October Suite

by Maxine Clair

  “You can bring anybody, bring your friend Cora. We can listen to the guys play awhile.”

  “Maurice’s is a honky-tonk, right?” she said.

  He laughed, making the label seem ridiculous even to her.

  “It’s an after-hours place. Don’t worry, won’t be no hoodlums. Truth be told, I’ve seen Ed and your friend Cora out there a time or two when his brother was playing. It’s private, you know? I mean, nobody knows nobody.”

  October let it percolate, good news and bad. A date, finally. She had never been out to Chez de Maurice’s. She was sure Cora would be up for the idea, because Ed was taking the weekend to look-see in St Louis. Cora would figure a night out as her best revenge. Still, the chaperone in Cora might spoil everything.

  “Cora and I have a meeting Friday night until nine,” she said. “I guess we could go for a while.”

  “Just tell me where to pick y’all up,” James said, “and we’re in business.”

  chapter 2

  October would remember the blur of coming and going that Friday night, and snatches of club life in between. First the three of them in James’s borrowed car out on Highway 24 where dark waves of prairie grass turned land liquid until the cut-off at the fading red-and-white of checkered Purina. Then a hump on the horizon, a flat bunker with painted-over windows, and Chez de Maurice in green on the Coca-Cola sign.

  Inside, the club had a bar at one end, bandstand at the other, and—as if it were the club’s whole reason for being—a dance floor stretching in between. The throb of a bass being played over the whirr of soft talk suggested that they whisper, but once Cora spotted Ed’s brother, she ignored the atmosphere.

  “There’s Leon!” she yelled right out “Lonny!” Set October off. Suppose she had not wanted to be seen?

  “Let’s sit here,” James said, choosing the first empty table he saw—to get Cora seated and settled, she thought.

  “Yes, this is perfect,” Cora said. Since they were in clear sight of the bandstand, October figured that Cora would let well enough alone. But no.

  “Order me a Singapore sling,” Cora said, and ran off like Leon was a long-lost brother who didn’t know he was about to be found.

  “I don’t know why Cora’s so excited to see Ed’s brother playing,” October said. As far as she knew, Leon was a fledgling.

  “He’s out here all the time,” James said. “Keeps things going till the biggies show up. What would you like to drink?”

  Her experience with drinks went from soda water with a splash of Mogen David wine, to beer with salt to take away the bitterness. Live a little. She ordered herself a sweet red Singapore sling. James asked for scotch and water.

  “Nice,” he said, looking long at her. “If I’da known you were going all out, I would have put on a tie.”

  She had gone all out and worn her just-in-case navy crepe with exaggerated shoulders, fitted waist and hips, flounce lined with polka-dot rayon, and high, open-toed blue pumps. Too audacious for church, and, therefore, sharp. She hoped.

  In his outfit, James looked more like somebody down-to-earth. He wore a white shirt, creased right out of the package. His blue suit coat did sag a little, and it didn’t even try to go with his brown trousers.

  Cora returned to the table just as drinks arrived. “Let’s toast,” she said. “To fun for a change.” She lifted her glass. October and James sipped and smiled. Cora took a long swallow of her drink. “Leon said Joe Williams is coming tonight and I, for one, want to meet him....”

  The combo had begun another number—fast, with what sounded to October like some version of musical scales.

  “You have to pay attention,” James told them, “or you miss half of what these cats are trying to do. Listen.”

  October listened, knowing that she was missing half. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard this song,” she said.

  “It’s bebop, baby,” he said. “If you’ve ever heard the tune like this before, they aren’t doing what they’re supposed to be doing. What’s hip is in the spur of the moment.”

  She watched James more than she listened. By the time the piano player got to his solo, James was spellbound. He yelled, “That’s it, that’s it!” And, when Leon soloed on his saxophone, “Now you sayin somethin.”

  After about an hour, the musicians took a break and James left the table. October watched him move among the tables, laughing, talking, knowing everybody.

  “James is on home ground,” Cora said. “I wonder how he knows all these people.”

  “He probably comes out here all the time,” October said.

  “He’s after you,” Cora said “He seems okay, but he knows his way around. Be sure you don’t get caught up in something you can’t handle.”

  Cora couldn’t see that knowing his way around made him all the more interesting. “I don’t think I’d have to handle him,” October said.

  “Yeah,” Cora said, “but I’ll bet he knows more about you than you do about him.”

  October shook her head. “He doesn’t know anything about me.”

  “He knows where you live. Where does he live? Who does he live with?”

  Cora probably wouldn’t know either. “He lives over on Rowland,” she said, guessing.

  “With ...?”

  “Alone.”

  “He told you that, or are you just guessing?”

  “What difference does it make? We’re not doing anything.”

  “I can’t believe you believe that, but okay, if you say so. Remember Connie what’s-her-name, when she brought Sherman to Darby’s and his other girlfriend showed up raising Cain?”

  Cora’s whole face changed and October looked to see Leon coming their way, trying on suave, she thought. He asked them what they were drinking, and what they wanted to hear. Flirting maybe, but that was okay. This was Chez de Maurice’s.

  “In My Solitude” popped into October’s head.

  “Ladies like the ballads,” he said, and was he possibly disappointed about that choice? He ordered them two more slings and got up to leave. “Listen for your song,” he said.

  When he was out of earshot, Cora told her, “Leon is a mess. He asked me if you were with James, and I told him yes, for now.”

  October ignored Cora’s remark but reminded her, “You know, don’t you, that Ed’s going to hear about you and your night out without him.”

  “He’d better hear, or Leon’s name is mud,” Cora said.

  The bebop started up again, and when James came back to the table he brought a friend he called School Boy who had gone to A & T and who kept calling Cora “Doll Baby.” He made himself at home and kept their glasses filled.

  October watched Cora’s ease with men, watched how she sparred as well as they did, without taking them seriously, nothing personally. October admired that.

  As the music got more intense, and James got more involved, School Boy remarked that “the cats sound canned to me, but they’re tryin—I’ll give ’em that—they’re tryin.”

  Cora jumped right on his case. “I’ll have you know that Lonny has people from New York interested in him. I’m talking about record contracts and things.”

  “Whoops,” School Boy said. “Didn’t mean to step on any toes.”

  October thought that loyalty might have Cora making up stories, but James was on Cora’s side—he liked the group, and so October did, too.

  As if on cue, the combo played a version of “In My Solitude.” Right away James caught on and said to October, “I saw him over here—did you ask him to play it?” Big grin.

  And with her best Cora-like attitude, October shrugged: “Um-hmm.” James closed his hand over hers on the table. Cora looked away.

  A little after midnight a commotion signaled that one of the biggies had arrived. Mr. Maurice went to the
microphone and announced, “Ladies and gentlemen, give Mr. Joe Williams a minute to compose himself. Lonny Haskins and the Tones will take a break and come back to play for Mr. Williams.” Singapore slings moved up to rum-and-Cokes.

  In person Joe Williams was much better-looking than the pictures October had seen; flesh and blood tells. Plus, he sang songs she knew—“Going to Chicago,” “Every Day I Have the Blues.” She was more excited by the idea of being there than by hearing him sing. When he crooned “My Foolish Heart,” jazz club became dance place and James and October swam with all the others around a dance floor under low lights.

  And then they were in the car, October and James, and had Cora really left with School Boy?

  “She’s a big girl,” James said. He kissed her. No trapdoors now, just his heat and his words, “Come go with me,” in her ear.

  “Go where?”

  “Don’t worry, just say you’ll go,” he said, kissing her neck.

  Wherever he wanted to take her, she wanted to go. “Yes, okay.”

  And down the silver strip of promise they rode, him driving, her hanging, head-heavy, on his shoulder, arms encircling him as much for balance as anything. The road tilted from side to side, rose, widened, narrowed, fell, slipping away, slipping.

  The next morning—Sunday—Cora stood over October’s bed with a glass of cold water. “No big deal. Everybody gets a little drunk at least once in her life. Be glad I was here. But,” she said, “Mrs. Pemberton was none too pleased. We made a ruckus and she came out of her room while I was getting you upstairs.” And Cora went back to bed.

  Where was the ice bag? October was head sick and heart sick. Remembered none of it. Wondered. On the basis of her limited experience, she thought surely she would feel sore or something if ...

  Sunday morning in a quiet house makes a phone ring very loudly. Very long.

  “I’ll get it,” Cora called. Stairs creaked loudly, Cora creeping down. Everyone else must have gone to church.

  “It’s for you!” Cora yelled.

  October scrambled as well as she could, got out of bed and made it down to the telephone. She could feel her own footsteps inside her head.

  “How are you doing?” James asked. From the sincerity in his voice she figured she must have been pitiful the night before.

  “Fine,” she said.

  “No headache?”

  “A little.”

  “Look,” he said. “I hope you’re not mad about last night. You don’t drink, and probably we should have gone light on the rum.”

  Nice man. “I’m the one who should be apologizing,” she said. “I was probably a mess.” She hoped there wasn’t anything more that they should be discussing, but she wasn’t sure.

  “Just a little tipsy,” he said. He seemed to be stalling.

  “The next time, I’ll be sure to order water with Coca-Cola on the side,” she said. Was there more?

  “Can we talk—I mean, can I come by today? I mean, if you’ve got some time ...”

  There was more. “Yes, I guess so,” she said. “I try to take Sunday afternoon to get ready for the week, but I can work it out.”

  “It doesn’t have to be the whole afternoon,” he said. “What are you doing now?”

  “Well ... nothing.”

  “What if I pick you up in half an hour?”

  “That’ll be all right.” Just let her off the phone now. Cora would have an answer. She raced back upstairs and into Cora’s room.

  Cora turned over in her bed. “What’s the matter? Was that James?”

  “Yes, and he sounded strange. Guilty. He apologized for getting me drunk and now I’m really wondering ...”

  “Hold it, hold it ...” Cora said. She unwrapped the covers further and sat up, rubbing her face.

  “You passed out girl. You probably scared him. Nothing happened. You got home a minute before I did, and I came straight home. You probably scared him.”

  Thirty minutes later, when October opened the door, it was clear to her that James had not slept. Same shirt and pants, and now a peacoat against the gray and bluster outside.

  “Come on in,” she told him. “I’ll get my coat.”

  “We can talk here, can’t we?” he said. “I take it everybody is at church.”

  Not the slightest play in him—he was definitely on purpose. This had to be about more than James being worried about her headache.

  “Okay,” she said. They went into the front room, and he turned to face her. Haggard, she thought. He’s nervous.

  “Is something wrong?” she asked. How little she knew him.

  He looked at her. “Nothing that you or me can do anything about,” he said. Not good.

  She sat down on Mrs. Pemberton’s love seat. He didn’t sit just dug his hands too deeply in his pockets and scraped the pile of the rug with the toe of his shoe. Was he concocting a story?

  “I just came over to talk, but there really isn’t anything to say. Nothing happened. I mean between you and me, and so nobody has anything to be sorry for, right?” Toeing the rug. Man with news?

  “I guess I’m wondering why you thought we needed to talk,” she said.

  “I needed to talk,” he said. He perched on Mrs. Pemberton’s French Provincial chair.

  “You gotta know I wasn’t trying to be slick. I didn’t have any particular plans or anything. I had to at least talk to you, I mean period, you know, talk to you.”

  He was backing off, but she couldn’t see why. “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying that I probably did want to get next to you. I was wrong. I should have let well enough alone with saying hi and ’bye.”

  She was getting it now. “Are you saying that you’re involved with somebody else?”

  “I’m married October. Things are real bad, but I’ve got a wife. I shouldn’t have ... you know ...”

  She looked at her hands. She should have put on cream, but it doesn’t matter now. She shouldn’t have hoped. She should have said no from the first.

  She stood up. “Well thanks for telling me,” she said. “We never should have gone out.”

  Without even clearing his throat, all in one breath he said, “You may as well know I’ve got a daughter, too. Irene is my daughter. Irene Wilson.”

  October’s mind struggled to pick it up, but the fact that she was his child’s teacher, his daughter was in her room every day—it was too much. She stayed with the moment his ugly shoes, her ashy hands, until the little round face began to insinuate itself between them.

  “You would have figured it out anyway,” James said. “I sign her grade cards.”

  October didn’t know him in the least—not in the least. A wife, and a daughter in her classroom. What had he thought, that she wouldn’t find out? Good thing Cora had come with them.

  “Irene Wilson is your daughter,” she declared, letting it sink in.

  “Yep,” James said, as if he had performed the miracle of birth himself. This was the wrong time, wrong situation, to beat his chest about being a daddy, and he must have realized it. “Yes, Irene is my daughter,” he said.

  October added it all up. It embarrassed her. In the scheme of things, she couldn’t have meant anything more to him than an interesting stone he fit into a wall that he was building. Once it was in place, you couldn’t tell it from all the other stones. How could she have thought that he liked her?

  She remembered Cora’s warnings, but better, Cora’s acumen. A finesse, a way to give them both the benefit of the doubt.

  “Well,” she said. “You did insist on bringing Cora with us, and now I understand why.”

  He looked relieved. “Like I said, you’re really some kind of woman ... lady ... and I wanted ...”

  “Church will be out soon. I guess you should
go on home.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” he said. “I just came over to apologize.”

  “Good-bye,” she said. She wished she could have shown him something else, but anger didn’t come up. Nothing had happened.

  chapter 3

  The blur of events that night in the car with James called up other, darker memories, elusive details of a distant October 26 when she was still a girl. In her grown years, October had never adopted any particular ritual to mark the anniversary. Her intention was always to honor the fact that she and Vergie had started out in a normal way, in a normal family, mother and father. She never wanted to let the day go by without saying to Carrie Cooper Brown, wherever in heaven she was, “I remember you.” But from the beginning, their aunts had had conniptions if October or Vergie even looked like they wanted to remember the anniversary. Long since, October had thought she recognized rue in her aunts’ impatience, and kept her memorials to herself.

  This October 26 was a school day. As it always was, some way would just be there, and she would know that this was the moment to stop and remember. The solar eclipse one year, or, another year, when someone had left a brand-new silk scarf on the bus. The chance sighting, once, of Joe Louis passing through Columbus, the first snow two years straight—something would show up.

  “All right, boys and girls,” she said to her third-graders. “You may sit down. Who remembered to bring in leaves?”

  They had finished Bible verses and the Pledge of Allegiance and were already fumbling in brown sacks or pressing newspaper preciously over layers of treasure. Hands shot up and pumped the air for emphasis.

  “Good,” she said. “Everyone will choose two of their best leaves for art this afternoon and share the rest with those who didn’t bring any.”

  Forty pairs of hands got busy—“quietly, now”—choosing. She took up the extras, instructed them to put the leaves into their activity boxes, and went on with the morning lessons. At afternoon art time she encouraged them to try matching nature’s improbable tones: trace the leaves, tempera-paint the paper look-alikes, cut out and string them—haphazardly—to simulate leaves falling all over the room like the snowflake cutouts that would soon replace them.