Taltos (Lives of the Mayfair Witches 3)

"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 breasts 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--"

"Enough of this talk, really," said Celia. "I'm so worried for Rowan!"

"Oh, I didn't know," said Mary Jane. "I mean--"

"Same thing to whom?" asked Mona.

"Now that's another thing. When do you say 'whom' instead of 'who,' exactly?"

"I don't think you're at that stage yet," Mona had replied. "There are a lot of other basic things...."

"Enough, ladies and gentlemen!" Bea had declared. "Mary Jane, I'm going to call your mother."

"You're going to be so sorry, Aunt Bea. You know what kind a' doctor cut off my sixth finger in L.A.? It was a voodoo witch doctor from Haiti, and he did it on the kitchen table."

"But can't they dig up the wrong woman and find out once and for all who she was?" Michael asked.

"Well, they have a very good suspicion, but ..." Celia had started.

"But what?" Michael had asked.

"Oh, it has to do with welfare checks," Beatrice had declared, "and that's none of our business. Michael, please forget about that dead woman!"

How could Rowan just ignore these proceedings? And here he was, calling Mary Jane by name, doing everything but eating Mary Jane up with a spoon. If this didn't snap Rowan to, then a tornado wouldn't do it.

"Well, Michael Curry, come to find out they'd been calling that dead lady Dolly Jean for some time before she passed on. Wasn't anybody in that place with a lick a' sense, if you ask me. I think one night they just started putting Granny in the wrong bed, and what do you know, the old lady in Granny's bed died, and there you have it. They buried some poor old stranger in the Mayfair grave!"

At that point Mary Jane had flashed her eyes on Rowan.

"She's listening!" Mary Jane had cried. "Yes, she is, swear to God. She's listening."

If it was true, no one else could see it or sense it. Rowan had remained oblivious to the eyes turning to her. Michael had flushed as though hurt by the kid's outburst. And Celia had studied Rowan, doubting, and grim.

"There's nothing wrong with her," Mary Jane had declared. "She'll snap right out of it, you watch. People like her, they talk when they want to. I can be like that."

Mona had wanted to say, Why don't you start now?

But in truth, she had wanted to believe that Mary Jane was right. This girl might just be some powerful witch after all, Mona had figured. If Mary Jane wasn't, she would still make it, somehow or other.

"Don't you worry none now about Granny," she said as she was "fixin' to go." She'd smiled and slapped her naked brown thigh. "Let me tell you something, it may have turned out for the best."

"Good Lord, how?" Bea had asked.

"Well, in all those years in that home, you know, they said she never said much of anything, just sort of talked to herself and acted like people were there who weren't and all that, and well now?? She knows who she is, you know??? She talks to me and she watches the soaps, and never misses 'Jeopardy' or 'Wheel of Fortune'?? I think it was all that commotion as well as anything else, and coming back to Fontevrault and finding things up in the attic? Did you know she could climb those steps?? Listen, she's fine, don't you worry about her, I'm getting cheese and graham crackers for her when I get home, and her and me will watch the late show, or the country-western channel, she likes that too, you know, 'Achy Breaky Heart' and all that stuff. Why, she can sing those songs. Never you mind. She's terrific."

"Yes, precious, but really ..."

Mona had even sort of liked her for five minutes, a kid who could take care of an old woman like that, making it up every day with Band-Aids and hot wires.

Mona had walked out to the front with her, and watched her hop in her pickup truck, which had bare springs sticking out of the passenger seat, and roar off in a cloud of blue exhaust.

"We've got to take care of her," Bea had said. "We've got to sit down and talk about the Mary Jane situation very soon."

True, Mona had agreed. The Mary Jane Situation was a good label for it.

And though this girl clearly had evinced no remarkable powers on the spot, there was something exciting about her.

Mary Jane was spunky and there was something irresistible about the idea of showering her with Mayfair money and benefits, and trying to improve her. Why couldn't she come in and study with this tutor who was going to free Mona from the boredom of regular school forever? Beatrice had been chomping at the bit to buy Mary Jane some clothes before she left town, and no doubt had been sending her the creme de la creme of once-worn hand-me-downs.

And there was one other little secret reason why Mona liked Mary Jane, a reason which nobody would ever understand. Mary Jane had been wearing a cowboy hat. It was small and made of straw, and she'd let it fall down behind her shoulders on its strings, but it had been there for two minutes when she first walked up. And she'd popped it back on her head before she pulled hard on the stick shift of that old truck and rushed off, waving at everybody.

A cowboy hat. It had always been Mona's dream to wear a cowboy hat, especially when she was really rich and in control of things, and flying about the world in her own plane. Mona had for years pictured herself as a mogul in a cowboy hat, entering factories and banks and ... well, Mary Jane Mayfair did have a cowboy hat. And with her braids on top of her head, and her slick, tight denim skirt, there was something all together about her. She had, in spite of everything, a sort of deliberate and successful style. Even her chipped and peeling purple fingernail polish had been part of it, giving her a kind of earthy seductiveness.

Well, it wouldn't be hard to verify that, would it?

"And those eyes, Mona," Beatrice had said as they walked back into the garden. "The child is adorable! Did you look at her? I don't know how I could ever ... And her mother, her mother, oh, that girl always was insane, nobody should have ever let her run away with that baby. But there had been such bad blood between us and those Fontevrault Mayfairs."

"You can't take care of all of them, Bea," Mona had reassured her, "any more than Gifford could." But they would, of course. And if Celia and

Beatrice didn't, well, Mona would. That had been one of the keenest revelations of that afternoon, that Mona was now part of the team; she wasn't going to let that kid not fulfill her dreams, not while she had breath in her little thirteen-year-old body.

"She's a sweet thing in her own way," Celia had admitted.