by Riley LaShea
Also by Riley LaShea
A Special Gift From Gram V
Behind the Green Curtain
Black Forest: Kingdoms Fall
The Four Proposals
The Wish List
Club Storyville
Riley LaShea
Club Storyville
Copyright 2014 Riley LaShea
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned or distributed in whole or in part, in any form, without written permission of the author.
Thank you for supporting the author’s rights and buying an authorized edition of this e-book.
This is a work of fiction. Characters and events are fictitious, or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to real events is purely coincidental.
CONTENTS
Author’s Note
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
A Few More Notes
Excerpt from A Special Gift From Gram V
Excerpt from Black Forest: Kingdoms Fall
Author’s Note
Until I was nine, I had my own brassy southern grandmother. After more than forty years in Southeastern Ohio, she still said “hoce” instead of “house,” “skoo” instead of “school.”
She was born in Lynchburg, Virginia in 1907, many years younger than her next youngest sibling. Her brother was a minor league baseball player, and she was a beauty, so that was a good time in her life and she enjoyed a long youth when most women didn’t. It was only when she moved to Richmond to “make her fortune,” as my dad put it, that she met my grandfather, and she didn’t give birth to my dad until 1947, not long after her 40th birthday.
As a boy, my dad would go by train to visit my grandma’s family in Virginia. I inherited my love of trains from my dad, and my love of the South. We traveled southward a lot when I was growing up too – Virginia Beach, Charleston, Atlanta, Nashville. Forget the Mason-Dixon Line. I knew I was south enough when the kudzu started crawling over everything and every restaurant served sweet tea.
That said, this is not my story. It is the story of another time, of a different, more divided South. I believe the only way to write a story like this is to fully embrace it, both the good and the bad, so I have done my best to stay true to the attitudes of the time.
Club Storyville is only a story. Storyville, however, was a real place, a slice of American freedom open in New Orleans between 1897 and 1917. It has been my privilege to spend so much time there over the past few months.
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Richmond, Virginia 1943
Chapter One
There was a song in my grandmother’s head I never heard her sing.
She used to hum, scrubbing dishes, wringing laundry with hands stronger than they looked, making Sunday supper with my mama and brothers and me, adding butter to everything when Mama’s back was turned and telling her to mind her own part of the meal when asked what she was doing.
Sometimes she would sing “Dixie.” “Dixie” was her favorite.
When it was the song, though, she grew quiet, as quiet as Nan ever got. Nan, that was what we called her. It would come on when she was alone, or thought she was alone, when she thought no one was paying her any attention. But I was always paying attention to her.
A lot of people paid attention to Nan, much to my mother’s great embarrassment. In Richmond, there were all sorts of well-behaved ladies - well-trained, Nan called them in private - the kinds who always remembered to cross their legs at the ankles and nibble their food, as if half a sandwich was simply too filling for a single meal. There weren’t too many Nans, and that made people look.
Nan’s beauty was beautiful in a way that only tried to be beautiful to the right people. Gray hair still flecked dark, she had wrinkles she’d earned, and scars on her hands and arms from working hard to take care of a big property when my grandpa made her a widow by fifty. She said her piece, did things that made people glance sideways and talk in whispers, and only let the men in her life be right when they actually were right.
Mama was ashamed of the woman she came from, we all knew it. Nan, though, Nan was ashamed of nothing she loved, and she never let anyone say a word against her family or her God or her beloved South, and whenever I stopped for a minute to think who I wanted to be, she was the only person I could see.
Though, I never told Mama that.
Practical by necessity, Nan could handle anything that needed doing. She didn’t lose a lot of time to illusion. Except when the song came on. She would get lost then. Like she had stepped through to another world, she would sway and close her eyes, and, even though I could see her right in front of me, I could tell she wasn’t there anymore. She was someplace else, old and distant and, only when I grew older would I think, romantic and seductive. Watching from behind a chair or just outside the doorway, I wanted to ask where she went when she went away, but I also kind of didn’t, because wherever Nan went when the song came, she wanted to be, and it was nowhere with us.
Then, someone would walk into the room and remind her we were there, and Nan would launch full-voice back into “Dixie.”
I never understood why Nan sang about missing the South so much when she never left it.
She always said, “There’s nothing wrong with being proud of the South, as long as you’re proud for the right reasons”. I never thought to ask Nan why she was proud, but I knew why she thought she shouldn’t be.
I was six, thereabouts, the Sunday we were walking home from church. A boy just a little older than me was crying on the sidewalk by an old rusty bicycle, and Nan helped him to his feet and pulled out a handkerchief to wipe the tears from his eyes and the blood off his knee.
“See, now, it’s not that bad,” she said when they could both see the little cut that made all that blood, and then Nan gave the boy some of the caramel candies she carried in her pocketbook for Edward and Scott and me, and sent him off smiling on his bike, like he’d never fallen off it.
I didn’t think a strange thing about it until we got down the block and Mama turned harshly to Nan. “You shouldn’t have done that,” she said. “People were looking. They’ll talk.”
“Let them talk,” Nan returned in her thick accent that, even after spending my whole young life in Richmond, I could never quite imitate. “And I’ll talk about the five dozen Christians who walked right by a little boy crying by himself because they were afraid his color might rub off on them.”
“Throw that away,” Mama looked distastefully at the white handkerchief covered with the boy’s blood and tears.
“I will do no such thing,” Nan declared. “This is my favorite.”
“Then you shouldn’t have used it,” Mama replied with a tight jaw. “You’ll never get that blood out.”
When Nan stuffed the soiled handkerchief down the top of her dress in a way that made Mama crazy with its crudeness, Mama grabbed me by the hand and dragged me along the sidewalk as if she was afraid Nan might rub off on me.
By that point, it was too late.
They always did have disagreements about things like that. Mama thought it was everybody’s job to make everyone else comfortable. Nan thought it was everybody’s job to mind their own lives and not worry about what everyone else was doing.
Every once in a while, they would go at each other especially hard, and say things they couldn’t take back. Mama would tell Nan she was a rabble-rouser who made her life harder than it had to be as a girl, and, one time, when Mama used the word Nan told us we’d better never say in her house, Nan got angry like I’d never seen her.
“I don’t know how your father and I turned out someone so ignorant,” she said, and Mama was hurt bad. Daddy took us out of Nan’s house quick, and we didn’t visit for a long time after that.
Eventually, though, Nan apologized for losing her temper, and Mama said sorry too. They always did in the end, but they both held onto being right as they said it, and it was never quite the same. Each time they had to say a sorry to each other, Nan and Mama grew a little further apart, and when they sat in silence sometimes, not coming up with a word to say between them, I wished I’d gotten to see them together before all the sorries started. As long as I’d been alive, they were mother and daughter in title only, bound by blood and little more. I imagined, though, there must have been a time they made each other smile.
Despite Nan and Mama’s differences, and there were a ton, when Nan got sick in September of 1943, it was enough to move all of us to her big house in the country, because that’s what family was supposed to do, and Mama always did what she was supposed to do. It was silly to keep two houses, Nan said, when she was going to die soon enough and leave us hers anyway.
Mama insisted we could take care of everything that needed doing, the chores on the big property and all Nan’s tending. Nan could afford to pay someone who needed a job, though, and she thought that was the way the world should work. Daddy already had good work in the city, where he spent the weekdays with Scott, who still had a year left of high school, and the house we lived in before Nan couldn’t live on her own anymore commanded a good price. Nan didn’t want to hang onto money none of us needed when she could spread it around to those who had an honest living to make.
That was what she told all of us, and I knew there was some truth to it. I also knew Nan, though, so I knew she wanted to be the woman who stood strong in the face of all things, who spoke her mind, and wiped a colored boy’s knee on the street because it was the Christian thing to do. She didn’t want to be a body wasting away in front of us, with a mouth sometimes too dry to make good sense, and accidents that had to be cleaned up.
So, though I knew Mama didn’t like it, when Nan asked me to do it, I called her advertisement for a nurse into the Richmond Times Dispatch and fielded the telephone calls that came in from people who wanted more information.
Sipping his whiskey by the phone when I took a call late one evening, Daddy sat listening to my side.
“Have you had all men calling?” he asked when I said goodbye to the stranger on the other end.
“No, Sir,” I told him. “Both men and women.”
“Tell the women it pays ten dollars less a week,” he instructed. “They don’t expect as much. Save your grandmother some money.”
“Tell the women it pays ten dollars more a week,” Nan said when I thought it best to ask, since it was her money we were saving, and that’s what I did. It must have been a good rate, because the women I talked to were anxious to come in for interviews, and Nan got her pick of the Richmond nursing litter.
Daddy thought he should handle the hiring too. He even took a day off work for it, but Nan asked him how he thought he would know who she’d want taking care of her, and she sat up next to him in the living room to meet each person who came in, looking like she was growing stronger, instead of weaker.
The Friday Daddy stayed home, Nan didn’t like a single person she saw.
“What was wrong with them?” Daddy asked in frustration. “They all seemed fine to me.”
Nan had told me I could stay too, if I wanted, though Daddy thought I had no business there, and I could tell he expected the hiring to be as quick and easy as the hiring at the company where he worked. He’d get it done in a day and have the rest of his weekend to relax.
“Well, not to me,” Nan said, and that only made Daddy more annoyed.
Getting up in a grumble, he went out to the porch to smoke, and Nan looked to me with a mischievous expression. Although I knew she really didn’t like any of those people, because they had all talked directly to Daddy, instead of to her, I knew she also liked causing Daddy aggravation just for the sake of causing him aggravation.
On the second day, Nan still didn’t find anyone who suited her, and by the third day, Mama came to Daddy’s aid.
“No one you would want would come out here on a Sunday,” she said when we got back from church and were settling in for more interviews. “You should pick from the people you’ve already seen.”
“Well, whoever I hire will have to work on Sunday,” Nan responded. “So, I guess we can’t be too judgmental about how they choose to honor this particular Sabbath.”
Trying to hide the smile that came to my face, as I always tried to hide when Nan said something I knew Mama thought I shouldn’t think was funny, I helped Nan get situated on the couch as Mama stormed from the room.
“You’re going to end up with a Jew,” she said on the way.
“We won’t let that happen,” Daddy passed her on his way in, tossing his Sunday paper on the table by his chair. “I do hope we can wrap this up today,” he announced. “I would like to get back to work tomorrow.”
“Well, it would certainly be a shame if you couldn’t be here,” Nan returned. “Your input has been invaluable.”
Unable to stop the laugh that rose in response to the compliment Nan didn’t mean, I turned it into a cough when Daddy gave me a look.
“Get the door, Elizabeth,” he said when the first person in line for the job that day knocked, and, when I answered it to a young man with slightly colored skin he could blame on a late suntan, but I could tell was because he was part Indian, I suspected Nan would give him an extra chance to impress her, just to irritate Daddy.
It was mid-afternoon, and Daddy had just about had it, when I pulled the door open to a woman with the most dazzling smile I had ever seen. Her strawberry blonde hair held onto a touch of summer where it fell in a light curl onto her shoulders beneath her hat, though there was a chill already for early fall and the sun had been spotty over Richmond for weeks. A little shorter than me, she felt taller somehow, and when she offered her hand in greeting, it felt as warm and soft as that of a woman who never had to work, not like that of a woman who had come looking for a job.
“Hello. I’m Ariel Brandt,” she said, and she didn’t sound like the others before her either. Her voice soft, it was also strong and crisp, almost like she worked harder to make her words right than the rest of us.
“I’m Elizabeth,” I returned.
“I’m here for an interview,” she had to further explain, her gray-blue eyes glancing beyond me, but it was only as she released my hand that I realized I had forgotten to invite her in.
“Yes, of course,” I gestured. “Come in, please.” And, watching her remove her second glove, which the temperatures didn’t quite call for yet, but explained why her hand felt warm on the not-entirely-warm day, I led her into the living room.
“This is Ariel,” I said, and, for a reason I couldn’t entirely grasp, her name felt nervous on my tongue.
“Ariel Brandt,” she better introduced herself, going to Nan first. “You must be Mrs. Mosby.”
“That, I am,” Nan replied, taking Ariel’s offered hand. “Ooh, warm hands. I like that.”
“Well, it is my job,” Ariel responded, and I hadn’t thought of that. Nor, did it seem, had most of the people who came before Ariel, whose hands had felt cold when I touched them.
Smiling, Ariel turned to Daddy next, but when he gave her a succinct nod, she realized he wasn’t going to take her hand and let it fall to her side.
“Please, sit down,” I rushed to make Ariel feel comfortable in Nan’s home when it felt like Daddy was trying to make her feel unwelcome. “Can I get you anything?”
“I would love a cup of hot tea.” She looked appreciative as she turned that same wide smile back on me.
“Of course,” I said, nearly stumbling over my own feet I turned so fast to fetch it.
“She’s got another one in there?” Mama prodded me when I got to the kitchen where she’d been hiding out all morning. If you asked, Mama would say she wanted no part of Nan’s nurse hunt. She did want to hear what was going on enough, though, to spend three days eavesdropping. “Is she going to talk to every nurse in Richmond? Why doesn’t she just pick somebody? How different can they be?”
Ariel felt different, though, from the second I answered the door. I wanted to tell Mama that to stop her talking, but I couldn’t explain why she felt different to myself, so I certainly couldn’t explain it to Mama.
“I think Nan just wants to find the right person,” I said. “I imagine it must be hard to have to trust somebody else to take care of you.”
“Then, she should let us do it,” Mama replied, and I thought it best not to tell her Nan might have thought us the wrong people. Maybe even the worst. “I hope she picks someone soon,” Mama went on to say, watching me put two sugar cubes on the side of Ariel’s saucer, and I fought the urge to add another in case Ariel liked her tea extra sweet. “Every person who wants tea wants sugar. We’re going to use up our entire ration with this nonsense.”
Would it have felt like nonsense to her, I wondered, if she was the one who had to be weak in front of somebody? If she was the one who had to let somebody see her at her least capable and most vulnerable? The tea ready, though, I managed to keep my comments to myself, which was for the best, and went back into the living room.
