Club Storyville (2 page)

Daddy thought he should handle the hiring too. He even took a day off work for it, but Nan asked him how he thought he would know who she’d want taking care of her, and she sat up next to him in the living room to meet each person who came in, looking like she was growing stronger, instead of weaker.

The Friday Daddy stayed home, Nan didn’t like a single person she saw.

“What was wrong with them?” Daddy asked in frustration. “They all seemed fine to me.”

Nan had told me I could stay too, if I wanted, though Daddy thought I had no business there, and I could tell he expected the hiring to be as quick and easy as the hiring at the company where he worked. He’d get it done in a day and have the rest of his weekend to relax.

“Well, not to me,” Nan said, and that only made Daddy more annoyed.

Getting up in a grumble, he went out to the porch to smoke, and Nan looked to me with a mischievous expression. Although I knew she really didn’t like any of those people, because they had all talked directly to Daddy, instead of to her, I knew she also liked causing Daddy aggravation just for the sake of causing him aggravation.

O
n the second day, Nan still didn’t find anyone who suited her, and by the third day, Mama came to Daddy’s aid.

“No one you would want would come out here on a Sunday,” she said when we got back from church and were settling in for more interviews. “You should pick from the people you’ve already seen.”

“Well, whoever I hire will have to work on Sunday,” Nan responded. “So, I guess we can’t be too judgmental about how they choose to honor this particular Sabbath.”

Trying to hide the smile that came to my face, as I always tried to hide when Nan said something I knew Mama thought I shouldn’t think was funny, I helped Nan get situated on the couch as Mama stormed from the room.

“You’re going to end up with a Jew,” she said on the way.

“We won’t let that happen,” Daddy passed her on his way in, tossing his Sunday paper on the table by his chair. “I do hope we can wrap this up today,” he announced. “I would like to get back to work tomorrow.”

“Well, it would certainly be a shame if you couldn’t be here,” Nan returned. “Your input has been invaluable.”

Unable to stop the laugh that rose in response to the compliment Nan didn’t mean, I turned it into a cough when Daddy gave me a look.

“Get the door, Elizabeth,” he said when the first person in line for the job that day knocked, and, when I answered it to a young man with slightly colored skin he could blame on a late suntan, but I could tell was because he was part Indian, I suspected Nan would give him an extra chance to impress her, just to irritate Daddy.

I
t was mid-afternoon, and Daddy had just about had it, when I pulled the door open to a woman with the most dazzling smile I had ever seen. Her strawberry blonde hair held onto a touch of summer where it fell in a light curl onto her shoulders beneath her hat, though there was a chill already for early fall and the sun had been spotty over Richmond for weeks. A little shorter than me, she felt taller somehow, and when she offered her hand in greeting, it felt as warm and soft as that of a woman who never had to work, not like that of a woman who had come looking for a job.

“Hello. I’m Ariel Brandt,” she said, and she didn’t sound like the others before her either. Her voice soft, it was also strong and crisp, almost like she worked harder to make her words right than the rest of us.

“I’m Elizabeth,” I returned.

“I’m here for an interview,” she had to further explain, her gray-blue eyes glancing beyond me, but it was only as she released my hand that I realized I had forgotten to invite her in.

“Yes, of course,” I gestured. “Come in, please.” And, watching her remove her second glove, which the temperatures didn’t quite call for yet, but explained why her hand felt warm on the not-entirely-warm day, I led her into the living room.

“This is Ariel,” I said, and, for a reason I couldn’t entirely grasp, her name felt nervous on my tongue.

“Ariel Brandt,” she better introduced herself, going to Nan first. “You must be Mrs. Mosby.”

“That, I am,” Nan replied, taking Ariel’s offered hand. “Ooh, warm hands. I like that.”

“Well, it is my job,” Ariel responded, and I hadn’t thought of that. Nor, did it seem, had most of the people who came before Ariel, whose hands had felt cold when I touched them.

“Please, call me Mary,” Nan said, flicking a look to Daddy. “My son-in-law, Burton.”

Smiling, Ariel turned to Daddy next, but when he gave her a succinct nod, she realized he wasn’t going to take her hand and let it fall to her side.

“Please, sit down,” I rushed to make Ariel feel comfortable in Nan’s home when it felt like Daddy was trying to make her feel unwelcome. “Can I get you anything?”

“I would love a cup of hot tea.” She looked appreciative as she turned that same wide smile back on me.

“Of course,” I said, nearly stumbling over my own feet I turned so fast to fetch it.

“She’s got another one in there?” Mama prodded me when I got to the kitchen where she’d been hiding out all morning. If you asked, Mama would say she wanted no part of Nan’s nurse hunt. She did want to hear what was going on enough, though, to spend three days eavesdropping. “Is she going to talk to every nurse in Richmond? Why doesn’t she just pick somebody? How different can they be?”

Ariel felt different, though, from the second I answered the door. I wanted to tell Mama that to stop her talking, but I couldn’t explain why she felt different to myself, so I certainly couldn’t explain it to Mama.

“I think Nan just wants to find the right person,” I said. “I imagine it must be hard to have to trust somebody else to take care of you.”

“Then, she should let us do it,” Mama replied, and I thought it best not to tell her Nan might have thought us the wrong people. Maybe even the worst. “I hope she picks someone soon,” Mama went on to say, watching me put two sugar cubes on the side of Ariel’s saucer, and I fought the urge to add another in case Ariel liked her tea extra sweet. “Every person who wants tea wants sugar. We’re going to use up our entire ration with this nonsense.”

Would it have felt like nonsense to her, I wondered, if she was the one who had to be weak in front of somebody? If she was the one who had to let somebody see her at her least capable and most vulnerable? The tea ready, though, I managed to keep my comments to myself, which was for the best, and went back into the living room.

“So, Ariel, that is an interesting accent,” I got back in time to hear Nan say. “Have you lived in Richmond your whole life?”

“No, Ma’am,” Ariel said, pausing to thank me with a small smile as I handed her the tea. “I was born in Chicago.”

Grateful I was no longer holding Nan’s good china, I lost the napkin I’d grabbed to pick out a cookie for our guest as I glanced up at Nan.

Now, there wasn’t a person on Earth Nan hated. Anybody she didn’t like enough to hate wasn’t worth the time hatred took, she always said. While you could be anything in Nan’s presence, though, being from the North was about the worst thing you could be.

This was a woman who still called the Civil War the “War of Northern Aggression,” and if you ever got her going about it, she would say, “You don’t just start killing people because you don’t agree with what they’re doing. If you can’t work out your disagreements, you work harder, and, if you still can’t, you go your separate ways until you find a way to meet without weapons.”

My second to last year of school, I had a teacher who said slavery never would have ended without the Civil War. He didn’t last long in Richmond, bringing up such sensitive subjects, as one might expect.

When I told Nan that, she said no war abolished slavery. One man did it with a single proclamation, and he should have done it sooner. That didn’t mean there wouldn’t have been those who rose to defend their self-proclaimed rights to turn people into property, she would go on, but, at least then, everybody would know the fighting was to save the union and not to end slavery, like Yankees got to claim, which somehow made their killing and raping and destroying of their own country more justified.

That was why Nan sang “Dixie,” I realized in that instant as I bent down to pick up the napkin I’d fumbled, because she grew up with people who remembered the South before it was trampled by a million northern boots, before Atlanta burned, and their homes and their friends’ homes were occupied by men who treated them like animals while behaving like animals themselves.

I thought Nan would be done with Ariel then, the second Ariel acknowledged the northern upbringing that gave her that crisp voice, that she would thank her for coming and send her on her way.

“What brought you to Richmond from Chicago?” Nan’s measured response surprised me, though I should have known she would carry through on her hospitality. I had seen Nan have a dozen conversations she didn’t want to have just to give someone time to finish a cup of tea before kicking him or her out the door.

“I didn’t come straight from Chicago,” Ariel responded. “I’ve lived several places in the North. I recently moved here from Boston because, while it does have its faults, I can’t help but love the South.”

It was about the most right thing she could have said.

“It has its faults, does it?” Nan questioned with a burgeoning smile, and, raising her cup to her lips in a dainty, overly-conscious way that assured everyone she had the breeding for polite society, Ariel looked across it at Nan.

“Well, no place is perfect,” she answered, and I saw the tiny trace of a grin flit across her face before she took a sip.

Nan continued with her questions after that, asking where Ariel went to school and about the places she’d worked as a nurse, giving Ariel time to get through her tea and enjoy the cookie I finally got to her.

Watching from his chair, Daddy listened to their exchange, but kept uncharacteristically silent, as if he knew he wasn’t invited into the conversation.

“Why’d they ask you to leave?” he finally felt the need to question when Ariel said she’d moved from Boston after she ended her contract with a veterans’ hospital there.

“They didn’t,” she responded. “I chose to leave.”

“That’s a good job. Work’s going to be plentiful for some time to come.” He sounded like he was accusing her of something as he glanced to the headline about the war on the front page of the paper. “Why would you choose to leave?”

“Because I have spent the past two years watching men too young to die dying of completely unnatural causes,” Ariel stared straight into Daddy’s eyes. “And I need to see something else.”

Leaning forward to slide her saucer onto the coffee table when Daddy looked away first, there was a crack in Ariel’s composure, and she took a deep breath, as if she might be the one to decide the job wasn’t right for her after all.

“So,” Nan seemed to worry about the possibility too, and I could tell Ariel had won the uphill battle for her respect. “I think I want to hire you. Would you like to stay for dinner?”

Glancing up with surprise, either at the offer of employment or at the invitation, Ariel didn’t seem to know how to respond. Then, eyes flicking briefly my way, she smiled.

Chapter Two

S
cott had a crush. It was obvious from the first day, when he rushed in from playing football in the park with all the friends he’d already made in the country and cleaned up too much for dinner, putting on a tie he never wore and a jacket he only ever wore to church or school dances.

In the winter holiday, though, when he was around all the time, it became such a constant thing, I got tired of seeing it.

Until then, I’d had Ariel to myself.

No matter how frequently or vehemently Mama proclaimed her unnecessary, I was glad when Ariel started coming around each day. Back in school, I’d had all sorts of friends, like Scott, but, after we moved to the country, they had fallen away one by one until life became nothing but things to do and things to worry about.

Ariel was smarter, though, and funnier, and worldlier with her travels and moves to cities where she didn’t know anyone all on her own. She made me laugh harder than I had ever laughed. She made me smile just to see her. I liked her more than any person I had ever met.

Even stuck in that big house day after day, around Ariel, I felt alive like I had never felt alive. I felt smarter and funnier and prettier than any good marks or high school boys’ attention had ever made me feel, because, sometimes when she looked at me, it seemed as if Ariel saw things in me I knew weren’t really there.

I liked being around her so much, I went out of my way to see her, to talk to her, to hear the interesting things she said. So, even if Mama didn’t think she was necessary, it didn’t take long at all before Ariel was necessary to me.

I
n the time we spent together those first weeks, I started to think Ariel and I were real friends, that we would have liked each other, and chosen each other, even if we hadn’t been pushed into the same place together. After Scott came home for break, though, I wasn’t as sure anymore, because, while Ariel did all those friend things with me, talked to me and teased me and winked like we had jokes only the two of us understood, she never touched me at all. She touched Nan free as day, but she didn’t touch the way my friends in school had touched. She never took my arm while we were walking or sat against my side the way my old girlfriends would to whisper stories or giggle about cute boys. She didn’t hug me or kiss my cheek.

I thought it was just the way she was, that she didn’t touch people unless she had good reason to touch them, and I wanted her to touch me more because of it. I wanted to give her a reason. It felt odd to me that she could be so friendly, but keep such distance at the same time.

Then, when Scott was home every minute of every day, I discovered I was wrong. Whenever he would come into Nan’s room with us, or would go find Ariel and ask her for a walk, or when they’d share a snack in the kitchen, I would often see Ariel slap Scott on the knee as she looked up at me with slightly surprised eyes, and I would know Scott had told her a joke that pushed the boundaries of good taste. Or he would say something that made her laugh, and Ariel would push him on the arm, and Scott’s face would turn a little red as he smiled that smile that made all the girls at his high school lose their heart to him in an instant.