A Book of Common Prayer (16 page)

The girl from Tupelo had finished reciting. The room was silent. Warren Bogart was fingering his cigar and watching me warily.

“Warren,” the girl said. “I finished. I’m through.”

“Do ‘Snowbound,’ ” Warren Bogart said. “There’s nobody here wouldn’t be improved by hearing ‘Snowbound.’ ”

“I just won’t allow this,” Lucy Fayard said.

“I’d advise you to save that tone of voice for West Texas,” Warren Bogart said.

“What’s this he’s saying about West Texas,” Morgan Fayard said.

“Just nonsense, Bro.” Adele Fayard stood up. “He’s talking nonsense.”

“I’m asking certain people in this room a question, Adele.” Morgan Fayard pushed his sister back into her chair with the heel of his hand. “And I believe I’m owed the courtesy of a reply.”

“What’s the question, Bro?”

“
Goddamn
West Texas trash.”

The girl from Tupelo began to cry.

Dinner was announced.

No one moved.

“This is a fucking circus. A freak show.” Warren Bogart turned to me. “Doesn’t this put you in mind of some third-rate traveling circus? Some Sells-Floto circus passing through that country you people run so well? Doesn’t it?”

“No,” I said. “It puts me in mind of the Mountain Brook Country Club in Birmingham, Alabama.”

Warren Bogart looked at me and then away. “You’re in over your head,” he said finally, and that was all he said.

Trout was served in the dining room. Lemon mousse was served in the dining room. Coffee and praline cookies and pear brandy were served in the dining room. The dining room was hot and we could not seem to leave it. Lucy and Adele Fayard described their most recent Junior League project in compulsive detail. Lucy and Adele Fayard described dinner as we ate it. Lucy and Adele Fayard described a pet cobra they had seen drink Wild Turkey-and-water at a party the night before.

“I told Morgan,” Lucy Fayard said, “ ‘Look there, Morgan, I believe that cobra is taking some
drinks.
’ ”

“I said to Morgan,” Adele Fayard said, “ ‘Mark my words, Morgan, that cobra’s going to have itself a
season
in New Orleans.’ ”

Morgan Fayard sulked. Warren Bogart remained in the living room with the girl from Tupelo. We could hear them at the piano. Warren Bogart seemed to be making the girl play, over and over again, the song that was always played in New Orleans at Mardi Gras. She played it badly.

“ ‘
May the fish get legs and the cows lay
—’ That’s an A-flat, Chrissie, you missed the flat. Start over.”

“
Dare
he sing that song,” Morgan Fayard said.

Lucy Fayard raised her voice. “You’re forgetting your duties, Morgan. Grace’s glass is empty? You ever get ground artichokes down there, Grace? To put around game?”

“Not forgetting
my
duties,” Morgan Fayard muttered. “Fine one to talk.”

“ ‘
May the fish get legs and the cows lay eggs—If ever I cease to love—May all dogs wag their
—’ No. No, Chrissie. No.”

“The
irony
,” Morgan Fayard said. “You talking about
duties.
”

“We should ship some down to you,” Lucy Fayard said. “Ground artichokes. To put around game. Morgan. Grace’s glass.”

“Actually,” I said, “I have to leave.”

“See now what you’ve done, Morgan. Making us all suffer at this stuffy table instead of taking our coffee in the living room like civilized beings, no wonder Grace wants to leave.”

“Not going out there to be insulted,” Morgan Fayard said.

“ ‘
May the fish get legs and the cows lay eggs—If ever I cease to love—May all dogs wag their tails in front—
’ ”

“Got no
right
to sing that song,” Morgan Fayard said.

“He has too a right,” Lucy Fayard said. “He’s from here.”

“Not from here at all. He’s from—” Morgan Fayard spit the words out. “Plaquemines Parish. That’s where he’s from. Where he left a—”

“I don’t guess Mardi Gras is your own personal property,” Lucy Fayard said. “Just because your mother was Queen of Comus. Which Adele, incidentally, was not.”

“—Where he no doubt left a promising future as assistant manager of a gasoline station, that’s the kind of trash you—”

I stood up.

Something about the presence of Warren Bogart was causing the Fayards to outdo even themselves.

“You back on West Texas?” Lucy Fayard said. “Or you still on Warren.”

“It’s a tacky song anyway,” Adele Fayard said. “Mardi Gras comes, I go out of town with the Jews. Do sit down, Grace.”

“I won’t tolerate this.” Morgan Fayard slammed his fist on the table. “I will not tolerate having my little children exposed to this trash.”

“Unless I’m very much mistaken your little children are at school in Virginia,” Adele Fayard said. “Which makes your tolerance the slightest bit academic?”

“I been hearing certain things about you in the Quarter,” I could hear Morgan Fayard saying as I left the dining room. “Sister.”

“I understand you’ve been leaving your own visiting cards at a certain address in the Quarter,” I could hear Adele Fayard saying as I walked through the living room. “Bro.”

“ ‘
May the fish get legs and the cows lay eggs—If ever I cease to love—May the moon be turned to green cream cheese—If ever I cease to love—May the—
’ ”

Warren Bogart looked up from the piano.

“Pretty little song, isn’t it.”

I said nothing.

“Tell Charlotte she was wrong,” he said.

3

H
ERE AMONG THE THREE OR FOUR SOLVENT FAMILIES
in Boca Grande we have specific traditional treatments for specific traditional complaints. Nausea is controlled locally by a few drops of 1:1000 solution of adrenalin in a little water, taken by mouth with sips of iced champagne. Neurasthenia is controlled locally by a half-grain of phenobarbitone three times a day and temporary removal to a hill station. In the absence of a hill Miami or Caracas will suffice. I have never known a treatment specific to the condition in which Charlotte Douglas arrived in Boca Grande, but after that one meeting with her first husband I began to see a certain interior logic in her inability to remember much about those last months she spent with him.

One thing she did remember was when and where she left him.

“I don’t want to leave you ever,” she remembered saying to him in Biloxi.

“How could I leave you,” she remembered saying to him in Meridian.

She left him at ten minutes past eleven P.M. on the eighteenth of July in the bar of the Mountain Brook Country Club in Birmingham.

I’m dizzy and my head hurts, the girl had said.

I think she should see a doctor, Charlotte had said.

She doesn’t need a doctor, Warren had said. She’s drunk and she needs a sandwich.

Sometime in the next several minutes, at the very moment when Warren hit both the waiter and Minor Clark, Charlotte got up from the table and walked in the direction of the ladies’ room and kept walking. She did not risk waiting to call a taxi. She just walked. She had been wearing a sweater in the bar but the night outside was hot and she dropped the sweater in a sand trap and kept walking. Once she was off the golf course she paused at each intersection to assess the size of the houses and the probable cost of their upkeep and then she walked in whichever direction the houses seemed smaller, the lawns less clipped. She had a fixed idea that she would not be safe until she had reached a part of town where people sat on their porches and on the fenders of parked cars and would be bored enough to take her side if Warren came after her. When it began to rain her feet slipped in her sandals and she took off her sandals and walked barefoot. She knew exactly what time it had been when she left the Mountain Brook Country Club because Minor Clark had said the girl did not need a sandwich, she needed a doctor, and Warren had ordered a sandwich and the waiter had said it was ten minutes past eleven and the kitchen was closed. So she had left the Mountain Brook Country Club at ten minutes past eleven and it was almost one before she came to a part of town so rundown she felt safe enough to stand in a lighted place and call a taxi.

The girl’s name was Julia Erskine.

The girl was not whining as Warren said but crying because her head hurt. Charlotte believed that Julia Erskine’s head hurt.

The girl said that her head hurt because she had fallen from a horse that morning while riding with Warren. Charlotte did not believe that Julia Erskine had fallen from a horse that morning while riding with Warren.

When the taxi came Charlotte went to the Birmingham airport. The first plane out was for New Orleans and Charlotte got on it. She was the only passenger. “You and I can watch the sunrise,” the stewardess said. Charlotte did not feel safe until the plane was airborne and then she ordered a drink and sat with her head against the cold window and did not watch the sunrise but drank the bourbon very fast before the ice could dilute it. She had not eaten since lunch the day before at Minor and Suzanne Clark’s, the lunch at Minor and Suzanne Clark’s to which Julia Erskine and Warren had never come, and as the bourbon hit her stomach she was pleasantly astonished with herself.

She was pleasantly astonished that she could still do all these things.

Walk out.

Call a taxi.

Use her American Express card, get on a plane, order a drink.

While she was still being pleasantly astonished her water broke, and soaked the seat with amniotic fluid.

“You hurt that girl,” Charlotte said to Warren when he brought the peonies to the Ochsner Clinic. Leonard was in the room. Charlotte did not know how Leonard happened to be in the room and she knew that she should not say anything about the girl in front of Leonard but it did not seem to matter any more what she said in front of anyone. “You hit her in the head. Didn’t you.”

“She’s doped up,” Leonard said. “Stay neutral.”

“Don’t talk about things you don’t know about,” Warren said to Charlotte. “What are you going to do about the baby?”

“Just the note I had in mind,” Leonard said.

“How did you find me,” Charlotte said.

“Never mind how I found you. I always find you. What about the baby.”

“The baby is—you hit that girl in the head.”

“You’re on pills,” Warren said. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Don’t let that stop you,” Leonard said. “Pitch her another life decision.”

“He doesn’t want you to see the baby,” Warren said. “Does he.”

“No,” Leonard said. “I don’t. The topic is now closed. Now we’re going to limit our remarks to areas in which Charlotte has no immediate interest. Sex. Politics. Religion. All right?”

“You don’t know anything about Charlotte,” Warren said. Charlotte could smell bay rum. Bay rum and cigar smoke. Warren. “You never did.”

Charlotte tried to focus on the tight pink balls of peony blossom.

“He wants you to walk away,” Warren said.

The tight pink balls seemed to swell as she watched them. The baby’s head would swell if the baby lived but the baby could not live. They had told her so. The doctors. Leonard too. If Leonard had told her about the baby then Leonard had been in the room before, she had just forgotten.

“He wants you to walk away from here the same way you walked away from everything else in your life.”

“You hit that girl in the head. You don’t take care of anybody.”

“I’m taking care of you right now. I’m telling you not to walk away.”

“
I never did
,” Charlotte said.

“ ‘How could I leave you,’ ” Warren said. “The same way you left everybody. How-could-I-leave-you-
let-me
-
count-the ways.
”

She closed her eyes against the obscene peonies.

“Never mind whether I take care of you,” Warren said. “You can take care of me.”

“Cut her loose,” Leonard said.

“She doesn’t want to be loose,” Warren said.

The peonies were swelling behind her eyelids.

“It doesn’t matter whether you take care of somebody or somebody takes care of you,” Warren said. “It’s the same thing in the end. It’s all the same.”

“You had your shot,” Leonard said.

She kept her eyes closed and she heard their voices ugly and raised and by the time the voices were normal again the peonies had burst behind her eyelids and the warm drugs were pulling her back under and she knew what she was going to do. She was not going to do what they wanted her to do. She was not even sure what they wanted her to do but she was not going to do it.

“Tell her I said it’s all the same,” she heard Warren say to Leonard.

She was going to leave here alone with her baby.

“You want her to watch you die,” she heard Leonard say to Warren.

She was going to let her baby die with her.

“Never mind what I want,” she heard Warren say to Leonard. “Just tell her I said it’s all the same. Tell her that for me.”

4

W
HEN I CONSIDER THE PATTERN OF THEIR DAYS AND
nights during those five months I see again that nothing outside that pattern happened at the Mountain Brook Country Club.

I wonder again why Charlotte left that night and not some other.

Charlotte could never tell me.

“But I had to leave,” Charlotte would repeat, as if until ten minutes past eleven P.M. on the eighteenth of July there had been some imperative to her staying. “He’d been with this girl and he’d hurt her and he was acting crazy. After I left the Clarks took her to the hospital, she had a concussion. Mild.”

Had not other such evenings occurred during those five months?

Charlotte said that she could not remember.

Bear in mind that I am talking here about a woman I believe to have been in shock.

Everywhere they went during those five months they ended up staying in a motel. Charlotte did remember the motels. They had stayed a while with Howard Hollerith in Greenville and they had stayed a while with Billy Daikin in Clarksdale and they had stayed a while with other people in other places but after a certain kind of evening they would always move to a motel. Usually Warren would not be present during the early part of this certain kind of evening. Usually Warren would be upriver or downriver or across the county with their host’s wife or sister or recently divorced niece. Never daughter. Warren never went upriver or downriver or across the county with the daughter of a host.