Chapter 25 #5
“But you’ve done … this before?” It sounded judgy when I said it, and oh I meant it to be.
“I did it to support us after Meg was born. That’s how I met Flossy, before she started working for Priscilla, and then—I did it a few times after Garnett got me fired. I did it to take care of my daughter.” She did not sound apologetic; just matter-of-fact.
“But why? Charlie, why would you risk being sent back to jail or Ellisville after everything they did to you?” I asked. “Why would you risk it when it would mean never seeing Meg again?”
She leapt up and was in my face the instant I mentioned Meg’s name, her cheeks bright, enflamed. “Because if I don’t do this, I’ll never get Meg back. So you are damn straight I’d risk it!”
I stepped back from her, wiping her spit off my face with the back of my hand. My heart was beating hard. The surprise was, I could sort of see her point.
“I’m sorry,” she said and swallowed hard. “I’m sorry I screamed at you. Please just sit down and hear me out.”
Still shaking, I sat down but I deliberately put one of the chairs between us.
“I know.” She set her hands flat on the table. “I know you’re upset that I lied to you.”
“To all of us, Charlie. You lied to Mrs. Tartt. She’s down in Jackson, thinking this thing is gonna save her.”
“Because it can,” she said.
“What about your friend Flossy in there? She quit her job because you lied to her.”
Charlie blinked at me, looking amazed. A scar between her eyes had turned scarlet, a little flaming check. “You don’t have any idea how disturbing Priscilla’s is. The things that Flossy’s told me.”
I didn’t answer; of course I didn’t. Charlie tapped her fingers on the table, a faint drumroll for what she was going to tell me.
“Priscilla’s got a man who beats the girls if they try and turn down a john, she’s running a coat hanger factory in her basement for extra cash, she gets high on a needle every night, and she cheats them out of their pay so they can’t earn enough to leave her.
” I’d heard the term coat hanger factory before, and it made me think of a butcher.
“Flossy is not young. She would die there, broke and helpless.”
“I am sorry for Flossy, I really am. But that doesn’t change the fact that you are bringing prostitutes to work in Mrs. Tartt’s house.
” It just seemed inconceivable. “You convinced Mrs. Tartt to give her home over to this … enterprise by lying to her, so yes, you’re being real kind and generous to Flossy and God knows who else, but that charity is not gonna protect you from getting caught.
You have a criminal record, Charlie. Garnett Pittman lives two miles away, and she already wants to see you hanged. ”
“Yes, she does.” Charlie sucked on her teeth.
“But Mrs. Garnett Pittman thinks I’m still at Ellisville, serving my last three months.
If she knew I was here, believe me, she’d have already come after me.
” She looked down, breathing through her nose.
“And I know. I was very deceptive with Mrs. Tartt, but she won’t be involved or implicated.
And, in a way, that’s the beauty of it. Nobody in this town would ever suspect a brothel at Mrs. Tartt’s house.
The whole notion is absurd.” She let out a little laugh that unnerved me.
“By the time anybody catches wind of what we’re doing, if they ever do, it won’t matter because we will be gone. ”
“No one will catch wind of us because we’re not opening a brothel.”
“Birdie—listen to me, Birdie. There are a thousand college boys just down the road. Driving forty miles to get to Priscilla’s—” Charlie stuck her hands in her hair, then pulled out the chair I’d put between us and moved over to it, sliding the ledger in front of me.
“Look, you understand numbers. Numbers make sense to you, right?” She opened the ledger to where she’d left the pencil in the spine and tapped the page. “Remember when I said we could bring in fifty dollars on a good night?”
I shrugged. I didn’t want to look at what she was trying to show me.
“Well, I was wrong,” she said. “I think we can do a hundred bucks on a good night. In a month that could be six, maybe seven hundred dollars apiece. Short of robbing a bank, nothing else can earn us that kind of money. That is a small fortune for each of us. It’s a future.”
I wanted to let myself drift into those numbers, cling to them, pick through them. Instead, I picked up the deadly saltshaker Frances had considered pummeling her with and squeezed it to stay clear. “We are not doing this, Charlie. We cannot.”
“There are no jobs, Birdie. Your family is going to lose their house. But you’re—you’re just going to give up and let that happen?
” She flung her hands in the air. “Lose everything and sell this poor woman’s house so she can be miserable and you can take your miserable sister home and you can all be miserable?
And I’m supposed to just sit here and take it while Garnett does whatever she wants?
I have no way to fight her except to make money!
She has everyone on her side—the courts, the sheriff, everybody in this town, even the damn lawmakers—and if she gets her hands on Meg, she’ll send her to that …
that damn program of hers, which might be no different from where she sent me. ”
“Charlie, I agree Garnett is appalling, but I don’t see how she could just take Meg away from her new family. You can’t just go and kidnap Meg from her parents—”
“I’m her family! I’m her parents! Me, not them! And Garnett doesn’t get to play God with Meg’s future or mine. This money is the only way out of here, for both of us.”
Very quietly, I said, “Well, it’s not going to happen like this.
” I let go of the glass saltshaker and let it topple over, grains spilling on the table.
My head ached; I needed to deal with … so much.
I was already dreading the telegram I’d have to send to Frances.
To Mrs. Tartt, who lived her life with the highest of hopes every day.
“I trusted you, and you lied to me, Charlie. Why in God’s name would you think I’d go along with this in the first place? ”
She crossed her arms over her chest. She’d already gone to jail and the nuthouse and had the scars to prove it.
“Because there’s something odd about you.
” She did not say this nicely. “You’re kind to people nobody else makes the effort to be kind to.
” With that, she got up and went to her room, shutting the door hard.
“Thanks, Charlie,” I said to the empty room.
I couldn’t believe I’d been such a sucker.
I went out on the back porch to try and calm down.
The last of a blue dusk hung in the sky, and in the middle of the backyard lay the wooden dance floor Charlie and Flossy had tried to put together.
The platform was tilted, higher on the left than the right.
The black paint was peeling off and a few boards were so warped they’d been cast aside, leaving strips of empty spaces.
Around it, the cow had left patties all over the yard.
It looked nothing like Mrs. Tartt’s photographs.
What a damn shame that Meg would never know how much Charlie was willing to risk to get her back.