Last Dance at Jitterbug Lounge

by Pamela Morsi

  “That Melinda, she’s a mighty pretty girl,” I began.

  He glanced up at me and raised an eyebrow, a grin on his face. “I noticed that,” he said. “In fact, most of the guys in school have noticed that. But I guess I’m a bit surprised that you would notice.”

  “I may be old, but I’m not blind,” I told him.

  “Does Mom know that?”

  I laughed “That woman knows more about me than I know myself.” I hesitated for a moment and then decided that was exactly the right track to go down. “You know, your mother and I, we have such a good marriage. We’re happy. And our life is full and fun. Some people would say we don’t have much. There’s not enough paint on the planet to cover up the flaws in this old house. We’re never going to be rich or have a lot of nice things. But we have each other and we love each other.”

  J.D. nodded thoughtfully.

  “When trouble comes,” I told him. “And it does for everybody, money and property and what you’ve accumulated, that stuff doesn’t mean much. But if you have the right person beside you, you can get through a lot.”

  “I believe that,” he said. “I see how you and Mom are and that’s what I want someday. Someday, not very soon, though.”

  I managed not to sigh aloud with relief. “If Melinda is the one,” I said, “she’ll wait for you.”

  His grin broadened and he chuckled aloud. “Melinda’s not the one,” he said. “Don’t get me wrong. I like Melinda. She’s got a cute face and nice figure and fabulous legs.”

  That was all true, but I was taken aback to have him inventory her assets aloud.

  “You know what I like best about Melinda, Dad?”

  I tried to think of what he might not have mentioned. “Her smile?”

  His expression sobered into deliberate seriousness. “Her baby-blue Mustang,” he answered.

  We laughed, both of us. It was very funny, but I had to remember my place as father, so composed myself as quick as I could.

  “Son, I don’t want you to marry that girl, but I don’t want you to break her heart, either.”

  “I won’t,” he insisted.

  “Are you sure? Girls can be very fragile and tender-hearted.”

  J.D. shook his head. “She only goes out with me because her father dislikes me so.”

  “What? How could he not like you?”

  “He can’t stand me,” J.D. said. “To Melinda’s face he refers to me as Dirty Shirttails. He’s scared to death that his precious daughter is going to tie herself to the trashy Shertz family. So she pretty much dates me to annoy Piggy.”

  “Oh my gosh!” I was shocked.

  “Melinda and I are perfect together. She gets to needle her dad and I get to drive the Mustang. It’s a match made in heaven.”

  J.D. laughed again.

  I remember that face, that young, strong face with the wide grin. Of all the photographs we have, he never smiled like that in any of them, yet it’s that smile I remember most.

  It was so long ago. So very long ago. I had failed my son. And now he was gone. Geri was gone, as well. I was all alone in the world, all alone and trapped in this bed in this hospital room. There was someone beside me. I tried to open my eyes to see, but my body would not obey my will. I was weak as a kitten, unable to so much as lift my hand.

  The music in the hallway was playing again. As soon as I recognized the tune I wanted to laugh at how completely appropriate it was to hear “Papa’s in Bed with His Britches On.” The band could not be Dizzy Gillespie’s, but they were almost as good. I relaxed into my pillow. Maybe all the music in this place wasn’t so bad after all.

  Monday, June 13, 4:35 p.m.

  Jack had been unable to get Dana on the phone all day. She didn’t pick up anywhere and that was not like her. He’d begun to worry. And to make it worse, he’d called Swim Infinity a little before four and Laura had put him off with, “Let me call you right back.” More than a half hour later, she still had not phoned. Mondays could be very busy, he reminded himself, and with Dana out, Laura would be fielding calls from both the work crews and the clients. But he didn’t like it. He needed to be there. He needed to be working. The very last thing he wanted or needed was to have time on his hands to rethink his own past.

  Women liked that kind of thing. Well, maybe not all women. He couldn’t imagine Dana being keen on it. But Claire certainly was. It was as if she was determined to understand everybody’s perspective, everyone’s reason for actions taken. Even now she was sorting through the photos and mementos stored under Bud and Geri’s bed. As if coming across some scrap of paper would explain everything.

  This is what they were thinking when they took you in.

  This is what they were thinking when they gave you back.

  “It’s very typical for children who were very young when they lost their parents to feel abandoned by them,” she’d said to him. “Maybe your feelings about your grandparents are complicated by anger associated with your father’s death.”

  Jack had rolled his eyes. “I think you’ve gone one Oprah show over the top on that one,” he told her.

  But he did wonder if all his impressions, his certainties, about his relationship with his father’s family, might be flawed.

  He had to find something to do.

  He pulled his cell phone out of his pocket, making certain it was operational. It was, but he had no missed calls and no messages. He needed to be busy. He’d repaired about everything he could see that needed repairing. He’d even painted the railing on the front porch. Which, of course, made the whole house look as if it needed a fresh coat.

  He’d changed the oil in both Geri’s car and Bud’s truck. And he’d given them both a nice wash and wax.

  He’d cleared the yard and mowed the grass. He was amazed that Bud still used his push mower. It worked fairly well, but Jack took great pride in sharpening the blades.

  He’d looked over the garden, abundant with flowers. He could probably hook up an automatic watering system for it. But he’d have to pull out a lot of plants to do it. And even to his eyes, the garden looked as if it had been very well kept.

  At a loss, Jack walked into the shaded work shed and looked around. The smell of axle grease, the dirt floor and the lingering scent of sawdust was an aromatic cocktail he found compelling and intoxicating. Surely, he thought to himself, there’s something in this building that is just screaming to be done.

  As soon as his eyes settled on the neat pile of cut boards on the top shelf, he knew what he needed to do. His father had wanted to make a box for Geri to keep her treasures in, but he hadn’t had the time to finish it. And Bud hadn’t had the heart. Jack figured he had both time and heart to do the job.

  He pulled the wood down and spread it along the workbench. The raw wood had aged considerably since it had been cut. The pieces on the top of the stack now showed a rich dark patina, as did all the edges and corners. He smoothed his palm across the grain of the wood and ran his fingers along the carefully detailed slots of the one completed dovetail corner. It was a strange feeling to know, without question, that his father’s hands had done exactly the same. He’d made a through joint, the strongest of all dovetails and the easiest to work by hand. Jack fitted the two pieces together. It was a perfect fit.

  He smiled. From his Cub Scout days, he’d always had a keen interest in building. And he just seemed to have a knack when it came to using tools. His talents had always been a mystery to his Van Brugge family. His brothers had fine motor skills that were better than Jack’s own, but they never seemed to get the feel for wood, or to have the desire to create something from its raw materials. Their scientific curiosity had always been directed toward plants and animals, while Jack was more fascinated with the geometry of structure and function. It was just another working-class anomaly, something that made Jack different, something in which he’d been embarrassed to take any pride. But at this moment, and maybe for the first time in his life, Jack had an inkling about the source of
his natural ability.

  He took the pieces apart once more and looked around for paper and pencil. Without plans to work from or a picture of what the finished product was supposed to look like, he would have to imagine the intent his father had by looking at the evidence of what was already done. Not a foolproof method, but Jack took up the challenge. His woodworking skills were rusty, but he needed to do something. And this was, he realized, what he wanted to do.

  He found paper and carefully traced the patterns of the cuts already made. He was somewhat surprised by the size of the box. It was supposedly for his grandmother’s treasures, and from what Jack had seen Claire dragging out from under the bed, that would require a box of considerable size. What these boards represented was clearly something considerably smaller.

  From around the room he gathered the tools he would need: an adjustable gauge, a square, a dovetail saw and a half-inch chisel. Not everything was as easy to find as he’d hoped, but he did find his grandfather’s shop to be surprisingly intuitive. It took only a few moments before he was working. From the traced patterns he marked the wood with a pencil. Then he clamped a board secure to the workbench and began to saw with a special blade, narrow and designed for fine crosscuts. Still, it would only be close to the right dimensions. The wood required hand chiseling to achieve the perfect snug fit.

  Keeping busy was a wonderful way to keep errant thoughts at bay, but today they followed him. And because they did, Jack forced himself to concentrate totally on the task at hand. He was accustomed to doing that. It was how he got by most of the time. The more vexing or complicated his life became, the more he would direct his focus to his work.

  He paused in midmotion as that realization came to him.

  When mankind was admonished “know thyself,” it had never really been explained that the information was most often arrived at in dribs and drabs.

  Reasonably, Jack began to consider the accusation that Claire so often made that he was hiding out with his work.

  He might have pursued this direction of self-discovery further had his cell phone not gone off. He pulled it out of his pocket. It had been nearly an hour since Laura had said she’d call right back. Finally, she had. But the office should be closed by now and his receptionist should have been on her way home. He flipped open the phone.

  “Yeah,” he said by way of greeting.

  There was a momentary silence on the other end.

  “Hello, Laura?”

  “Um, yes…Mr. Crabtree,” she stumbled. “I meant to call you sooner, but…well, it’s…well…ah, you know Mondays.”

  “What are you still doing at work?” he said. “It can’t be that busy. Did you manage to get in touch with Dana?”

  “Uh…well.” The hesitation was beginning to annoy Jack.

  “Laura, what the devil is going on?”

  With a gush of anxiety and concern, the receptionist answered with a demand.

  “Mr. Crabtree, you’ve got to come back here,” she said. “I’m not completely sure what all is happening, but none of it seems to be good.”

  Jack couldn’t even imagine what she might be talking about. “I’ve only been gone four days,” he reminded her.

  “A lot of things can change in that amount of time,” she said.

  “Like what?

  “Like…well, like Dana going out on her own.”

  “Out on her own?”

  “She’s starting her own business,” Laura said.

  Jack was genuinely surprised to say the least. He’d always figured that Dana would eventually go out on her own, but she hadn’t yet acquired the knowledge or experience to compete with most of the guys in town. Most of her ability was in sales. She did have a good eye, but her understanding of construction was very limited.

  Jack responded with generosity. “I wish her well, but surely she’ll stay on at Swim Infinity for a while,” he said. “It takes time to get a new business on its feet. She’ll have to find a prime location, hire some good people, do some advertising and all of that takes money. She’ll need a really top-notch business plan to go to the bank.”

  “She doesn’t need to go to the bank,” Laura said. “Mr. Butterman is paying. She’s already setting up in one of the auxiliary shops next to his store near La Cantera. And she’s offered jobs to most of the guys in your crew, with higher pay and Butterman’s company benefits package. I think a lot of them are going to take her up on it. She doesn’t want me. She said I’m not ‘hot enough’ for the front of her store.”

  The last was spoken with such heartbreak and disappointment, Jack thought the woman must be close to tears.

  “So you’ve got to come back and do something,” Laura said. “I need this job. I’ve got car payments every month!”

  Jack had several monthly payments of his own. He wasn’t worried, but he didn’t like what he was hearing.

  “I’ll get a flight back as soon as I can,” he told her.

  The old iron bed in Bud and Geri’s back bedroom was narrow and very high off the floor. Claire wasn’t sure if this late nineteenth-century design was meant to keep vermin out of the mattress or to get the sleepers closer to the warmer air near the ceiling. Or if it was, just what it seemed, a practical arrangement that allowed for abundant under-the-bed storage. As soon as Claire got home from the hospital, she changed into her work clothes and got down on her knees on the little rag rug at the bedside and began dragging out the dusty boxes that were stored there.

  She found old scrapbooks with orderly photographs held in place with black paper corners. In one picture there was a line of pretty young women standing in front of a brick building, the girl in the center in a graduate’s cap and gown. Claire looked closely. It had to be one of the aunts, but she didn’t know which one. She did recognize Geri, not because she looked like the woman Claire had known, but more because she reminded Claire of her twins.

  There were newspaper articles cut out of the Catawah Daily Citizen, and later Claire noticed, from the Catawah Weekly Citizen. Many were obituaries of people Claire didn’t know. There were also a lot of clips that featured a young J.D. either playing sports or getting some accolade:

  Crabtree Wins Leadership Award

  Jack Dempsey Crabtree, Jr., known locally as J.D., received the Leader of Tomorrow Award from local American Legion Post 98. Crabtree, a senior at Catawah High, is an honor student, national merit scholar and three-year letterman in basketball and baseball. He was chosen for his schoolwork, his extracurricular activities and his service to his community.

  In the last year he developed and initiated an antilittering program in conjunction with the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. The program, Catawah, Keep It Clean, was lauded earlier this year by Lieutenant Governor George Nigh as an example of local effectiveness in the state’s new Beautify Oklahoma campaign.

  When asked about his future plans, Crabtree announced that he has applied to the U.S. Air Force Academy. “If I don’t get in,” he said, “I’ll join up.”

  Crabtree is the son of Mr. and Mrs. J.D. ‘Bud’ Crabtree, Sr.

  Claire smiled and laid the yellowed piece of newsprint on the stack. She wondered if Jack had ever seen these. Even if he had, her children had not.

  There were also articles about Bud and his volunteer work with civil defense, old “Ann Landers” columns on getting along with the neighbors and which direction to hang the toilet paper. Rather than wade through all of that, Claire moved on to other boxes.

  Several contained old phonograph records, mainly from the big-band era. Lots of ancient and brittle seventy-eights by the orchestras of Tommy Dorsey or Artie Shaw, as well as later, minted LPs of greatest hits. She flipped through them with the thoughtfulness and care that some might reserve for visiting a museum.

  There was a lot of memorabilia of the Shertz family, including an old German-language Bible. Tucked inside was an aged and brown note in a poorly written hand: Arrived SS Hyde June 16,1854 Aldolphos Shertz 41 years, wife Willamina 34 years
, sons Heinrich and Fredrich 11 years, daughter Ava dead at sea. Claire placed the piece of family history aside, reverently thinking to herself, more twins, it clearly ran in the family.

  One box contained only trophies and plaques, some for Bud but most for J.D. Jack’s father played sports, made speeches and was good at history.

  There was one box that was full of baby clothes. Claire couldn’t help but sigh at the sight of them. There is just something about miniature sweaters and tiny stray mittens that touch a mother’s heart. Her favorites were the lace-up leather shoes and a little pair of hand-sewn overalls. Most of the shirts and pants appeared not to be store brands but stitched up on somebody’s sewing machine. All pieced together with love, Claire thought to herself. She happened on a round flattened beret of soft grayed wool with a note pinned to it. Jackie’s first cap, last piece knitted by Grandma Stark, 1972. Claire’s jaw dropped in surprise. She’d assumed all these baby clothes belonged to J.D., but, of course, these could easily be those of her husband, as well.

  The sound of someone knocking on the front door distracted her attention.

  “Just a minute!” she called out as she extricated herself from the prison of boxes with which she’d surrounded herself. She made it to the front door to find a woman about her own age standing there. She was dressed in green crop pants, flip-flops and a T-shirt with flowerpots on the bosom.

  “Claire? Hi!” the woman greeted, enthusiastically offering her hand. “I’m Mena Beverly. I’m sorry I didn’t call. I left the house this morning with my phone on the charger and I haven’t made it back home yet.”

  “I guess you’re one of my husband’s cousins,” Claire said.

  “Right, but isn’t everybody?” She laughed. “Look, I hate to do this to you, but my grandmother made me bring her here. I’ve got a million things to do—would you mind letting her stay here on your porch. I swear I won’t be more than a half hour. Promise. Absolutely.”