October Suite

by Maxine Clair

  “Well, we’re here,” Vergie said. “What are we supposed to do now?”

  God was still on the throne. Gene and Vergie were on the eighth floor, where they could see everything. She could hear David in the background chattering away. October had to just laugh.

  Vergie chuckled a little, too. “We came on TWA,” she said. “I got sick on the plane.” October told her to wait in their room, and she and Leon would come up.

  What two years of absence does, it freezes people in the frames where they once stood. It changes them to voices in the head, flashes of the real thing that can’t be felt or heard or smelled unless it’s in the flesh. Vergie looked older, and a little scared. Probably she, herself, did too. Vergie’s hair was a mess. Probably hers was, too. Vergie had on a navy blue suit like one Aunt Maude used to wear, and she had lost a little weight. But she was Vergie, and October wanted to hug her.

  They stood there in the door of the hotel room looking at each other, and Vergie looking at Leon. And then Vergie motioned for them to come in. “You-all may as well come in and sit down and tell us what’s what.”

  Suddenly David. Standing between the beds. Beloved fit. He was beautiful in a different way this time, and she fought back immediate tears. He had changed already. Just from seeing him look and look away, she could feel him being more quiet, shy. Gene sat on the side of one bed and waved a little wave.

  “Hi, Auntie Oc,” David said. He took a few steps and held out his hand, awkward, like practicing his manners.

  She wanted to hold him to her for a long time. “Hi, David,” she said, and buried his hand in her hands. “You look so grown. So handsome.”

  He smiled at that, and looked down at himself, his suit and tie. “Momma said I should dress up.”

  “This is Leon Haskins,” she said. Leon stepped up and shook Gene’s hand and said “Hey man,” to David.

  David stared.

  October felt Leon needing to hurry.

  “We probably ought to get on over to the hospital right away,” she said. And Leon told them, “We can get a cab out front, and later on I think I can borrow a car to get us around. Is anybody hungry?”

  Vergie said no, not yet anyway, and October could see that David was taking his cue from her. He wouldn’t say he wanted anything.

  Above the front entrance, on the overhang of the roof, large brass letters spelled out “Harlem Hospital.” It was six o’clock. If they looked down the rows of brownstones, and up at the sky between, they could see strips of clouds and the last tip of sun bouncing flame glare off the windows.

  David rushed up the steps to hold open the door.

  “I remember when I was little and Aunt Frances was in the hospital,” he said. “I had to wait downstairs with Daddy, and a lady gave us Tootsie Rolls.”

  As they went into the lobby, Vergie rested her hand on David’s shoulder. “We’re in New York now—you’ll come with us,” she told him.

  They passed the information desk and the sign saying children under fourteen couldn’t go on the wards. The woman at the desk looked David over but let him go.

  October asked Leon about Franklin’s floor.

  “I think Sylvia said fifth, 505-E.”

  On the elevator with a gurney carrying a blue-draped, sleeping patient, David squeezed himself between Vergie and the corner, avoiding any contact with the gurney. October wondered if he ought to be there.

  David whispered to Vergie, “How will he know who we are?”

  Gene told him, “He might not.” Vergie and Gene exchanged looks. “Maybe you can wait in the hall,” Vergie said.

  David said “Okay” before she even got it all out.

  When the elevator stopped, Leon took October’s hand and Vergie and Gene fell in behind them, holding on to David. Marching on the granite floor, they sounded like a small army moving past open doors where October could see the rows of beds, patients and visitors sitting in chairs beside them, nurses smiling with trays of little cups. Medicine.

  “I hate the smell,” Leon said. She was remembering Auntie, and thinking what it was like for Leon. And she was thinking, too, We are here. I hope we’re not too late.

  “E Wing is down this way,” he said, and held her hand tighter. “Did I tell you Sylvia said he asked for me?”

  “This sure is a big hospital,” David said.

  Vergie said “Um-hmm. Remember, you’ll wait right outside the room.”

  Walking. Walking.

  “All this time,” Leon said, “I’ve been thinking that the day would come when Foots would come bopping into a club, bragging about his protégé. But the time just went.”

  October touched his arm. “It’s okay. He asked for you, and you’re here.”

  If the man was past talking, how would she know for sure that he was their Franklin Brown? And if he talked, how would they know that he was telling the truth? How—in front of a roomful of people they didn’t know—would she and Vergie ask him anything, especially about Carrie?

  Up ahead a clump of people stood outside a room, and then faces turned in their direction.

  “Looka here,” one old guy said. “If this ain’t somethin.” He came up to Leon and patted his shoulder.

  “Boy, I’m glad to see you. I heard you might make it back. Foots asked for you.”

  “Is that you?” another man said. For a split second Leon studied the face, then slapped hands with the man. “Hey, how’re you doing?”

  And then a man in a porkpie hat, stub of unlit cigar stuck in his mouth, came out of the room. “Hey, Kansas City,” he said. “I want you to know Foots’s chair is gonna stay at the shop.”

  The man looked at October and the rest of them. “Is this your family?”

  “This is Grimes,” Leon said to October, slipping past the question. “October Brown and Vergie and Gene Parker, and David.”

  Everybody said hello to everybody.

  “Wells just left,” another man told Leon. “You think Foots’ll wake up again?”

  Leon didn’t answer, just took October’s hand and led them all into the room. David stepped back and Vergie turned around to tell him to stay right where he was, leaning against the wall, looking up into the faces of a generation of old men he’d never seen before.

  The bed nearer the door was empty. Another old man stood with his back to the door, and the sight of him seemed to make Leon more nervous. An old-fashioned metal-frame screen had been placed between the two beds in just the right way to hide the upper half of the bed nearer the window—the bed with a still body on it.

  Leon held tight to her hand. Beside the bed the woman who had to be Sylvia looked their way, and her face lit up. In a loud whisper she said, “They’re here!”

  Leon went to her, and as he did, he looked at the figure in the bed—the figure that, because of the screen, October couldn’t see yet. All the blood went out of Leon’s face. Sylvia stood up, and it looked like Leon lost his bones in her arms.

  “Aw, sweetie,” Sylvia said. “Don’t cry. You’re here now. He loved you, you know.”

  She was smallish, in a black straw cloche with a rolled brim, so that her tight gray curls were mostly hidden. When she stood up October saw the sleeveless blouse and taffeta skirt and soft ballet slippers with the elastic band across the instep.

  The other old man there held out his hand. “I knew Kansas City would make it. How do, all y’all. Just call me Slick—Slick Moses.”

  Sylvia tried to smile at them. “Is this ...”

  Leon turned, no blood still, eyes wide but not crying. “Yes, this is October Brown and her sister, Vergie Parker, and Vergie’s husband, Gene,” Leon said.

  Immediately Sylvia started to give up her chair. Leon waved her back. “No, no, that’s okay—sit down.”

  He held out his hand and look
ed for October’s eyes.

  She had hesitated at the foot of the bed, feeling mostly like a death watch was a private thing, and that she and Vergie ought not to be there. It wasn’t going to be easy with Leon sad and her sad for him, but mostly curious.

  “Y’all come on in,” Sylvia said, and stood up again.

  Leon’s hand was out, but October didn’t go farther. And because he had seen her glimpse the body in the bed, he looked again, too.

  Later he would tell her that the old man had gone down. Shrunk. With his eyes closed, his mouth open, struggling to take in each breath and forcing it out in whispers, he didn’t look like the man Leon had known. The actual Foots had “vacated the premises, gone to some hip city where he’s hobbling around talking about the life he once lived.”

  From the end of the bed, October saw an old man sucking in breath. No connection to her, no resemblance to anyone she had ever seen. Black skin stretched across cheekbones, fuzzy rim of white hair, not her, not Vergie. His arms lay like long dark bones with hardly enough flesh to cover the knobs of his hands, and his hands were wing tips, fingers nearly on top of one another. Not a piano player’s hands, not fleshy hands holding a fork, a knife.

  Looking at this shell of a man, his legs gone, she felt no deep sadness and no relief. Even the edge of curiosity turned dull. She looked at Vergie, and Vergie dropped her head and shuffled around like she had spilled something on the floor. Gene stood holding the brim of his hat in both hands.

  “He’s been asleep since yesterday,” Sylvia said. “Every now and again he might open his eyes, but he can’t see much. Or he might say something, but he don’t make no sense. I think he’s been waiting for you to get here,” she said to Leon.

  Finally Leon joined October and Vergie at the foot of the bed and took October’s hand again. Sylvia began to weep quietly and sat down.

  Wiping her nose, she looked at October, then at Vergie, and nodded toward the bed. “that’s you-all’s father, you know.”

  “Probably is,” Leon said.

  To October it felt too much like an insult. “I don’t think so,” she whispered back to Leon. October felt Vergie shaking her head in agreement.

  “Oh, he is, all right,” Sylvia said. “He had children once. I’ve been knowing that. All he wanted was to see them before he died. And Lonny brought you here.”

  A whole lot of men die every day wanting to see the children they’ve given up or lost was October’s first thought. She bit her tongue. Sylvia probably needed for everything to end right, have all his wishes come true before he took his last breath.

  Sylvia wouldn’t let go. “You’re the ones he’s been waiting for. When Lonny didn’t come last month, I knew there was a good reason. God wouldn’t let him stay away, knowing that Foots had to go under the knife, unless there was a mighty good reason.”

  She nodded at the bed. “This is the reason. He’s your father, all right.”

  “No,” Vergie said. “That’s not him.” Gene stepped up to Vergie’s side and put his arm around her.

  Slick Moses Mabry told them he was going to get a cup of coffee. “Anybody else want one?”

  They all said no. As he moved past October and Vergie, he hesitated. “You-all was good to come,” he said.

  Then the old man in the bed sighed a breath heavier than the others. Leon went to the bedside. As October watched, she saw the slits of his eyes open and close, then flutter. His breathing picked up. He moved a hand, and Sylvia rubbed his arm. His eyes fluttered open again, looked toward the side of the bed where Leon stood.

  Leon bent over. “Hey Foots,” he whispered, touching the hand.

  “He can’t see you, but he knows you’re here,” Sylvia said. Then louder she said, “We’re here, Foots. It’s Lonny.”

  Supposedly he was blind, but October watched his eyes roam slowly over the room, like he had come awake in a strange place. Even more slowly, his eyes focused where she and Vergie and Gene stood, at the foot of the bed. He peered like they were standing in fog.

  He tried to lift his arm, reaching, and she wondered if he was trying to speak.

  Then just above a whisper, he called, “Carrie?”

  It stunned her, just stunned her. She grabbed Vergie and Vergie grabbed her, and they held on to each other.

  “Carrie?” he called again. Then his arm fell limp, and he closed his eyes again.

  All at once Leon was pulling chairs from somewhere and telling her and Vergie to sit down. Gene tried to get them to drink some water.

  “Can he see?” Leon said.

  “No, no honey,” Sylvia said. “He’s been doing that since yesterday. Ever so often he opens his eyes and he calls her name. He’s started seeing her now. It won’t be long.”

  Sitting now, October and Vergie held on to each other like they were afraid that they might suddenly wake up and find they’d been dreaming.

  “Did he ever talk about Cleveland?” Vergie asked.

  “I know he lived in Cleveland, long time ago,” Sylvia said. “He didn’t much like to talk about what happened, and this might not be the right time to say it, but I know he was sorry, and I know he went to hell for a long time. In the pen. He told me. He wanted me to know everything.”

  “What about David?” Gene whispered to Vergie.

  She told him no, that it was too much for David. “I’ll tell him tonight.”

  “S’pose he don’t get another chance to see him?” Gene said.

  “No,” Vergie said.

  “One of these days you might wish he had,” Gene said. “He’s old enough.”

  Slick Moses came in with a cup of coffee for Sylvia. “Delores is out there,” he said. “She’s lettin you-all have your time.”

  “Let me go talk to her,” Sylvia said. “We’re all family now,” and Slick Moses helped her up and out of the room.

  “I’ll get David,” Gene said. Vergie nodded okay.

  Leon must have sensed his own time, because as October and Vergie sat letting it settle on them, Leon sat down and scooted the chair up against the bed.

  The whole scene happened again, the old man trying to reach out, crying “Carrie.”

  October watched Leon making his peace with this shell of the black old man who had once been Franklin Brown.

  “I guess she’s coming for you,” Leon said. He bent down closer to Foots’s face. “I hope you can hear me when I tell you that I didn’t know you ever had anything to show me. The whole time you were trying to set me straight, I thought it was only about my horn—you know, the music.

  “I owe you a lot,” Leon said. “You sent me home one night. I wish somebody could’ve done that for you, saved you from yourself. Then maybe ...” He stopped talking for a while and October knew he was trying not to cry.

  Then finally he said, “I didn’t know this thing between you and me was a two-way street. I thought it was all you. I know I’m late. I’m saying you’re my ace, Foots. I hope you know it.”

  They stayed until nearly midnight, all of them. Leon said he’d sit watch with Sylvia. Could be all night. Finally, October went back to Holly House with Vergie, Gene, and David.

  As they sat on the beds eating ham sandwiches and looking at the television screen, October had the truth in her heart and no answers.

  “Are we staying until he, you know, dies?” David asked.

  Earlier, when Gene had come back inside the hospital room with David, he had waited to let Leon have his time. And then Vergie had urged David forward.

  “He was your grandfather,” she had said. “You can say something to him if you want to.”

  David had stopped and looked and then just went right over to the side of the bed and touched Franklin Brown’s hand.

  “I’m David,” he said. Timid. Then himself. “You’re my grandfather. V
ergie Parker is my mother.”

  He looked at Leon who shook his head. “I don’t think he can hear.”

  “Suppose he can?” David said. He turned back and touched the frail hand “We thought you ... we didn’t know you lived in New York I always wondered ... I guess that’s all.”

  He had backed away from the bed, keeping his eyes on Franklin Brown. When he reached the foot of the bed, Vergie hugged him.

  “I wish he could say something,” David had said for everybody.

  And so sitting on the bed at Holly House, October listened to Vergie tell David that she didn’t know yet if they would stay until he died. “We haven’t had time to figure this all out,” she said. “I was hoping he could talk. Or recognize us or something.”

  “It doesn’t seem fair,” October said.

  Then television flags waved to “The Star-Spangled Banner,” and it was time for her to go downstairs to sort by herself.

  She dressed for bed, dozed off and on. Sometime in the night she heard Leon put his key in the door. She sat up and turned on the lamp, waiting just to see his face. He came in but didn’t utter a word, just sat down and held his head in his hands and started to weep. Quiet. Foots Franklin Brown had died. She raised the covers. Without even taking off his shoes, Leon lay down beside her and she rocked him.

  Over the three days that it took to get Franklin Brown into the ground, October hung suspended between her childhood and these incredible few days, between what she had thought was her real life and all the possibilities that had just died, between her life without David and this week of seeing him morning, noon, and night, again. She and Vergie said each other’s thoughts aloud to themselves.

  “I felt sad, but not like crying.”

  “Other people loved him. Isn’t that something?”

  “He turned into an old man who loved Leon.”

  “At least now we’ll know for sure when he died, and where he’s buried, but that’s all.”

  Neither of them wanted any part of planning a funeral—just said that they would stay and pay their respects.