“We should find an Elvis concert to go to,” she said.
“But he’s in the army now,” Charlotte said.
“Maybe when he gets out, then.”
“You would do that?”
“Why not?” Bessie raised her mint julep. They clinked.
“I could ask Julia to stay with Max.” Charlotte sounded excited.
“Or Charles could come over that night.”
“Maybe Gail will want to go with us,” Charlotte said.
Was Gail an Elvis fan? Why didn’t Bessie know this simple fact about her daughter, her only child? What the hell kind of mother was she?
“Maybe,” Bessie said. “If she’s not in college by then.” Hanging out with the colored students, maybe even dating some of them. She took another sip. “Let’s not wait for Elvis. Who else would you like to see?”
A sly smile lit Charlotte’s face. “Harry Belafonte. But I don’t think he performs in the South. We might have to go to New York.”
Again, Bessie raised her glass. “To New York, then.”
And here came Julia with more mint juleps. “You ladies ready for the birthday cake?”
“Why not?” Charlotte said.
Bessie glanced at her watch. A little after two. Marcie’s mother wouldn’t drop Gail off until four.
“Ab-so-lute-ly,” she said.
Maybe she shouldn’t have driven herself home that afternoon, but she did. And when she stopped beside the mailbox, what was lurking inside? A blue envelope, addressed to Gail.
Bessie didn’t read Hanna’s letter. She wasn’t that far gone. She simply took it upstairs and put it in a dresser drawer, promising herself that she’d decide later what to do with it. When she was thinking more clearly. Had a few more wits about her.
Parallel Lives
Virginia Beach, Virginia, and Washington, DC, 1964
AT CLUB NEPTUNE, THE DECOR was blue and the rules were simple. Customers who’d had their hands stamped at the door could order bottled beer. Those without stamps were between eighteen and twenty-one and could have draft (3.2) beer only. It was okay to meet a customer after work, but a waitress who sat down at a table with one would be fired. Everyone bussed her own tables and emptied the ashtrays.
It’s not a nightclub, Gail had told her parents; it’s a restaurant with live folk music. Some weeks that was true. Below the stage was a small dance floor. Sometimes people danced.
On this Tuesday in August, her summer of waiting tables in Virginia Beach nearly over, Gail had learned the bad news from the marquee above the front door. The Platters had canceled. Some group called the Philly Five was filling in.
Now, as the Philly Five took the stage, she heard much grumbling about the obvious: they weren’t the Platters. But then the man at the piano began singing “Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen,” with a young white boy cutting in from time to time on trumpet. Together they sounded so much like Louis Armstrong that people started paying attention.
Including Gail. Balancing the heavy tray on her left shoulder, she stared at the piano player. The longer she stood there, the more certain she was, even though she’d never seen Del in person before. There had been photographs—the ones on his record album and the mug shot of him in the Knoxville newspaper.
Del would surely know where his daughter was. He could give her Hanna’s address.
Her hands shaking, Gail managed to set the tray down on an empty table. Was it Del? She continued to stare.
After a series of minor chords, the piano player sang a bluesy solo. And Gail knew.
Ain’t touched a keyboard since November
Nothing to write with, just have to remember
Lie here in jail, playing the air
Making up verses I’m not ready to share
Truth is, I didn’t kill him
Truth is, I wish I had
He messed up my wife
Messed up our life
I sent her away
She left the next day
Truth is, I didn’t kill him
Truth is, I wish I had
Got some ideas but
Keeping my mouth shut
Safer that way
Better not say
Truth is, I didn’t kill him
Truth is, I wish I had
Whoever did it left a sign
Used a tire iron, coulda been mine
But I’m not the man
With blood on his hands
Truth is, I didn’t kill him
Truth is, I wish I had
Oh, that white man, put my wife through hell
Oh, that white man, put my wife through hell
He’s the one belongs in this jail cell
During intermission, Gus, Club Neptune’s manager, asked Gail to take a tray loaded with hamburgers and fries backstage. “Aren’t you too shy to wait tables?” he’d asked back in June. “Knock first,” he said now.
Would Del even know who she was? What should she say to him?
But the dressing room’s only occupant was grossly overweight. He’d stripped down to a sleeveless undershirt and gold boxer shorts and was sitting in front of a mirror. “Just set it here.” He patted the counter in front of him.
What stopped her wasn’t the color of his skin. Never before had she approached a strange man in his underwear.
“I said put it here, little lady.” He slapped his hand down on the counter. “I don’t bite.”
“Where’s Del Norris?” Gail asked.
“Those burgers aren’t Del’s; they’re mine.” Again he slapped the counter. “Leave ’em right here.”
Gail set the tray on a chair and retreated. A deep cackle followed her out the door.
Gus was waiting near the dance floor. “Uh-oh. What did they say to you?”
“It was only one of them.”
“Should I send someone else next time?”
“Someone male,” she said.
The following afternoon, the front door was still locked, so she went around back and climbed the wide metal steps to the kitchen. Roosevelt, not yet wearing his white jacket and chef’s hat, was cleaning the grill. His hair, she was surprised to see, was even grayer than her father’s.
“Hi, Roosevelt.” She felt like an intruder.
Startled, he turned around, spatula raised like a weapon. “Lord have mercy, girl. You scared me half to death. What you doing here so early?”
All humans were colored. Gail, with her summer sunburn, was strawberry ice cream, Roosevelt a glass of strong iced tea.
“I wanted to ask a favor,” she said.
“What kind of favor?”
“The Philly Five? I know the piano player. His daughter’s a good friend of mine. She promised to write to me after they moved away to Philadelphia, but she never did.”
“Maybe she had a reason.”
“I’d sure like to know what it is. We grew up together. She always kept her promises. I was wondering if you could ask him for her address.”
“Why don’t you ask him yourself, if you know him?”
“We’ve never actually met,” she said. “It’s a long story.”
“Most stories are.” Roosevelt found a pencil and an order pad. “Now, I’m not promising anything, but go on and give me their names.”
“Del Norris. His daughter’s name is Hanna.”
“And, Gail, what’s your last name?”
“Madison.”
“Will Del Norris know who Gail Madison is?”
“I’m not sure. My father was his lawyer.”
“Criminal lawyer?” Roosevelt said.
“In Del’s case, yes.”
“Your father get him off?”
“All he had to do was prove Del was in Memphis when the homicide occurred.”
“Murder.” Roosevelt grimaced. “So he spent time in the slammer.”
Gail nodded. “Couldn’t post bail.”
“You never met the man, but you call him Del?”
“His wife us
ed to work for us,” Gail said. “I guess I never heard him called anything other than Del.”
“Mrs. Norris was your family’s maid, you mean.”
Again Gail nodded.
“I had a white friend once,” Roosevelt said. “We used to go fishing in the James River. Long about the time we turned ten, he suddenly had other things to do. I think his father was behind it.”
What could she say to convince him? “Hanna and I were more like sisters.”
Roosevelt’s expression was hard to read.
“Never mind,” Gail said. “It’s not that important.”
“It’s so important you came in early just so you could ask me.” He folded the order slip and put it in his pocket. “Most of that group go out to their van at intermission. I’ll try to take my cigarette break then.”
Was Roosevelt his first name or his last? “Should I be calling you Mr. Roosevelt?”
That made him laugh. “Roosevelt’s more like a stage name. What the police call an alias.”
“Then what’s your real name?”
“A man needs his secrets.”
“Thank you, Roosevelt.”
“Don’t thank me till you got something to thank me for.”
After intermission, Roosevelt beckoned to her when she entered the kitchen. He said Del had written something down but then changed his mind. “He sure is cautious. Wants to give it to you himself.”
“When?” Gail said. “How?”
“Guess you just have to ask him.”
For the rest of the night, she tried to keep one eye on the stage. Tried to keep from sloshing beer all over her tray.
The Philly Five began wrapping up while she was distributing six full mugs to a table of UVA frat boys. Hardly caring if Gus was watching, she left her tray on the table and hurried to the stage.
But Del had already left. The overweight man was putting away a bass guitar. “Del Norris?” she called up to the trumpet player, who nodded and disappeared.
Soon Del was staring down at her. He didn’t speak, just raised his eyebrows.
“I’m Gail Madison.” Her throat was so tight, the words came out as a whisper. She tried again. “I’m Gail. Hanna’s friend?”
“Your parents know you’re working in a place like this?”
So are you, she felt like pointing out. “I was wondering if you could give me Hanna’s address.”
“I might have a phone number. In Philly. If you are who you say you are. What are your parents’ names? Where do they live?”
Gail told him what he already knew.
“Your father’s a good man.” From his pocket, Del withdrew a tightly folded piece of paper. But the quiz wasn’t over yet.
“What’s Hanna’s mother’s name?”
“Sophie.” Gail’s other mother.
At ten o’clock the next morning, from the kitchen wall phone in the house she and three of her William & Mary classmates were renting, Gail dialed the number Del had given her. But no one answered in Philadelphia. Same story at noon. And at three.
When she tried again at five, Davis came into the kitchen, combing her long black hair. It was Davis who’d heard, back in May, that Club Neptune was hiring waitresses. The phone was in her name, as was the three-month lease for the house on Atlantic Avenue.
“Don’t worry,” Gail said. “I’ll log the call if anyone ever answers.”
“You look a lot more worried than I am,” Davis said. “Who’re you trying to reach?”
“A friend from home.” She liked Davis but was reluctant to confide in her. William & Mary, like the schools Gail had attended in Knoxville, was lily-white. There had been a black student in one of her sociology classes, but he hadn’t returned for another semester.
“Problems?” Davis was all business, all the time; she planned to be a CEO. Their other housemates, the twins, Marsha and Maria, were more easygoing and, like Gail, had no idea what they’d do after graduation.
“Won’t know till I talk to her,” Gail said.
On Saturday, a certain sailor named Patrik ordered his usual mug of draft beer. Horse piss, he called it. The night Gail had met him, he’d driven down with a buddy. Now he usually came alone.
Two years younger than she was, Patrik was taking top-secret classes in nuclear power at the US Naval Training Center, Bainbridge, in Port Deposit, Maryland. If he graduated, he’d end up on a nuclear submarine, probably in the South China Sea.
What was Port Deposit a port on? she’d asked that first night. His answer, the Susquehanna River, gave her goose bumps. Hanna’s full name.
“You free tonight?” Patrik flashed his bad-boy, Steve McQueen smile and tugged at a belt loop, revealing the bathing suit under his jeans. “Want to go swimming?”
Hours later, as Patrik waited in his blue Willys Overland jeep, his pride and joy, Gail went inside to change. Davis and the twins had dates. The house was empty.
It was two fifteen on a Sunday morning. Too late to call, but she tried the number anyway. This time, a familiar voice answered in Philadelphia.
“Sophie?” she managed. “Is it really you? This is Gail.”
“Gail? Gail Madison? Is something wrong?”
“No.” Gail tried to steady her voice. “I’ve been trying to reach you for days. Sorry to call so late.”
“I just got home. Been working double shifts at the hospital.”
Gail wanted to picture her wielding a thermometer, but, given Sophie’s sixth-grade education, what seemed more likely was a mop. “Is Hanna there?”
“Hanna’s down in DC. How’d you find me?”
“Del. I’m waiting tables at the club where he’s performing.”
“In Richmond?”
“Virginia Beach.”
“Never could keep track of that man.”
Gail got to the point. “Why didn’t Hanna ever write to me?”
“She did write. Several times. You never wrote back.”
“After you all moved to Philadelphia, I never heard a word from her.”
“You might want to ask your mother about that.”
Behind these soft words, Gail sensed Sophie’s sly smile.
“I tried to reach Hanna by phone,” Gail went on. “Information had a listing for a D. Norris in Philadelphia, but the woman who answered had never heard of Del. Or you.”
“We lived with my sister the first three years,” Sophie said.
“So, how is Hanna?”
“Far as I know, she’s fine. Doesn’t call home all that much.”
The round-shouldered Frigidaire purred into action. “You think Mother intercepted Hanna’s letters to me?”
“Now, don’t be too hard on her,” Sophie said. “She wrote a letter of recommendation for Hanna. To Howard University.”
Hanna was at Howard? Gail’s mother knew this but had never said a word?
During the three years Gail had spent in Williamsburg, her long-lost friend had been only hours away. Why hadn’t this possibility ever occurred to her?
“So, Hanna called my mother, but she wouldn’t call me?”
“No one called your mother. Del called your father and asked him to write the letter, but somehow your mother did it instead. Because of her, Hanna got a scholarship.”
Gail’s mind was racing. Did Howard accept white students? Would she have been welcome there? “Okay if I get in touch with Hanna?”
“All I have’s a work number.”
Barely able to hold the pencil, Gail wrote down the phone number for Casey’s, a hotel coffee shop in DC. “Thank you so much, Sophie. I miss you. Bye for now.”
She replaced the magical receiver. Tucked the precious phone number away in her wallet. Changed from the sleeveless blue dress that was her waitress uniform into her bathing suit. Remembered to log the phone call to Philadelphia, then floated out into the glorious night, to kindhearted Patrik, who would surely give her a ride up to Washington, or at least part of the way.
What did one wear to a reunion with a
n old friend in the nation’s capital? Gail chose a gray skirt and a peach-colored blouse, then decided she looked like a robin, but before she could change, Patrik was at the front door.
Davis and Maria were fast asleep. Or maybe it was Marsha who was snoring and Maria who hadn’t yet come home. There would be no one at Club Neptune to answer the phone on a Sunday morning, so Gail left a note on the kitchen counter. “Please tell Gus I can’t work tonight. I’ll explain later.”
Patrik had a return ticket for the new Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel. Gail would’ve preferred a more direct route to Washington, but it was, after all, his car.
“We’ll cross the Chesapeake Bay twice.” He sounded excited. “First here in Virginia, and then in Maryland.”
“You must like bridges.”
“I pretend I’m flying.”
As they ascended a long span, buffeted by crosswinds in the open jeep, Gail did think about the Wright brothers, but eventually the jeep lost altitude and ended up in a tiled tunnel, where claustrophobia set in.
What was above them, the Chesapeake Bay or the Atlantic Ocean? Both, she supposed, all mixed together, like Hanna’s heredity.
They’d been best friends, even though the two of them were so very different. In junior high, Hanna had relished getting up onstage and belting out Billie Holiday songs. Or so she’d told Gail in rambling telephone conversations. Across town, in a different school, Gail hadn’t been able to stand in front of an English class and give a simple book report. Still, they’d had some things in common. Skepticism about the powers of a Ouija board. Exasperation when a Magic 8 Ball made the same mistakes again and again.
A final, curving span landed the jeep on the Eastern Shore of Virginia. Route 13.
“The number thirteen used to spook my grandmother,” Patrik said.
All Gail knew about his family was that they were Swedish. “Was she born in Sweden?”
“Minnesota, like the rest of us.”
“So you have brothers and sisters?”
Patrik groaned. “My brother’s a jerk, and because of him my sister’s a cripple.” Suddenly he accelerated, pushing the little jeep up over the speed limit. Lips pressed together, he passed a pickup truck loaded with corn.
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