by Lee Smith
AND JINX WAS the first person I saw when I came downstairs the next morning ready for work. There she sat in the parlor, dwarfed by a big fat uniformed policeman and another man I had never seen before, an older man wearing a suit and tie. He had a thin, pale, impassive hatchet face, incongruous against our pansy-patterned wallpaper. In fact they both looked ridiculous sitting on our curvy, old-fashioned furniture, as if they had walked into a doll’s house. Jinx looked like she had just gotten out of bed, tousle-headed and sleepy-eyed, wearing an old plaid flannel robe that was obviously much too large for her. She could have been about eleven years old, sitting there with her feet tucked under her. Seeing me, she stretched and waved with total self-possession, as if nothing at all were wrong. “Hey, Evalina,” she called.
“Now Miss Feeney, I asked you a question,” the policeman said sternly. Both men leaned forward on their spindly seats.
“You tell me the answer then.” Jinx yawned and pushed the hair back out of her eyes. “I don’t even know what y’all are talking about.”
“Oh no, what’s the matter? What’s going on?” Amanda came clattering down the stairs. “Is Jinx all right? Evalina?”
“Hush, honey, I’ll fill you in.” Ruth was right behind her. “Jinx is fine, everybody’s fine. Just keep going.”
The men stood up. “Good morning, girls, our apologies for this rude awakening, heh-heh,” the big policeman said. He had a wide, fake grin I hated. It was not really an apology, either. He liked to scare people; you could tell. “Yes, you may go on about your business, for the time being. We know who you are, we know where to find you. We just have a few questions to ask your friend here.”
“What? Who?” Ruth said.
“Me, I reckon.” Jinx looked utterly bored.
The front door flew open and it was Mr. Pugh again, with Mr. and Mrs. Morris right behind him. ”Now just a minute here, you can’t barge into a hospital residence like this and disturb our clients!” Mr. Pugh looked as if he had not been to bed all night long. Mrs. Morris immediately went over to sit beside Jinx on the loveseat.
“Oh yeah, is that right?” The men stood up and the policeman held out a piece of paper to Mr. Pugh, who barely looked at it before handing it over to Mr. Morris, who was a lawyer.
“We have some questions to ask Miss Feeney concerning her—” the big policeman hesitated—“acquaintance with Charles Winston. Matter of fact, Miss Feeney is going to have to come downtown with us.”
The other man looked intently from one person to another but never said a word. He was some kind of detective, I thought.
Mr. Morris whispered something to Mr. Pugh while Mrs. Morris hugged Jinx. Behind us, Myra came out of her room and sank down upon the top step, starting to wail.
“You see?” Mr. Pugh said.
“Evalina, you and Amanda and Ruth go on now,” Mrs. Morris directed from the loveseat in her even voice. “Go ahead, take Myra with you. Everything will be just fine, don’t worry. We will take care of this situation, and we will take care of Jinx, too. She will be accompanied at all times. This is obviously a case of mistaken identity or something.”
It took some coaxing to get Myra into her coat and lead her out to catch the bus with Ruth. “Jiminy cricket,” was the last thing I heard Jinx say as we all exited the door together into the cold bright morning of March 7.
THE CONVOCATION IN the Homewood auditorium was brief, low-key, and factual—exactly what we had come to expect from Dr. Bennett. It was neither a memorial service nor a religious service, but simply an acknowledgement of the previous night’s events. Dr. Bennett stood before us in his customary dark blue suit and red tie, flanked by an American flag in a stand, brought in for the occasion. My grand piano was closed.
“Good morning,” he said in his no-nonsense way that I always found reassuring though sometimes annoying. “We know that you were all upset and some of you were very alarmed by the disturbances of last night. We apologize for the police sirens and the noise, which was totally unnecessary, in our opinion. Be that as it may. As all of you undoubtedly know by now, these events came about from the unexpected death of our friend and client Charles Winston.”
“He was a war hero,” a male voice yelled out.
Dr. Bennett hesitated only briefly. “Yes, Captain Charles Gray Winston the Third was indeed a war hero, as he was a son and a family member and a friend to many—many of you here in this room as well as all over this state. Raised in Winston-Salem, he graduated from Virginia Military Institute before entering the United States Army. His untimely death is a great tragedy for his family and certainly for all of us at Highland Hospital who had grown to enjoy and respect and care for him.” A military man himself, Dr. Bennett faltered and almost choked up.
“Those who live by the sword will die by the sword!” rang out that same voice, which I now recognized as belonging to another one of the veterans, a large, agitated redhead with an especially fine baritone. There was a pause and then a brief scuffle as he was escorted out.
Dr. Bennett cleared his throat. “Of course this is a very emotional time for many of us. I urge you all to disregard whatever accounts you may read of Charles Winston’s death in the newspapers and remember him as he was in life, a valued and almost fully recovered member of our community. I encourage you to concentrate upon your own goals and your own recoveries.
“A routine police investigation is in progress, as required by law for any unattended death. We intend to cooperate fully with this investigation and urge you to do the same, though we ask that you please notify a staff member if you are so approached directly.
“And now let us bow our heads in a moment of silence and thanksgiving for the life of Charles Gray Winston the Third.”
Dixie grabbed my hand and squeezed it as the unaccustomed silence stole over us all like a warm blanket, like a blessing. Nobody spoke. Nobody moved.
“Thank you.” Dr. Bennett pulled out his familiar little notebook. “As of this moment, all groups, meetings, appointments, classes, and meals at Highland Hospital will proceed as regularly scheduled. Sign-up sheets have been posted outside the dining hall for the symphony and also for the upcoming trip to the basketball game in Charlotte. We remind you of the podiatrist’s visit to our clinic this afternoon; the bridge club meeting tomorrow afternoon at four p.m., refreshments furnished; and of course the ongoing preparations and rehearsals for our Mardi Gras party this coming Friday evening, to which everyone is invited. I’ll see you there.” His farewell gesture was a cross between a wave and a salute.
Despite Dr. Bennett’s attempt at establishing calm, rumors went flying all that long day, whispered in the halls between groups, over sandwiches at lunch, at the big tables in Art where people were putting the final touches on their fantastical Mardi Gras masks, and on the paths and sidewalks between buildings.
Charles Winston was married. No, he was engaged. Charles Winston was engaged to be married. He had shot himself between the eyes with a pistol. No, it must have been a shotgun, they said his brains were all over the wall. No, it was a pistol. They said his blood was all over the room. No, it was a pistol, but there had been two shots fired. What? Two shots. But everybody knows you can’t shoot yourself twice, can you, if it’s a suicide? Can you? So maybe it wasn’t a suicide.
“Maybe it was murder,” Karen Quinn whispered into my ear as I took my seat at the portable keyboard in the gymnasium. Then she jumped out onto the floor and got her straggly “second line” up on their feet to join her. I played the rocking intro to “Go to the Mardi Gras,” and they set off grumbling around the floor to the shuffle beat that soon proved irresistible. It did sound exactly like a parade coming down the street. After a couple of laps, I switched over to “Jock-A-Mo” while Karen built on the momentum to get them dancing. Harry Bridges, the redheaded veteran who had caused the ruckus in the auditorium earlier, was dancing up a storm now, taking a turn with several of the older ladies, who seemed to be enjoying themselves enormously. I will never un
derstand anything, I thought. “Laissez les bon temps roulez,” big Karen said, dancing past, winking at me. Is this crazy? I wondered. But nothing is crazy in an insane asylum.
MARCH 9. THE oblivious sun shone brightly all that long day; by late afternoon, the snow was gone. Tiny blades of bright green grass glistened on the muddy hillsides. Forsythia waved by the dining hall door like the yellow flag of spring. “Look!” Dixie pointed to a clump of purple crocuses as we set off down the hill for rehearsal right after supper. But here came Freddy in his station wagon, slamming on the brakes and jumping out to pull me into the rose arbor.
“Why, what in the world!” I said.
“Bye now!” Dixie and Amanda were giggling.
Freddy was still dressed in his white doctor coat and a nice striped tie. He pulled me to him and gave me a big, minty kiss. “There!” he said as if it were a mission accomplished. Then he held me out at arm’s length and gave me a long searching look. “I’ve been missing you, Evalina, that’s all. I haven’t even gotten a glimpse of you for two, maybe three days.”
Was that true? I hadn’t realized it.
“But it’ll be all over soon,” Freddy said cheerfully, which gave me the most ominous feeling, somehow. My palm began to itch and my heart beat furiously.
“Evalina? Honey? What’s the matter. You’re white as a sheet. Do you feel okay?”
“I’m just tired,” I said. “There’s been so much going on.”
“That’s what I’m talking about. Charles’s death, and this performance coming up—I know you’re working yourself to death. But all this Mardi Gras stuff will be over with after the party, right? So I’ve got a big surprise for you, a special date on the next Saturday night afterward, an overnight.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” I said.
“At Lake Lure, Evalina!” he burst out like a child.
“But Freddy, that’s way too expensive. That’s crazy—you don’t have that kind of money. Why don’t I just sneak into Mrs. Hodding’s house again with a special bottle of wine?” At first Freddy had been too straitlaced to let me come to his boardinghouse on nearby Montford Avenue.
“Nope,” he said firmly. “This is something special. We’ve got some decisions to make. I’ve already booked the room and made our dinner reservations.”
We stood inside the white lattice walls of the rose arbor, looking out upon the beautiful hospital grounds in the last of the light as people we knew and loved, patients and staff alike, went back and forth on the sidewalk. The climbing roses were already sending out spikes of new growth all over their trellises; spring was here, but suddenly I felt as if I were in a prison. I didn’t know how I was going to get out of it.
“Honey?” Freddy took me in his arms again, as big and solid as a bear. “Kiss me?
I did.
Anybody could have seen us.
I WAS LATE for rehearsal but it didn’t matter; it looked like everybody else was late, too, except for Mrs. Fitzgerald, who sat onstage at my piano bench, hunched over, legs crossed, tapping her satin slipper-clad foot on the floor as she eyed the door. “Get up here, Pie-Face,” she said to me. Nervously I took my seat next to her on the bench, opening the piano and arranging the sheet music I had brought in my book bag. Mrs. Fitzgerald didn’t budge, even as the others began to arrive. I already knew that Myra would not be here because she had “fallen apart” at the library and was now in the hospital “but just overnight,” according to Dr. Schwartz.
Jinx was not present.
Neither was Mrs. Morris’s daughter Nancy, nor Mrs. Morris herself.
“So where are they all? The rest of them? My corps de ballet?” Mrs, Fitzgerald shot a black look down at Phoebe and Dr. Schwartz on the front row.
“Well, it’s been such an unusual day, hasn’t it?” Dr. Schwartz said calmly. “I imagine you should just go ahead with the ones you’ve got—there’s another rehearsal tomorrow anyway, right?
“Dress rehearsal,” Mrs. Fitzgerald said darkly. She switched legs, now banging her other foot on the floor, and I shifted accordingly on the piano bench. “But where is that little redhead, little Orphan Annie I call her? She is the heart and soul of it, my heart and soul.”
When no one answered, she finally stood up and walked forward. She clapped her hands and said, “Dancers on stage!”
Up they came, indeed a diminished lot in the unforgiving stage lights. Amanda was pale and silent, Pauletta was red-eyed and twitchy, and even Ruth looked tired and unsure of herself. Only Karen Quinn and Dixie appeared ready to dance, Karen in her usual aura of health and solidity, Dixie radiating charm in every direction. Frank was coming up for the dance, she’d told me excitedly, and they’d be leaving a day or two later. So would Mrs. Fitzgerald, almost done with her course of treatments and headed off to New York City to visit her daughter, Scottie, and her growing family, which now included the much-heralded baby Eleanor. Amanda was leaving, too, but not for Tampa; she would be traveling in Italy with two old friends, her college roommates. She had filed for divorce from the judge.
“Places!” Mrs. Fitzgerald snapped as they tried to find their groups, though Pauletta had started crying in earnest now, rubbing at her face with the tail of her sweater.
I played the jaunty, now-familiar prelude.
But Mrs. Fitzgerald held up her hand. “This is ridiculous. My dear, can you not stop weeping? This is very annoying.” At which Pauletta cried even harder and Dixie left her own place and ran across the stage to comfort her.
“That’s it, then. Enough. Alors. Arretez!”
“This is going to be the biggest flop,” Ruth complained to Karen Quinn as they escaped offstage. “Nobody knows what they’re doing. We’ve never even gone through the whole thing. It’s ridiculous.”
Mrs. Fitzgerald whirled to point at her. “Nonsense! You are ballerinas, every one of you. Artistes. You shall be present for dress rehearsal tomorrow and you shall dance brilliantly. Superbe! Magnifique!” She grabbed her fringed purple shawl off the top of the piano and threw it haphazardly around her shoulders before rushing down the steps and striding up the aisle, still in her ballet shoes, muttering to herself, unlit cigarette already in hand.
“Oh, brother,” said Phoebe Dean.
“Oh no,” said Dr. Schwartz.
CHAPTER 15
I DON’T THINK I have ever been more nervous—Phoebe Dean, either. We arrived very early for dress rehearsal and she paced back and forth in front of the stage while I practiced my Mardi Gras music on the grand piano and Cal Green’s crew put the final touches on the stage set which they had constructed in Shop. “When the saints come marching in, oh when the saints come marching in, well I want to be in that number, when the saints come marching in!” Phoebe jumped up on stage to sing along with me in her big, churchy voice while Cal grinned at us and his crew of patients snapped their fingers appreciatively. “Yeah!” one large man yelled. It was amazing, really, what they had built—the sturdy wooden facsimile of a clock tower such as you would see in Europe, its plywood façade painted to look like ancient stones, Notre Dame in Paris or the Cathedral St. Louis in New Orleans. “Oh when the sun begins to shine, oh when the sun begins to shine—” Phoebe and I started in on the second verse.
Cal climbed atop a ladder while his helpers carefully handed up the big clock face we had all seen in the Art Room for weeks now, its black Roman numerals painted in Gothic lettering. Miss Malone herself arrived just in time to stand and watch this procedure, hands on her wide hips. “Oh Lord I want to be in that number, when the sun begins to shine!” We finished, and I switched over to “Tipitina,” which sounded good, too. Everything always sounded great on that piano. By then I was feeling better; a keyboard can always calm me down.
“That looks perfect, Cal,” Phoebe called out as he descended from the ladder.
Cal tipped his hat, that same old khaki hat he had worn for all the years I had known him at Highland. “Come on boys, let’s get out of here, we’ve got work to do.” His crew follo
wed him reluctantly, with the big man dancing like crazy all across the stage, surprisingly light on his feet.
Then Miss Malone came up on the stage herself to look at the clock more closely. It seemed to pass her inspection. “Okay, Karen,” she yelled out suddenly, surprising me, “where are you?”
“Got it covered, Boss” came Karen’s voice from somewhere high overhead. “Here we go!” The first gossamer strip fluttered down from the catwalk far above the stage, waving behind the clock tower, followed by another, then another, then another, in shades of blue and red and yellow, Mrs. Fitzgerald’s favorite primary colors, I remembered. She always liked to paint straight from the little pots, never mixing the colors. The banners waved and shimmered nearly to the floor.
“Oh my goodness, how gorgeous, Rowena!” Dr. Schwartz cried out as she arrived, but Miss Malone was still not satisfied, calling up to Karen to move this one or that one in order to achieve just the right fantastical backdrop. Finally Karen was allowed to climb down, receiving a squeeze from Miss Malone for her efforts, and spontaneous applause from the rest of us.
I had just switched over to “Jambalaya,” tinkling the treble keys, when the back door opened and Phoebe leaned over the piano to say, “Uh-oh. Here comes trouble.” Of course we were all wondering this very same thing. Mrs. Fitzgerald entered, wearing her enormous purple shawl. I took my hand off the keys immediately, but Dr. Schwartz said softly, “No, no, Evalina, just keep playing, please, that’s a girl,” which I did, while Mrs. Fitzgerald strode purposefully down the aisle without a word and came to a stop before the stage where she stood dead still for a long second before finally clapping her hands together and crying “Bravo, bravo! Bravo, Rowena!” her face transformed, alight.
Miss Malone bowed her head in silent acknowledgment, according Mrs. Fitzgerald that great respect she always gave her. Miss Malone would have done anything—anything—for Mrs. Fitzgerald, I believe.
And Mrs. Fitzgerald was glowing as she stood transfixed before her festive tower.