Club Storyville (30 page)

No one in the house could sleep. No one would, I knew, not until morning, once the man came to take Nan’s body away. I was still surprised, though, when I got to the living room and heard Daddy and Ariel talking in hushed voices out of respect.

“I’m sure you’ll be happy to get your life back,” I heard Daddy say, though it didn’t sound mean, just resigned to the sudden change in our household. “You took really good care of her. Thank you.”

“I enjoyed the time I got to spend with her,” Ariel said in return, and there was such a sense of finality in it, I stopped outside the doorway, clinging to the frame and the way things had been before Nan died. “It truly was my pleasure.”

“You can stay here until you get your place back or find another one,” Daddy said. “I’ll give you a good severance. Is six months enough?”

“That’s far too generous,” Ariel accepted her leave with such grace, irritation crawled over me like a rash. “With the state of the world, I think we both know I’ll find work right away.”

“Still…” Daddy uttered, and I waited for him to take it back, all the things he’d said to send Ariel away before Nan’s body was even cold. “Nan would want you to have it.”

“Thank you,” Ariel was in the process of accepting the offer, and her dismissal, with a nod as I stepped around the wall into the room, and my irritation sharpened to a dagger.

“No,” I said, drawing both their eyes to me, though my eyes only saw Ariel as she stared at me in surprise. “You can’t leave.”

“Ariel has her own life to get back to, Elizabeth,” Daddy declared.

“No!” My irritation ignited, and, up in an instant, Ariel came to me, her hands on my arms dampening my rage just enough to keep me from exploding all over the living room.

“Elizabeth,” she whispered, and everything I wanted in the world was in that utterance, in the way Ariel said my name, in the way she looked at me when she looked only at me.

“Don’t leave,” my hands balled the back of her sweater, determined to hold onto her. “Please, don’t leave me.”

“What’s wrong with her?” Daddy asked, and, though it was with concern, as if he was afraid I was losing my wits, the question made me instantly angry, because there was nothing wrong with me. The only thing wrong with me was I had just lost Nan, I might lose Scott, and that the universe would dare try to take one more person from me made me furious.

“Nothing,” Ariel said to Daddy, though her eyes never left mine. “It’s just a lot of stress,” she tried to convince me.

“I don’t want you to leave,” I pleaded with her in return.

“Elizabeth,” Ariel stated very calmly. “You’re not thinking clearly.”

“I am thinking clearly!” Though I couldn’t be nearly as calm as she was, not with the threat of her walking out of my life hanging in the air, my thoughts were perfectly clear. Surprisingly clear. In fact, I hadn’t had such clarity since I started trying to stifle my thoughts about her.

In that moment, I realized exactly what I would lose if I let her go, and how much time I had wasted running away from Ariel when I should have been running toward her.

As high as I knew the price would be as I looked past her shoulder, and saw Daddy looking at me with such concern, I knew the value of what I might get in return, and I was willing to pay whatever it cost.

“Daddy, I’m leaving,” I said, blinking back more tears, because I didn’t want to go, but I had no reason to stay. What would I be waiting for? Scott to maybe make it home, or maybe not? Ariel to leave? Jackson, who would come back from the war and wouldn’t be enough? Because no matter how perfect he might seem held up against the Adonis image carved into young girls’ minds from a tender age, and no matter how much of a hero he was, he would still never be Ariel.

“Leaving?” My announcement put even more confusion on Daddy’s face as he took a few steps toward us. “Where are you going?”

Realizing I didn’t know the answer to that, I fought the fear that instilled in me as I reached for Ariel’s hand, pulling from the well of her strength. “Wherever Ariel goes,” I said, and when Daddy’s eyes flashed to her, as if she was somehow responsible, and Ariel’s eyes flashed to me, I realized it was something I probably should have told her first.

“No, you’re not,” Daddy shook his head.

“I am,” I insisted.

Fury building inside my chest, I suddenly understood why the man on the trolley, the one who looked so angry, was the one who chose to break the law and sit in the white seats. Defiance required some anger, the belief you had the right to something someone was trying to keep from you, the determination you would not be put into your place.

“You are not going anywhere!” Daddy shouted, and I flinched at the violent edge to his voice I had rarely heard, and never directed toward me. Though I had cowered close by when Daddy yelled at Edward or Scott like that, I had always been so careful to never make him that angry.

As Daddy looked at us, his breaths heaving, I didn’t know what he would do, and I stepped in front of Ariel, making sure all his wrath was directed only toward me. I wondered what would happen if I just tried to leave, if I grabbed Ariel and my suitcase and walked out the door. Despite Daddy’s old-fashioned attitudes, I never thought he would be the person who forced me to mind against my will. I never thought him the type to make me sneak out my window when no one was watching.

“Neither of you are,” Daddy said more quietly, taking deep breaths, and, though I was certain I heard him, I was certain I couldn’t have heard right. “We have lost enough,” his voice shook, and I realized Daddy was angry too. But he wasn’t angry at me. And he wasn’t angry at Ariel. “The rest of this family is staying together.”

“Mama will never allow it,” I returned instantly, because I was certain he had forgotten about her in the midst of his proclamation.

“I will deal with your mother,” Daddy responded in clipped syllables. “Scott will need care. No one will question it.” Not wanting to think it myself, I didn’t ask what would happen if Scott didn’t come home. “No one is going anywhere,” Daddy declared again. “That’s final. I’m going to check on your mother.”

Relieved as I was at still having my home, it was diluted with the worry of what it would be like, trying to stay there and keep Ariel happy, how oppressive it could feel if there was no place we could be ourselves, and I worried it might be better for us to go.

“I won’t hide in my own house,” I tested Daddy, making sure he understood what it would mean if we stayed, that I wasn’t going to pretend or be hidden away in the attic.

Getting nothing in response, I was forced to turn around, and, standing in the doorway, Daddy looked at me in a way he had never looked at me.

I always knew he loved me, as much as he loved Edward and Scott, that he thought I was smart and I had talent. That was the first time in my life, though, Daddy ever respected me.

“I would never expect you to,” he said, before he walked out of the room.

Turning to face Ariel, I wasn’t entirely convinced I hadn’t made up the conversation. She looked so dumbstruck, though, I knew I hadn’t imagined it, and it occurred to me I didn’t even know if that was what Ariel wanted, to stay there, if she even loved me enough to make a home with my family.

“Do you really love the South?” It seemed the least frightening question to ask. I had thought it difficult to tell Daddy the things I needed to say, until I stood waiting for Ariel to answer and started to wonder if I had confessed everything only to get the same result, her leaving and me yearning for her for the rest of my life.

“Yes,” she nodded at last, her eyes roaming my face as she tried to make sense of it all, before they settled on mine and I could see the truth in them, that behind all Ariel’s strength and composure lay a heart as desperate as mine for something real and lasting. “But I would stay even if I didn’t.”

A small laugh of relief surging past my lips, it turned to joy as I reached for her, feeling Ariel’s hands on my neck, her lips against mine. I knew she meant it, that she would stay, that I was enough to keep her there. I didn’t think in that moment how hard it might be, or how we would live with Mama and her condemning gaze. Closing my eyes to the world around us, I just rested in Ariel’s embrace and listened to the band play.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

T
he light behind the bed flickers. Three winks, a long spell in which it remains on, then two more, and I am transported back to the days after Scott came home when we didn’t know how things would go.

Though he could breathe on his own, and, when I put my ear to his chest, I could hear Scott’s heart as strong as ever, he hadn’t woken since Daddy went to get him released from the hospital into Ariel’s care.

I started to wonder if he ever would.

The lamp was a hand-me-down Scott inherited from Edward’s and my nursery, the oldest remaining relic of our childhood, aside from the blue and pink blankets our parents used to tell Edward and I apart, which still lay folded at the foot of Ariel’s and my bed.

In adolescence, when the pastel yellows and oranges made Scott self-conscious, he’d painted them grays and beiges so the lamp looked more grown-up. It was only after Scott was in high school that the cord frayed and the lamp developed a short that made it a hazard.

Still, it had made it to Nan’s with us, and when Scott needed something to guide him back, Mama pulled it out of the closet and let it flicker by Scott’s bedside, like the beacon in a lighthouse, until one day, just after I’d stopped expecting him to wake up at any moment, Scott did.

“Hey, Lizzie,” his voice startled me at the window as I was watching Mama approach Ariel in the garden with the same worry I always had about what she might say when they were alone together to send Ariel away. “Would you get me some ice cream?”

Spinning around, I watched Scott yawn as if he had no idea just how long he’d been sleeping, what a miracle he was waking up, and Scott’s tired state made him more patient than normal.

“Yeah,” I breathed. “I’ll get you some ice cream.” Dragging my eyes reluctantly from him, I knocked on the window to get Ariel’s and Mama’s attention before pulling it up. “Scott wants some ice cream,” I called out to them, and, wearing matching shocked expressions, Mama and Ariel scrambled to come inside.

T
hree times, the light winks above the bed. A long spell when it doesn’t. Then, two more.

I wonder if our need for logical explanations about everything undermines our search for meaning.

It was just after Edward died that Scott’s lamp began to flicker. “It’s old,” Daddy said. “Unplug it before it starts a fire,” Mama said.

The light behind the bed was fine when they first moved her into this room. Now, it flickers, three times, a long spell, and two more.

I wish I could remember the Morse code Edward taught me when we were kids.

I wonder if Ariel is trying to send me a message.

H
ow to read a topographic map and plotting coordinates, those were the lessons Scott brought back from the war.

As soon as he could maneuver from his bed, he wanted to teach me, despite Mama’s protests that he needed his rest, and we would walk Nan’s property and beyond until he got tired of holding himself up on crutches and hobbled back to the house.

Sometimes Ariel would go with us. Sometimes she wouldn’t. Scott never asked any questions as to why Ariel was there, assuming she had stayed for him, and, knowing we would always hear Scott coming with the heavy equipment he required to walk, we just let him think it.

“Tell me,” Scott said one day before I was ready, and I realized, along with his strength, he had regained his sixth sense for the things I tried to keep hidden from him.

“Tell you what?” I hedged, moving away across Nan’s garden, not ready to have the conversation when he wasn’t entirely mended and neither was I.

“I know you told Jackson you didn’t want to be his girl when he came here to see me,” Scott said.

“Couldn’t keep his mouth shut, could he?” I tried to joke, but, despite his dedicated service to his country, I felt Jackson a true traitor. Though, I wasn’t sure what allegiance I thought he owed me when I was the one who had never been loyal to him.

“He was upset, Lizzie,” Scott said, and that was my fault, I knew. If I had just had the courage to tell Jackson the truth from the start, or even a kind lie, he never would have gotten hurt.

“I didn’t mean for things to happen like this,” I declared, studying the southern magnolia Mama planted the week after Nan died, just days before Scott got back to Richmond, amazed at how it was already taking to the land and developing new buds.

When she was planting it, I reminded Mama that Nan said it wouldn’t survive a Richmond winter.

“Let’s just see,” Mama replied, and I knew, if that tree took all Mama’s energy until her dying day, that magnolia was going to thrive in Nan’s garden.

“He thinks there’s someone else,” Scott said to me, and, turning toward him with a sigh, I felt such fear, deeper than the fear I felt talking to Daddy or facing Mama, I could scarcely hold myself upright.

It wasn’t that I didn’t want to tell Scott. I wanted to tell him. I wanted to tell everyone. I felt like bragging even. Ariel was a catch, and she loved me, and that made me feel special. After hearing so loudly for so long, though, how wrong I was, every person felt like a chance to be reminded, and I didn’t think I could take that from Scott when he might have been the only person who had ever looked up to me.

“There is,” I admitted in a tremulous voice, reaching out to touch a yellow rose in first bloom, its silken petal between my fingers reminding me of Ariel, what beauty she had brought, and would continue to bring, into my life, worth every thorn that came with her.

“So, that’s what happened?” Scott said. “You met someone while we were gone?”

Laughing at how easy it was for Scott to imagine me meeting and falling for some other man in such a short time, I wondered how hard it must be for him to imagine the reality.

“There was always someone else,” I told him.

“Who?” he asked, and turning with utter conviction, if not confidence, I set my shoulders and prepared to be hurt.