Michael McDowell - Candles Burning

Camille beat up Santa Rosa Island as well, just not as severely as Mobile and Pass Christian. She tore off most of the verandah and punched Merrymeeting’s roof through with seven pine boles and an Adirondack chair. The damage report from Miz Verlow, via Mrs. Mank, added that a school bus from Blackwater had been discovered half-buried in the dune fronting Merrymeeting. Its windows were sealed closed and it was full of water, and water moccasins.

Two days after Miz Verlow reported that Ford had claimed Mama’s remains, the mail arrived at Mrs. Mank’s. It was late morning, and I was in the garden again, trying to read and failing, for the desire to leave was very intense. Mrs. Mank was in her bedroom, with her masseuse. I heard the mail van on the gravel of the drive, and knew it was mail-time, but it was a surprise to have Appleyard emerge from the house with an envelope in hand. He presented it to me silently.

It was an ordinary greeting card envelope, addressed to me in care of Mrs. Mank at the Brookline address, and without a return address.

Inside was a black-edged card announcing that an interment service for Roberta Ann Carroll Dakin would be held in Tallassee, Alabama. The given day and hour were the morrow, the place a cemetery called The Promised Land. I recognized the name as the one where Daddy was buried, that I had not been able to remember when I returned to Tallassee with Grady. There was no RSVP number. No one to contact.

Later, when I showed it to Mrs. Mank, I said, “This is from Ford, obviously, and I want to see him.”

She frowned. “It’s a long way to go. How are you going to do it?”

“Take a bus,” I said. Of course, I didn’t have the fare. I would steal it, if I had to, or beg it at the bus station.

Mrs. Mank gauged my determination and shrugged. “We’ll fly—”

“You weren’t invited,” I said.

She covered her shock with a cold little laugh.

“Yes,” I said suddenly, “let’s fly.”

The flinch in her eyes was satisfying. “Don’t be tiresome,” she said. She crossed her arms over her bosom. “You’re in no position to order me around.”

“Never mind,” I answered, turning toward the stairs. “I’ll take the bus.”

“No,” she said, biting the word off sharp. “We will fly.”

I smiled to myself and went upstairs to pack my brand-new luggage.

We were to leave early the next morning, the day of the service.

We dined by candlelight, just the two of us, as usual, in the formal dining room of the house in Brookline. Mrs. Mank had begun educating me about wine and food. I was surprised to discover that wine was well-worth drinking, and the knowing-about was only important to my palate, not to impress anyone. Mrs. Mank had been pleased that I appeared to possess both an educable palate and a strong head.

At the end of the meal, Price set out the brandy snifters in their sterling silver cradles. Mrs. Mank poured the decanted brandy herself, and lit the spirit flames beneath the snifters with a long wooden match.

The wine that we had consumed during the meal had mellowed us both, lessening the tension over my defiance.

“Tell me about the Circus,” I said, and made a little calliope wheeze.

Mrs. Mank laughed at my boldness.

“You’ve been listening,” she said, with some pride.

Indeed I had. I did a little more calliope, and she laughed again.

“I use the term generically,” she said. “Life’s a circus, is it not?”

“Fat ladies and acrobats and lions—oh my.”

“Indeed,” she said agreeably.

“It means something more, doesn’t it?”

“Of course.” She twiddled the crystal balloon, so the candlelight gilded its contents. “I prize talent, special talent. People with special talents have special needs. Their talents need protection. People who stand out of a crowd,” she said, “like excessively large ears on a Calley Dakin’s head, draw the sometimes murderous hatred of all those sadly untalented people who make up the mob. Is there any more characteristic human behavior than the burning of witches?”

It was an assertion that I could not refute.

“My Circus provides a refuge for certain specially talented people. Now, it happens that the talents in which I am interested can and often do occur in families. Your great-grandmama, for instance—”

“Cosima—”

She nodded. “Cosima. What a gifted woman she was. To give credit where it’s due, the idea of the circus as a refuge was hers. It isn’t at all surprising to me that mere death had not silenced her. Personalities of Cosima’s strength do not easily unravel. She married your great-granddaddy when he was a mildly successful proprietor of what he called ‘A Traveling Show.’ She made it into a real Circus. She drew talent like a magnet. She made him a wealthy man. He repaid her with infidelity. In turn, she took revenge by nursing him through his final illness, which was syphilis. Before the syphilis reduced him to a grinning toothless lunatic, he suffered her extraordinary kindness and gentleness. Forgiveness is a terrible thing, Calley. It wracks the guilty worse than hate.”

“It’s a point of view,” I ventured. I wasn’t about to commit myself to forgiving anybody, least of all Mrs. Mank.

“It’s the truth,” she said, straightening in her chair. “Cosima was a goddamned angel.” Her tone was sarcastic. “She forgave every thing.”

The brandy had loosened her tongue. I didn’t want to interrupt her.

“Your grandmama had only her looks. Beautiful women are as common as sin, of course. Because the world so overvalues beauty in a woman, the beautiful woman often becomes an empty shell. I myself,” she added, “am not beautiful.”

I wondered if she meant the face that she presently wore, with its strong resemblance to that of the current Queen of England, or the one with which she had been born. Had she changed her face for strategic purposes or because she hated her original one?

“I have a particular talent, and that is to be able to recognize and use the talents the rest of the populace would gladly smother in infancy.” She nodded toward me significantly.

She may have wanted me to thank her. I didn’t.

She drank a little of her brandy and continued. “Your mama received only Deirdre’s and Cosima’s useless beauty. It brought her only grief, I can assure you.”

“Speak ill of the dead,” I said.

“If I wish.” She pursed her lips. “Your mama’s sisters had talents. Deirdre tried to kill them. She was enraged to be afflicted with them, the sort of people that she had fled in her marriage to ‘Captain’ Carroll.” Mrs. Mank said “Captain” roguishly, mocking Mamadee. “Cosima saved them from her. Alas, your mama undid Cosima’s best efforts. When she was in her teens and Deirdre was becoming jealous of her looks, she ran away to Cosima.”

“It’s a fairy tale,” I said. “‘Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who’s the fairest of them all.’”

Mrs. Mank smiled sourly. “Of course it is. Once in Cosima’s house, your mama could not abide living with her own sisters, those ugly but talented young women. Did she mean to burn the house down and everyone in it except herself? Ask Cosima sometime, will you? Or your mama, if you can. It hardly matters. Faith and Hope were lost, and so was Cosima.”

For a moment she sat silent, brooding. “I wanted to hate Cosima. I was never very successful at it. I had my jealousy, for I had neither Deirdre’s beauty, nor talent of the kind that Cosima and your aunts had. Mine are talents far more common in the world. Jack Dexter’s talents.”

Her features sagged with dissatisfaction.

“Yes, I am Deirdre’s sister. Your great-aunt.” She looked at me with suddenly wide-open eyes. “I’m half-pissed,” she said.