I nodded yes.

He handed me a picture. “Is this the man who tried to blow you up this morning?”

Again I nodded yes.

“Bill Dolton, Choirboy to you, has confessed. I guess God finally got to him. He helped Frankenstein kidnap the women, though he claims he didn’t know they were to be murdered until too late.”

“Too late for whom?” Danny interjected. “To save any of the women or avoid a murder rap?”

O’Connor gave a tired shrug. “Frankenstein, Bill Mahoney, worked as an orderly in some hospital, wanted to be a doctor, but couldn’t even keep his orderly job. I just finished searching his apartment. He had a couple of medical textbooks on abortion. With what to avoid marked in yellow highlighter. He learned enough about abortions to botch them.” O’Connor paused for a moment, taking a deep breath, then continued, “Choirboy claims Frankenstein got the dynamite for Sarafin. He just put the bombs where they told him to. Empty buildings, he thought.”

I made an angry gesture.

“Which we know is bullshit,” O’Connor said. “His two partners are dead. Why not put as much blame on them as possible?” He continued, “I would like to get a statement from you, Dr. James. I know you’ve had a long day, but if you don’t mind?”

“It’s okay. Can we do it somewhere else? Micky should get some rest. She’ll just want to ask questions if we hang about.”

“I won’t stay very long,” Danny assured her.

“I’m borrowing your car. You won’t need it for a while,” were Cordelia’s parting words for me. She followed O’Connor out.

“You are going to have one hell of a bruise,” Danny observed, looking at my throat.

I nodded.

“Anything I can do?”

Ice cream came to mind, but I stoically shook my head no.

“Good. Then let me start on the list of all the things I wanted to say but didn’t, because I knew that smart mouth of yours would make me regret it.”

I reached out and took Danny’s hand, kissing it softly on the palm.

“Damn,” she said, blinking. “I can’t think of a thing. Except I am so glad you pulled out of this one.”

“Are you related?” emanated from the hall.

“No. Fortunately,” came the reply.

Joanne came in, followed by Alex.

“Hail the conquering hero,” Alex said. “Hi, Danny.”

“She can’t talk,” Danny cheerfully informed them.

“Yeah?” Joanne asked, returning Danny’s grin. “I’ll be damned, a silent Micky Knight.”

“But I wanted to hear your adventures,” Alex lamented. “Where’s C.J.?”

“With O’Connor. Doing her civic duty,” Danny said.

Joanne and Danny did their best to fill Alex in on the day’s numerous events. I tried to pay attention, but my throat was a pain in the neck. I was also starting to nod out.

Elly arrived to retrieve Danny. And, nurse that she was, she shooed everyone out, telling them to let me get my rest.

The minute they were gone, I missed them. Particularly since I knew they were probably going to convene at Danny’s and Elly’s to talk, party, and…eat ice cream.

It’s over, I thought as I dozed off, relieved that no more bombs would be exploding, no more women cast as unwilling Jocastas. Then I realized it was all over. No excuses to go back to the clinic to see Cordelia. No clinic. Well, she’ll have to give my car back, I consoled myself. Unless she leaves it with Danny.

I counted ice cream flavors and fell asleep.

Chapter 26

The next day, a little after lunch (applesauce), Emma and Rachel came by to pick me up.

“You’re going to spend a week or so out in the country,” Emma informed me, handing me some clean clothes. “Your friend Danny helped us get the things you’ll need from your place.”

I winced at the thought of Emma prowling through my drawers. Hell, just my apartment.

“You are bruised all over, Micky, girl,” Rachel said as I shrugged off my hospital gown.

I quickly dressed, embarrassed by both my bruises and nakedness under Rachel’s and Emma’s scrutiny.

We checked out of the hospital.

After making sure I was comfortably positioned in the back seat, we drove out of the city, heading across Lake Pontchartrain.

Listening to Emma and Rachel talking in the front seat, I suddenly realized: they’re lovers. It wasn’t what they said, but the tone of voice, perhaps body position as they conversed, that bespoke intimacy.

I’m an idiot, I thought, for not having noticed before. Separate rooms were only a token nod to decorum, to circumvent the racial and sexual rules of the South. Or perhaps a harsh necessity. What had it been like, thirty years ago? Before Stonewall? Before even Rosa Parks?

I had first met Emma when I was just seventeen. She was Miss Auerbach to me and I didn’t know enough or dare enough to look under the surfaces I was shown. She and Rachel were both in their late forties then. Afraid as I was that Emma wanted something sexual from me, I was more than willing to see only the scholarly, asexual spinster front she presented. In some way, I realized, I had demanded the distance, building a wall of reserve between us to protect myself. Emma had always respected that distance.

I recalled that horrible last year of high school. I was aloof and a loner there, despising that ugly house in Metairie that I had to return to. I didn’t have many friends. I couldn’t risk it. I knew what I was. Queer. A pervert. I was haunted by a constant refrain of “if only they knew…” Every time a teacher wrote “good” on a paper, every time someone said hello in the hallway.

From school I went to work, a local burger place that left me with the smell of day-old cooking oil and greasy ground beef, even after a long scrubbing shower. Then I went to Aunt Greta’s house, where I lived. It wasn’t home, I couldn’t call it that.

Bayard was there on weekends. He was still taking courses at LSU to graduate in December. He came home on Fridays and left on Mondays. I did the best I could to avoid him on those weekends, taking extra shifts at the burger joint, barricading myself with Uncle Claude and feigning interest in whatever TV show he was watching. But after Christmas, Bayard would be living at home. And I would be like a caged animal with only a small area in which to run from him. I dreaded the thought of December.

Late in November, one of my teachers, Miss Silver—I later found out she was a lesbian—was handing back papers and mine “just happened” to be on the bottom, making me the last student there. She gave me my paper and a business card, saying, “Call her, I think you need to talk to someone.” That was all. The card was for Rene Harper, a social worker at the local health clinic. And, I suspected, Miss Silver’s lover at the time, but I never did find out.

I did need to talk. I told her everything. Almost everything, I was still too ashamed to mention incest. I told her that I preferred women, though it took a few sessions for me to admit that I was sexually active.

One day, she asked if I would be interested in earning money helping organize and catalogue a private library. It was Emma’s, of course. I was so nervous on that interview, feeling very out of place in her Garden District home. I was sure that she would spot me as perverted bayou trash. But at the end of the interview she asked me when I could start.

Several weeks later, Emma offhandedly inquired where I was going to college. The question caught me off guard because I had never thought about going to college. I didn’t have an answer.

A few days later, Emma handed me a sheaf of college applications and told me that my job that week was to fill them out. I did as I was told, but I knew it was impossible. Aunt Greta wouldn’t let me go part-time to UNO, let alone the places Emma was having me apply to. I remembered resenting Emma for making me want something I couldn’t have.

The holidays came and went. Bayard was home, in no hurry to get a job. I stayed out late, changed my hours, snuck around, but I didn’t always get by him.

My eighteenth birthday was on the last day of February. I decided that on that day I was going to leave Aunt Greta’s house. I realized that I would have to drop out of school. But I couldn’t stay there any longer.