Guests on Earth: A Novel

by Lee Smith

  “Oh, look!” “Wow!” “Look!” sang out the “hours” as they came tramping down the aisle, bundled up in their winter coats.

  I kept on playing like a person possessed until Mrs. Fitzgerald finally waved her hand at me. “That will certainly do, Patricia!” she said, “That’s entirely enough out of you!” though with a smile. “It’s time to get down to business.” She threw her shawl across my piano and stood revealed in her black leotard and tights, with a swirling purple skirt that shone and moved as she moved, like liquid, like her banners.

  “Come on, come on now, dears, it’s time,” she called out to the girls.

  But the girls clustered together and hung back, keeping their coats on.

  “What is it? Come on now!” Mrs. Fitzgerald moved toward the front of the stage.

  “I think perhaps they are embarrassed,” Dr. Schwartz said softly. “This is the first time they have worn their costumes.”

  Several of the “hours” nodded.

  “What? Oh, that is ridiculous!” Mrs. Fitzgerald snapped.

  But I understood perfectly. I would never have done what they were doing, not in a million years.

  Mrs. Fitzgerald got that dangerous, smoldering look. “Places!” She clapped her hands.

  As suddenly as that, electricity filled the air.

  “Oh, okay—” Dixie was the first, laughing as she ran up the steps with her red skirt floating out around her like a full-blown rose; then Amanda in yellow—all yellow, her flying hair, too; then Karen Quinn, large and orange. Ruth surprised me by looking absolutely beautiful in her electric blue skirt, frizzy red hair pulled back into a tight chignon. She waved at me as she ran past my piano. Shy Pauletta was pretty and graceful in her pink skirt—and not crying, for once. But Nancy Morris was the big surprise. In her shiny white skirt she looked lovely and moved slowly, with perfect composure, a real dancer, heading into a future that seemed to stretch before her across the stage. Mrs. Fitzgerald smiled at her. “Nice. Very nice, dear.”

  But then the thundercloud came back, as Mrs. Fitzgerald counted on her fingers: “—five—six—only six? Where are the others? Where is my Little Orphan Annie?”

  “Probably in jail,” Ruth said under her breath.

  “Perhaps you can improvise a bit,” suggested Dr. Schwartz.

  “This is totally unprofessional. Where are they? It will not do!” Mrs. Fitzgerald seemed to swell before our eyes, dire and regal, a menacing queen.

  “Jesus Christ!” from Ruth.

  “He ain’t in this dance” came Jinx’s flat nasal voice as she ran down the aisle. “I’m in this dance! And you are, too—what the hell are you doing down there?” now grabbing up Myra, who’d been cowering between the seats. “Come on! If I’m coming, you’re coming, too—” dragging Myra down the aisle with her.

  All the hours were laughing now, and Mrs. Fitzgerald clapped her hands. “Places!”

  I switched into the upbeat intro as—at last—the great clock took form before us on the stage. And now I understood the purpose of the colors, as the girls in the pastel skirts took their positions at the small numbers, the palette darkening as time progressed around the clock toward Mrs. Fitzgerald herself at twelve.

  “Come on, now, come on!” Jinx, in green, pushed pale-blue Myra across the stage, pliant as a pipe cleaner.

  “Oh buck up, honey!” Ruth snapped, and surprisingly, Myra did, slipping in at five.

  Jinx went over to seven and stretched, perfectly at ease, grinning out toward the empty auditorium that suddenly seemed to fill with people, a phantom audience, a full house. And it was again true, as it was always true, that once Jinx was onstage, you had to look at her. You had to. Her flaming red hair moved loosely all over her head as she stretched, limbering up, her green skirt swirled out and then clung to her legs.

  Mrs. Fitzgerald took her own place at the top of the clock, then nodded to me. I played louder, moving into the actual music. Each hour turned in place, then twirled, all the skirts swirling about them, the many ruffling layers making them look like so many carnations. And then the great clock turned, the whole clock went round, all those carnations, including Mrs. Fitzgerald, now one of them. The kaleidoscope, I thought. Of course, the kaleidoscope.

  “Now we’re in business!” Phoebe announced.

  But no one heard her, or took any notice of her, as round and round they went. It’s amazing what a costume can do—the physical transformation that occurs—the liberating effect upon the psyche. Though each girl must have tried on her skirt at least once in the Art Room at some point, presumably—or even several times, for fittings—they had never worn them in public, or all together. Round and round and round they went, then sallied forth in their groups of three to dance charmingly, that first hard sequence now fully natural, like the routine of our lives.

  Each hour was distinctive, each different from all the others, each very beautiful in her own way, and I can see them yet in my mind’s eye—Dixie the blooming red rose she had been all her life; sweet pink Pauletta, whom I didn’t really know; Ruth with all that energy focused for once, a blue bolt of lightning; bright orange Karen Quinn, practical and useful as a marigold; Jinx, a streak of green neon; pale blue Myra, fluid as water; pure white Nancy Morris, all talent and resolve, like a distant star; Amanda come into her own at last, a sunflower of Provence; and Mrs. Fitzgerald herself, regal and secret as an iris, born to dance—oh why hadn’t she joined the San Carlo company when they asked her? Why not? Why do we do the things we should not, and not do the things we should? But no matter. For the garden blooms, the seasons pass, the great clock turns.

  I strike the time.

  And ah, alas, now the hours must scatter, searching, searching, arabesque, arabesque, the plaintive notes, the frantic search until the clock strikes again and all the hours—all!—flutter offstage like a cloud of butterflies.

  THE AUDIENCE WHISPERS, rustles, and several among them start to applaud, then stop in confusion. A deep hush descends upon us all—the audience, the empty stage. The moment extends . . . and extends . . . until the suspense becomes unbearable.

  Then voila! I hit the jubilant C chord and here they all come back, leaping and strutting, laughing and smiling, to form a lineup straight across the stage, like the girls in the Moulin Rouge. Even Mrs. Fitzgerald is fully engaged, enjoying herself, face like a flame. She nods at me, I hit the C again, and suddenly it’s the cancan, the cancan! As surprising and improbable as anything in life. “Kick, one two three! Kick, one two three!” she cries out. “Kick high! Over your head!” The beautiful skirts are petals, they are wings, lifting my chums, the hours, oh fly! Fly away, fly away, fly away home.

  Our little audience is on their feet now, holding on to each other, laughing and crying, as are we all. Kick, one two three!

  Together the hours bow, together raise their clasped hands then stand exhausted, amazed by what they have just done. Mrs. Fitzgerald awards them with her rare smile. “Go, go home now,” she says to them. “Get some rest. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  THE MOUNTAIN TIMES, Asheville, N.C., March 11, 1948—A fire started in the kitchen of the Central Building of Highland Hospital last night and shot up the dumbwaiter shaft, leaping out onto each floor. It was discovered by nurse Jane Anderson who had earlier administered sedatives to all the patients on the 5th floor. At 11:30 she thought she smelled smoke and went downstairs to investigate. She opened the kitchen door to behold a bizarre sight—the big kitchen table burning all around the edges of its galvanized top with the flames rising over a foot high, making it look like “one of those fiery hoops animals jump through in circuses.” Confused and terrified, she did not try to extinguish this burning rectangle but ran back upstairs to the nurses’ station on the fourth floor and started trying in vain to telephone her supervisor, Willie May Hall, over at Oak Lodge, as she had been told to do in case of a fire or other emergency. But the hospital’s telephone exchange was not working properly, so finally she called the Asheville Fire
Department.

  The first alarm came into their headquarters at 11:44 according to Fire Chief J.C. Fitzgerald—fourteen minutes after Miss Anderson first smelled the smoke. He said that the fire had been burning for 40 to 45 minutes by the time they got there. “If the alarm had been given 30 minutes earlier,” he said, “there would have been no need for anyone losing their lives.”

  But the heat had grown so intense by the time the firemen arrived that their gushing water had absolutely no effect on the leaping flames. For the fire had spread rapidly, racing along the halls and filling the stairways with smoke. There was no sprinkler system and no fire alarm system. The top floor was entirely locked down to insure the safety of all those whose insulin shock treatments were in progress. But most windows and doors on the other floors were locked as well, severely hampering the efforts of the hospital staff, local police and citizens, and firefighters who arrived in force when they finally got there. The fire filled the sky. Orange-tipped flames laced with black and white smoke shot up from the hospital like fireworks, lighting up the whole night . . .

  I RAN UP the hill with Amanda and Ruth but then lost them amid the flood of shouting, converging townspeople. A sobbing black-smudged patient in his pajamas ran into me, going the other way. My eyes stung from the smoke.

  The Central Building looked as if a child with a fiery crayon had painstakingly outlined it: the roofline, the walls, each floor, the windows in which black, gesticulating figures stood framed. I could feel the heat long before I neared the building—or got as close as I could get, I should say, for the police had cordoned it off to make way for those who were still going in and out, bringing patients to the waiting stretchers and ambulances. Everyone was screaming, or crying, or yelling—a huge moan went up as one of the burning fire escapes—for they were made of wood, too—broke loose and fell, with people on it.

  Here and there I glimpsed familiar faces in the intense red glow, but not many, and not for long, and not Freddy or Phoebe or Dr. Schwartz or the Overholsers or anybody I really knew except for heroic Carl Renz, easily identifiable due to his size, who kept walking in and out of the burning building like a robot calmly carrying people in his arms. Two days later he would die as a result of his own burns. Mr. Pugh would be hospitalized for months.

  The police were trying to disperse the crowd, but I could neither leave nor look away from the black figures in silhouette against the orange and red flames until the roof began to collapse and they were gone, my princesses, my chums, and it was over. Dixie died there, and Mrs. Fitzgerald, and Pauletta, and four other women. I remembered what Mrs. Fitzgerald had said in Art so long ago, about the danger of putting princesses in towers. Her body would be identified only by her charred ballet slipper, and Dixie’s by her dental work, that perfect smile.

  Still I could not leave, for on the balcony still standing at the end of the top floor, several stockings hung out on a clothesline were dancing, dancing, dancing in the rising heat of the fire, and as I watched, I thought of Mrs. Fitzgerald and also of my own mother, and how much I had loved her, beautiful dancer, as I had loved my own big-headed baby girl. “Places!” I cried, clapping my hands as they danced on for as long as they could, Mamma and Mrs. Fitzgerald, through their hard, bright lives.

  CHAPTER 16

  I AM IN NEW ORLEANS now, where I teach private piano lessons and am proud to be a staff accompanist at the venerable Petit Theatre. I live alone—by choice, I might add—for I have had a few suitors here, most as odd as myself, yet not unattractive. After the fire, I found I could not marry Freddy, somehow, but the Carrolls gave me the small remainder of my inheritance from Arthur Graves, which has allowed me to return to this city.

  And as for the fire, I am certain that Flossie set it, though I never said so, and other people voiced other opinions. Mrs. Hodges recalled hearing that Mrs. Fitzgerald herself had started other fires in the past, one in California and one at “La Paix” in Baltimore, and mentioned her fondness for cigarettes, which “that Jinx” was always slipping her despite the rules. Others believed that Jinx set the fire herself, for she took advantage of the commotion to vanish entirely, escaping both the remainder of her mandated stay at Highland Hospital and any possible prosecution in the death of Charles Winston. She has never been found. Pan disappeared as well, though I am not at all convinced that this had anything to do with Jinx Feeney. It is my personal feeling that he simply went to ground, moving farther back into the wilderness, like an animal fleeing a forest fire.

  But I know he will come to me eventually, which is why I settled upon this particular apartment in the Garden District quite near Audubon Park, where he will be able to get a job with the landscaping crew. Oh, but this place was hard to find! Since New Orleans is below sea level, there are no basements anywhere in the entire city. Even the cemeteries are all above ground. Yet I feel strongly that Pan will be more comfortable in some sort of lair, and at last I found this little spot, which is actually a half-basement, seven steps down from street level, the butler’s former dwelling beneath the grand historic mansion above. It also has the unexpected advantage of being much cooler in the summer, and warmer in the wintertime.

  I have furnished it quite simply with second-hand things, as you see, the piano being my only extravagance, if you can call it an extravagance. For me it is a necessity. A row of small square windows at the top of my parlor look out upon the street, and I do mean directly upon the street, and I love to sit right here in this soft green velvet armchair and watch the passing feet, the grand parade of humanity that moves along St. Charles Avenue day and night. High heels, sandals, tennis shoes, brown feet, white feet, cowboy boots, shiny pimp shoes, sensible brogans, and little patent leather pumps with white lace socks such as I once wore myself to Sunday mass at St. Louis Cathedral. It is a great variety, especially at Carnival time.

  So I like to sit here and drink a bit of sweet wine in the late afternoon and watch the parade until it relaxes me after a long day’s work. It is so relaxing that sometimes it puts me right to sleep, and once I awoke with a start to find his feet there right above me, those handmade moccasins that I’d know anywhere, stopped on the sidewalk mere inches from my window. I flew for the door but by the time I got up to the sidewalk, he was gone. I do not for one minute believe it was a dream, as my friend Clara has suggested. I believe he will return, and I shall be here. I am not yet too old to bear another child, and I should like to do it, under more auspicious circumstances, of course. Why not? Freddy and Dr. Schwartz are married now, and they are expecting one, according to Phoebe Dean. Pan can learn to speak as the baby speaks, and we will all be very comfortable right here. This apartment is larger than it looks. My palm has been itching of late, so I believe he will return soon, possibly in time for Mardi Gras, and I shall be here waiting. Oh hurry, hurry, hurry up, the azaleas and jasmine and bougainvillea are blooming now the parade is almost constant it’s time it’s time it’s almost carnival time when he will appear at my door his face like a flower.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I am grateful to the many people who helped in bringing Guests on Earth to publication. Mary Caldwell, medical ethicist and lifelong Asheville resident with early work experience at Highland Hospital, was invaluable in her careful reading and detailed advice; she also consulted with noted Asheville psychiatrist Dr. William Matthews. Linda Wagner-Martin, author of Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald, An American Woman’s Life, generously shared her research with me, including photocopies of Zelda Fitzgerald’s unpublished letters and writings in her own hand, archived material in the Princeton University Library, Manuscripts Division, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections. Opera singer Andrea Edith Moore gave me several crucial, critical readings of the novel and allowed me to trail around observing her in performance and in practice sessions with her accompanist, Deborah Hollis; both agreed to interviews. Frances and Ed Mayes offered their expertise in Italian. I am indebted to Shannon Ravenel, for her brilliant editing of this manuscript; to J
ill McCorkle, for her helpful early reading; to Jim Duffy and Susan Raines, for their knowledge of New Orleans; to Diane Plauche, for naming the “Intermezzo” section; to Hillsborough piano teacher and accompanist Grace Jean Roberts, for musical advice and teaching techniques; to Barbara Bennett, for alerting me to the Samarcand Manor mattress-burning case; to Scott Hill of Durham, North Carolina, a piano student of Mrs. Carroll’s throughout her youth, for her reminiscences; to ballad singer Sheila Kay Adams, my friend, who kindly took me up to Madison County, North Carolina, many years ago when I was researching Appalachian mountain ballads for my novel The Devil’s Dream; to Mona Sinquefield, for her help with research and manuscript preparation though draft after draft; to Chris Stamey, for his careful copyediting; to my agent, Liz Darhansoff, for always “being there” in every way; and to my husband Hal Crowther, for weird facts, companionship, risotto, and encouragement during the long years of writing this book.

  Much information is available through the University of North Carolina at Asheville’s D. Hiden Ramsey Library Special Collections/ University Archives as well as the Pack Memorial Library on Haywood Street, part of the Buncombe County Public Library system. Here I learned about early life in Asheville and the Highland Hospital’s history, and about the tragic 1948 fire.

  Adonna Thompson at the Duke University Medical Center Archives in Durham, North Carolina, was especially helpful when I began this project, guiding me through their Highland Hospital Records 1934–1980. Though actual patient records are not available, letters, clippings, memorabilia, and the many various archived Highland Hospital publications over the years proved invaluable to me in gaining a sense of hospital life during the years covered in my novel, 1936 to 1948. Here I found catalogs, brochures, programs of events such as concerts, dances, and celebrations of all kinds, the Highland Highlights magazine, and the wonderful Highland Fling newspaper published by the patients.