Last Dance at Jitterbug Lounge

by Pamela Morsi

And when Dr. Van Brugge’s car pulled into our driveway, his dark eyes were as big as saucers.

  I wanted to cry just remembering it. Or maybe it was the music. The orchestra at the end of the hall was playing the sad, melancholy melody of “I Don’t Want To Walk Without You.” And the notes were filled with such emotion that I could actually feel the music in my chest.

  Wednesday, June 15, 10:02 a.m.

  Jack and Claire were seated in Bud’s hospital room. They’d been there for three and a half hours already. Wilford had called them just after 5 a.m. to let them know that the night resident had said she thought Bud’s death was imminent. They’d rushed back to the hospital as if their presence could really make a difference between life and death. He didn’t look so much different than before. The grayish cast to his skin seemed more yellow now and the whoosh of oxygen into his lungs created some kind of rhythmic bass tone rattle in his throat. They sat listening. Waiting.

  Jack didn’t have any feeling of isolation or of being alone. He was grateful to have Claire beside him. He could have gotten through it without her, but he was finally able to acknowledge that it would have been so much more difficult.

  But even the two of them weren’t on their own. In the three chairs out in the hallway family members waited with them. And in the lobby downstairs were a couple dozen more. They were there for Bud, of course. They loved and respected the old man. He was one of the few patriarchs left in their strange tribe.

  Jack also understood that they were there for him. Not that he had done anything to deserve that. It had nothing to do with how successful he might or might not be. It wasn’t anything he had earned by what he may or may not have done. They were there for him because he was family. And in this strange world where his father had come from, where his roots still lay, family was reason enough.

  Jack shook his head thoughtfully as he realized that his life so far had been like one of those optical puzzles. Someone shows you a picture and at first glance you see it’s a fish. You continue to believe it’s just a fish until someone else looks at it and says, “Oh, it’s a landscape” and suddenly you see it in a completely different way.

  His whole life he had tried so hard to fit into the Van Brugge family. His stepfather and stepbrothers loved him and cared for him. His mother adored him, but somehow he’d always been odd man out. He felt different. He was just not like them.

  His father’s family were virtual strangers. He didn’t know or understand them. Their curiously knit kinship and their apparent desire to live out of each other’s pockets was as foreign to him as some of the strange tribes Claire had encountered in Africa. Jack didn’t fit in here, either.

  But now, today, with Claire at his side, he’d glimpsed the picture differently. He was not the inevitable outsider of two different family circles. He was the connection that held a long-frayed bond together. He, Jack Dempsey Crabtree III, was the living evidence that his father had existed and that he and Toni had once been in love.

  Jack’s own children would never know Bud and Geri, and he regretted that. And he’d never known his father, yet he now realized how much J.D. continued to be a part of his own life.

  The door opened and Dr. Marchette and the R.N. on duty walked in.

  Jack stood and accepted the man’s handshake.

  “How’s it going?” the doctor asked.

  Jack shrugged. “Maybe you’d better tell me.”

  Dr. Marchette nodded and patted him on the back. “I’d like to examine him, if you and your wife could step outside for a minute…”

  Jack offered his hand to Claire and was pleased when she clutched it tightly in her own. Once outside the door, she turned to him.

  “You okay?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” he said. “I’m glad you’re here with me, Claire.”

  “Me, too.” She glanced down at the sketchbook in his hand. “You’re working on the Quiet Pool?”

  Jack nodded. “I figured out why the setting looked so familiar.”

  He held it up so she could look at it more closely. She studied it for only a minute.

  “It’s our backyard.”

  “Yeah, I think it is,” he said.

  He slipped his arm around her waist, hugging her close for a moment before they turned to the sitting area at the end of the hall. The three old aunts awaited them there, each with her own unique mobility accouterment. Aunt Sissy was wearing a bright purple muumuu. Jesse’s pantsuit was a designer item from two decades previous. And Viv wore navy trousers with a blue-striped short-sleeve men’s shirt.

  “Is he still with us?” Sissy asked.

  “Yes,” Jack answered. “He’s got a real bad sound in his breathing, but he is still breathing.”

  “’Course with that noisy equipment in there, I don’t suspect you can tell how much is him and how much is the machinery,” Aunt Jesse said.

  Jack nodded.

  “I really want to thank you for coming out here every day,” he told the three. “I know that you want to be here, but I also know how difficult it is for you.”

  “You’ve come all the way from San Antonio to be here,” Viv said. “It’s not so much of a struggle to drive a few miles.”

  “Viv says that ’cause she wants to brag how she can still drive,” Aunt Sissy claimed. “I have to be carted everywhere like a sad sack of feed. But I do think my kids feel fine about bringing me here. They think they can drop me off and if something happens, well, I’m already at the hospital.”

  “Just so they don’t start feeling that way about the cemetery,” Aunt Jesse joked.

  The three women giggled together like girls.

  Jesse reached up and took Jack’s hand. “When you get our age,” she said, “death doesn’t have to be so dad-gummed solemn.” Her words coaxed Jack into a small smile.

  “When we were kids,” she continued, “Daddy stored a lot of his stuff in a place we called Coyote Canyon. It was a good-size dump and sometimes he navigated it by ropes. He’d string two ropes across, about four feet apart. He’d walk on the bottom rope and use the top one to hold on. Do you remember that?” The question was directed to her sisters.

  “Lord, yes,” Viv answered. “He could access the whole canyon that way. I’ve walked those ropes a mile or two myself.”

  “I know you did,” Jesse answered. She turned again to Jack. “Viv was always tough and game for anything. But I was much more cautious and afraid of heights to boot. Those ropes scared me something fierce. I told Daddy I would never go across on them. And he was such a good man and so crazy about us girls, he’d never make us do anything. Which is why Sissy missed out on school almost completely.”

  “I never liked being shut into that place,” she defended. “And I learned enough to get by.”

  “But you know, I watched Daddy and Viv and Opal and Geri and Cleata all crossing on those ropes a million times. Just like walking down the street. They did it and didn’t think a thing of it. And one day, I needed to get a fender for an old Model T and I knew there was one on the south side of the canyon. It would have taken me nearly an hour to walk around and I just had more guts than I had time. I’d seen so many people I loved walk across on those ropes, so I just stepped up and made it across. It was a lot easier than I thought it would be and I never even bothered to look down.”

  The old woman smiled, remembering and then she gave Jack’s hand a squeeze.

  “That’s what I think death is like,” she said. “It seems like a very scary path. But once you’ve watched enough people go across, your turn seems less and less frightening.”

  All three women nodded.

  “Poor old Bud has missed Geri so much,” Sissy said. “It may be time to let him go.”

  Jack nodded. “I guess it is,” he said. “Of course, it’s not up to me.”

  “Oh, I think it probably is,” Aunt Viv said.

  Jesse shushed her sister and then apologized. “I told you how she is,” Jesse said. “She says what she’s thinking when she
needs to keep her mouth shut.”

  Jack was confused.

  “What are you thinking?” he asked Aunt Viv. “It’s not a question of pulling a plug on the old man. He’s not on life support.”

  Viv shook her head. “That’s not my meaning at all,” she said. “I just think…” She glanced over at her sisters and then looked once again at Jack. “I just think that you should kiss him goodbye and tell him that you’re going to be all right and it’s okay to go.”

  Dr. Marchette led the nurse out of Bud’s room and said only a couple of words to her before coming directly to the family huddle at the end of the hallway. He didn’t say anything that could be considered news. And he seemed almost apologetic about how long Bud had lingered.

  “The day he arrived, I honestly didn’t expect him to last the night,” the doctor said. “And every morning I see him on rounds, I think it will be the last. It has to be nothing less than the will to survive that keeps him in there day after day.”

  Claire noted to herself that he had not talked so pessimistically at the time. She didn’t know if that was revisionist history or sugarcoating for the family. But she was more inclined to go along with Aunt Viv. Bud continued to live because he still thought he had a reason to. And it very well might have something to do with Jack.

  Aunt Viv was at Jack’s side as he went in to sit with Bud. Claire sat down with Jesse and Sissy.

  “I’m so sorry Viv spoke out of turn,” Jesse said. “But I agree with Viv and I sometimes think with those Crabtree men you’ve got to really make an effort to get them to see the obvious.”

  “That’s for sure what Geri had to do,” Sissy piped in. “She was perfect for Bud and she practically had to hit him on the head with a baseball bat to get the man’s attention!”

  Claire smiled.

  “The thing about that,” Aunt Jesse said, “is that once you’ve got their attention, you’ve got it. They’re not the kind of men who are likely to stray, not Bud, not J.D., not Jack.”

  “And that’s good,” Claire said. “That’s very good.”

  “How are you coming with the sorting of Geri’s treasures?” Aunt Sissy asked. “Our whole family are a mess of pack rats, but at least Geri was good at recognizing the gold among the sawdust.”

  “Oh, I’ve found some great things,” Claire told them. “I love all the old scrapbooks and photos. And the newspaper clippings tell us more about Jack’s father than we ever knew.”

  “That’s important to show to your young ones,” Jesse said. “The first real sense of history a person can have is the history of their family.”

  Claire nodded. “And I looked through all their old record albums,” she said. “I caught myself singing some old song in the shower last night.”

  “Geri and Bud were swell dancers,” Sissy said.

  Aunt Jesse agreed. “From the time he got home from the war until J.D. was born, they’d be up at the Jitterbug Lounge every weekend. They loved to dance. And they were good at it. They moved in perfect synch and were completely sure about each other. Lots of married couples would trade partners, but those two only wanted to move on the floor together.”

  “I think they missed it,” Aunt Sissy said. “After they had J.D. and spent their weekends at home, Bud bought that record player. Those old tunes would be spinning against the needle all evening long.”

  “Those were good times,” Aunt Jesse said. “They had a fine life. It wasn’t easy and it wasn’t free of troubles or heartache, but no life is. That’s the secret, you know, to recognize the best times when you’re living them and to have confidence that the worst times will disappear just as quickly.”

  “I guess Jack and I are just learning that,” Claire said.

  Aunt Sissy patted her on the hand. “You two are going to be just fine,” she predicted. “For some couples, when trouble comes, it pulls them apart. But for others, like you and Jack, it can make you pull together.”

  “Thanks,” Claire told her.

  “But it’s too bad about the medals,” Sissy said. “Poor Bud was near prostrate with grief when J.D. died and angry and guilty to boot. I don’t think he would have gotten rid of those military things of his if he’d been in his right mind. If he’d been thinking about Jack and Jack’s children, he’d never have buried all that.”

  “Are you talking about that box of ribbons and such that Bud brought home from the service?” Jesse asked.

  “Yes,” Sissy answered. “Claire was looking for it, but I told her that Bud put it in the coffin with poor J.D. I remember that moment right now just as clear as any I’ve lived in my life. When Bud set that shoe box in the casket, it was as if he was sending his own heart, his very own life, to the grave with his son.”

  Claire considered that sadly and a brief moment of silence fell among the women.

  “I have that box,” Aunt Jesse said.

  “What?”

  Both women turned to look at her questioningly.

  “I have the box,” she repeated. “The one with Bud’s medals.”

  “I saw him put it in the coffin.”

  Jesse nodded. “And when he’d left the church, Geri stayed behind. She had them reopen the casket and she got it out,” Aunt Jesse said. “She came outside and handed it to me. She told me to take it home and not to let Bud see that I had it.”

  “Omigosh!” Sissy said. “You’ve had it all this time?”

  “I took it home and put it in the top of my closet,” Jesse said. “Geri never asked for it back and it’s been there ever since. When she died, well, I didn’t know if she’d ever told Bud, so I didn’t say anything, either.”

  “So you don’t think he knows?” Claire said.

  Jesse shook her head. “I always felt very cross-purposed about the whole situation,” she said. “These were Bud’s things. If he wanted to bury them with his son, then he ought to be able to do that. I just felt like Geri knew that someday he’d want Jackie to have them.”

  “And I guess now he will,” Aunt Sissy pointed out.

  Bud

  I had to keep swimming or I would drown. I had to keep swimming. I had to keep swimming. The water was dark. The water was full of sharks. I had to keep swimming.

  “Flyboy! Flyboy! Wake up, you’re having another dream.”

  For an instant I didn’t know where I was. I thought I was still out in the Solomon Sea. But I was in sick bay. I was picked up by the S-class submarine U.S.S. Perfidia one week and three hours after Lusty Libby went down.

  It was a miracle. I was a “goddamn miracle” the squadron commander said about it later.

  The guys on the sub had seen the zero taking target practice at something and they’d cruised over to see what it was. One lone crewman bobbing on the water was not what they’d expected.

  I guess that’s true of life in general. It’s never what we expect. I had always known that Jackie would go home to live with his mother. Even when I secretly hoped it might not happen, I still knew it would. But when it did, it was not at all what I’d expected.

  I thought I’d be sad, lonely. I thought I’d miss him. I had no idea I would go into a tailspin. I’d expected that Toni’s husband would be a fairly decent fellow and would treat Jackie appropriately. The doctor, it turned out was a tremendously fine guy. He was great with Jackie from the moment they met.

  “I want to be a father to him,” he told me. “I want him to feel that he is my own son.”

  I would have thought that would make me happy. But it didn’t. It made me sad. It was just what I wanted for Jackie. And none of what I wanted for myself. If Van Brugge was going to be his father, then what about J.D.? What about me? I managed not to voice my own selfishness about it, but it was a burden to me.

  At first Toni called us every few weeks. We’d talk to Jackie on the phone and listened to all that was going on in his life. It all sounded good. He loved his new home, he’d started kindergarten. He was happy. He was settling in. It was exactly what we wanted. And yet, I jus
t felt sick about it. Though, that wasn’t so rare—I felt sick most of the time.

  The dreams, the water dreams, had never really gone away, and after Jackie left, they returned with a vengeance. I suffered a lot with them when J.D. went overseas and after he died. But they had eased up a good bit. Once a month I’d wake up screaming. A guy could live with that. Especially if he slept only during the day and he had a wife who was understanding. But after Jackie left, it was every day. Every time I fell asleep. Every minute I closed my eyes. I couldn’t stand it and I began to try just staying awake. I would stay awake for days on end and then collapse into near unconsciousness, the kind of sleep a guy could hardly wake from. Still the dreams would come.

  My body was too old to put that kind of pressure on it. I started catching every germ that neared my neighborhood. I got every cold, every flu, one winter I got strep throat twice. Then there were the eye infections, the unexplained fevers, kidney pains and heart palpitations. On the job I spent more time on sick leave than I did showing up.

  “Maybe it’s time for you to think about retiring?” my boss suggested. “You’ve got enough time to do that, don’t you?”

  So I retired and then I had nothing. No job, no son, no grandson, no life.

  “You can’t just lay around here and watch TV all day, all night,” Geri complained. “If you keep this up you’ll be dead in five years.”

  “I’ve been dead since 1943,” I told her. “Just leave me alone.”

  Geri being Geri could never do that. She pushed and prodded and nagged. She expanded the flower garden and painted the house and reorganized the kitchen. And naturally, she expected me to do most of the heavy work. She dragged me out to the hippie commune, having told them that I’d help them change over from a septic tank to a lagoon system sewer. And she volunteered me to help turn the old Ford dealership building into a senior citizens center.

  Geri made sure I kept busy. And being busy helps pass the time, makes the years go by. But it doesn’t make you feel better and it didn’t help me sleep.