Club Storyville

by Riley LaShea

  “Why?” I asked with the sticking feeling of knowing something was gravely wrong before I knew what. Like mud, closing in at my knees.

  “I don’t know,” Ariel softly replied, meeting my gaze with concern, and I could tell she was telling the truth. “Let’s just get to the house.”

  With no questions left she could answer, I followed Ariel’s lead, climbing into the car of yet another stranger to let him carry us back to a life we’d left behind only a few days before.

  Through the streets of the city and out onto the old county road, Richmond felt more claustrophobic than I remembered. The way looking narrower with each passing mile, I couldn’t find the courage to be myself there. More scared coming home than I had been leaving, I didn’t even have the courage to reach across the car seat and take Ariel’s hand.

  The crackle of gravel beneath the tires as we turned up Nan’s drive, I listened to individual stones ping the undercarriage and stared up at the house that had often been more like home to me than the house I grew up in. Porch light on, Nan’s old farmhouse stood darkly behind it, only a single dim light streaming through a window, and, when the driver stopped and Ariel and I got out of the car, no one rushed to greet us or even stood on the porch in more subdued welcome.

  Our footsteps echoing our lonely approach, the front door swung wide when I turned the knob, the only part of the house excited to see us, but, more darkness waiting beyond it, it felt so deep even Ariel’s sweater couldn’t protect me.

  It wasn’t just a physical darkness, it was a spiritual darkness. Recognizing it as the same heavy air that had been in the house the day my friends dropped me off and I walked in to discover Edward was gone and my life would never be the same, I felt the mud form around my knees again so I couldn’t take another step.

  Taking my bags from my hands and setting them on the floor, Ariel came to face me in the hush of the foyer. Her hands on my shoulders too light in their touch, I wished she would handle me as she had in New Orleans, and, when those hands moved to the front of her sweater, barely brushing the body that yearned for her beneath, I thought, for a moment, Ariel wished the same.

  “Okay,” she uttered at last, her touch falling away, and I realized with disappointment I was just being made presentable for the world in which I belonged.

  “Daddy,” I said when we found him a few seconds later, sitting alone in the living room, listening to Mozart instead of news for once and nursing a whiskey like he might any normal night.

  “Elizabeth,” Daddy stared across the room for a moment, before pushing at last from his chair. He didn’t seem aware the sun was almost down, and the room dark, until I reached for the light, and, blinking rapidly against the sudden brightness, Daddy’s bloodshot, unfocused eyes made me wonder how many whiskeys he’d had before we got there.

  “Nan?” I asked because I didn’t need to ask if something was wrong.

  “She’s still alive,” it took Daddy a moment to answer me. “Just barely.”

  Walking toward us, his eyes never left my face, and there was something different in them that made the room feel like a dream as he raised his hand to me in an uncharacteristically clumsy touch that stroked down my hair. Letting forth a short burst of breath, he sounded surprised to find me tangible, as if he thought I was a hallucination, or a ghost, who might vanish at any moment.

  “What else?” I asked him, and Daddy sobered some at the question. Dropping his hand, he seemed to realize he was being abnormally affectionate as he took a few steps back.

  “You should go see your grandmother,” he said.

  “What else?” I demanded, and Daddy looked shocked by my tone, squinting my way as if he didn’t know whether to scold me for breaking the fourth commandment or obey.

  “We heard from Jackson,” he answered at last, and, trying not to flinch at Jackson’s name, I glanced to Ariel, doubly pained when she showed no reaction. “He’s being awarded a medal. Their platoon was part of an operation that went… well, it went right,” Daddy’s jaw tightened, “but there were a lot of casualties. When their sergeant was killed, Jackson stepped up. He acted heroically, got a lot of men to safety. You should be proud.”

  “Scott?” I felt no pride or even concern for Jackson in the face of what Daddy wasn’t saying. Because Scott and Jackson were in the same troop. If Jackson was under attack, Scott was under attack, and it felt like Daddy was burying the sharp point under a mound of flowers.

  “He was injured,” Daddy shook off all emotion to respond. “He lost a leg, took some shrapnel. He has an infection. If he survives, he’ll come home.”

  “If he survives?” I was certain the floor actually shifted beneath my feet, only realizing it was I who was fading when Ariel caught me, her strong hands on my back the only things keeping me standing.

  “You should go see your grandmother,” Daddy refused to discuss Scott any further. Looking to his glass, he determined he’d had too much, and I watched him slide what was left onto Nan’s side table through distorted vision. “Go now, Elizabeth,” Daddy got enough mind back to order. “She doesn’t have long.”

  “Come on,” Ariel’s encouragement was more sympathetic. Her hands, though, were complicit as they turned me out of the living room.

  Cast between the light from the hallway and the small yellow lamp next to Nan’s bed, Mama was no more than an outline where she sat, head-bowed, in the chair next to Nan, and, for a moment, I was certain we were too late.

  “Mama?” I asked helplessly, and when she turned to Ariel and me in the doorway, she looked years older than when we left.

  “Elizabeth?” It was Nan’s voice that responded, feeble and failing, and, though it looked as if it took all the strength she had just to open her eyes, she smiled for us. “Ariel.”

  “How are you feeling?” Ariel softly questioned, dropping me off next to Mama to move to the other side of Nan’s bed.

  “I feel good,” Nan’s breath came in ragged bursts, and, looking down at where her hand was in Mama’s, I wondered how long Mama had been sitting there without moving. “My daughter’s taken wonderful care of me. And, you know what?” she asked in a conspiratorial whisper. “There is some ease in dying.”

  Despite seeing it coming with my very own eyes, hearing Nan say it out loud started my tears at once.

  “Come here,” Nan said. Taking her hand from Mama’s with effort, she gave it to me, and I held back a sob at how cold and lifeless it felt as I took it. “I need to talk to these girls alone,” she declared, and, though I expected her to argue, Mama got up, so tired she staggered to the door, but I knew she wouldn’t go far.

  Touching the back of her hand to Nan’s wrinkled face, Ariel reached for the stethoscope dangling on the hook where she’d left it.

  “No time for fuss,” Nan grabbed Ariel’s hand too, as I felt what was left of the life in her hold on with all its might. “How was New Orleans?” she asked, and not sure who she wanted to answer, I looked to Ariel. The yellow light shining against the side of Ariel’s face, it cast the other side into near darkness, so she looked like some of the masked statues we’d seen on our drive through the streets with Desmond.

  “It went well,” Ariel said, producing a genuine smile for Nan.

  “Did you see Desmond?” Nan asked, and truth coming at once to my lips, that her Desmond had died, but we met his grandson, I bit it back when I realized Nan didn’t need to know all that, that lies were sometimes kinder.

  “Yes, Ma'am,” I responded, and, at Nan’s bright smile, I knew it was the right thing to say.

  “Was he still handsome?” she asked.

  “So handsome,” I whispered. Remembering the picture in my bag, that, at least, I could say with some honesty.

  “Did he play for you?” Nan wanted to know, and, glancing up at Ariel’s soft smile, I knew we didn’t have to push the lies too far.

  “No,” I answered. “We didn’t get the chance.”

  “That’s too bad,” Nan gasped for breath.
When Ariel tried to pull away to ease her pain, though, I could see her surprise as Nan found a reservoir of strength to hold her in place.

  “I’m glad Heaven isn’t segregated,” Nan went on as if there was nothing more pressing than what she had to say. “When Desmond makes it there, I’m going to introduce him to your grandfather. I think they’ll like each other.”

  “Me too,” I laughed through my tears, and, though I had never met him, I could picture my grandpa as Nan had always described him to me, with his booming laugh and big arms to match his heart.

  “Ariel,” Nan said.

  “I’m right here,” she stepped into Nan’s gaze, though I got the sense Nan could no longer see us.

  Tugging me closer too, Nan guided my hand until I felt the familiar, welcome sensation of Ariel’s palm against mine, as Nan’s hands closed around ours, holding them together.

  “You take care of her,” Nan said. “That is your job now.”

  “I will,” Ariel responded, and, as I watched the tears finally spill onto her cheeks, I didn’t know if she was more upset that Nan was dying or that she had to lie to her in her final moments.

  Nan’s eyes drifting closed, she left us, and I thought it was the end. At the small smile that came to her face, though, I realized Nan hadn’t traveled onward, but had traveled backward, to a place I had seen her go so many times before, a place that was old and romantic and seductive.

  “Do you hear it, Elizabeth?” she whispered, and, desperate to follow her, to know where it was she had always gone when she left us, I closed my eyes, listening past the pounding of my heart until I could hear it, a single note somewhere off in the distance.

  Focusing on it, I beckoned the sound toward me, hearing other notes join in, growing in volume until there was a song in my head so loud it blocked out everything else. Recognizing its melody, I knew it couldn’t be Nan’s song. When I shut my eyes and opened my heart and listened for music, it seemed, it was the song from below ground in Club Storyville, the one Ariel and I danced to, that I would hear.

  “Yes,” I breathed. “I hear it.” And, opening my eyes to meet Ariel’s across Nan’s bed, I was sure she could hear it too, that she was back there with me in New Orleans, where we were free and love had no boundaries.

  “That’s Desmond,” Nan sighed. “He sure knows how to play.”

  Nan’s hands falling suddenly from ours, Ariel was quick to catch them, her thumbs stroking tenderly against Nan’s skin as she crossed Nan’s hands over her stomach, and I knew it was just that fast, that Nan had sprinted forward, out of the past and beyond us, and she would never talk to me or hug me or argue with my parents on my behalf again.

  Sobbing, I could feel the room starting to crumble, as if Nan’s house didn’t want to stand without her in it, and I knew I would be next until I felt Ariel’s arms around me, so tight they held my pieces together.

  One hand covering my ear, she called Mama back into the room, but I couldn’t let go as Mama came in, paying only passing interest to us as Ariel moved me out of the way, and I wasn’t sure if we had protected her from those last moments or had stolen them from her.

  My mind going to Scott, lying in some foreign hospital unit, I wondered if he would die too, as Edward had, away from home and everyone who loved him, with no one to sit beside him and hold his hand and remind him he was loved.

  “Go tell your Daddy,” Mama said, and, accepting that there was no one else to do it, I nodded and forced my feet to move, pulling Ariel with me as I left the room, unwilling to let her go when she was the only thing that still felt real.

  The medical examiner arrived quickly to pronounce Nan’s death, but, late as it was, and the temperature moderate enough, Daddy decided to wait until morning to call the coroner.

  I sat with Mama for a while when she refused to leave Nan’s room for bed, but it didn’t feel like Nan was there anymore, so I went to make Mama some tea and asked if she was okay before going off in search of Ariel.

  No one in the house could sleep. No one would, I knew, not until morning, once the man came to take Nan’s body away. I was still surprised, though, when I got to the living room and heard Daddy and Ariel talking in hushed voices out of respect.

  “I’m sure you’ll be happy to get your life back,” I heard Daddy say, though it didn’t sound mean, just resigned to the sudden change in our household. “You took really good care of her. Thank you.”

  “I enjoyed the time I got to spend with her,” Ariel said in return, and there was such a sense of finality in it, I stopped outside the doorway, clinging to the frame and the way things had been before Nan died. “It truly was my pleasure.”

  “You can stay here until you get your place back or find another one,” Daddy said. “I’ll give you a good severance. Is six months enough?”

  “That’s far too generous,” Ariel accepted her leave with such grace, irritation crawled over me like a rash. “With the state of the world, I think we both know I’ll find work right away.”

  “Still…” Daddy uttered, and I waited for him to take it back, all the things he’d said to send Ariel away before Nan’s body was even cold. “Nan would want you to have it.”

  “Thank you,” Ariel was in the process of accepting the offer, and her dismissal, with a nod as I stepped around the wall into the room, and my irritation sharpened to a dagger.

  “No,” I said, drawing both their eyes to me, though my eyes only saw Ariel as she stared at me in surprise. “You can’t leave.”

  “Ariel has her own life to get back to, Elizabeth,” Daddy declared.

  “No!” My irritation ignited, and, up in an instant, Ariel came to me, her hands on my arms dampening my rage just enough to keep me from exploding all over the living room.

  “Elizabeth,” she whispered, and everything I wanted in the world was in that utterance, in the way Ariel said my name, in the way she looked at me when she looked only at me.

  “Don’t leave,” my hands balled the back of her sweater, determined to hold onto her. “Please, don’t leave me.”

  “What’s wrong with her?” Daddy asked, and, though it was with concern, as if he was afraid I was losing my wits, the question made me instantly angry, because there was nothing wrong with me. The only thing wrong with me was I had just lost Nan, I might lose Scott, and that the universe would dare try to take one more person from me made me furious.

  “Nothing,” Ariel said to Daddy, though her eyes never left mine. “It’s just a lot of stress,” she tried to convince me.

  “I don’t want you to leave,” I pleaded with her in return.

  “Elizabeth,” Ariel stated very calmly. “You’re not thinking clearly.”

  “I am thinking clearly!” Though I couldn’t be nearly as calm as she was, not with the threat of her walking out of my life hanging in the air, my thoughts were perfectly clear. Surprisingly clear. In fact, I hadn’t had such clarity since I started trying to stifle my thoughts about her.

  In that moment, I realized exactly what I would lose if I let her go, and how much time I had wasted running away from Ariel when I should have been running toward her.

  As high as I knew the price would be as I looked past her shoulder, and saw Daddy looking at me with such concern, I knew the value of what I might get in return, and I was willing to pay whatever it cost.

  “Daddy, I’m leaving,” I said, blinking back more tears, because I didn’t want to go, but I had no reason to stay. What would I be waiting for? Scott to maybe make it home, or maybe not? Ariel to leave? Jackson, who would come back from the war and wouldn’t be enough? Because no matter how perfect he might seem held up against the Adonis image carved into young girls’ minds from a tender age, and no matter how much of a hero he was, he would still never be Ariel.

  “Leaving?” My announcement put even more confusion on Daddy’s face as he took a few steps toward us. “Where are you going?”

  Realizing I didn’t know the answer to that, I fought the fear that ins
tilled in me as I reached for Ariel’s hand, pulling from the well of her strength. “Wherever Ariel goes,” I said, and when Daddy’s eyes flashed to her, as if she was somehow responsible, and Ariel’s eyes flashed to me, I realized it was something I probably should have told her first.

  “No, you’re not,” Daddy shook his head.

  “I am,” I insisted.

  Fury building inside my chest, I suddenly understood why the man on the trolley, the one who looked so angry, was the one who chose to break the law and sit in the white seats. Defiance required some anger, the belief you had the right to something someone was trying to keep from you, the determination you would not be put into your place.

  “You are not going anywhere!” Daddy shouted, and I flinched at the violent edge to his voice I had rarely heard, and never directed toward me. Though I had cowered close by when Daddy yelled at Edward or Scott like that, I had always been so careful to never make him that angry.

  As Daddy looked at us, his breaths heaving, I didn’t know what he would do, and I stepped in front of Ariel, making sure all his wrath was directed only toward me. I wondered what would happen if I just tried to leave, if I grabbed Ariel and my suitcase and walked out the door. Despite Daddy’s old-fashioned attitudes, I never thought he would be the person who forced me to mind against my will. I never thought him the type to make me sneak out my window when no one was watching.

  “Neither of you are,” Daddy said more quietly, taking deep breaths, and, though I was certain I heard him, I was certain I couldn’t have heard right. “We have lost enough,” his voice shook, and I realized Daddy was angry too. But he wasn’t angry at me. And he wasn’t angry at Ariel. “The rest of this family is staying together.”

  “Mama will never allow it,” I returned instantly, because I was certain he had forgotten about her in the midst of his proclamation.