by Lisa Rusczyk
CLEO
Barbie was even thinner and more beautiful than the last time I had seen her. She had a ghostly look about her, and it instantly reminded me of our mother when we lived in Nebraska. She gave me a small smile and asked to come inside.
I took her into the room Cecil and I called the library. It was the only room in the house that wasn’t full of children’s toys. We had lined the walls with heavy, dark wood bookcases. I was proud of those books. I had read every one.
Barbie asked if she could see a recent photo of Angelica. I found one in the kitchen and brought it to her. She ran her bony fingers over the photo and said, “Very pretty. She looks like Cecil, I think, but has our eyes.”
“Yes, she does. You can have that.” I asked her what kind of work she did.
“Clerical stuff at an office near here,” she answered, looking up from the photo. “Did mother tell you Aunt Savannah died from cancer?”
I blinked in surprise. “No, nobody told me. Why didn’t anyone tell me?”
Barbie smiled at me like I was feeble-minded and said, “This family has so many secrets, Cleo.”
I asked, “Like what?”
Barbie looked away and said, “There is somewhere I’d like to take you. It’s called the Beacon.”
“What is that?”
She said, “It’s a club of sorts.” Then she was silent.
I thought about my aunt dying and nobody telling me. It was a typical thing for my family. I said, “I want to talk about our mother, not some club.”
Barbie said, “I think for you to understand our mother you should come out with me. To the Beacon.”
“I don’t want to go to a club.” I was angry that Barbie was being so evasive. “I want to know what is wrong with our mother. Is she sick? In the head, I mean? She wrote me a very odd letter, and even her handwriting seemed different. She sounds paranoid. I haven’t heard from her since.”
Barbie nodded, examining at the picture of Angelica, and said, “I suppose it would seem that way to you.”
I sighed, and asked her if she was living with anyone, if there were any more little details about my family that they had forgotten to tell me.
“I live alone now,” she said. Then, “I think you should go with me this weekend. To the Beacon.” I had this feeling she was high. I looked over her very carefully then. Her clothes were old, yet strangely stylish. Her blonde hair was clean, and she had curled the straight ends under with an iron. I really didn’t want to go to a club and watch my sister get wasted. I said as much.
She laughed then, and said, “I don’t drink, Cleo.”
I folded my arms and said, “Yes? Really? Then why do you go hang out at nightclubs?”
She shook her head and said, “It isn’t a nightclub, really. I mean, yes, they serve drinks, but it isn’t that kind of club. You should come see for yourself. Maybe get out of the house. It feels…so lonely in here.”
She stood up and said, “Meet me at my place at seven on Friday.”
I told her I didn’t know if I would.
She said, “Think about it.” Then she was gone.
I looked up the Beacon in the phone book, but could not find a listing. I called information, but then again, nothing. I wondered if the place even existed.
When Cecil and Angelica came home that night, I told Cecil about Barbie’s visit. His eyes lit up like I’d told him she was getting married and he took my hand and said, “You should go with her, Cleo. You never leave the house. It would be good for you. And besides, I know how worried you are about your mother. I can see it in your eyes, although you don’t talk much about it.”
I shook my head, and Angelica looked up at me. She said, “I want to meet Aunt Barbie!”
Cecil squeezed my hand. “Really, it’s not good for you to be cooped up in here with nobody to talk to all day. Have a night out on the town with your sister. Who knows, you may even enjoy yourself.”
On Friday night, Barbie and I were riding a bus into the city. She was quiet, but she also looked excited. I asked her why I couldn’t find a listing for the Beacon.
She said, “It’s a private club.”
I asked, “What does that mean?”
“You’ll see,” she said.
We got off the bus near South Street and Barbie led me to an alley. I thought it looked a bit creepy, but Barbie assured me that it was safe. About halfway through the alley, I saw a door in the dim light. It was made of heavy wood, and carved into it was a picture of a lighthouse. I could barely make it out until Barbie pushed on the thick wooden handle and the light from within animated the door.
The first thing I noticed was piano playing. I couldn’t recognize the tune, and it didn’t seem to have any pattern to it. The door opened to a set of stairs going down into a basement. The walls were black, and little hurricane glasses hung high on the walls, each with its own lit candle within. I smelled cigar and cigarette smoke.
I followed Barbie down the stairs to a small bar. The walls were black there, too, but they were covered with a smattering of many different kinds of art and posters. The bar occupied the wall across from the stairs. I saw that there were about fifteen other people in the little room, some at tables, some sitting and standing around the bar. Little white lights lined the ceiling, all of them facing one way - toward the stage. It was not a large stage, more of an open mic stage. On the far right of the stage was a piano, with an old man playing the keys, making the random music that I had heard when I first entered. How did I feel the first time I went in the Beacon and looked around? I felt interest, something nothing in my daily life had been offering me.
Barbie walked to a small, round table with two chairs near the stage. It was then that I saw the doorway next to the end of the bar. A beautiful beaded curtain hung in the frame, and soft candlelight came from within. I pointed at it and said, “What is in there?”
Barbie looked at the doorway and smiled at it. That was her answer. A few of the people nodded to Barbie, and two of them waved and grinned at her. I looked at the bar again, deciding that maybe I would just have a drink or two to relax. Just then a man rose up behind the bar with a bottle of wine. He had been crouched down behind it when we came in, and I assumed he was getting the wine from some cabinet below. He had bleached-blonde hair with thick black roots. His skin was deeply tanned, as though he spent a lot of time in the sun. Just as I looked him over, he met my stare. His eyes, I could never really describe them. Many words come to mind, but the one that probably fits them best is vitality, like the reflection of sunlight off of a wet fern after an afternoon sprinkle on a pacific island.
He smiled at me, and Barbie waved to him. He put down the wine bottle and walked around the bar and came to our table. He was lean, muscular, had a build that perhaps Patrick might have had were he to have lived past nineteen. I admit this man looked nothing like Patrick, but there was something about him that was similar. That cat-like movement, an expression like he would know what to do in any situation.
He pulled up a chair and turned it backwards, straddling it. “Joanie, good to see you, as always.” He smiled at her. Then he looked at me again. He held out his hand. “You must be Cleo. Joanie said she was hoping you’d come with her tonight.”
“Hello,” I said, taking his hand. It was warm.
He said, “My name’s Nikki.”
Barbie said, “Some people call him Ice, too. He owns the Beacon.”
He seemed very interested in me, and I felt a slight flush creeping up my neck. He also seemed excited about Barbie when he looked at her. Like I said, he was very alive.
He said, “Would you like a drink, Cleo?”
“Yes, please.” I nodded, and I couldn’t look away from his black eyes.
He grinned, “Let me guess. You look like a bourbon or wine kind of a woman, right?”
I said, “I do like both.”
“Okay,” he said, then stood and walked to the bar. On the stage, the man playing piano was changing his music from its
random sweet notes, and the chords were getting more dissonant as the man tickled the higher keys with his right hand. I sat still and listened. It was actually quite beautiful, the music, like a madman with a great, heavy meaning to his crazed words. Nikki came back with my drink. He resumed his position in the chair, and said to Barbie, “Swan was in rare form last night, huh, Joanie?”
She nodded, and her eyes twinkled.
Nikki asked me, “How much has Joanie told you about this place?”
I told him, “Nothing, really.”
He said, “You have a nice voice. Do you sing?”
“No, I actually have never tried to sing,” I said.
He nodded and I sipped my bourbon. It tasted like I should have been smoking a pipe and wearing silk. I asked him how much I owed him.
He looked confused. “For what?”
“For the drink,” I said. “How much money do I owe you? Or can I start a tab?”
He grinned at Barbie and shook his head, then looked back at me. He said, “Everything is free here.”
I said, “Free?”
“Yep,” he said.
“How can it be free?” I asked.
He said, “Don’t worry about it.”
I told him I didn’t understand.
Nikki said, “Hang around, have a good time. I gotta go fix a couple drinks, see you in a bit.”
He went back behind the bar and I watched him chat with a couple of women sitting there. He opened the wine bottle with a quick hand. I wanted to keep watching him. He seemed so very interesting to me, like an old, familiar painting come to life. However, a young woman came out of the room that hid behind the beaded curtain, saw Barbie, and waved. “Joanie!” She walked like a little sprite, and I saw she was wearing ballet shoes. Pink ones. She turned the chair that Nikki had sat in and took her place at our table. She was thin, small, with big brown eyes and light skin, short brown hair. I could smell lavender on her. She took Barbie’s hand and said, “How you been, hun?”
Barbie held the woman’s hand and said, “I’ve been okay. You danced beautifully last night.”
The woman said, “Oh, work has been busy, busy, busy! Makes me want to twirl.”
Barbie gestured to me. “This is my older sister, Cleo. Cleo, this is Swan.”
Swan took me in with lightening bolt eyes. She could have been drunk, I didn’t know at the time, but she had so much enthusiasm it was hard to think anyone could be like that sober. She took my hand, squeezed it and said, “You look like it’s your first time here, am I right?”
I nodded.
She clasped her hands under her chin and propped her elbows on the table. She said, “What do you think of the improv stage?”
“The what?”
She pointed at the small stage with the man playing piano. “That,” she said, “is the improvisation stage.” She turned back to me. “Do you improv?”
I asked, “Improv what?”
She said, “Oh, anything.” Then she laughed. “Has Joanie told you nothing about the improv stage?”
I shook my head.
“Ice built it when he opened this place eight years ago. Anyone can go up there.” The tone of her voice rose and fell as she talked, like a television ad for a car sale. “I go up there and I dance, when I feel like it. Some people sing, paint, do spoken word, all kinds of things. Like 88 Fingers up there, he just plays piano forever.”
I said, “Why do you all have weird names?”
She cocked her head and smiled, saying, “When someone actually improv-es on the stage for the first time, we name them.” She leaned in toward me. “You can tell when someone does it for the first time.”
I asked her what she meant.
Her eyes flicked to Barbie and she said, “Joanie here has never ever gotten on the improv stage. She says she can’t do it, but everybody can!”
Barbie laughed and tossed her blonde hair, something I hadn’t seen in years.
Swan continued, “I danced on the stage for at least three months before I ever actually improv-ed. What a feeling, too. They called me Swan that night, and now that is my name here.”
I looked at 88 Fingers, then at Nikki. “Why is he called Ice?”
“Well,” Swan said, “I wasn’t here when he did it, but several years ago Nikki used to do spoken word. I don’t know what he said the first night he improv-ed, but it earned him the name ‘Ice upon the Pond.’ We call him Ice for short, or Nikki. He’s the only one who goes by two names here.” She winked at me and said, “Once you get to know him a little better, you’ll see why.”
I watched Nikki. One of the women he was talking to threw her head back and laughed. He reached over the bar and batted at her arm, which made her laugh even more.
Swan said, “You came on a good night. Fridays, people want to blow off some steam after working all week, and the improv stage is very active. But that’s usually a little later.”
I said, “I am just here for a drink.” I sipped the last of my bourbon, burning my gums. I looked at the stairwell as three men who appeared to be in their thirties came in. One of them was a short, black man with dreadlocks. He saw Barbie and smiled, waving. They came to our table. The three of them chatted with Swan and Barbie. I wasn’t really listening, but I do remember Barbie smiling softly. The man with the dreads pulled out a harmonica. He blew into it, then said, “Me and ole 88 got some jamming to do.” At the time, 88 Fingers had been playing darker sounding music on the piano, like he had a thought about a dying relative and was putting it down in music.
The men looked me over but nobody introduced us. The man with the dreads walked up to the improv stage and climbed onto it. 88 Fingers didn’t look up, but the music changed. It sounded bluesy and a little off-beat. A couple of people called out, “Reed! Reed!” I assumed that was the harmonica man’s improv name. The other two men pulled up chairs and our little table was getting a bit crowded for me. They called for Nikki to bring them drinks, which he did, also dropping another bourbon in front of me with a sparkly smile. People in the bar had gotten quiet, and they were waiting for Reed to play his song. He blew a few notes into the harmonica, then bent over and took the shot glass of liquor Nikki had put near his feet a moment earlier. He drank the shot and started playing.
I must say, at first I was not impressed. But as he warmed up, I saw and heard something change. His body started swaying to the beat of the piano and strange sounds came from his instrument. I had never heard anyone play a harmonica like that. I didn’t know if I liked it or not. People in the bar started clapping and calling out, “Reed! Reed!” again. Then they got extremely quiet and we all just sat there and watched and listened. I looked around at the people in the bar. A few of them had closed their eyes, like they were tasting German chocolate. Nikki stood behind the bar with his arms folded across his chest. I looked back at the harmonica player. I had thought they called him Reed because the harmonica was made of reeds, but as I watched him sway back and forth, he reminded me of a reed near a lake, blowing in the wind. I thought perhaps the name had more than one meaning.
I listened to him intently. I sipped my drink. I checked out the other people, watching their faces and examining them, trying to figure out their ages, backgrounds, and what not.
More people came in from the stairwell, and I don’t know how much time had passed before Reed took the harmonica away from his lips and opened his eyes. He looked like he had given birth. He and 88 Fingers shook hands and the two men got off the stage. One of the women who had come in during the performance climbed up on the stage and sat on the floor with her back to the crowd. She was carrying a canvas, and she propped it up against the back wall of the stage. She mixed paints in a small dish as a few people called out, “Rivers!” She paid them no attention, it seemed, but then all I could see was her back. She began painting quickly with a wide brush. One of the women whom Nikki had been laughing with earlier pulled out a violin and stood on the stage to the left of Rivers. She tuned her instr
ument as people called out, “Dream Weaver!”
As with Reed, I didn’t think her music was very good at first, but then her fingers moved faster and faster and her bow reached out at wild angles and people grew quiet. We watched as one woman painted and another played violin, two artists who would not usually be sharing the artistic process at the same time. I was fascinated, but I was also starting to feel a little bit uncomfortable. I realized I was losing track of time as I watched the performers and drank the strong bourbon.
Swan clasped her hands at one point and tiptoed up to the stage in her pink ballet shoes. She hopped up on the stage, which was starting to seem full. I wondered how she would find the room to dance. She pulled it off, though, to the cries of, “Swan!” and then we all just watched and listened again. She bent down, touching her feet, then put her hands behind her ankles in what seemed to me must be uncomfortable, but she sprang up from the pose and swirled in place on one toe like a top.
There was a time during the performance in which I did not think at all, which was an uncommon feeling for me. I don’t even know how long this went on, but Dream Weaver stopped playing, trailing off and stepping off the stage. A man with olive skin and a shaved head got onto the stage with his guitar, plugged it into the amp next to the piano and began to pick notes. Nobody called any name out, but they clapped and whistled. He waved and said into the microphone, “Okay, going to try this again.” More cheering. He strummed chords and seemed to be concentrating more than the others had.
I noticed a few people going into the room beside the bar. Nikki was hard at work making drinks and talking quietly with a couple of men at the bar. The woman they called Rivers was painting with a fury, and I strained my eyes to see what she was making. It looked like a tunnel with a light at the end, but I couldn’t figure out what it was supposed to be.
A man who had been sitting at the bar by himself drinking wine met my curious gaze. His eyes were very blue, even in the dark bar. He gestured for me to sit next to him. I looked at Barbie, and she nodded at me, and then resumed listening to the men at her side as they chattered. I stood up, thinking I wanted another drink anyway.
I sat next to him. He was wearing ratty clothes and he smoked a cigar. His white skin was dirty, I could see once I was close up. Nikki walked over to us, and asked, “Cleo, care for another drink?”
I nodded and looked back at the man. He said, “Hello, so you are Cleo.”
I asked him what his name was. He said, “I have no name.”
To be honest, the man’s appearance had frightened me enough already. He was a handsome man, but his eyes seemed different from other people, like he had walked out of the medieval times in Europe. I said, “You must have some name.”
He said, “No, I left behind my name years ago. Now I have no name.”
I asked him why he would leave his name behind.
He said, “Now I am a portal.”
I asked what he meant, but he didn’t answer. He looked all around me, at my clothes, my wedding ring, my hair. Then he said, “You have a very pure, violet aura. Like your sister, yes.”
Nikki put another drink in front of me and said to the man with no name, “Scaring away Cleo already?” Nikki smiled and told me, “This man is quite the prophet, given a nice wine and a Cuban cigar.” He laughed and walked off, but I felt a bit more at ease.
The man with no name watched me for a second, then said, “I just wanted to tell you that. That is all.” Then he dismissed me, it felt, and went back into a drunken stupor. I shook my head just a little, then took my drink and stood up. Rivers had stopped her painting and carried her canvas, walking towards the beaded curtain. She went through it. A man was taking her place on the stage, hanging a sheet from hooks on the back wall of the stage. I had not noticed them earlier. He held up a machine-like thing and began airbrushing the sheet. Some people called out, “Flames!” I was interested in the airbrushing, never having seen it before, but even more I wanted to know what was in the room behind the beaded curtain.
I was feeling the bourbon. It was quite strong, stronger than the kind Cecil sometimes brought home. I walked to the curtain. I watched the improv stage for a moment before crossing through. A young man with long, blond hair had taken up the piano bench and the man with the guitar withdrew from the stage. Swan was spinning in circles, which seemed impossible to keep up with. I reached out to the beads of the curtain and pushed them aside. The walls of the room were painted light peach, and they wore more of the candles in hurricane-shaped glass and I saw different paintings. There were pillows all around the floor, and I saw about six people sitting on them, talking, drinking, playing cards. I watched Rivers hang her new painting on one of the walls. She turned and looked at me with a smile. She walked over to me and said, “This is where we dry them. I’ll take it home once it’s dry.”
I didn’t know what to say, so I just said, “Okay.”
She bit her lip and looked up at me. She was very short. She said, “Have you seen that before?” She pointed at her painting.
I said, “No.”
She nodded slowly. “Someone here has, and since I’ve never seen you and I painted that painting, I thought it must be you.” She looked over my shoulder into the bar. I shook my head, and she looked back up at me. She smiled and walked back through the curtain as though in a daze.
I glanced at the people playing cards. They were sitting on the floor near where Rivers had hung her painting. I wondered what kind of card game they were playing, so I walked over to them and peeked over a man’s shoulder. He was talking to the woman across from him. She looked young, with dark skin and black hair up in a bun. She was listening to him intently. They either didn’t notice me or didn’t care. I looked at the cards. They were face-up, in some sort of formation, and they had beautiful pictures on them. I blinked a couple times and realized they were tarot cards. I heard the man say, “…and that is why he does not respond to you…” I backed away, and turned around. I looked at the other four people in the room. They were sitting facing each other, eyes closed, and now they were holding hands, like children playing a game. I did not know what they were doing, but one of them, a woman, opened her eyes and looked up at me.
The piano player in the bar started playing music that reminded me of 1920s jazz. It was an abrupt change.
The woman’s eyes were like those I had seen of extremely religious people in Birmingham. She nodded at me. I took a step forward toward her without thinking, and she said, “He says to say hello, dear.”
“What?”
She closed her eyes and her eyebrows came together. The man whose hand she was holding shook his head and said, “A frightening way to pass on.”
The woman who had spoken to me nodded.
That is when I realized it. Barbie was in a cult.
I ran back to the table in the bar where Barbie was lazily smoking a thin cigarette. I leaned down to her ear and said, “We have to leave.”
She looked up at me with dull eyes, touched with a bit of sadness, and nodded. She stood up and gazed behind me. I turned and saw she was eyeing Nikki behind the bar. His eyes held some inscrutable secret as he stopped pouring a glass of wine midway. He held up one hand as a slight wave goodbye. He seemed a little sad too, and I didn’t know why. It was hard to stop looking at him, but I remembered the people in the peach room behind the beaded curtain and blinked. Then I turned and dashed up the narrow staircase. I pulled open the door and plunged outside. Barbie followed. When the door closed, it was deathly silent, like all the joy in life had been closed off. My ears were ringing slightly, as they often did when I drank a little too much. I turned to face Barbie and held her upper arms. She dropped her cigarette. I said, “Barbie, what are you doing in a cult?”
She shook her head and looked at me with vacant eyes, like I had stolen the fun out of them by dragging her away from the bar. She said, “It isn’t a cult.”
“Then what the hell is it?” I noticed my words were s
lightly slurring.
She said in a soft voice, “It is a place where all are welcome, where anything goes. That’s all. It’s a place where ideas are born and dreams are acted out. A safe place, a haven for lost souls.”
I shook her arms and said, “Lost souls! What do you mean, lost souls? Are you trying to insinuate that I am a lost soul? That our mother is? Because that is how you got me here, by telling me I would better understand our mother in some way. But all I saw was madness!”
Barbie looked away from me and said, “Should we catch the bus?”
“Yes,” I said, “The bus. And on the bus you will tell me exactly what is going on here.”
She said, “What do you mean?”
I started walking toward the sidewalk, and I heard her soft footfalls behind me. I was shaking my head, saying, “Family secrets. That is what you said. I see nothing but a woman who used to be lively and happy and expressive turned dark and mysterious and haunted, you…Changed so much, and now I know how, by these people and their wackiness.” I didn’t say anything else as we waited for the bus, and neither did she. We sat like strangers as we rode the bus back to Powelton Village. We got off at the same stop, and only then did Barbie talk to me. She actually smiled at me and said, “When you want to go again, I’ll look forward to seeing you.”
I felt angry at her words, thinking she really must be mad if she thought I would ever go back there. I watched her small frame as she turned and walked down the sidewalk toward her home, and I must admit my eyes watered a bit. For Barbie really did look like a lost soul just then, with the streetlights making haloes of her beautiful blonde hair, and she walked without expression. I thought she looked more like a wisp of smoke than a woman.
When I got home, Cecil had left the hall light on for me. I saw that it was just past midnight. That shocked me. How had so much time passed? I went up to the bedroom and saw Cecil and Angelica in our bed, the nightstand lamp still on. They were asleep, under the covers. I smiled at them, feeling safe. I climbed into bed without undressing and petted my daughter’s hair. I looked at Cecil, wanting to wake him and tell him about the Beacon and the life my sister had chosen, but I didn’t. They looked so peaceful. I turned off the light and closed my eyes and saw visions of the night pass behind my eyelids. I awoke a few hours later and quietly left my husband and daughter sleeping. I watched the sun rise from my front porch, feeling groggy from the bourbon. I was thinking of Patrick, and then I thought of Nikki.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN