Blackwood Farm - Anne Rice [57]
“As for the cameo, she told me all about it—that it was the mythical Hebe holding up a cup for Zeus, the king of the gods, who was in the form of an eagle, dipping his beak to drink.
“Now, Goblin had been sulking all this time by the doorway, hands in his overall pockets, until I turned to him and told him to come over and that I wanted to show him to Aunt Queen. I believe that I did my very best to describe him to her, since no one to my knowledge could ever see Goblin, except me, and I could swear that she looked at the space beside me, and I had an inkling, the barest inkling, that she did see him, at least for a moment, when she narrowed her eyes.
“She looked sharply to me again, as if snapping back, and demanded very gently, ‘Does he make you happy?’ and that too caught me off guard, as her earlier question had done.
“I think I stammered out something to the effect that Goblin was always around except when he was hiding, as if it wasn’t a matter of whether he made me happy or not, and then Goblin began to tug on my hand to drag me from the room. I said ‘Behave, Goblin!’ just as Sweetheart sometimes said to me, ‘Behave, Quinn!’ and Goblin, pouting and making faces, disappeared.
“I started to cry. Aunt Queen was very distressed at this and asked the reason, and I told her that now Goblin would not come back for a long time. He’d wait and wait until I was crying and crying, and then he would come.
“Aunt Queen pondered this for a long time and said that I mustn’t cry. ‘You know what I think, Quinn?’ she asked. ‘I think if you remain quiet and pretend you don’t need him, Goblin will come back.’
“It did the trick. As I was helping her and Big Ramona to unpack suitcases, as I was playing with Aunt Queen’s cameos, which she set out on her famous marble table, along came Goblin, peeping around the door and then pouting and sulking and coming in.
“Aunt Queen didn’t mind my murmuring to him as I explained who she was and that everybody called her Miss Queen but we were to call her Aunt Queen, and when Big Ramona went to correct me and tell me to hush, Aunt Queen said, No, let me go on.
“ ‘Now, Goblin, don’t run off again,’ Aunt Queen said, and once more I was certain she could see him, but she said that she couldn’t, and was only taking my word for the fact that he was there.
“For the entirety of Aunt Queen’s visit she spoke to me as if I were an adult, and I also slept in her bed with her. She sent into town for some men’s white T-shirts, size large, and I wore these as my little white nightshirts. And I snuggled up to her spoon fashion as I did with Little Ida, and I slept so deeply not even Goblin could wake me before I heard Aunt Queen’s call to get up.
“Little Ida was a tiny bit put out over this, as she and I had been bedfellows since I was a baby, but Aunt Queen soothed her so that she let it go. I liked the white canopy over our heads better than the satin-lined baldachin in my own room up here.
“Let me move to another recollection which must come from the same time. Aunt Queen and I drove into New Orleans in her big stretch limousine. I’d never been in a car like it, but I remember little of it, except that Goblin sat on my right side and Aunt Queen on my left. Goblin tried to stay solid, but he flashed transparent numerous times.
“What struck me that day most strongly was that we got out on a shady side street with a long brick sidewalk, and all over that sidewalk were pink petals, and it was one of the most beautiful sights I’ve ever seen. I wish I knew now where that street was. I’ve asked Aunt Queen but she doesn’t recall.
“I don’t know whether those pink petals had fallen from a long flank of crape myrtle trees or from Japanese magnolias. I tend to think it was crape myrtles after a rain. I’ll never forget that stretch of sidewalk and that lovely path of flower petals, as though someone had strewn them especially for people to walk on and be transported out of reality and into dreams.
“Even now, when existence seems unendurable I think of that