The Girls at the Kingfisher Club: A Novel

by Genevieve Valentine

  Doris flinched. “Sorry.”

  She sighed. “I just—I never thought that it would be a mistake to get Lou out of that house. If I had just waited, she’d be all right by now, but I was so anxious to manage it all.”

  “You did everything you could,” Doris said, leaning closer. “And when it went sideways, you warned us. But we all did all right for ourselves, I think—Lou got her shot, and here we all are. We did all right. I’m sure the others have, too.”

  Free, Jo thought, as I always wanted, and now we’re all starting again.

  “I’ve been the General for a long time,” Jo said.

  Doris said, “You’ve been our sister longer.”

  That was a comfort—a strange thought, but a comfort—and Jo was still smiling when Doris said, “Watch out, or Jake’s going to fall for you.”

  “I don’t think so,” Jo said. “I think both our hearts’ desires took the road to Chicago a little while back.”

  Doris didn’t say anything to that (Jo was grateful), but when the song was over and everyone came back, she and Sam had one of their silent conversations, and then Sam was asking Jo for the Charleston.

  “Not this time,” Jo said. “I’m shirking work sitting here. Tomorrow night, sure thing.”

  Sam smiled. “All yours,” he said, and swiveled to face Rebecca, who laughed and said, “Second-string, I see how it is,” but took his hand anyway.

  Doris watched them go with the kind of smile Jo had always hoped to see on them, on any of them—a smile that was open and untroubled.

  Jo would have to work to be happy with what she could have. It was no good turning useless over pasts and small things.

  She went to the bar to glad-hand a pair of city councilmen she recognized. Half the reason she read the paper these days was to catch up with the clientele.

  Then it was checking in with Henry (“Not mixing tears with the champagne, I hope?” “No, General”) and greeting a few of the most finely dressed ladies.

  The Charleston was almost over when she saw Myrtle standing on the stairs.

  “At last,” she was saying as she moved through the crowd, her voice pitched to carry, “I was wondering when you’d take me up on my invitation.”

  Myrtle was turning to look behind her, ushering a young couple to stand beside her—

  But it wasn’t a young couple, Jo knew even as she thought it.

  It was a young girl in a dancing dress, and another with her hair slicked back and wearing trousers, and Jo recognized them at once, out of long habit and long wishing.

  She was too happy for dignity—she waved with both hands overhead, like a drowning swimmer, and when Rose and Lily saw her waving they nudged each other and leaned in to say something to each other out of the corners of their mouths.

  They had become twins, Jo thought, though it seemed a strange thing to realize only now, when they couldn’t have been more differently dressed, and when the truth was so obvious. They’d always been twins. Jo was getting imaginative in her old age, that was all.

  By the time Jo reached them, Doris had seen them, too, and Jo only had a moment to pull them into her arms before the others descended (Myrtle stepping back to give way), and it was a flurry of crushing hugs and kisses on the cheek.

  Lily had adopted bright red lipstick to go with her new black slacks, and her kisses happened in the air, to preserve the color.

  “You look scandalous,” Jo said, but it was a compliment and Lily only beamed.

  “The men don’t know what to make of it,” she said, “but for some reason the women go wild!”

  “Some women,” said Rose, and she and Lily shared a fleeting smile.

  Doris was crowding Jo from behind, gasping, “Lily, what are you wearing?” as Rose laughed, and it gave Jo a moment to cup Rose’s chin and get a good look at her.

  She was thinner—they both were—and there was something flinty behind the eyes that hadn’t been there before, and Jo’s stomach sank to think of anything awful happening to them.

  “Where have you been?” she asked, every word a plea.

  Rose shook off Jo’s fingers, looking embarrassed. “Nowhere, General.”

  Jo tried not to look too stung. “I’m not asking as a general,” she said. “I’m asking as someone who was worried about you.”

  That got a flush. “We’re all right,” Rose said. “Don’t worry about us.”

  Lily appeared at Rose’s elbow. “We got your message in the paper,” Lily said, “but we thought for sure it was a trap, at first.”

  Rose said, “There are plenty of people in this town who don’t mind setting traps.”

  Jo glanced down at their hands—Rose’s fingertips were red and callused, and even though Lily’s hands were in her pockets, Jo could guess that these twins hadn’t gotten so close to each other by keeping separate jobs.

  They had been factory girls after all, at least for a while, and from the looks of things it had been rough going.

  She didn’t push them. General Jo would have, but some things were too fragile; reunions were one of them.

  “Come and dance,” she said. “We’re at our regular table. Catch the ring on Doris’s finger, and see what Rebecca’s wearing, still.”

  “I can’t believe she married him,” said Lily. “She hardly knew him! What a way to go about it.”

  “He’s a nice fellow,” Jo promised, “and he came through in a pinch. Even I like him. Now, stay and have a decent drink. You don’t know how long we’ve all been waiting to see your faces.”

  Rose and Lily linked hands without looking (Lily smiled at Jo, Rose not quite), and moved past Jo toward the sisters’ table.

  “Thank you,” Jo said to Myrtle when the twins were out of hearing.

  “Not my idea,” Myrtle said, around the cigarette holder clamped in her teeth. “The cat dragged them in. Jake pointed them out to me as two of yours, and I thought I might as well bring them over—they seemed so lost that I pitied them, that’s all.”

  Jo let it pass. If Myrtle wanted to do a good deed, Jo wasn’t going to stop her, and if Myrtle didn’t want to be thanked twice, Jo was happy not to thank her.

  “There’s a nice whiskey at the bar,” Jo said instead. “Even Jake thinks it’s top-shelf. Come and have a taste of some quality, as long as you’re here.”

  That offer Myrtle was happier to accept, with a wink at Henry, who was already smiling ear to ear at the sight of two more Princesses who had come home.

  Then Myrtle was happy to accept a dance, and another dance, and finally a dance from Lily.

  (Lily had gotten better at leading, Jo noticed. Whatever they’d been doing when they were out of sight, they’d been dancing.

  Though it must have been a strange time, all the same. Lily wore her trousers like armor, and Jo had no doubt it was a habit of necessity as much as whim.

  Poor girls, Jo thought. Where have you been?)

  Jo kept busy and let the others crowd around and fight to tell stories and disappear for dances. She didn’t want to push them—she didn’t dare lose them.

  When Rose was left alone for a moment, Jo took a seat at the edge of the booth.

  Jo said, “What have you been up to, with those hands?”

  She’d tried to make it sound as kind as she could, but Rose still pulled her hands under the table.

  “The Palmolive factory,” she said finally. “Over in Hell’s Kitchen.”

  Jo pulled a face before she could help it. “Oh, Rose, how did you ever end up there?”

  Rose shrugged and shook her head without conviction. “We ran until we couldn’t any more, and that’s where we were. We didn’t want to be caught, and we knew he’d never look for us there. Once you get used to a place, it’s amazing what happens. There’s a dead dog outside our boardinghouse, and I didn’t notice for three days. Everything just smells like soap by now.”

  Jo knew that whatever she said next was important, but she also guessed that it was pride as much as anything
that had kept them away from their sisters until Jo had gone begging, and she’d have to be careful.

  “Well,” she said, “if you’re happy there, then stay, but I can help you find something if you ever feel like a change. Let me know.”

  It hurt—every inch of her wanted to tell them to move out of wherever was starving and overworking them before the sun was up, to just stay here and leave behind whatever was left where they were living now, and let her take care of things.

  But those days were over.

  And after so long a pause that Jo feared the worst, Rose looked up and said, “I’ll talk to Lily.”

  Jo nudged her shoulder before she slid back out into the crush of people, all the way behind the bar.

  There was a bottle she wanted to set aside for Jake. A little decent drink was the least you could do when someone sent you two of your sisters back.

  • • • • • •

  The twins had replied to the ad, gloriously and in person, and so it was more than a week before Jo returned to the post office.

  She’d intended to close out the box (she had already closed out the advertisement at the newspaper office).

  It surprised her, then, when she asked if anything had been delivered and the gentleman at the post office counter handed her a letter from an attorney.

  Oh God, she thought for a terrible moment, please don’t let anyone have found me at the Marquee. I don’t want to have to run from home again.

  It was from van de Maar, she saw when she opened it; it was sent from his address, and the header named him as estate executor to a Joseph Hamilton.

  She skipped the pleasantries—her father always had—and caught the first sentence that mattered.

  Your father is taken ill, the letter read. He wishes very much to see you on an urgent matter.

  He must have been combing with a pretty fine tooth, she thought, her skin crawling, to contact her here from one small reference in the paper, with no names or places to give them away.

  (It helped a little to know that the three weeks she had suffered with no word to anyone had been a necessary precaution. God only knew what would have happened.)

  Jo would have stopped reading and thrown it in the trash with a “Good riddance,” but she caught something that gave her pause.

  It would never have occurred to her that the letter could be anything but a trap, but underneath the official typed letter was a handwritten note that she suspected her father had never seen.

  And so she hesitated, and stood beside the trash can, crushing the side of the paper from the pressure of her fingers, reading the note over and over.

  I worry for his health, and recommend you come as soon as you can. You seem a reasonable young woman, and I know you will understand the obligations of family.

  He is asking you to come home.

  twenty-six

  SHOW ME THE WAY TO GO HOME

  Jo stood on the front steps of her old home for the second time in her life.

  It had been two months since she’d been chased out the front door by a man brandishing a weapon at her—a man who had now summoned his oldest daughter back to his side.

  But the woman standing on the steps was different from the one who had staggered down them, nearly blind with panic and unable to do anything but run for her life before the truck came to carry her away.

  “Should I come in with you?” asked the man at her side.

  She looked at him and smiled. “That won’t be necessary, I’m sure, Sergeant Carson. But thank you. I’ll be down in no time.”

  Van de Maar was waiting for her at the threshold, looking remarkably like Walters.

  “Miss Hamilton,” he said.

  “Mr. van de Maar. I trust this won’t take long? I don’t want to leave my associate waiting.”

  “Not at all,” said van de Maar, with a glance at Carson’s uniform.

  “Shout if you need me, Miss Hamilton,” said Carson, fixing van de Maar with a level look. “I’ll have my ear out.”

  Then Jo smiled in earnest.

  “Sergeant, if I need you, you’ll hear it for miles.”

  • • • • • •

  “You look well, Miss Hamilton,” said van de Maar when he’d closed the door and it was just the two of them in the foyer of the house.

  “Thank you,” she said, and tugged the cuffs of the mustard-colored dress out from under her coat. She refused to be in anything that looked like mourning—not today.

  “You’ve been all right, then?”

  If this was his way of drawing her out, he didn’t know how to do it very well.

  She said, “No doubt it’s just the benefit of sunlight and some clothes that can be bought in person.”

  He didn’t have an answer for that, and before the silence got strained, she went on. “I’m glad to see you again. I’ve wanted to thank you for the help you gave a while back.”

  “Please,” he said, looking uncomfortable. “It was nothing.”

  “Not to me,” she said.

  “Don’t mention it,” he said. He glanced at the door.

  It took her a moment to realize why he was uncomfortable; he didn’t want her father to think he’d had a hand in her escape.

  She spared him. Sometimes a good deed done out of bewilderment and disbelief was still a good deed, and there was no need to force the other party to agree.

  “You said my father wanted to see me,” she said. “What about?”

  “Well, he’d like to speak with you himself, of course,” said van de Maar, taking a step toward the stairs and offering his arm.

  “And he may,” she said. “As soon as you’ve told me what this is about. You didn’t specify when we spoke on the phone what exactly he wants to discuss, and my father has not earned any trust from his daughters.”

  “Well, your father—”

  “Mr. van de Maar, the days of me walking blindly into my father’s offices are over.”

  Van de Maar looked truly taken aback, and she wondered what her father had told him to expect, that a daughter who disliked him could be such an unpleasant surprise.

  “Your father is dying, Miss Hamilton,” he said at last. “He wishes to speak with you.”

  He said it with all the gravity he could possibly want the words to carry, as if the statement would shatter her composure.

  Instead she thought, I wonder if this is an illness that came on slowly, or if he had a heart attack after he tried to beat me.

  She asked, “Is he alone?”

  “A nurse is with him,” said van de Maar. “I’m happy to accompany you, if you’d like.”

  “Do you already know what he’s going to tell me?”

  After a pause, he nodded.

  “Then there’s no need,” she said. “I’ll see him myself, thank you.”

  She took the stairs, and paused on the landing for a moment before she heard rustling from one of the doors, halfway down the hall on the right-hand side.

  It was the bedroom directly under Rose and Lily’s, and Jo was grateful those girls were so quiet. It might have gone wrong for them sooner, if it had been Rebecca and Araminta bickering over his head.

  (It was across the hall from the clean, quiet room that Jo had entered only once, long ago, to look for their mother.)

  She knocked at the closed door. A moment later, a nurse answered.

  “Miss Hamilton?”

  “Yes.”

  The nurse beamed. “He’s been expecting you all morning,” she said. “Please come in.”

  Jo stepped inside and froze in the doorway as her eyes adjusted. The curtains were drawn tight, and her father was just a shadow under the covers of his dark-wood bed.

  “I’ll leave you two alone,” the nurse said.

  “No,” Jo said, too loud. “Stay. Thank you.”

  The nurse hesitated in the doorway, and Jo took one step closer, then another, until she could see her father’s face.

  He looked sweltering under the blankets, his fa
ce strained. It was the first time she’d ever seen him less than able, and it made her uncomfortable, as if she was spying.

  His arms were folded on top of the coverlet, and his limp fingers under thin skin seemed a good twenty years older than the hands that had curled around his cane as he moved to attack her.

  It was unfair that he would call her back now, when she would be tempted to pity him.

  “Father,” she said, “you asked to see me.”

  He opened his eyes, and she saw that no matter what else had happened to him, his mind was still as sharp as ever.

  “Where are your sisters? What is this? Did you come alone?”

  “I’ve brought a police sergeant with me,” she said. “He’s waiting downstairs. None of my sisters have come, or will.”

  Behind them, the nurse sucked in a quiet breath. Jo could almost see the thought forming in the nurse’s mind: What an ungrateful daughter.

  But her father hadn’t forgotten the promise she’d made about his never laying eyes on any of her sisters again, and he grimaced.

  “I suppose you didn’t tell them,” he said. “You didn’t even have the decency to tell your sisters that their father is dying and asking to see his children again—”

  “They know.”

  He faltered, but even now that wasn’t nearly enough to throw him.

  “Well. I suppose I should expect that. I can’t imagine what terrible things you’ve told them about me, during all those years.”

  The years they were upstairs, he meant. The years he’d held on to them. Jo waited with clammy hands for him to say it, to admit it at last.

  But he had stopped for breath, and she realized he was going to go no farther.

  “No,” said Jo, her voice steady, “you can’t imagine.”

  He flinched.

  “Josephine,” he said, “I thought you would be ready to put all this behind us.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “Then I hope that this isn’t the only reason you asked me here, or you’ve wasted our time.”

  Behind them, the nurse shifted her weight.

  He let that sink in for a moment.

  Then he said, “I would never have believed, before this moment, that any of my children could be so poisonous.”

  Jo knew better than to listen—the word was meant to cut her, and she couldn’t let it—but part of her was sorry, very sorry, that this was how her father had chosen to make his case, at the last twilight of his life, for her loyalty.