Club Storyville (8 page)

O
n one of his final calls to the house, just before it was time for Scott to board the train to take him to the big boat that would carry him across the Atlantic Ocean, Jackson went mad. At least, he sounded mad to me.

“Will you wait for me?” he asked, but I didn’t know what he expected me to wait for exactly, him to come home from the war to decide if he wanted to make me his wife, or something to heal inside of me so I could want him as my husband.

Insane as it was for him to ask, no one would think Jackson’s question crazy, or even unfair. They would think me crazy, that I should have my feelings for Ariel shocked or frozen away, that I was a horrible blight on my family. There wasn’t a thing wrong with Jackson asking me to put my life on hold for him until he got back from the war, though. No one would ever say, ‘You two barely know each other. You’re a lunatic for wanting someone you don’t even know to wait for you.’

They would think Jackson romantic. They would think it made logical sense. They would think I was the fool, perhaps even a tease, for letting him spend his money talking to me on the phone and then refusing to let him carry my heart thousands of miles away with no idea how long it would be before he brought it back.

“Please, Lizzie,” Jackson said. “I need a reason to make it home. I need to know I have someone waiting for me.”

Closing my eyes at the soft plea, I wished it could sound like Ariel’s voice in my ear.

“I’ll think about it,” I told him, feeling guilty toward Jackson for not immediately saying I would wait, and guilty toward Ariel for not immediately saying I wouldn’t.

H
is last night home, Scott found a few bottles of beer in a crate in Nan’s basement, and brought them to the surface to meet their final act.

“Bet they’ve been down there since Prohibition,” he grinned as he wiped the thick casing of dust from the first bottle, glancing toward the door to make sure Mama wasn’t going to catch us.

“Nan,” I shook my head, but it was with pride that I took the open bottle out of Scott’s hand. The thing I admired most about Nan, but knew I would never be able to emulate, was how she never let the world tell her what to do. Only God could do that, she thought, and only to the extent she deemed His interference reasonable in her mortal life.

Popping the cap on his own bottle beside me, Scott looked hesitant, but I knew he was going to drink it anyway, that he would drink just about anything to get through the night, and the next few days in which he would leave his home country for the first time to face certain peril.

“You first,” he flicked his eyes to the bottle in my hand, and, figuring it was the least I could do for the war effort, I put the bottle to my lips and tipped the barely-cool liquid into my mouth.

“Oh God, that’s awful,” I warned him, but Scott only laughed as he took his first drink, accepting the fact that, with what he was about to face, bad beer was better than no beer at all.

Thinking of Jackson, and his proposition, and twice as much about Ariel, because thoughts of her seemed to live in both the well-lit areas and the darkest shadows of my mind, I agreed with Scott’s assessment of the situation and took another drink, not sure which of us needed intoxicating more.

Halfway through a second bottle that tasted every bit as bad as the first, but that, with the alcohol already coursing through my system, was considerably easier to drink, the nostalgia kicked in as I stared out at the yard stretching away from Nan’s house.

Remembering the days spent there with Scott and Edward, when we often forgot there even was a Depression, and felt nothing aside from freedom and possibility, I wished someone would get around to inventing a time machine, like the one H.G. Wells imagined in his book. If we went back, I wondered what we could change, if Scott could be preparing to go back for another week of school instead of overseas, if Edward could be balanced on the railing beside us, distributing the beers unevenly, because he was technically the oldest and thought he could handle more alcohol.

“I wish things were the way they used to be,” I uttered, smiling at the past, even as my eyes welled at the knowledge the past was all it would ever be. “Back when we could tell each other anything.”

“You can still tell me anything,” Scott said, but, even with the beer more potent after the years spent in Nan’s cellar, I wasn’t nearly drunk enough to believe him. I knew Scott believed it, but I also knew people had a way of saying ‘anything’ when they didn’t really mean anything, and they would only know they didn’t really mean it once they were staring from the other side of a secret with eyes that would never see the secret-sharer the same way again.

Realizing, in that instant, the things I had been feeling could never be confessed, not even to Scott, opening my mouth, I couldn’t even come up with an adequate lie. I couldn’t tell Scott I was upset about him leaving, or about Nan’s poor health. A sob suddenly escaping, I began crying instead, harder than I had cried since I was a little girl, with the same desperate feeling the world would end if I didn’t get my way.

“What’s wrong?” Scott pleaded with me to tell him, but, as his arm slid around my shoulders, I could only cling to the front of his shirt and cry. Cry until my head ached and my eyes were puffy, cry until I felt all dried out inside, cry until the fabric against Scott’s chest was soaked through, but neither of us found any absolution.

N
an had so many opinions, it would take years to file them alphabetically, but she never had more of an opinion about anything than she did about Adolf Hitler.

Although she told Scott she was proud of him when he went into her room to say goodbye once we had his bags packed in Daddy’s car, Nan’s pride lasted only as long as it took for Daddy and I to return from the train station, where Scott tried one last time to get me to tell him what was wrong with me. When my explanation sounded more like an excuse for my crying than the real reason, because that was what it was, only an excuse, Scott left worried, and I felt as bad about giving him more cause for concern as I felt about him going off to war.

“You know, just because I’m on my way out of this world doesn’t mean I don’t get to have an opinion on it,” Nan was saying as I wandered into her bedroom, the place that felt most like a sanctuary. Though, it felt less like a sanctuary than once it had.

After seeing Scott away again, Nan’s declaration was the last thing I wanted to hear, that she too would soon be leaving for a foreign place.

“Nan, don’t say things like that,” I quietly pleaded, but it was Ariel who glanced to me first, Nan’s gaze following more slowly, as if she didn’t hear me or realize I was there until Ariel looked my way.

Seeing the fires that burned behind Nan’s eyes, I could tell what she’d been talking about, because I had heard her go on so many times before.

“Killing to stop killing doesn’t make good sense,” she would say. Though, having read the news in the papers, even Nan could think of nothing else to do about Hitler trying to take over the entire world. That was why Nan hated him so much, I thought, because he made her question her belief that there was always a better solution than sending more people to die.

“Don’t think about the war,” Ariel would try to lead her away from stress. “Think about something nice.”

“Like what?” Nan would huff in response.

“Like puppies,” Ariel said one day. “Think about puppies.”

“Puppies?” Nan returned. “Puppies! Why, they should send her in to do peace talks, don’t you think, Elizabeth? Ariel will tell them to think about puppies, and everyone will smile and laugh and have a bourbon.”

Glancing my way, Ariel had winked at me then, and, even in the midst of everything, for a moment, the world was a place worth being in.

That was before the garden, though, before I kissed Ariel, and Jackson came into our lives, and I stopped remembering how to find waters of happiness in an arid landscape.

“How was Scott?” Nan’s room felt far heavier, impending death and disharmony bogging it down.

“He was brave,” I answered, because that was what Scott was being. Every moment. When he smiled, it wasn’t because he was happy to put on a uniform and rush into battle. When he promised Daddy he would take good care of himself with a steady nod, it wasn’t because he was dedicated to what he was going to do. Every gesture was courage, because the state of the world had limited his options, and all Scott could do was stand tall in the face of them.

“And how are you?” Nan asked.

Though I did try, I couldn’t withhold the urge to either cry or to laugh, so I did both at once, tears filling my eyes as a demented chuckle broke over my lips.

‘How was I?’ Nan asked me. Barely keeping it together, that was how I was. Halfway to the institution.

“Come, sit,” Nan ordered, and, with a last oddly humored exhalation, I did as she told me, sinking into the chair next to her bed where I always sat to visit, to try not to stare at Ariel, to watch Nan get closer to death each day.

“I’ll leave you alone,” Ariel said, and I wasn’t sure that was what I wanted.

“Now, tell me what you’re feeling,” Nan prodded, as she had when I was a little girl, and it was a cruel reminder of everything I was going to lose.

Nan was the only person who ever asked me that, not what I was doing or what I was thinking or what I wanted to be, but how I felt. She asked it in much the same way I imagined a gypsy asked, ‘What would you like to know?’, as if trying to see into the very depths of one’s soul to get a reading on its condition.

“I don’t want to worry you,” I shook my head.

“I have no worries of my own left,” Nan responded, and when I looked up, her eyes sparkled, like hope and stars, still bright even though they were dying. “I know where I’m going next. Now, you tell me how you feel.”

“I’m scared,” I admitted.

“I imagine you are,” Nan returned softly, and I knew she understood.

Uncle Rodney was gone, Edward was gone, Scott was gone, Nan was going, and Ariel would go. I felt like everyone was leaving, disappearing one by one, and that they would just keep disappearing until I was the only one left. The only way to stop myself from being alone, it felt like, was to grab onto the people who wanted me.

“Jackson asked me to wait for him,” I uttered.

“Did he?” Nan returned, and I didn’t know what else I was expecting. For her to be excited, maybe, to smile broadly and proclaim Jackson a good old southern boy with nice, thick hair, perfect teeth, broad shoulders, and the charm to back it all up.

“Yes,” I whispered, and I could fake no enthusiasm.

“And how did that make you feel?” Nan deferred her opinion until she could get more from me, but I hadn’t really allowed myself to think about that. I didn’t want to think about it. I didn’t want to acknowledge that Jackson’s request made me feel uncomfortable and trapped and more out of sorts than I already felt.

“Surprised,” I gave her the only honest answer I could. “I barely know him.”

“Well, he obviously feels he knows you well enough to ask you to wait,” Nan reasoned, and I nodded my acknowledgment of the fact.

With nothing else to say, and no answers of my own, when Nan grew quiet, we were left in silence. Even if she tried, Nan could no longer guess what was wrong with me. She could no longer coax the truth from me with the promise of a day alone with her or homemade chocolates. Because Nan could never bring herself to imagine what I was going through, I knew, and I could never bring myself to tell her the entire truth.

“Could you love him?” she asked me at last, and that was the essential question.

Not long before, I would have said ‘yes’ automatically and meant it. I wouldn’t have loved Jackson yet, but I would have believed I could, that, in time, I would feel for him what, if I were honest with myself I would admit, took me only moments to feel for Ariel. Knowing there was no other answer I could safely give, I started to say ‘yes’ anyway, because even saying I wasn’t sure would raise questions I didn’t know how to answer.

When Nan deemed my prolonged silence a fitting time to have one of her strokes, though, I called out for Ariel, who was there before the brief episode came to its end, and I couldn’t even say it was possible I could love Jackson when my heart tugged so undeniably in Ariel’s direction.

Worried I had upset Nan, that I had been the cause of her stroke, I thought about leaving, sparing her more of my troubles, but, feeling her time grow shorter each time she went away and came back like that, I forced myself to stay by Nan’s side.

“It seems Jackson has been captured under the spell of our Elizabeth,” Nan said a few minutes later, her words slurred, but amazingly lucid.

They came as a terrible surprise for me, though, because Nan never invited anyone into our talks. I always knew whatever I said was safe with her, and she had never once betrayed my trust.

“He wants her to wait for him,” she went on, “and Elizabeth doesn’t know what to say. What do you think she should say?”

Ariel’s jaw clenching and unclenching quickly, it could have been frustration at the blood pressure cuff she had just taken from Nan’s arm, which was putting up a fight as she tried to fold it back into its place. “I think she should say whatever she feels,” she answered.

“She doesn’t know what she feels,” Nan replied, and I realized not saying anything had said everything I hadn’t meant to say.

Finally tucking the blood pressure cuff into its place on the shelf, Ariel seemed to recognize Nan wasn’t going to release her from the conversation until she actually participated in it, and, as she at last turned her eyes to me, her gaze both hard and soft, I didn’t know which to believe.

“I’m sorry you’re confused,” she said, and it was an utterly pointless apology. Because, looking at Ariel, I wasn’t confused at all. I knew exactly what I felt, and it was the wrong thing to feel.

Chapter Eight

O
ne can hope for things to get better, pour all her dwindling desire into it, pray as hard as she can as long as she can. It still doesn’t mean things won’t get worse.