Deaths of Jocasta Read online

  “Made enough for the hired help, I hope,” I said as I took a big whiff of the just baked pie.

  “Micky, child, do you get taller every time I see you or am I just shrinking?” Rachel exclaimed, putting down the pie and giving me a floury hug.

  I squeezed her back. One of the things I always looked forward to was hanging out in the kitchen with Rachel. After Aunt Greta’s immaculate kitchen and her tired meals, it was a revelation to be welcomed into a kitchen where people laughed and you could make as big a mess as you liked as long as the food was good. Everyone, including Emma, would pitch in to clean up after one of Rachel’s extravaganzas.

  “You’re the same size you always were, so I must be getting taller,” I answered her.

  “There’s a pecan pie with your name on it. You’re getting too skinny.”

  “I doubt that. But I’ll eat the pie, just in case. Where’s the lady of the house?”

  “There’s only one lady in this house and she’s standing in front of you,” Rachel replied. “Emma is off in that direction. Just go straight and you’ll hear her presently.”

  I followed Rachel’s directions until I did indeed hear Emma’s voice. She was on the front porch playing with her latest electronic toy, a wireless telephone. Or rather, in her polite but adamant way ensuring that the florist filled her order and made the high school prom make do with daisies, if need be. She finished the conversation, then got up and gave me a hug.

  “Michele, dear, you’re looking well. And punctual as usual. What would you like?” she asked as we sat down.

  Emma Auerbach has high cheekbones, a determined chin, and a pile of gray hair turning gloriously silver. She is equally at home in a library reading a scholarly text, in a bank discussing what she wants done with her money, or hosting a gracious party for a hundred guests. In short, she was a lot of things I admired and wished I could come closer to emulating than I was doing at present.

  “The usual Scotch?” she continued, not noticing my hesitation.

  “No. No, thanks,” I said. “I’ve been…drinking too much.” I hated to admit my mistakes to Emma. But I hated even more to lie to her. “I had to get some control over it. I had to…have to prove to myself that I can live my life without a shot glass beside me.”

  “Better to learn that at thirty than at sixty. Or never,” was her only comment.

  We discussed the details of the party, then the phone rang and she was off on another involved conversation. I excused myself to take a walk around the grounds.

  The real responsibility of providing security at a party like this is to make sure that not too many guests fall into the swimming pond. And to make sure that nothing slithers out of the woods to take a refreshing dip with the inebriated guests.

  I walked past the pond, glancing at my reflection on its glassy surface. There was a gazebo on the far side, its airy white sides twined with honeysuckle. I climbed up the stairs and perched on the rail to view the expanse of lawn—verdant grass dotted with explosions of colorful flowers, blue irises, pink camellias, some azaleas in full bloom, and still others I couldn’t name. The color was balanced by somber live oaks with ponderous charcoal trunks and low-hanging limbs fringed with gray Spanish moss. The lawn was bordered by the surrounding woods. The wind carried the smell of pine overlaid with the sweetness of honeysuckle and magnolia. Although the sun was bright, the temperature was still mild. It promised to be a perfect weekend.

  I roused myself and headed back for the house. I needed to unpack. I was staying in my usual room, in the main house, next to Rachel’s and across from Emma’s. When I had first come here, Emma had put me there, saying she wanted to discourage any chicken hunting. I was eighteen then, still in high school, and didn’t quite get it, though the other women had glanced at me and laughed knowingly.

  I spent the early part of the afternoon running errands for Emma and Rachel. Emma let me drive to town in her silver Mercedes. It’s amazing how much more polite storekeepers are when they see you drive up in a Mercedes than in a faded lime green Datsun.

  Rosie, who was working with me, showed up in the afternoon along with some hand-picked college students (from the lesbian and gay organizations)—the rest of the hired help for the weekend.

  The first guests began arriving in the late afternoon. After the requisite politeness, I wandered around the grounds, enjoying the colors of the setting sun and the first cool breeze of evening, the calm of twilight. The stars would shine tonight.

  “Micky Knight! And I thought this affair had class,” a voice called to me from a newly arrived car.

  “Danno,” I yelled back. “It did until you showed up.” I quickened my pace so that Danny and I wouldn’t be shouting across the lawn.

  Danielle Clayton and I had both grown up in Bayou St. Jack’s, a small town out in bayou country, but we’d never met there. For reasons as simple as black and white. By the time the schools were integrated, I was living in Metairie with Aunt Greta and Uncle Claude. We met in college, two Southern children up in a harsh Northern city. We’d spent long nights drinking bourbon and wishing for warm weather. Danny had come back to go to Tulane Law School. She was now an assistant district attorney.

  Her lover, Elly Harrison, was hauling a suitcase from the trunk when I reached them. “Hi, Micky,” she said. “It’s good to see you running around again.”

  “Can’t keep a good woman down,” I bantered, giving Danny a perfect opening.

  “Oh, yes you can. The longer the better,” she said with a suggestive movement of her eyebrow. Then she gave me a big bear hug and a friendly kiss.

  After graduation Danny and I had lived together for a while, first as roommates, then lovers. But it hadn’t lasted. Danny wanted something serious and I wasn’t ready to settle down. She kept telling me that she loved me. Until I finally had to let slip that I was sleeping around to prove to her that she didn’t. Danny had no choice but to break it off. I was drinking too much to really care. Or notice how much commitment scared me.

  Another woman I’d let slip by me, with regret coming much too late. Danny and Elly were in the process of buying the house they had been renting.

  Then Elly hugged me, her slight and slender frame replacing Danny’s broad-shouldered sturdiness. I had always felt a little awkward around Elly. Probably because she knows a good deal more about me than I do about her, including possibly (knowing Danny, quite probably), what I do in bed. At least what I did the summer Danny and I were lovers.

  “I’ll show you where you’re staying,” I said, snagging their suitcase.

  “How did you manage to get invited out here?” Danny asked as I led them to their cottage.

  “It’s a long story, dear Danno,” I replied.

  “Which you have to get very drunk to tell, I presume,” she answered.

  “That’s the swimming pond over there,” I said, playing tour guide. “You can see a bit of the gazebo behind the oak tree beyond it.”

  “I can’t wait to walk around here tomorrow,” Elly said. “Do you know how big the place is?”

  “Around two hundred acres, total,” I answered, “but most of it’s forest. There are a number of hiking trails, so you can, if you want, walk your little feet off.”

  “You’ve had a busy afternoon,” Danny commented.

  “Huh?” was my intellectual response.

  “Or did you do research before you came up here?”

  “Danny, being a D.A.,” interjected Elly, “wants information. Like how do you know so much about this place after being here only a few hours?”

  “Then, Danny, being an assistant D.A., can ask,” I responded.

  “Right,” Danny said. “How do you know so much, etc.?”

  “I’ve been here before, for one thing. Here’s your cottage,” I said, making a ninety-degree turn, leading them up a walkway to the porch.

  All the cottages were different. This one was pale blue with a broad porch complete with authentically creaking porch swing. Off by it
self, nestled closely to the woods, it was my favorite. I turned on the porch light.

  “This is great,” Elly said.

  “I’m impressed,” Danny added as she opened the door and led the way in.

  There was a comfortably spacious sitting room with a small kitchenette tucked off at one end and a large red brick fireplace at the other end. Off to one side was a hallway that led to three bedrooms. Joanne and Alex would also be out here.

  “Looks like we get our choice,” Danny said from the hallway where she was poking her head into all the bedrooms.

  “How about the one with the oak tree outside?” Elly asked. She got their suitcase and put it in the far bedroom.

  “Good choice,” I noted.

  “Okay,” Danny said from the room. “Where is that…aha!” she muttered to Elly. They came back to the main room, Danny with a bottle of bourbon. “I’m going to make us all drinks and then, dear El Micko, you can enlighten us on how you know so much about this place.”

  “Good idea,” Elly agreed. “This has been a hell of a week. I could use a drink.” She went to the kitchenette and started searching for glasses.

  “Elly has been having lots of fun with anti-abortionists.”

  “Right to life,” she snorted. “Some of them would kill you if you disagree with them.”

  “New job?” I asked.

  “No, I work part time at Cordelia’s clinic. Cordelia said they’ve had protesters there all week. We’re really just a local clinic in a neighborhood that needs one. You think they’d leave us alone.”

  “Better a whole community do without health care, than a single innocent life aborted,” was Danny’s sardonic comment.

  Elly took three glasses off a shelf. Danny got an ice tray from the small refrigerator. She cracked it and started putting cubes in the glasses.

  “None for me,” I said as Danny was about to put ice in the third glass.

  “Would you repeat that? I’m sure I heard it wrong,” Danny said.

  “I’m not drinking,” I said. “I’m on duty.”

  “‘Duty?’” Danny’s eyebrows shot up.

  “Emma hired me to take care of security for this weekend. Hence, no inebriation while I’m protecting the premises,” I circumlocuted. It would do for now.

  “Well, that’s nice to know. And I must tell you I feel very secure,” Danny said sarcastically.

  “Glad to know that. I aim to keep the guests comfortable.”

  “Right. Why do I detect the sound of a bull straining and grunting to drop a big load in the background?” she continued.

  “Dan-ny,” Elly chided. “How did you get this job?” she asked me.

  “Actually,” Danny broke in, “I’d feel more secure if you were drinking. I’m not sure how to talk to you sober. Maybe that swamp did some brain damage.”

  “I have a right not to drink. Particularly your cheap bourbon,” I shot back.

  “Cheap never stopped you before.” Danny had some choice memories of my drinking when I was with her.

  “Danny, make two drinks, dear,” Elly said.

  Sometimes the hardest thing about changing is the people who still expect you to be as you always were. Danny’s most potent recollections of me had to be from college and the summer we lived together. I was a heavy drinker then and proud of it. I thought it proved something. I drank because I knew Aunt Greta wouldn’t approve. I fancied each drink a victory over her.

  “And don’t make jokes about that swamp,” Elly continued as Danny made their drinks. “Beowulf lost track at one point and we were almost ready to give up and go off in the wrong direction. If we’d done that, we may never have found you.”

  You’d have found me, I started to say. Just not alive. Then I realized that Elly really was concerned. I had been shot in the thigh and forced to hide in a swamp to avoid the men who had shot me. Danny and Elly, along with their hound dog, Beowulf, had helped find me.

  “Yeah, Mick,” Danny said, handing Elly her drink, “that swamp was not fun. If you must have gangsters shooting at you, please stay in the city.” But there was a hint of conciliation and apology in her voice. I’d hurt Danny when I’d left her. Occasionally a trace of anger would sneak out. Heavy sarcasm, a strident tone to her voice. I never said anything. I tried, like she did, to pretend it was all part of our usual banter. Then there would be a slight change in her tone and the anger would be gone.

  “You think it wasn’t fun? You should have been in my shoes,” I said.

  “No, thanks,” Danny and Elly said in unison.

  “No way,” Danny continued. “I don’t ever want to see a criminal outside a courtroom.”

  “I don’t want to see any at all,” Elly added.

  “Look, I agree,” I said. “And from now on I’m taking cream puff jobs like guarding secluded parties with selectively invited guests.”

  “I’ll drink to that,” Danny toasted, touching her glass to Elly’s.

  “Can we build a fire?” Elly asked.

  “That’s what the wood’s for,” I answered.

  “Good. You know what I love to do in front of the fireplace,” Danny said as she put an arm around Elly.

  “Cook marshmallows?” I asked.

  “Of course, that’s what I meant,” Danny murmured from Elly’s neck, which she was now nuzzling.

  “Come on, Danny,” Elly said laughingly. “We haven’t seen Micky for a while.”

  “Yeah, Mick. What have you been up to lately?” Danny asked, still making progress on Elly’s neck, and, I suspected, not much interested in what I had been doing lately.

  “Much as I know you’d love for me to stay and talk, I am a working girl and duty is calling, nay, yelling, screaming for me.”

  “Oh, too bad,” Danny muttered, paying no attention to me.

  “So long, Micky. We’ll talk tomorrow,” Elly said, not yet totally consumed by lust.

  I waved to her (Danny wasn’t looking in my direction) and let myself out. I cut away from the footpath and walked along the border of the woods.

  The stars were bright points of ice against the approaching dark of the evening sky. I stood staring at them, a discreet distance from Danny’s and Elly’s lovemaking. I didn’t want to hear Danny’s passion or remember the ways I’d touched her to elicit such cries. I stared instead at the crowded and lonely sky.

  I hadn’t seen Danny and Elly in about six weeks. I had said I was busy whenever they called asking me over or out. Letting my leg heal and taking it easy, so no parties or dancing, I elaborated for them. But I knew that Danny and Cordelia were good friends. And that if I saw Danny I would see Cordelia. I didn’t want to be idly hanging around in front of her, intruding on her life. Even that was only partly true. I was too afraid of her unconcern, or worse, polite, distant solicitude.

  I turned from the night sky and walked back to the house. Perhaps Joanne and Alex were here by now. I could distract myself by trying not to flirt with Joanne. Or Alex. Danny and Elly had reminded me of my past few months of celibacy.

  As I stepped onto the porch, Emma called to me, “Micky, dear, you used to tend bar, didn’t you?”

  I nodded yes.

  “Disaster. These college kids can handle beer, but they’re not sure what a dry martini is. And there are a few women my age who are members of the martini generation.”

  “I’ll see what I can do,” I volunteered

  She touched my arm briefly as I passed. I stiffened without thinking, then belatedly smiled. But Emma was hurrying off in the other direction. I headed for the bar.

  Aunt Greta’s oldest son, Bayard, had caught me in the street one day shortly after I’d turned eighteen and moved out of their house and into Emma’s. I remembered him standing there blocking my way, a knowing smirk on his face.

  “You know what they say about Miss Auerbach?” he said, hitting the Miss with a hard inflection.

  I tried to sidestep him.

  “You know what she wants from you, don’t you?” he continued.


  I started to turn around, but he grabbed my arm.

  “She wants to fuck you,” he said, the “fuck” a hissing whisper. “That’s the only reason she’s letting you stay there. Want to put your mouth on her old pussy? Want to fuck an old woman like that?” His voice a close and foul undertone.

  “Better her than you,” I yelled, jerking my arm away, causing passersby to look. Then I ran from him, not stopping until I was breathless and on a street I didn’t remember turning onto.

  But he had planted something corrupt and contaminated. It wasn’t until after college, after the hold I thought Emma had on me was gone, only after it hadn’t happened and hadn’t happened over and over again, that I could believe it wouldn’t happen. But before time had taught me trust, whenever she put her hand on my arm, as she had just now, I would wonder, is this it?

  If Emma had ever had any sexual thoughts about me, she never showed them. I doubted she did. Now. Now I trusted her. Now I knew better. By the time I finally knew she didn’t want sex with me, I had pulled back and stiffened too many times whenever she touched me. At times I wanted so much to apologize for my suspicion, but that would mean admitting to it, framing the words to explain how evil I thought she might have been. To take in a scared high school kid with no other place to go only to…fuck, Bayard’s tainted word.

  “An Old-Fashioned?” I heard the barkeep ask. “How about a new-fangled? I’m better at those,” he said with disarming ineptness.

  “Want a lesson?” I asked, jerking away from memories to the mundane demands of the present.

  “Hi…Oh…Yes, ma’am,” he answered to my presence.

  “Micky. Don’t call me ‘ma’am,’” I told him as I pulled the ingredients for an Old-Fashioned.

  I proceeded with my Old-Fashioned lesson. I had to send to the kitchen for sugar. A young college girl brought it to me, making sure her hand touched mine as she handed it to me. She was cute, but she still had a little baby fat left in her cheeks, and not a single, solitary gray hair. I would have to steer Rosie in her direction.