called a high prole, Henri. If you fix red beans and rice, I'll be fine."
  
  A high prole. Mona had gone up to Uncle Michael after supper, just as he was trying to 
get away from everyone and take his nightly constitutional, as he called it, and said, 
"What the hell is a high prole, Uncle Michael?"
  
  "Such language," he'd whispered with mock surprise. Then before he could stop himself, 
he'd stroked the ribbon in her hair.
  
  "Oh, sorry," she'd said, "but for an uptown girl, it's sort of, you know, de rigueur to 
have a large vocabulary."
  
  He'd laughed, a little fascinated maybe. "A high prole is a person who doesn't have to 
worry about making the middle class happy," he said. "Would an uptown girl understand 
that?"
  
  "Sure would. It's extremely logical, what you're saying, and I want you to know I 
loathe conformity in any form."
  
  Again his gentle beguiling laughter.
  
  "How did you get to be a high prole?" She'd pushed it. "Where do I go to sign on?"
  
  "You can't sign on, Mona," he'd answered. "A high prole is born a prole. He is a fire 
fighter's son who has made plenty of money. A high prole can mow his own grass any time 
he likes. He can wash his own car. Or he can drive a van when everybody keeps telling him 
he ought to drive a Mercedes. A high prole is a free man." What a smile he had given her. 
Of course he was laughing at himself a little, in a weary sort of way. But he liked to 
look at her, that she could see. Yes, indeed, he did like to look at her. Only some 
weariness and some sense of propriety held him in check.
  
  "Sounds good to me," she'd said. "Do you take off your shirt when you mow the grass?"
  
  "How old are you, Mona?" he'd asked her playfully, cocking his head to one side. But 
the eyes were completely innocent.
  
  "I told you, thirteen," she'd answered. She'd stood on tiptoe and kissed him quickly on 
the cheek, and there had come that blush again.  Yes, he saw her, saw her breasts and the 
contour of her waist and hips under the loose pink cotton dress. Yet he'd seemed moved by 
her show of affection, an emotion quite entirely separate. His eyes had glassed over for 
a minute, and then he'd said he had to go walk outside. He'd said something about Mardi 
Gras Night, about passing this house once when he'd been a boy, on Mardi Gras Night, when 
they'd been on their way to see Comus.
  
  No, nothing really wrong with his heart now at all, except that the doctors kept 
scaring him, and giving him much too much medicine, though he did now and then have those 
little pains, he'd told Ryan, which reminded him of what he could and couldn't do. Well, 
Mona would find out what he could or couldn't do.
  
  She stood by the pool for a long moment, thinking of all the bits and pieces of the 
story - Rowan run off, some kind of miscarriage in the front hall, blood everywhere, and 
Michael bruised and knocked unconscious in the pool. Could the miscarriage account for 
the smell? She'd asked Pierce earlier if he could smell it. No. She'd asked Bea. No. 
She'd asked Ryan. Of course not. Stop going around looking for mysterious things! She 
thought of Aunt Gifford's drawn face as she stood in the hospital corridor on Christmas 
Night, when they'd thought Michael was dying, and the way she had looked at Uncle Ryan.
  
  "You know what's happened!" she had said.
  
  "That's superstition and madness," Ryan had answered. "I won't listen to it. I won't 
let you speak of it in front of the children."
  
  "I don't want to talk about it in front of the children," Aunt Gifford had said, her 
jaw trembling. "I don't want the children to know! Keep them away from that house, I'm 
begging you. I've been begging you all along."
  
  "Like it's my fault!" Uncle Ryan had whispered. Poor Uncle Ryan, the family lawyer, the 
family protector. Now that was a fine example of what conformity could do to one, because 
Uncle Ryan was in every respect a super-looking male animal, of the basically heroic 
type, with square jaw, and blue eyes, and good strong shoulders and a flat belly and a 
musician's hands. But you never noticed it. All you saw when you looked at Uncle Ryan was 
his suit, and his oxford-cloth shirt, and the shine on his Church's shoes. Every male at 
Mayfair and Mayfair dressed in exactly this fashion. It's a wonder the women didn't, that 
they had evolved a style which included pearls and pastel colors, and heels of varying 
height. Real wingdings, thought Mona. When she was a multimillionaire mogul, she would 
cut her own style.
  
  But during that argument in the hallway, Uncle Ryan had showed how desperate he was, 
and how worried for Michael Curry; he hadn't meant to hurt Aunt Gifford. He never did.
  
  Then Aunt Bea had come and quieted them both. Mona would have told Aunt Gifford then 
and there that Michael Curry wasn't going to die, but if she had she would have 
frightened Gifford all the more. You couldn't talk to Aunt Gifford about anything.
  
  And now that Mona's mother was pretty much drunk all the time, you couldn't talk to her 
either, and Ancient Evelyn often did not answer at all when Mona spoke to her. Of course 
when she did, her mind was all there. "Mentation perfect," said her doctor.
  
  Mona would never forget the time she'd asked to visit the house when it was still 
ruined and dirty, when Deirdre sat in her rocker. "I had a dream last night," she'd 
explained to her mother and to Aunt Gifford. "Oncle Julien was in it, and he told me to 
climb the fence, whether Aunt Carlotta was there or not, and to sit in Deirdre lap."
  
  This was all true. Aunt Gifford had gotten hysterical. "Don't you ever go near Cousin 
Deirdre." And Alicia had laughed and laughed and laughed. Ancient Evelyn had merely 
watched them.
  
  "Ever see anybody with your Aunt Deirdre when you pass there?"
  
  Alicia had asked.