Chapter 44
There was the usual scurry and ruckus before we opened, with Mr. Binny warming up on piano and horns blaring through the air, stopping, then blaring again.
Mrs. Tartt and Frances had already left for the picture show.
While I chopped ice in the kitchen sink, I could hear the girls upstairs getting ready, but when I tried to get out the back kitchen door it was already locked for the night, so I had to go find Charlie.
She was coming out of the parlor into the main hall.
“Charlie, can you unlock the kitchen door for me?”
Charlie frowned at something behind me. I looked back and saw Dixie opening the front door for somebody—she was supposed to ask before answering that dang door. Then I froze.
Oh my. He’s here. Now. Charlie must’ve realized who he was because she said, “We open in twenty-five minutes.”
Jack took long, wide strides toward me. He was not smiling. He was wearing the gray suit coat that was tight in the upper arms. I’d never been afraid of Jack, despite his size, but seeing him come at me like that, I braced myself. Inches away, he said, “What is going on, Birdie?”
Dixie trotted upstairs, and I heard Ruby bray a laugh.
“Can you please go wait for me out front and I’ll meet you—”
“No. Sit down. Here.” He turned me by the shoulders to the main stairs and pulled me down to sit next to him on the bottom step. “Tell me.” He sounded a little desperate. “Why would you write that letter?” His mouth was so close to mine I could’ve kissed it.
“Because it’s the truth. I can’t give you what you want.”
“Why would you say we’re not right for each other?”
“Because I can’t have children, Jack.”
A crease deepened between his eyes. “Well, Birdie, I can’t have them without you. So I’d rather be with you and not have children than not be with you and not have children.”
“But you could meet somebody who could give you children.”
“But I don’t want somebody else, I want you. I’ve never met anybody even remotely like you.” Arguable if this was a good thing or not.
“I just don’t see how it can work …” We could hear Mr. Binny tinkling the keys outside.
The girls would be coming down any second, and I thought better to end this now with me as the woman like no other, not the woman like no other who was running a brothel.
“I have to go back to Footely and take care of my mama and her mama. Somebody’s got to look after things.
” I wasn’t sure if Jack could understand that.
He’d left his wife and son for months at a time, sent to work for banks in Toledo, Little Rock, Oxford.
“You’ll be in Jackson and then who knows where they’ll send you after that. ”
He took my hand and pressed it to his left cheek and held it there. “One of the reasons I love you is that you’d never leave somebody behind like I did.” My heart ached at the words love you. It seemed too good to be true. I shook my head because this simply could not work.
“Listen to me.” He took my hand off his cheek but held on to it.
“My son’s decided to attend Ole Miss next fall.
He wants to play football, and I intend to stay close to him.
This time next year, I’ll be living here in Oxford full time.
Allison’s retiring so I put my name in the hat, and”—he shrugged—“they gave me the job to run Henry Tartt’s bank.
I’ll be in Jackson till then but coming back and forth a lot.
” He bit his lip and searched my face. “Didn’t you tell me your purpose in life was to drive your sister crazy? ”
I nodded. It was true. Except for the small detail that my sister never wanted to see me again.
“I would think to do that to the best of your ability, you’d need to come visit her here often.
We can make this work, Birdie. And the best part is, we’ve got a year to figure out how.
” I saw a flash of worry cross his face.
“If you need more time than that, I don’t mind waiting.
Unless this really isn’t what you want.”
“I want it,” I said. “Of course I want it.” It stunned me how fast I’d said that.
I leaned up and kissed him hard on the lips, not embarrassed at all by my own desperation.
I had found the one man in the state of Mississippi who’d be willing to put up with me and I better hold on tight.
“I guess we can try it.” As we sat on the bottom stair, three, four, five prostitutes were coming down, fully maked up and armored for the night.
Jack glanced at them and stood up. I stood up too.
Flossy, in the lead, was doing stretching exercises for her jaw; behind her, Trixie, Dixie, and Esmeralda descended in a single file, and as she passed, Ruby looked at Jack and said, “When I’m good, I’m very, very good, but when I’m bad, I’m better,” in a Mae West drawl. Jack looked puzzled as hell.
“Listen, I spoke to Eleanor at the bank today,” I said, trying to turn his attention away from them.
“I heard,” he said. At the end of the hall, Charlie opened the back door, and the music swooned louder. “I guess renting out rooms was a better idea than—are y’all having a party tonight?”
“The boarders give dance lessons in the backyard—but why would the bank dismiss the rest of Mrs. Tartt’s mortgage like that? After they put her through so much?”
He squeezed my hand. I had his attention again. “Mr. Allison should’ve spoken to Mrs. Tartt years ago about what was happening with her money,” he said.
That wasn’t an answer. “So … the loan really is satisfied? There’s no catch?”
“No catch. The bank dismissed what was left of the debt, except for one dollar,” he said in a clipped tone. “The bank doesn’t need to assume the upkeep of a big house like this that could take years to sell.”
“Did you make that decision?”
He thought about this. “It is … in my best interest that your sister lives in Oxford so you’ll come visit her.
To do that, she needs a house to live in.
” I wanted to wrap my arms around this kind man and tell him I didn’t need to torment Frances as a reason to come to Oxford, I’d come just to see him.
The telephone on the floor of the hall rang. Ruby backtracked, snatched it up, and barked, “C Club, whadaya want?” I knew what C Club stood for and it was not the Charlie Club. Whatever the man said he wanted made Ruby slam the telephone down.
I watched Jack watch this. His brow furrowed as Ruby hitched her titties up higher.
“You didn’t tell me you got a telephone,” he said.
“We try to keep the line open for the dance club.” We watched Ruby walk out the back door, rear end swishing. On her way out, she scratched it, with intent.
“You found these ladies yourself?” he asked.
“I—sort of. We had to take what we could get.”
The telephone rang again, twice, but then stopped. I’d swear I could hear things adding up in his head. “When you said you wanted to start your own business …”
“A bookkeeping business. That’s what I want to start, keeping books for other businesses to save them money.”
At the end of the hall, Esmeralda was casting her spell with her white rabbit foot.
She stuck it on the window ledge and went outside.
Flossy, the last to go, reached inside her dress and pulled out a tissue, blew her nose, and stuck it back inside the lining.
After she walked outside, we could hear Charlie calling out the rules, the girls calling back, “He’s a dead john.
” Jack’s forehead crunched up in, what—shock?
Disgust? “You are the most bewildering woman I have—” Here it comes.
He’s going to ask me if it’s a— “You really did all this to help Mrs. Tartt and your sister?”
“I did it … for a lot of other people too.” He stared at me, as if waiting for more. “We’re only open through homecoming, then it’s over. We’re shut down for good.”
“The busiest weekend of the year,” he said and whispered, “Smart.”
Did he know or didn’t he? I honestly could not tell. But still, I asked, “Does this … change anything? About what you … think of us?”
He took my hand again in his. He looked like he didn’t quite recognize me. And that he was teetering on the razor-thin edge of asking, What … have you done …
He shook his head and smiled. “I sure hope I can live up to somebody as brave as you are. Because I suspect I’m gonna have to put up with it for the rest of my life.”
I led him out to the front porch, and he said, “I’ll see you Sunday?” I nodded. He kissed me and walked to his car, gazing back at the house one more time, looking puzzled, then he blew me a kiss and drove away.
The sun was still sizzling well above the horizon when I took my seat at the telephone table.
We were in a true Indian summer. Behind me, the girls were waving O H Douglas funeral fans at their faces.
It felt like Mississippi’s last effort to spit roast us and eat us before fall, but a cool tingle kept washing over me.
Jack. I couldn’t believe it. I was so grateful.
This man I love actually wants to put up with me.
The customers showed up on time and most left smiling on this Thursday evening.
When the sun finally went down at seven, there was a collective sigh over the yard.
A cool breeze blew in, sending the ornaments swaying, and when Mr. Binny played “The Saint Louis Blues,” the cow mooed in her pen and made the oboe player miss a note from laughing.
In fact, everybody laughed. About half the customers were grown men tonight.
They did not look sheepish or ashamed as some others had.
Their grins were confident, lazy, as if, by damn, they’d earned this for themselves.
I wondered what their wives earned for their hard work.
I reckoned a peaceful night without their cheating husbands.