“Honey,” he said, “Deirdre never had a chance in that family. You might say she was cursed when she was born. That’s what Daddy said.”
Jerry had been just a grade-school kid when Deirdre’s mother, Antha, died, in a fall from the porch roof outside the attic window of that house. Her skull had broken open on the patio. Deirdre was a baby then and so was Rita Mae, of course. But Jerry was already working with his daddy.
“I tell you we scraped her brains up off the flagstones. It was terrible. She was only twenty years old, and pretty! She was prettier even than Deirdre got to be. And you should have seen the trees in that yard. Honey, it was like a hurricane was happening just over that house, the way those trees were blowing. Even those stiff magnolia trees were bending and twisting.”
“Yeah, I’ve seen them like that,” Rita said, but she was quiet so he would go on talking.
“The worst part was when we got back here and Daddy had a good look at Antha. He said right away, ‘See these scratches around her eyes. Now that never happened in the fall. There were no trees under that window.’ And then Daddy found out one of the eyes was torn right out of the socket. Now Daddy knew what to do in those situations.
“He got right on the phone to Dr. Fitzroy. He said he thought there ought to be an autopsy. And he stood his ground when Dr. Fitzroy argued with him. Finally Dr. Fitzroy came clean that Antha Mayfair had gone out of her mind and tried to scratch her own eyes out. Miss Carl tried to stop her and that’s when Antha had run up to the attic. She fell, all right, but she was clean out of her head when it happened. And Miss Carl had seen the whole thing. And there was no reason in the world for people to be talking about it, for it to get into the newspapers. Hadn’t that family had enough pain, what with Stella? Dr. Fitzroy said for Daddy to call over to the priest house at St. Alphonsus and talk to the pastor if he still wasn’t sure about it.
“ ‘Sure doesn’t look self-inflicted to me,’ Daddy said, ‘but if you’re willing to sign the death certificate on this one, well, I guess I’ve done what I can.’ And there never was any autopsy. But Daddy knew what he was talking about.
“ ’Course he made me swear I’d never tell a living soul about it. I was real close to Daddy then, already a big help to him. He knew he could trust me. And I’m trusting you now, Rita Mae.”
“Oh, what an awful thing,” Rita whispered, “to scratch her own eyes out.” She prayed Deirdre had never known.
“Well, you haven’t heard all of it,” Jerry said, taking another drink of his bourbon. “When we went to cleaning her up, we found the emerald necklace on her-the same one Deirdre wears now-the famous Mayfair emerald. The chain was twisted around her neck, and the thing was caught in her hair in back. It was covered with blood and God knows what else was on it. Well, even Daddy was shocked, with all he’d seen in this world, picking the hair and the splinters of bone out of that thing. He said, ‘And this is not the first time I’ve had to clean the blood off this necklace.’ The time before that, he’d found it around the neck of Stella Mayfair, Antha’s mother.”
Rita remembered the long-ago day at St. Ro’s, the necklace in Deirdre’s hand. And many years later, Mr. Lonigan showing her Stella’s name on the gravestone.
“And Stella was the one shot by her own brother.”
“Yes, and that was a terrible thing, to hear Daddy tell it. Stella was the wild one of that generation. Even before her mother died, she filled that old house with lights, with parties going on night after night, with the bootleg booze flowing and the musicians playing. Lord only knows what Miss Carl and Miss Millie and Miss Belle thought of all that. But when she started bringing her men home, that’s when Lionel took matters into his own hands and shot her. Jealous of her is what he was. Right in front of everybody in the parlor, he said, ‘I’ll kill you before I let him have you.’ ”
“Now what are you telling me,” Rita said. “It was brother and sister going to bed together?”
“Could have been, honey,” Jerry said. “Could have been. Nobody ever knew the name of Antha’s father. Could have been Lionel for all anybody knew. They even said … But Stella didn’t care what anybody thought. They said when she was carrying Antha, she invited all her lady friends to come up there for a big party. Never bothered Stella that she had that baby out of wedlock.”
“Well, that’s the damnedest thing I ever heard,” Rita Mae whispered. “Especially in those days, Jerry.”
“That’s the way it was, honey. And it wasn’t just from Daddy I heard about some of those things either. Lionel shot Stella in the head, and everybody in the house went just plain wild, breaking out the windows to the porches to get out of there. Regular panic. And don’t you know that little Antha was upstairs, and she came down during all that commotion, and seen her mother lying there dead on the living room floor.”
Rita shook her head. What had Deirdre said on that long-ago afternoon? And they said her mother died when she was young, too, but they never talk about her.
“Lionel ended up in a straitjacket after he shot Stella. Daddy always said the guilt drove him out of his mind. He kept screaming the devil wouldn’t leave him alone, that his sister had been a witch and she’d sent the devil after him. Finally died in a fit, swallowed his own tongue, and no one there to help him. They opened up the padded cell and there he was, dead, and turning black already. But at least that time the corpse came all neatly sewn up from the coroner. It was the scratches on Antha’s face twelve years later that always haunted Daddy.”
“Poor Dee Dee. She must have known some of it.”
“Yeah,” Jerry said, “even a little baby knows things. You know they do! And when Daddy and I went to get Antha’s body out of that yard, we could hear little Deirdre just wailing away in there as if she could feel it that her mother was dead. And nobody picking up that child, nobody comforting her. I tell you, that little girl was born under a curse. Never had a chance with all the goings-on in that family. That’s why they sent her baby daughter out west, to get her away from all that, and if I were you, honey, I wouldn’t meddle in it.”
Rita thought of Ellie Mayfair, so pretty. Probably on a plane right this minute for San Francisco.
“They say those California people are rich,” Jerry said. “Deirdre’s nurse told me that. That girl’s got her own private yacht out there on San Francisco Bay, tied right up to the front porch of her house on the water. Father’s a big lawyer out there, a real mean son-of-a-bitch, but he makes plenty. If there’s a curse on the Mayfairs, that girl got away from it.”
“Jerry, you don’t believe in curses,” Rita said, “and you know it.”
“Honey, think about the emerald necklace just for a minute. Two times Daddy cleaned the blood off it. And it always sounded to me like Miss Carlotta herself thought there was a curse on it. First time Daddy cleaned it up-when Stella got shot, you know what Miss Carlotta wanted Daddy to do? Put the necklace in the coffin with Stella. Daddy told me that. I know that for a fact. And Daddy refused to do it.”
“Well, maybe it’s not real, Jerry.”
“Hell, Rita Mae, you could buy a block of downtown Canal Street with that emerald. Daddy had Hershman from Magazine Street appraise it. I mean here he was with Miss Carlotta telling him things like ‘It is my express wish that you put it in the coffin with my sister.’ So he calls Hershman, I mean he and Hershman were always good friends, and Hershman said it was real, all right, the finest emerald he’d ever laid eyes on. Wouldn’t even know how to put a price on it. He’d have to take a jewel like that to New York for a real evaluation. He said it was the same with all the Mayfair jewels. He’d cleaned them once for Miss Mary Beth before she even passed them on to Stella. He said jewels like that ended up on display in a museum.”