“Maybe I shouldn’t meet him.”
“Listen, baby, I’ve known a lot of men in my life. Most of ’em blockheads. But Frank, he’s one of the good ones. Just go. It’ll be worth your while and then some.”
Clearly, Irene knew more than she was letting on.
“Please tell me I won’t need to borrow your galoshes again.”
Irene smiled. “Not this time, baby.”
The next night, despite her misgivings, Mirielle snuck out after supper. The oak tree–studded lawn appeared empty when she arrived. Robins crooned from the branches, and Spanish moss undulated in the evening breeze. She started to turn back when she heard a low whistle.
Mirielle looked in the direction of the sound and saw Frank behind the thick trunk of one of the trees, frantically waving her over. She reached him just as Watchman Doyle strode into view.
“Shh,” he said, pulling her to a crouch beside him. His hair, once again slick and tamed, glinted beneath his hat in the golden sunlight. He smelled of sandalwood and shaving soap. They peered from behind the trunk as Watchman Doyle strode along the fence with his watchclock. When he reached the far corner of the fence and headed westward toward the houses, Frank whispered, “Come on.”
Before Mirielle could ask where they were going, Frank dashed to the fence. Mirielle hesitated a moment, then followed, her heels sinking into the soft ground as she tried to keep up. By the time she reached the fence, Frank had already clipped several strands of wire near the bottom with pliers he’d pulled from his pocket. He peeled back the section of the fencing he’d cut as if it were the lid on a can of sardines and gestured for her to crawl through.
“I can’t run away. Dr. Ross said if I tried again, I’d get another month in jail.”
“It’s just for the night,” Frank said. “We’ll be back before anyone realizes we’re gone.”
After a moment’s indecision, she hunched down and scrambled through. Frank followed, then carefully realigned the fence. Without bending down and inspecting each link, Watchman Doyle would never know the strands had been cut. They crept to the edge of the road and waited in the gully until dust plumed, and a Model T truck stopped a few yards ahead. It honked its horn once.
“Wait here.” Frank approached the driver, keeping his hands in his pockets until the driver nodded. Frank passed him a folded bill. She realized watching him that Frank was dressed more dapper than usual. He wore a smart suit of worsted gray wool and a curve-brimmed derby hat. He looked like a jaunty city fellow, not an escaped leper. But surely the driver knew. He took Frank’s money nevertheless and motioned with his head to the bed of the truck. Frank waved her over and helped her up. A thin layer of straw covered the bed, but the truck rumbled out of idle before she could think twice about sitting down.
The Model T lumbered over ruts and through potholes, jostling Mirielle like ice in a cocktail shaker. Dust choked the air. But she felt a strange lightness, a giddiness almost, at being away from Carville.
“Where are we going?” she yelled above the truck’s rattle.
“New Orleans.”
CHAPTER 34
They reached the city just before ten. The streets in the outlying neighborhoods were empty, the windows of the ornately trimmed houses dark. But as they neared the center of New Orleans, automobiles and streetcars and horse-drawn wagons rumbled past them. People crowded the sidewalks.
“I forgot what civilization looks like,” Mirielle said. It wasn’t just the way it looked. It was the sound of honking horns and jingling shop doors and hollering street vendors. It was the smell of gasoline and restaurants and trash bins. She drank it all in.
Their driver dropped them off at the corner of what Frank called the Vieux Carré. The buildings here were foreign-looking and run-down, their stucco siding cracked and roofs speckled with moss. Standing on the sidewalk as roadsters and touring cars rattled past, Mirielle felt suddenly naked. What if someone caught on that they were lepers? She’d heard stories from other patients about absconders returning to Carville in shackles or at gunpoint. Of townsfolk hurling stones and garbage to chase them away.
Mirielle’s skin tightened around her bones. The fruit seller across the street kept glancing their way as he packed up his cart. The whispering trio of women waiting for the streetcar were surely talking about her. The electric street lamp that hummed overhead shone brightly as a spotlight. She fingered the beads around her neck, hoping they concealed her lesion well enough that it wouldn’t draw attention.
The Model T sputtered off before Mirielle could suggest they forget their plans—whatever they were—and return to Carville. A man exited a nearby building and walked straight toward them. Panic twisted inside her. He knew. He must.
Frank, however, appeared unconcerned. His shirt and jacket covered the lesions on his forearms, and his misshapen hands were hidden in his pockets.
“Ready, chère?”
The man continued toward them. Mirielle clutched Frank’s arm. “That man, I think he—” Just before reaching them, the man turned down an alley without heed to anyone. He unbuttoned his pants and pissed on the brick wall.
“Oh.” Mirielle hurriedly looked away, hoping her cheeks weren’t as red as they were warm.
“No one’s gonna notice us here,” Frank said.
She released her stranglehold on his arm. “You going to tell me what sort of shenanigans you’re up to?”
“Don’t worry. Our mission’s completely square. Come on.”
She couldn’t help but laugh. So far, nothing about the evening had been square, but the shadow that had stalked her since Hector’s funeral hadn’t made it into the truck bed in time to follow her. That was worth whatever mischief Frank had planned.
He led her through the city to the train station. Even at this hour, the grand lobby was crowded with travelers. Electric pendulum lights hung from the high ceiling. Rows of wooden benches filled the room. She heard what sounded like Italian and German as well as French and English as they wound their way toward the far corner of the lobby, opposite the ticket office.
Frank stopped when they reached a bank of telephone booths. He glanced at the large clock above them on the wall. “It’s only eight thirty in California. Ya think your family’s still up?”
Mirielle stared dumbly at him for a moment. The din around her faded, and her heart beat a ragtime rhythm. She suddenly realized she hadn’t brought a purse or evening bag and hadn’t any money, but Frank was already thrusting a small bag of quarters into her hand. “Go on. I’ll wait for you here.”
She closed herself within one of the booths. The phone, the same model as any old public telephone, looked foreign to her. She rattled her head, took a deep breath, and lifted the receiver. When the operator asked for the number, Mirielle responded without pause. She fed a dozen quarters into the machine and waited as the line went quiet. Then the butler’s familiar voice sounded through the earpiece.
“Hello?”
Mirielle’s throat cinched around her voice box.
“Hello?”
She moved closer to the mouthpiece. “Hello, this is Mrs. Mar—Mrs. West. I’d like to speak with my husband, please.”
After a long pause, the butler said, “Mrs. West?”
“Yes, Mrs. Mirielle Lee West. Can you put Charlie on the line and fetch the children, if they’re up?”
Another pause. “Er . . . yes . . . just a moment, Mrs. West.”
The line was silent for an interminably long time before another voice sounded through the earpiece. “Now see here, I don’t know what you mean by—”
“Charlie, it’s me.”
“Mirielle? How did . . . where are—”
“New Orleans. I just slipped away to call.”
“Slipped away?” He sounded different than she remembered, his voice strident and thin.
“How are the girls? Can I talk to them?”
“Talk to them? . . . Yes, yes of course.” She heard him cover the mouthpiece, holler for the n
anny, then return to the line. “How—er—how are you feeling?”
“Fine. Great. Healthy as a May morning,” she said, but couldn’t help slipping her hand beneath her necklace to touch her lesion. “How’s the new picture?”
“Swell,” he said. “Cecil’s terrific. The whole production’s being managed in great style.”
“And what about working with Miss Thorne? Is she as boorish as everyone says?”
“Gloria? No, she’s been perfectly—wait, Evie’s here.”
Perfectly what, Mirielle wondered as Charlie handed over the telephone.
“Mama!”
Mirielle wasn’t prepared for the stabbing pain her daughter’s sweet voice inflicted. Tears flooded her eyes, but she willed her voice steady. “Evie, dearest. It’s wonderful to hear you on the line. Have you been behaving for Daddy and the nanny while I’ve been away?”
“I have, I promise, Mama. When are you coming home?”
“Soon, my love.”
“How soon?”
“In a few months.”
“Mama, some boys at Kitty’s birthday party said you’d gone crazy as a june bug and weren’t ever coming home.”
Mirielle’s heart squeezed. “Don’t you listen to them. I’m looking after my sick auntie, and as soon as she’s better again I’ll be home.”
“They pulled my braids, Mama, and said crazy’s in the blood, and I’m gonna get it too.”
Mirielle curled around the phone. Tears dripped from her chin onto the collar of her dress. “Oh, darling, that’s not true. They’re just being ornery.”
“I hope your auntie gets better soon.”
“Me too. Now tell me more about Kitty’s party. Did she have a cake and candles?”
“Yes, a great big cake and—”
The operator cut in. “Another dollar to continue your call.”
Mirielle fumbled with the bag of quarters, her hands sweaty and shaky. She managed to slip three quarters into the coin slot but dropped the last one on the ground. She bent down, feeling for it atop the dusty flooring while keeping the receiver pressed to her ear.
“Please insert more—”
“Just a moment,” she shouted up at the mouthpiece. When she found the quarter and inserted it, Evie’s voice returned, midway through her description of the party.
Not long after, Mirielle heard a muffled voice in the background. Evie huffed into the line. “Daddy says I’ve got to give Helen a turn, even though she’s a baby and hardly says two words. Bye, Mama.”
“I love you, Evie.” Mirielle leaned so close the mouth horn pressed against her face. “You hear me? I love you.”
Static was the only reply. She waited with the receiver to her ear. A cooing noise sounded, followed by a string of babble.
“Helen? Helen, it’s your mama.”
“Say ‘Hello, Mama,’ ” the nanny said in the background. Helen made a few more garbled sounds.
“My sweet baby.” A sob slipped past Mirielle’s lips. “I’m coming home soon. I think of you every day and—”
A rapping noise sounded on the phone booth door. “You about finished in there?” an unfamiliar voice said.
“She’ll be finished when she’s finished,” Frank said.
“I ain’t got all night to wait around in line.”
Mirielle leaned in closer to the phone and covered her other ear with her palm. “Helen, darling, you still there?”
“It’s me again,” Charlie said. He sounded more like himself now, steady and sure. As if the nightmare of the past months hadn’t happened. As if he’d rung her from the studio to let her know he’d be home late and not to wait on him for dinner. “This business Evie was talking about, those pesky boys, don’t put any stock—”
“I saw the Picture-Play article, Charlie.”
Silence carried across the line. Her eyes welled again.
“People don’t believe it, do they? Our friends. You’re telling them it’s not true. That it’s just a nasty rumor.”
“I’m sorry, Mirielle, I never meant . . . I just wanted those muckrakers off my back.”
“You told the reporters that?”
“They were hounding me night and day.”
“Charlie, the entire city thinks I’m crazy now!”
“I had to tell them something,” he replied, and then, in a mutter, “It’s better than the truth.”
Mirielle flinched.
“It’s not so bad, darling. Really,” Charlie continued. “Half of Hollywood has been to an alienist.”
“Visiting a psychotherapist and being locked away in a nut farm are hardly the same thing.”
“How long could I go on telling people you were off caring for some sick relative? Besides, the news didn’t come as much of a surprise to people. Not considering the way you’d been acting since . . .”
“And how was I supposed to act?” she yelled into the mouthpiece. “Like you? Like everything was hunky-dory and my son hadn’t drowned?”
Charlie didn’t reply. Before she could apologize the operator cut in again. “Please insert one more dollar to continue your call.”
Mirielle upended Frank’s bag. Empty. She felt for pockets in her dress where she might have stowed loose change, remembering belatedly the dress hadn’t any pockets. She fingered the coin return, but it too was empty.
“Please, patch me in again, just thirty more seconds.”
“I’m sorry, I can’t do that,” the operator replied.
“I haven’t spoken to my family in months. I just want to say—”
“Goodbye.” A clicking sound followed, and the line went dead.
Mirielle dropped the receiver. It swung back and forth on its cord like a pendulum. She lay her head atop the phone box and wept.
Sometime later—half a minute, half an hour, she wasn’t sure—another knock sounded on the door. This one soft and gentle. She wiped her eyes and stepped outside.
Frank handed her his handkerchief as the next man in line brushed past them into the phone booth. “Sorry, I thought it would be nice for ya to talk to your family.”
Mirielle blew her nose, a loud, unladylike honking. She felt tired, gutted, but when she looked up at the wall clock, she saw only fifteen minutes had passed since they’d arrived at the station.
“We’ve got another few hours before our driver returns,” Frank said. “I’m guessing ya could use a drink.”
“Boy, could I.”
“Come on.”
CHAPTER 35
Mirielle followed Frank down one street and up the next. They crossed a grand boulevard with a tree-lined median into the shabbier part of town where the driver had first dropped them.
He didn’t pry into her telephone conversation, as if it were perfectly natural to be walking beside a woman with a runny nose, tear-salted cheeks, and bloodshot eyes. The unobtrusive silence had given her time to cobble herself back together. To rebuild the walls necessary to survive Carville. Now she needed distraction. “How often do you sneak out and come here?”
“Not often. I snuck out more in the beginning. I was angry then, and it felt good to flip my finger at the world.”
The kernel of a laugh rocked inside her. She couldn’t imagine him flipping a finger at anyone. “When did it go away? The anger, I mean.”
Frank shrugged. He was a good head taller than she, and the brim of his hat shaded his face from the lamplight. “I still am, sometimes.”
“It’s a ruse then? Mr. Happy-Go-Lucky.”
He took off his hat and ran a hand through his hair, upsetting the smoothed strands. She could see his expression now, his furrowed brow and focused stare. “No. That’s me too.”
Mirielle frowned. “That’s what I hate most. How this”—she lowered her voice even though no one else was within earshot—“this disease cleaves you into two people. Without it, you’d just be . . . you.”
“Ya can’t let it split ya like that or you’ll go mad. Trust me. Besides, even if—” He paused and flashed
that earnest smile of his. “Even when ya go home, ya won’t be the same person ya were before. No two ways about that. With or without the disease, life ain’t that damn long. Might as well make the most of it, or try at least. Wherever ya are.”
“You sound like a traveling salesman.”
His smile turned sheepish. “Sister Verena gave me that advice. Back in the beginning. When there weren’t nothing to me but anger.”
Their footsteps echoed into the night as Mirielle considered his words. Spice-scented aromas wafted from the late-night restaurants they passed. She couldn’t imagine him like that, all anger. And she certainly couldn’t imagine Sister Verena giving such kind, sage advice.
“There’s no way Sister Verena said ‘damn.’ ”
He laughed. “I might have added a little color to her words.”
They turned down an alleyway and stopped before an unvarnished door flanked by rusty trash cans and moldering crates. Frank looked over his shoulder, then knocked four times.
The alley smelled of urine and rotting lettuce. Patches of brick showed behind the crumbling stucco façade. She wasn’t a stranger to backdoor entries, but most of the speaks she and Charlie had frequented boasted nicer entrances.
After nearly a minute had passed, the door opened just enough for a flat-faced man to peek his head out.
“What’d ya want?” he said in heavily accented English.
“Un jeu de billiard c’est tout,” Frank said.
Mirielle followed the man’s gaze downward. Frank held a folded bill between two of his misshapen fingers. The man frowned, and Mirielle’s heart floundered. He looked between her and Frank with narrow, beady eyes. “Un jeu de billiard,” he repeated with a snort, then took the money and let them in.
They followed him down a short hallway into a dimly lit, smoky room. A bar ran the length of one wall, fringed with mismatched stools. A billiard table sat to one side of the room, opposite a small dance floor ringed with tables. A band played from a raised platform at the far end. Several couples jigged on the dance floor.
Naked bulbs crowned with tin shades hung from the ceiling. Posters papered the walls, stained with smoke and curling at the edges. Nothing like the cut-glass chandeliers and velvet-dressed clubs Mirielle was used to. The music too was different. Rawer. The partiers’ laughter less restrained.
The Second Life of Mirielle West Page 19