October Suite

by Maxine Clair

  “Never married, either,” she said.

  He told her no, but that he did believe in shackin’. Why wasn’t that news to her?

  “Not me,” she said.

  “I know. Remember, I knew you when.”

  “Or you thought you knew me when.”

  “Tell me you weren’t a nice lady.”

  “I was.”

  “Young and green.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Don’t feel like the Lone Ranger,” he said. “That time we stood up for Ed and Cora, I had a fire in me that wouldn’t quit.”

  She wanted to ask. Then what?, but instead they pulled up to the curb and she started to gather her things and told him he could come in if he wanted to.

  “You got anything good to eat?”

  “Day-old chicken salad,” she said.

  “What are you doing later?”

  She pulled her records from behind the seat and hugged them. “Listening to my new records—what else?”

  “I guess I’ll go on home,” he said.

  The breeze had picked up and the sun was almost gone. Leon held on to the steering wheel, already somewhere else.

  “Why aren’t you out getting up a combo or something?” she asked him.

  “You know what it means to woodshed? It means you start all over again, make the shit happen all over again. That’s what I’m doing. Wood-sheddin’.”

  He dropped his arms and turned to her, and he started talking about jazz, how it was a wheel in the middle of a wheel, how everybody was hungry for something that they had to stretch for, something that defied everything they had ever heard. “That’s me,” he said. He tapped his chest with his fingers. “That’s what I’m after. A new way to go, or I’m just another recording. Dig it? Put me on a turntable and spin me ‘round.”

  He was wound up, talking about freedom and how “niggers are talking about being free, digging what we came from. That’s me.”

  October nodded. She didn’t know exactly, but she understood this personal quest was important to him. And then she watched his mouth open again with something left-field crazy about to fall out.

  “Why didn’t you ever get married?”

  “Wrong men,” she told him, not caring this time.

  “Oh, so you did finally get with somebody?”

  “What kind of question is that?”

  “Well, when I knew you,” he said, “I always thought nice was a coat of paint on a suit of armor.”

  “It’s really chilly out here,” she said. “Are you coming in or not?”

  “Nah,” he said. “Little Boy Blue is going to put on his mute and blow.”

  She told him she’d like to hear him sometime without the crowd. He told her okay. “When I know what it is, I’ll play it for you.”

  The very evening after her shopping day, she turned on the radio in the basement and laid out her new piece of blue wool, pinned on the pattern, and began cutting. KCMO played jazz—for her, education more than anything else. And then she heard the DJ announce, “Coming up, Lonny Haskins and ‘Footsloose.’”

  She went upstairs to the telephone and dialed Cora. “It’s all we listen to,” Cora told her.

  She called Leon. “They’re playing one of your songs on KCMO.”

  “Yeah, okay,” he said. No big deal to him, but she glued her ear to the radio upstairs. Really, for once, she wanted to be able to say something that was up to the minute, something about harmonics or ride cymbals—the right lingo. But all she could think was that he played so well, and how did he do that?

  She called him back to see if he had heard himself.

  “Nah, I know what I sound like,” he said.

  “I liked it,” she told him. “You’re really fast and you make a lot of little surprises.”

  He chuckled. “Pretty soon you’ll be into chord progressions.”

  “So did you write ‘Footsloose’ for your friend?”

  “Yep. I put it together. Foots liked it.” Sad-sounding.

  “You-all must have been pretty close.”

  “Foots was my main man—I mean, I always knew he had my back. He was always hip to what was happening.”

  “Did he play jazz?”

  “Blues, jazz—it’s like the same thing,” Leon said. “Foots played the blues, but the blues runs right into jazz, so he knew it all. Mostly though, he ran numbers all over Harlem. Put him a shoeshine chair in the barbershop and shined shoes. Stepped on my heels, though, on every club date. Never did mind pulling my coat when he thought I was wrong.”

  Sad again. She thought maybe something had happened to the man recently. “Did he die?”

  “Nah.” He chuckled. “Foots is probably still hobbling around the streets on his jack leg.”

  “Well, I liked his song.” And she did. And warmed to that thing in Leon that had made him write it.

  This was in the fall, when Vergie’s letter still stung, and when sitting and sewing had turned into a way to deal with her thoughts. More than a year since she had seen David. It was her own fault. She could have gone to Ohio, even for a weekend. But what to do about Vergie?

  Sitting and sewing she cooked up a plan. The Wednesday before Thanksgiving she would drive to Chillicothe, get there in the middle of the night and bang on the door. Gene would let her in and she would park her things in the bedroom and talk to David until Sunday. If Vergie didn’t want to speak, so be it. Simple.

  But when the time came, the best-laid plans were only plans. For one thing, it snowed—near blizzard with an ice storm on top of it—the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. Quiet as it was kept, October hadn’t packed a single stocking. The tide she had been pushing against seemed to be washing away all the starch in her, and washing away any hope of having David even halfway.

  And it wasn’t Vergie’s fault. October didn’t think she could claim David because when it came right down to it she didn’t think she could tell David. She had torn up Vergie’s letter, but she remembered every word. If David knew that she threw him away, it would crush him, hurt him too bad. She had hurt him enough already. And besides that he would hate her. Change his name. She would lose any chance to be anything to him. And what made her think that she deserved better?

  Sitting and sewing, she began to think that maybe Vergie had been right about staying away and leaving them alone. It was impossible to see David and not wish, not want to be closer. She couldn’t get closer and not want to tell him. She couldn’t hurt him and lose him.

  Sitting and sewing and wiping tears, she thought maybe there was nothing to do but to leave them alone and try to get on with her life. It hit her for the second time since David was born that she would have to start thinking of David as Vergie’s son and not the son she had mistakenly given Vergie to keep for the rest of his life. Maybe the time had come for her to surrender, give David up for real.

  Sitting and sewing and wiping tears, she wondered if every life has something a person has to face, some dream they hold on to, calling it hope. And then when the time comes, there is nothing to do but face the mistake, pay the price, and go on. She wondered if that was what balances things, grows people up.

  Sitting and sewing night in, night out how does somebody face giving away a child? The bad dream came only at night, and in it she always saw herself standing near a gurney along the wall of a large, empty room that she knew was a labor room, and she knew that she was supposed to give birth to a baby boy. Tile on the walls. Aunt Frances stood on the other side of the room, timing her. If she lay down on the gurney, the baby would try to come out. She tried to explain to Auntie that the nurse had to measure her first, to see whether or not the baby could get out, and that the nurse hadn’t come yet. She went out of the room, wandered in hallways, looking everywhere for the nurse.

  Th
en somehow she realized that time had run out ages ago. She was wandering still, and she knew that she wouldn’t be able to birth the child now, because she had never been measured. She decided not to go back to explain, and she knew that the baby was left on the gurney near the wall—quiet, not crying—still waiting for her to birth him.

  How does someone get on with a life?

  Cora said that the new Ebony Fashion Fair was supposed to be coming to Kansas City in December. She ought to get herself together and go. Donetta and Cora both were already tripping all over themselves about it. And there was the harvest ball thing afterward. Think about it.

  Sitting and sewing she thought about Leon. Wondered if he would be okay with taking her to something like that. At the moment, he was the only man she knew well enough to ask. If she decided to go.

  Leon said sure. He didn’t mind going to some shindig with her. And he’d buy the tickets, even.

  What she remembered most about the Fashion Fair was that it was all color. No little black dresses. And it beat anything she had ever seen before. Everything done to the hilt, with incredible models and incredible clothes, incredible music. So much so that if she had been in a better mood, she would have taken notes. Why hadn’t she ever sewed anything for a fashion show? She knew about color. Why hadn’t she ever thought about selling her dresses? It felt like a fashion show had always been going on, and she had never been invited.

  She had pressed and twisted up her hair, and made herself a black cocktail dress with spaghetti straps that Leon thought was “outta sight” but she felt homemade and dull.

  In the car, Leon had asked her what they were supposed to be—like lovers, or what.

  “We’re friends, Leon,” she told him. “You know that. You’re my escort. Don’t worry. I’ll even introduce you to some of my girlfriends.” All of a sudden, he was getting on her nerves. “Besides,” she said, “everybody knows there’s nothing going on.”

  “Who’s everybody?”

  “This is Kansas City. You’ve been here almost nine months. Everybody knows.”

  And all of a sudden he got serious on her. “Look,” he said. “I know I said I wanted to meet some of your foxy friends, but I’m not trying to get next to anybody. My luck with women runs from bad to worse.”

  “Whose fault is that?”

  He looked at her as if to say, Watch it. “Every woman I’ve ever been with wanted half the spotlight or my whole life.”

  “And what did you want?” Getting to be pretty good at his game.

  “Somebody to hang with for a while. Not forever. At least not then. I never was too tough on that forever thing. Just chicken, I guess, or stupid. Guys can be knuckleheads when it comes to that.”

  “Look at Ed—he isn’t,” she said.

  “Touché,” he said back.

  At the soiree after the fashion show, Leon was a hit—Leon meet my sister, Leon I have all your records, Leon meet my cousin, Leon meet my friend Sonia, the piano teacher.

  And October watched him—pressing hands, holding eyes—eat it up. She wasn’t up to the spotlight. At some point she slid her arm out of his and sat herself down with Cora and Donetta and their men. “Make room for Leon and me, and maybe one more. Cecelia is fixing him up with a music teacher.”

  “Good,” Cora said. “He needs to be seeing somebody. The two of you are making me nervous.”

  Cora’s attitude came as a surprise to October.

  Ed jabbed Cora with his elbow lightly. “She already had two whiskey sours.”

  “Well, they are,” Cora said. “You-all don’t match,” she said. And when Leon came over, Cora asked him about the music teacher.

  “We didn’t hit it off,” he said. “She asked me if I ever played ‘serious’ music.”

  Fast music started up and Ed asked October to dance, but she was busy trying to get a little pep from her highball.

  “Not this one,” she said, “but ask me again.”

  Cora asked Leon, too, but Leon didn’t want to, either. Said he couldn’t dance, which October didn’t believe.

  “Goodnight My Love” came on. Once October got out there with him, she saw that Leon hadn’t lied. A dancer he was not. Not even for the slow drag. For one thing, he nearly squeezed the life out of her, held her much too tight and not tenderly, either. Bear-hug tight.

  She told him in his ear, and he dropped his arms like a rag doll. She gave him a quick lesson—take her hand and put his arm around her waist close enough that she could follow him if he could lead, which he couldn’t. Lesson two was that he should follow her. They moved a couple of steps.

  He looked down at her. “I told you I don’t dance.” The uncool Leon, looking uncool.

  “We’re dancing,” she said, but she wished for a little more.

  Then of course, he opened his mouth in that way again. “You didn’t have to disappear just because a woman smiled my way.”

  “Just giving you room,” she said.

  “I didn’t need it.”

  Intermission came and went Leon got bold and danced all the slow drags with a different woman each time. The women looked like they loved it because it was Lonny Haskins, and Leon looked like he loved it because he could keep up and talk jive at the same time. October didn’t do badly with going through the motions. It wasn’t a high night but plenty of men were swarming around.

  Then “Red Top” came on, a song she liked. Kenneth asked her to booga-loo with him, which she couldn’t do, but why not try it? Easy. Just a little back action, a little bit of shaking it up, a few steps—she got into it. And when the music got louder, she and Kenneth let loose, laughing and outdoing each other. But as the song ended, and she discovered that she’d worked up a sweat, she thought she’d better sit herself right down and stay in her chair until the last dance.

  And when the lights flickered and “For All We Know” started, Leon made a beeline over to her. At least he had his Emily Post down pat. On their way home, his thoughts were full of his name on other people’s lips, and he ran off at the mouth about his albums and holding up Bird’s name. So excited that when they got to her house, he asked to come in for an after-drink. May as well. She felt like she could use a little more cheer. Besides, he made good company.

  In her kitchen he loosed his tie and she kicked off her shoes. She made sandwiches and he put bourbon in hot tea. When the last crumb was gone, he told her that he’d had a good time. “Thank you,” he said. Silly face.

  “I saw you shakin it, too,” he teased, and told her, “I’ve never danced.”

  “I could tell.” She smiled at him—nice, though. It had been pleasant enough.

  Quiet time between them was all right, too. He was easy. Then he jumped out of his chair—“I’ll be right back”—and went out into the cold with no coat on. When he came back in, he called her into the living room.

  In the middle of the floor, he was putting a horn together. “It’s my old horn, but it’ll do.”

  She sat down on the sofa and curled her legs up. Pulled the throw around her shoulders. Leon tuned up a bit, and then got serious. “This is called ‘Noel.’”

  He closed his eyes and played. Ballad, she thought. Then, like he was in another world, he played the same thing, only faster, and threw in all kinds of little riffs and runs. October closed her eyes, too, and let it wash over her.

  When he finished, he just knelt on the floor and took apart the horn. She could hear the wind creaking. The house had a hush on it. There was nothing to say but “Thank you.”

  He sat on the other end of the sofa and put his feet up. “I’ve been working on it for a while.”

  “‘Noel’—is that for Christmas?”

  “Don’t be too impressed with the title. I couldn’t think of anything else. It’s ‘Leon’ spelled backwards.”

 
They talked. About his young life and hers. Ed and Vergie, Chillicothe and New York. Being an orphan and finding parents in aunts. In one of the silences in between, she heard his breathing and saw that he was gone. She got a blanket to cover him, turned off the lamp, and went up to bed. She could hear the wind soughing through the cracks around her bedroom window. The sound caressed her, sent her slipping down the circular stairs of sleep.

  chapter 24

  The next morning early, she heard the water running in the bathroom and waited until she smelled coffee to slide into her nice satin robe to see what Leon might be doing in her kitchen.

  In white shirt and undershorts he looked too too naked for her, and she carried it off by making fun of his skinny legs.

  He grinned. “I know you aren’t crowing on my legs with that hair,” he said, pointing a spoon in her direction.

  “Just make my coffee strong,” she said, and got right out of the kitchen. She came back downstairs with her quilted robe for him and a ribbon around her caught hair.

  “Here,” she said, laying the robe on his arm.

  “I’m okay,” Leon said. “What’s the matter—haven’t you ever seen a man’s legs before?” His eyes were all over her face.

  “Just put it on,” she said.

  He shoved in his arms. Too small. Poured two mugs of coffee and sipped one. Handed the other to her.

  “I was teasing you about your hair,” he said. “It’s wild”—he sipped again—“but I like it.” He reached over and squeezed the tight wad of hair in the ribbon at the nape of her neck. “It’s soft,” he said and took back his hand.

  In her kitchen, the two of them—hair wild, legs hairy—were suddenly a man and a woman.

  October turned her back, went for the doorway. “You can make my eggs and bacon any time now. The apron is on the hook.” Keeping it light.

  “Okay,” Leon said. “I can do that.”

  In the bathtub she could smell the bacon—and was that really French toast, and what was that feeling she didn’t want to feel? Leon was a friend. Right.

  Leon had gotten dressed, too, and they wolfed down his masterwork breakfast. He sopped up the last drop of syrup with his last bite of French toast, and let roll out, “So that joker broke your heart?”