Chapter 24 #3
He looked stage left. I pointed to Donald, who was bent over his record player with the tone arm raised, ready to stick the groove. This time Donald’s father was going to know damned well that Donald had borrowed one of his big-band records, because the man was in the audience.
Glenn Miller, that long-gone bombardier, launched into “In the Mood,” and onstage, to rhythmic clapping from the audience, Mike Coslaw and Bobbi Jill Allnut flew into a jet-propelled Lindy far more fervent than any I had ever managed with either Sadie or Christy.
It was all youth and joy and enthusiasm, and that made it gorgeous.
When I saw Mike squeeze Bobbi Jill’s hand, telling her by touch to counterspin and shoot through his legs, I was suddenly back in Derry, watching Bevvie-from-the-levee and Richie-from-the-ditchie.
It’s all of a piece, I thought. It’s an echo so close to perfect you can’t tell which one is the living voice and which is the ghost-voice returning.
For a moment everything was clear, and when that happens you see that the world is barely there at all.
Don’t we all secretly know this? It’s a perfectly balanced mechanism of shouts and echoes pretending to be wheels and cogs, a dreamclock chiming beneath a mystery-glass we call life.
Behind it? Below it and around it? Chaos, storms. Men with hammers, men with knives, men with guns.
Women who twist what they cannot dominate and belittle what they cannot understand.
A universe of horror and loss surrounding a single lighted stage where mortals dance in defiance of the dark.
Mike and Bobbi Jill danced in their time, and their time was 1963, that era of crewcuts, console televisions, and homemade garage rock.
They danced on a day when President Kennedy promised to sign a nuclear test ban treaty and told reporters he had “no intention of allowing our military forces to be mired in the arcane politics and ancient grudges of southeast Asia.” They danced as Bevvie and Richie had danced, as Sadie and I had danced, and they were beautiful, and I loved them not in spite of their fragility but because of it. I love them still.
They ended perfectly, hands upraised, breathing hard and facing the audience, which rose to its feet.
Mike gave them a full forty seconds to pound their hands together (it’s amazing how fast the footlights can transform a humble left tackle into fully fledged pressed ham) and then called for quiet. Eventually, he got it.
“Our director, Mr. George Amberson, wants to say a few words. He put a lot of effort and creativity into this show, so I hope you’ll give him a big hand.”
I walked out to fresh applause. I shook Mike’s hand and gave Bobbi Jill a peck on the cheek.
They scampered offstage. I raised my hands for quiet and launched into my carefully rehearsed speech, telling them Sadie couldn’t be here tonight but thanking them all on her behalf.
Every public speaker worth his salt knows to concentrate on specific members of the audience, and I focused on a pair in the third row who looked remarkably like Ma and Pa in American Gothic.
This was Fred Miller and Jessica Caltrop, the schoolboard members who had denied us use of the school gym on the grounds that Sadie being assaulted by her ex was in bad taste and should be ignored, insofar as possible.
Four sentences in, I was interrupted by gasps of surprise.
This was followed by applause—isolated at first but quickly growing to a storm.
The audience took to its feet again. I had no idea what they were applauding for until I felt a light, tentative hand grip my arm above the elbow.
I turned to see Sadie standing beside me in her red dress.
She had put her hair up and secured it with a glittery clip.
Her face—both sides of it—was completely visible.
I was shocked to discover that, once fully revealed, the residual damage wasn’t as awful as I had feared.
There might be some sort of universal truth there, but I was too stunned to suss it out.
Sure, that deep, ragged hollow and the fading hash marks of the stitches were hard to look at.
So was the slack flesh and her unnaturally wide left eye, which no longer quite blinked in tandem with the right one.
But she was smiling that charming one-sided smile, and in my eyes, that made her Helen of Troy.
I hugged her, and she hugged me back, laughing and crying.
Beneath the dress, her whole body was thrumming like a high-tension wire.
When we faced the audience again, everyone was up and cheering except for Miller and Caltrop.
Who looked around, saw they were the only ones still on their fannies, and reluctantly joined the others.
“Thank you,” Sadie said when they quieted. “Thank you all from the very bottom of my heart. Special thanks to Ellen Dockerty, who told me that if I didn’t come here and look y’all in the eye, I’d regret it for the rest of my life. And most thanks of all to…”
The minutest of hesitations. I’m sure the audience didn’t notice it, which made me the only one who knew how close Sadie had come to telling five hundred people my actual name.
“… to George Amberson. I love you, George.”
Which brought down the house, of course. In dark times when even the sages are uncertain, declarations of love always do.
7
Ellen took Sadie—who was exhausted—home at ten-thirty.
Mike and I turned out the Grange Hall lights at midnight and stepped into the alley.
“Gonna come to the after-party, Mr. A? Al said he’d keep the diner open until two, and he brought in a couple of kegs.
He’s not licensed for it, but I don’t think anyone’ll arrest him. ”
“Not me,” I said. “I’m beat. I’ll see you tomorrow night, Mike.”
I drove to Deke’s before going home. He was sitting on his front porch in his pajamas, smoking a final pipe.
“Pretty special night,” he said.
“Yes.”
“That young woman showed guts. A country mile of em.”
“She did.”
“Are you going to do right by her, son?”
“I’m going to try.”
He nodded. “She deserves that, after the last one. And you’re doing okay so far.” He glanced toward my Chevy. “You could probably take your car tonight and park right out front. After tonight, I don’t think anyone in town’d bat an eye.”
He might have been right, but I decided better safe than sorry and hoofed it, just as I had on so many other nights. I needed the time to let my own emotions settle. I kept seeing her in the glow of the footlights. The red dress. The graceful curve of her neck. The smooth cheek… and the ragged one.
When I got to Bee Tree Lane and let myself in, the hide-a-bed was in its hiding state. I stood looking at this, puzzled, not sure what to make of it. Then Sadie called my name—my real one—from the bedroom. Very softly.
The lamp was on, casting a soft light across her bare shoulders and one side of her face. Her eyes were luminous and grave. “I think this is where you belong,” she said. “I want you to be here. Do you?”
I took off my clothes and got in beside her. Her hand moved beneath the sheets, found me, and caressed me. “Are you hungry? Because I have poundcake if you are.”
“Oh, Sadie, I’m starving.”
“Then turn out the light.”
8
That night in Sadie’s bed was the best of my life—not because it closed the door on John Clayton, but because it opened the door on us again.
When we finished making love, I fell into the first deep sleep I’d had in months.
I awoke at eight in the morning. The sun was fully up, the Angels were singing “My Boyfriend’s Back” on the radio in the kitchen, and I could smell frying bacon.
Soon she would call me to the table, but not yet. Not just yet.
I put my hands behind my head and looked at the ceiling, mildly stunned at how stupid—how almost willfully blind—I’d been since the day I’d allowed Lee to get on the bus to New Orleans without doing anything to stop him.
Did I need to know if George de Mohrenschildt had had more to do with the attempt on Edwin Walker than just goading an unstable little man into trying it?
Well, there was actually quite a simple way to determine that, wasn’t there?
De Mohrenschildt knew, so I would ask him.
9
Sadie ate better than she had since the night Clayton had invaded her home, and I did pretty well myself.
Together we polished off half a dozen eggs, plus toast and bacon.
When the dishes were in the sink and she was smoking a cigarette with her second cup of coffee, I said I wanted to ask her something.
“If it’s about coming to the show tonight, I don’t think I could manage that twice.”
“It’s something else. But since you mention it, what exactly did Ellie say to you?”
“That it was time to stop feeling sorry for myself and rejoin the parade.”
“Pretty harsh.”
Sadie stroked her hair against the wounded side of her face—that automatic gesture.
“Miz Ellie’s not known for delicacy and tact.
Did she shock me, busting in here and telling me it was time to quit lollygagging?
Yes she did. Was she right? Yes she was.
” She stopped stroking her hair and abruptly pushed it back with the heel of her hand.
“This is what I’m going to look like from now on—with some improvements—so I guess I better get used to it.
Sadie’s going to find out if that old saw about beauty only being skin deep is actually true. ”
“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”
“All right.” She jetted smoke from her nostrils.
“Suppose I could take you to a place where the doctors could fix the damage to your face—not perfectly, but far better than Dr. Ellerton and his team ever could. Would you go? Even if you knew we could never come back here?”
She frowned. “Are we speaking hypothetically?”
“Actually we’re not.”