the miracle there, simply by coming home from the hospital and needing care, and guess who has dashed up to Amelia to feed her soft-boiled eggs and make her talk, and make her grip tight with both hands? Dad says it’s the perfect antidote for grief. I wonder if Mother’s spirit isn’t there.”

  “All the news is good news now,” Rowan said with a wan smile, her voice deep as always. “And the girls will be in the house, and the silence will have to wait, and the spirits recede into the walls.”

  “You think they’re still there?” Pierce asked with touching innocence.

  God bless the Mayfairs who have never seen, and don’t really believe.

  “No, son,” Michael said. “It’s just a big beautiful house, and it’s waiting for us, and for … new generations to come.”

  “For Mayfairs yet unborn,” whispered Rowan.

  They had just turned onto St. Charles Avenue, the heavenly corridor of green, oaks in blinding spring leaf, sun mellow, traffic slow, flash of one lovely house after another. My town, home, everything all right, Rowan’s hand in mine.

  “Ah, and Amelia Street, look,” he said.

  How dapper the Mayfair house looked in the San Francisco style, with its fresh coat of peach with white trim and green shutters. And all the weeds gone. He almost wanted to stop, to see Evelyn and Bea, but he knew he had to see Mona first, he had to see the mother and child rolled into one. And he had to be with his wife, talking quietly in the big bedroom upstairs, about all that had happened, the tales they’d heard, the strange things they’d seen and might never tell anyone … except Mona.

  And tomorrow he would go out to the mausoleum where Aaron was buried, and he’d do the Irish trick of just talking to Aaron, out loud, as if Aaron were answering, and if anybody didn’t like it, well, they could just get out of there, couldn’t they? All his family had always done that, his father going out to St. Joseph’s Cemetery and talking to his grandmother and grandfather any time he felt like it. And Uncle Shamus when he was so sick, saying to his wife, “You can still talk to me after I’m gone. The only difference is I won’t be answering you.”

  Once again the light changed, darkening, and the trees expanded, crowding out the sky and breaking it into tiny glowing fragments. The Garden District. First Street. And wonder of wonders, the house on the comer of Chestnut, amid its spring banana trees and ferns, and azaleas in bloom, waiting for them.

  “Pierce, you must come in.”

  “No, they’re waiting for me downtown. You rest. Call us when you need us.” He had already slipped out to lend a manly hand as Rowan climbed from the car. And then his key was in the gate, and he was waving goodbye to them.

  A uniformed guard walked along the side fence, disappearing discreetly around the end of the house.

  The silence was healed, the car slipping off in light and shadow, noiseless, removed, the dying afternoon burnished and warm and without the slightest resistance. The scent of the sweet olive hung over the whole yard. And tonight he’d smell the jasmine again.

  Ash had said that fragrance was the sharpest trigger of memory, a transport into forgotten worlds. And he had been so right, and what did it do to you, to be taken away from all the fragrances you needed to breathe?

  He opened the front door for his wife, and felt a sudden impulse to carry her over the threshold. Hell, why not!

  She gave a little unrestrained cry of delight, clutching his neck as he scooped her up.

  The thing about gestures like this was not to drop the lady in question.

  “And now, my dear, we are home,” he
growled against her soft neck again, forcing her head back as he kissed her beneath her chin, “and the smell of the sweet olive gives way to Eugenia’s ever-present wax, and the scent of the old wood, and something musty and expensive and delicious to breathe.”

  “Amen,” she said.

  As he went to put her down, she clung to him for a moment. Ah, that was nice! And his aging, battered heart had not begun to pound. She would hear it, wouldn’t she, with a doctor’s ear? No, he stood hale and quiet, holding her against him, smelling her clean soft hair, and gazing down the polished hall, past the great soaring white doorway, at the distant murals of the dining room, touched still by the afternoon sun. Home. Here. Now, as it has never, never been for either of us.

  At last she slipped from him, landing on her feet. The tiniest frown came to her forehead. “Oh, it’s nothing,” she said. “Only certain memories will die hard, you know. But then I think of Ash, and that is something to contemplate rather than all the sad things.”

  He wanted to answer, he wanted to say something about his own love for Ash, and something else, something else that was almost torturing him. It would be better to leave it alone, that’s what others would advise, if ever he asked them. But he couldn’t. He looked into her eyes, opening his own very wide, perhaps wide enough to look angry when he didn’t mean to at all.

  “Rowan, my love,” he said. “I know you could have stayed with him. I know you made a choice.”

  “You’re my man,” she said with a soft explosion of breath, “my man, Michael.”

  Nice to carry her up the stairs, but he’d never make it, not all twenty-nine steps, and where were the young ladies, and Granny, the resurrected one? No, they could not shut themselves away now, unless by some luck the entire tribe had gone out for an early dinner.

  Closing his eyes, he kissed her again. Nobody could stop him from doing that at least a dozen times. Kiss. And when he looked up again, he saw the red-haired beauty at the end of the hall, two in fact, one very, very tall, and that mischievous Mary Jane, blond braids on top of her head again, three of the most gorgeous necks in the universe, young girls like that are swans. But who was this new beauty who stood incredibly tall, and looked, why, she looked exactly like Mona!

  Rowan turned, staring back down the hall.

  The Three Graces, they were, against the dining room door, and Mona’s face seemed to occupy two different places. This wasn’t resemblance, it was duplication, and why did they stand so still, all of them in their cotton dresses, merely staring as if from a painting?

  He heard Rowan gasp. He saw Mona break into a run, and then rush towards him across the polished floor.

  “No, you can’t do anything. You can’t. You have to listen.”

  “Dear God,” Rowan said, her weight falling heavily against him, her body shaking.

  “She’s my child,” Mona said. “My child and Michael’s, and you won’t hurt her.”

  Suddenly it struck him, as things often do, in a rush of different stages, all clattering together to take his breath away. The baby is this young woman. The giant helix produced this. This is a Taltos as surely as Ash is a Taltos, as surely as those two under the tree are Taltos. Rowan is going to faint, she is going to go down, and the pain in my chest is killing me.

  He clutched for the newel post.

  “Tell me now, neither of you will hurt her.”

  “Hurt her? How could I do that?” Michael said.

  And then Rowan began to cry, blubbering hopelessly against her clasped hands. “Oh God.”

  The tall girl had taken a shaky step and then another. And now would that helpless voice come out, the child voice he’d heard from the other before the shot was fired? He felt dizzy. The sun was dying as if on cue, the house returning to its natural darkness.

  “Michael, sit down, sit down there on the step,” said Mona.

  “Dear God, he’s sick,” said Mary Jane. And Rowan, snapping to, wrapped her long wet fingers around his neck.

  And the tall one said:

  “Well, I know this is a dreadful shock for you both, and Mother and Mary Jane have worried for days, but I myself am relieved to see you at last, and force a decision as to whether I can remain beneath this roof, as they say, your child as well as Mona’s child. As you can see here, she has placed the emerald around my neck, but I bow to your decision.”

  Rowan was speechless. So was he. It would have been Mona’s voice except it sounded older, and a little less strong, as though chastened already by the world.

  He looked up to see her standing there, big spill of vivid red locks, woman’s breasts and long curved legs, and her eyes, her eyes like green fire.

  “Father,” she whispered, dropping to her knees. Her long fingers shot out and clasped his face.

  He closed his eyes.

  “Rowan,” she said. “Love me, please, and then maybe he will.”

  Rowan cried, her fingers tightening on his neck. His heart was thudding in his ears, thudding as if it were growing bigger and bigger.

  “Morrigan is my name,” she said.

  “She’s mine, my child,” Mona said, “and yours, Michael.”

  “And I think it’s time that you let me speak,” said Morrigan, “that I take the burden of decision from both of you.”

  “Honey, slow down,” he said. He blinked his eyes slowly, trying to clear his vision.

  But something had disturbed this long nymph. Something had made her draw back her hands and then sniff at her fingers. Her eyes flashed to Rowan and then to him. She rose, rushing close to Rowan, before Rowan could possibly move away, sniffing at Rowan’s cheeks, and then standing back.

  “What is that scent?” she said. “What is it! I know that scent!”

  “Listen to me,” Rowan said. “We’ll talk. That’s what you said. Now come.” She moved forward, releasing him to die of a heart attack entirely by himself, and she put her arms around the girl’s waist, the girl staring down at her with comically frightened eyes.

  “The scent’s all over you.”

  “What do you think it is?” Mona asked. “What could it be?”

  “A male,” the girl whispered. “They’ve been with him, these two.”

  “No, he’s dead,” said Mona, “you’re picking it up again from the floorboards, from the walls.”

  “Oh no,” she whispered. “This is a living male.” Suddenly she grabbed Rowan by the shoulders. Mona and Mary Jane sped to her side, gently tugging her arms away. Michael was on his feet. God, the creature was the same height as he was. Mona’s face, but not Mona, no, not Mona at all.

  “The smell is driving me mad,” she whispered. “You keep this secret from me? Why?”

  “Give them time to explain,” Mona pleaded. “Morrigan, stop it, listen to me.” And then she had the girl’s hands in hers, holding them tight. And Mary Jane was standing on tiptoe.

  “Now just you simmer down, long tall Sally, and let them tell us the scoop.”

  “You don’t understand,” Morrigan said, voice suddenly thick and tears gathering in her huge green eyes, as she looked again to Michael, to Rowan. “There’s a male, don’t you see? There’s a male of me! Mother, you can smell the scent. Mother, tell the truth!” It was a scream. “Mother, please, I can’t stand it!” And her sobs came like something tumbling downstairs, her face clenched in pain, her tall angular body wobbling, and bending gently as she let the other two embrace her and keep her from falling.

  “Let us take her now,” said Mary Jane.

  “Just don’t do anything, you have to swear,” Mona pleaded.

  “And we’ll meet and we’ll talk, and we’ll …”

  “Tell me,” the stricken girl whispered. “Tell me, where is he?”

  Rowan pushed Michael towards the elevator, pulling open the old wooden door. “Get in.”

  And the last thing he saw, as he leaned against the back wall of the elevator, was those pretty cotton dresses, as the three of them fled up the stairs together.

&n
bsp; He lay on the bed.

  “Now, don’t think of it now. Don’t think,” Rowan said.

  The wet rag felt exactly like a wet rag. He didn’t like it.

  “I’m not going to die,” he said quietly. And what an effort, the words. Was it defeat again, was it a great ghastly defeat, and the scaffolding of the normal world buckling beneath its weight, and the future forecast once more in the colors of death and Lent, or was it something that they could embrace and contain, something that they could somehow accept without the mind shattering?

  “What do we do?” she whispered.

  “You are asking me this, you? What do we do?” He rolled over on his side. The pain was a little less. He was sweating all over and despised it, the feel of it, the inevitable smell. And where were they, the three beauties? “I don’t know what we do,” he answered.

  She sat still on the side of the bed, her shoulders slightly hunched, her hair falling down against her cheek, her eyes gazing off.

  “Will he know what to do?” Michael asked. Her head turned as if pulled sharply by a string. “Him? You can’t tell him. You can’t expect him to learn some hing like that and not … not go as crazy as she’s gone. Do you want that to happen? Do you want him to come? Nobody and nothing will stand between them.”

  “And what happens then?” he asked, trying to make his voice sound strong, firm, when the firmest thing he knew to do was to ask questions.

  “What happens! I don’t know. I don’t know any more than you do! Dear God, there are two of them and they are alive and they’re not … they’re not …”