Bridge of Scarlet Leaves

by Kristina McMorris

  TJ brushed over the gift with a mere glance. “I was gonna take the girls to some jazz joint. Any chance you wanna come?”

  “Sure. I’d love to,” he said, not catching the objection in Maddie’s face.

  Her gaze darted to the top of the staircase, seeking help. There, she found Jo leaning against the rail with a look that said, Ah, well, things could be worse.

  And she was right. Before the night was over, things could get much, much worse.

  2

  Cigarette smoke at the Dunbar swirled, adding to the fog of Lane’s thoughts. Since arriving, he had been struggling to keep his focus on the Negroes playing riffs onstage. Now, with TJ off fetching drinks, he could finally allow his eyes to settle on the profile of Maddie, seated across from him. Her jasmine perfume, while subtle, somehow transcended the wafts of beer and sweat in the teeming club.

  From above the bar, blue lights danced over the crowd united in music and laughter—racially integrated, as the entire world would be when Lane was done with it—and rippled shadows across Maddie’s face. The narrow slope of her nose led to full lips, moist with a red sheen. Her hazel eyes studied the musicians with such intensity that he chose to merely watch her.

  Amazing that he’d known her for more than half his life, yet only months ago had he truly begun to see her. The ache to touch her swelled, along with a desire to make up for lost time. He reached over and brushed the back of her creamy hand resting on their cocktail table.

  She jolted, her trance broken. “Sorry,” she said, and returned his smile.

  “Pretty good, isn’t he?” Lane indicated the saxophonist. The long, haunting notes of “Summertime” made the guy’s talent obvious even to Lane.

  “Yeah, I suppose.”

  “You don’t think so?”

  “No, I do. It’s just—the structure’s so loose, with all those slurs, and the downbeat going in and out. Plus, the key changes are too quick to feel grounded. And during the chorus, his timing keeps—” She broke off, her nose crinkling in embarrassment. “Gosh, listen to me. I sound like a royal snob, don’t I?”

  “Not at all.”

  She exaggerated a squint. “Liar.”

  They both laughed. In truth, he could listen to her talk forever. “God, I’ve missed you,” he said to her.

  “I’ve missed you too.” The sincerity in her voice was so deep, he could lose himself in that sound for days. But a moment later, she glanced around as if abruptly aware of the surrounding spectators, and her glimmering eyes dulled, turned solid as her defenses. She slid her hand away, sending a pang down his side.

  He told himself not to read into it, that her aversion to a public show of affection wasn’t a matter of race. She was simply fearful of jeopardizing her relationship with her brother. Understandable, after all she had been through.

  “So,” she said. “Where did Jo go?”

  “To the ladies’ room.”

  “Oh.”

  Awkwardness stretched between them as the song came to a close. They joined in with a round of applause. When the next ballad began, it occurred to him that a slow dance would be their only chance for a private, uninterrupted talk. His only chance to hold her tonight. He gestured to the dance floor. “Shall we?”

  “I ... don’t think we should.”

  “Maddie, your brother won’t get any ideas just because—”

  A booming voice cut him off. “Evenin’, sweet cakes.” The guy sidled up to the table near Maddie, a familiar look to him. Beer sloshed in his mug, only two fingers gripping the handle. He had the sway of someone who’d already downed a few. “Fancy seeing you here.”

  Maddie shifted in her seat, her look of unease growing. “Hi, Paul.”

  Now Lane remembered him. Paul Lamont. The guy was a baseball teammate of TJ’s, ever since their high school years, subjecting Lane to occasional encounters as a result. Even back then, the towhead had carried a torch for Maddie subtle as a raging bonfire.

  “What do you say?” Paul licked his bottom lip and leaned on the table toward her. “Wanna cut a rug?”

  “No thanks.”

  “C’mon, doll. You don’t wanna hurt my feelings, do ya?”

  Lane couldn’t hold back. “I think the lady’s answered.”

  Paul snapped his gaze toward the challenge. He started to reply when recognition caught. “Well, lookee here. Lane Moratoro.” Beer dove from his mug, splashed on Lane’s dress shoes.

  “It’s Moritomo.” Lane strove to be civil, despite being certain the error was purposeful.

  “Oh, that’s right. Mo-ree-to-mo.” Then Paul yelled, “Hey, McGhee!”

  A guy standing nearby twisted around. His fitted orange shirt and broad nose enhanced his lumberjack’s build. “Yeah, what?”

  “Got another rich Oriental here who wants to rule our country. Thinks he’s gonna be the first Jap governor of—no, wait.” Paul turned to Lane. “It’s a senator, right?”

  Lane clenched his hands under the table. “Something like that.” Out of the corner of his eye, he glimpsed Maddie shaking her head in a stiff, just-ignore-him motion.

  Paul’s lips curled into a wry grin. “Well, in that case, maybe you can help a local citizen out.” He put an unwelcome hand on Lane’s shoulder. “See, my pop’s been truck farming for twenty-some years, working his fingers to the bone. But wouldn’t you know it? Jap farmers round here just keep undercutting his damn prices. So I was thinkin’, when you’re elected senator you could do something about that.” His mouth went taut. “Or would your real loyalty be with those dirty slant eyes?”

  Lane shot to his feet, tipping his chair onto the floor. He took a step forward, but a grasp pulled at his forearm.

  “Lane.” It was Maddie at his side. “Let it go.” The lumberjack squared his shoulders as she implored, “Honey, forget him. He’s not worth it.”

  At that, Paul’s glance ricocheted between her and Lane. He scoffed in disbelief. “Don’t tell me you two are ...”

  Lane knew he should deny it for Maddie’s sake, yet the words failed to form. Again, her touch slipped away, leaving the skin under his sleeve vacantly cold.

  Paul snorted a laugh, thick with disgust. “Well, Christ Almighty. Who’d a thought.”

  Lane’s nails bit into his palms. He felt his upper back muscles gather, cinching toward the cords of his neck.

  “We got a problem here?” TJ arrived at the scene and put down their drinks.

  “Everything’s great,” Maddie announced. “Isn’t it, fellas.”

  Jitterbug notes failed to cushion their silence.

  “Paul?” TJ said.

  Paul nodded tightly and replied, “Just fine, Kern. I’m surprised, is all. Figured you’d be more selective about who made moves on your little sister.”

  TJ’s face turned to stone. “What are you sayin’?”

  Once more, a denial refused to budge from Lane’s throat.

  “What, you didn’t know either?” Paul said, but TJ didn’t respond. With a glint of amusement, Paul shook his head, right as Jo returned to their table. “Goes to prove my point,” he went on. “Every one of them filthy yellow Japs is a double-crosser, no matter how well you think you—”

  His conclusion never reached the air. A blow from TJ’s fist stuffed it back into the bastard’s mouth. Paul’s beer mug dropped to the floor, arcing a spray across strangers’ legs. Shrieks outpoured in layers.

  A wall of orange moved closer; McGhee the lumberjack wanted in on the action. Lane lurched forward to intervene. Diplomacy deferred, he shoved the guy with an adrenaline charge that should have at least rocked the guy backward, but McGhee was a mountain. Solid, unmovable. A mountain with a punch like Joe Louis. His hit launched a searing explosion into Lane’s eye socket.

  The room spun, a carousel ride at double speed. Through his good eye, Lane spied the ground. He was hunched over but still standing. He raised his head an inch and glimpsed TJ taking an uppercut to the jaw. TJ came right back with a series of pummels to Paul
’s gut.

  Lane strained to function in the dizzy haze, to slow the ride. He noted McGhee’s legs planted beside him. The thug motioned for Lane to rise for a second round. Before going back in, though, Lane was bringing support. His fingers closed on the legs of a wooden chair. He swung upward, knocking McGhee over a table and into a stocky colored man, who then grabbed him by the orange collar.

  “Cops!” someone hollered.

  And the music stopped.

  “Let’s scram, Tomo!” In an instant, TJ was towing him by the elbow. They threaded through the chaos with Maddie and Jo on their heels. They didn’t stop until reaching an empty alley several blocks away.

  Lane bent over, hands on his thighs, to catch his breath. The echo of his pulse pounded in his ears, throbbed his swelling eye. Still, through it all he heard laughter. TJ’s laughter. That carefree sound had been as much a part of Lane’s childhood as Japanese Saturday school, or strawberry malts at Tilly’s Diner.

  Maddie rolled her eyes with a glower. “Well, I’m glad someone thinks that was funny.”

  “See, I was right.” Jo nudged her arm. “Told you that joint was jumpin’.”

  “Yeah,” she said, “it was jumpin’ all right. Too bad we almost jumped straight into a jail cell.” When TJ’s laughter grew, Maddie’s smile won out. She hit her brother lightly on the chest. “You’re off your nut.”

  Lane grinned. “And this is new news?”

  Jo peeked out around the brick wall. Water drizzled from a drain spout. “Coast is clear,” she reported.

  The ragged foursome treaded toward the bus stop. On the way, Lane turned to TJ and quietly offered his thanks—for what he did, for defending him.

  “Eh,” TJ said, “what’re friends for.” He used a sleeve to wipe the trickle of blood from his lip, then slung an arm over Lane’s shoulder. “Besides, I can’t think of the last time I had that much fun.”

  The vision of TJ hammering out his aggressions on Paul came back in a flash of images. “I’m just glad I’m not your enemy,” Lane said with a smile—one that faded the moment he recalled what had initially provoked the fight.

  3

  It was on nights like this that Maddie missed her most, when her love life seemed a jumble of knots only a mother could untangle. More than that, her mom’s advice would have fostered hopes of a happily ever after.

  The woman had been nothing if not a romantic.

  She’d adored roses and rainstorms and candlelight, in that order. She had declared chocolate an essential food for the heart, and poetry as replenishment for the soul. She’d kept every courtship note from her husband—who she’d sworn was more handsome than Clark Gable—and had no qualms about using her finest serving ware for non-holiday dinners. Life, she would say, was too short not to use the good china. As though she had known how short hers would be.

  Maddie tugged her bathrobe over her cotton nightgown. Unfortunately, no amount of warmth would relax the wringing in her chest. Always this was the cost of remembering her mother. The one remedy Maddie could count on was music.

  She placed the violin case on her bed. Unlatching the lid, she freed her instrument from its red velvet–lined den. The smooth wood of the violin, of the bow, felt cool and wonderful in her hands. Like a crisp spring morning. Like air.

  An audience of classical composers—black-and-white, wallet-sized portraits—sat poised in the lid’s interior. Mozart, Mendelssohn, Bach, and Tchaikovsky peered with critical eyes. Do our works justice, Miss Kern, or give us due cause to roll over in our graves.

  She rosined and tuned in systematic preparation. Then she positioned herself properly before the music stand. Bach’s Partita No. 3 in E major. The sheets were aligned and ready. She knew them by heart but took no chances. She placed the chin rest at her jaw, inhaling the fragrance of the polished woodwork. A shiver of anticipation traveled through her.

  Eyes intent on the prelude, she raised her bow over the bridge. Her internal metronome ticked two full measures of allegro tempo. Only then did she launch the horsehairs into action. Notes pervaded the room, precise and sharp. Her fingertips rippled toward the scroll and down again, like a wave fighting its own current. The strings vibrated beneath her skin, the bow skipped under her control. And with each passing phrase, each conquered slur, the twisting on her heart loosened, the memories faded away.

  By the time she reached the final note, the calculated stanzas had brought order back to her life. She held her pose in silence, waiting reluctantly for the world to reenter her consciousness.

  “Maddie?”

  Startled back, she turned toward the doorway.

  “Just wanted to say good night.” Her brother held what appeared to be ice cubes bound by a dishcloth on his right knuckles. His scuffle with Paul suddenly seemed days rather than hours ago. “Got a game tomorrow morning. Then I’m taking Jimmy’s shift,” he reminded her.

  “Are you sure you can do all that, with your hand?”

  He glanced down. “Ah, it’s nothin’,” he said, lowering the injury to his side.

  TJ’s hand could be broken into a thousand pieces—as could his heart—and he’d never admit it.

  “That sounded good, by the way,” he said. “The song you were playing.”

  She offered a smile. “Thanks.”

  “You using it for the audition?”

  “I might. If I make it past the required pieces.”

  “Well, don’t sweat it. I know you’re gonna get in next time.” In contrast to this past year, he meant, when she had blown the audition at I.M.A.

  Under the Juilliard School of Music, the Institute of Musical Art had been established in New York to rival the best of European conservatories. Maddie’s entrance into the program was a goal her dad had instilled in her since her ninth birthday. He’d gifted her with a used violin, marking the first time he had ever expressed grand hopes for her future, versus her brother’s.

  “You know, I was thinking... .” Maddie fidgeted with the end of her bow. “When I visit Dad this week, you should come along.”

  TJ’s eyes darkened. “I got a lot of stuff to do.”

  “But, we could go any day you’d like.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “TJ,” she said wearily. “He’s been there a year and you haven’t gone once. You can’t avoid him forever.”

  “Wanna bet?” Resentment toughened his voice, a cast shielding a wound—that wound being grief, Maddie was certain. She had yet to see him shed a tear over their mother’s death, and those feelings had to have pooled somewhere.

  After a long moment brimming with the unspoken, his expression softened. She told herself to hug him, a sign she understood. Yet the lie of that prevented her from moving. Their father, after all, had never even been charged. How many years would TJ continue to blame him?

  TJ studied his ice bag and murmured, “I’m just not ready, okay?”

  Maddie knew better than to push him, mule-headed as he could be. Besides, she couldn’t discount his admission, which held promise, if thin. And truth, the core of his existence.

  “Fair enough.” She tried to smile, but the contrast of her ongoing deception soured her lips.

  Lane.

  Her steady.

  It had been Maddie’s idea to keep their courtship a secret, at least until the relationship developed. With TJ’s temperament heightening along with his protectiveness of her, why get him hot and bothered for no reason? His friendship with Lane aside, society’s resistance to mixed couples wouldn’t have helped her case.

  Tonight, though, from her brother’s old smile to his old laugh, his defending Lane with gusto, she saw an opening for his approval. She needed to act before the opportunity closed.

  “Well, good night,” TJ said, and angled away.

  “Wait.”

  He looked at her.

  The words gathered in her throat, but none of them suitable for a brother. She didn’t dare describe how a mere glance from Lane could make her feel more gla
morous than a starlet. How his touch to her lower spine, while guiding her through a doorway, would cause a tingle beyond description.

  “What is it?” TJ pressed.

  Time to be square with him. She clutched her bow and hoped for the best. “The thing that Paul said,” she began, “about me and Lane ...ogether ...”

  He shook his head. “Ah, don’t worry.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “Maddie, it’s fine.”

  Stop interrupting, she wanted to yell. She had to get this out, to explain how one date had simply led to another. “TJ, I need to tell you—”

  “I already know.”

  Her heart snagged on a beat. She reviewed his declaration, striving to hide her astonishment. “You do?”

  His mouth stretched into a wide grin. The sight opened pores of relief on her neck before she could question how he’d found out.

  Of course ... Lane must have told him. In which case, how long had her brother gone without saying so? All these months spent fretting for nothing. She couldn’t decide which of them she wanted to smack, or embrace, more.

  “Seriously,” TJ mused, “the two of you dating? That’s the stupidest thing I ever heard.” He bit off a laugh, and Maddie froze. “Lane’s part of our family—the only family we’ve got left. Even if he ever did get a wild hair to ask you out, he’d come to me first. He’s not the kind to go behind a pal’s back. Paul was just drunk, and he was egging for a fight. Don’t let anything he said get to you, all right?”

  The implication struck hard, shattering Maddie’s confession. “Right,” she breathed.

  “Listen, I’d better hit the sack. Sleep well.”

  “You too,” she said with a nod. Though with her uncertainties and emotions gearing up to battle, she expected anything but a restful sleep.

  4

  “Shhh.” With a finger to his lips, Lane reminded his sister to keep as quiet as a ninja. Her analogy, not his. Emma gave him a conspiratorial smile. In her blouse and pleated skirt, black bob framing her round face, she stood next to him behind his bedroom door. Their secret quest lent a twinkle to her chocolate, Betty Boop eyes.