the experiment didn’t matter. But you never do know the name of Maxim de Winter’s second wife in that novel, or in the movie. Did you see the movie?”
“What’s the point?”
“Well, you’re like that yourself, Ryan, you’re going to go to the grave without ever saying Lasher’s name.” Again, she broke into laughter.
Mary Jane laughed and laughed as though she knew everything.
There is nothing funnier than someone laughing at a joke, except for someone who does not even crack a smile and stares at you with a face full of outrage.
“Don’t touch the boxes,” said Ryan solemnly. “They belong to Rowan! But there is something I must tell you, about Michael, something I found in a genealogy in those papers. Mary Jane, please do sit down and eat your supper.”
Mary Jane sat down.
“Right, genealogies,” said Mona. “Wow, maybe Lasher knew things we didn’t know. Mary Jane, genealogy is not a special interest with this family, it’s a full-time obsession. Ryan, your four minutes are nearly up.”
“What four minutes?”
She was laughing again. He had to leave. She was going to get sick, laughing like this.
“I know what you’re gonna say,” said Mary Jane, who jumped up again out of her chair, as though for truly serious conversations she had to be standing. “You’re going to say Michael Curry is a Mayfair. I told you!”
All the vitality drained out of Ryan’s face.
Mona drank down the fourth glass of milk. She had finished her rice, and lifting the serving bowl, she tipped it and let a new little mountain of soft, steaming rice grains fall on her plate.
“Ryan, stop staring at me,” she said. “What is it about Michael? Is Mary Jane right? Mary Jane said Michael was a Mayfair the first time she met him.”
“He is,” declared Mary Jane. “I saw the resemblance right away, and you know who he looks like? He looks like that opera singer.”
“What opera singer?” asked Ryan.
“Yeah, what opera singer?”
“Tyrone MacNamara, the one that Beatrice has pictures of, you know????? Those engravings on her wall???? Julien’s father???? Well, Ryan, he must be your great-grandfather. I saw a passel a’ cousins at the genealogical laboratory looked like that, Irish as can be, you never noticed? Of course you didn’t, but then y’all have got Irish blood, French blood—”
“And Dutch blood,” said Ryan in a terse, uncomfortable little voice. He looked at Mona, and then back at Mary Jane. “I have to go.”
“Wait a second, is that it?” Mona demanded. She gulped down her mouthful of rice, took another drink of milk. “Is that what you were going to tell me? Michael is a Mayfair?”
“There is a mention,” Ryan said, “in those papers, that apparently pertains to Michael, explicitly.”
“God damn, you don’t mean it,” said Mona.
“You all are sooooo divinely inbred!” said Mary Jane. “It’s like royalty. And here sits the Czarina herself!”
“I’m afraid you’re right,” said Ryan. “Mona, have you taken any medicine?”
“Certainly not, would I do that to my daughter?”
“Well, I have no choice but to go,” he said. “Do try to behave yourselves. Remember the house is surrounded by guards. I don’t want you going out, and please don’t devil Eugenia!”
“Shucks,” said Mona. “Don’t leave. You’re the life of the party. What do you mean ‘devil Eugenia’?”
“When you’ve returned to your senses,” said Ryan, “would you please call me? And what if this child is a boy? Certainly you aren’t going to risk his life with one of those tests to determine gender.”
“He’s not a boy, silly,” said Mona. “She’s a girl and I’ve already named her Morrigan. I’ll call you. Okay? Okay.”
And away he went, hurrying in his own special quiet way of hurrying. Kind of like the way nuns hurry, or doctors. With a minimum of sound and fuss.
“Don’t touch those papers,” he called out from the butler’s pantry.
Mona relaxed, took a deep breath. That was the last adult scheduled to be looking in on them, as far as she knew.
And what was this about Michael? “God, you think it’s true? Hey, Mary Jane, when we’re finished, let’s go up and look at those papers.”
“Oh, Mona, I don’t know, he just said those were Rowan’s papers, didn’t he just say that? ‘Don’t touch those papers.’ Mona, have some cream gravy. Don’t you want the chicken? That’s the best chicken I ever fixed.”
“Cream gravy! You didn’t say it was cream gravy. Morrigan doesn’t want meat. Doesn’t like meat. Look, I have a right to look at those papers. If he wrote things, if he left