The Angry Woman Suite (26 page)

Precisely the point she’d intended making when she’d arranged our little walk.

I looked away. I
had
known about Frederick. I
could’ve
saved her.

Nasty business, consciences.

“But I got my son,” Magdalene said, apparently choosing not to rub my nose in what she considered incomprehensible apathy. “I got Earl. So maybe there’s a good God after all … and maybe, just maybe
, I
can turn everything around, Aidan.”

Two months later, about the time we got word Lear was out of prison and even writing press releases from the front, and that it had been decided American forces would fight independent of French advice, Magdalene and Earl moved into the mill house. It made no sense, Sahar said, for Magdalene and the baby to be traipsing back and forth to the mill house every day when she’d more room than she knew what to do with.

“Though I hate to see a family split apart,” she said over coffee at the mill house, just the two of us at the table; Matthew, engrossed when he had a project, was already in the studio with Magdalene.

“Second thoughts?” I said, forgetting all those summers Sahar had chosen to
not
accompany her
family from Maine to Chadds Ford.

“No, no. I just hate the splitting up, that’s all.”

“My darling Sahar, now who’s being dramatic? You’re not making Magdalene
do
anything.” I rose, gathering my things for the day. “Yes, you invited her, but it was
her
decision to take you up on it. Besides, it’s only until Lear gets home and I’m sure he’s on his way. Or will be once he gets this war correspondent bug out of his system.”

“I worry, though,” Sahar persisted. “Lothian up there at Grayson House with just Elizabeth and that poor unfortunate Stella.”

I loved Sahar back in those days, but as I said before, she lacked Magdalene’s complexity: she was
too
good.

“Cheer up,” I said off-handedly. “Lothian’s here at the mill house more than she’s at Grayson House anyway. She and Jamie have a thing for each other, don’t you know.” I filched Matthew’s words for the other, the monster. “And there’s nothing that can be done for Stella. She’s a freak of nature and nothing can be done for freaks of nature, Sahar. Nothing at all, and no use even trying.”

I missed Festival that summer, missed it badly, even more than the year before, but in light of the number of American casualties being reported, missing Festival should’ve been irrelevant. I enlisted Jamie and Lothian for a thorough cleaning and inventory of the museum, and in-between overseeing them and keeping up with my lecture commitments, I shared coffees with Sahar and Magdalene most mornings, and gins with Matthew most evenings.

“We’ve got ourselves a real routine,” I said to Matthew one afternoon. We sat in lawn chairs under the oak, sipping gins.

He flicked an imaginary ash from his cigar. “Jamie walked up to Grayson House with Magdalene to see Stella. He said the Graysons had a letter from Lear. Apparently, he’s still writing pieces for
The Gazette.”
Matthew flicked another ash. “Interesting thing, really … I mean, a man with all his pull, in Europe, in prison, and now writing of all things. Doesn’t make sense, does it? A lot doesn’t make sense here.”

“Things will get sorted out when he’s back.”

“Perhaps. Of course Lear’s no idea about Frederick or what happened to the business, I shouldn’t think, or that Magdalene and Earl are living at the mill house. Elizabeth, apparently, won’t tell him about the business until he’s home. Magdalene’s threatened to stop her mother’s stipend if she does.” He paused. “Magdalene’s got a lot of spirit,
and
she knows the power of money.”

“If I recall, spirit was what you were after. How
are
the paintings coming along?”

“We’re on the sixth.”

I asked, and not for the first time, if I might have a preview, and once again Matthew told me the suite was to stay under wraps until Lear was home. At Magdalene’s request.

“What’re you two hiding?” I half-kidded.

“You know better.”

“Tell me this then: are you still painting Magdalene angry?”

Matthew leaned forward, as if I’d finally asked the right question. “A word of caution, Aidan. There’s more to Magdalene than meets the eye. She has layers. Frederick was only one.”

I sat back farther in my chair.

“By that I mean what’s formed Magdalene is more subtle than the hundred and one usual things that go into making character. In Magdalene’s case, it’s injustice. Magdalene may flaunt Frederick, but Frederick was never her center.
Injustice
is. And you are nowhere near ready for the game of injustice, my friend.”

I was more than casually offended. “Magdalene doesn’t flaunt Frederick. She hardly even mentions him! Besides, Frederick’s dead!”

“And just in the nick of time, wouldn’t you say? Now Magdalene can use him any old way she pleases.”

We were back to
that.
Matthew thinking he knew everything there was to know about Magdalene, when it was
I
who knew Magdalene and had known her for years, and better, longer, far more intimately than Matthew ever could.

But suddenly I was insecure, because Matthew spoke with such authority. Maybe I still didn’t understand
anybody.
I wasn’t like Matthew, or even Lear, who excelled at microscopic examinations of people. Lear was a writer at heart, with a passion for description and inventory. But I was an empirical man, which was why history was
my
baby: things already done and written about. Things
coherent.

Later that night, tossing and turning, I thought back on what Matthew had said about injustice and its influence on Magdalene.

I experimented, trying to visualize Magdalene’s center, to think through all those layers she supposedly had. It was easy enough at the start. At the start of anybody is their core family, in this case Elizabeth and Lear Grayson. But that’s as far as I got before finding myself so squeezed into a tunnel of bias and supposition that Magdalene’s center disappeared before my eyes.
Poof,
gone … way before I’d ever given consideration to Lothian’s role in Magdalene’s development, or to mine as the teacher who’d fawned over the younger sister and dismissed the one with the pale, knowing eyes—or to the notion that Frederick, a loser in life, and an abuser, could now be used as a good excuse for avoiding another relationship.

An empirical man, I consoled myself, drifting off to sleep. That’s what I was, and there was a need for people like me.

On June 5
^th
, 1919, I made this entry in my diary: “Just got the news that Lear’s on his way home. The war’s finally over. I’m sure my life with Magdalene begins now.”

FRANCIS
On the Road
1945

I was an overnight sensation. My rendition of “Dazed,” introduced at Glenn River Casino with Elena on vocal, was received with an unbelievable standing ovation from the live audience, phone requests from hundreds of radio listeners for more of the Francis Grayson Orchestra, and the unpretty picture of Elena’s agent, Pete Burdick, salivating all over himself.

Short, dark and nervous, Pete gave me the willies. His saving grace was that he seemed to know what he was doing. The booking agency he represented—MCA—maintained a roster of key ballrooms that had become virtually exclusive to MCA, and with my phenomenal success at Glenn River, Pete was breathing down my neck and patronizing as hell, talking to me as if I were an idiot, telling me how to dress, smile, talk, eat, even think. He had, in just two unbelievably short days, begun to grate on my last nerve.

“Someone’s showing a
big
interest in you,” he announced our third night out at Glenn River, wringing his hands. “Someone
very
important. He wants a meeting. You’re gonna have to pull out all the stops. Act like you understand what he’s talking about. Do what you do best—after blowing that horn, that is. Look pretty—but let me close the deal. Think you can do that, Frankie?”

The dipshit.

But the someone Pete referred to
was
important. He was Earl Hunnicutt,
the
bigwig at Tandem Records, one of the emerging companies that had cut into the majors’ actions during the musicians’ strike.

He was exactly what Elena had predicted.

Elena accompanied me and Pete to the dinner meeting with Earl Hunnicutt.

“I’d be taking a rider on y’all,” Hunnicutt drawled, a middle-aged, cigar-chomping Southerner in a too-shiny suit.

Most of the new record companies
were
focused on hillbilly music, so it was true what Hunnicutt said. The Francis Grayson Orchestra
would
be a huge change for Tandem.

“These kids can call their own shots,” Pete pitched. “First time outta the chute and the public can’t get enough of ’em. I’ve got ’em booked from here to Timbuktu and they’re not coming up for air till Thanksgiving at least.”

“And if they don’t have a recording contract, they’ll be swallowing shit,” Hunnicutt returned. “But the majors aren’t signing new talent these days, you know that.”

“Yeah, but these kids are different,” Pete shot back, twisting in his seat. “Lots of people are showing interest in them. Ever see a reception like the one these kids got at Glenn River? Course not, nobody has. Anybody with half a brain’s gotta be seeing dollar signs here with these kids.” Pete leaned over the table, fidgeting with his drink, smacking his lips. I switched my focus back to Hunnicutt. He seemed entranced by the tip of his cigar.

“Good to know you’ve got yourself half a brain, Pete. But I agree with you: the boy’s arrangements are smart. They’re raw, even tricky. ‘Dazed’ in particular.” He glanced over at Elena. “And the girl’s a beaut, plus she already has a decent name for herself. Drummer’s a beaut, too—got major heartthrob written all over him. Like our Francis baby here. Hell, half this group’s got heartthrob stamped on ’em. They all beauty contest winners?” He stubbed his cigar out.

“Okay, Pete, here’s how I see it. We play up the sex appeal angle. Francis baby here, Elena, a coupla others. We’re gonna need posters, glossies, interviews.” He looked at me. “And, Francis baby, we’re leading off with ‘Dazed.’”

August was momentous. “Little Boy” was dropped in Hiroshima, and “Fat Man” in Nagasaki, and the A side of the Grayson Orchestra’s first single was “Dazed.”

The B side was “Moonlight Serenade,” our tribute to Glenn Miller, the music giant whose plane had gone down en route to Paris.

“It’s our song now,” Elena said. “Remember that, Francis.”

I flew to Atlanta, where Earl Hunnicutt showed me around his new offices. He pointed to a map on the wall covered with black dots, where our record was selling like crazy.

“Tour time,” he said, chomping on his cigar. “A concert package and some coast-to-coast programming.”

I nodded gravely, as if we were talking an armistice. “Pete’s got that—”

“Pete, schmeet,” Hunnicutt snapped. “You sure you’re doing the right thing, Francis baby, letting that Petey fella have such a big slice of you?”

Pete Burdick had left MCA. In effect, he was now
the
booking agent and manager for the Francis Grayson Orchestra. After much urging on Elena’s part, Buster, being of legal age, had signed the contract Pete had shoved in our faces, part of which specified we were responsible for payment to other acts when we topped the bill at variety theaters. Not unheard of, Elena assured me. Especially for bands drawing big audiences, like us.

“Pete schedules our club dates,” I said. “You’ve got to talk with him. Pete got Elena her break with Lee Andrews, so we stick with Pete. I owe Elena that—
she
got me the Glenn River gig.”

Hunnicutt’s words, though, were to ring in my ears for years to come.

“It’ll kill you, boy, thinking you gotta keep everybody happy. That kind of thinking smells to high heaven, and
then
it kills you, take my word for it.”

Columbus, Chicago, St. Louis, Wichita, Denver, then into California, to San Diego, Los Angeles and San Francisco. If it had a club or auditorium, we played it. By February, 1945, when the still-fighting Russians were positioning for a new advance on Austria, we’d arrived in Sacramento stupid with fatigue. But “Dazed” was at the top of
Billboard;
co-eds across the country were swooning over me and my musicians, and every red-blooded American male was in love with Elena. On top of that, the critics were singing our praises.

“Rarely, if ever, have I witnessed such synergy, emotion, style and talent …” one Chicago critic wrote. “Fueled by Francis Grayson, master of the horn, inheritor of Bunny Berrigan’s mantle … other members tremendously gifted … dazzling good looks … the comely Miss Fitzgerald is destined to become the next Helen Ward … repertoire includes toe-tapping, hand-clapping swing, and tough, tender ballads …”

Mission accomplished. We were bona fide stars, and with our gig at Sacramento’s Memorial Auditorium still two nights off, we’d earned ourselves some down time. I hollered when Pete came by my hotel room to urge adding a smaller play date to the itinerary, in Stockton.

“We need the dough,” he said in that condescending tone that made my skin crawl.

“We’re raking it in!”

“Sure—but payroll’s eating us up. Plus we had to hand a fortune over to those other acts in Chicago and Denver. Then there’s the bus, the gas and insurance and—” I practically pushed him out the door, and when I turned around a white-faced Buster was staring at me, the phone in his hand.

“What?” I yelled at him next. “Can’t get room service?” I kicked a hassock, mumbling, “I’m bushed,” already ashamed of myself. I poured a drink.

“I just called home,” Buster said, his tone as stupid as his expression.

“So? Somebody die?”

“Not yet … but my draft notice came.”

Exactly what I
didn’t
need to hear. “Piss!” I aimed for the wall beside Buster, flinching as the glass shattered against it. “Anybody hear the war’s over?”

“I’m leaving tonight.” Buster withered under my look.

“When,
exactly,
do you have to report?”

“Three weeks. But I want to go home first, Francis. I haven’t seen my family in almost two years.”