Chapter 38 #2
Now that the fraternity bacchanal was over, some Last Resorts started showing up.
Pimply-faced, in too-short pants and thick glasses, they were unmistakable as they solemnly passed me their dimes.
The first night they arrived, I saw Virginia duck down in the kitchen window so they wouldn’t see her and think the worst. When a greasy, heavyset one with his shirttail hanging out spotted Esmeralda, his eyes nearly popped out of his head.
As he and the other Last Resorts danced song after song, none brave enough to be the first to go inside, I smiled thinking of the elated letter I’d gotten from Mama this morning.
Asking what felt like hundreds of questions—how did you get the money, did Frances’s husband give it to you?
Nope, I thought. That scoundrel didn’t have a thing to do with it.
Though I suppose he did, leaving his wife and mother in the lurch like that.
And there will be more money coming, Mama, so maybe you won’t have to worry so much.
As I thought this, I heard a noisy flock of geese overhead.
A sign that summer would be over soon and in two and a half weeks the club would be too, less if it was up to me.
Charlie and I were still “negotiating” that.
As I watched the honking birds pass over the dance club, I remembered my father telling me once that geese flew in a V shape to reduce the drag of the wind and save themselves energy.
He’d told me that the birds in the rear honked at the leader to give him confidence, Godspeed; the first bird flew silently, determined to lead.
After almost ten dances, I watched Esmeralda finally tug the heavyset boy into the darkness, and the other three couples quickly trailed after them.
Like those geese, our premiere girl had managed to lessen the drag and made it easier for the rest to follow.
An unusually short while later Esmeralda’s boy walked back out into the yard. He flicked his greasy hair off his face, looking smug. I checked my daddy’s pocket watch: eight minutes. I reckoned that was all it took to become a man.
With over a week’s worth of lucrative nights under our belt, and three hundred dollars and change in each partner’s envelope, I would not say Charlie looked exactly relaxed yet—I’d swear I could still hear a high-pitched scream sometimes when she entered a room—but at least she kept her head out of the oven.
If half an hour went by without a customer showing up, she’d dig her fingers into the scars that wrapped around her wrists and stand by my table, staring out at the road.
I knew she was counting every minute until she could get Meg back.
As much as I’d grown to love Charlie, I was still in flux over what was the right thing for Meg.
If it’s in any way up to me, I prayed, please, God, show me what’s best for them both.
It’d surprised me to learn that helping run a morally corrupt, illegal brothel business didn’t exclude me from the rites of prayer.
If anything, I prayed more. I understood why Charlie did it.
Praying was more important than ever now.
In all this, I missed Jack so much that at times I fell into a febrile, silent panic.
We wrote to each other almost every day, and my legs felt long and lean from walking to the post office and back so often.
I had no intention of telling him we’d gotten the telephone hooked up, not with the way Ruby’s mouth worked.
I miss you terribly, he wrote.
He signed every letter All yours, J.
What was it about reading somebody’s handwriting that made you feel like you could hear his heart beat?
Or his voice in the hard slant of his consonants and curves of his vowels.
He had terrible handwriting. He told me that his ex-wife was being difficult, but he’d seen his son three times since he’d come back to Jackson. I hope you’ll get to meet him soon.
I hope I do too, I wrote back. Something I wouldn’t have admitted even a month ago. I used to believe high hopes would see your face in the dirt.
With Picador and Polly coming in now, the workload was more manageable. Polly’s way was to breeze right on past anything unsavory, like Flossy’s robe hanging open or Ruby showing off her merkin to the breakfast table. I did not slight Polly a bit for that.
Picador, though, was anything but oblivious, at least when it came to the wash, which seemed fair. With the kitchen being headquarters for both laundry and cooking, I heard everything.
“Nasty mens don’t even take they boots off in the bet-room?” Picador said, holding up another ruined sheet. “Miss Charlie, somebody need to make a rule.” Charlie, who had the never-ending task of mending rips in the sheets, nodded, and a rule was made.
“They’s another johnny stuck in the drainpipe,” Picador said when the washtub drain clogged up for the umpteenth time. “Miss Flossy, you put these here paper sacks in all you rooms for waste cans, or we gone ruin Miss Viktoria’s plumbing.” After that, no more johnnies stopped up the washtub.
I made sure the girls understood Picador and Polly’s legacy here.
Flossy was good about tipping them after a busy night.
Ruby was Ruby, tipping them each with “Don’t expect another cent from me.
” And the next night tipping them and saying it again.
Trixie and Dixie didn’t tip at all, but Esmeralda tipped more than enough to make up for the twins.
For some reason Esmeralda never tipped them directly; she always gave the money to me to give them, even if they were in the next room.
It made me wonder if maybe she wasn’t as freethinking, particularly around colored folks, as I’d thought she’d be.
Some afternoons, I’d see Charlie and Picador together out back, deep in conversation. They knew things about men, about children, about life that I didn’t. It was getting harder and harder to think about going back to Footely after this, especially without a job.
One of those afternoons, while I was stringing green beans on the back porch steps, they were smoking on the rail a few feet away. “That where them scars come from?” Picador asked Charlie, pointing at her wrists. I’d always wondered myself, but it’d never felt right to ask.
“State,” Charlie said, nodding.
“Law have mercy.”
As though it were an afterthought, Charlie said, “Ropes run cheaper than anesthesia, I guess.”
It took me a moment and then I shuddered all the way down to my bones. Mississippi’s new president of the Anti-Vice League, Garnett Pittman, had that done to Charlie. Imagine what she’d do to her now.
A few mornings later, Polly was outside running sheets through the mangle. I was waiting on the coffee to boil, thinking I might make another chicken potpie for supper, this time with, of all things, chicken.
“’Scuse me, Miss Birdie?” Picador said, coming over to the kitchen table.
“Morning, Picador, you need something?” It was still early and I was about half asleep.
“We was wondering, y’all got any news on Mr. Rory yet?”
“No, not that I’ve heard.” I’d told them about the mortgage and the bills, and that Frances had gone to Gulfport while Mrs. Tartt had stayed in Jackson.
Her forehead crinkled up. “We got a letter from Mr. Rory yesterday, with twenty-five dollars each for what he owe us. He say how awful sorry he was. I always knew he gone pay us,” Picador said. “I’s gone send it back to him since Miss Viktoria already pay us but he don’t give no return address.”
“Did he say where he is? Did you see the postmark?”
She nodded. “Yes ma’am. It’s marked Biloxi.” She sounded grave.
I covered my mouth with my hand, thinking it through. Biloxi was what—about twenty miles from Gulfport? Frances had almost been right.
“You reckon … you gone tell Miss Frances where he is?” She said it carefully.
“I—” It hadn’t occurred to me not to. “Guess so.”
She nodded. “You spec Miss Frances gone come straight home soon as she fine him? Toting Miss Viktoria home wif her?”
Picador’s wheels were turning faster than mine this morning. “That would … probably be the case, yes,” I said.
“I know you want what’s best for your sister and Miss Viktoria … to help them fine Mr. Rory.” She spoke slowly, I assumed for my benefit. “But getting that note paid fo she come home. That seem like a real nice thing to do too.”
This was a real murky area we were wading into. Swampy water. But she was right. Our eyes locked. Picador nodded slightly, and I nodded back.
“I’ll probably … wait a bit, then, before I tell my sister,” I said. “Maybe I’ll send them some money, to make sure they’re comfortable.”
“That sound like a good thing to me. What you want me to do with the money what Mr. Rory send?”
“You and Polly keep that,” I said. “I’m sure that’s what Mrs. Tartt would want.”
Dear Birdie,
I wish you were here. There’s something I haven’t told you but I need to tell you now.
For a while now, my wife has been trying to reconcile our marriage and this is why she’s been refusing to move forward with the divorce proceedings.
I realize I should’ve told you this sooner.
Last night, she joined my son and me for dinner and afterwards, she asked me to move back into the house.
“What’s that?” A car had stopped alongside me on North Lamar.
“Said do ya need a ride, ma’am? I’m headed thataway.”
“No … thank you,” I said. My heart was frozen in place. I went back to the letter.
She said that Sam needs a family. He’s sixteen and he’ll be going off to school next year and this is my last chance with him.
What she said is true. Soon he’ll be living his own life, and I feel like my time with him is precious.
I’ve been away so much for work the past five years.
And Birdie, I don’t want to cause her pain, but I told her I did not want to reconcile.
I told her that I’d fallen in love with someone else.