The Jazz Palace (27 page)

Pearl needed dark water, the lake grass between her legs, tiny perch that darted before her eyes. The water calmed some part of her that could not otherwise be calmed. Trudging across the sand, she dropped her towel and bag on the shore. Except for one man walking a dog, the beach was empty. She went into the lake slowly, letting the frigid waters seep around her ankles, her toes, up her thighs, her belly, her breasts. She dove as if she were looking for something. Perhaps she'd been a fish in another life.

As she swam in the water that was numbingly cold, she thought about Benny. She heard his laughter. She saw his big hands and long arms, the way he dropped his head when he played. He made her want to dance. She did not want to let go of him even for Opal, but she could not bear the silence anymore. She could not love her sister and have this wall between them.

Pearl swam in long strokes back and forth along the shore. Though her hands and feet were numb, she pulled harder as if she were trying to swim away. When she had exhausted herself, she floated on her back. The sun beat down on her, warming her face.
Opal can have him
, Pearl said to herself. Her decision was made. It was what the swimming had taught her. She belonged to the great sea, a universe much larger than herself. She'd let him go. He wasn't hers anyway to give. Pearl would find the way. Perhaps it was jealousy
that had driven her. Perhaps Opal was right. She dove, twisting her body, swimming in slow, sinuous movements. She swam until a policeman blew his whistle and told her it was time to go home.

When Pearl returned, refreshed, her skin glistening, her mind clear, she found her sister wrapped in a blanket near the stove. She wanted to tell her. “Opal, I have something to say…,” but that was as far as she got. The cold of the last few days was followed by a breath of spring, but Opal, her delicate bones chattering, was trying to stay warm. “What is it?” Pearl asked her, the color draining from her face. “What's the matter with you?”

“It's nothing,” Opal said with a wave of her hand, “I'm just not feeling that well.” Pearl brought her hand to Opal's forehead. Her skin was clammy and she was trembling. “I ache,” she said. Pearl made a bath of hot water and salts, and as Opal soaked, Pearl rubbed her sister's neck and arms, and she did a trick that her mother had once done for her. She tugged on the lobes of Opal's ears. Opal cooed like a mourning dove, and, for the first time in many months, nestled into her sister's arms.

But that night Opal was still sick and the pain was spreading down her back, her legs. She ached when touched. She begged Pearl to let her sleep alone. Pearl agreed. Perhaps, she reasoned, Opal might rest better by herself. Pearl got clean sheets and a pillowcase and made a path into the spare room, removing the hatboxes and suitcases that stood in her way. It was the room of the boys who'd drowned. Almost no one ever went into that room except to store winter clothes in summer and summer clothes in winter. Now Pearl dusted and made up the bed. Then for the first time in their lives, she tucked her sister into a room by herself. She sat at the edge of the mattress, stroking Opal's moist brow until she fell asleep.

In bed with Ruby, Pearl struggled to stay awake. She wanted to listen if Opal needed her in the night. But she was so tired from her swim and from her concerns that she drifted off. In the middle of the night Pearl woke to the sound of moaning and Opal calling her name as she had in her bad dreams as a child. Rushing into the spare room, she found her sister, pale as a ghost, curled into a ball, groaning
in pain. Opal gazed up at her with her milky eyes and mumbled an apology that Pearl could scarcely hear. Around Opal a pool of blood blossomed as it spread. In her arms she cradled the perfectly formed fetus of a boy in its caul, the way she had been born, but this child was stillborn and black as a lump of coal.

Pearl stifled a scream and ran to wake Jonah. While he raced for the doctor to staunch the bleeding, Pearl raised Opal's legs and stuffed pillows beneath them. Squeezing her hand, Pearl placed a cool cloth on Opal's brow. Gently she lifted the infant from her sister's arms. His body was slippery and still warm. Pearl was surprised by the peaceful look on his face, as if he would wake up into the world at any moment and wail. She'd never held anything so small. His fingers and toes were perfectly formed. His hands and feet were miniatures. A tiny penis dangled like a little ornament between his legs. He seemed too perfect to be dead. She touched each dark finger and each dark toe. Then she swaddled the child in a clean white towel.

Pearl clasped her sister's hand. She remembered when she had first taken Opal in her arms—a perfect porcelain doll. How she had cared for her sister all of her life. Opal lay as pale as her gown against the sheets, sucking her thumb. Already she looked like an angel. Before Dr. Rosen could be aroused from his bed and brought to the house, Pearl felt her breath slip away. She died in the morning along with the child who, no matter what, probably wouldn't have lived. The name of the baby's father never left Opal's lips.

When Dr. Rosen arrived, shaking his head, for he had helped bring Opal into this world, Pearl pleaded with him. No child was mentioned on the certificate of death. Pearl called her siblings together and told them, “She died of influenza.” And despite their sadness they agreed.

In the room where their drowned brothers once slept, Pearl and Ruby stretched out Opal on the bed. They cleared away all the boxes and swept around the bed. They lifted her body as they removed the bloody sheet and put on clean ones. Upon it Opal lay in a white linen gown, awaiting the women of the burial society that would bathe
and prepare her for her burial the next day. The family tore their sleeves and covered the mirrors for the youngest girl, born in a rim of blue moonlight inside her caul.

As they prepared to sit shivah, each went about their task in silence. Jonah tied a black ribbon across the door and closed the Jazz Palace. While Moss wiped down the mahogany bar and polished the mirror, Pearl swept. She swept under all the tables and stools. Tears streamed down her cheeks as she dug her broom into places that hadn't been reached in years. She cleaned every crevice and knocked cobwebs off the chandeliers. She swept the pile of dirt into the candy shop and out the door. Then she began wiping down and dusting off the candy jars and bins.

Inside one of the bins she came upon a satchel, tucked far into the back. In the bag Pearl found the yellow silk dress and shoes that Opal had worn when she danced with Al Capone. In an envelope was the money Opal had taken from the till that she'd been saving for her escape. It was hundreds of dollars in single bills and coins. Without a word Pearl returned it to the cash drawer. When the burial society women arrived, she handed them the gold dress and matching shoes. “She'll wear this,” Pearl said.

Just before the burial Pearl asked to be alone with her. Opal lay washed and dressed in her coffin in her yellow dress, as beautiful as she'd ever been except for her cropped-off hair. Pearl sat with a bundle in her lap for a few moments, holding Opal's cold and stiffening hand. Then Pearl opened her bundle. She lay the corpse of the baby between his mother's legs. This was the custom when mother and child both died at birth. Once a coffin like this was exhumed, and it was rumored that the baby had made its way to its mother's breast.

The regulars who came to hear the music and have a drink now arrived with their arms weighed down with baskets of fruit and flowers, casseroles of noodles and sliced beef. Some came inside to offer their condolences and drop off their offerings, but many just left them at the door of the candy shop. They scribbled notes and slipped them through the speakeasy slot. Soon the petals of roses littered the front of the saloon, and rodents nibbled at the fruit. The notes were dropped into a basket and never read.

As the tedium of mourning took over her life once more, Pearl sat despondent at the bar, staring at the mural of the family Ruby had painted so long ago. It was coated in grime and had lost its sheen. When Pearl tried to clean it, paint came off in chips. She stared at the corner where the gem sisters were shown on their bed. Ruby had painted herself with her blaze of red hair turned away and Opal with her big eyes gazing up toward the sky. Only Pearl was staring, her face dark and expressionless, straight ahead.

After shivah they tried to reopen the saloon, but none of the children had the heart for it. Glasses gathered dust and deliveries of bootlegged liquor piled up inside the candy shop door. Mice darted between the bar stools. Just when it seemed as if the Jazz Palace would not open its doors again, and even the regulars had begun to search for other bars, Napoleon appeared. He'd been gone for days, and Pearl never asked why, but when he came by now, he saw the black ribbon above the door. Pearl looked up as he walked in, his hat in his hand. He glanced around the saloon and, within moments, he knew. The laughter and spun gold were gone. Then he saw Pearl's crestfallen face.

Pearl couldn't bring herself to look at him. For days she'd been thinking the obvious. The fetus that killed her sister was Napoleon's child. But now that he stood in his gray flannel suit in front of her, she wasn't sure. The child she'd placed between her sister's legs was dark as ink and Napoleon favored the high yellow of the mother he barely knew. Still Pearl could not bring herself to greet him. As he bent down to embrace her, and Pearl pulled away, he assumed it was because of her sorrow and not her rage. “It was the flu,” Pearl told him. “She was never strong.”

That night Napoleon went looking for Benny. He searched for him in the clubs because he didn't know where Benny lived. But he knew where he'd eventually find him. He looked for him the next night and the night after that and finally found him playing at the White Peacock. Napoleon waited out the set, and when he was finished, he went up to Benny. “Come outside while I grab a smoke.”

Benny followed him into the street. Napoleon lit his cigarette. Then he told him. “She died, Benny,” he said. “The angel left us.”

“Who?” The color went out of his face, and Benny shook all over.

“Opal.” Shaking his head, Napoleon flicked the ash. “She's gone.”

Benny looked as if he was going to keel over. “It's not possible…”

“You should go and see them.” As Napoleon wiped his own tears away, thinking of the girl whose skirts he'd raised in an alleyway, Benny staggered back inside to finish his set. Afterward he cruised from bar to bar, getting himself drunk. He stayed holed up in his rented room, coming out only to prowl the clubs. He didn't stop by the Jazz Palace, certain that Pearl and her siblings would never speak to him again. He stayed away until Napoleon found him again at the White Peacock. Benny was so drunk he'd stumbled past, and Napoleon had to grab him by the lapel. “You need to go home and clean up and pay your respects.”

“It's my fault,” Benny told him.

Napoleon wanted to share his own fears. This was his fault, too. “I have something to tell you, Benny,” Napoleon said, gripping his collar hard. He almost told him. He almost said what he didn't dare say. But in the end he couldn't. The secret would die with her. “And it may come as a surprise, but not everything is your fault. If you looked at her, you could see how frail she was. That girl was sickly. She'd always been…”

“She waited for me in the rain.”

“I could wait outside all day in a blizzard and not catch a sniffle. It's sad, Moon, but it's not your fault, and you need to go and see that family and pay your respects.”

“I should've married her.”

“What you should have done was leave her alone, but you didn't kill her.” Even as he said it, Napoleon knew he was speaking for himself as well. He should have stayed away, too, but he didn't blame himself for her death. Anything or anyone could have brought her down.

“People die around me.”