Chapter 42 #2
“Not rude at all, very understandable,” I said, then, “Rory’s not coming home, is he?” I’d sort of forgotten about him.
“No.” That was all Frances said.
I opened a door that stood between Mrs. Tartt’s room and Rory’s room at the end of the hall.
The attic stairs were narrow and steep. The higher we climbed, the warmer and thicker the air grew.
Mrs. Tartt huffed and had to stop and rest in the middle, and then we reached another door at the top.
I opened it to a landing, where there was one door to the left and another to the right.
I’d cleaned and rearranged both rooms back when we’d first decided to bring in boarders, before I understood the bedrooms were the business.
Charlie’d moved their personal things up here too, so that helped.
In the back, a little bathroom connected the two rooms.
“You’re sure you don’t want to stay at a friend’s?” I asked one last time. “It’s pretty warm up here.”
“I want to stay in my own home,” Mrs. Tartt said firmly. She went into the little white bedroom on the left, the old iron bed Mr. Fauster hadn’t bought already made up. A small single window faced the front yard but it had been painted shut.
That put Frances in the room on the right, which had been Rory’s nursery. It had a single daybed in the corner and a ceiling fan. On the bare floor was a wooden box of old toys and a built-in bookcase with some baby books. The room smelled musty, sort of like the orphanage.
“Maybe you wouldn’t mind bringing an electric fan up?” Mrs. Tartt asked from her room.
It felt definite now; they were staying. Even if we declared ourselves closed, cars full of loudmouthed boys and men would still show up here tonight, demanding service—and tomorrow night and the night after that and the next. “Yes,” I said. A fan would help drown out some of the noise at least.
Mrs. Tartt climbed on top of the white coverlet and lay back with a groan. Frances just stood in her room, staring at the daybed in the corner.
“You need to lie down now, Franny, get some sleep.” Please. I went in and hit the switch for the ceiling fan, which made a nice whir.
“Birdie, it was so awful seeing Rory in jail,” Frances said. “And when he—” She shut her eyes, and while I badly wanted to know when he what?, that had to wait.
“I want to hear everything, I do, but Franny, you are so tired right now.” I said it like I was her hypnotist. I had to talk to Charlie—we had to shut this place down. I moved Frances by the shoulders to the bed. She was strangely pliable and even let me push her back so she was lying down.
“But I don’t want to go to sleep yet,” she whined, trying to sit up. “I have so much to tell you.”
“It’ll keep. Now, Franny, do as your big sister says, alright?”
She sighed and lay back down.
“Y’all stay up here, you don’t need to come all the way down. I’ll be right back up with your things and something to eat and drink, and I’ll keep checking for anything you need.”
When I got downstairs, Charlie was on the telephone, still trying to find an open room somewhere. The White Hotel, Mrs. Lamar’s boardinghouse, the Guyton’s, they were all booked up. Charlie said, “Silva said this homecoming’s drawing every alum in the state.”
“Keep trying, I’ll be back,” I said. I set yesterday’s vegetable soup on the stove and ran their other suitcases upstairs and then a pitcher of iced tea with iced glasses, clean towels, soaps, magazines from Flossy’s pile, two decks of Mrs. Tartt’s cards, and two electric fans, the more noise the better.
Customers were gonna start showing up here at five, just a few hours away.
We couldn’t call and tell them not to come—these men didn’t use their real names or give telephone numbers.
I wanted to swipe Ruby’s Little Fella radio, but it was in her room.
I’d get it later, and if Ruby murdered me, well, then it would solve many of these problems. If she didn’t, I’d go to town and buy one with my own money tomorrow.
I took the brass bell off the cow and tied it to the door handle at the top of the landing. I told Frances to ring it if she needed anything.
Mrs. Tartt was running a bath in the little water closet now. Better if she slept hard tonight while I tried to explain to angry customers there’d be no Ruby Slipper specials or knee jobs or tangos for sale ever again. Frances rolled over and looked like she might go to sleep.
My legs ached from climbing all those flights of stairs. I leaned on the rail down in the grand hall and racked my brain for ways to keep customers from showing up. I had a few ideas, not great ones. Most involved the electric prod pole or a lot of signs that said Closed.
Charlie walked into the hall just as the bell clanged upstairs. We both looked up.
“Birdie? ”
Frances was calling my name from the second floor. Then her feet were padding down the main stairs. Charlie gave the staircase a look so sharp it could’ve cut hair. “I’ll be in the kitchen,” she said.
I met Frances at the bottom stair. She’d put on a pink nightgown and leaned her head on my shoulder. “I’m so tired, but I can’t sleep.”
“I’m sorry, Franny.” For so many things. “If you’ll go back upstairs, I’ll come rub your feet.” Behind me, the telephone rang. “Ignore that.”
“But it might be for me.” She slipped past me and snatched it up. “Hello?”
“Don’t, Frances, give me that—” I tried to grab it out of her hand, but she dodged me.
Her tired eyes blinked brighter. “I’m sorry?” she said, and scrunched up her forehead, then whispered to me, “What’s a Ruby Slipper special? Is that for the club?”
I pried the receiver from her hand and said, “We’re not taking any more appointments,” and hung up.
“Why not?” Frances asked.
“Because we’re not opening tonight.”
“Why not?”
“Because you’re home and you’re tired and it’ll be so noisy.” It hadn’t occurred to me yet that if we didn’t open, I’d have to explain that too. Overhead the girls were probably going stir-crazy in their rooms.
“Don’t turn down money on account of us,” Frances said.
She seemed fully awake now and suddenly interested in our business.
“I mean, it’s still completely mortifying, but we’ve got to get the mortgage paid.
And where are these boarders anyway, asleep?
It’s past two in the afternoon.” She wrinkled her nose as if she never slept in.
I was shaking my head. “You don’t want to meet them right now, you look terrible.”
“I’d at least like to know who’s staying in my room.”
I needed her to go upstairs and stop asking questions, and there was only one way to do that. I planted my hands on both her arms. “Right now, all we need to talk about is you, Franny. Everything you’ve been through these past weeks.”
She went limp in the neck, her concern for something besides herself dried up again. “It was so hard, Birdie,” she said, her face crumpling. Thank God Frances was still Frances.
“Let’s get you back upstairs to take a bath first. It’ll make you feel better. We’ll talk after.”
I ran the tub for her, which was just a cold tap. I knew, mercifully, Frances didn’t want me staying in there, so I shut the door behind her. Mrs. Tartt had eaten her soup and put on her blue nightgown and was rummaging through her train case on the bed. She was so tired, she was swaying.
“What can I get you, Mrs. Tartt?” I asked.
“My heart pills. I have to take them at five, but I can’t seem to find …”
“I’ll look. You get in bed.” She climbed up and in, eyes drooping like a child, as I sifted through her things and found the bottle.
“I believe I’ll take two this evening,” she said. Good. They made her sleep like the dead.
When I went in the kitchen, damp with sweat, my legs noodly from running up and down the stairs, Charlie was leaning against the sink. She had her arms crossed. I hoped she was thinking of a way to make tonight go better than it was going in my head. I pulled the stool over and sat my rear on it.
“What do you think we ought to do?” she asked.
I took in a deep draft of air. “Post signs outside the house that say DANCE CLUB CLOSED and pray they leave.”
“And if they won’t leave?” Charlie asked. “If they pound on the doors?”
“We’ll make ’em leave. Ruby will. The only other idea I have is to open as a legitimate dance club, no upstairs business and try to explain to them.” Charlie was staring at me. It was irritating. “Will you say something, please?”
“The way I see it,” she said, tapping her foot on the black-and-white-checked floor, “is at least one of them is bound to figure it out, whether we open tonight or not, Birdie.”
I shook my head. “No, no, that’s not necessarily true. Frances is exhausted, and Mrs. Tartt will take her medicine and sleep. How can they find out we didn’t open a brothel if they’re dead asleep?”
“How would they find out we did open if they’re dead asleep?”
“That’s not what I meant—”
“Birdie, the customers are going to show up here all weekend, regardless of a sign on the door, and they’re going to be pretty noisy about it if they can’t go upstairs.”
Charlie, I realized, had already gotten dressed for work tonight. Under the apron, she’d changed into a black cap-sleeved dress with stockings and heels. Her dark hair curled at her jawline, and she wore crimson lipstick.
“What exactly are you proposing here, Charlie?”
She raised her eyebrows like she was surprised herself and said, “I think we should open.”
No sound came out of me at first. Until it did. “While they’re upstairs? Oh hell no.”
“We’ve got over fifty appointments on the books, Birdie. If we close, what reason will you give your sister and Mrs. Tartt that won’t make them suspicious?”
“That—that they’re tired and it’ll be noisy …” It sounded thin even to me.