A Toast Before Dying (24 page)

“In fact, there’s really no set time,” she answered, glad to talk. “Some folks you have to nurse and bring along gradually. Others seem to burst on the scene like a meteor. Of course, they need direction also, to keep from burning out too quickly. But whether a singer develops over the years or overnight, she must have something to begin with. When I started to coach Thea, I knew she had something.

“You know how Nina Simone and Aretha Franklin can make you cry with a single note. You sit there in
the dark listening and the tears are coming while you nod your head at something you wished you could’ve forgotten years ago. And then the very next song will have you smiling, stepping, finger-popping.

“Or go back earlier and listen to Billie Holiday sing ‘Them There Eyes’ or ‘My Man.’ That girl made you
see
what she saw, which was usually some pretty man whose mission was to dog you from day one. But you were able to
see
him and feel her pain, and that was her genius.

“Thea could’ve eventually done that, but for some reason …” Miss Adele sighed and the smile went away. “I can tell you why she lost that pageant, Mali. When she sang the crucial number, she was supposed to sing from her center—as most singers do. But Dessie, the only person in the world who had meant anything to her, was dying. And Thea’s center drained like a whirlpool even as she fought to keep it intact.

“Then, a few years later when she found those letters, I imagine she really hollowed herself out. Emptied herself of everything. I mean what little that might have remained, she
froze
it, so to speak, then dug it out the way a dentist would handle a bad tooth. Then she filled that place with something that finally did her in.”

“What was that?”

“Rage. Despair. Hopelessness. The knowledge that her mother had never wanted her and she had no idea who her father was. I don’t think Dessie ever found out who Thea’s father was. Marcella never said anything, only stayed one day and didn’t even wave
when she left. I know. And Thea must’ve found all that in those letters.

“She tried to sing after that, had several gigs here and there, but eventually she seemed to shut down, as if the world and everything in it was just too much.”

“Is that why she went to work at the Half-Moon when she knew she could’ve done so much better? I mean, she had a modeling career, had married a successful architect. Why’d she throw that away?”

Miss Adele raised her shoulders gently, as if to shift a weight that had rested there too long.

“I don’t really know. Perhaps she’d felt betrayed, violated. She’d lost a sense of who she was, and probably felt she didn’t deserve anything that good. Who knows? Then again, she may have gone to the Half-Moon out of spite. By the time she started working there, the place was nothing like it used to be. It had gone through so many changes it gave me a headache just to pass by on the same side of the street.”

“Maybe,” I said, “it was her way of letting the world—especially her mother—know that she didn’t care about anything. Nothing mattered.”

Miss Adele nodded wearily. “For somebody who didn’t care, she was a very busy girl.”

I smiled, thinking of Edwin and all the other men in her life who had hoped to be the one to change her, to break through, like in
Pygmalion
. Instead, she had changed them. Or shortchanged them.

“Do you know of a woman named Teddi Lovette?” I asked, changing the subject again.

Miss Adele thought a minute, then shook her head. “Doesn’t sound familiar. Who is she?”

“A white actress who has a small repertory company called Star Manhattan on Theater Row. She had asked me to find out as much as I could about Thea.”

“Why?”

“She never gave me a clear answer. Except that she’s in love with Kendrick and is kicking out big bucks for his legal fees.”

“That’s interesting. Seems to me she’d be concentrating on springing the living, not raising the dead. I mean, despite her money, Kendrick’s still behind bars and—”

“She had offered me twenty thousand to dig up Thea … a hell of a lot of money. At first I thought it was because she was obsessed with the fact that Kendrick had been in love with Thea and she wanted to find out as much as possible about her. You know, find out the formula … But no damn formula is worth that much, even if Kendrick’s a sixty-minute man. Then she changed her mind and told me to forget all about it.”

Miss Adele put her glass down. “There must be something she isn’t telling you, Mali. Listen: Give me her name again. Friend of mine was an assistant set designer when I was working. He’s retired now but does some volunteer stuff in the small productions, especially along Theater Row, to keep his hand in. Something of a gossip, and he’ll let me know what’s going on in a beat.”

I had no clear memory of arriving home. Just a wavery image of a cab waiting in front of Miss Adele’s to pick me up, then a kaleidoscopic vision of trees, cars, horns, people, and Technicolor traffic lights. The sky was a painfully bright blue that wouldn’t stop spinning whenever I looked up.

I did not remember how unsteady my hand was when I pushed a bill toward the driver, and I did not remember counting the change. Then came the careful and calculated tightwire stroll from the curb to the stoop and the relief that Dad had been waiting to open the door before the pavement, shimmering like waves, came up to meet my face.

He shepherded me inside and I heard succinct remarks but couldn’t process them. Then more steps that he helped me negotiate and finally a cold cloth across my forehead. Before I drifted off, I saw golden star-bursts explode like a Fourth of July gala, except all that terrific sound was entirely inside, ripping through my gray matter. The room was spinning and I thought, Miss Adele, Miss Adele. Living well is hell.

T
here was a cup of coffee on the night table and it was dark outside when I turned over. The phone was ringing and I lay with eyes closed, preferring to let the machine click on. The message was faint—Dad must’ve turned the volume down low—and I didn’t care so long as it didn’t deepen the rhythm of the hammer in my head. I raised up on one elbow and leaned over to taste the coffee. It was ice-cold and I wondered vaguely how many hours had passed. The phone rang again and I ignored that call also. Then I fell back to sleep and somewhere between dreams I thought I heard it ring once more.

“You must have had quite a time at Adele’s,” Dad said as he pulled up the blinds. I blinked awake to the sun spilling yellow and white across my bed.

“What time is it?”

“You mean what day is it, don’t you?”

I didn’t answer and he closed the door, leaving me alone again. Actually I felt fine, having slept through the worst of the hangover. I showered quickly and wandered downstairs.

“Sorry, Dad. I hope I didn’t embarrass you too much.”

He looked up from the
Daily Challenge
and nodded. “Nope. You didn’t embarrass me.”

Which meant that I must have embarrassed myself. “It was champagne. Too much, too quick, too rich. Never again.”

He didn’t look up but riffled the papers in a way that let me know the subject was closed. I saw the tight expression and made up my own mind that popping corks was not for me.

Upstairs again, I turned on the answering machine and listened to two messages from Miss Adele asking me to call as soon as possible, and one from Teddi Lovette apologizing for her disappearing act the other day and promising to call later.

The phone rang again even as the last message played out.

“Mali,” Miss Adele said without asking how I had survived her champagne breakfast. “I called my friend yesterday and he didn’t even have to ask around. Your actress friend’s maiden name is Teddi Eden. She’s the daughter of Marissa and Sam Eden. Marissa Eden’s maiden name is Hamil.”

There was a pause and I waited. When Miss Adele didn’t speak, I said, “Yes. Go on.”

She laughed then. “You don’t see?”

“See what?”

“The connection. The article I showed you yesterday.”

“Oh. Oh,” I said, even though I hadn’t been able to make head or tails of the piece of paper. “Are you sure? I mean, is your friend sure?”

“Sure, he’s sure. He knew Teddi’s husband. Older man named William Lovette who died on the honeymoon. Left her megabucks and an estate in Westchester.”

“Yes. Yes. But let’s get back to Marissa Hamil. Or Eden. Or whatever her name is.”

“Well, she was Marcella Hamilton before she was anything else,” Miss Adele said. “Names may change but pictures don’t lie.”

I hung up and got out my file to jot down the latest developments. As I read it over, I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

Later, I dialed Teddi’s number, even though she’d told me not to. She was somewhere in Westchester, probably Bedford or Armonk, and I wondered about the size of her mansion. Her machine clicked and her voice sounded nervous even on the tape.

“Teddi, I have the information you wanted,” I said and hung up without leaving my name. She’d know who I was.

It was 10
P.M.
and I was wide-awake so I collared Ruffin. “Come on. Let’s see what’s happening at Better Crust Pie Shop. I need a sweet-potato custard.”

We walked up 139th Street to Seventh Avenue
and peered through the window, but although there were sounds of the night baker in the rear, the shop was closed.

Across the avenue, the bright lights of Mickey Dee’s spread like a beacon, pulling in cars and pedestrians alike, but that wasn’t what I wanted. We strolled one block north to stand near the Half-Moon, where I cupped my hand against a dusty window and peered inside. The bottles and votive candles were long gone. The spindly legs of the bar stools upturned on the counter resembled the hair-like limbs of spiders lying on their backs, stiffened by time and death. I saw the quick and careful movement of rats the size of puppies making their way along the counter, gnawing probably at the glue that held the stools together.

I thought of Thea lying in the alley a few feet away with half her face gone. I closed my eyes and imagined the slow tap of Dessie’s five-inch heels heading toward Lenox Avenue and the haven of Harlem Hospital.

I wondered if it had been a winter night and if she had held her coat close against the cold. Or if it had been summertime and people lounging on stoops to escape the heat of crowded apartments had waved as she passed. I wondered if the emergency room had been very crowded.

I turned away and looked up at the lamppost, where a remnant of a
GRAND OPENING
pennant, faded and torn, hung limply from thin wire. It was all that remained of the Half-Moon.

I walked to Eighth Avenue and headed home.
There were two messages when I returned. One was from Tad, his deep quiet voice phrasing some extraordinary ideas about my lovemaking and how hard it was for anyone to improve on a good thing. Then he calmed down enough to tell me about Roger Morris. Tad had interviewed Morris, who could offer nothing other than that he’d paid one thousand a month into Thea’s bank account for her support. It turned out that he hadn’t wanted a divorce after all, but hoped Thea’d change her mind and return to him when she was “ready to settle down,” as he put it. Meanwhile, he had hoped and paid.

The other message was from Teddi, wanting to see me at the theater tomorrow.

I took another shower and went to bed. Sometime in the night, the phone rang, and when I answered there was silence. I pressed the call-back key but it didn’t connect. I hung up and called Elizabeth Jackson, who woke up grumbling.

“Mali, I’m not going to tell you what I think of your calling me at this hour. It had better be important.”

“I’m going to see Teddi tomorrow at the theater. She called while I was out. I need an update on Kendrick.”

“Kendrick’s okay. Teddi Big-Bucks hired another lawyer to work with me. He’s a gun with heavy connections, so her boy might be seeing the light of day any day now.”

“Good. I have some info on Thea that’ll surprise her. I’ll talk to you tomorrow afternoon. I’m meeting her at twelve.”

I still couldn’t sleep and spent the next hours reading the file again and trying to keep the names and dates straight. Finally I settled against the pillows, intending to think about everything. It was dawn when I opened my eyes with a bad ache in my neck and the notes scattered on the floor near the bed.

I reached for the phone and dialed Miss Adele. She came on sounding unbelievably cheerful, then got serious. “You want the clipping? What do you intend to do with it?”

“Give Teddi the information she asked for.”

I hung up and showered and dressed and went uptown.

When Miss Adele opened the door, the concern showed in her face. “Are you sure you’re doing the right thing?”

“I won’t know until I do it, Miss Adele. There’s a connection here and the longer we do nothing, the longer Kendrick looks at hard time.”

She went to the cabinet, pulled out the rosewood case, and handed me the clipping. “You want me to call anyone? I don’t like you stepping into something with no one to watch your back.”

“I’ll be fine. I’m not planning to confront anyone, just to tell Teddi what she needs to know.”