Dreamland Burning

by Jennifer Latham

  Back when things were flush, Addie’s father, Richard, built a great mansion with a ballroom on the third floor where Addie and her friends would roller-skate. After he went bust, he sold the house to a banker with no children to speak of, and the Dobbs family moved into a modest bungalow a few blocks west.

  That’s where I found myself on Sunday afternoon, two days after my encounter with Joseph. I hadn’t stopped wondering who his mourning band was for, or worrying that it might have been the boy Vernon and his pals had beat down—the same boy I knew in my heart to be Clarence Banks.

  So there I stood on the Dobbses’ front porch, hat in hand, knot in my throat, grateful Mama had loosed my reins for the afternoon. A black woman answered the door. She was hollow-eyed and ashen, and her black dress hung from her gaunt frame like funeral bunting.

  “Yes, sir?” she said. “Can I help you?”

  I told her my name was William, and that I was there to see Addie. She nodded and led me to the parlor, said I should have a seat, and asked would I like some iced tea while I waited. My throat was raw as fresh-hewn wood, but I perched on a settee and said no thank you, that I just needed to see Addie for a moment and didn’t mean to be a bother. And she dropped her head and shuffled out silently.

  Now, even though it was only a ten-minute walk from my house and less than five from the new place Mama and Pop were in the midst of building, I’d never been inside Addie’s home. Never been alone in a room with her anywhere, in fact, which had my nerves ajangle and my temples beaded with sweat. There was plenty to look at, though, which was a distraction of the good sort.

  Mansion-sized furniture filled the room to the gills. A fine rug from someplace far away covered the wood floor wall to wall. The vases on the mantel were so wide they barely fit. And instead of the tatted half-curtains that hung in the windows of most houses its size, long velvet drapes blocked out the day’s heat at the Dobbses’. It was as if all those fine furnishings didn’t know how out of place they were in such a modest room, or as if they didn’t plan on staying for long.

  The ceiling creaked overhead. Water gurgled through pipes in the wall. Then soft footsteps came down the stairs behind me, and Addie walked in wearing a yellow frock that would have shamed the sun.

  “Why are you here?” she asked.

  She’d painted bright circles of rouge on her cheeks; an attempt, I supposed, at hiding the pallor of her skin. But it only accented the dark crescents under her eyes and did nothing to mask the exhaustion in her voice.

  “Is Clarence dead?” I asked.

  “Yes,” she replied.

  The mantel clock measured out seconds after that, each tick louder and more awful than the one before. Birds sang outside. The smell of roasting Sunday chicken mingled with perfume from the lilac blooms in a vase on the coffee table. They were normal things, all of them, and awful for it.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, full expecting Addie to slap me like she’d done in the cafeteria. Or worse, to leave. Instead, she lowered herself onto the edge of a chair and said, “Good.”

  The clock ticked on. Addie crossed her ankles. There was a calmness to her, a tired acceptance, that I wasn’t sure how to take. It might have been easier if she were angry. Easier to deal with, easier on my ragged conscience. But she just sat, watching bird shadows flit across the narrow sliver of window between the drapes. Then she did something that made no sense at all: she smiled.

  “Clarence loved the color yellow,” she said quietly. “Marie told me she’d wear her yellow dress if only she could bear the lightness of it. So I’m wearing mine for her.”

  Nervous as I was about upsetting Addie, I didn’t ask who Marie was. And her eyes never left the bird shadows, not even when she spoke again, saying, “Are you glad he’s dead, William?”

  Which touched something curdled and tender inside me. Something I’d never known to be ashamed of before.

  “No,” I said, surprised at the truth of it.

  Her eyes focused hard on mine. “Then you should ask for forgiveness,” she said.

  At that, my heart near broke along with my voice as I began pleading, “Can you ever forgive me, Addie? Please? Please, can you?” And her face pinched in frustration as she shook her head, saying, “Not from me, William. From God.”

  Which wounded me deeper than any slap ever could, for it hadn’t occurred to me that I needed absolution from anyone other than Addie. She saw it, though. Saw the ugliness inside me, saw how small and stupid I was. And it shamed me to the bone.

  But, kind soul that she was, Addie didn’t leave me to squirm.

  “He’d come down from the 101 Ranch to tell Marie good-bye before the spring cattle drive,” she said. “Even though he was only a cook, he was so happy they’d decided to let him go down to Texas with them this year. He was hoping they might teach him to cowboy…”

  Her voice trailed off as the maid came in and set a tray with two glasses of iced tea in front of us. There were lace cookies, too, and a silver sugar bowl and slices of lemon.

  “Thank you, Marie,” Addie said gently. The maid dipped her chin and left without a word.

  “He was her son,” I said.

  Addie nodded, picked up a glass, and stirred the ice chips round and round with a long-handled spoon.

  “Marie’s been our maid since before I was born. She used to live with her husband, but after he died in a mining accident, she sold their house and moved into the quarters on our property. I was two then. Clarence was four. We grew up together, playing in the yard, stealing oranges from the kitchen. Mother never seemed to mind.”

  Addie lifted the glass halfway to her lips, stopped, and lowered it again. Silence sucked all the oxygen out of the air between us, until it finally got so bad that I blurted out, “I never meant for him to die.”

  “But you never meant for him not to,” Addie replied.

  The gentleness in her voice was gone, and I folded in around my own shame like an accordion. She stirred her tea some more and said, “I’m sorry, William. I didn’t mean to sound curt.” I responded that she had every right to sound however she pleased. But she shook her head and her shoulders fell even lower.

  “No, I haven’t,” she said.

  And there was so much pain in her voice, so much sorrow, that I took her hand and squeezed it. The gesture was heartfelt, and meant to be a comfort. Addie must have sensed that, for instead of pulling away, she only sat there, chest rising and falling underneath the bodice of her dress as the clock ticked on.

  An automobile puttered by outside. Addie tensed. I pulled my hand away. She looked at me, dry-eyed, and sighed and set her glass down. “I was wrong, William,” she said. “Wrong to blame you, wrong to strike you in the cafeteria, and wrong not to apologize sooner.”

  Which left me more confused than relieved.

  “The truth is, what happened was more my fault than yours,” Addie went on. “I asked Clarence to take me to that awful speakeasy. He said I’d no business being there, that it wouldn’t do for me to be seen with him in public. I was petulant, though, and insisted the two of us spend one last evening together before he left. My father doesn’t approve of Clarence and me spending time alone, you see. And it wasn’t as if we could meet somewhere private. Even I knew that if anyone were to spy us picnicking by the river or taking a stroll, it could very well mean a death sentence for him. But I wheedled and teased, pleading for him to take me somewhere wild, until he finally gave in.”

  She paused, as if she knew she should cry but had no tears left.

  “That may be,” I said. “But I’m the one who stirred up trouble in the first place. If it weren’t for me, you and Clarence could have passed the evening together and said your good-byes in peace without anyone bothering you. I was jealous and petty. I started everything. Clarence only protected himself. It was my fault.”

  Addie’s face darkened and her hands bunched the fabric of her skirt up tight. “Perhaps,” she replied. “But you know as well as I do that if you h
adn’t raised a ruckus someone else would have. There was no way the other white men in that place would have tolerated a girl like me spending an evening alone with Clarence. Why, just this Friday, I heard that pinch-faced friend of yours asking boys at school to join him in a letter-writing campaign. He wants the Ku Klux Klan to start a junior branch here in Tulsa. Did you know that?”

  I told her no, but that it didn’t surprise me overmuch. For though Clete had a weakness for pretty girls no matter what their complexion, he harbored no love for Negro men, and had a tendency to think the world owed him more than it was willing to give.

  “Well, he does,” Addie said. “That’s the way things are in this town, and I know it. Only I was selfish and spoiled and made Clarence give in to my whims one last time. I’ve always gotten exactly what I want. Even petty, silly things with prices far too dear.”

  She let go of her skirt and smoothed the fabric with her palms. I picked up my glass and drank deep. Not because my stomach wanted tea, but because my mouth had gone so dry I was afraid I couldn’t speak otherwise.

  The floor creaked behind us.

  “Will your guest be staying for supper, Miss Addie?” Marie asked. Addie didn’t look up, only murmured quietly that I wouldn’t. Marie pressed her lips together and nodded and left the room in a rustle of black fabric.

  “I should be going,” I said.

  “Yes,” Addie replied. She rose from the chair and led me to the front door, opening it without a word. And just as silently, I walked out, knowing there would never be such a thing as a good good-bye for Addie and me. Not then. Not ever.

  Rowan

  When Dad asked if he could run with me the morning after James and I made nice, I knew it was time to tell him about the clinic.

  He’s slower than me and can’t make it as far, so my mileage suffers. On the other hand, he doesn’t talk a lot and lets me set the route. That morning I led us down through the southern section of our neighborhood, where the absence of sidewalks keeps the unwashed masses from strolling through. We jogged in the street.

  Except for Dad breathing hard, the first two miles were quiet. It felt good going easy, especially after the pounding I’d given myself the two mornings before. Good enough that I decided to wait until we got closer to home to bring up the clinic. I’m not really sure why I worried about telling Mom and Dad my internship had fallen through. Maybe I didn’t want them to think it was my fault—that I’d sabotaged things somehow, or screwed up. Not letting my parents down was a huge part of who I was. Am, really.

  But then Dad started talking, and I realized I wasn’t the only one who had something to say.

  “You doing okay?” he huffed.

  “Yeah,” I said. “How about you?”

  He had to work to get the words out. “Well, considering there’s been a murdered body on my family’s property since before I was born, I guess I’m all right.”

  That was his angle: Dad wanted to make sure the skeleton hadn’t traumatized me.

  I slowed a little so he could catch his breath.

  “I know what you mean,” I said. “It creeped me out at first, but I spent some time with the anthropologist the other day. She made it seem less personal and more like science.”

  That seemed to satisfy Dad. We ran quietly for a while, dodging kamikaze squirrels and listening to birds. As we passed a big Italian-villa-looking place, Dad pointed out a fox sitting on the walkway. It was small and sharp-eyed, resting on his haunches like a dog.

  “He thinks we’re beneath him,” Dad said.

  I laughed, because the fox really did look bored, or maybe annoyed, like who were we to be on his street? Which reminded me how James and I had talked about groups of men going around white neighborhoods during the riot, trying to flush out black people in hiding.

  “Dad?” I said.

  “Yep?”

  “How long has our family owned the house?”

  He side-eyed me.

  “Why?”

  “Well, like you said, the body’s been there a long time, and I’ve been thinking about it a lot…”

  “Since right after it was built,” Dad said.

  “We didn’t build it ourselves?”

  “Nope.”

  A woman pushing a stroller walked past on the other side of the street. We waved.

  “Do you know who did?” I asked.

  “I’m not sure. You’d have to check the title.”

  “How do I do that?”

  “You get it from the title company.”

  I sped up a little, hoping he’d have to concentrate so hard on breathing that he wouldn’t have the energy to be suspicious. Only it turned out I didn’t need to bother.

  “Ro,” he said, “I don’t have a problem with you playing detective. If things weren’t so crazy at work right now, I’d probably do it myself. So if you want to take a look at the title, just say the word and I’ll call and have them pull it from the vault.”

  Which earned him the kind of I-love-you-Daddy smile that still worked surprisingly well.

  At 41st Street we cut over to Riverside and started north at a slow jog. Dad was nearly toast, I could tell. So I finally nutted up and told him about the clinic, overexplaining things so there wouldn’t be any questions left for him to ask. He stopped in the middle of the bike path, bending over with his hands on his thighs. “Sounds like you turned a bad situation around for yourself,” he said between big, relieved gasps. “You remind me of your mother more and more every day.” Then he waved for me to go ahead without him. Which I did, sprinting the rest of the way, relieved as hell and thinking how perfect it would be if Arvin showed up at the clinic that morning. He was the last person I needed to get square with.

  The last thing I needed to make right.

  Arvin never showed. Apart from that, it was a good day. Dr. Woods recognized Dad’s name when I handed her the release. Not that she said anything—I could just tell from the little double take she did, looking from the signature to me and back again. “All right,” she said, tossing the form into the chaos on her desk. “Let’s go.”

  I’d chosen a long lab coat from the breakroom closet, hoping I’d look more like a really young nurse than some random high school tagalong. It was wishful thinking; with makeup, I could maybe pass for a college sophomore. But other than some mascara and ChapStick, my face was naked. I wasn’t fooling anyone.

  The thing was, nobody cared. Every time we walked into an exam room, Dr. Woods would introduce me as a student and ask the patient if they minded me staying. Not a single person did. They were all so glad to see Dr. Woods, to tell her their problems and show her their rashes and bumps and where it hurt, that they barely noticed me at all.

  Dr. Woods listened to every one of them. Her Spanish wasn’t as good as Tru’s, but she held her own. She only looked away to type quick notes into her laptop, and when she got around to the actual exam, there was something so gentle in the way she touched people—resting her fingertips lightly on a coughing man’s shoulder, lifting an old woman’s hand to examine her swollen knuckles—that there was no way anyone could leave feeling like they didn’t matter.

  It wasn’t glamorous work. Mostly she did simple stuff, like adjusting prescriptions or talking with people about their diet and how much they exercised and how they should quit smoking. The only remotely exciting thing happened when we got to her very last patient of the day.

  He was dressed in suit pants and a tie, and said he had chronic migraines that his old doctor in Little Rock had prescribed Vicodin for. But he’d lost his prescription during the move, so could Dr. Woods please write him a new one?

  Instead of a prescription, she handed him a sheet of paper with advice for treating migraines without pills and said he should try to walk at least twenty minutes every day and eat regular meals and avoid soda and coffee and anything else with caffeine.

  At first he acted sad and told her he’d tried all those things and they didn’t work. I felt bad, watching him r
ub his temples and squint against the light from the fluorescent overhead bulbs. But when she said no, he got really insistent. Then mad. Then sad again. Dr. Woods headed him off every time, as if she knew exactly what he’d say next. She told him she’d be happy to see him again in a week if his symptoms didn’t improve, and that she could get him into a guided meditation group that might really help.

  He wasn’t interested in any of that, and I doubt he even had migraines to begin with. He was there for pills. But Dr. Woods stayed so kind and firm that he eventually gave up, took the paper, and left.

  Afterwards, Dr. Woods turned on Ella Fitzgerald in her office, leaned back in her chair, crossed her legs, and asked me to tell her what I’d seen. I knew she didn’t want me to rattle off a list of diagnoses or anything as easy as that. She wanted to know what I’d seen. So I told her. And she listened like she’d listened to her patients—deep and thoughtful. When I was done, she said, “Not very exciting, was it?”

  I thought about that awhile. Dr. Woods made me want to be… more. To stretch out and aim for something better than good enough.

  “That depends on what you mean by ‘exciting,’” I finally said.

  She asked me to explain.

  “Well, if ‘exciting’ means drama and people dying and doctors and nurses rushing around like in the movies, then no, it wasn’t. But if it means doing something that seems small now but can make a big difference in the long run, then it was.”

  She smiled. “I’m glad you feel that way, because we’re going to do the same thing tomorrow and every day after that. It’s good that you’re here, Rowan. You’re interesting to have around.”

  And you know, I walked out of her office that day feeling even better than I had after my run with Dad, believing there were things I could do that were real and solid and good. It was the opposite of how I’d felt when I drove away from Arvin the other morning.

  For the first time in a long time, I thought I knew where I was going. Like maybe there was something useful I could do with my life after all.