“Lucy doesn’t associate with West Texas trash,” Morgan Fayard said. “I don’t allow Adele to filthy this house with him. Grace doesn’t know what we’re talking about and it’s rude to continue, in fact I forbid it.”
As a matter of fact I knew precisely what they were talking about, because the last evening I had spent with the Fayards had been devoted exclusively to a heated discussion of this same “West Texas trash.” It had appeared then that Adele Fayard was seeing a man from Midland of whom her brother did not approve. It appeared now that Lucy Fayard was seeing him as well, and that Morgan did not yet know it. Very soon now either Lucy or Adele would allude to one of Morgan’s own indiscretions. All evenings with the Fayards were essentially Caribbean, volatile with conflicting pieties and intimations of sexual perfidy, and in that context were neither very difficult to understand nor, in the end, very engaging.
“That West Texas trash doesn’t enter this house,” Morgan Fayard said, ignoring his own injunction.
“My mistake then,” Warren Bogart said. “I thought I met him here.”
“I should say, your mistake,” Lucy Fayard said.
“You are certainly set on making it difficult, Warren.” Adele Fayard smiled. “Just as difficult as can be?”
“Set on making what difficult, Adele.”
“You know perfectly well what’s difficult, Warren.”
“Difficult for you and your discourteous sister-in-law to continue to extend me your famous hospitality during my dying days? That about it, Adele? Or is it my mistake again.”
“What dying days you talking about,” Morgan Fayard said. “Nobody dying here.”
“You’re all dying. You’re dying, your wife and sister are dying, your little children are dying, Chrissie here is dying, even Miss Tabor there is dying.”
Warren Bogart watched me as he lit a cigar. I had not been introduced to him as Grace Tabor.
“But not one of you is dying as fast as I’m dying.” Warren Bogart smiled. “Which I believe allows me certain privileges.”
“Frankly he didn’t behave any better when he wasn’t dying,” Adele Fayard said.
“Frankly it’s not ennobling him one bit,” Lucy Fayard said.
The girl from Tupelo laughed nervously.
“ ‘Sunset and evening star and one clear call for me!’ ” Morgan Fayard cried suddenly. “ ‘And let there be no mourning at the bar when I put out to sea.’ Learned that at Charlottesville.”
“Not any too well,” Warren Bogart said.
“No mourning at the bar, Warren. Lesson there for all of us.”
“It’s ‘moaning of’ the bar, Morgan. Not ‘mourning at’ the bar. It’s not a wake in one of those gin mills you frequent.”
“I don’t guess George Gordon Lord Byron is going to object.”
“Wrong again, Morgan. You don’t guess Alfred Lord Tennyson is going to object. You recite it, Chrissie. Stand up and recite. Recite that and ‘Thanatopsis’ both.”
The girl looked at him pleadingly.
“Stand up,” Warren Bogart said.
“I must say,” Lucy Fayard said.
“Shut up, Lucy. I said stand up, Chrissie.”
The girl from Tupelo stood up and gazed miserably at the floor.
“Speak up now, or I’ll make you do ‘Evangeline’ too.”
“ ‘Sunset and evening star — And one clear call for me — And may there be no—’ ”
The girl’s voice was low and wretched.
Warren Bogart picked up his drink and walked over to me.
“It is Miss Tabor, isn’t it?”
“ ‘Twilight and evening bell — And after that the dark—’ ”
The girl was speaking with her eyes shut. All three Fayards sat as if frozen.
“It was,” I said finally.
“I believe you did research of some sort with my old friend Mr. McKay. In Peru.”
“In Brazil.” At the end of each line the girl would open her eyes and look at Warren Bogart’s back as if he alone could save her. “If you’re talking about Claude McKay it was Brazil.”
“Somewhere down there, you may be right.”
“I am right. I was there. What exactly are you doing to that child.”
“Chrissie? Chrissie’s brilliant, you should talk to her, she’s very interested in anthropology, took some courses in it at Newcomb. Does some homework before she speaks. Mr. McKay would have been devoted to her. He had a place in Maryland, you probably know it, I used to drink with him there before he died.” He glanced across the room at the girl, who had fallen silent. “Straighten those shoulders, Chrissie, don’t slouch. ‘Thanatopsis’ now.”
“ ‘To him who in the love of nature holds — Communion with her visible forms—’ ”
The girl’s voice was so low as to be inaudible.
“Would have been devoted to her,” Warren Bogart repeated. “May he rest in peace. An American aristocrat, Claude McKay. One of the last. Gentleman. Well-born, well-bred.”
The evening was hot. I was tired. When I am tired I remember what I was taught in Colorado. When I remember what I was taught in Colorado certain words set my teeth on edge. “Aristocrat” is one of those words. “Gentleman” is another. They remind me of that strain I dislike in Gerardo. As a child Gerardo once described the father of a classmate as “in trade” and I slapped his face.
“Last of a breed,” Warren Bogart said, watching my face. “Used to speak about you. You should meet my good friend Miss Tabor, he’d say.”
The last time I could recall seeing Claude McKay I had accused him of publishing my work under his name. I wondered when Warren Bogart would get around to Charlotte.
“I never thought I’d run into you here at Lucy’s,” he said.
I have never had patience with games.
“I expect you did,” I said.
The girl from Tupelo had finished reciting. The room was silent. Warren Bogart was fingering his cigar and watching me warily.
“Warren,” the girl said. “I finished. I’m through.”
“Do ‘Snowbound,’ ” Warren Bogart said. “There’s nobody here wouldn’t be improved by hearing ‘Snowbound.’ ”
“I just won’t allow this,” Lucy Fayard said.
“I’d advise you to save that tone of voice for West Texas,” Warren Bogart said.
“What’s this he’s saying about West Texas,” Morgan Fayard said.
“Just nonsense, Bro.” Adele Fayard stood up. “He’s talking nonsense.”
“I’m asking certain people in this room a question, Adele.” Morgan Fayard pushed his sister back into her chair with the heel of his hand. “And I believe I’m owed the courtesy of a reply.”
“What’s the question, Bro?”
“Goddamn West Texas trash.”
The girl from Tupelo began to cry.
Dinner was announced.
No one moved.
“This is a fucking circus. A freak show.” Warren Bogart turned to me. “Doesn’t this put you in mind of some third-rate traveling circus? Some Sells-Floto circus passing through that country you people run so well? Doesn’t it?”
“No,” I said. “It puts me in mind of the Mountain Brook Country Club in Birmingham, Alabama.”
Warren Bogart looked at me and then away. “You’re in over your head,” he said finally, and that was all he said.
Trout was served in the dining room. Lemon mousse was served in the dining room. Coffee and praline cookies and pear brandy were served in the dining room. The dining room was hot and we could not seem to leave it. Lucy and Adele Fayard described their most recent Junior League project in compulsive detail. Lucy and Adele Fayard described dinner as we ate it. Lucy and Adele Fayard described a pet cobra they had seen drink Wild Turkey-and-water at a party the night before.