“I told Morgan,” Lucy Fayard said, “ ‘Look there, Morgan, I believe that cobra is taking some drinks.’ ”
“I said to Morgan,” Adele Fayard said, “ ‘Mark my words, Morgan, that cobra’s going to have itself a season in New Orleans.’ ”
Morgan Fayard sulked. Warren Bogart remained in the living room with the girl from Tupelo. We could hear them at the piano. Warren Bogart seemed to be making the girl play, over and over again, the song that was always played in New Orleans at Mardi Gras. She played it badly.
“ ‘May the fish get legs and the cows lay—’ That’s an A-flat, Chrissie, you missed the flat. Start over.”
“Dare he sing that song,” Morgan Fayard said.
Lucy Fayard raised her voice. “You’re forgetting your duties, Morgan. Grace’s glass is empty? You ever get ground artichokes down there, Grace? To put around game?”
“Not forgetting my duties,” Morgan Fayard muttered. “Fine one to talk.”
“ ‘May the fish get legs and the cows lay eggs — If ever I cease to love — May all dogs wag their—’ No. No, Chrissie. No.”
“The irony,” Morgan Fayard said. “You talking about duties.”
“We should ship some down to you,” Lucy Fayard said. “Ground artichokes. To put around game. Morgan. Grace’s glass.”
“Actually,” I said, “I have to leave.”
“See now what you’ve done, Morgan. Making us all suffer at this stuffy table instead of taking our coffee in the living room like civilized beings, no wonder Grace wants to leave.”
“Not going out there to be insulted,” Morgan Fayard said.
“ ‘May the fish get legs and the cows lay eggs — If ever I cease to love — May all dogs wag their tails in front—’ ”
“Got no right to sing that song,” Morgan Fayard said.
“He has too a right,” Lucy Fayard said. “He’s from here.”
“Not from here at all. He’s from—” Morgan Fayard spit the words out. “Plaquemines Parish. That’s where he’s from. Where he left a—”
“I don’t guess Mardi Gras is your own personal property,” Lucy Fayard said. “Just because your mother was Queen of Comus. Which Adele, incidentally, was not.”
“—Where he no doubt left a promising future as assistant manager of a gasoline station, that’s the kind of trash you—”
I stood up.
Something about the presence of Warren Bogart was causing the Fayards to outdo even themselves.
“You back on West Texas?” Lucy Fayard said. “Or you still on Warren.”
“It’s a tacky song anyway,” Adele Fayard said. “Mardi Gras comes, I go out of town with the Jews. Do sit down, Grace.”
“I won’t tolerate this.” Morgan Fayard slammed his fist on the table. “I will not tolerate having my little children exposed to this trash.”
“Unless I’m very much mistaken your little children are at school in Virginia,” Adele Fayard said. “Which makes your tolerance the slightest bit academic?”
“I been hearing certain things about you in the Quarter,” I could hear Morgan Fayard saying as I left the dining room. “Sister.”
“I understand you’ve been leaving your own visiting cards at a certain address in the Quarter,” I could hear Adele Fayard saying as I walked through the living room. “Bro.”
“ ‘May the fish get legs and the cows lay eggs — If ever I cease to love — May the moon be turned to green cream cheese — If ever I cease to love — May the—’ ”
Warren Bogart looked up from the piano.
“Pretty little song, isn’t it.”
I said nothing.
“Tell Charlotte she was wrong,” he said.
3
HERE AMONG THE THREE OR FOUR SOLVENT FAMILIES in Boca Grande we have specific traditional treatments for specific traditional complaints. Nausea is controlled locally by a few drops of 1:1000 solution of adrenalin in a little water, taken by mouth with sips of iced champagne. Neurasthenia is controlled locally by a half-grain of phenobarbitone three times a day and temporary removal to a hill station. In the absence of a hill Miami or Caracas will suffice. I have never known a treatment specific to the condition in which Charlotte Douglas arrived in Boca Grande, but after that one meeting with her first husband I began to see a certain interior logic in her inability to remember much about those last months she spent with him.
One thing she did remember was when and where she left him.
“I don’t want to leave you ever,” she remembered saying to him in Biloxi.
“How could I leave you,” she remembered saying to him in Meridian.
She left him at ten minutes past eleven P.M. on the eighteenth of July in the bar of the Mountain Brook Country Club in Birmingham.
I’m dizzy and my head hurts, the girl had said.
I think she should see a doctor, Charlotte had said.
She doesn’t need a doctor, Warren had said. She’s drunk and she needs a sandwich.
Sometime in the next several minutes, at the very moment when Warren hit both the waiter and Minor Clark, Charlotte got up from the table and walked in the direction of the ladies’ room and kept walking. She did not risk waiting to call a taxi. She just walked. She had been wearing a sweater in the bar but the night outside was hot and she dropped the sweater in a sand trap and kept walking. Once she was off the golf course she paused at each intersection to assess the size of the houses and the probable cost of their upkeep and then she walked in whichever direction the houses seemed smaller, the lawns less clipped. She had a fixed idea that she would not be safe until she had reached a part of town where people sat on their porches and on the fenders of parked cars and would be bored enough to take her side if Warren came after her. When it began to rain her feet slipped in her sandals and she took off her sandals and walked barefoot. She knew exactly what time it had been when she left the Mountain Brook Country Club because Minor Clark had said the girl did not need a sandwich, she needed a doctor, and Warren had ordered a sandwich and the waiter had said it was ten minutes past eleven and the kitchen was closed. So she had left the Mountain Brook Country Club at ten minutes past eleven and it was almost one before she came to a part of town so rundown she felt safe enough to stand in a lighted place and call a taxi.
The girl’s name was Julia Erskine.
The girl was not whining as Warren said but crying because her head hurt. Charlotte believed that Julia Erskine’s head hurt.
The girl said that her head hurt because she had fallen from a horse that morning while riding with Warren. Charlotte did not believe that Julia Erskine had fallen from a horse that morning while riding with Warren.
When the taxi came Charlotte went to the Birmingham airport. The first plane out was for New Orleans and Charlotte got on it. She was the only passenger. “You and I can watch the sunrise,” the stewardess said. Charlotte did not feel safe until the plane was airborne and then she ordered a drink and sat with her head against the cold window and did not watch the sunrise but drank the bourbon very fast before the ice could dilute it. She had not eaten since lunch the day before at Minor and Suzanne Clark’s, the lunch at Minor and Suzanne Clark’s to which Julia Erskine and Warren had never come, and as the bourbon hit her stomach she was pleasantly astonished with herself.
She was pleasantly astonished that she could still do all these things.