Jazz Funeral (14 page)

She was quiet for a moment, and Skip thought the silence felt good. Ti-Belle could get up quite a head of energy when she was angry. No wonder the neighbors had heard the battles.

When the singer spoke again, it was in the quiet voice of remembered grief. “And now I’d give anything to have him back again.”

“I know.”
I know the right thing to say, anyway
.

“I’ve thought about what happened. It seems like he was talking to somebody and they got mad enough to really do it, doesn’t it? Well, I could have done that, except that …” She shrugged. “It’s just not the sort of thing you kill someone over. He was the most frustrating man in the world, but it was nothing personal. If you killed somebody, wouldn’t you have to have a damn good reason?”

No. Blind rage is plenty good enough. Particularly if there’s alcohol or drugs involved
. But if Ti-Belle didn’t know that, maybe she was putting up a smoke screen. Skip thought she’d poke around a little, see if she hit any sensitive spots.

“Did you fight at all about getting married? Did one of you want to and the other one didn’t?”

The ravishing Ti-Belle spoiled her image by snorting. “He was still married to Mason!”

“What?”

“Yeah. Five years later. And that’s over. Way over. Ham was just too damn wimpy to get a divorce. That would require positive action, and Hamson Brocato never took positive action, oh no.” She was off again. Anger may have felt better to her than grief.

But this Mason thing was food for thought. “Did Ham have a will?”

“I don’t know. Why? Probably not, why would he?”

Right, why would he?
A man who couldn’t even be bothered to get a divorce wasn’t going to make a will. It was funny, Mason had used the same word Ti-Belle had—wimpy. But
Mason
was no wimp. Why hadn’t she taken care of the divorce?

Ti-Belle’s thoughts were still on marriage. “Look, I’m not the kind of woman who just wants to get married. It isn’t my thing, maybe never will be. I’ve got a career going. I thought Ham was going with me, maybe as my manager. I used to think we’d work as a team, but I was starting to think it just wouldn’t happen. Couldn’t. Probably shouldn’t.”

“Why not?”

“Well, it turned out his main talent was schmoozing.” She spoke with the sadder-but-wiser air of someone who’s learned the hard way.

Skip thought she’d learned everything she was going to learn from Ti-Belle. It was time to play the bad cop. “Ti-Belle, I checked all flights out of here for a week. And I checked with Mr. Jarvis Grablow in Chicago. You didn’t go anywhere.”

The beautiful face registered disbelief and then panic. It was probably about to be replaced by anger, and if Ti-Belle was as volatile as she seemed, she might attack. Skip got ready. But the human volcano had burned itself out. She fell back in her chair, defeated. “Oh, shit!”

Skip breathed a sigh of relief. “Where were you?”

“Oh, fuck!”

“You didn’t really think you were going to get away with it, did you? With a shaky alibi like that?”

“Get away with what? I didn’t kill Ham, for Christ’s sake. I was with a man, okay? Ham got to me. He wore me down. I needed some …” She sniffled a bit “… some self-esteem from somewhere. He wasn’t around, he was putting everything into JazzFest, I was frustrated, I felt like our relationship was coming apart….”

“You don’t have to make excuses to me.”

She made a face that was like a funny little half smile. “I guess I was really talking to Ham. Do you have any idea how awful I feel? I was in bed with somebody else while he was getting killed!” Loud voice again. Mad at herself—or a good actor. “I might have saved him, do you realize that? If I’d have only been here.”

She raced out of the room, Skip following. But she was only getting a tissue. She came back dabbing and patting at her face. “Actually, I feel better. I really do. I couldn’t talk to anybody else about this, might as well be a stranger.”

Skip smiled, momentarily the good cop. She said, “Who was the guy?”

“The guy? I have to tell you that?”

“Either that or get a lawyer fast.”

“Shit!” She thought it over. “Okay—it was Johnny Murphy. My drummer.”

As she shut the door behind the damn cop, Ti-Belle threw her Kleenex at it. But that wasn’t good enough, so she went back in the living room and threw each of the sofa cushions across the room.

“Shit!

“Fuck!

“Shitfire!

“Motherfucker!”

The pilows didn’t make any noise, so she picked up a little ceramic box—ugly thing Ham wouldn’t let her deep-six—and threw it against the wall. “Goddamn, motherfucker!”

To her disappointment, it only hit the wall and fell to the carpet. There was a good thwack, but no satisfying shatter.

“Goddamn, goddamn, goddamn!” She hated the cop, she hated herself, and she couldn’t believe the goddamn motherfucking stupid mess she was in. About the only person whose ass she didn’t currently despise was Johnny Murphy.

She went into her bedroom, thinking as always how much she hated the colorless, boring, unbelievably ordinary cover on the bed. God, it was going to be good to pick her own things. Was she crazy to have lived with a man who wouldn’t even let her get a goddamn new bedspread?

But there’d been good things. There certainly had. And lots of them.

She dialed Johnny Murphy for the fiftieth time that day, but goddamn! No answer again. She spoke to the robot: “Johnny, it’s Ti-Belle. I need you real, real bad. Please call me the minute you hear this, I don’t care how stoned you are or who you got with you. This is an emergency, you hear me?”

What to do now? Oh, shit, what? The tears started coming again, just as they had before the cop came. Being alone was bad. Sitting on the bed, she looked in the mirror and hated what she saw. A crying, pathetic waif. Definitely not a dynamic, take-charge kind of woman, the kind who could have gotten from where she’d started to where she was now, on the brink of really making it big. If she didn’t take charge right now, what was left of her life was going to fly apart like a bomb hit it. She found a pair of socks, put them on, got down and crawled, looking for her running shoes. Then she remembered Andy Fike had been there cleaning up—they’d be in the closet.

She got in her car and started driving. She was halfway across the causeway to Covington when it occurred to her to wonder where the hell she was going.

To find Johnny
.

But Johnny doesn’t live in this direction.

There was no turning back in the middle of the lake. Where in the hell was she going to look for Johnny, anyway? She already knew he wasn’t home. Where the hell would he be? Practicing? More likely getting ripped with people she’d hate.

She was driving like a sleepwalker. She turned off the AC and rolled down the window, hoping the breeze would keep her alert. Why had she gotten on the causeway? Instinct, she thought. She probably just needed to keep moving for a while, and she needed to be outside. She’d walk when she got to the other side. Go to the banks of the Bogue Falaya and be with the world in a way that she couldn’t in New Orleans.

The wind on her face was familiar, the whole situation was.

No wonder I’m doing this. I always run from the bad stuff.

It would get hot like this when she was a kid, the wind would be hot, and yet refreshing. Moving through it would make her feel alive. Being on her bike. She would get on her bike and pedal so fast her calves hurt, her calves nearly killed her, her chest felt raw, but that was okay, she was getting away.

“M’ay Ellen?” (Not “Mary.” Her dad could never get the “r” in when he was drinking.) “M’ay Ellen, bring me a Bud.”

The words echoed in her head as if they hadn’t been uttered nearly twenty years ago. Twenty years ago she’d heard them, or nearly that long, a lifetime ago, and she hadn’t thought of them since.

They hadn’t had air-conditioning, and all the windows were open. Outside someone was cutting his lawn. The drone was pleasant, borne on the afternoon breeze with the sweet scent of the mown grass. Another drone came from the living room, this one not nearly so pleasant, in fact ugly, to Ti-Belle, depressing. It was the baseball game on television.

She didn’t know why it depressed her. Because it reminded her of darkened rooms on a beautiful day, she supposed. Because her father was glued to it, not available to play, to take her out, even to get groceries for the family. Because it was the most important thing in the world to him, and she sometimes thought she was the least. Because it dominated the household with its horrid drone and everyone’s schedule planned around it. And because it was so utterly his territory.

She wanted to go lie down on her bed and let the tears run out of her eyes while she clutched her green and purple stuffed rabbit, her last year’s Easter bunny, holding it to her face so no one could hear her sob. The ball game took her that way. But she couldn’t do that, even though she didn’t have to babysit today, because Jimmy was over at a friend’s house. She had to figure out how to make macaroni and cheese. She had told her mother she could do it, and she was smart, she knew she could.

Then her dad called for that Bud. He’s forgotten, she thought. She could go in there and remind him that Mama had one of her headaches and couldn’t be disturbed. But then he’d get mad. She didn’t know why he got mad about things like that, but he did, and she’d be the one he yelled at.

He’d say, “Shit! Goddamn headache! Goddamn! Again?” She’d try to leave at this point, but he’d say, “Don’t turn your back when I’m talking to you!” And he might throw something. He might do that whether she stood respectfully or whether she tried to get out of the way; there was no way to tell.

The best thing was to bring him the beer herself. She went to the refrigerator. “M’ay Ellen? M’ay Ellen!”
Oh, no
. There weren’t any more. But there had to be some beer—her father always drank beer when he watched the ball game. It had to be here.

There it was on the table. She remembered now. He’d gone out that morning and gotten it. She pried a can loose from the pack. Warm. He’d be mad about that. He liked his beer good and cold, he was always talking about it. What to do? Ice! She could put ice in it, like tea.

“M’ay Ellen, what’s taking so goddamn long?”

“I’ll just be a minute.”

She pulled a chair up to the refrigerator, stood on it, and opened the freezer door. But the ice tray stuck. It was frozen in there. She had to get down and get a knife to pry it loose. Her dad was yelling again….

The tray came loose so suddenly she fell backward, toppling the chair, hitting the floor. The knife nicked her arm and it started to bleed. She heard her dad’s footsteps, heavy, threatening, like a bear coming to get her.

“What in the hell do you think you’re doing?” (Except he really said “What in the hail,” which she knew was incorrect from watching TV.)

“Just gettin’ you a beer.” She was in trouble; big trouble.

“Look at you! You’re bleedin’. What the hail do you mean you were gettin’ me a beer? You were up in that freezer, weren’t you? What were you doin’ up there?”

“Daddy, the beer was warm. I was just tryin’ to get you ice.”

“Ice! Ice! You don’t put ice in beer! What the hail were you doin’?”

“I was—” She started to pick herself up.

“Don’t lie to me.” His voice rose, his hand went back behind his shoulder, cocked to hit. “Don’t lie to me!”

“Daddy, I was just—”

“You were just. Don’t tell me just.”

Feet hit the floor and heavy steps came fast down the hall, her mother’s, urgent. She looked awful in an old nylon nightgown in the middle of the day, no makeup, hair every which way.

“M’ay Ellen, what the hail is goin’ on here?”

He turned toward her and smacked her hard. Ti-Belle was out the door, fast, the screen slamming behind her. If he caught her, she was dead, but she didn’t think he would. They’d played this scene before, and she’d gotten away. She’d come back crying, sure he’d kill her, and afraid her mama was already dead, overcome with guilt because she’d left her alone with him, but her mama’d gotten away too, the distraction gave her time. She told Ti-Belle she’d done the right thing, to do it again if she ever had to.

“But Mama,” she sobbed, “when he wakes up, he’s gon’ kill me.”

“No, he won’t, honey. He won’t remember a thing.” She pushed Ti-Belle’s hair back behind her ears, just playing with it, nervous. “He’ll be sobered up and sorry as he can be.”

“What’s that mean, Mama?”

“It means the devil won’t be there anymore. You know when he gets like that? That idn’t really Daddy, honey. The devil gets in him and makes him act like that.”

She got away this time, too. Grabbed her bike, hopped on and started pedaling, her dad chasing her down the street, a great big barefoot guy in his shorts, yelling like a crazy man. But a neighbor came out, an older man, and said, “Hey, Bobby, you go back in there where you belong.”

And he had, but by then her mama had probably gone back to the bedroom and locked the door, so she was safe. Ti-Belle was pedaling down the road with the wind in her face, going to a place she knew—a place with a big creek where you could see tadpoles and dragonflies and lots of water bugs. There were trees there, one of them with steps nailed up it by some kids a little older than she was. She could climb up there and sit if she wanted to, just Ti-Belle and the tree, until her heart stopped beating so hard and her face wasn’t red anymore. She sang when she was up in the tree, songs she knew and new songs she made up. She didn’t have to be mad, or sad, or anything when she was singing.

Ti-Belle felt her face now. Was it red? It always had been when she ran for the treehouse.

But how did I know that? There was never a mirror.

It just felt that way, she decided. But it didn’t now. She was cool as cucumber ice cream. But she had to take stock. She focused: Ham was dead and so was that part of her life. Fine. Good.

It sounds cold, but I can live with it.

Anyway, he isn’t the first.

There had been another time when this had happened.