King of Hearts

by Stevenson, Jennifer

  She wished King Dave would come into the restaurant. King Dave would know why she couldn’t possibly go back there. What awful people. How hard it had been to leave. Her good reasons.

  But by Goreville standards, those reasons weren’t good enough. Blood was thicker than water. You showed up when your Daddy got married. I’m still from Goreville. God help me.

  She couldn’t cry. At her break she went to the ladies’ room and leaned against the door holding herself with both arms, bent over as if she expected something to fly out of her body. But she didn’t cry. She was too scared.

  I’ve lost King Dave.

  I’ve lost my Momma and found her and lost her again.

  Daddy wants me in Goreville.

  She was making change for Bobbyjay and Weasel at two o’clock that afternoon when she made up her mind.

  “’Sup, Queen Nadine?” Weasel said.

  “Queen Nadine?” Bobbyjay said.

  “Yeah.” Weasel thought he was awful witty. “You know. King Dave. Queen Nadine. Has kind of a ring to it.”

  Bobbyjay looked at Nadine and his ears went red. “I guess.”

  So he’d heard about her fight with King Dave. Heavens, the whole Local must have, except for Weasel here, who was always behind the news. That’s what happens when you break up downstage center at the Skyline during a rain curtain test.

  “Four-fifty, Harold,” she said. She slapped his change in front of him and started to walk away, but he called her back.

  “Isn’t this yours?” Weasel held out a bent-up white card. “It was stuck in with the singles.”

  “Don’t be so darned funny,” she snapped. She snatched the card out of his hand. Weasel and Bobbyjay exchanged spooked looks and hunkered down over their coffee.

  She felt ashamed. The rule in the Local was, you don’t piss off waitresses, unless of course you are divorcing them. But it wasn’t Weasel’s fault she was pissed off.

  She didn’t have it in her to apologize right now.

  On her way to the cash register she looked at the card he’d handed her. Mag c b M rna. How had this got into her apron?

  Momma, where are you when I need you? she wailed inside.

  Right here in Chicago. That’s where.

  Momma had tried to apologize for almost nine years of abandonment.

  Maybe she would accept an apology from Nadine for misjudging her.

  In a dream, Nadine spiked Weasel and Bobbyjay’s checks at the register and put their money away. She took the hairpins out of her waitress cap. “Lisa, I’m sick.”

  “Are you going home?” Lisa said, her stud-lipped mouth dropping open in dismay.

  But Nadine didn’t answer. She stuffed her white cap in her apron. In slow motion she drifted out the door, raised her arm, and walked straight into traffic on Michigan Avenue. “Taxi!”

  Momma’s showroom was at the Apparel Mart. Nadine mounted the escalator in a state of awe. Names she had only read about in magazines adorned the plate-glass fronts of showrooms: Givenchy, Armani, Versace.

  Forgive me, Momma. I didn’t believe you.

  As she stepped off the elevator at the sixth floor, the showrooms got smaller. Soon the doorways were human-sized, with only a narrow glass window beside each one, big enough to show whether the lights were on.

  Here she was. Magic by Myrna. She peered through the window. It looked like any office. Nadine tried the door. Locked. She pressed the doorbell button.

  Forgive me, Momma. You were right and I was wrong.

  No answer.

  She fidgeted, feeling sweat from her morning’s work sticking her thighs together, making cold patches at her armpits where the air conditioning chilled her sweaty uniform. Momma, please. Be here. She rang again.

  No answer. Her insides twisted with panic. I can’t get through this without you, Momma! she thought, and then, I’ll hate you for the rest of my life if you aren’t here, and then, I’ll hate myself if I lose my nerve. She leaned on the doorbell.

  Through the glass, she heard the ringing of the doorbell inside, like a fire alarm. Emergency. Emergency.

  She caught the flash of movement inside, and then Momma appeared not two inches from her face, peeking through the same narrow window where she stood. Who is this strange woman? she read in Momma’s face, at the same time as Nadine thought, Who is that strange woman?

  The door opened. “Nadine?”

  They looked at each other. Momma had on jeans, jeweled sandals, and a loose pink strappy top that looked like silk. Her hair was cut like Jackie O’s. Around her forearm was a velcro band with a pincushion full of pins. Nadine had seen dressers from the Auditorium come into Liz Otter’s wearing them.

  Nadine, of course, was wearing a sweaty white waitress uniform, coffee-stained and rumpled, and her Stride-Rites. She shoved her hands into her apron. Hidden in her apron, Daddy’s wedding invitation slid cool and menacing against her knuckles.

  Momma looked her up and down. Nadine could imagine what her thoughts must be.

  Not so pretty as when I saw her at the opera.

  Wonder who bought her the dress? Because if she’s a waitress, she sure couldn’t afford it.

  My daughter is only a waitress.

  A smile touched Momma’s lips. “Come in. I’m alone today. My assistant quit to get married.”

  “Daddy’s getting married,” Nadine blurted. “To Ella Mae Amory!”

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Momma burst out laughing. “He waited this long?” When she saw Nadine’s face crumpling she held out her hands. “Oh, baby.”

  Nadine hurtled into her arms. “He lied, Momma! He lied, he lied, he said you were dead!”

  She sobbed on Momma’s shoulder. I’m taller than Momma, she realized, and her sobs slowed.

  Momma patted her on the back as if Nadine were a baby.

  “Come in and sit,” Momma commanded. She led Nadine into a kitchen with a view of the Chicago River. Nadine sat with her knees together and her hands on her lap, as if her grubby white uniform were her Sunday best. Momma poured her a cold lemonade.

  “I’m sorry, Momma. I’m sorry I didn’t believe you.”

  “You didn’t expect him to lie.” Momma smiled, and Nadine thought she looked younger than she had two minutes ago. “I believed in him, too, darlin’,” she said, the Texas creeping back into her voice. “Thirteen years of waiting on him hand and foot, wearing those white gloves. I never did it well. That woman constantly watched me, criticizing, reporting back to Jim as if I were a schoolgirl. You turned out like my father,” she said, swerving off track. “You never got those big blonde looks from me or Jim.”

  “Daddy’s shorter than me now,” Nadine offered.

  Momma laughed. “You are here on your own, aren’t you?” she said. “I assumed, when I saw you in that dress, that you weren’t at the opera with Jim.”

  “No. I mean, yes, I’m on my own. Since last fall.” Nadine fell silent, watching this woman who was so like her Momma and yet a world away. The years rolled back. They were in the kitchen together, and nobody could hurt them now.

  “I found out on a Wednesday,” Momma said. “I won’t tell you how. He went to Austin that weekend for the convocation. When he left, I took my suitcase and got on the train to Chicago. I left him a note.” Momma’s superhuman front cracked for a moment. “I should have called you. I was so torn. He’s your father. I didn’t want to put you in the middle. That was a mistake.”

  “Don’t blame yourself, Momma,” Nadine said around a spiky lump in her throat.

  Momma put her hand over Nadine’s. Her blue eyes were full of tears. “He told me about your breakdown. If only I’d stayed. But that might have been harder on you.” Awed, Nadine watched the tears spill out and fall. “I was so torn,” Momma said again.

  “Breakdown?”

  “He said you hated me. I was afraid to call you at the hospital. He warned me the doctors wouldn’t let me talk to you. After that I couldn’t make myself take the risk.” Momma d
ashed the tears away with one elegantly manicured forefinger and met Nadine’s eyes. “I told myself I was afraid you would have another breakdown, but I was really afraid you still hated me.”

  “Hospital?” Nadine said, sounding stupid to herself. “Daddy said I went to the hospital with a breakdown?”

  Momma nodded. “He said the doctors wouldn’t let me visit you. After six months I felt too guilty to keep calling. He didn’t contest the divorce, and he sent money for a year, but he said I should leave you alone.” Momma met her eyes and Nadine saw the dawn of realization even as she felt it. “Was it a lie?”

  Speechless, Nadine nodded.

  Momma laughed harshly. “A lie? Oh, honey!” She squeezed Nadine’s hand. Nadine got up and pulled her Momma into a tight, blind hug. “I’ll kill that sorry sonofabitch,” Momma said, between gusts of bitter laughter.

  When Nadine let go of her, she saw Momma was crying while she laughed. “He was young once, darlin’, and so was I. Being king of the hill in Goreville made him like he is. I think he truly loves you.” She seemed to force that part out.

  He cursed me, Nadine wanted to say.

  Momma got serious. “I’m so sorry I let him intimidate me. I was a meek little preacher’s wife then. In spite of his affair I believed him. He won you too easily.” She brooded a moment. “I divorced him in the Chicago courts, so it took three years. By then I’d met Konstantin. He lives with me when he’s in the States.” She examined Nadine carefully.

  Nadine thought, My mother has a continental lover and designs dresses and goes to operas. How wonderful and strange.

  “So you didn’t have a breakdown,” Momma said. “What happened?”

  “I thought—I thought you left because you hated being a preacher’s wife. I sure hated it.”

  “What?!” Momma sat up bolt upright, glowering.

  “White gloves all day on Sunday. The receiving line. Ella Mae picked and picked at me. I grew—” Nadine couldn’t think of how to condense eight years of awfulness. She said helplessly, “I grew a foot between fifth and sixth grade.”

  “Oh, baby,” her mother said in a quavery voice. She looked Nadine up and down with pity.

  Nadine slumped in her chair to hide her big body from Momma’s eyes. “I was gawky and ugly and my bubbies were huge and I didn’t know, Momma, I never knew until right before I ran away, but they all thought I’d turn out a whore, too. That was why Daddy said I had to be above reproach.”

  “Oh. Did he?” Momma’s voice grated.

  “Bub Smith said, when I said I wouldn’t marry him, he told them all he turned me down for being a slut. Daddy believed him.”

  Momma smacked the table with the flat of her hand. “That does it. I’m buying a gun.” She sounded full-out Texan at last.

  Nadine gave in to tears. She laid her head over their clasped hands and cried on them.

  Momma started swearing.

  “I’ve always thought those Jukeses in Gorville were a bunch of poxy six-fingered ignoramuses with vestigial tails behind, but I never, ever thought your Daddy would try to make you take my place,” was the clean part of what she said.

  Nadine hiccupped and cleared her throat. “I was his surrogate preacher’s wife, Momma.”

  “That doesn’t make it any better.” Momma swore some more, terrible to hear. “I’m gonna sever his perverted generative organ and pickle it and send it to the State Fair. I’m gonna—”

  Nadine hiccupped again. Now she understood Momma’s rage. “Momma, Momma, he never—I mean I didn’t—I was a virgin’til I came to Chicago, Momma. I only meant,” she said, when Momma stopped cursing and started listening again, “that I did all those awful things, too. White gloves and receiving line and making spiritual correction visits to families with fast girls in high school and fetching backsliders out of the tavern on Sunday. And Ella Mae Amory always watching.”

  “A gun and a knife.”

  Nadine laughed and cried and hiccuped all at the same time.

  “Drink your lemonade,” Momma said, looking thunderous and thoughtful. “This is all my fault. I should never have settled for my freedom. He took my little girl away from me with a lie and then he didn’t even treat her right!” Her long fingernails clattered on the tabletop. “We need revenge.”

  Nadine sniffled. “Well, he’s marrying Ella Mae.”

  Chapter Forty

  Two hours later they had killed the bottle of champagne Momma sent out for to celebrate. Nadine had told her all about King Dave Flaherty. Momma listened with her cheek on one hand.

  “I don’t know about you,” she said, shaking her head gently. “You talk like a preacher’s daughter. You dress like—well, like one of my models.” She smiled. “You’ve been in town less than a year and you’ve had more adventures than I’ve had in nine years.”

  “What about Konstantin?” Momma hadn’t said much about him, except he was Greek and older and she was in no hurry to marry him.

  Momma waved her free hand. “You’ll meet him. No, I’m fascinated. And curious. Who are you going to be, Nadine?”

  Nadine blinked. “I don’t know.”

  “Do you want to marry this king of Daves?”

  A shaky sigh bubbled out of Nadine. “That depends. He’s almost perfect. He’s a wonderful father and a wonderful l—” She stopped. Preacher’s daughter habits were hard to break.

  “If you’re gonna talk about sex, you can call me Myrna.”

  Nadine blushed. “Well, he is. If he can make the time,” she added darkly.

  “So if he gets this job you’ll marry him.”

  “Yes.”

  “And if he doesn’t, you won’t.”

  She felt a hard spot in her throat. “Well.” She swallowed.

  It sounded so bald and dangerous like that. What if someone else got the job over King Dave’s head?

  Inconceivable. Nobody was better than King Dave. She had complete faith.

  But he might bollix the interview. Or never apply at all. Come to think, he never promised he would, when they’d talked in the rain onstage. Her hands made fists.

  He had to apply. He wanted it.

  She squeezed her fists tight, wanting it for him.

  “There’ll be other jobs someday,” Momma suggested. “Don’t be as rigid as your father.” She looked sad. “I suppose I was rigid, too, when I found out about him and Ella Mae. I’ll be sorry all my life that I didn’t try harder. Fight her for him.” Her eyes darkened. “I should have fought him for you.”

  Nadine made a distressed sound in her throat.

  Momma focused on her again. “Look, honey, I don’t mean to tell you your business about a man I don’t know. But if you love him, you might cut him some slack.”

  “That’s what other waitresses do,” Nadine said in a hard voice. “And they all get stung.”

  “How about,” Momma said, “you call him and ask him if he applied. Tell him how important it is to you. Talk about your own feelings. Don’t put a lot of conditions on him. Just ask.”

  “I guess I could do that,” Nadine said grudgingly.

  Having said it, she felt a huge weight roll off her heart. She didn’t have to be too proud, like Daddy.

  “So this waitress thing,” Momma said, veering off again. Nadine relaxed, glad to get away from the King Dave questions and the cliff they were leading her up to. “Do you want to keep doing that?”

  Nadine thought about the island of warmth and light that was Liz Otter’s, home away from home for two hundred and fifty meat-eating, womanizing stagehands, all of whom knew she had been King Dave’s girl for two whole weeks.

  And who would now know she wasn’t any more.

  They were her friends. Weasel and Bobbyjay. Rob the Snob. Anvilhead Arny. Badger and Scooby. The doorman Burgs with their raunchy winks. Mikey Ray, who thought he was irresistible and, thankfully, was wrong where she was concerned.

  They’d all helped out when she was looking for King Dave last time. A big change from the first
time she’d had to hunt him down—she’d had to blackmail Bobbyjay into squealing. Now they were lining up to side with her. She was in the club.

  Weasel even tried to hang a moniker on her. Queen Nadine.

  Well, Queen Nadine only worked if she was with King Dave.

  “Because,” Momma said, “I need a model here. My last one went on the Atkins and dropped sixty pounds and now she’s no earthly use to me. I could use a model with your figure.”

  Nadine stared. “Me?”

  “I have a show in two months. I have another show six months after that. In between shows I need an assistant. A sales-girl-slash-office-girl. Can you run a computer?”

  “I did the church books for two years before I ran away.”

  “No problem then. How about design?”

  “Clothes design? M-me?” Nadine said again. “Don’t you need college for that?”

  “You do. You could go to design school down here at the Art Institute. Work for me to cover tuition. If your rent gets tight,” Momma said casually, “I have a spare bedroom at my condo.”

  “Wait, wait!” Nadine waved her hands, feeling dizzy and overwhelmed. Her heart thundered. King Dave might have applied for that job. She couldn’t move in with him. He might not want her. She couldn’t leave Liz Otter’s. “One thing at a time.”

  “I’m sorry,” Momma said for the fiftieth time. She put her hands over Nadine’s. “I’m moving too fast. It’s such a wonderful thing to have my daughter back,” she said.

  Nadine’s eyes filled with tears again. She took a deep breath. “Let me make a phone call before I decide?”

  Momma pulled a phone off the counter and put it on the table between them.

  She wouldn’t let King Dave know she was knuckling under. She would call and say, I’m with my Momma, and she loves me! Or something more dignified. I’ve met your demand. So did you apply for that rigger job yet?

  Oh, heck, go for straight and honest.

  Do you love me? Do you still want me, or shall I move in with my mother?

  But when she called King Dave’s cell, she got voicemail.