Blackwood Farm - Anne Rice [220]
“There was no great order and no great thrift to the manner in which we traveled. Back and forth we went often. It had something to do with the seasons. It had everything to do with desire and whim.
“Tommy and Nash worked intensely on homework for the school board of Ruby River City. But in the main, Tommy received his knowledge as I did—from Aunt Queen and Nash drawing our attention to things we might otherwise have missed, from Aunt Queen and Nash giving us the cultural background of the things we saw and telling us marvelous stories that had to do with the famous persons connected to monuments, countries, culture and time.
“There was such a richness to all of it that I felt a fool for not having yielded to Aunt Queen’s requests that I travel made so many years before. It seemed the arrogance of ignorance that I had refused to join her. But as she said to comfort me, it was not a time for regretting things. It was a time for embracing the entire world.
“Let me also note that no matter how much we saw or how late in the day we toured, I still managed to read Dickens for Nash, and he greatly increased my appreciation of Great Expectations, David Copperfield, The Old Curiosity Shop and Little Dorrit. I also investigated the Brontë sisters with keen delight, swallowing Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre. If only I had been a better reader I might have accomplished more. I tried hard with Milton, but I couldn’t remember what I read of Paradise Lost, no matter how hard I tried, so I put it by for Keats, reading the odes aloud until I had them memorized.
“All was bliss for us as we roamed. But not so with everyone. In the middle of our second year, Jasmine called to let us know that Patsy had gone through her income entirely for that period (staggering), and had gotten Clem to invest his entire inheritance from Pops in a rock album which had flopped, and Clem was now blaming Patsy for having tricked him and wanted to sue her.
“At Aunt Queen’s behest I got on the phone with our lawyer, Grady Breen, and ascertained that Patsy had spent all the money on a rock video, the making of which had cost a million dollars, what with a foreign director and cinematographer, and then all the big cable music networks had failed to give it airtime.
“Clem had not been wearing blinders when he sunk his hundred thousand into the deal, and he was, in Grady’s words, no fool, but I told Grady to pay him off and be done with it. As for Patsy, if she wanted money, just give it to her. She did want money and he would give it to her.
“In closing, I asked Grady if Patsy was having any success at all with her music. He replied that she was very successful of late with the good clubs, playing House of Blues all over the country. Her album was selling about three hundred thousand copies. But that’s nothing compared to the million copies she longed to sell, and which she needed to sell to attain the fame she wanted. She had simply overestimated her name-brand appeal with this video she had made. It had been a little too soon for her.
“I didn’t dare to ask directly about her health. I put it simply: ‘Have you recently seen her?’
“ ‘Yes,’ said Grady. ‘She was just on Austin City Limits. She’s as pretty as ever. Your mother has always been a pretty gal. I’m old enough to say that much, don’t you think?’
“ ‘Yes, sir,’ I said.
“And so back at home, Patsy was still being Patsy.
“Now that I have said all the above—dispatching all subjects pertaining to this period—let me return to the matter of Pompeii.
“Of course I was eager to see the ruins, but I couldn’t forget the spell which Petronia had cast over me when she had come to Blackwood Manor, and Aunt Queen had thoughts of her own about it, though they were far less alarmist than mine. We had discussed Petronia but only with some strain, Aunt Queen not quite forgiving me for my denouncing of Petronia and not quite believing that Petronia wasn’t human and that Petronia had dumped two bodies in the swamp.
“As for me, I believed everything, and I wanted to see if the ruins of Pompeii—the