Taltos (Lives of the Mayfair Witches #3)(14)
Author: Anne Rice

“So they let the old lady live with you in this flooded house?” Michael had asked so innocently.

“Honey, after what they did to her in the old folks’ home out there, mixing her up with some other woman and putting her name on a slab and all, what the hell are they going to say to me about her living with me? And Cousin Ryan? Cousin Ryan of Mayfair and Mayfair? You know? He went down there and tore that town apart!”

“Yeah,” said Michael. “I bet he did.”

“It was all our fault,” said Celia. “We should have kept track of these people.”

“Are you sure you didn’t grow up in Mississippi and maybe even Texas?” Mona had asked. “You sound like an amalgam of the whole South.”

“What is an amalgam? See, that is where you have the advantage. You’re educated. I’m self-educated. There’s a world of difference between us. There are words that I don’t dare pronounce and I can’t read the symbols in the dictionary.”

“Do you want to go to school, Mary Jane?” Michael had been getting more and more involved by the second, his intoxicatingly innocent blue eyes making a head-to-toe sweep about every four and one-half seconds. He was far too clever to linger on the kid’s br**sts and hips, or even her round little head, not that it had been undersized, just sort of dainty. That’s how she’d seemed, finally, ignorant, crazy, brilliant, a mess, and somehow dainty.

“Yes, sir, I do,” said Mary Jane. “When I’m rich I’ll have a private tutor like Mona here is gettin’ now that she’s the designee and all, you know, some really smart guy that tells you the name of every tree you pass, and who was president ten years after the Civil War, and how many Indians there were at Bull Run, and what is Einstein’s Theory of Relativity.”

“How old are you?” Michael had asked.

“Nineteen and a half, big boy,” Mary Jane had declared, biting her shiny white teeth into her lower lip, lifting one eyebrow and winking.

“This story about your granny, you’re serious, this really happened? You picked up your granny and …”

“Darling, it all happened,” said Celia, “exactly as the girl says. I think we should go inside. I think we’re upsetting Rowan.”

“I don’t know,” said Michael. “Maybe she’s listening. I don’t want to move. Mary Jane, you can care for this old lady all by yourself?”

Beatrice and Celia had immediately looked anxious. If Gifford had still been alive, and there, she too would have looked anxious. “Leaving that old woman out there!” as Celia had said so often of late.

And they had promised Gifford, hadn’t they, that they would take care of it? Mona remembered that. Gifford had been in one of her hopeless states of worry about relatives far and wide, and Celia had said, “We’ll drive out and check on her.”

“Yes, sir, Mr. Curry, it all happened, and I took Granny home with me, and don’t you know that the sleeping porch upstairs was just exactly the way we’d left it? Why, after thirteen years, the radio was still there, and the mosquito netting and the ice chest.”

“In the swamps?” Mona had demanded. “Wait a minute.”

“That’s right, honey, that’s exactly right.”

“It’s true,” Beatrice had confessed dismally. “Of course, we got them fresh linen, new things. We wanted to put them in a hotel or a house or …”

“Well, naturally,” said Celia. “I’m afraid this story almost made the papers. Darling, is your granny alone out there right now?”

“No, ma’am, she’s with Benjy. Benjy’s from the trappers live out that way—real crazy people, you know??? The kind that live in those shacks all made out of pieces of tin, and windows from salvage and even cardboard? I pay him below minimum wage to watch Granny and to cover the phones, but I don’t take out any deductions.”

“So what?” said Mona. “He’s an independent contractor.”

“You sure are smart,” said Mary Jane. “Don’t you think I know that? I was actually biting my lip on another little tidbit right at that point, you know??? That Benjy, bless his heart, has already discovered how to make some easy money in the French Quarter down here, you know?? Peddling nothing but what God give him.”

“Oh my Lord,” said Celia.

Michael laughed. “How old is Benjy?” he asked.

“Twelve years old this September,” said Mary Jane. “He’s all right. His big dream is to be a drug dealer in New York, and my big dream for him is to go to Tulane and become a medical doctor.”

“But what do you mean, cover the phones?” asked Mona. “How many phones have you got? What are you actually doing down there?”

“Well, I had to spring for some money for the phones, that was an absolute necessity, and I’ve been calling my broker, naturally enough. Who else? And then there’s another line that Granny can talk on to my mother, you know, my mother is never getting out of that hospital in Mexico.”

“What hospital in Mexico?” asked Bea, utterly aghast. “Mary Jane, you told me two weeks ago how your mother died in California.”

“I was trying to be polite, you know, save everybody the grief and the trouble.”

“But what about the funeral?” Michael had asked, drawing close enough most likely to sneak a look down Mary Jane’s tightly laced junk polyester blouse. “The old lady. Who did they bury?”

“Darlin’, that’s the worst part of it. Nobody ever found out!” said Mary Jane. “Don’t worry about my mother, Aunt Bea, she thinks she’s on the astral plane already. She might be on the astral plane for all I know. Besides, her kidneys are shot.”

“Now, that’s not exactly true about the woman in the grave,” said Celia. “They believe it was …”

“Believe?” asked Michael.

Maybe big br**sts are markers of power, Mona had thought as she watched the girl bend nearly double and laugh and laugh as she pointed at Michael.

“Look, that’s all very sad about the woman in the wrong grave,” said Beatrice. “But, Mary Jane, you have to tell me how to reach your mother!”

“Hey, you don’t have a sixth finger,” said Mona.

“Not now, precious,” said Mary Jane. “My mother had some doctor in Los Angeles chop it off. That’s what I was going to tell you. They did the same thing to—”