Rita ran out the gate.
A storm was blowing up. The trees were all moving. She could see the big black branches of the oaks swaying in the wind, hear that loud roar that big trees always made. The branches were lashing the house, scratching at the top of the upstairs porch. She heard the sound of breaking glass suddenly.
She stopped and looked back, and she saw a shower of little green leaves falling all over the property. Tiny branches and twigs were falling. It was like a hurricane. Miss Carl was standing on the path staring up at the trees. At least her arm or leg wasn’t broken.
Good Lord, the rain would come any minute. Rita was going to be soaked before she even got to Magazine Street-that on top of everything else, her hair torn to pieces and the tears streaming down her face. She was a sight all right.
But there was no rain. She made it back to Lonigan and Sons without getting wet. And when she sat down in Jerry’s office, she broke down completely.
“You shouldn’t have gone there, you should never have gone!” he said. He had a funeral going on out front. He should have been helping Red out there. “Honey, they could turn everybody against us, old family like that!”
Rita couldn’t do anything but cry. Then she looked at the little white card. “But will you look at this, Jerry! Will you look at it!”
It was all mashed and damp from the sweat of her palm. She broke down again.
“I can’t read the numbers on it!”
“Now, just a minute, Rita,” Jerry said. He was patient as always, just a really good-hearted man the way he’d always been. He stood over her, unfolding the little card on the desk blotter. He got his magnifying glass.
The middle part was clear enough:
THE TALAMASCA
But you couldn’t read anything else. The words below that were just tiny little specks of black ink on the pulpy white cardboard. And whatever had been written along the bottom edge was completely ruined. There was just nothing left of it.
“Oh, Dee Dee!” Rita cried.
Jerry pressed it out under two heavy books, but that hadn’t helped. His dad came in and took a look. But he couldn’t make anything out of it. Name Talamasca didn’t mean anything to Red. And Red knew just about everybody and everything. If it had been an old Mardi Gras society, for instance, he would have known it.
“Now look, you can see something here written on the back in ink,” Red said. “Look at that.”
Aaron Lightner. But there was no phone number. The phone numbers must have been printed on the front. Even pressing the card with a hot iron didn’t help matters.
Rita did what she could.
She checked the phone book for Aaron Lightner and the Talamasca, whatever that was. She called information. She begged the operator to tell her if there was an unlisted number. She even ran personals in the Times-Picayune and in the States-Item.
“The card was old and dirty before you ever got it,” Jerry reminded her. Fifty dollars spent on personal ads was enough. Jerry’s daddy said he thought she might just as well give up. But one thing she could say for him, he hadn’t criticized her for it.
“Darlin’, don’t go back to that house,” Red said. “I’m not scared of Miss Carlotta or anything like that. I just don’t want you around those people.”
Rita saw Jerry look at his father, and his father look at him. They knew something they weren’t saying. Rita knew Lonigan and Sons had buried Deirdre’s mother when she fell from that window years ago, she’d heard that much, and she knew Red remembered the grandmother who had “died young” too the way Deirdre told Rita.
But those two were closemouthed the way morticians had to be. And Rita was too miserable now for hearing about the history of that horrible old house and those women.
She cried herself to sleep the way she had at boarding school. Maybe Deirdre had seen the ads in the papers, and knew that Rita had tried to do what she wanted.
Another year passed before Rita saw Deirdre again. The baby was long gone. Some cousins out in California took it. Nice people, everybody said, rich people. The man was a lawyer like Miss Carl. That baby would be looked after.
Sister Bridget Marie at St. Alphonsus told Jerry the nuns at Mercy Hospital said the baby was a beautiful little girl with blond hair. Not like Deirdre’s black curls at all. And Father Lafferty had put the baby in Deirdre’s arms and said to Deirdre, “Kiss your baby,” then taken it away from her.
Gave Rita the shivers. Like people kissing the corpse right before they closed up the coffin. “Kiss your baby,” then taking it like that.
No wonder Deirdre had had a complete breakdown. They took her right from Mercy to the sanitarium.
“Not the first time for that family,” Red Lonigan said as he shook his head. “That’s how Lionel Mayfair died, in a straitjacket.”
Rita asked what he meant, but he didn’t answer.
“Oh, but they didn’t have to do it like that,” Rita said. “She’s such a sweet thing. She couldn’t hurt anybody.”
Finally Rita heard Deirdre was home again. And that Sunday Rita decided to go to Mass at the Mother of Perpetual Help Chapel in the Garden District. That’s where the rich people went mostly. They didn’t come to the big old parish churches-St. Mary’s and St. Alphonsus-across Magazine Street.
Rita went up there to the ten o’clock Mass, thinking, Well, I’ll just pass by the Mayfair house on the way back. But she didn’t have to, because Deirdre was there at Mass, sitting between her great-aunts Miss Belle and Miss Millie. Thank the lord no Miss Carlotta.
Deirdre looked dreadful to Rita, like Banquo’s Ghost as Rita’s mother would have said. She had dark circles under her eyes and her dress was some old shiny gabardine thing that didn’t fit her. Padded shoulders. One of those old women in the house must have given her that.
After Mass, as they were going down the marble steps, Rita swallowed, took a deep breath, and ran after Deirdre.
Deirdre at once gave her that beautiful smile. But when she tried to talk, almost nothing came out. Then in a whisper she said: “Rita Mae!”
Rita Mae leaned over to kiss her. She whispered:
“Dee Dee, I tried to do what you asked me. I could never find that man. The card was too ruined.”
Deirdre’s eyes were wide, vacant. She didn’t even remember, did she? At least Miss Millie and Miss Belle didn’t notice. They were saying their hellos to everybody passing. And poor old Miss Belle never noticed anything anyway.
Then Deirdre did seem to recall something. “It’s OK, Rita Mae,” she said. She had the beautiful smile again. She squeezed Rita Mae’s hand and leaned forward and kissed her this time, on the cheek. Then her Aunt Millie said, “We should go now, sweetheart.”
Now, that was Deirdre Mayfair to Rita. It’s OK, Rita Mae. The sweetest girl she ever knew.
Deirdre was back at the sanitarium before long. She’d been walking barefoot on Jackson Avenue talking out loud to herself. Then they said she was in a mental hospital in Texas, and after that Rita only heard that Deirdre Mayfair was “incurably ill” and was never coming home again.
When old Miss Belle died, the Mayfairs called Jerry’s dad as they’d always done. Maybe Miss Carl didn’t even remember the fight with Rita Mae. Mayfairs came from all over for that funeral, but no Deirdre.
Mr. Lonigan hated opening the tomb in Lafayette No. 1. That cemetery had so many ruined graves with rotting coffins plainly visible, even the bones showing. It sickened him to take a funeral there.
“But those Mayfairs have been buried there since 1861,” he said. “And they do keep up that tomb, I’ll give them that. They have the wrought-iron fence painted every year. And when the tourists come through there? Well, that’s one of the graves they always look at-what with all the Mayfairs in there, and those little babies’ names, going back to the Civil War. It’s just the rest of that place is so sorry. You know they’re going to tear that place down someday.”