Straight Up

by Lisa Samson

  Sean should never have married. Period.

  When he came back, I crossed my arms at the doorway and told him to leave. But he brought his bags inside and unpacked his clothing. The scene didn’t go at all as I’d rehearsed during that half year as my resentment built up. Go off to some inner-city commune and leave me here? What? I’m not good enough? The music’s not enough, and how long will it be before nothing’s good enough? Oh yeah, I saw it all in that time.

  I walked out of the room fifteen minutes later, telling him, “If you think you can walk in here, unpack your bags, and start up our marriage again like nothing’s happened, you’re delusional.”

  So he packed up his things again, stood at the doorway, and begged me to let him in.

  I said—and I shudder to this day to think I actually uttered something so old hat—but I said, “Don’t call me, I’ll call you.”

  I was a little drunk. Big surprise.

  He gave me the address of the monastery and told me he would wait. And despite the fact that over seven years passed without word one from me, he resurfaced during the time surrounding my father’s death, looking much more settled but even less sure. He met me at the Ten O’Clock Club around midnight the day I buried Dad. My refusal to answer the door obviously hadn’t deterred him. He waited and followed me into the bar. “This is silly, Georgia. Please, let’s make this work.”

  “It’s been too long, Sean.”

  “I’ve been waiting for you to change your mind. I don’t want to give up, Georgie, but I don’t want to force you to love me either, or to live out a commitment you don’t feel or want.”

  “Oh, how very monastery that sounds. Very wise. Very grasshopper.”

  He was beautiful. Older looking by that time. The bright blue eyes sitting more loosely them in the burnished skin. He filled out too, solid, like a real man.

  I told him, “I want a divorce.”

  “I meant what I said all those years ago.”

  “It’s too weird now.”

  “No divorce, Georgia.”

  So we chitchatted, both of us raised to be polite, and I found out he’d never strayed to another female, that he still wanted to try. Please.

  “My father just died, Sean. I can’t think about this yet.”

  He said he’d come back later, and he kissed me. So sweet, his lips the same, yet somehow more than they were before. The next day he helped me box up my father’s things at the condo.

  “What are you thinking, Georgia?” He handed me some ties for the Salvation Army. “Are you ready to make a new life?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  He squatted in front of my father’s bar and opened the cabinet. And it became clear to me why I didn’t want him to return, this holy man who fed the poor and turned to Jesus while his wife worshiped at the altar of Bacchus.

  He grabbed several bottles by their necks and turned to face me. I handed him an empty box.

  “Georgia, I’m sorry I didn’t try harder.”

  I stared at the bottles. “They’re Dad’s.”

  “I should have—”

  “The damage was done.”

  “I won’t divorce you.”

  “Yeah, so you said. Maybe you’d better go home to Richmond.”

  Ten minutes later he stood at the door. “I’ll be waiting for your call. Man, Georgie, someday call me. Or write me back. Or something.”

  And he told me he loved me. And I believed him, but I realized he didn’t know even one half of who I’d become.

  But it’s time to drive this car one direction or the other. Uncle Geoffrey’s right. And maybe I could make a right turn into Alcoholics Anonymous or something while I’m at it.

  Yeah, like that’ll ever happen.

  It’s funny. After that high from playing at All Souls, I actually thought it would be enough to get me to stop drinking. I remember at church hearing stories about big, big prayers, mothers praying God would do “whatever it takes” to bring their children back to Him. I used to think, Dear God, I hope nobody’s praying me into a cancer ward or a wheelchair.

  Today, I might feel a little differently.

  I am torn.

  I don’t want to play the organ in a church. I loved playing in that church the other day. To be engulfed in the sound. But today, I only want to run.

  I want to play jazz again, like I did when I was in high school. I want to slip on Polly’s shoes, the only shoes that ever really seemed to fit me all the time, match any outfit, go with all my pocketbooks.

  But can I do this? Can I walk down to that rector and tell him I quit before I even started? And honestly, if I did, would the jazz shoes fit anymore?

  Who am I? Where am I? Why don’t I know what to do with myself? How do I stop what I’m doing to become who I am?

  God, God, God! Step in. A little help. Not my will but Thine, all right?!

  So I sling my purse over my shoulder and walk down to the Ten O’Clock.

  Jesse raises an eyebrow as I walk straight past him and sit down at the piano.

  Twinkle twinkle little star.

  How I wonder what you are.

  Only this time those stars whiz like lightning bolts and fireworks all wrapped up in a gauzy sensuality that makes you want to sway and love and kiss.

  Up above the world so high.

  You diamonds in the sky are beautiful here now. Come and play with me. Come and play.

  I look up.

  Aunt Drea and Jesse stand with their mouths open. I stand up, walk out, and go home.

  Jazz is a slang term for copulation. Boogie-woogie for secondary syphilis. Gig refers to the female sexual organs. And swing? Well, the term swingers didn’t come from nowhere.

  I play my piano all night. I improvise. I pull long-forgotten melodies from somewhere deep in my brain, and I feel as if God, despite the names for what I am doing, sits on the edge of His throne and sways. Maybe a little?

  Please?

  Sinful music, Georgia, coming from a sin nature. And if not sinful, well, surely not the best option. You were living the best option before this, don’t you remember? And you could not be satisfied. It’s not the music, it’s not the expression, it’s you. If you couldn’t be happy playing in church, you couldn’t be happy anywhere.

  YOU ARE THE PROBLEM!

  Remember, girl … only one life.

  Only what’s done for Christ.

  And Jesus is in church. Not on any of those records, not in those clubs, not, obviously, in those jazzy fingers of yours.

  You’re getting on my nerves. You’re a loser who’s been sulking for years. You’re pathetic, and I don’t like you one bit.

  Pull yourself up by your bootstraps, girl! This act is boring me now. Get moving. Moving, moving, moving!

  Oh, God! Who is this voice in my head? Is it light or dark? Tell me, please! I can no longer tell on my own.

  Clarissa

  The father helps the children into the backseat of his car and tells them they’re going to spend the night at his sister’s house, with Aunt Wanda and Uncle Buck. Phyllis needs some time away from the kids. Too much pressure on her these days.

  Remember Jimmy and Scott and Sue? Your cousins?

  The boy says he’s old enough to stay home.

  “No, Reggie, you’re not. Not overnight.”

  “Aunt Phyllis says she hates you. And I do too.”

  The father recedes into the bags under his own eyes.

  The little girl remembers the last time they went to Aunt Wanda’s, how Jimmy and Sue held Reggie down while Scott peed on him. Even on his face.

  “You’re adopted, you don’t belong,” they always sang, dancing around and wiggling their behinds at Reggie. But the girl was too little to really do anything. She tried once and received a blow to the head for her heroics, Reggie telling her not to embarrass him like that. He could take care of himself.

  She’s not going to go to sleep, she decides, because she never wants to get peed on and not know it.
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br />   She told the father that TV Mom offered to let her come and stay next door, but he said family is family.

  Georgia

  And then there’s John Coltrane. I look up at the ceiling in my bedroom as I lay naked on the bed. My AC is on the blink.

  If I could design the ultimate jam session, Coltrane would naturally be in the mix. You see, there’s a part of me that loves these musicians for their music … but a truer part of me loves them for their struggles.

  Coltrane was an addict. When he emerged from the prison of his substance abuse, he wrote A Love Supreme, my mother’s favorite jazz album. He wrote it for God, he said, which to me means he wrote it for all of us.

  What is it about some of us, the old runners of our art so pitted and worn, we jostle and bump and sometimes grind to a halt, needing the wax of booze or sex or drugs to lubricate our very existences and send our creative urges whizzing down the mountain of truth?

  Fairly

  I met a darling girl on the way to Uncle Geoffrey’s house. This cabby named Melissa even looked like a Melissa because the true Melissa requirements are sparkling dark-blue eyes, white teeth, shiny brown hair, and laughter. She laughed for three-quarters of the ride, and I thought, “I need a friend like that, goodness knows.” I mean, people like Melissa are easy to be with, and while she’s not unfashionable or anything, she doesn’t seem so affected and blasé like the majority of my tribe in the city.

  She knows Uncle G. Everybody knows him, she said. Frequently she drives him to the airport, and he’s sure cute for an old guy. That tickled me.

  Uncle G purchased a fan for the guest room, so I will be able to sleep. It hummed as I read myself tired with another cozy mystery, this about a head-hunter in Maryland who has the most adorable house, and don’t people’s lives in books hold such appeal?

  Oh, and Uncle G’s little house is just darling! Despite his normal Big Lots-Sal’s Boutique fare, he has managed to intersperse his collection of items from his travels the world over. Very eclectic. The guest bedroom needs a nice coat of paint and new draperies. So I figure I’ll make myself useful and help out a little during my stay. I’m thinking caramel with honey and butter overtones.

  Thank goodness the mattress is new.

  It feels more settled than any place he ever lived before, which makes me wonder if something new is around the corner. I have a theory, really, about how our dwellings affect our lives and decisions. But I’m no sociologist. Rather, it’s more of an observation that people tend to stay in places they love, especially if they’ve done the work on them themselves.

  Mary-Margaret

  With fine-boned hands, sweet yet strong, Mary-Margaret unfolds the square of wrapping paper, pushing aside the cellophane wrapper. Cute, wispy fairies float like wishing weeds beneath the glossy surface.

  Six years old she’d be.

  Sliding the gaping scissors along the paper with a tidy zip, she sighs, then casts away the excess and sets the present, a jewelry box, in the center. She opens the lid and listens to the song, “Music Box Dancer,” as the tiny ballerina twirls on her peg just like the dancer in the jewelry box she’d had when she was growing up. It took her forever to find one like this, old-fashioned and displaying the tenderness she feels in her own heart.

  She prays one day Miranda will find her. And when she does, the ballerina will be waiting to dance to such a pretty song.

  She loves this child just as she loves the children God let her keep. Just as much. She’s been waiting for her heart to harden, to find a place in it where there is no room for Miranda, a separate place, but it just won’t happen. And so she bleeds.

  Georgia

  Sean asked me to marry him when we were eighteen, a week after graduation. We sat in the back of Sacred Heart Church in Highlandtown, holding hands and listening to the organist practice for the upcoming weekend’s Masses.

  “This brings me such a sense of peace, Georgia.”

  I laid my head on his shoulder.

  He pulled me close. “And you bring me such a sense of peace too. I know it sounds sentimental.”

  I felt the same way about him.

  When the final note echoed around the sanctuary and the organist lowered the cover, Sean slipped the ring on my finger as he said, “In the sight of God and the Blessed Sacrament, will you marry me?”

  And I accepted, though I wasn’t quite sure what the Blessed Sacrament had to do with it. But that’s Sean for you.

  We walked down to Fells Point, his arm around my shoulders, and I felt young and old at the same time. Very ready to commit my life to him. My entire life. But still happy about the tassel hanging from my rearview mirror.

  We married at the end of July.

  Each day, before he returned home from his job at the bike shop and left for night class, I’d look at the clock and get the same wonderful feeling I used to get when my mother and I walked hand in hand across the parking lot of Kings Dominion, jingly excitement speeding up my heart as I thought about the roller coasters, the shows, the dolphins, holding my mother’s hand as we ran from ride to ride.

  I should get back together with him. He’s asked my forgiveness many times. He grows more beautiful each year. And I haven’t had a drink in two days.

  Maybe if we start out slowly, maybe if we go back to the cafeteria or Sacred Heart Church. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe.

  “Okay. Sit down and let me tell you a story, Georgie.”

  UG. On the phone. “You need to hear about Ella Fitzgerald.”

  “Please, Uncle Geoffrey! I know Ella like the back of my hand.”

  “Even better. Listen up.” He inhales from the cigarette I cannot see but know is there, snuggled between the lower portions of the first two fingers on his right hand.

  He tells me about Ella’s childhood, how she lost her mother at fourteen and her father six months later. How she started doing poorly at school, skipping classes; how she got in trouble with the police; how she landed in reformatory school, where she was regularly beaten.

  “She managed to escape that school, right in the middle of the Depression.”

  I knew that.

  “She was quite a lady, Georgie. She didn’t give up.”

  “So what does this have to do with me?”

  “I contacted Sean. He’s coming to Lexington the day after you arrive.”

  Okay, so two days without a drink was a good start. Maybe next time I can make it three. But who knows when that will be?

  Fairly

  I love these people! Uncle G didn’t tell me he was part of an adorable little cult! Ex-drug addicts, businessmen, an almost-prostitute, and a cab driver-actress with tattoos and spiky blond hair! Theological students and a cashier from the Save-a-Lot round out the group and make them even more delightful.

  And a beautiful man named Gracen. Love him!

  They meet in the park on Sundays and seem to eat dinner together all the time, if what they tell me is true. I have no reason to believe it isn’t.

  Their idea of church sure beats sitting in a stuffy old sanctuary, sitting, standing, sitting, standing. And even though it’s so Jesusy, I don’t mind. Hort loved the liturgy and the quiet worship at the early service at his church, but I convinced him I wasn’t Episcopalian and had no intention of doing anything on Sunday mornings other than coffee and lounging with the Times.

  Uncle G tells me Georgia’s moving down soon. He actually asked me if I’d go around with a real estate agent to “separate the wheat from the chaff” for her. Nice little Bibley reference. My parents would have loved it.

  To be honest, I kind of miss Solo. People who revere God in quiet ways fill me somehow.

  I’m all about houses and style, so tomorrow I’m heading out with an agent named Howard Huckleberry. Dreadful or adorable, I can’t say. He’s got some cute houses to show me as well as a few apartments for rent. Georgia would have a conniption if she knew I was doing this, but as I said to Uncle G, “Mum’s the word!”

  The city celebrate
d World Refugee Day today, and so I trudged over to the park with Uncle G. Why must he walk simply everywhere? Fossil fuels, my foot. How much gas would it take to drive from East Third down to Main and Broadway? And my feet will end up looking like some shoeless pioneer woman’s feet. Most of the people in the cult wear walking sandals, and I have to admit they are cute in their own hand-milled-flour way, but a woman has to uphold her standards. And Lexington, judging by the looks of the pedestrians, could use a little more panache. In the meantime, I thought I’d just stretch out on the park lawn and take off my YSLs. I do love the old designers.

  A man as dark as graphite stepped up to the podium and began to speak of his experiences in Africa. He lost his wife and daughter and now lives in Kentucky, making a brand-new life for himself and the child who survived, another little girl. He held her high above his head, and we all cheered as they smiled.

  My goodness. How could anyone smile after seeing his wife raped and hacked to death with a machete?

  And then he told us he was a Methodist minister, that the key to life is forgiveness, that Jesus is the way to learn to forgive. I would say that was easy for him to say.

  But clearly it wasn’t.

  He seemed to just be warming up when a few of the more blue-state people became a little uncomfortable at his Baptist-style preaching. I couldn’t say I adored it either, but in my book, this man should be allowed to say whatever he wanted after what he’d been through.

  Uncle G has mostly blue-state views but behaves with red-state friendliness. I, myself, am yellow. This minister named Jonah seemed yellow too. For some people, I’ve always thought, political views are too much of a luxury, what with trying to survive for the day and all.

  On the way home from the rally I called Solo.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “Researching Incan religious rites.”

  Oh.

  “How was your wife killed, Solo?”

  “She died of a terrible sickness. The diarrhea, I believe you would call it. I tried to get her to the hospital in the city, but by the time we got there, she was too far gone. We had only the most simple of supplies in our village. I did all I could for her, but … a man can only do so much.”