“You should have come inside,” Michael had said kindly, hanging on every syllable the girl spouted. The trouble with Michael was that he did have a weakness for pubescent pulchritude. His tryst with Mona had been no freak of nature or twist of witchcraft. And Mary Jane Mayfair was as succulent a little swamp hen as Mona had ever beheld. Even wore her bright yellow hair in braids over the top of her head, and filthy white patent leather shoes with straps, like a little kid. The fact that her skin was dark, sort of olive and possibly tanned, made the girl look something like a human palomino.
“What did the tests say on you?” Mona had asked. “That’s what you’re doing here, isn’t it? They tested you?”
“I don’t know,” said the genius, the mighty powerful swamp witch. “They’re so mixed up over there, wonder they got anything right. First they called me Florence Mayfair and then Ducky Mayfair, finally I says, ‘Look, I’m Mary Jane Mayfair, looky there, right there, on that form you got in front of you.’ ”
“Well, that’s not very good,” Celia had muttered.
“But they said I was fine and go home and they’d tell me if anything was wrong with me. Look, I figure I’ve probably got witch genes coming out the kazoo, I expect to blow the top off the graph, you know? And, boy, I have never seen so many Mayfairs as I saw in that building.”
“We own the building,” said Mona.
“And every one of them I could recognize on sight, every single person. I never made a mistake. There was one infidel in there, one outcast, you know, or no, it was a half-breed type, that’s what it was, ever notice that there are all these Mayfair types? I mean there are a whole bunch that have no chins and have kind of pretty noses that dip down just a little right here and eyes that tilt at the outside. And then there’s a bunch that look like you,” she said to Michael, “yeah, just like you, real Irish with bushy brows and curly hair and big crazy Irish eyes.”
“But, honey,” Michael had protested in vain, “I’m not a Mayfair.”
“—and the ones with the red hair like her, only she’s just about the most pretty one I’ve seen. You must be Mona. You have the gleam and glow of somebody who’s just come into tons of money.”
“Mary Jane, darling,” said Celia, unable to follow up with an intelligent bit of advice or a meaningless little question.
“Well, what does it feel like to be so rich?” Mary Jane asked, big, quivering eyes fastened still to Mona. “I mean really deep in here.” She pounded her cheap little gaping blouse with a knotted fist, squinting up her eyes again, and bending forward so that the well between her breasts was plainly visible even to someone as short as Mona. “Never mind, I know I’m not supposed to ask that sort of question. I came over here to see her, you know, because Paige and Beatrice told me to do it.”
“Why did they do that?” asked Mona.
“Hush up, dear,” said Beatrice. “Mary Jane is a Mayfair’s Mayfair. Darling Mary Jane, you ought to bring your grandmother up here immediately. I’m serious, child. We want you to come. We have an entire list of addresses, both temporary and permanent.”
“I know what she means,” Celia had said. She’d been sitting beside Rowan, and was the only one bold enough to wipe Rowan’s face now and then with a white handkerchief. “I mean about the Mayfairs with no chins. She means Polly. Polly has an implant. She wasn’t born with that chin.”
“Well, if she has an implant,” declared Beatrice, “then Polly has a visible chin, doesn’t she?”
“Yeah, but she’s got the slanty eyes and the tipped nose,” said Mary Jane.
“Exactly,” said Celia.
“You all afraid of the extra genes?” Mary Jane had thrown her voice out like a lasso, catching everybody’s attention. “You, Mona, you afraid?”
“I don’t know,” said Mona, who was in fact not afraid.
“Of course, it’s nothing that’s even remotely likely to happen!” Bea said. “The genes. It’s purely theoretical, of course. Do we have to talk about this?” Beatrice threw a meaningful look at Rowan.
Rowan had stared, as she always did, at the wall, maybe at the sunshine on the bricks, who could possibly know?
Mary Jane had plunged ahead. “I don’t think anything that wild will ever happen to this family again. I think