Club Storyville (9 page)

Scott sent word when he shipped off to England, and then the days started getting longer. Literally and figuratively.

As the sun came earlier and stayed later, the weather grew increasingly stifling. The heat that had come in April grew thicker throughout May and, by the first day of June, the Richmond countryside was nearly unbearable. It was a struggle just to breathe, torture to move, and, as much as I sometimes longed for the city, and the pace of life left behind in it, I was glad to be out away from the concrete and tall buildings, where the air flowed at least.

In her bedroom, Nan continued to weaken. I could see it. Despite her finding the temperatures far more agreeable than the rest of us, they were hard on her, Ariel said, and it showed in the sweat inside Nan’s hairline, in her gasping breaths that sucked for oxygen in the heavy air.

Despite knowing every day might be her last, each morning when I woke, Nan was still there, holding on tightly to this world. Ariel had said weeks, and Nan was determined to squeeze as many good weeks from life as she could. She wasn’t in pain, at least not any more than she had been in before, she was simply wearing down, each part of Nan that made her Nan slowing, like a wind-up music box that played at half-speed just before its song came to an end.

Sometimes, she would forget. Not often, but sometimes. In the morning, I would walk in, and she would be as sharp as ever, but, once in a while, by night, she would ask if Scott was going to come in to see her, then if Edward would.

“They came in earlier, remember?” Ariel would say. And, if Nan refused to believe her, “Scott was talking about football,” or “Edward still insists that hole you found in the backyard when he was a boy was made by a stray dog, and not by him digging for pirate treasure.” And, though it was a lie, Nan would let herself be convinced by the false memory and smile, and, even having been told my entire life lying was wrong, I started to wonder if there were times when it was kinder to be wrong than to be honest.

Ariel’s voice always soothing Nan into a sense of peace, it did the exact opposite to me, stirring up so much inside of me, I felt like a volatile substance around her. When she wasn’t making up stories for Nan, or tending to something Nan needed, Ariel was just there, a constant reminder of my own sickness, haunting my choice to tell Jackson I would wait for him for all the wrong reasons.

It wasn’t that I didn’t want Jackson to be strong, to fight hard, to stay alive, to keep Scott alive, but he was as much excuse for me as I was motivation for him. At last, I had a real reason to show no interest in the young men who had always shown so much interest in me.

In the past, minor excuses had always been good enough. ‘He was a bore,’ I would sigh. ‘He was crass.’ ‘He was unattractive.’ After the garden, though, it felt as if anyone who heard them would see right through such casual reasons. It was far easier to say my heart was promised to Jackson, though it was impossible to say in front of Ariel. So, I told Nan once, when Ariel was busy outside the room, and was grateful Nan never brought it up again.

W
alking into Nan’s room one morning as soon as I was up and dressed, I didn’t know who looked more depleted - Nan at the end of her life, or Ariel, who was spending all her waking hours caring for Nan and much of her sleeping time too.

“Finally, Sleepyhead,” Nan rasped my way, and it put a smile on my face, if only for a second. “How were your dreams?”

“They were good,” I said, but it wasn’t true. The house too hot, Nan too close to death, no word from Scott or Jackson in weeks, and Ariel looking as if she herself would be in need of care once Nan was gone, sleep, let alone good dreams, had become an elusive thing for all of us. “How did you sleep?” I questioned Nan.

“Anxiously,” she sounded like a young woman, and looked instantly alive, more alive than she had in weeks. The spark that radiated out from beneath the sick and dying shined like Nan at her highest form as she looked to the table beside her.

As if she could read Nan’s mind - perhaps, by then, she could - Ariel came over, saying a ‘Good Morning’ to me that sounded mandatory and picking up the wooden box from the table next to Nan to help settle it into Nan’s lap.

“I need a favor from you,” Nan looked to me again, and my eyes trailed from the stunningly-carved dark wood box, accented in faded pink magnolias and the sharply-pointed leaves of a tree, to the request in Nan’s eyes.

“Of course,” I replied. “Anything.”

“I want you to take this box to an old friend of mine.”

With Ariel’s help, Nan tilted the box toward me, and I could see how the flowers and leaves wrapped onto its top, curving and grasping, almost as if they were alive and growing as we spoke.

At the center of the hinged lid was a symbol I had never seen before. Somewhat of a heart, but with an arrow piercing straight down through it, a crown nestled inside, two pairs of curved whiskers, as if it had separate mustaches, it was so many things, I didn’t know what to think it might be.

“What does it mean?” I asked.

“That’s one of the things I want you to find out,” Nan said, and it made the box even more of a mystery. “There’s a letter inside,” she went on. “I want you to be there when he opens it, but I don’t want you to look before then. Will you do that for me?”

“Yes, of course,” I said, eyes dropping toward the mystery box. Never in my life had I seen it, and I wondered how, in all our scavenging of Nan’s house as children, and Scott’s continued scavenging since we’d been living under Nan’s roof, the box had never been found. Glancing to Ariel, I felt a touch of jealousy as I realized Nan must have asked her to take it from its hiding place, choosing to trust her with the secret instead of me. “Where does your friend live?” I decided I would have to worry about that later.

“The last I knew...” Nan grew weaker, as if my agreement eliminated her need for strength, and I wondered if I should have refused to keep her fighting. “New Orleans.”

“New Orleans?” I returned, expecting an answer more down the street than down the country.

“Yes, New Orleans,” Nan uttered so dreamily, I might have thought it a place beyond the clouds if I had never seen a map.

It wasn’t a complete surprise to hear Nan mention what was, for me, the utterly foreign place. I knew she had spent time there when she was younger, as a still unmarried woman in her mid-thirties - a positively scandalous state to be in, Nan loved to brag - but she didn’t talk much about that time.

Maybe it was because, any time Nan mentioned New Orleans, Daddy would start in that it was an island of vice and sin where no decent person would waste time. In those moments, I think Nan and I both wondered what Daddy thought of Nan.

Or, maybe it was because Nan was as bawdy as the rest of them in those days, and indulged in all that vice and sin Daddy talked about while she was still young enough to make the most of it, and she felt as if she couldn’t tell me that, because, deep down, I was more like Mama and Daddy than I wanted to admit.

“I can’t go to New Orleans, Nan,” I said, ignoring the rush of excitement in my gut, where there had been nothing of the sort an instant before, or in the days before, or the weeks, or even months. Even when I was a little girl, when Nan would mention New Orleans just to me, she would say it with a kind of smile that made me feel like it wasn’t anything like Daddy said it was, or that it was exactly like Daddy said it was and that wasn’t nearly as bad as he wanted me to believe. “You know Daddy won’t let me.”

“He’ll let you,” Nan responded.

“How can you say that?” I asked. “You know how he feels -”

“I know him,” Nan wasn’t worried. “Your father has his prejudices and his own brand of ignorance.” The statement jolting me with its unflinching honesty, I glanced to the doorway with the fear Daddy might be standing right outside it. “But he will talk to any man with something to offer and go any place a deal might be struck,” Nan declared. “Your Daddy’s a businessman first. You let me worry about the negotiations.”

Though it sounded insane, looking to Nan, I had no doubt she would get Daddy to agree to what she wanted. Even in her debilitated condition, she would convince him to let me go as deep south as the South got, to a place he didn’t trust. Though, I couldn’t help but wonder if Daddy would keep his word once Nan was gone.

There was also part of me, I hated to admit, which feared Daddy’s permission. I had been outside Richmond only half a dozen times in my life, and never that far.

I knew Nan hated that. ‘All those men didn’t work so hard to lay paths for us just so we can all stand still,’ she always said, and I imagined it was why she wanted me to make this trip for her, to force me to go somewhere I would never go on my own, to force me outside the comfort of Richmond to see the world beyond a bubble.

“If Daddy won’t take me,” I vowed to do as she wanted, to overcome my fear and make the trip for her, “I know Mr. Andrews travels to New Orleans once a year on business. Maybe his wife will go with him next time, so I can travel with them.”

“I need you to go now,” Nan returned instantly, and that wasn’t at all what I had agreed to.

“Nan, no,” I uttered. “I can’t go now.” I couldn’t. I wouldn’t. Trying to think of how I could make her understand why, that I didn’t want to be like Scott, knowing it was the last time I would ever see her, I could come up with nothing that wouldn’t just remind Nan she was dying.

“Now, Elizabeth,” Nan insisted, and, shaking my head, I felt hot tears splash my cheeks. “Please.”

“What if I don’t make it back?” I countered, and, though my voice was sharp with all the thoughts of her dying before I returned, Nan’s eyes gentled at my question.

“Before I meet Jesus, you mean?” she asked.

“Nan,” I breathed. “Why must you be so blunt?”

“Somebody has to be,” she said, and she thought she was funny. I was in pain, she was in pain, and we were both supposed to laugh about it, because we had no other power between us. “Saying it out loud doesn’t change a thing,” Nan imparted wisdom I didn’t want to hear. “I’m at the end of my life, Elizabeth, I know that. But Jesus has waited eighty-one years to make my acquaintance. I suppose he’ll wait a while longer. I’m not going anywhere until you get back.”

“You can’t promise that,” I reminded her.

“I just did,” Nan replied. “I dare Jesus to test my resolve.”

A small laugh letting loose from Ariel at that, the usually melodic tone sounded tinny and empty, but it made Nan smile, even as her hand, suddenly on my arm, was as firm as she ever got with me. “Take the box to New Orleans, Elizabeth,” she insisted. “I won’t die in peace until you do.”

It wasn’t like Nan, to push so hard, to drop such a heavy burden upon me and expect me to bear it. In the past, she was always the one, along with Edward and Scott, who helped carry the weight when Mama was sometimes too overbearing.

“That isn’t fair,” I breathed.

“Life isn’t fair,” Nan returned, and, though it did little justice to how unfair it had been over the past few years, I never thought Nan would simply surrender to it, or become the one asking for more than I had strength to give. For years, I had simply endured, with no ability to find even my own sense of peace. For months, my state had been even less serene. I was a sea of choppy waves and dangerous currents. I had no calm waters of my own. How, I wondered, could I bring peace to anyone else?

“I’ll have to ask, Daddy,” I admitted with shame, figuring the only thing I could provide Nan was my agreement. “I can’t go alone.”

“I don’t want you to,” Nan responded at once. “You’ll be safer with Ariel.”

“Mrs. Mosby,” Ariel took up the mantle of denial before my shock could fully set in. “That is not a good idea.”

“I’ll decide what’s a good idea,” Nan declared.

“Who will care for you?” Ariel looked flustered, despite her perfectly logical argument.

“I did care for myself for a good many years before you got here,” Nan answered.

“You know it’s not the same,” Ariel said.

“Well,” Nan looked undeterred. “My daughter has been convinced for months she can handle everything. I say we give her the chance.”

“Nan,” I uttered, not sure what I was fighting against more - how much Nan wanted Ariel and I to travel to New Orleans together, or how much I wanted it the instant the suggestion left her lips. “You need a nurse. You’re not well.”

“And I’m not sick,” Nan replied. “I’m dying. Can you cure dying, Ariel?” Nan looked to her with the question, and, having had all our logic taken away by the sheer inevitability of death, Ariel appeared as out of arguments as me.

“I can make you comfortable,” she said.

“So can a well-stuffed pillow and a bottle of brandy,” Nan replied. “I don’t need to be comfortable. I need Elizabeth to take this box to my friend in New Orleans, and I need you to go with her. That is what I need. You have traveled on your own before. You won’t be afraid.”

“I won’t be afraid,” I sat up defensively, but both my words and posture were lies.

“I’ve known you your entire life,” Nan saw right through them. “I know you’re afraid. The only question is, will you do this for me even though you’re afraid, or won’t you?”

“Of course, I will,” I said at once, the tears in my eyes adding to the heat in Nan’s room until I felt dizzy from it.

“Ariel?” Nan turned her gaze Ariel’s way again, and, for once, I thought I might actually be the braver of us, that, after what had happened in the garden, Ariel would never agree. Only I would know it wasn’t because she didn’t want to go to New Orleans, but because she didn’t want to go to New Orleans with me.

“Whatever you want,” Ariel said at last, and I swallowed the new wave of arguments that screamed into my throat.

“Good,” Nan sighed, sinking deeper into her pillow, as if she didn’t possess half the strength she was trying to show us.

My eyes returning to the wood box, I stared at its unusual symbol with no clue what it meant, or what was going on inside of it. That made it feel frightening too, as if I was in the presence of a mystical relic I would have to handle carefully or face dire consequences.