Joplin's Ghost

by Tananarive Due

  She went on. “If I’m sleeping with you, you’re my boyfriend, and I’m your girlfriend. When you’re with me, you’ll have to try not to fall over yourself when you see a woman with nice legs. Or blondes. And no flirting with my cousin. Period.”

  Carlos opened his mouth to object, but he reconsidered, granting the point. “Go on.”

  “And we’re monogamous,” she said. “No sex with anyone else.”

  Carlos raised his eyebrows, a challenge. He didn’t have to say the words aloud.

  “I know what you’re thinking, and that doesn’t count,” Phoenix said. “Even if I knew a way to keep him from coming back, I don’t want to.”

  “Of course not. I wouldn’t ask you to.”

  “Anyway, that’s different, Carlos. It’s more like a dream with him. It isn’t real.”

  Carlos touched her chin with his index finger. “What’s real is what you remember, Phee.”

  What did she remember? She remembered climbing out of the pool with Carlos, asking him if he thought the ghost would visit, and how they’d stood squirming in the moonlight before she finally took his hand and said, Come on in. Stay with me. After that, there was only Scott, even if her memories of Scott had faded, as if she’d had last night’s dream a year ago.

  “I promise to remember next time,” Phoenix said, stroking a dreadlet that had fallen near Carlos’s eyes, tightly woven jet threads. She could be talking to Carlos or Scott, or both.

  Carlos pursed his lips, turning away in mock sulkiness. “Isn’t there some paperwork you need me to sign first? Some fine print I need to read?”

  She shook her head, smiling. “No paperwork. Just rules.”

  “And meanwhile, you still get to play with your Backdoor Man?”

  “You’re right, Carlos. Fair is fair. You can have sex with all the dead people you want.”

  With a playful grunt, Carlos grabbed her tightly around her middle, rolling her closer to him. The bedsheet pulled free with her, until Phoenix and a mound of covers lay directly atop Carlos’s chest. As he breathed, she rose and fell with his rib cage. Neither of them had brushed their teeth yet, and their breath smelled the same.

  “You sure about that?” Carlos said. “Because I just got a very friendly visit from Dorothy Dandridge, and she was lookin’ kinda fine. Halle didn’t do her justice.”

  “She must be pretty damn fine.”

  “She’s not the only one.” His face was so close, they breathed the same air. Carlos’s smile vanished as he gazed up at her. His eyes looked more like Scott’s, suddenly. “Cuidado, Phee. Be careful. Make rules for him, too. You don’t want to be in love with a dead man.”

  Phoenix’s stomach tightened, more grief. She still missed him, she realized, a useless feeling with nowhere to go. A hard feeling. “I know. I’ll be careful.”

  When Carlos Harris kissed Phoenix again for the first time in memory since she was sixteen, his mouth and tongue were a warm, welcome haven. A homecoming.

  And alive, Phoenix reminded herself. Alive.

  Part Four

  “It’s showtime, folks!”

  JOE GIDEON,

  All That Jazz

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  St. Louis

  1906

  When I saw the name on my pad, I had to look twice,” the physician said, beaming at Scott from behind round, gold-rimmed eyeglasses. He grasped Scott’s hand, pumping hard. “This is a pleasure. Tom Turpin’s mentioned your name, sure enough, but I didn’t realize you were back. Do you know my wife and I played ‘Maple Leaf Rag’ on our wedding day?”

  Dr. Otis Wiley was a dark young man with a broad smile and hulking shoulders nearly too large for his white physician’s coat. He could be the Negro boxer Jack Johnson, except for his eyeglasses and the stethoscope around his neck. His moustache was trimmed stylishly thin, the ends disappearing as blacks wisps so tightly wound they looked braided. Scott would have preferred an older doctor, but he looked capable enough.

  “The band played it so fast, we were about to trip over our feet,” Dr. Wiley said, not discouraged by Scott’s silence. “‘Maple Leaf’ is one of our favorites.”

  Scott heard new stories about “Maple Leaf” all the time, as if his piece were a child away prospecting for gold, and from time to time he caught wind of its adventures. Apparently musicians from far and wide used his piece to try to outshine each other, carving their own fame. The most outlandish story, to date, was that President Roosevelt had cakewalked to “Maple Leaf Rag” at an event at the White House. It seemed unlikely, but Scott didn’t know. His song had its own life, and less and less of it had anything to do with him.

  “You didn’t have to come to my office,” the doctor said. “I would’ve been happy to come see you at home, Mr. Joplin. You’re out in Clayton? All you had to do was phone.”

  “I don’t mind it,” Scott said. “It’s a chance to get out.” Two sentences of chitchat had drained Scott, and the day was only getting started. Tom told him he should get out more, but the world beyond his parlor was a tiring exercise.

  Everyone said he would get his feet under him again after Freddie, and he’d tried to believe that the first year despite every evidence that he would never have his footing again. In the beginning, every third woman he saw looked like her and he could cry half a day straight. After a year of that, he needed to believe there was another way to be. But his poor girl had been gone two years now, and Scott was still tired from the time he woke up each day. Grieving was the hardest work he’d ever done.

  “What brings you to the doctor today?” Dr. Wiley said.

  Finally. He could be out with it. He could have it done.

  “My hair’s been falling out in back,” Scott said. He didn’t touch the nape of his neck, where it itched. He’d learned how to ignore the itching during daylight, never scratching in public, but the nights were driving him mad. “Tom thinks it might be overwork. You know, tension and the like. I guess I’m all right with it, but his wife insisted, so here I am.”

  “I see,” Dr. Wiley said. He walked behind Scott to gaze at his hairline. “So…are you working on any new compositions after ‘Maple Leaf Rag’?”

  Scott felt his back teeth tighten. “Always,” he said, trying to smile. On another day, he might have explained that he’d published two dozen pieces since “Maple Leaf,” and he would be happy to list the names. Most people thought “Maple Leaf” was his only composition, and he found some humor in that sometimes. But not today.

  “How long’s the itching been troubling you?” the doctor asked.

  “Comes and goes,” Scott said. “A couple weeks so far, this time.”

  The doctor tentatively touched the back of Scott’s neck, parting the hair to show his scalp. “Where’s the most exciting place you’ve ever performed, Mr. Joplin?”

  Scott realized his fingers were tight around his wooden armrests, and he exhaled and forced his hands to go slack. His nervousness might be apparent, so this doctor was trying to take his mind from this visit. Already, the doctor pitied him.

  But better to be here, he reminded himself. Better to have it done.

  “I guess that would be the World’s Fair,” Scott said, swallowing the dry mound in his throat. Freddie had all but blotted the fair, since his giddiness after meeting her and his visions of Wonderland from the book she’d given him had inspired him to write the piece he’d been playing the night Tom Turpin told him he had a letter from Freddie, the night he learned her father had said yes, and they were engaged. All that had happened during the fair.

  Scott raised his fist to clear his throat again. “You remember those fountains? What a display! I wrote a piece about them and played it. Colored musicians played, you know, in the breezeways, but a lot of people enjoyed it even so. There were people from everywhere. All over the world, really. That felt good.” As Scott spoke, he opened his fist and stretched out his fingers. Sometimes he felt a razor’s first kiss across his tendons when his fingers stretched, and s
ometimes he felt fine.

  But he would bring that up later. One thing at a time.

  “Your hand bothering you, too?” the doctor said, not letting him wait.

  Scott shrugged, and his right shoulder twinged. He’d almost forgotten his shoulders, which complained more and more when he raised his arms too high, or even when he didn’t. One more thing for his list. “Yeah, I’ve got some stiffness.”

  “For how long?”

  “Some time now, I guess. Couple years, on and off. Maybe more.”

  While the doctor wrote that down, Scott’s mind looked for diversions. Where was that fool Louis? One of the reasons Scott had looked forward to being back in St. Louis was to be near Louis, who, like him, had moved to Chicago and back. Louis never came to the Rosebud anymore, Tom said—but then again, neither did anyone else, since Tom was talking about shutting his place down. Scott hadn’t been able to find Louis in a month. Louis wasn’t at his last-known address, but Scott was determined to find him. A man needed his friends the most during the times he didn’t want to be found.

  The doctor walked around to face Scott. He folded his arms and leaned back against his desk, as if he didn’t want to tower too high above him. “When’s the last time you saw a doctor, Mr. Joplin?” Dr. Wiley said. His voice was as gentle as he would speak to a child.

  “My wife took sick two years ago, suffered seven weeks. I’d seen enough doctors,” Scott said. He made his heart go cold so he could get through the facts without dredging up the memory. The horrifying sound of Freddie’s struggles to breathe was a burden he couldn’t carry today, not in front of a stranger.

  “I’m very sorry. What took her from you?”

  “Pneumonia, the doc said. Consumption, I think. Her lungs.” Her lungs ain’t right. Scott had to stop talking about Freddie. He’d have to say so if the doctor asked about her again.

  “God keep you. That’s a dreadful loss,” the doctor said, writing again. “But when did you last see a doctor for yourself?”

  “Been a long time,” Scott said. “I don’t recall.”

  “Have you had any rashes?”

  “Besides whatever’s itching my head?” Scott said. “Not in a while. How far back?”

  “Up to…ten years ago?”

  The dog sleeps, Scotty.

  Scott’s hands clung to his armrests again. “Yeah, I have. I think so.”

  “Where did the rashes turn up?”

  “My feet.”

  “Anywhere else?”

  Scott made himself meet the young doctor’s eyes, as much as he wanted to look away. “My privates. Well, my thigh, but…close to my privates,” he said, trying to sound matter-of-fact. “I had a sore, maybe in ’99. It healed.”

  Unless it was Scott’s imagination, the doctor’s face had become a mask over another expression, but pieces escaped in the man’s eyes, a quiet alarm. Scott looked toward the windows, feeling a sudden certainty that none of them were open. The office felt like a hothouse, but all three rectangular windows were pushed up high. A plant on the sill trembled in the breeze.

  “Did it leave a scar?” the doctor said.

  “Yes. Not bad, though.”

  “Sorry I have to ask you this, Mr. Joplin, but may I see the scar? I have a screen and a gown. I’d like you to disrobe, sir.”

  “Why?” Scott said.

  “Seeing the scar will help me get a fix on your symptoms.”

  “What do you think it is?” Scott said. Only five words, but few had ever weighed so heavily on his tongue. He’d been avoiding those words for six years.

  Before today, the hardest words he’d uttered had been the night a stupid boy ran up to him at a gig in Sedalia and claimed Freddie had died. The news had sent Scott fleeing for home in a rainstorm, but it turned out the doc had come and pronounced she had pneumonia. How the news had gotten so confused, Scott never knew. Pneumonia would kill Freddie sure enough, but not that day. The boy’s report had always sounded slapdash, so Scott had refused to believe his wife could be dead—he couldn’t believe it—until Sol Dixon met him at the door, and he saw his friend’s face. Then, suddenly, the worst was plausible. What happened? Scott had asked.

  Those had been his hardest words, until today.

  The night of the storm. The night he sang. The night he last made love to Freddie.

  “There’s any number of ailments to explain a rash,” Dr. Wiley told Scott, not blinking, and Scott’s heart skipped, hopeful. The young man had an honest face, so he might even be telling the truth. Good news would be worth undressing and the indignity of this whole awful affair.

  The examination was careful, nearly twenty minutes. Scott stood behind an Oriental-styled screen while the doctor examined him head to foot, following with quiet questions. Have you noticed bald patches on your head? How long do these outbreaks on your scalp usually last? The doctor asked about his hands, his arms, even his moods. As Scott stood in the doctor’s office naked except for his black socks—and even those came off for a time when the doctor turned over his feet to look at his soles—Scott didn’t know how he’d mistaken the room for hot before. He felt cold. And ridiculous. And damned.

  When Dr. Wiley left the room to let him dress himself in privacy, Scott thought about the story he’d have for his father when he saw him next. Yeah, Pappy, I went to see a colored doctor with a hincty office on Olive Street, and the white patients waiting to see him called him “Doctor,” not “boy.” The degree on the wall says he graduated from Oberlin, but Tom says he’s not ashamed to two-step like a fool. Freddie would have liked him.

  Scott wasn’t nervous by the time Dr. Wiley came back. In the doctor’s absence, hearing the motorcars, barking dogs and newsboys carrying on three floors beneath them, Scott discovered the secret to keeping his nerve: He was ready to know. Knowing was its own salvation. Knowing was enough.

  Dr. Wiley sat behind his desk this time, farther away than he’d been. His face’s guise was gone now, so Scott knew what he was going to say. He’d known since Louis came to see him on Morgan Street, even if he’d lied to himself. The doctor had trouble choosing his first words.

  “Well?” Scott said.

  The doctor’s eyes looked like glass. He twisted the end of his moustache, then folded his hands on his desk, disciplined. “Mr. Joplin…there’s talk of a new blood test, but I’m not equipped for it. But to speak frankly, I’ve seen these cases before, and I feel a duty to share my mind.”

  “Yes. Tell me.”

  The doctor’s jaw locked. He picked up his fountain pen and wrote something on a fresh page of his notebook. Then, he tore the page free and reached across his vast desktop to give it to Scott, past thick books, models of the human body and shiny instruments of healing.

  S-y-p-h-i-l-i-s, the slanted script said.

  So, there it was, in front of his nose. At last.

  “Is my writing clear?” the doctor said.

  Scott nodded, clasping the page with both hands. His heart was calmer now than before. All his concentration lay within the doctor’s words. The world was this man’s voice.

  “Not all cases of this damnable disease come to this, but some do. You might have seen a doctor sooner, but I don’t know if it would have mattered. I’ve never held much stock in the mercury cure. There’s some promising talk about arsenic, but that’s still talk, too. Either way you look at it, this disease is difficult. And where you are with it…I’m not hopeful your symptoms will improve.”

  Freddie.

  “My wife?” Scott whispered. As he thought of Freddie, Scott became so rigid that his bones felt like they might crack. “Did I…”

  “How long did you know her?”

  “Three months before we married.”

  The doctor smiled, elated to have a glimmer of good news. “Then this disease posed no danger to your wife, Mr. Joplin, not for many years before you met. No matter what some doctors believe, it’s my firm opinion that once a year had passed since your first experience in 1899, you were n
o danger to anyone. I promise you, whatever happened to your wife is not a cross for your conscience to bear. That was God’s province, and God’s alone.”

  The relief that swamped Scott exposed the maw in him he’d held at bay, and he doubled over in his chair, gasping. “Thank you, Doctor,” he whispered, tears spilling from his eyes. “Thank you, dear Jesus, dear Lord.”

  He could not have lived knowing he had hurt Freddie. It was hard enough to think she might be alive if he had left her with her parents during that tour, if she had never been with him to catch her fatal cold. But to have cursed her through the act of making love, when he had only sought to give her bliss, to imprint his heart upon her soul? Precious reprieve! Then I had no hand in killing either of my girls, my Freddie or my baby. Dear God, only by chance…

  Scott heard Dr. Wiley’s chair slide across his wooden floor, and hurried footsteps as the doctor came to him. “Are you faint? Do you need salts?”

  Scott shook his head. “I’m sorry. A moment,” he said, and the doctor backed away to give Scott time to summon his masculinity and straighten himself in his seat.

  “Anything I tell you today is with the highest discretion. No one will hear any hint of this visit from my lips,” Dr. Wiley said. “You have my word.”

  Scott clenched his hands into fists, and the razors between his knuckles stabbed him. All this time, he’d lived under the foolish hope that grief alone had caused his body so much havoc. When he hadn’t liked the sound of his piano, he’d given his hands rest for a day or two, and sometimes he sounded fine after that. He’d even begun using an arthritis tonic advertised in the Palladium. This doctor must think he was a fool! And wasn’t he?

  Scott stared down at the royal purple Persian rug beneath his feet, his black shoes lined up in a V at the heel, perfectly still.

  “I’m a musician. I play piano,” Scott said. “What about my hands?”

  Dr. Wiley almost hid the wobble in his words. “I don’t know, Mr. Joplin,” he said.