Then finally, the promise: “Michael, if you sober up, I’ll give it a try. I know where the lady can be found.”
Sober up; he thought about it now as he lay in the dark. He groped for the nearby cold can of beer, then cracked it open. A beer drunk was the best kind of drunk. And in a way it was being sober because he hadn’t poured a slug of vodka or Scotch in the can, had he? Now that was really drinking, that main-line poison, and he ought to know.
Call Dr. Morris. Tell him you’re sober, sober as you ever intend to get.
Seems like he’d done that. But maybe he’d dreamed it, maybe he was just drifting off again. Sweet to lie here, sweet to be so drunk you couldn’t feel the agitation, the urgency, the pain of not remembering …
Aunt Viv said, “Eat some supper.”
But he was in New Orleans, walking through those Garden District streets, and it was warm, and oh, the fragrance of the night jasmine. To think that all these years he had not smelled that sweet, heavy scent, and had not seen the sky behind the oaks catch fire, so each tiny leaf was suddenly distinct. The flagstones buckled over the roots of the oaks. The cold wind bit at his naked fingers.
Cold wind. Yes. It was not summer after all, but winter, the sharp, freezing New Orleans winter, and they were rushing through the dark to see the last parade of Mardi Gras night, the Mystic Krewe of Comus.
Such a lovely name, he thought as he dreamed, but way back then he had also thought it wondrous. And far ahead, on St. Charles Avenue, he saw the torches of the parade and heard the drums which always scared him.
“Hurry, Michael,” his mother said. She almost pulled him off his feet. How dark the street was, how terrible this cold like the cold of the ocean.
“But look, Mom.” He pointed through the iron fence. He tugged on her hand. “There’s the man in the garden.”
The old game. She would say there was no man there, and they would laugh about it together. But the man was there, all right, just as he’d always been-way back at the edge of the great lawn, standing beneath the bare white limbs of the crepe myrtles. Did he see Michael on that night? Yes, it seemed he did. Surely they had looked at each other.
“Michael, we don’t have time for that man.”
“But Mom, he’s there, he really is … ”
The Mystic Krewe of Comus. The brass bands played their dark savage music as they marched by, the torches blazing. The crowds surged into the street. From atop the quivering papier-mâché floats, men in glittering satin costumes and masks threw glass necklaces, wooden beads. People fought to catch them. Michael clung to his mother’s skirt, hating the sound of the drums. Trinkets landed in the gutter at his feet.
On the long way home, with Mardi Gras dead and done, and the streets littered with trash, and the air so cold that their breath made steam, he had seen the man again, standing as he was before, but this time he had not bothered to say so.
“Got to go home,” he whispered now in his sleep. “Got to go back there.”
He saw the long iron lace railings of that First Street house, the side porch with its sagging screens. And the man in the garden. So strange that the man never changed. And that last May, on the very last walk that Michael had ever taken through those streets, he had nodded to the man, and the man had lifted his hand and waved.
“Yes, go,” he whispered. But wouldn’t they give him a sign, the others who had come to him when he was dead? Surely they understood that he couldn’t remember now. They’d help him. The barrier is falling away between the living and dead. Come through. But the woman with the black hair said, “Remember, you have a choice.”
“But no, I didn’t change my mind. I just can’t remember.”
He sat up. The room was dark. Woman with the black hair. What was that around her neck? He had to pack now. Go to the airport. The doorway. The thirteenth one. I understand.
Aunt Viv sat beyond the living room door, in the glow of a single lamp, sewing.
He drank another swallow of the beer. Then he emptied the can slowly.
“Please help me,” he whispered to no one at all. “Please help me.”
He was sleeping again. The wind was blowing. The drums of the Mystic Krewe of Comus filled him with fear. Was it a warning? Why don’t you jump, said the mean housekeeper to the poor frightened woman at the window in the movie Rebecca. Had he changed the tape? He could not remember that. But we are at Manderley now, aren’t we? He could have sworn it was Miss Havisham. And then he heard her whisper in Estella’s ear, “You can break his heart.” Pip heard it too, but still he fell in love with her.
I’ll fix up the house, he whispered. Let in the light. Estella, we shall be happy forever. This is not the school yard, not that long hollow hallway that leads to the cafeteria, with Sister Clement coming towards him. “You get back in that line, boy!” If she slaps me the way she slapped Tony Vedros, I’ll kill her.
Aunt Viv stood beside him in the dark.
“I’m drunk,” he said.
She put the cold beer in his hand, what a darling.
“God, that tastes so good.”
“There’s someone here to see you.”
“Who? Is it a woman?”
“A nice gentleman from England … ”
“No, Aunt Viv-”
“But he’s not a reporter. At least he says he’s not. He’s a nice gentleman. Mr. Lightner is his name. He says he’s come all the way from London. His plane from New York just landed and he came right to the front door.”
“Not now. You have to tell him to go away. Aunt Viv, I have to go back. I have to go to New Orleans. I have to call Dr. Morris. Where is the phone?”
He climbed out of the bed, his head spinning, and stood still for a moment until the dizziness passed. But it was no good. His limbs were leaden. He sank back into the bed, back into the dreams. Walking through Miss Havisham’s house. The man in the garden nodded again.
Someone had switched off the television. “Sleep now,” Aunt Viv said.
He heard her steps moving away. Was the phone ringing?
“Someone help me,” he whispered.
Three
JUST GO BY. Take a little walk across Magazine Street and down First and pass by that grand and dilapidated old house. See for yourself if the glass is broken out of the front windows. See for yourself if Deirdre Mayfair is still sitting on that side porch. You don’t have to go up and ask to see Deirdre.
What the hell do you think is going to happen?
Father Mattingly was angry with himself. It was a duty, really, to call on that family before he went back up north. He had been their parish priest once. He had known them all. And it had been well over a year since he’d been south, since he’d seen Miss Carl, since the funeral of Miss Nancy.
A few months ago, one of the young priests had written to say that Deirdre Mayfair had been failing badly. Her arms were drawn up now, close to the chest, with the atrophy that always sets in, in such cases.
And Miss Carl’s checks to the parish were coming in as regular as always-one every month now, it seemed-made out for a thousand dollars to the Redemptorist Parish, with no strings attached. Over the years, she had donated a fortune.
Father Mattingly ought to go, really, just to pay his respects and say a personal thank you the way he used to do years ago.
The priests in the rectory these days didn’t know the Mayfairs. They didn’t know the old stories. They’d never been invited to that house. They had come only in recent years to this sad old parish, with its dwindling congregation, its beautiful churches locked now on account of vandals, the older buildings in ruins.