The Girls at the Kingfisher Club: A Novel

by Genevieve Valentine

  “That was eight years back,” Jo said. “You’re easy to fool when you’re young. It fades.”

  “You kept that bag in your closet for ages, though,” Lou said.

  Jo blinked. She’d never told anyone, certainly never Lou—Lou, who had always been suspicious of Jo wanting to leave them and look for something better.

  It couldn’t have mattered, what Jo felt.

  If she loved him, she could have forgiven him for almost betraying them (she never would); surely she couldn’t have given him up.

  But she’d gone home from Tom’s little room above the Marquee without hesitating, just after he’d agreed to take Lou someplace where her father couldn’t get at her.

  Tom had looked heartbroken and distant the whole way back home, like he was working to shut her out of something she’d come too close to.

  She could have said, “I missed you.” She could have said, “Keep driving, just you and me.”

  She was putting Lou in the car instead.

  One sister was safe. That was the bottom line. What Jo felt about it was beside the point.

  “You’d better wash up,” Jo said, standing. “He’ll be here soon. You don’t want to keep him waiting.”

  • • • • • •

  The sisters said their good-byes in the fourth-floor hall, filing into Jo and Lou’s room in pairs, red-eyed. Jo had made them put on day clothes (you never knew, these days, when Father would send for you), but they were bleary from the long night and from crying.

  Doris was inconsolable, but refused to leave until at last Ella took pity and walked her back to their room.

  “But she’s going,” Doris said between sobs, and Ella said something comforting that Jo didn’t hear.

  “You shouldn’t have woken them,” said Lou, blinking back tears. “This is a circus. Too much sentiment.”

  “You couldn’t have left without seeing them,” said Jo, and Lou made a face but didn’t argue.

  “If you even say good-bye to me I’ll kick you.”

  “Just get downstairs before Father changes his mind.”

  “Louise,” their father called, “Tom is here. Is the trunk ready? We have an appointment at city hall that I believe you don’t want to miss?”

  “Yes, sir!” Lou called back, turning a little green.

  “Well, then come down and say good-bye to your father, and we’ll take your trunk to the car.”

  Lou and Jo dragged the trunk onto the landing, where Walters materialized out of nowhere.

  “Mister Hamilton would like to see you downstairs for the send-off, Miss Josephine,” he told her.

  Jo’s stomach sank. She didn’t think she could bear waving good-bye to Tom as he drove off with Lou in the passenger seat, headed for city hall and the open road.

  “Oh, no,” she said. “I—I couldn’t.”

  “He’d like to see you there for the send-off,” the butler repeated, as if she hadn’t spoken. The last scraping steps faded as he went down the stairs to the front hall and out to the waiting Ford.

  “You don’t have to go,” Lou said.

  It was a lie; their father issued orders, not invitations.

  “Come on,” Jo said. “The quicker you’re away from here, the better.”

  “Your problem is that you’re too sentimental,” muttered Lou.

  On the way down the stairs, Jo grabbed Lou’s hand and squeezed it once, too hard.

  By the time they were in sight of their father and Tom, Jo had her hands back at her sides.

  Tom was still in his car coat and had tucked his hat in his left hand.

  “Louise,” Tom said, “it’s wonderful to see you again. You look lovely.”

  “And you,” Lou said, coming down the last few stairs to meet him. Her eyes were fever-bright as she looked up at Tom, her face pale.

  In the morning light from the hallway, with Lou in her sharp dress and cloche hat and Tom in his black suit with the tie done up, they looked like a lobby card advertising the wedding at the end of a movie.

  Jo could hardly make it down the last few stairs; her body had turned to stone, somehow.

  Their father watched Jo with a strange expression as she descended, and she wondered what he saw. If he even guessed, about Tom—

  But when she looked again, it was gone, and his face was implacable as ever.

  “Josephine,” Tom said. “Nice to see you again, too. It’s very kind of you to see us off.”

  “Don’t mention it,” said Jo.

  The ghost of a smile crossed his face before he turned to Lou and caught her hand in his. Then his smile was just for Lou, and Jo walked to the narrow window beside the door, as far away from them as she could get.

  The street was bustling; the street was filled with women Jo’s age, walking briskly with purses and attachés, hailing cabs to wherever they wanted to go, without anyone minding where they went.

  She couldn’t imagine.

  “Sir,” Tom said to their father, “if you’re ready, we should get going—we don’t want to miss our chance with the judge.”

  “Oh, absolutely,” their father said. “I’ll follow you in the car in just a moment.”

  “The trunk is ready,” Walters said from the doorway. Jo hadn’t even noticed him.

  She clasped her hands behind her back.

  Lou kissed their father on the cheek, and Tom shook his hand, and they walked through the door.

  Jo had a glimpse of Lou’s red-rimmed eyes, and of Tom’s face in the shadow of his hat—someone brushed her hands as they passed, either Lou or Tom; she hadn’t felt it at first and she couldn’t be sure.

  Then they were both in the car and pulling away, and the silhouette of Lou’s waving arm was lost to sight as they turned the corner.

  “Josephine, please pull yourself together.”

  Jo hadn’t realized she’d been crying.

  She ran her hand over her eyes and cleared her throat. “Yes, sir. I’m sorry. You wanted to see me?”

  Their father smiled thinly. “No, Josephine, I have everything I need at the moment, thank you. Please go upstairs and try to keep some order. I’ll be back as soon as the ceremony is over.”

  The hair on Jo’s neck stood up, but she couldn’t figure quite why. He was always most terrible when he was trying to seem kind, and there was no telling what it really meant.

  The girls were behind their doors as Jo took the staircase (she had seen more of the front stairs in the last month than in the first twenty-seven years she had spent in the house). It was quiet as night; Jo imagined them crowded into the bedrooms that had a view of the street, peering through the curtains to catch a glimpse of the car as it pulled away with Lou inside, their sister set free and making a straight line for the open road.

  When Jo closed the door to their room (her room, now) and closed her eyes, she could almost hear the rumble of the car as it turned through the streets; she could almost hear Louise laughing.

  She could feel the restless mourning beneath her, ten wide-eyed birds calling to be let out, their desperation pressing against her feet as if she was the lock on the roof of their cage.

  Jo wasn’t used to crying. She dug the heels of her hands into her eyes stupidly, like it would stop the tears, but the crying had the best of her.

  It frightened her how deep her sobs could reach, as if someone was pulling sorrow from her bones.

  • • • • • •

  Jo had closed the door on them all, and the breakfast tray had come and gone without her even getting up for the knock, but at two o’clock the little raps came in urgent bursts, and Jo recognized at last that it was Rebecca knocking and not the maid.

  “General,” Rebecca was hissing at the door, “General, we need to know about—oh yipes.”

  Jo didn’t want to think about what she looked like. She hadn’t slept in days, had hardly eaten, had been worn out by worry; she probably looked like a cadaver.

  “What is it?”

  “It’s about tonig
ht.”

  Jo stood and crossed the room. “What about it?”

  Rebecca flinched at Jo’s tone. “Nothing, General. Just wondering if we were, you know, likely to.”

  Jo realized with a sinking stomach that she hadn’t asked Tom what would happen to the Marquee in his absence. Would it be safe? Who was going to be running operations while he was away?

  The Kingfisher was out of the question—it was blind luck to have escaped the cops twice, and it would be unforgivable recklessness to go back now, not when there was any other place in the city where they might go. Poor hunting.

  It had been blind luck for Tom, too, though he couldn’t have known it then.

  Jo hoped Lou would be good for him. It was going to be a long drive to Chicago if they hated each other, but somehow she suspected they’d end up getting along like a house on fire.

  (He could love her, he said, if he only tried.)

  “No,” she said. “Not tonight. I’m not ready to take you out.”

  Rebecca frowned. “That’s unfair.”

  Jo blinked, looked at Rebecca, and raised her eyebrows. Rebecca took a half step back.

  (Jo’s fist was clenched. Jesus. She smoothed her hand along her dress.)

  “Maybe not,” Jo said. “But it’s your answer. Make your peace with it however you like.”

  Then she closed the door.

  Even though the bed was neatly made just like every other morning, and the wardrobe door was closed, the room was still achingly empty. Every powdered circle on the dresser screamed that Lou was gone for good.

  Lou had been the first person Jo told, in this room, as if she’d known even then that dancing would be the best thing they would ever do.

  Since Jo could remember, she had fallen asleep to the sound of Lou’s breathing. It had been an intrusion when she was young, this redheaded, unwelcome addition from the nursery, a little alien noise that filled the room at night.

  Now it was the silence driving her mad; at any minute, she thought, the empty place where her worries lived was going to swallow her whole.

  She went to the library, stared at the atlas until her vision blurred.

  • • • • • •

  In the middle of the afternoon, long after the glass of milk on the tray had stopped sweating and the soup had stopped steaming, the note came from their father.

  He had questions about Hattie and Mattie.

  She was to come alone.

  • • • • • •

  On her way downstairs, she knocked at Doris and Ella’s door.

  “Make sure everyone’s still dressed,” Jo said. “He wants to know about Hattie and Mattie. He’ll probably ask about you, too, and after that I don’t know what’s to keep him from calling everyone else down.”

  Doris nodded. She was still dressed from the morning, and some of the others went through the motions. The rest tended to do the bare minimum until they could get dressed for dancing.

  That was out of the question. Jo couldn’t imagine what would happen if their father caught anyone in sequins.

  She went downstairs under a stony silence, feeling as though their doors had been shut to protect them from her, rather than closing them inside.

  (Fair enough. She hated jailers, too.

  Jo swallowed a pang.)

  Their father was sitting at his desk. With one hand he was idly spinning the knob of his cane, as if drilling into the carpet for oil, and with the other he was tapping out a rhythm on his blotter.

  He didn’t stand to greet her when she knocked and opened the door.

  “Sit down, Josephine. I trust the business from this morning has passed?”

  It took Jo a moment to realize he meant her crying. “Yes, sir.”

  “Good.” Their father sat back in his chair. “I wanted to talk to you about the future of the girls.”

  She didn’t trust herself to say anything polite, so she nodded. Their father seemed on edge, coiled in on himself, as if he was waiting for something. She didn’t want to risk a wrong answer.

  “I suppose you’ve guessed by my rather—efficient agreement with Mr. Marlowe that business is not going as well as I could hope at the moment.”

  Jo had not guessed. She had assumed the agreement came as a result of some form of congenital greed.

  “I see,” she said.

  “As much as I would like to care for you all as long as you might need it, there are other factors to consider. Therefore, I am relying on you girls to make good matches, with husbands who have the means to take care of you in the style to which you are accustomed.”

  Four dollars a month, if they behaved.

  “Of course, sir.”

  He sat a little forward. “The men from good families are looking for wives with beauty, manners, virtue. Unlike your sisters, the gentlemen are in a position to choose. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Then why have you been disobeying me?”

  Jo blanched.

  It was as if someone had socked her in the stomach; it took her a moment to breathe.

  He had known, somehow. He had only needed to be sure. She’d been called down this morning because he wanted a good look at her red eyes and purple bags before he showed his cards.

  At last she managed, “What?”

  “You heard me,” their father said, a dark gleam in his eye. “I know you and your sisters go out when your foolish father is asleep. You think I can’t ask two questions and determine the answer to a third? You think because you’re in your stocking feet, no one hears you sneaking in at dawn, if he is awake and of a mind to?”

  She hadn’t—she couldn’t have seen that he was awake, that he was listening—

  Jo couldn’t breathe. “Sir—”

  He slammed the cane onto the desk with such force that Jo felt a breeze. When she looked at him, his face was as smooth and kind as she had ever seen it, as if he wasn’t angry at all, as if someone else was wielding the cane.

  It was terrifying.

  (She pitied her mother.)

  “I have tried to be kind—to take care of you, to protect your reputations, to give you your choice of husbands who would, in their turn, preserve the honor of the family name. But this willful display disgusts me, Josephine. What would possess you to disobey me?”

  Jo sat closer to the edge of the chair, thought fast, and tried to sound obliging.

  “You gave no order, sir, that we were never to go out. Only that we were not to disturb you.”

  “Don’t presume to answer me with jokes, Josephine!”

  “Sir, I’m only trying—”

  “I don’t want any of your lying! You know my wishes, and I expect you to honor them!”

  Wishes? He wanted to sell his daughters and wave his cane and talk about the sanctity of wishes?

  Then they would.

  She looked him flat in the eye.

  Jo said, “Honor which, exactly? I know your wish to hide us because you were ashamed of having no son. I know you wished to keep us locked up until you could marry us off to strangers, so we could be chained to a childbed like Mother was for you.”

  Her rage was building now, and the words came faster, louder. “And now I know you’re even ashamed that your daughters have managed something on their own, and you wish they had died quietly upstairs and saved you the bother of caring for them. If there’s some other wish I missed, then by all means explain!”

  There was a moment’s quiet, except for Jo’s breathing. She was standing now; she didn’t remember when she’d gotten up.

  Their father’s face went red, then white, with rage.

  Jo was too petrified by her own outburst to move, and too sure of being right to apologize. She watched him as she would watch a tethered bear on a fraying rope.

  Slowly, he stood up from behind the desk and withdrew his cane, and with his other hand he rested the tips of his fingers on the blotter, supporting the weight of his indignation.

  “I had thought
at one time,” he said, “to settle this with you rationally, and have a helpmeet. I wanted to marry the rest quietly, at first, after I discovered what loose and lawless girls you had become—before news could get out and ruin your prospects.”

  Jo’s limbs felt like coiled springs.

  “But,” he said, “since marriage is so distasteful to you, I feel I have given you ample lenience until now, and I can address the matter as I should have done from the start. I’ve asked Dr. Whitman from the Three Willows Asylum to evaluate my daughters, who are suffering from hysterical alcoholism. I had been thinking of you, at first—if they have disobeyed, it is because of you—but if this same vile temper has spread to all of them, then it will have to be addressed. He’s an old associate of mine, and very much in agreement, as it happens; he doesn’t approve of the new fashion for loose behavior . . .”

  An asylum. A mental hospital. There were stories about what happened behind those walls, stories that worried even the men who went out drinking at night.

  Those who went in rarely went out again.

  Horror filled Jo’s mouth. Across the desk from her, their father was reaching for his newspaper, calmly; the discussion was over.

  “He’ll view me as a negligent father,” he said, as if making party conversation. “Well he should, but it’s cheaper to keep a daughter in the hospital than to keep her in style, and at least I’ll be spared anyone else knowing about the traitorous women who called themselves my children.”

  Before he had finished speaking, Jo was bolting out of the study. She prayed they weren’t angry enough to ignore her—she prayed they still trusted, that they would not disobey her now.

  “Beat it!” she shouted from the foot of the steps, her voice raw. “Get out, get out!”

  For one awful, endless second, everything froze.

  She couldn’t breathe, and she couldn’t hear—everything was suspended in water. If her sisters had even heard her, they were too frightened to move, and then it would be too late, and the men from the asylum would come and run up the stairs and find them all just as they were, sitting on the edges of their beds, as still as a photograph.

  Her heart was pounding—she could swear, she could swear ten hearts upstairs were pounding in time.