Club Storyville (19 page)

“All right,” was all Daddy said though, thumping the dash with his hand. “Let’s go.” And I knew learning wasn’t an option, even if it was Edward’s car and I had no right to be driving it.

T
hat first night, Daddy wouldn’t let us go home for dinner until I had mastered the art of moving from gear to gear without a sputter, and we went every day after that, until there came a point when I no longer had to be ordered from my room and actually started waiting for him to get home from work each day, not recognizing it as looking forward to something.

“Now, I need you to finish teaching your brother,” Daddy said once he decided I couldn’t get any better, and I was as comfortable driving through the city streets as I was down country roads. “Maybe you could help Scott get this old beater fixed up. We could use a second car. You two could share it. It’s probably best if you do it at Nan’s. You’ll have plenty of space there.”

“Yes, Sir,” I said, and, though I knew it was an assignment, and not an option, it didn’t feel like a chore.

“S
cott,” I was waiting for him in the living room the next day when he came in from basketball practice. “Daddy wants me to teach you to drive.”

“Really?” he asked with enthusiasm.

“Yeah,” I told him. “Eat a snack, and we’ll go.”

Though Scott couldn’t be more obvious in his excitement, I didn’t realize how eager he was until he returned in less than two minutes with a bottle of cola in his hand, a box of crackers under his arm, and a big grin on his face.

So, I picked up where Edward left off, continuing Scott’s driving lessons the two of them hadn’t gotten to finish.

“I’m real glad you’re helping me, Lizzie,” Scott said out back at Nan’s one night, after it took both our muscle pushing at the end of a wrench to loosen the last bolt on the flywheel so we could scrape off the bad gasket and replace it with the one Daddy brought home for us the day before. “I was starting to wonder if you were ever going to talk to me again.”

Though he gave a small smile after he said it, dipping beneath the hood to pull the bolt and flywheel free, I knew Scott felt it, and that was when I understood, as much pain as I was in, it was shared, and disappearing into myself hadn’t spared anyone further suffering. It had been selfish.

I wasn’t the only one flailing, Scott was flailing too, and somehow Daddy knew how to save us both at once, like he could tell what we each needed most. For me, it was something worth doing, and for Scott, it was me.

“D
id your father teach you to drive a truck?” I glanced across the cab at Ariel, trying to shake the memory of how long it took Scott and I to turn Edward’s roadster into the gem he always wanted it to be, which, with Scott’s distance, felt bittersweet.

With all she had shared about her life, Ariel had always been reserved when it came to the years spent at home, even when it was Nan who asked the questions. From the things she’d chosen to share, I had picked up a fact at a time, but I had, by no means, formed a full picture of Ariel’s family life before the garden.

Then, after the garden, I was scared to ask Ariel anything, and the image I’d been building came to a sudden stop, like a puzzle left in mystery because there were too many missing pieces.

Ariel’s small laugh of response somewhat humored, I heard sadness in it too. “In a roundabout way,” she said.

“What does that mean?”

“It means I taught myself to drive a truck,” she answered, “but my father was certainly motivational in my learning.”

“How did you teach yourself?” I wondered if she would ever cease to impress me.

“Well, I’d seen other people drive them,” she shrugged as if it was just that easy. “I pay attention to things like that.”

“Must be why you’re so good at everything,” I returned.

“I’m not good at everything,” Ariel shook her head. “I’m not good at very many things. Learning to drive a truck was more necessity than anything.”

“You make it sound like you were running away from someone,” I laughed lightly, but Ariel didn’t. Watching her glance into the rearview mirror, I knew she was worried about how much Buddy could hear, though I doubted it was much with the wind and the road noise beneath us. “Were you running away from someone?”

“You could say that,” she murmured.

“Who?”

“My father,” Ariel said, and, at the hesitation in her response, I realized my question had been unintentionally cruel.

“Why?” I asked her, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. Ariel telling me nothing about her younger life didn’t mean things had to be bad. It was possible she just didn’t want me to know, which would be both better and worse.

“Because the day I was supposed to leave for nursing school, my father changed his mind,” she said. “We had packed all my things in the car the night before, but when I came down that morning my bags were sitting in the front room.”

“Why would he do that?” I asked her.

“He’d only agreed to let me go in the first place because he was so certain I would never find a husband,” she explained.

“So, he knew...” I breathed.

“Oh, God... of course not,” Ariel cut in, and it surprised me that she didn’t bother to deny anything or ask what her father could possibly know. Not sure if it was because she’d already admitted so much she no longer had plausible deniability, or if she’d just decided to trust me, I was honored, and terrified, to share her secret. “I can’t even imagine,” she shuddered, and it was exactly how I felt about my parents finding out about the thoughts I’d been having over the past months.

I wasn’t even like Ariel. I wasn’t going to be. I did want a husband. I did want to get married and do what was right. It was just those feelings I had for her, only for her, that I couldn’t stop or control, that confused me. I was trying, though. God knew, I was trying.

“But you’re so beautiful,” I heard myself say, blushing as I realized my true feelings slipped out when I wasn’t paying close enough attention. “If he didn’t know, why would he think you would never find a husband?”

“Because I was also impossible and precocious and didn’t demure well,” Ariel declared, and a smile tugged at my lips at the realization not much had changed. “I was always letting men know when I knew more about something than they did, and refusing to let them tell me how to behave. There aren’t many men like your grandfather who find such traits desirable,” she said.

Even with that, though, I knew it wouldn’t matter if there were. If that man existed in her life, Ariel still wouldn’t want him. She had admitted as much at dinner, and I was fairly certain she hadn’t changed overnight.

As I hadn’t. Unfortunately.

“But your father changed his mind?” I questioned.

“He got his hair clipped on occasion by a man who’d lost his wife a few months before. When my father told him I was leaving, the barber said it was a shame, because he had been planning to marry me,” Ariel said in a direct way, as if she had no feelings about the event one way or the other, though I was certain she must. “Turned out he had just been waiting a respectful amount of time to make his intentions known, but his respect for his poor, deceased wife lasted only until he saw his opportunity slipping away.

“He would
have me
,” there was finally some fire in Ariel’s voice as she stopped at another sign, sudden aggression giving her hand an extra burst of strength that made the shift back into first gear easier. “That was what my father said to me. The barber would
have me
, as if I was some mutt picked up off the street in need of a good home. Wasn’t that decent of him? Wasn’t it kind for him to decide he would take a woman half his age for his wife, despite her occasionally smart mouth? My father certainly thought so. He was ready to nominate the barber for sainthood for volunteering to take me off his hands.”

“So, what happened?” I questioned carefully, afraid of further upsetting her, but too curious not to ask.

“He’d invited him over for dinner,” Ariel said.

“The barber?” I asked, and, drifting between lanes to avoid the open door of a parked car, Ariel nodded.

“I locked myself in my room,” she said, and it was hard to imagine her doing such a thing. It was the kind of thing I might do, the childish behavior Mama hated and told me was foolish and accomplished nothing. “My mother stood outside my door, trying to smooth things over before the barber got there. When I heard the car door outside, I knew that was it, my fate was sealed. If I stayed, my father would force me to do what he wanted, and I would never have anything I wanted in life. Not just...” she lost her nerve for a moment, and when she went on, I understood why. “Love,” she whispered, and, from Ariel’s lips, it sounded vital. Like air or water or food. “Not even a career, or my independence.” The touch of desperation in her voice made me feel like I was there with her, waiting in her bedroom for her father to give her away to the first man who asked. “Nothing,” she uttered. “So, when I heard my father letting him in, I climbed out my bedroom window. That’s when I saw the barber’s truck. The keys were in it, so I taught myself how to drive it.”

“You stole the barber’s truck?” I could scarcely believe it. Laughter rising in my chest, it was a rather wonderful feeling in the midst of everything, and I wondered if Nan knew.

“Borrowed,” Ariel was quick to point out. “I did leave it at the train station for him. I’m sure he got it back.”

Watching the smile slip onto her face, I knew she was making the best of things as they were, not that things were satisfactory or free of pain.

“So, you just left everything behind?” I softly asked, and the question was all the excuse Ariel needed to let the smile fall.

“Almost everything,” she answered. “I had some money I’d saved and a picture with my mother. That was all I needed.”

Unable to imagine a time or place when that would be enough, I knew she had to be lying.

“Do you ever talk to her?”

When Ariel sighed heavily at the question, I thought it would be the moment that came in every conversation between us, the one where she had given me everything she was going to give and brought the discussion to an abrupt end.

“I call her every now and then,” Ariel surprised me by answering, “to let her know where I am. It’s hard, though, because she knows I can never come back, and I can tell it breaks her heart. Of course,” she went on in a faltering voice, “if she knew everything about me, she may not want me there anyway.”

Following the hard swallow down Ariel’s throat, it occurred to me I couldn’t have picked a worse time to bring up such a painful topic, and, reaching across the seat between us, my hand slid onto her leg, feeling the muscles in her thigh tense as I pushed our boundaries, though I wasn’t sure whose I was pushing more.

At the sound of the knock on the window, I was reminded Buddy could see everything, and, glancing back, I was glad he seemed to have seen nothing as Ariel slowed to a stop.

“This is me,” he said, hopping off the side of the truck and looking at us through the open window. “It’s just two streets over and you’ve got the address. Try not to forget me when you’re done.”

“We won’t, I promise,” Ariel said, and, grinning, Buddy backed away.

“Be careful parking now,” he teased. “Try not to take the tires off.”

Ariel’s usual throaty laughter filling the air as we started off again, I was amazed she could laugh at all.

Chapter Twenty

A
s far as houses went, I’d seen few as inviting as the one hovering over the spot Ariel pulled slowly into, not quite against the curb, on Esplanade Avenue. Its red door and shutters and fancy roof edging accenting yellow walls, it was as bright as a child’s painting and looked like a place where interesting things happened all the time.

“That's it,” Ariel confirmed the house as our destination, but despite its enticing appearance, I was stuck to the seat. “What’s wrong?” she looked back in at me after she climbed out of Buddy's truck to finish the job she'd started, showing no fear at all as she pressed forward toward deeper truth.

“Nothing,” I returned.

“What are you afraid of finding out?” she questioned more softly, but I didn't know.

I didn’t know if I wanted to know anything more about the world than I did, if I wanted any more thoughts or discoveries, things that made me feel discontent, that might make me have to run from my sometimes heartbreaking, but quite comfortable existence.

Looking to Ariel where she stood inside the open driver's door, I tried to imagine how she must have felt when the decision came down on her one day without warning, when she realized in a split instant she had to stay or go and suffer the consequences that came with either.

“Were you lonely?” I whispered, watching the breeze lift her hair off her shoulder. “When you left home? Were you lonely?”

“Yes,” Ariel admitted, and my chest ached at the idea of it. “But then I made some friends and I wasn’t as lonely anymore.”

I noticed she didn’t say she wasn’t lonely, just not as lonely as she had been, and I understood then why there had always been such a lonely feel about Ariel, in spite of her ability to connect with anyone. I had noticed it from the start. At first, I thought it was just from being a stranger in a new place, but, when it clung to her, I knew it lived somewhere deeper, in a place inside of her I now knew might never be filled.

Smiling sadly her way, whatever I might find in the bright house no longer seemed as intimidating, and I at last climbed out of the truck.

“A
re you ready?” Ariel asked me on the porch a minute later, and, though I felt nothing of the sort, I nodded as she raised her hand to knock.

It took long enough for someone to answer that I held out the counterproductive hope no one would be home, but when the door swung open a few moments later, a black man I would have thought very handsome, if it was the kind of thought a white woman should have, tried to disguise his shock as anything else.

“Can I help you ladies?” he questioned.

Knowing I needed to say something, that, by this point, I should be past my concerns about whether it was proper or made sense, I opened my mouth, but no sound came out.