“How did you come to me, darling?” I asked her.
“Up the trellis, Oncle Julien, hand over hand. You have shown me an attic is not a prison. I will come to you as long as I can.”
We made love; we talked together. I lay there with her as the sun came up. She told me they were being kind to her now, letting her go places, that she walked in the evening all the way up the Avenue, and down to Canal Street, that she had ridden in a car again, that she had real shoes. Richard had bought her pretty dresses. Cortland had bought her a coat with fur on the collar. Mary Beth even had given her a silver-backed mirror and a silver-handled comb.
At dawn I sat up and cranked the Victrola. We danced to the waltz. It was a crazy morning, the kind of crazy morning that follows carousing and drunkenness and wandering from dance halls to taverns, yet it had all taken place in this room. She wore only her petticoat then, trimmed in pink lace, and a ribbon in her hair. We danced and danced about the room, giggling, laughing, until finally someone…ah yes, Mary Beth, opened the door.
I only smiled. I knew my angelic child would visit me again.
In the dark of the night, I talked to the Victrola.
I told it to hold the spell. Of course I did not believe in these things. I had steadfastly refused to believe in them. Yet now I pared my nails and slipped them in between the bottom wood and the side wood. I clipped my hair, and slipped that beneath the turntable. I bit my fingers and drew blood and smeared it into the dark stain. I made the thing like a doll of myself, like the witches’ dolls, and I sang the waltz.
I played the waltz and said, “Come back, come back. Be at hand if they need you. Be at hand if they call you. Come back, come back.”
I was possessed of a terrible vision, that I was dead and rising and the light was coming, and that I turned my back on it, and plummeted with my arms out, digging deep into an air which became thicker and thicker, as dense as it was dark. Earthbound. And it seemed the night was choked with spirits like mine, lost souls, fools, fearing hell, and not believing in Paradise. And the waltz played on.
I saw finally the futility of all these gestures, that witchcraft is but a matter of focus-that one can apply one’s fierce and immeasurable energies to an act of choice. I would come back! I would come back. I sang it out to the walls.
Come back.
Beware the watchers in that hour!
Yes, come back in that hour!
Else shall Eden have no Springtime.
Else shall our kind reign no more.
Michael, remember now all the verses I’ve told you.
Remember. See what they say! Michael, I tell you I would not be here if the battle were over. The hour we speak of is yet to come. You have used love, yes, you have done that and it was not enough. But there are other tools you can use. Remember the poem, “crude and cruel.” Do not hesitate when you see it. Do not let the goodness hold you back.
Why else have I been allowed to come here? Why else have I been allowed once more to hear that waltz beneath this roof? In a moment you must play it for me, Michael, my waltz, my little Victrola. Play it when I am not here.
But let me tell you now of the last few nights I remember. I’m growing tired. I can see the finish of these words, but not the finish of the story. That is yours to tell. Let me give the few words left. And remember your promise. Play the music for me, Michael. Play it, for whether I go to heaven or hell is not yet known by either of us, and perhaps never will be known.
It was a week after, that I gave the little Victrola to Evelyn. I had taken advantage of an afternoon when no one was about, sending Richard up to fetch her, and tell her to come as soon as she could. I had the boys bring up for me a large Victrola from the dining room, a sizable music box with a fine tone.
And then, when Evie and I were alone, I told her to take the little Victrola up home and keep it and never let it out of her hands till after Mary Beth was gone. I didn’t even want Richard to know she’d taken it, for fear he would blab to Mary Beth if she put the screws to him. I told Evie, “You take it, and sing as you walk out with it, sing and sing.”
That way, I thought, if Lasher were to observe her taking away this mysterious little toy, he would in befuddlement not attach any meaning to what he saw. I had to remember: the monster could read my thoughts.
I was desperate.
No sooner had Evie gone, her high singing voice dying away in the stairwell, than I wound the big new Victrola and called Lasher to me. Perhaps he would not heed her at all.
When he appeared, I appealed to him:
“Lasher, protect always that poor little Evie,” I said. “Protect her from the others, for my sake, will you protect that child.”
He listened as best he could with the music entrancing him. Invisible, he blundered about the room, knocking things from the mantel, rattling the framed pictures. Fine with me. It was proof that he was there!
“Very well, Julien,” he sang suddenly, appearing in the midst of a jolly dance, feet striking the boards with some semblance of weight and sound. What a smile. What a dazzle. How I wished for an instant that I had loved him.
And by that time, I thought, surely Evie is all the way home.
Weeks passed.
Evie’s liberation was now a fact. Richard often took her driving, along with Stella. Tobias took her regularly with him to Mass.
Evie came to me when she wanted, by the front door. But there were still nights when she chose the trellis, seeking me as if she were a fearless little goddess, and whipping my blood, with her courage and her own passion, to an obscene and delirious heat. We lay together for hours, kissing, touching one another. What a wonder that in my dotage I should be a skilled lover for one so young. I told her secrets, but only a few.
The gods had granted me that final pride.
“Julien, I love you,” said the crafty Lasher when he was about, hoping I would play the big Victrola, because he had come to love it so. “Why would anyone harm Evelyn? What is she to us? I see the future. I see far. We have what we require.”
When Mary Beth came home one afternoon, I sat her down beside me and vowed to her that I had told that little girl nothing of importance and that they must look out for her as the years passed.
Tears came into Mary Beth’s eyes, one of the few times I ever saw them.
“Julien, how you misunderstand me and everything that I have done. All these years, I’ve striven to bring us together, to make us strong in number and in influence. To make us happy! Do you think I would hurt a child that has your blood? Cortland’s daughter? Oh, Julien, you break my heart. Trust in me, that I know what I do, that I have done everything right for our family. Trust in me, please. Julien, don’t die in agitation and fear. Don’t let this happen to you. Don’t let the last hours be ugly with fear. I’ll sit with you night and day if I have to. Die calm. We are the Mayfair family…a million leagues from where we were at Riverbend so long ago. Trust that we shall prevail.”
Nights passed. I lay awake, no longer needing sleep.
I knew by this time that Evelyn carried my child. God gives no quarter to old men! We burn; we father. What a dreadful circumstance! But the girl herself did not seem to know. I did not tell her.
I could only trust to Cortland, whom I called to myself and lectured incessantly. I knew the feathers would fly, as they say, as soon as everyone knew Evelyn was pregnant. I could only trust to the edicts and pronouncements I had issued, ad nauseam, that the child must be protected no matter what happened as the years passed.
A night came on, peaceful, warm. It must have been midsummer when I died! Surely it was. The crape myrtles were full of pink blossoms. Surely I have not imagined such a thing.