CHAPTER 19
"By the time we reached Mayfair Medical, I was a gibbering idiot in a bloody nightshirt"
He repeatedly tells them that the intruder was in the house, that Goblin had broken the glass and saved his life, and he can tell they think he's crazy. "They" here is Clem, Big Ramona, and Aunt Queen, though since I'm pretty sure AQ knows Goblin is real, it's just Clem and Big Ramona who probably think he's nuts. I just realized that since the cast is divided between the white family and the black staff, it pretty much makes it so only the white people get to have special ghost senses whereas the black people are all boring mundane sorts. Sort of the reverse of the "Magical Negro" trope, and the idea of black people as more connected to the supernatural/spiritual, and yet, somehow not better. Because, rather similiar to the lack of black vampires in Anita Blake, the trope is only inverted in order to exclude black people from the most interesting and privileged status within the story. Black people get to be magical and mystical when helping a white protagonist, but when the powers go to the white people, the black people have to be boring normies who can't understand. This isn't helped much when more white people get added to the cast, since those people (Lestat, Mona, etc.) are all magical types too.
Quinn is put on a gurney and taken to the ER. He has a lot of scratches and bruises and a headache from being slammed against the wall. Goblin is very concerned for Quinn and does not like what is happening, but Quinn tells him not to do anything or he'll make it worse.
A Dr. Winn Mayfair, "the proud scion of the legendary Mayfair family" and appears and "doctors and nurses" are "mesmerized" by him. It turns out that Quinn knows all about this guy because Lynelle told him for...some reason...and he info-dumps on his about where he was born, where he was raised, his job history, his relationship to Rowan Mayfair (who we know is an important character, she was the protagonist of The Witching Hour, but Quinn has never met and shouldn't give a shit about whether she resembles her cousin Winn in temperament and looks despite only having met him recently) and how he has a reputation for a quiet voice and Quinn can tell he's brilliant and attentive because Rice has a big thing about her characters just knowing these things about other characters in very instantaneous, unrealistic ways. This is called informed characterization, folks, don't do it. Especially if you can do better, which I know Rice can.
We also get a little bit of that ever-present ego with Quinn also telling us that Winn was roused from bed to see the "legendary boy prodigy who communed with the dead", despite there being no way Quinn could know that. I want to say it's just Quinn's smug assumption, but, again, I think Rice means for this to be objective fact. For the record, Rice's earlier work was actually really good about deliberately biased and conflicting POVs between viewpoint characters, or at least that's what a friend who is much more into the Vampire Chronicles tells me, and I trust her on this. She says that's actually what she likes best, trying to piece out what the truth is about the characters and the events. But Rice's later work, in what I've read of that, has pretty much gone the exact opposite from what it used to be in that department, with objectively correct protagonists who just know everything about everyone all the time. That's how I remember The Wolf Gift, certainly. Why this is, no one can technically know, but I think it has a lot to do with how crazy her ego has gotten as time has gone on...not unlike LKH.
During the examination, Quinn tells Dr. Winn what happened but leaves out the parts about Goblin. Smart move, Quinn. Winn confirms that Quinn's injuries couldn't be self-inflicted. Also, his touch makes Quinn tingle. A CAT scan shows his head is ok, brain injuries. He gets "a fairly lavish suite, consisting of a living room and two bedrooms." Oh, getting your own living room and two bedrooms in a HOSPITAL is just "fairly" lavish? What the hell kind of hospital even is this? And why does Quinn NEED this, he's just bruises and cuts, I doubt he's fixing to be a long-term patient. Also, a police officer is guarding the door, though I think that might be more to keep Quinn in than to keep other people out, given everyone thinks he's nuts right now and Dr. Winn hasn't had the chance to inform them otherwise.
AQ is at his bedside, and it distresses Quinn that she is still in her feathered negligee, because that means she hasn't had time to change in all this. This is actually a REALLY good little detail in showing us something about Quinn. It shows that Quinn is perceptive and attentive, that he notices little things like this and that he knows enough about Aunt Queen to understand what it means, and to care about that. This works so much better than just TELLING us how much Quinn loves AQ or how intelligent he is or whatever. it's done just in three sentences, it's not hammered in at all, it's not spelled out for us, and that's what makes it effective. It also makes Quinn himself sound a lot less smug than if he had spelled it out, since this is him recounting the story to Lestat so it's all coming from his own mouth.
Speaking of coming from his own mouth, he describes the stranger to him and says "He's an eccentric, I can vouch for that by the cut of his handsome black clothes and his long hair, but he's strong as an ox" and I just...I cannot express my exact problem with this, it's just such a weird, kinda nonsensical string of logic, as if him being an eccentric somehow conflicts with physical strength, I don't know, it just seems off.
He calls for Dr. Winn and asks him about Lynelle. Dr. Winn remembers her, and realizes "you're the boy she talked so much about" and tells Quinn how Lynelle loved him like she did her own children. Quinn asks if, after she lost consciousness in the accident, she never regained it before dying, if she never felt any pain from her injury, and Dr. Winn confirms this is the case. Quinn feels absolutely sure that he knows this man wouldn't lie to him ever about anything.
I don't like more of "Quinn just knows things about people" for aforementioned reasons, but this is another good way to show Quinn thinking and caring about others, that he remembered Lynelle's connection to this guy, and thought to ask him about this despite the crazy shit that had just happened to him, and this matter was important to him. This makes Quinn's care for and connection to Lynelle feel more authentic than anything else in this book.
Father Kevin Mayfair comes in. Quinn asks "What do you want me to say? They've probably told you all I've told them. They'v told you that Goblin rescued me. You know Goblin. Goblin comes to Mass with me every Sunday."
Father Kevin asks him not to be so scared, that's not the enemy here to haul him up to the Spanish Inquisition and that "Your housekeeper, Ramona, says she saw all this flying glass. If I'd seen it, maybe I'd never doubt the Almighty God again. Maybe the Devil can do that for us."
That's a pretty neat thought there. Quinn, however, retorts that it wasn't the Devil it was "an angry man, a tall good-looking vain man."
Thinking immediately of your attacker as "tall and good-looking" comes of as shallow/thirsty to the point of bizarre and unrealistic...and I'd be keen to known where Quinn is getting "vain" from here. Projection much?
Quinn insists, as I think he has to Father Kevin before, that Goblin isn't from the devil, and says there has to be another kind of spirit that isn't angel or demon. To Quinn's surprise, Father Kevin says he might be right. Quinn thinks about how "distractingly handsome" Father Kevin is, about his red hair and green eyes and "alert expression and the excellent proportions of his face, the shortness of the nose and the length of his full mouth". Well, better noticing that now than AT YOU FATHER'S FUNERAL I suppose.
Father Kevin explains that since coming to the South, he's run into so many stories of ghosts and family curses and so on that he's become a bit more flexible in what he'll believe, but that no matter where spirits come from, the Devil or inside or brains or somewhere else, he's sure that "spirits don't do us any good."
I gotta say, I love that being in the South is what made him accept the possibility of more beyond what's standardly accepted by the Church because, yeah, we're haunted as fuck. You ever been to Savannah? It's here in Georgia, and it's an old Southern town with all these old houses and hotels, and it's said to be the most haunted place in the USA. There's a story on every street, and for good reason, a whole lot of murders and mysterious death and stuff like that has gone down there. Hell, the first time I visited the place, a mass grave of slaves had recently been discovered under a street square. And the Voodoo priestess Minerva from "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil", which is set in Savannah? Like the drag queen Lady Chablis, she's real, her name was Valerie Fennel Aiken Boles and she passed away in 2009. Yeah, you've got your big cities like Atlanta, and your whitebread suburbs like where I live, but then you've still got places like Savannah...and I think being reminded of them is one of the things I really like about Rice's work. There's a definite spookiness to places like Savannah---their history, their atmosphere, and the degree that the people there genuinely believe in the supernatural--that Rice taps into at her best, and I find it neat how that's being textually acknowledged by a character.
Goblin is "agitated" and "staring at Fr. Kevin with a cold hate." Quinn warns him not to do anything, Goblin gives him a smile "as if to say, Don't you think I know better?"
Quinn tells Kevin that Goblin is here, that he saved him, he broke the glass, he isn't evil. Father Kevin tells him just to call him if he ever needs to talk, and mentions he's coming by Mayfair Medical a lot because "you'd be surprised what Dr. Rowan wants me to investigate" which seems a trifle unprofessional for him to mention to Quinn. Quinn of course asks what this is, Kevin says it's near-death experiences, specifically the whole "they see a bright light" thing. Quinn says he's read everything he can on the subject and believes it happens. I am not surprised to see this pop up; a theme in Rice's work from the beginning is the question of what happens to the soul after death, the spirit world, etc. I'm also not surprised to know that Quinn, given his own experiences with ghosts from his birth, would read up on this kind of thing, so it doesn't seem random and inorganic when Quinn brings this up despite never having mentioned it before.
They talk a little about this matter, and that comes around to Quinn telling he doesn't feel ready to go to Confession right now, or take Communion, and "sex is brand-new to me". Father Kevin says that "it's difficult at your time of life. I thought it was Hell when I was your age, and frankly I think so sometimes now" which I guess is his way of saying he struggles with sexual thoughts and desires too, especially since he then tells Quinn that priests go to Confession too, that they confess to other priests.
Quinn tells Kevin he likes him, Kevin says he has to be going and will see him this afternoon. Before he leaves, Quinn asks what to do when you see a ghost that means you harm. Kevin advises him not to talk to it, not to give it any attention, not to entertain it in any way. He then talks about how "what if Hamlet had never talked to the ghost of his father" and it feels kinda...unnatural, especially with how he says the play could be call The Damnation of Hamlet. Which he's not WRONG about, just...for me, the way he begins discussing it just comes off as an unrealistic dialogue choice, especially since he'd had pretty "normal" dialogue till now. Like, Aunt Queen saying it would make more sense, she's made references to stuff like that before (actually, she's specifically cited Hamlet too, if I recall right) but Father Kevin, it doesn't seem his style thus far. On the other hand, if he has talked to a lot of people who have had experiences with ghosts, which I think he has given what he says about believing in them now that he's come to the South, he's found this to be a good example to give people of why they shouldn't engage with ghosts...though, actually, how many people are gonna know what he's referring to if that's the case?
The priest leaves, and Quinn asks Goblin how the stranger got in his room in the first place. He gets no answer, and Goblin has a "grave" expression. Quinn asks why Goblin can't talk to him, and offers to get him some paper and crayons tomorrow so they can write to each other. Goblin shakes his head, sneers, and "looked cold and then angry" and tells Quinn he wants the computer. Quinn agrees, and as he's falling asleep, Goblin tells him "Anger makes me strong, Quinn"
I'd be way too piss-terrified to sleep after THAT but Quinn immediately drifts off. He wakes up, and Jasmine tells him she and Big Ramona have to go home because the manor is all booked up for the next two weeks (remember, they're a B&B) but that there are guards and she'll back when she can. Quinn responds by whispering "Kiss me" to her, then drifts into a dream where he and Rebecca are sitting on the lawn in "big wicker peacock chairs" and Rebecca says in a "rippling, rhythmic voice" which is a phrasing I really like:
"Oh, of course I'd like to live in a civilized fashion and pretend it all never took place, that he married me and made me mistress of this house and that my children would have been loved by him, and you know that you always had love, you always had love, you don't know what it means not to have love, and what if a child came from that union, would you love that child, the child you had with that colored bitch!"
Obviously, she means Jasmine, and I get we're supposed to hate her for being an awful bad racist person...and obviously, this is a racist thing to say and Rebecca is a racist, but, sorry Anne Rice, I'm not gonna hate her. While being from another time is not an EXCUSE for racism and does not make it okay, the fact is she's not saying anything that is in any way EXCEPTIONAL for her era either, and she's literally frozen, she's a ghost, so I don't expect her to be able to grow and change and alter her views or personality. I'm a lot more inclined to be judgmental of YOU the writer, because you pat yourself on the back as a liberal progressive (which she does, she prides herself on how Enlightened she is) while writing much more insidious racist dreck (seriously, I'll say this for people like Rebecca, they don't dress their prejudice up or try to disguise it) and trying to use blatant racism as both a cheap strawman tactic to make me hate Rebecca AND as a way to illustrate that racism is, of course, the domain of poor trashy people, not nice classy rich people like Quinn. I think I discussed this before, but Rice is a TREMENDOUSLY classist, elitist person, which comes out a LOT in her writing, and white people like that tend to assign racism as the domain of the lower classes, certainly not something THEY would ever engage in as they are far too Educated and Liberal for such things, and given Rebecca's background as a poor prostitute, I think that's why she's portrayed like this, not just because she's from several generations ago. I bet VIRGINIA wouldn't be like this, because she was the classy first wife who was a good mother.
Also, literally everything else Rebecca said is correct. Everyone loves Quinn, except for Patsy who gets treated even worse than Rebecca does, and is a character pretty similiar to her actually (evil trashy sexual woman with no ~class~) Quinn really has no idea what it's like to be in a position like Rebecca, and I can see why she'd be bitter now she's started to have contact with him and learn about his life.
Quinn wonders if Jasmine might indeed be pregnant but "I feared she'd be mean to me if I brought it up" That phrasing makes me sound about twelve but then again that...sort of fits, to be honest, Quinn's really never been outside the womb of his little world. He then thinks about how neither of them "took any measures" and that there could be a baby and the thought makes him "almost happy"
Quinn, no.
So many reasons no.
But I guess that fits Quinn too---he has no sense of consequences, and how could he, really? He hasn't been raised with any responsibilities or sense of consequence. And he's probably pretty woozy right now.
Suddenly he realizes he can't move his hands and awakes to realizes his wrists and feet have been tied. He starts to shout for help and Aunt Queen informs him they had to do this because he had torn the IV out, and that he'd also been very agitated, pushed the intern away when he tried to put the IV back in, and was talking out loud to someone. Quinn then goes unconscious, and Rebecca is waiting for him, pouring coffee amidst a bunch of flowers. He talks about the flowers, naming what kinds there are, and how much he loves the marguerites, and all I can think about is that scene from earlier in the book where he cares more about flowers than the lives of the two women being taken by him and Lestat.
Quinn tells Rebecca:
"You've got to find a way to get out of here. You have got to find a way to escape this place and go into the Light. God's waiting for you. God knows what's happened to you, he knows about the hook, he knows what they did. Don't you understand that it's God who's going to give you justice?"
This comes off as pretty preachy to me, especially given that Rebecca is a ghost and has been for a long time, ergo she knows a lot more about the afterlife than Quinn. Maybe she knows for a fact there isn't a God, or that the next place isn't so great, or that people who don't become ghosts don't go to another plane they just cease to exist, or that she's going to Hell, or who knows what else! I'm torn on whether this is meant to be presented as pretentious and stupid on Quinn's part or not. Given Rice's return to Christianity, and this theme showing up in her other books, of moving on to God in the afterlife, like when Baby Jenks died in Queen of the Damned, I'm going to guess Quinn is meant to be in the right here.
He hears someone telling him to wake up. Meanwhile, Rebecca says, "Why should I go when it's so nice here?" and tells him to look at the blouse she's wearing for him and her cameo and "Oh, I just love being with you" and you know, I bet she does, she probably hasn't had anyone to talk to in literal decades. She offers him more coffee and asks what he's going to do with all her old clothes from the attic.
Quinn hears someone telling him to wake up again, and he tells Rebecca the real question is what he's going to do with her and "I'm telling you, you're going to go home to God. We all do. It's just a matter of time."
The chapter ends there, leaving me annoyed with Quinn for mansplaining moving on to a ghost because seriously YOU DON'T FUCKING KNOW, QUINN, SHE'S THE ONE WHO'S DEAD!