high prole, Henri. If you fix red beans and rice, I’ll be fine.”
A high prole. Mona had gone up to Uncle Michael after supper, just as he was trying to get away from everyone and take his nightly constitutional, as he called it, and said, “What the hell is a high prole, Uncle Michael?”
“Such language,” he’d whispered with mock surprise. Then before he could stop himself, he’d stroked the ribbon in her hair.
“Oh, sorry,” she’d said, “but for an uptown girl, it’s sort of, you know, de rigueur to have a large vocabulary.”
He’d laughed, a little fascinated maybe. “A high prole is a person who doesn’t have to worry about making the middle class happy,” he said. “Would an uptown girl understand that?”
“Sure would. It’s extremely logical, what you’re saying, and I want you to know I loathe conformity in any form.”
Again his gentle beguiling laughter.
“How did you get to be a high prole?” She’d pushed it. “Where do I go to sign on?”
“You can’t sign on, Mona,” he’d answered. “A high prole is born a prole. He is a fire fighter’s son who has made plenty of money. A high prole can mow his own grass any time he likes. He can wash his own car. Or he can drive a van when everybody keeps telling him he ought to drive a Mercedes. A high prole is a free man.” What a smile he had given her. Of course he was laughing at himself a little, in a weary sort of way. But he liked to look at her, that she could see. Yes, indeed, he did like to look at her. Only some weariness and some sense of propriety held him in check.
“Sounds good to me,” she’d said. “Do you take off your shirt when you mow the grass?”
“How old are you, Mona?” he’d asked her playfully, cocking his head to one side. But the eyes were completely innocent.
“I told you, thirteen,” she’d answered. She’d stood on tiptoe and kissed him quickly on the cheek, and there had come that blush again. Yes, he saw her, saw her breasts and the contour of her waist and hips under the loose pink cotton dress. Yet he’d seemed moved by her show of affection, an emotion quite entirely separate. His eyes had glassed over for a minute, and then he’d said he had to go walk outside. He’d said something about Mardi Gras Night, about passing this house once when he’d been a boy, on Mardi Gras Night, when they’d been on their way to see Comus.
No, nothing really wrong with his heart now at all, except that the doctors kept scaring him, and giving him much too much medicine, though he did now and then have those little pains, he’d told Ryan, which reminded him of what he could and couldn’t do. Well, Mona would find out what he could or couldn’t do.
She stood by the pool for a long moment, thinking of all the bits and pieces of the story—Rowan run off, some kind of miscarriage in the front hall, blood everywhere, and Michael bruised and knocked unconscious in the pool. Could the miscarriage account for the smell? She’d asked Pierce earlier if he could smell it. No. She’d asked Bea. No. She’d asked Ryan. Of course not. Stop going around looking for mysterious things! She thought of Aunt Gifford’s drawn face as she stood in the hospital corridor on Christmas Night, when they’d thought Michael was dying, and the way she had looked at Uncle Ryan.
“You know what’s happened!” she had said.
“That’s superstition and madness,” Ryan had answered. “I won’t listen to it. I won’t let you speak of it in front of the children.”
“I don’t want to talk about it in front of the children,” Aunt Gifford had said, her jaw trembling. “I don’t want the children to know! Keep them away from that house, I’m begging you. I’ve been begging you all along.”
“Like it’s my fault!” Uncle Ryan had whispered. Poor Uncle Ryan, the family lawyer, the family protector. Now that was a fine example of what conformity could do to one, because Uncle Ryan was in every respect a super-looking male animal, of the basically heroic type, with square jaw, and blue eyes, and good strong shoulders and a flat belly and a musician’s hands. But you never noticed it. All you saw when you looked at Uncle Ryan was his suit, and his oxford-cloth shirt, and the shine on his Church’s shoes. Every