Last Dance at Jitterbug Lounge

by Pamela Morsi

  The floor was so quiet that around the corner she could hear the elevator open. Then a whirring sound of electrically powered wheels commenced that she assumed was the movement of some big piece of hospital equipment.

  She was wrong.

  Turning down the hallway was Aunt Jesse in her bright pink wheelchair scooter. She caught sight of Claire and waved. She came to a stop in front of the glass door to Bud’s room, watched for a moment and then moved on toward Claire.

  Aunt Jesse was dressed in a knit pantsuit that still looked good on her, though it was about two decades out of style. The vivid purple color seemed coordinated with the pink scooter as if the latter were just another fashion accessory.

  Rising to her feet, Claire greeted the older woman with a congenial hug and a look of surprise.

  “What are you doing here so early?” she asked.

  Jesse shrugged. “I don’t sleep much anymore,” she said. “So I called Darby to find out how Bud was doing. He told me that he and Missy were in the break room because the doctor had called you and Jackie in. So I just got in my car and came on down to find out what was going on.”

  Claire gave her a quick rundown of what seemed to be going on and what the doctor had told them.

  The old woman shook her head. “Dying can be a hard job,” she said.

  “He may get better,” Claire assured her quickly. “They say the next few hours are critical.”

  Aunt Jesse nodded. “Oh, I’m sure they are. But we’re all old, sweetie,” she said. “We may get through this year, but then there’s the next. Not a lot of chances to get out of this world alive.”

  Behind her thick bifocals, Claire could see the woman’s eyes twinkling with humor. “Bud’s had a good life,” she explained. “He had Geri for most of that and J.D. for a lot of years. And you and your children have been a comfort to him, even so far away. I’m sure his regrets are few.”

  “I hope so,” Claire said. “He’s a good guy. He was always very nice to me. I have a few regrets, though. I wish we’d been here more. And I wish that he and Jack had been closer.”

  Jesse nodded. “Yes, that could have been a good thing,” she said. “I suspect you’re faulting Jackie for that, but it’s hard to know, really. Both of them are so alike. I think that blame has to be shared.”

  “Jack thinks that his grandfather kind of rejected him,” Claire said.

  “I suppose in a way, he did,” Jesse agreed.

  The old woman sighed heavily and retrieved a handful of knitting from her bag. It was a large cable pattern in a garish teal color. She held it in her hands at an uncomfortable angle as she peered through the bottom of her glasses. Her hands easily picked up the movements as Jesse, still carefully watching her yarn, picked up the thread of the conversation.

  “In the months and years after he lost J.D., Bud was hurting so badly,” she said. “I don’t think there ever was a father and son more at peace with each other than those two.”

  “It must have been horrible,” Claire said.

  “Yes, I think so. But then, in the darkest of times a precious little light came into the world. Once Jackie was born Bud just cast aside all the bitterness and anger and guilt he must have felt and poured all his love into the baby.”

  The clicking sounds of Aunt Jesse’s knitting needles was the only sound as the woman paused, choosing her words.

  “A child belongs with his mother and none of us would ever say one word to contradict that, but when Jackie went back to live with Toni, it was devastating for poor Bud. It was as if he’d lost J.D. all over again.”

  Jesse shook her head sadly and continued to knit. “I suspect that he deliberately held himself back some after that. There’s only so much heartbreak a man can volunteer for.”

  Claire sighed. “From the time I met him their relationship was so complicated. I’m just hoping that before Bud goes, it can all get simplified. That’s why I’ve left Jack alone with him in the hospital room. It’s the only way Jack seems comfortable enough to talk to Bud. I’m hoping that just by talking to him, Jack will manage to resolve some of the feelings he has.”

  “That’s a good idea,” Aunt Jesse said. “One thing I’ve noticed about men is they just don’t talk enough. Maybe it takes having one of them in a coma to carry on a decent conversation.”

  Claire smiled at the woman’s little joke.

  “And your explanation eases my mind, as well,” Jesse said.

  “How so?”

  Jack’s aunt abruptly ceased her knitting to turn and look Claire straight in the eyes.

  “I saw him in there and you sitting out here, and I was thinking that you and Jack couldn’t bear to be in the same room together.”

  Claire was shocked.

  “Good grief! Why would you jump to a conclusion like that?”

  Aunt Jesse shrugged. “Sweetie, it doesn’t take a mind reader to see that you two are going through a rough patch these days.”

  Too surprised to deny it, Claire questioned how anyone could.

  “Jack and I never argue in front of anybody, not even the children.”

  “That’s good,” Aunt Jesse said. “It’s terrible for the little ones. They can’t understand how a marriage can ebb and flow. Sometimes you’ll feel so close that even your breathing is synchronized. And sometimes it’s like two strangers living in the same house.”

  “Well, we’re not strangers,” Claire said. “But there are times when I can’t believe he’s the same guy I married.”

  “You were very young when you fell in love,” Aunt Jesse said. “You’ve both had some growing up to do.”

  Claire nodded but didn’t reply.

  Aunt Jesse took up her knitting once more. After a few stitches she spoke once more. “You’re worried that it’s less about growing up than it is about growing apart.”

  She shrugged. “It’s so strange,” she told Jesse. “I thought we wanted the same things, but more and more it seems like we’re working toward living in two different worlds.”

  “What’s your world like?”

  “Mine?” Claire hardly gave herself a moment to ponder the question. “It’s all about the kids. Our family being together. That’s what’s important to me.”

  “What’s important to Jack?”

  “His job,” she answered. “He wants to be successful and make a lot of money and live in a big fancy house so that everyone will know he’s successful and makes lots of money.”

  “Well, he has created his own business,” Jesse told her. “I think that’s something he should feel proud about. I’d bet he thinks all that money he makes has something to do with providing for the children.”

  “We created that business,” Claire said. “I worked as hard at it as he did.”

  Aunt Jesse raised an eyebrow. “I suspect a lot of people have forgotten that,” she said. “You miss not being a part of it.”

  “No, of course not,” she answered quickly and then added. “Well, sometimes maybe a little. I was glad to give it up. I love staying home with my little ones. I want to be there with them. I want to see every moment of their childhood. But I wanted to share it with Jack, too.”

  “So,” Jesse asked carefully as if sorting through some difficult formula, “you’re doing what you want. And Jack’s doing what he wants. But you’re frustrated with Jack because he doesn’t want what you want. And he’s frustrated with you because you don’t want what he wants. Does that about cover it? It’s all a bit confusing.”

  Claire chuckled self-consciously. “When you put it like that, it sounds so petty,” she said.

  Aunt Jesse nodded. “It sounds petty because it is,” she said. “Most of the trouble between men and women falls into that petty category. If there is anything that ought to be clear to you sitting outside this hospital room it’s that life is too short for this nonsense. Dig down deep inside yourself and find a way to be happy. Your husband isn’t perfect. He’s got the requisite number of flaws and blind spots. But if you do
n’t let yourself get past him not being what you’d hoped, you’ll never get to know him as he is. And that would be the real loss.”

  Bud

  The heat was unbelievable. I was not going to drown after all; I was to be cooked alive. What a great joke. To be stranded at sea, water in every direction and to die shriveled and dry. I reached for the metal can that held the raft’s water ration. I screamed out in pain as my muscles complained about the movement. The water was disappearing by the hour. I was limiting myself to near dehydration, but it was evaporating faster than I was drinking it.

  I wet my parched lips trying to remember how grateful I was for it and preparing myself for when it would not be there. I lay back down, closing my eyes, but the sun shone through the lids, I couldn’t block it out anymore. I couldn’t retreat into darkness.

  “Go away!” I screamed at the hated hot orb.

  The sun wasn’t answering yet. But I expected to have him talking to me very soon.

  I longed to be back in the sea. At least there, death was cool. If the sharks came to get me surely it would be quick. If I thought about it rationally, it was the easier way to go. But I couldn’t think about it rationally. I had become terrified of the thought of drowning. Terrified of the monsters that lurked under the surface.

  “God give me strength to kill myself,” I murmured to myself.

  It was then that I heard it. At first I didn’t think it was real or maybe at last it was God answering. The sound was not unfamiliar to me. I knew it from dozens of early mornings on various island bases. It was a plane overhead. And even without locating it with my eyes, I knew what kind of plane it was. The whim-whim sound was distinctive, a result of not synchronizing the propellers. There was a Japanese zero in the sky above me.

  I should play dead. I should play dead. I knew my duty. I knew what I should do. I should give him no reason to waste a bullet. I surely must look dead. I almost felt dead. I merely had to do nothing and he would believe I was dead. He would fly on and I would continue to lie in the raft until I was dead.

  There are times when right and duty are at cross-purposes. I was supposed to stay alive, to suffer to the last. But I didn’t want to suffer, I’d suffered enough. And my only other choice was to face the sea once more.

  That thought, that fear, filled me with strength that I’d not felt in days. I opened my eyes and pulled myself into a sitting position. I saw him then. The little plane was flying low, it’s one bright red dot on the fuselage easily familiar. As he curved around me, I shook my fist at him.

  “Shoot me!” I demanded. “Shoot me!”

  The croak of my voice was lost over the engine noise.

  What if he didn’t shoot me? He had no reason to. I was his enemy, but I was no threat to him. I had to make him shoot. I had to force him to kill me. I had no weapon. Only the water can. I grabbed it up and held it to my chest as if it were some strangely shaped tommy-gun. I made a shooting stance, forcing him to guess if the gun were real and raising the stakes if he were wrong.

  Immediately he turned and headed for me. The sound of the engine grew louder as he accelerated. He began firing his guns. And on the surface of the water pairs of fountains rose up out of the sea and came nearer and nearer. The whoosh of escaping air as a dozen bullets pierced the raft, the ping of metal, the splash of water, these were to be the last sounds that I heard. I was knocked backward to the floor of the raft, the sea was pouring in and over me. The saltwater didn’t ease my pain, it stung and burned me. I gasped as my head cleared. I realized I wasn’t hit. I was in the water and I wasn’t hit.

  I tried to scream. I tried to curse God. I could do neither. Beside me I heard J.D.

  I turned my head expecting to see him in the water. But he was not there. I was not there. I was in a hospital bed far away from the sharks and the zeros. And J.D. was sitting beside me. He was talking calmly and quietly. He was doing something, working on something and talking to me as he did so. I couldn’t quite see him but I knew he was there. That made me feel a lot better. He was so young and so full of life.

  Like the day he brought his new bride to meet us.

  They’d called us a couple of hours after they’d taken their vows.

  “We didn’t want a bunch of hoopla, so we wed at the courthouse,” J.D. had said. “In the judge’s chambers with his bailiff as our witness. No muss, no fuss, legally married.”

  Geri and I were both listening holding the receiver between us. She began to snivel a little bit.

  “Mom? You’re not crying, are you? Aw, please, Mom, don’t cry,” he said.

  “I’m just happy,” she assured him. “I’m just so happy. And the mother of the groom has a right to cry at her son’s wedding.”

  “Well, you’ve got every reason to be happy,” he told us. “Toni is the best girl I could ever even imagine. You are going to just love her.”

  “If you love her, J.D.,” I told him, “then we love her already.”

  For his sake, we loved her from that very minute. Though it was more than a month before he got around to bringing her home to meet us. I have to admit that she was not at all what we had expected. It wasn’t that she was fancy or looked down her nose at us. Toni was never like that. But she had grown up in a different world. She was, in her way, unflappable. Perfectly groomed and unfailingly polite, but her amiability seemed more studied than sincere. Not at all like Geri who gushed love from every pore of her being. J.D.’s choice was reserved and dignified.

  What she thought of us, I can’t even imagine. She never indicated, by even a look, that she was shocked by our plainness. But it was impossible for her to hide her unfamiliarity with the kind of life we led. As her story came out in dribs and drabs, I think we were able to appreciate how hard she was trying.

  Her mother, a frail young woman, had died of asthma when Toni was just a baby. Her father brought her to San Antonio and left her to be raised by his aging parents. Rather than staying with them, her father moved out to California where he remarried and started a new family. They only rarely visited. Her childhood had been one of pampered princess, the darling of her grandparents’ heart, much beloved. Then the old couple passed away within months of each other the summer she turned fourteen, and her father returned to San Antonio with his new wife. They took over the household and controlled the purse strings. The family had always been wealthy and prominent and her father and stepmother gladly stepped into those positions. With three growing children of their own, her new parents had little time or inclination to deal with a confused and grieving teenage Toni, whom they saw as spoiled, headstrong and rebellious.

  It was undoubtedly this behavior that caused their reaction to her hasty, courthouse marriage.

  “They hated me on sight,” J.D. explained. “They told her to break it off with me or she would not be welcome in their house. We love each other, so we decided to get married instead. That really miffed them. Now they won’t even talk to her on the phone.”

  The two laughed and joked about it as if family disapproval was a small thing. Geri and I shared a quick, worried glance with each other. But we only spoke about it in private.

  “As hard as marriage is,” she said, “starting out with your family against you is really getting off on the wrong foot.”

  I agreed with her. “I guess we’ll just have to be doubly in favor of them to try to make up for her folks.”

  That seemed like a good plan, but it hit a snag in the middle of the Sunday dinner table. The day was very warm for May and by any stretch of reasoning, we should have been eating out on the cool, screened wash porch. But Geri, undoubtedly for Toni’s sake, had opened up the drop-leaf dining table and had fancied up the meal as if it were Christmas.

  “So will you be going up to Colorado Springs with J.D. come July?” Geri asked casually. “I hear it’s a lovely town.”

  Toni glanced at J.D. He deliberately finished chewing his food and swallowed before he answered.

  “I won’t be going to Col
orado,” he told her. “The prep school doesn’t accept married men. Besides the Air Force has other plans for me this summer.”

  “What plans are those?”

  “It looks like I’ll be heading off to Vietnam,” he said.

  “Vietnam?” Geri sounded shocked. “There’s a war going on over there.”

  “It’s not a war, Mom. It’s a police action,” he answered.

  “Boys are being hurt and killed,” she said. “I’ve seen it on the news.”

  “That’s mostly army and marines,” he assured her. “I’m in the Air Force, remember. I’ll be up above it all. Best view of the war, right, Dad?”

  I think I managed a smile. I tried for one anyway. But my stomach was rolling so sickeningly I thought I might vomit. I set my fork on my plate. The meal continued for nearly a half hour, but I wasn’t able to force down one more bite. And I saw that Geri wasn’t eating, either.

  I walked the garden most of that night, worrying and wondering and finally deciding that I had to talk to J.D. I had to make him understand. I wasn’t sure that I understood it all myself, but I had to tell him more than I had so far.

  Getting a moment alone with J.D. was not easy. Toni never seemed to be far from his side. And that suited him perfectly. He could hardly take his eyes off her and he hung on every word from her lips. That was to be expected, I suppose, from a couple of newlyweds. But as each hour passed, what I wanted to tell to him got more complicated and my thoughts on how to explain my experience became more tangled.

  Finally, on his last morning at home, I got him to go out to the wood shop with me, under the guise of doing something about his treasure box project.