It is just as I thought. In an instant we are off and away down the hall and into her office, where she summons me for her “talks.” This much is certain: it is bad news about Kate. If it were a talk about me, my aunt would not be looking at me. She would be gazing into the hive-like recesses of her old desk, finger pressed against her lip. But instead she shows me something and searches my face for what I see. With her watching me, it is difficult to see anything. There is a haze. Between us there is surely a carton of dusty bottles—bottles? — yes, surely bottles, yet blink as I will I can’t be sure.
“Do you see these whisky bottles?”
“Yes ma’am.”
“And this kind?” She gives me an oblong brown bottle.
“Yes.”
“Do you know where they came from?”
“No’m.”
“Mercer found them on top of an armoire. That armoire.” She points mysteriously to the very ceiling above us. “He was setting out rat poison.”
“In Kate’s room?”
“Yes. What do you think?”
“Those are not whisky bottles.”
“What are they?”
“Wine. Gipsy Rose. They make wine bottles flat like that.”
“Read that.” She nods at the bottle in my hand.
“Sodium pentobarbital. One and one half grains. This is a wholesaler’s bottle.”
“Do you know where we found that?”
“In the box?”
“In the incinerator. The second in a week.”
I am silent. Now my aunt does take her seat at the desk.
“I haven’t told Walter. Or Jules. Because I’m not really worried. Kate is just fine. She is going to come through with flying colors. And she and Walter are going to be happy. But as time grows short, she is getting a little nervous.”
“You mean you think she is afraid of another accident?”
“She is afraid of a general catastrophe. But that is not what worries me.”
“What worries you?”
“I don’t want her moping around the house again.”
“She’s not working downtown with you?”
“Not for two weeks.”
“Does she feel bad?”
“Oh no. Nothing like that. But she’s a little scared.”
“Is she seeing Dr Mink?”
“She refuses. She thinks that if she goes to see a doctor she’ll get sick.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“She will not go to the ball. Now that’s all right. But it is very important that she not come to the point where it becomes more and more difficult to meet people.”
“She’s seen no one?”
“No one but Walter. Now all in the world I want you to do is take her to the Lejiers and watch the parade from the front porch. It is not a party. There will be no question of making an entrance or an exit. There is nothing to brace for. You will drop in, speak or not speak, and leave.”
“She is that bad?”
“She is not bad at all. I mean to take care that she won’t be.”
“What about Walter?”
“He’s krewe captain. He can’t possibly get away. And I’m glad he can’t, to tell the truth. Do you know what I really want you to do?”
“What?”
“I want you to do whatever it was you did before you walked out on us, you wretch. Fight with her, joke with her — the child doesn’t laugh. You and Kate always got along, didn’t you? Sam too. You knew Sam will be here Sunday to speak at the Forum?”
“Yes.”
“I want Sam to talk to Kate. You and Sam are the only people she’d ever listen to.”
My aunt is generous with me. What she really means is that she is sure Sam can set things right and that she hopes I can hold the fort till Sam arrives.
IT IS A SURPRISE to find Uncle Jules at lunch. Last fall he suffered a serious heart attack from which, however, he recovered so completely that he has dispensed with his nap since Christmas. He sits between Kate and Walter and his manner is so pleasant and easy that even Kate is smiling. It is hard to believe anything is wrong; the bottles, in particular, seem grotesque. Uncle Jules is pleased to see me. During the past year I discovered my sole discernible talent: the trick of making money. I manage to sell a great many of the stocks which Uncle Jules underwrites. He is convinced, moreover, that I predicted the January selloff and even claims that he advanced a couple of issues on my say-so. This he finds pleasing, and he always greets me with a tremendous wink as if we were in cahoots and might get caught any minute.
He and Walter talk football. Uncle Jules’ life ambition is to revive the fortunes of the Tulane football team. I enjoy the talk because I like football myself and especially do I like to hear Uncle Jules tell about the great days of Jerry Dalrymple and Don Zimmerman and Billy Banker. When he describes a goal-line stand against L.S.U. in 1932, it is like King Arthur standing fast in the bloodred sunset against Sir Modred and the traitors. Walter was manager of the team and so he and Uncle Jules are thick as thieves.
Uncle Jules is as pleasant a fellow as I know anywhere. Above his long Creole horseface is a crop of thick gray hair cut short as a college boy’s. His shirt encases his body in a way that pleases me. It fits him so well. My shirts always have something wrong with them; they are too tight in the collar or too loose around the waist. Uncle Jules’ collar fits his dark neck like a tape; his cuffs, folded like a napkin, just peep out past his coatsleeve; and his shirt front: the impulse comes over me at times to bury my nose in that snowy expanse of soft finespun cotton. Uncle Jules is the only man I know whose victory in the world is total and unqualified. He has made a great deal of money, he has a great many friends, he was Rex of Mardi Gras, he gives freely of himself and his money. He is an exemplary Catholic, but it is hard to know why he takes the trouble. For the world he lives in, the City of Man, is so pleasant that the City of God must hold little in store for him. I see his world plainly through his eyes and I see why he loves it and would keep it as it is: a friendly easy-going place of old-world charm and new-world business methods where kind white folks and carefree darkies have the good sense to behave pleasantly toward each other. No shadow ever crosses his face, except when someone raises the subject of last year’s Tulane-L.S.U. game.
I mention seeing Eddie Lovell and deliver his love.
“Poor Eddie,” my aunt sighs as she always does, and as always she adds: “What a sad thing that integrity, of itself, should fetch such a low price in the market place.”
“Has she gone to Natchez again?” asks Uncle Jules, making his lip long and droll.
Walter Wade cocks an ear and listens intently. He has not yet caught on to the Bollings’ elliptical way of talking. “She” is Eddie’s sister Didi, and “going to Natchez” is our way of referring to one of Didi’s escapades. Several years ago, while Didi was married to her first husband, she is said to have attended the Natchez Pilgrimage with several other couples and “swapped husbands.”
“Oh yes,” says my aunt grimly. “Several times.”
“I didn’t think the Pilgrimage came until April,” says Walter, smiling warily.
Kate frowns at her hands in her lap. Today Kate has her brown-eyed look. Sometimes her irises turn to discs. I remember another time when my aunt asked me to “talk” to Kate. When Kate was ten and I was fifteen, my aunt became worried about her. Kate was a good girl and made good grades, but she had no friends. Instead of playing at recess, she would do her lessons and sit quietly at her desk until class began. I made up the kind of spiel I thought my aunt had in mind. “Kate,” I said in my aunt’s Socratic manner, “you think you are the only person in the world who is shy. Believe me, you are not. Let me tell you something that happened to me,” etc. But Kate only watched me with the same brown-eyed look, irises gone to discs.