She gave him one of those looks that he felt as a chill up and down the length of his arms. She left the room then, left him standing in the middle of the kitchen with the bright yellow walls. The walls were blazing at him now, spotlighting the shame that he felt over what he was doing, wronging two women in fact when he thought about how he’d listened so passively to the way the men had talked about what they wanted to do with Valadean. He couldn’t stand how bright these walls were, was thinking that when they repainted he’d suggest a more muted shade. He walked out of the kitchen, headed back outside to the porch to catch a smoke. The porch was dark and soft and he inhaled deeply and settled in to the night sounds of Cecil Street. That’s when he saw Alberta.
Actually, he didn’t see her first, costumed in her usual long and dark something. He felt her presence at first until the night pulled back to reveal the outline of her face.
“Alberta,” he said as she walked up the steps on her side of the thin railing that separated the houses. “How you doing this evening, Alberta?”
“Joe,” she said and then disappeared into her house so quickly it seemed as if she’d just changed form and become air and seeped in through the brick porch wall. Joe felt a tightening in his stomach. Something about the way her face looked in the half-black air, a familiarity about her face. He suddenly needed to hear some music. Thought about going down to Tim’s apartment and putting his horn to his mouth and making his own tunes. But he felt too incapable of blowing his horn, afraid still. He crushed his cigarette out and went back into his house, went to his stereo console and riffled through his albums and found what he was looking for. “Round Midnight.” He put it on and settled down on the couch. He felt like such a fallen man right now, pieces of himself scattered all over the place, scattered all the way back to twenty or more years ago.
He was thinking now of the night he’d asked Louise to marry him. They’d been seeing each other for about half a year though their time together was erratic because of Joe’s touring schedule. Louise was living with her sister on Queen Street and this night Joe had two bouquets when he showed up, one for Maggie, just to get through the door, and the other one with the white orchid in the center for Louise. He was loaded down with other offerings for Maggie that night: a double-decker box of Whitman’s chocolates, silk nylons, a slab of steaming-hot barbecued ribs that he’d just gotten from D’s on South Street. Maggie scanned the dining-room table and said that if these gifts were leading up to him asking for her sister’s hand, he should take them back on out because her sister wasn’t ready for marriage, furthermore, the sauce from the ribs was leaking through the bag and onto her good lace tablecloth. Joe snatched up the bag and carried it into the kitchen saying as he did that actually he hadn’t come to propose to Louise. “Maggie,” he said, “I wants to marry you, baby.”
That got them all laughing and Maggie told Louise that though in her heart she thought that Louise should see the world before she carved out her rut in it, at least Joe would make her laugh. “That’s not the worst trait for a son of a bitch,” she said as she followed the aroma of the barbecued ribs and left Louise and Joe standing at the dining-room table.
Joe fumbled for the ring under the blazing light of the chandelier. He was quiet for once. Not talking, not making a joke. His hands were sweaty, and he thought cold too when he took Louise’s hand and her hand was so soft and warm. He slipped the ring on her finger, chipped diamonds around a gold band that had swallowed up two months’ worth of work. Louise was looking down. Her mountain of thick black hair had fallen forward and he couldn’t see her face. He tilted her chin up so that he could see it. Wished then that he’d left it lowered because it was easier to look at the crinkles in her hair than what her face was doing, her eyes. Dark eyes that stared right through him, not spilling over with tears of joy, or sparkling with delight. Just barraging him with a steady, unblinking gaze.
“You sure it’s me you want, Joe? Me?” Louise asked, her voice as steady as her gaze.
“What? Sure? Baby. Sure? Ask me anything, Louise, but don’t ask me if I’m sure.” Joe had had to look away then. Couldn’t hold on to her eyes. Thought that if he didn’t look away right then, Louise would have seen that he was anything but sure. He’d gone searching out C earlier. Just to make sure. Went back to Pat’s speakeasy/brothel where he had not been since the night he’d first met Louise half a year before. He’d never been to Pat’s during the day. During the day the normal three-story corner house with a storefront basement entrance gave no indication of the flesh and whiskey devoured there at night. Children played hopscotch out in the street, farther down the block a man proudly hosed down his ’48 Chrysler. Joe walked around to the side street and down the three short steps and knocked on the door with two quick knocks, a pause, and two more, the code to get in. His door knocks went unanswered. The storefront window was tightly draped. He cupped his hands and peered through the square of the window at the door. Could see the card tables arranged, which meant that at least games still went on there at night. Then he saw a figure walking across the room, headed for the door. She was light and thin and his breaths quickened that it might be C. He had to admit that he might not even recognize C under the light of day. Chuckled at the thought that he’d have to stand her under darkness to know for sure it was her. This one almost to the door looked like a ragamuffin though, in two or three layers of clothes, scarf tied around her head, unmistakable pout to her stomach indicating a baby on the way.
“Nothing till ten,” she shouted through the door and then closed the blinds, tightly blocking Joe’s view into the room.
“Well, wait, hold up, please,” Joe shouted through the door. “I’m looking for C. She still around?”
Silence then. “Hello,” Joe called again. “Please just tell me whether or not she’s still around.”
“Long gone—”
“You know where, I mean, she working still?”
“Gone, got her a man, she married now, long gone.”
He hadn’t expected such news. Had imagined himself walking into that third-floor bedroom just like always, his heaviness lifting at the sight of the curves of C’s back under that green silky robe, then the thrill of her in the dark. He told himself he should be happy for C that she’d escaped that life, been rescued from that life and made respectable by a husband. But he didn’t feel happy. Felt a rock turning over in his stomach that he recognized as molten, craggy regret.
He walked away from the house, up the street and into the store on the corner to buy a Tribune. Made small talk with the old cat behind the counter. Told him he used to be a regular at Pat’s Place but he’d been away for some months. “Still good action?” Joe asked.
“Naw, daddy,” the old cat said as he twirled a toothpick around in his mouth. “Some crazy babe married to Pat’s jailbird stepson got freed from Byberry and stabbed Pat in the chest with an ice pick. Didn’t kill her, but it shook her up so much that she went back to Chicago where she’s from. Pat’s hos split even before the red car got there. Here tell those hos took the jewelry from ’round Pat’s neck while she was bleeding on her kitchen shed floor. Nothing much goes on there at night anymore. A little card game, a little overproof liquor poured by some sweet little homely chick, some stepgrand-child to Pat. Try South Street, you want some action, daddy.”
Joe stayed in the store for about an hour talking to the old cat, thought he was the age his father would have been had he lived. He told the old guy that he was a musician, that he was thinking about getting married, had even been looking at houses, had his eye on a two-story row on Cecil Street in West Philly. “Tree-lined block feels like heaven when you walk through,” Joe said.
The old guy laughed and asked Joe if he was sure. “You a musician, daddy? Plus, you out here looking for the likes of Pat’s Place? You sure you sure?”
Joe tried to convince himself that he was sure as he focused on the china closet in Maggie’s dining room where silver-framed pictures were prop
ped behind the gleaming glass door. Even went to the china closet and opened the door and fingered the picture of Louise as a young girl snuggled under her mother’s arms. He allowed his eyes to soften as he looked at the picture. Said to the picture because he still couldn’t look at Louise just yet, “Mnh, you asking me, am I sure? Baby, ask me anything, but don’t ever ask me if I’m sure that it’s you I want.”
ROUND MIDNIGHT” was easing in and out of Joe’s consciousness as he sat on his living-room couch. He was moving his fingers through the air as if they were closing and opening over his saxophone. He’d always gotten a rousing ovation when he played that song. Even from C. Though when he thought about it now, never from Louise.
Chapter 14
IT WAS FRIDAY morning and Cecil Street was setting up for the block party that would start tonight, culminating in the fireworks late on Saturday. Deucie was curled up under the cellar stairs, an array of Joe’s and Louise’s and Shay’s clothes from the boxes down here spread out in a thickened mass for her deathbed. She’d found something white in one of the boxes, looked like the sort of robe someone might wear when they were baptized, so she put it on. That’s the least she could do for the people who lived here who’d likely suffer through the smell of her body rotting before they had the presence of mind to investigate their own cellar. But their cellar had been a nice home the past weeks. And it sure beat the mental hospital, or jail, as a place to draw her final breath.
She’d done a brief stint at Muncy after she’d tried to kill Pat. Though the court-appointed lawyer could have gotten her off with an insanity plea given her recurrent stays at mental health facilities, Deucie had protested. Told the judge at the arraignment that the truth of it was that she’d had every intention of killing Pat. That had been her premeditated plan, to stab Pat through the heart with the ice pick for turning her daughter out. She wasn’t a liar, she insisted to the judge. Her daddy always said that a liar is worse than a thief because if you’ll lie, you’ll steal. She was a mother more than prepared to commit murder to right a wrong done to her child. She’d swear to it on a whole stack of Bibles, not just the one they pushed under her hand. The judge accepted her guilty plea and held her over for sentencing. Gave her a paltry sentence of one year and another four on probation. Though in her mind the only difference between jail and the crazy house was that in one the staff wore blue, in the other white. This cellar had eliminated both places as the likely site of her death and she was grateful. So she’d say thank you to these people for their hospitality by dressing herself in the robe. Thought that she wouldn’t be such a frightful spectacle when she was discovered. Thought that dressed in the holy-looking white number she might look more like a fallen angel than a dead witch.
There was hammering going on outside, the sound of metal poles falling and clanging, wood being sawed. She wondered if Joe and Louise and Shay were out there helping. She’d learned their names when they talked in loud voices in certain spots in the house and their voices fell over her head. Knew that Louise was the mother and Shay was the smart-mouthed daughter and Joe was the husband who was running around. Knew he was running around because of the times of night she’d hear his heavy footsteps on the porch. And then silence in the house. Knew that silence was filled with accusations swallowed, unvented guilt. She’d ask the Big Man to turn a special eye on them when she beheld him finally face-to-face. Had to behold him soon. It had been days since she’d eaten solid food. Drained all of her energy just to make it back to the spigot and get the water running so she could drink. She no longer even considered hoisting herself up onto the windowsill to go for the cat’s bowl. Though she did squat under the window from time to time just to have a few strokes of sunlight before she went back to her curl under the steps to wait on death. She’d watched Louise from her squat as Louise surveyed the cat’s bowl. Saw the worry lines come up on Louise’s forehead. Thought it sweet that Louise was worried about her diminishing appetite. Thought that Louise could pretend all she wanted that it was the cat she was worried about. “You ain’t no dummy, Louise,” Deucie had muttered to herself as she looked at Louise in her starched nurse’s uniform calling for the cat. “You know it’s me down here you feeding. Can’t admit it to yourself that you know, but you know.”
The closer Deucie got to death, the more she understood. Believed now that people always know more than what they’re willing to admit. Deny to their death that they know because then they’ll have to act. Deucie understood that kind of denial because it was much easier to not act. Had her own denial working about who was living right next door. Whose high-yellow legs she’d see on those steps out back. Whose screams had gotten under her skin when the sirens were right outside. Could admit it to herself now that she could do nothing about it. Deucie had watched Louise in the white soft-soled shoes and white stockings walk to the same fence that the cat was always creeping under. Had heard Louise say the name, Alberta. Just like that. Alberta was just that close. Deucie had let go a small gasping sound. Went to the drain to vomit. Then back to her deathbed because she was powerless to do anything more. Certainly didn’t have the power to listen to the frightened screams her presence would surely generate. Nor did she have the power to keep them from carting her back to a hospital, heroic efforts to keep her living past her time. So she’d pretended the woman next door was just some random next-door neighbor who didn’t mix in much with other people. Not her Alberta, that sweet, sweet child who’d been terror stricken when she’d seen her all those years ago and yet had kept her screams inside. The softness, the purity of that gesture filled Deucie up all over again. She would have cried right now over that gesture but she seemed to be dripping blood from every place these days, her nose, her mouth. So she didn’t want to cry and see blood in her tears.
Except that this sensation of Alberta being right next door was such a big feeling. It rumbled through her now like an earthquake getting ready to happen. Suddenly Deucie was hearing her father’s favorite song. Before her father was stricken with high sugar, Deucie knew when he was coming and going because he was always singing about how he said he wasn’t gonna tell nobody, but he just couldn’t keep it to himself, what the Lord had done for him. Suddenly Deucie couldn’t keep this feeling to herself. The largeness of the feeling wouldn’t allow her to lie here and die knowing that Alberta was right next door. Knowing that only a cellar window and a modest-size backyard separated her from getting one last peep at her daughter’s face. She sat straight up then, forgetting her weakness, the dizziness prompted by sudden moves, the unpredictable thunderbolts of pain that owned her head these days. She clapped her hands. “Ain’t this just like life,” she said. “Just when you ready to turn out the lights for good, you see you got one more river to cross.” She raised her hands in an optimistic hallelujah way.
She would try to get next door once quiet and darkness had fallen. She’d sneak into the house and look at her daughter while she slept. That’s all she wanted to do. Look at the child one last time and whisper thank you.
JOE AND LOUISE WERE in the kitchen having an antagonistic breakfast. Joe was irritable, his neck and back stiff from having fallen asleep on the couch the night before while listening to “’Round Midnight” over and over. Hadn’t even wakened when Shay came in after sitting out on the steps until eleven with Bobbi. Louise panicked at first when she woke at dawn and Joe wasn’t in the bed. Tiptoed down the hall and heard him snoring downstairs. She was relieved, then sad, now angry as they sat across from each other, both having taken this Friday off, Louise because of her mouth, plus she had baking to do for the block party; Joe needed to help get the booths and stages put together. But right now Louise was quizzing Joe about the plate that she’d sent next door with the German chocolate cake when Neet had come home from the hospital. She was asking Joe how the plate had gotten back in the cabinet.
Her tongue went to all the empty spaces in her mouth as she listened to Joe stammer out a response. Louise had only noticed the plate because
she was going through her dishes, ferreting out the chipped ones to box up and put down in the cellar along with the clothes she’d bagged, waiting in the back of her closet for Joe to carry down. At first she’d gotten excited when she’d seen the plate because she thought that Neet and Shay were talking again. But she’d asked Shay as Shay left the house this morning for work. Shay’s dark eyes had lowered and she’d said that no, she’d had no contact with Neet.
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