October Suite

by Maxine Clair

  “There’s this casino, on this big lawn. Newport Casino. You stand at one end and you look out from this giant clamshell”—he waved his arms in the air—“you know, the stage where they rig the sound system. Here are all these people just like when we were in Europe, thousands of people.”

  He stopped and thought for a minute, grinned to himself, and shook his head. She could see his mind turning. He picked up the bottle and poured a little rum into her lemonade and his.

  “Behind the stage, all of us, we’re getting ready. We can hear Bird’s music they’re playing into the speakers. That was the way to start, you know, with Bird, ’cause he was gone. Dizzy headed up our all-star band. I was the only tenor sax,” he said. “Only one.” And he stopped again. October let him stay in his own world as long as he wanted.

  “When our turn came, we did a tribute to one of my buddies who got killed the week before. Maybe you heard of Clifford Brown. After that we had the crowd in our hands. Dizz did ‘Night in Tunisia’ and the crowd ate that up, too. And then we did ours, our old standard—I mean, that’s what you do. ‘What Is This Thing Called Love?’ It wasn’t a tune I would have picked, but it was something that let me stretch out with some of my new ideas, until I got the framework I wanted.”

  She didn’t know exactly what he meant, except that whenever it had happened, it had been a big moment for him, and he’d been really into it. She drank the rest of her drink.

  Then he scooted back his chair and leaned over toward her. The good part was coming.

  “And then I stretched out,” he said, stretching out his arms like he was blowing a horn. “I just riffed and the crowd broke out cheering, you know?”—really going at it like it was happening all over again.

  “I just did what I do, and the crowd went wild.” He sat straight in his chair again. He poured more lemonade into both their glasses, and then a shot of rum in both. She knew she wouldn’t drink it.

  “Later on, Dizzy was pissed ’cause I took so long with my solo.” He laughed, rocked his chair back on two legs. She laughed too.

  “I just unwrapped my little bundle of goodies and laid it out. The crowd was with me. If I never cooked before, I cooked that day. Like I said, all the critics were there. Downbeat gave me the New Artist award.”

  October heard the old Leon telling his story, patting himself on the back. And rightly so. He had kept his promise to himself.

  “And what have you been doing?” he said. “You tell me something.”

  What could she tell him? “I’ve been doing all the plain old things people do to make a life,” she said. “Making mistakes, trying to fix them. Working hard, trying to get along with other people. No big awards yet.”

  “So are you with somebody now?”

  “You are really nosy.”

  He chuckled. “I thought we were friends.”

  “We like two of the same people, and we stood up for them once, if that’s what you mean by friends.”

  “So no go, Lonny?” he said, still smiling, like he thought he was expected to make a play, not even halfway serious.

  “Um-ummm, no go,” October told him. She was feeling relaxed but not that relaxed.

  He looked at his wristwatch and she glanced at the clock above the stove. Three a.m.

  “Then it’s about time for me to find the hotel and get out of your kitchen, right?”

  She stood and began folding up their mess. He did not need an answer, but she wasn’t quite finished.

  “Leon,” she said, “I have to tell you, tonight was nice—just what I needed.”

  He got up and went to the sink, turned on the water, and soaped his hands. “Does that make me a chump or Sir Galahad?”

  “Well, I hadn’t expected to have a good time, and if it hadn’t been for you, I don’t think I would have.”

  “Sounds like one of those somebody’s-been-doin-me-wrong songs, right?”

  “Maybe a little bit of that.”

  “So that’s the big mistake you’re trying to fix?”

  “No, no,” she said. He had gotten the wrong idea.

  She steered him back to the point. “Seeing you tonight was like having a little bitty piece of Cora here—you know, friends.”

  Leon’s hands were dripping; he didn’t see the towel. “Thanks, but no reward, huh?”

  “I beg your pardon. I am the friend who stayed up with you all night and fed you Bryant’s barbecue in her kitchen.” She handed him the dish towel.

  “Thanks for that,” he said. “If you ever come to New York, I’ll return the favor—take you to a real swanky place.”

  “A deal,” she said.

  As he went he left her with regards for Ed and Cora and Eddy Junior, his new little nephew.

  “Tell him his uncle Lonny is making a name for us in the city.”

  Good news. Ed hated St Louis, and they were coming back! The letter from Cora said first of all that they had heard from Leon. Exclamation points and stars. He had sent a savings bond for Eddy Junior, thanks to seeing the picture that her sisterfriend October had shown him. Cora went on to say that she would come up to Kansas City to look for a house in three weeks but that she couldn’t stay more than a few days. Look at the paper, she told October. And they didn’t want anything in the new developments way out on Troost.

  October clipped newspapers and made phone calls. Everybody knew Tim Crawford, the best black real estate man around, and she called him.

  Cora got back to Kansas City one minute and got on the phone the next, worried about leaving Ed and Eddy Junior for four days.

  Mornings, she and Cora ate breakfast together and October went off to school while Cora went off with Tim Crawford. He owned his own business, and so of course he pressed Cora about space for Eddy Junior and all the other children she and Ed might have, and a two-car garage, something up-and-coming blacks should have, attached to the kind of ranch-style house he happened to be building in the new Crawford Estates out on Troost. No, Cora didn’t want that.

  The houses that Cora did like were in neighborhoods where white flight didn’t work so smoothly. One evening when October joined Cora and the real estate man, she figured out how Tim Crawford did so well. He knew how to get around a bad situation. At first he showed Cora the possible houses only from the street. Once they narrowed it down to what she liked best, he found out which buyers were dead set against selling to blacks. He told her, “Unless you’ve got your sights set on a special place, we may as well save ourselves some trouble.”

  In the evening October would get Cora to show her the picks for that day so that they could whittle down Cora’s choices. If the houses were empty, all the better. October could walk around in those spacious living rooms. She could touch old bathtubs, trip up stairs into hallways. What a nice thing it was to have a sidewalk where a child could ride his tricycle. Later, October would remember that it was during that scouting-out with Cora that the seed had been planted for buying a place of her own.

  After dinner, if she and Cora didn’t go house-looking they lazed around, catching up on the heart things that don’t come unless there is time and lazing around. One of those times, Cora kicked off her shoes and fell on the sofa.

  “I’ve been wanting to ask you—and don’t try to duck me this time—what’s going on for real with you and Vergie? Does what happened with David keep you upset?”

  “No, I’m fine with it,” October said. No choice—she had to be.

  “This is me you’re talking to, girl,” Cora said. “Don’t you ever wish things were different? Don’t you ever just want to go to Ohio and snatch him up?”

  “It wouldn’t work,” October told her. She told Cora how she wished that Vergie would just wake up one day and give him back, and how in the world could that happen without David ever knowing that he had been given away in t
he first place? The rock—not having him with her; and the hard place—having him hate her. Even though Cora convinced her in that moment that it didn’t have to be that way, that David could learn to love her like a mother, somebody was bound to be destroyed.

  “Whatever happens,” Cora said, “I guess I just want to know that you’ll never resent me.”

  “Resent you for what?”

  “Well, I always wonder what would have happened if I hadn’t called your aunts. Maybe you wouldn’t even have had him.”

  “The milk was already spilled,” October said, “and you weren’t the one to tip it over. I made that decision all by myself, and even with things the way they are, I’m not sorry. You should see him. He’s a beautiful boy.”

  “I guess as long as this goes on, I’ll always feel sad, too. The price I pay for letting you-all up under my skin.”

  How nice it was to have the sister without the things between the two of you that rubbed everybody the wrong way.

  Another evening when Cora kicked off her shoes and fell on the sofa, she asked October, “What would you do if you had all the money in the world?”

  October had turned to the news with John Cameron Swayze on her new television set. “Quit working, I guess,” she said.

  “I would buy me and Ed that house on The Paseo, and travel to California or somewhere till we got tired.”

  They were quiet. Cora added, “Instead of trying to teach shop to those knuckleheads at school, Ed could do carpentry till his arms fell off.”

  “He hates teaching, huh?”

  And then Cora told what October knew had been eating at her. “It’s partly my fault. I mean, I pushed him into it, and now I’m scared he’ll quit. And if he does, we won’t be able to pay the mortgage.”

  “If he’s buying a house, he’ll pay for it. You’ll see.”

  Cora moved on. “You said you’d quit your job—are you telling me you would quit teaching if you could?”

  October had never really thought about it. She switched to the most outrageous thing she could think of at the moment.

  “If I were rich, I would go to Paris for a while, just to spend a little money.”

  “Remember I said you’d have all the money in the world.”

  “Then I’d buy me a house. And I’d buy Vergie and Gene a house right next door. And cars for everybody—clothes, all that.”

  “Then what?”

  “Then I’d just sit around and look after David all day. I guess I’d sew, too, make all kinds of things.”

  “Like what?”

  “Clothes. For people. I’d have me a little shop where I could sell them, too.”

  “You wouldn’t make any money, you know.”

  “I wouldn’t have to. I’d already have all the money in the world.”

  “You know,” Cora said. She sat up. “Maybe that’s what Ed should do. Have a little workshop in the basement. Goodness, I just gave myself a good idea. I’m so glad we’re moving back.”

  chapter 17

  During the years when October and Vergie had put up with the orphans from the Children’s Home, the Hopewell Burial Mounds was a mere field trip to them—a place where ancient spoons and forks were buried, where they hoped to see an arrowhead. Or, if they were lucky, they might find a four-leaf clover.

  Around 1000 B.C., in what was now the Ohio part of North America, an ancient people had thought it was good to bury the dead on kames, the tops of the gravel left behind by melting glaciers. Later these prehistoric peoples simply piled earth on and around the bones of their dead, making the first mounds in the lowlands. No one had figured out what the other kind of mounds were about: scattered all over the same territory, they were strangely shaped and contained no bones. Ritualistic, maybe—ceremonial, archaeologists thought.

  No one knew for sure who these people had been, though they called the mounds Hopewell for the first archaeologist who had dug in. These Mound Builders were around for a thousand years—then, apparently, they just vanished. Why, nobody knew. Anthropologists had conceded, however, that they bore a resemblance to the Choctaw Indians whom Europeans came upon centuries later. And, too, similar mounds from ancient times had been found all up and down the Mississippi Valley.

  At night, crossing the Scioto River, October couldn’t make out the mounds, though she knew they were out there, and knew that she would be hearing enough about them this trip. What little else there was to be seen—Tecumseh’s memorial or the new restaurant and mall in the center of downtown Chillicothe—she’d have to see later.

  Ten o’clock at night and her new, used Impala had made it fine on two tanks of gas. On the way back to Missouri, she might venture to leave the air-conditioning on for longer than fifteen minutes at a time.

  Six o’clock that morning, she had been standing at her kitchen counter in Kansas City, cutting boiled potatoes into cubes, making potato salad for the drive. Her mind had had trouble sleeping and the night had had trouble ending. Vergie was going to have the operation, put an end to her “female trouble,” and October was going to run Vergie’s house for a month, six weeks at the outside. Help her sister recuperate.

  Cora had come by to see her off, get the keys to water the plants, and, October knew, to sound her out a little. But Cora didn’t rush it.

  “Paper says it’s going to be in the nineties,” Cora said. “Not a good time for being on the road, especially by yourself.”

  October laid it to rest with the mention of the air-conditioning—which Cora and Ed didn’t have in their Ford—and reminding Cora that the new interstate would get her there a lot faster than the old local roads.

  It was then that Cora had ventured to ask about Vergie, how she was coping and October had reminded her that Vergie always sounded like herself, always we’ll-get-through-this. “She’s probably scared to death.”

  “I would be, too,” Cora said. “I guess there’s a couple of bright sides to it though,” she added, “like you having David all to yourself for the rest of the summer.” October nodded, putting a dollop of mayonnaise in the salad and tossing it with two spoons.

  “Be careful,” Cora said, “—you know you. Vergie will be in a rough place, and you’ll be sorry if you start giving out ultimatums or make some kind of grand stand.”

  October had looked at her friend and told her straight that she was going to Ohio to take care of Vergie. Period. It was the truth. And Cora had said her usual “‘Nuff said,” and made October promise to call from a pay phone when she got to the Indiana line.

  Finally, at the end of that day, October made the familiar turn into the other part of her life. Most of the houses on Monroe Street had the steep, straight-sided gables of clapboard colonials, with peeling paint, sagging windows, missing screens, and balding lawns. Not like she had once seen it, or maybe just hoped it was. An occasional bedroom or dining room light showed her plenty of living deep inside, silhouettes of families keeping cool by keeping down the lights, families winding toward sleep. Her headlights caught a skein of children flying across a front yard. Outside was cooler than in.

  Seven-fifty-two stood on its foundation of stone, with its wooden porch and posts, the wide picture window that you never could see too well because of the swing but that now was a 3-D picture of damask drapes swept back and tied to show off a porcelain lamp and fluted shade. Vergie had been busy. The front door, though, with its oval window, was the same door she had leaned against and slammed for years.

  She started up the porch steps and flip went the porch light. There Vergie was, spitting image of Aunt Maude. Everything about her curved, arched, swayed, or bowed; the same round figure in a white blouse and gathered skirt ballooning over her hips, the same black hair with a few gray strands and thick braids across the crown held in place with a million Maude Cooper hairpins.

  They hugged long Ver
gie smelled like onions and Oxydol.

  “That was quick,” Vergie said to her. “You drove too fast. David’s asleep, but I promised I’d wake him up when you came.”

  Gene came to the door, joked, “I saw that Cadillac drive up and said to myself, I’ll bet that’s October—anything that long and shiny is a Cadillac,” he said. “I’ll get your bags.”

  They went inside to see what Vergie had done with the house. At one time her aunts had been so proud of their worn wood floors, the wide front room with its comfortable divan and easy chairs and good light from the floor lamp and the console. Vergie had redone it with wall-to-wall carpeting, new sofa and chairs, and a small table where the hat tree used to be.

  “Come see the side porch,” she said. She had turned it into a den with a console TV and easy chairs for her and Gene.

  Vergie went up to get David, and Gene came in with Mrs. Hopp, step-stepping then resting October could tell that Mrs. Hopp seldom made the effort to come across the yard anymore. Toothless and stooped, white hair in tiny plaits over her head, she looked up sideways and said she’d seen October drive up. “I said, I’ll bet that’s her.”

  October hugged her hello.

  “It’s good to see you girls together,” she said. “You movin back?”

  October said no, just for a while—a long while this time.

  “Seems a shame, you living way out there in Missouri when everybody is here.”

  October heard David tripping down the stairs—had to be wide awake—and Vergie behind him.

  “Hi, Auntie Oc,” he said, face bright as the next morning.

  “She’s still Aunt October to you,” Vergie said.

  October loved it. “No,” she said, “I like Auntie Oc. We woke you up, huh?” She touched his head—close haircut.

  “Momma said you bought a new Impala,” he said. “If you want me to, I can get your stuff.”