The Calamity Club by Kathryn Stockett - 26

W hen I got back from town for the second time, I found Charlie on the back porch, trying to pry open a crate with a metal spatula. I just stood there watching, not speaking. A very hard thing for me to do.

“ Dammit —” She sat back, sweat dripping down her temples. The top was still nailed down.

She wiped her brow in the crook of her arm and looked up at me. “Say it,” she said. “Say what you’re thinking.”

“Where should I begin?” Now that Frances and Mrs. Tartt were gone, all my frustration and fears and confusion could only land on Charlie.

“What are you so upset about?”

“Charlie, I got a list .” I took my good spatula out of her hand and bent the metal handle back straight. “First of all, it seems to me like you were trying to get rid of Frances and Mrs. Tartt.”

“Not Mrs. Tartt, just your sister. I can’t start a business and be her maid and ignore her rude stuck-up nose in the air.”

“Fair enough,” I said. “Moving on, your numbers are unrealistic. There’s no way a dime-a-dance business can earn that—”

“We have to try—”

“—kind of cash and frankly I’m scared you don’t have any idea what you’re doing except getting Mrs. Tartt’s—”

“I never promised this would work!”

“Well, you sure dangled some mighty big numbers,” I said. “So could you at least act a little more worried about what happens if it doesn’t?”

Charlie’s mouth hung open. “You think I’m not worried? Have you even noticed”—her smile was clownish—“how my life has turned out?”

“I—yes. I have, Charlie.”

“Then don’t say I’m not worried. I am so worried this won’t work, I can hardly breathe .” She climbed to her feet, wiping her face again with her sleeve. Gone was the sales pitch, the chin-up confidence.

“I don’t feel any better knowing you’re as worried as me now.”

“Then go home, Birdie,” she said. “Don’t risk a thing. We told you already, you don’t have to do this.”

That was three jabs in one morning that my little life might not even be worth losing.

“I told Mrs. Tartt I’m staying, so I’m staying,” I said. “But I’ve got questions.”

“Fine, we can talk about it tonight. To be honest, I’m still figuring a lot of it out myself.”

You wouldn’t know that from the telegram I’d sent for her. It’d been addressed to somebody named Flossy Stolivsky at Good News Bible Co., Inc., Sweetwater, Miss. The tenner read: GOOD HOUSE FAIR PAY VERY BUSY COME SOON BRING OTHERS STOP . The gray-headed woman at the Western Union looked up like she was dying to ask what in the world could be “very busy” these days, except a free soup line. It seemed pretty presumptuous of Charlie when we hadn’t even unpacked the first crate.

“Whatever happens,” Charlie said, tapping her chest, “I take responsibility for all of this.”

“I’ll let Mrs. Tartt know that when they come seize her house.”

Even with the cooler weather, it was hot, heavy work. I hauled more crates to the porch and unwrapped wads of Oxford Eagle newspaper to find inside sparkly pink balls, gold angels, silver stars and moons. There were jumbled strings of tin lanterns, paper crowns, bags of confetti, ashtrays stamped with the letter T , horns, hats, a violin bow, a dried-up mouse skeleton curled inside a ladies’ gold shoe size 3, all the picayune pieces of Mr. and Mrs. Tartt’s parties, molded or stiff with age. Also, a live chipmunk that skittered off and a nest of live baby birds I set back in the barn, the mama probably wondering, Where in the heck are my kids now? When I returned, the cow was up on the porch, eating newspaper from 1922.

A few things I managed to ask Charlie: “How many boarders do you think you could get in here and when?” I’d need to start planning meals and where they’d sleep.

“Probably six, maybe seven. Some can share a room and hopefully they’ll start getting here in the next few days.”

“And do you plan on selling dances too?”

“No,” she said and then repeated it. “No, I don’t dance anymore. But the one you sent the telegram to, Flossy, she’s good, she’s got a specialty.”

“What kind of specialty?” I asked. Seemed like every answer brought a new question, but before she could answer, a corn snake slithered out of a crate and we both jumped.

By two, I’d tossed out most of the broken things, the smelly things, the deceased. We’d moved on to pulling out the pieces of the dance floor. Stacks of long boards, painted black, scuffed and peeling. Heavy metal pieces to secure the corners and long metal brackets for the sides. Posts that were to go down deep in the ground and hold the thing together. The sun was fierce today, despite the cooler air. By four o’clock, it felt like my mouth had melted shut. We’d skipped lunch and I’d been too hot to ask any more questions. I wished Mrs. Tartt was here to see everything being unpacked, it would’ve made her smile, though I was more glad Frances wasn’t. I didn’t need her hollering from the sofa, What’s for supper? Or Why are you even helping with this stupid idea? In fact, I stuck a crinkled gold party hat on my head and, for a few minutes, let myself get very slightly excited. Even if it was a failure, I’d never been to a dance club before. Heck, a month ago, I’d never had hot water come out of a tap before.

Down in the yard, Charlie dropped a heavy cocktail tabletop in the grass. She’d already hauled about eight of them outside. Her face had gone from pink to strangely white.

“I think you need a break, Charlie,” I called. I’d been on the porch in the shade while she’d been working in the sun. When I came out with a glass of water, she’d moved under the shade of a crape myrtle tree and was pressing her forehead against the peeling trunk.

“I feel like I can’t breathe,” she said into the tree.

“Alright, drink this,” I said and gave her the water. She took it and drank it down. “Sit, sit here,” I said, and she sank to the ground and leaned the side of her face against the tree trunk. Something about that tree seemed to be steadying her.

“Will you tell me about her,” she asked, “just until I feel better?”

So I told her about the biscuits, how strawberry jelly and ham were Meg’s favorite. How she’d helped me paint the walls blue and the trim white, how her eyes had lit up when I’d pulled the boards off the window. I didn’t bring up that Meg was stuck in that moldy office or how the other girls treated her and surely not Garnett Pittman. I fed her only the words she needed to stop crushing her face into a tree.

After a while she sat up straight again and said, “This thing better goddamn work.”

I’d almost made it down the stairs when I tripped on the hem of my nightgown. I caught the rail as the banging on the front door continued. Every single one of my bones ached from hauling crates and tables and floorboards the day before. By the light pouring in, I figured it must be past eight in the morning.

I opened the front door and blinked at the woman standing there. She had lank yellow hair. She wasn’t much more than skin and bone inside a tight pink dress with pink straps, black kohl smeared under her blue, bulging eyes.

“Boy, she wasn’t kidding about this place. Schmancy. ” She walked right on past me into the house with a pink bag looped over one shoulder, swinging a beat-up brown leather suitcase in her other hand. A peeling red decal on the side said See North Dakota . She set the suitcase down with a thump and, looking around the empty hall, the library on the right full of piles of junk, the formal sitting room on the left, she said, “On second thought, this place looks like crap.”

“Are you here to sell something?” I asked. I was still half asleep, squinting at a tear in the seam of the pink fabric along her rib cage.

“You betcha I am,” she said and smiled, flashing the biggest set of false teeth I’d ever seen. “Name’s Flossy.” She stuck her hand out. I didn’t know what to do, so I shook it. “Charlie told me to get here on the fly.”

“ Oh .” Finally I understood. She’s gotten here so fast. But she was not, by far, the elegant young lady Mrs. Tartt was expecting. She looked over forty, with deep bags under her eyes and I noticed she had on a pair of heavy, black … were those men’s shoes? They made her legs look skinny as broomsticks. It got even more confusing when you added the tight pink dress and huge false teeth and the fact that she’d been working as a Bible saleslady. “You’re the one with the … specialty?” Wasn’t that what Charlie’d called it?

“That is I. By way of a painful, yet fortuitous injury.”

“I’ll go get Charlie,” I said and started down the hall, calling her name. Voices traveled in this house, and I heard a distant deep thump and, seconds later, “I’m—I’m coming.”

“She’s coming,” I said. There was nowhere near to sit, that settee in there smelled odd. So I just kept talking. “So … how long have you been in this business?”

“Since I’s thirteen. A uncle type taught me. Whatabow choo?”

“Oh, I’m not, but my daddy taught me a few steps.”

“Ain’t we lucky. Keeping it in the family like that.”

She had a strange, unplaceable accent. “Where’re you from?” I asked.

“I’s born in Dakota, but some a me’s from Philly and Jersey and the greater New Orleans area.”

Charlie came hurrying up the hall in a white nightgown. “Flossy, you’re here already!”

“Well, I come soon as I could, just like ya said. So what’s it been, six, seven years since Memphis?”

Charlie nodded, chewing her bottom lip. She looked nervous as a cat, glancing from me to Flossy.

“You shoulda seen Priscilla when I told her I’s leaving. Tossed my things right out the window, she did. I burned that bridge good.”

“Come in the kitchen,” Charlie said, “we can talk there. Birdie, you can go back to bed now.” She pulled Flossy by the arm.

“Watch it, you gotta pay to pull on me,” Flossy said, wriggling out of Charlie’s grasp.

“Are the other girls coming?” Charlie asked.

“The who?” Flossy said.

“The rest of the girls,” Charlie said.

“Oh, they ain’t coming. Said it’s too risky, got job security to think about and all. Good thing you’re busy, though, ’cause I’m just about broke. How many girlfriends you got working this crib?”

“Not … many,” Charlie said.

“How many customers you expecting tonight?”

“We’re not actually open for business—yet,” Charlie said. She glanced at me again, I guess to gauge how disturbed I was by this woman in her tight, tawdry dress. “I’ll tell you everything in the kitchen .”

Flossy’s mouth had fallen open, and her top teeth slipped down slightly. She pushed them back up with her left thumb. “But you said in the telegram to get here in a jiffy. You said the place was—it was hopping.”

“We’ll be busy, very soon.”

Flossy looked back at the front door and seemed afraid of what was out there. “But I quit Priscilla for this. And I got the payments, Charlie.” And then quieter, almost shyly, “On the teeth.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll get the word out that we’re hiring. We’ll do it first thing,” Charlie said, nodding like she had all the answers, like she had with Mrs. Tartt. I wondered, again, why she’d lied in her telegram to this woman.

“And what if none come, Charlie? It ain’t easy as all that these days.” Flossy walked past us and peered into the front sitting room, then back out into the hall. “Look at this place. Why ain’t there no furnitures?” She truly sounded afraid now. She stared at the little empty telephone table under the stairs, like she knew what was supposed to be there. “Where’s the telephone?”

It took Charlie a second to answer. “We don’t have one yet, but we will, and we’ll make the place nice just as soon as the girls get here and pay their upfronts.”

Flossy came over and snatched her brown suitcase by its handle and swung open the front door.

“We’ll be open in just a few days, Flossy,” Charlie called, going after her, but Flossy was clomping out on the front porch.

“Ain’t even got a telephone to call a taxi … What am I s’posed to do, walk the street?”

Charlie went after her. “Flossy, wait—will you just listen? It’ll be a fair house. I’m telling you, the cut’s 50 percent, not a penny more, three dollars a week for board, five for the upfront, and no upcharges.”

Flossy kept trudging up the walk, head bent forward. I could count the knobs on her upper spine. I felt awful for this woman; she’d quit her job.

Going down the porch steps, Charlie yelled, “You really want to go back to Priscilla’s and get cheated and screwed and scammed every week?”

“Of course I don’t,” Flossy yelled back, but she kept on trudging. “I don’t even know if she’ll take me back.”

“Then stay, Flossy. It’ll be a good house , I promise, this close to the college we’ll bring in a hell of a lot more business than Priscilla ever will.”

I stood watching them from the doorway with no idea what any of this meant, screwed and scams and upfronts and good houses while Charlie begged her stay.

“It’ll be like the old days!” Charlie yelled going down the walk. “Fair and even. It’ll be like it used to be, Flossy. Like a goddamn family .”

Flossy stopped halfway down the brick walk and turned back to Charlie. The pink pocketbook strap slipped off her shoulder and down her thin arm. Bluish circles pulled low under her eyes, and she looked very, very tired, like she hadn’t had good sleep going on around ten years now. She brushed at a clump of yellow hair. Maybe she was actually closer to forty-five.

“I can refuse a john if I don’t like his looks?” she called.

“You can refuse anybody you damn want,” Charlie called back.

“How many keys?”

“Five keys, seven girls,” Charlie said. “No more.” I had no idea what that meant either.

“And you ain’t working? I don’t take to the boss eating into my business.” Charlie shook her head. “And I want my own room. That Daisy snored like the Illinois Central.”

“You get first pick,” Charlie said.

Flossy stared at her and slowly trudged back up the walk. When she reached the porch steps, I heard her mumble, “ Sonofasacagawea .” She walked past us again, and I shut the door. She looked so deeply exhausted now, she appeared hollow. She smacked what looked like six dollars on top of the newel post at the bottom of the stairs. “That’s my upfront and board but you still owe me two from what you borrowed back in ’26. All I got, anyways.” She stomped up the curving staircase.

I had many, many questions. Charlie went up the stairs after her but then she leaned over the rail. “Birdie, please, can you please take that money to town and beg them to bring the telephone back? Whatever it takes? We need it.”

I sighed. “Alright.”

Upstairs, Flossy hollered, “I pick the pink one.”

“She can’t pick the pink one, Charlie,” I called. “That’s Frances’s room—”

“Oh, she’s definitely picking the pink one,” Flossy yelled back.

“Charlie—”

“I know, I know,” she called. “We’ll talk when you get back, I promise.”

I’d managed, with some negotiating, to get Southern Bell to agree to come hook the telephone back up. After paying them Flossy’s six dollars and five of our own precious money, we still owed them twelve dollars and fifty cents, so I’d had to settle for a party line instead of a private one. That meant while you were on a call, your neighbors could pick up and listen in. “They’ll be here early next week to set it up.”

Charlie shook her head. She’d met me at the front door when I’d walked in. “A party line’s not going to work, Birdie.”

“I’m not giving up any more of Mrs. Tartt’s money for a private telephone, Charlie. We’re down to twenty-four dollars. Who cares if someone overhears us, we’re not running a confession booth, we’re running a dancing club.”

Charlie’d started rubbing her wrist again. “Look, I need to talk to you about this business. There’re some things you need to know about this business.”

“Please do. So far I don’t know anything except it’s a 50 percent split and something about keys and upfronts. And Flossy is our first employee.”

“I know, I know she’s not exactly what you expected.” She looked to be having some kind of internal argument, starting to speak, then stopping. “She’s an old friend, and it’s been a while since I’ve seen her.” Charlie looked me in the face. “Birdie, before I give you details, I just—I want you to know how much I appreciate everything you’ve done for me already. No one’s shown me as much kindness as you have in a very long time.”

“I want to help you, Charlie, and I want to help Meg,” I said. “And I’m sorry. I don’t know when exactly in life I started expecting the worst, but it’s a problem I inherited, evidently.”

At this, she winced again.

“Charlie, what’s going on? What’s so hard to tell me?”

“The three of us will go over everything together, when Flossy wakes up this afternoon.”

“I can’t, I’m meeting Jack in town.” I smiled at that, I couldn’t help it. God, I was like a schoolgirl.

“Okay, we’ll talk when you’re back tonight.”

I wasn’t going to push. I had to fix my hair myself, and besides, what difference would another few hours make? She followed me to the kitchen. “Do you think it’s a bad idea to date a divorced man?” I asked, holding the swinging door open.

“As opposed to a married one?” she asked. Charlie and I had the same barbed-wire humor, but then I thought about her affair with Welty. “Don’t ask me,” she said. “I think a woman’s better off not dating at all.”

I slowed my walk when I saw Jack standing in front of the bank up ahead; I wanted to watch him a minute. I’d found at the Foote that you could learn things about people when they didn’t know you were watching them. A sneer behind someone’s back, the temptation to swipe something they couldn’t afford. Jack had on the tan suit today with the coat folded over his arm. He stood solid, patient, towering over everyone else. He was probably six foot four. Another thing I’d learned from watching people: Most big men wore their size like a threat, came in arms swinging, legs splayed at the counter, though there were also a few who wore it like an apology, stooping their necks, tucking their fingers up inside their palms. Jack wore his size like a responsibility. Catching the door with a long arm to hold it open for a secretary, leaning down lower than could be comfortable to listen to an old man say something.

I was wearing Frances’s olive-green dress. It hit just below my knee, even though mid-calf was the style, but it looked all right. The wave I’d spent so much time pressing into my hair was definitely falling flat. The constant flutter in my stomach had got me wondering, was this supposed to be enjoyable or exciting? Because right now it felt like I had the flu.

Jack looked over, spotted me and simply gazed back. I blushed all over my body, from my forehead to my ankles.

When I got to him, he said, “I was thinking we could go over to the Mecca and talk. Sometimes they have a combo playing, but it shouldn’t be too crowded since most the college students don’t get here for at least another week.”

His car was parked on a side street that was, at this hour, in full sun. When I got in, the hot brown leather cooked the back of my thighs. I lifted the left one, then the right to cool them off, breathing in the smell— what was it about this car? As he walked around to the driver’s side, I wondered if he’d ever had S-E-X in here. Right on this seat because I was pretty sure I could feel him through the back of my dress. He got in and rolled his window down, reaching across me to roll mine down too. “Sorry it’s so hot.”

“It’s good—it’s fine.”

As he drove toward the college, I told him the latest, that Mrs. Tartt and Frances had gone to Jackson to look for Rory. Like them, he thought it was worth looking for Rory, but like me and Charlie, he didn’t think there was much chance of finding a man who didn’t want to be found. We went around a curve, and the Ole Miss campus loomed up ahead.

“You ever been to the university?” he asked. I told him I had not. They’d cut down most of their trees on this side of campus so the lawns were vast and low-clipped, yellowing since it’d been over a month without rain. New white sidewalks lined the road and traveled through the empty grounds. A birdless, queer stillness had settled over the campus. I counted a total of four young men in white shirts and long dark ties on the white sidewalks. But it gave the feeling that something was coming, like I’d had watching Mr. Will Lewis clean the windows at Neilson’s. Everybody said this would be a very different place soon.

We passed a row of brick buildings, each with a sign stuck in the grass with names I’d seen in the paper. Folks Mr. and Mrs. Tartt had probably eaten supper with: Vardaman, Longstreet, Hill, Barr, Falkner, maybe a dozen of them.

“Those are the men’s dormitories,” Jack said. “And that’s the Lyceum.” He pointed to a tremendous brick building ahead with beveled columns and a clock mounted in the portico. “I took a tour here in high school, even though my family could nowhere near afford it.” He laughed. “I think it cost all of forty dollars back then. And those little buildings there,” he said, pointing down a lane, “are the girls’ dormitories.” There were only three to the boys’ dozen or so. It was as Charlie’d said: not enough girls for all those boys.

Jack turned again and slowed down in front of a low storefront. “Maybe … this isn’t the best place to talk.” We could hear the music inside, a jumpy song with a horn and a rowdy piano. Jack parked the car anyway but left the engine running. I could feel the vibration on the back of my legs. He turned and looked at me.

“I—” He stopped and looked down at the seat between us. “The other day, you asked me why I hadn’t told you about the divorce.” He thought about it some more. “I guess the obvious reason is … I was afraid it would scare you off.”

“Oh, it still might,” I said.

He nodded, like he’d expected as much. “I also have a sixteen-year-old son.”

“I know,” I said.

He faced front again, looking somber. Thing was, we’d been to one lunch and a picture show, and at two in the afternoon at that, but something had happened in that time. I’d let myself hope for something with Jack I’d been told I would probably never have. And by something , I didn’t mean a dime-store romance or even anything to do with the sordid longing between my legs. It was something about a person saying, like it was actually good news, you’re not like anybody I’ve ever met before. I’d been waiting my whole life to hear that.

“Will you tell me why you’re ‘leaving each other’?”

“We just … we can’t seem to get along. We got married too young, we didn’t plan things right—” He stopped himself and turned off the ignition, and the vibration on the seat stopped. “I worked too much and was drinking. I quit two years ago.”

I put my fingers out and I counted. “So you’re a married banker with a child and you have a drinking problem? And you thought a divorce would scare me off?”

He reached over and took my hand. Heat slipped up my arm. “It gets worse.” At least he smiled when he said it.

“My mother said it usually does.” I’d told him about the Doris Report . “How much worse?”

“You’re leaving to go back home at some point and, like I said, I’ll be leaving for good. And while I’m here, I’ll have to make trips back and forth to Jackson. In fact, I’ll probably have to go in a few days.” He looked doubtful. “This didn’t exactly help my marriage. You think it’s something … you could work with?”

He was very serious. I pretended to think it over. It felt almost comical. As if I had other options? “I think I can work with that,” I said. “But please, try to keep me interested.”

He squeezed my hand. “Oh I will. Now, come on, let’s go inside and dance.”

I didn’t know how to dance anything except the waltz, and I almost laughed at that since four miles from here I was supposedly opening a dance club. On the sidewalk, the chalkboard sign read Mr. Binny and His Band of Brothers, 4:00 until 6:00 p.m. I wondered if that was Mr. Binny the driver. Jack opened the door and it was dim and smoky inside and sure enough, there he was. Short, wide Mr. Binny on a piano stool, sitting up straight and proper as he did in his taxicab, with his suit coat fanning out around him. His three brothers looked even older than he was with little hair and skinny frames. A few couples were slow-dancing now, while a handful of boys stood around the black-and-white-tiled floor, watching. The rest sat in the shiny red banquettes, arms flung over the back, smoking cigarettes.

Jack walked me to the floor and put one hand on my waist and took my hand in his, and we danced a few steps. It felt formal, right out of grammar school, though, aside from the musicians, we were definitely the oldest ones here. Right away I smacked Jack’s foot with mine, and we both laughed. After that we got better. Mr. Binny played “All of Me” and “Good Night Sweetheart” and “Just One More Chance,” and whenever I glanced up, Jack wasn’t looking down at me, which seemed better—surely something was wrong with a man who looked at me too much. My leg grazed his and I felt drunk and sick and warm, being this close to him.

Toward the end of a song, the boys standing around us moved in closer. They had on high-waisted trousers, their hair flopped over to the side. They all looked cocky and rich to me. A chubby one with red spots on his face tapped the shoulder of a fellow who’d been dancing with a blond girl. “No cuts, fatty,” the fellow snapped. The pimply-faced boy backed away, but he kept watching them, along with his friends. It made me think of hyenas waiting for leftovers.

After what seemed like hardly ten minutes, Mr. Binny stopped playing and closed the case on his piano. We both stood there a second in the silence and then, Jack leaned down and kissed me. It was on the lips this time, his mouth very slightly open and— my God, it was good. I leaned up closer to him, tugging him toward me until I heard one of the boys say, “Jeez, lady, let the man breathe.” We both pulled back.

He led me outside, where the light had turned a soft blue. It was after six. “Can I take you to dinner somewhere?” he asked.

My body was still vibrating from kissing him. I was ravenous.

“I’m sorry, I’m supposed to get home.” And just then I thought, What if this insane idea of Charlie’s actually works? I felt a tug of hope, a wind sucking me in. All those boys in there, standing around and cutting in on just one blond girl and one brunette. There really weren’t enough girls to go around. “Another time?”

“I hope so,” he said.

The group of boys from the banquette walked out laughing, one wearing a funny leather cap with flaps over the ears like football players wore. I heard, “Oughta get a trip to Sweetwater ’fore the girls come back to school.” And another said, “You dirty dawg. Count me in.”

Sweetwater was where I’d sent the telegram to Flossy. I waited until we were driving up Lamar to ask, “That place in Sweetwater, is it a little rough around the edges?”

“You mean … Priscilla’s?” Jack asked. He sort of smiled, sort of frowned. “I reckon you could call it rough. But most folks call it worse than that.”

“How far is it?” I wondered.

“Mm, forty miles? It’s a pretty bad road to get there. Accidents in the paper all the time, boys driving up there drunk.” Jack glanced over at me. “For the record, I’ve never been there. And I don’t plan to, if that’s what’s got you asking.”

Worse than that , he’d said. “How seedy is this dance club?” I asked.

He laughed. “I don’t think … there’s much dancing going on out there. Or not the kind we just did.” He curved around the oak tree in the road, and though it was just us in the car, he leaned over and whispered in the direction of my ear, “Sweetwater is a …”

“ Oh .” I laughed, embarrassed, and then embarrassed I was so embarrassed. But then a sticky, hot notion started rising up my throat. I felt my chest turn a warm, blotchy red. “There’s—really nothing else out there?”

He shook his head. “Only one reason to go to Sweetwater that I know of.”

He stopped in front of the house and turned off the car. Everything went still except for the ticking of the engine. My hands felt numb. When he got out and opened the car door for me, I felt like I was moving through water toward the house.

“Wait a minute,” he said and pulled me toward him and kissed me again, harder than the last time, and with an open mouth—exactly what my mother had warned me about. I wasn’t numb at all anymore. I could feel every nerve ending, every hair on my head. Every drop of blood draining into my sister’s shoes.

Hands on my waist, he set his forehead on mine. “Where did you come from?” he asked.

I didn’t know. I couldn’t have answered that if I’d tried.

I told him I’d see myself to the door and I could feel his eyes on me as I walked up the brick path. When I turned around to wave goodbye, he was leaning against his car, arms crossed, watching me. I felt wobbly on my feet. I wished I could go down the brick path and fall into him one more time. But I really needed to deal with something else right away.

Once I was inside, I stared down the long hall. On my right, the door to the library was now shut to hide the piles of junk we’d stuck in there. On my left, in the formal sitting room, I saw Flossy. She was sitting on the three-legged settee, filing her fingernails. She had on a pink silky robe, one side slipping off her thin shoulder. Somebody had thrown a white bedspread over the smelly settee to, I assumed, tamp down the bad smell.

“Oh, hiya, I was just”—Flossy kicked up a large bare foot—“practicing my dance steps. For the new dance club and all.” I noticed her toenails were painted pink, something I’d never seen before.

“Is that … Frances’s bathrobe you’ve got on?” I asked. My bones felt loose, unconnected to my joints.

“Who’s Frances?” she asked. Then, with a little smile, she pointed a bony yellow finger at me. “ You. Got a glow.”

“Where’s Charlie?” My voice sounded far off, already wandering through the house to find her.

“She’s taking a tub bath, which was not a bad idea. She fished a dead mouse outta this couch cushion while you was gone. I threw this bedspread on it from the room upstairs. When we getting better furniture in this crib anyway?”

I groaned. That bedspread, it was from Mrs. Tartt’s room. “I don’t—not anytime soon.”

She sighed. But smiled showing her huge false teeth. “Well. I suppose these things take time, they do.”

I thought about barging into Charlie’s bathroom, but instead I sank down on the edge of the settee. Now that Flossy’d gotten some sleep and washed the kohl out from under her eyes, she had an affable face. Though her big blue eyes had folds and wrinkles under them, and her full lips curved over her teeth. Maybe if I asked her the right thing , I’d find out this was all just a big misunderstanding.

“I know I was complainin’ when I first come here,” she said, “on account a Charlie lied to me and all, but we had a talk, and I want a say thank you. For the employment opportunity.” She said it like oppor-toonity . “It’s real nice not to be working for Priscilla no more.”

“How long did you say you worked there?” I asked.

She hesitated. “Two years and change.”

“And why … did you work there?” And by the way, was it a dance club or a … brothel?

“She’s sorta where you go when you got nowhere else to go.”

“And there’s just the one … place of business there? In Sweetwater? No others of any kind?” My voice sounded shimmery and high, light on broken glass.

“She’s it and she knows it too. Overcharges us for room and board, cheats us out our pay, and if you can’t cover the cost, she sends in the bulldog—a guy who—” She shut up there.

Who what ? Who are you? But she’d gone hollow, arching into herself. I guess Charlie’d told her not to say too much, though she added, “Most those girls ain’t never gonna dig their way outta that place. It’s real sad.”

“But this place’ll be different, right? Our dance club will be—different?”

She thought about it and gave me a shy smile. “I’m sure hoping it’ll be different. Charlie says it’ll be, you know, like we’re a family.”

“And do you have a family? Somewhere?” Maybe she’d say, Oh sure, a family dance troupe, actually, we traveled the country, doing our dancing act.

But again, she had that shy look and an embarrassed shrug. “At the moment, that’d be you guys.”

I heard a door shut in the house. “I’ve got to go find Charlie.”

She waved a finger at me as I walked out. “By the way, there’s something for you to see out back—oh and I want to hear about this guy. And no omittin’ .”

I went through the swinging door to the kitchen. Charlie was sitting at the round table, writing in a ledger. She had on a dress I hadn’t seen before, slender, black with a white collar.

“I moved Frances’s things to the nursery upstairs,” she said without looking up. “And I heated up some rice and gravy for supper if you want.”

“I don’t. Want.”

My heart was pumping blood directly into my ears. I wondered, if I went up to bed, when I woke up, I’d be wrong about this? I placed both hands on the back of the curved wooden chair beside her. “Charlie,” I said. I swallowed. “Are you starting a …”

It was like a pencil snapped in her face. That was all I had to say.

“Oh, Charlie.”

She leaned back in her chair and closed the ledger on the table. “Please, just please, listen to me a minute, Birdie.”

“When? When were you gonna tell me?”

“Tonight, I promise I was going to tell you tonight.”

“You—I can’t believe you’d go and do this, Charlie.”

“Look, I know it sounds … unusual. But … why can’t we?”

“Because we can’t —and that is a ridiculous question to ask because we could be arrested!”

“But what if we aren’t ?” She said it like it was a lark, a small possibility. It reminded me of Mrs. Tartt asking, But what if it doesn’t fail, Birdie? I had no idea those two had so much in dang common. “Just—can you please sit down, Birdie, sit down and listen to me?”

“No, I will not sit down .” I couldn’t feel my feet. I felt like I might fly up to the ceiling. She’d called it “unusual”? “You said we were starting a dance club like you used to work in, for dimes, not—whatever a prostitute makes.”

“But it will be a dance club, and the town will think it’s a dance club because we’ll run a dance club as our front.” She jammed her finger on the cover of the red ledger. “If we get seven girls and charge five dollars for the upfront and three for board, right there that’d be fifty-six dollars before we even open, and on top of that we’d make money selling Co-Colas and cigarettes and liquor drinks—”

“We are not serving liquor in a house for prostitutes!” It sounded so absurd, I felt like my eyes were gonna pop out of my face.

“We’d water it down .” Like that changed something. “At a dollar a shot, with all those cases of it in the cellar, we’d be crazy not to sell drinks. And we’d be running a clean house, no rolling customers, no tar smoking, no needles, no cadillacs.”

“I … I don’t even know what that is .”

“Cadillacs—cocaine, there’d be none of that here.”

I squeezed the back of the chair. “And what exactly do you think will happen. When Mrs. Tartt gets home.” I sounded like Garnett, speaking in fragments. I felt like I might faint.

“If they don’t find Rory in Jackson …” Charlie took a breath. Her voice was calmer now, but her hand on the ledger was trembling. “We’ll have made enough money to send them to the next town, maybe to New Orleans, to start looking, and they’re not going to find him, or not anytime soon, and by the time they get home for good, money made, shop closed.”

“My God, Charlie, if Frances finds out about this …” Bringing Charlie in had been my idea. Staying here to help with a dance club, again my idea. My sister would hate me, she’d tell Meemaw—she’d tell Mama. I had to close my eyes and just breathe. “Why, Charlie? Why can’t we just open a regular dime-a-dance club like you said in the first place?” This ridiculous idea of hers now sounded so utterly logical .

Charlie frowned up at me like I was an idiot. “You think dancing for dimes would earn enough to pay Mrs. Tartt’s mortgage and Frances’s damn sorority dues and enough for me to get Meg the hell out of this state?”

“Yes—no—I mean, not anymore!” Maybe I was screaming a little.

“And what about your family, Birdie? Didn’t you tell me your family stands to lose their house?”

“Yes.” I felt a heavy sinking in my chest, thinking of what I was supposed to be doing here. What I’d failed at doing.

“They sent you up here to help the family, isn’t that right?”

I nodded, my mouth going dry.

“But you’ve decided you’re going to let your family lose everything instead, all because you don’t think it’s worth taking the risk to help them?”

“That’s not what I want at all. We’ll … find another way.”

She blinked at me, almost smiled. “Do you hear yourself? You think money’s going to drop from the sky and make everything all better? You sound a lot like Frances.”

“ Hey. Watch it, Charlie. ”

Charlie set her jaw tight; she was getting angrier now, and so was I. “Our ships are sinking , Birdie. No one’s coming to save us.” She was enunciating her words like I might not understand her. “We are going down with it unless, for God’s sake, we make something happen!”

“I agree, but this is too much happening, Charlie. You don’t understand, I come from a town with absolutely nothing happening .” The image flashed in my head of me standing at the ladies’ counter waiting on exactly nothing to happen. “How on earth did you even—”

But I stopped there, suddenly. I was still standing over her. She raised her chin up the slightest bit, her jaw set. “When you were arrested at the train station, was it for doing this?” I asked.

“I was only offering the man a ride, but I was charged with attempted miscegenation.” Miscegenation—I’d heard of that in the paper. The coupling of blacks and whites. It was a felony now. Another reason Charlie’s sentence was so harsh.

“But you’ve done … this before?” It sounded judgy when I said it, and oh I meant it to be.

“I did it to support us after Meg was born. That’s how I met Flossy, before she started working for Priscilla, and then—I did it a few times after Garnett got me fired. I did it to take care of my daughter.” She did not sound apologetic; just matter-of-fact.

“But why ? Charlie, why would you risk being sent back to jail or Ellisville after everything they did to you?” I asked. “Why would you risk it when it would mean never seeing Meg again?”

She leapt up and was in my face the instant I mentioned Meg’s name, her cheeks bright, enflamed. “Because if I don’t do this, I’ll never get Meg back. So you are damn straight I’d risk it !”

I stepped back from her, wiping her spit off my face with the back of my hand. My heart was beating hard. The surprise was, I could sort of see her point.

“I’m sorry,” she said and swallowed hard. “I’m sorry I screamed at you. Please just sit down and hear me out.”

Still shaking, I sat down but I deliberately put one of the chairs between us.

“I know.” She set her hands flat on the table. “I know you’re upset that I lied to you.”

“To all of us, Charlie. You lied to Mrs. Tartt. She’s down in Jackson, thinking this thing is gonna save her.”

“Because it can ,” she said.

“What about your friend Flossy in there? She quit her job because you lied to her.”

Charlie blinked at me, looking amazed. A scar between her eyes had turned scarlet, a little flaming check. “You don’t have any idea how disturbing Priscilla’s is. The things that Flossy’s told me.”

I didn’t answer; of course I didn’t. Charlie tapped her fingers on the table, a faint drumroll for what she was going to tell me.

“Priscilla’s got a man who beats the girls if they try and turn down a john, she’s running a coat hanger factory in her basement for extra cash, she gets high on a needle every night, and she cheats them out of their pay so they can’t earn enough to leave her.” I’d heard the term coat hanger factory before, and it made me think of a butcher. “Flossy is not young. She would die there, broke and helpless.”

“I am sorry for Flossy, I really am. But that doesn’t change the fact that you are bringing prostitutes to work in Mrs. Tartt’s house. ” It just seemed inconceivable. “You convinced Mrs. Tartt to give her home over to this … enterprise by lying to her, so yes, you’re being real kind and generous to Flossy and God knows who else, but that charity is not gonna protect you from getting caught. You have a criminal record, Charlie. Garnett Pittman lives two miles away, and she already wants to see you hanged.”

“Yes, she does.” Charlie sucked on her teeth. “But Mrs. Garnett Pittman thinks I’m still at Ellisville, serving my last three months. If she knew I was here, believe me, she’d have already come after me.” She looked down, breathing through her nose. “And I know. I was very deceptive with Mrs. Tartt, but she won’t be involved or implicated. And, in a way, that’s the beauty of it. Nobody in this town would ever suspect a brothel at Mrs. Tartt’s house. The whole notion is absurd.” She let out a little laugh that unnerved me. “By the time anybody catches wind of what we’re doing, if they ever do, it won’t matter because we will be gone .”

“No one will catch wind of us because we’re not opening a brothel .”

“Birdie—listen to me, Birdie. There are a thousand college boys just down the road. Driving forty miles to get to Priscilla’s—” Charlie stuck her hands in her hair, then pulled out the chair I’d put between us and moved over to it, sliding the ledger in front of me.

“Look, you understand numbers. Numbers make sense to you, right?” She opened the ledger to where she’d left the pencil in the spine and tapped the page. “Remember when I said we could bring in fifty dollars on a good night?”

I shrugged. I didn’t want to look at what she was trying to show me.

“Well, I was wrong,” she said. “I think we can do a hundred bucks on a good night. In a month that could be six, maybe seven hundred dollars apiece. Short of robbing a bank, nothing else can earn us that kind of money. That is a small fortune for each of us. It’s a future .”

I wanted to let myself drift into those numbers, cling to them, pick through them. Instead, I picked up the deadly saltshaker Frances had considered pummeling her with and squeezed it to stay clear. “We are not doing this, Charlie. We cannot.”

“There are no jobs , Birdie. Your family is going to lose their house. But you’re—you’re just going to give up and let that happen?” She flung her hands in the air. “Lose everything and sell this poor woman’s house so she can be miserable and you can take your miserable sister home and you can all be miserable? And I’m supposed to just sit here and take it while Garnett does whatever she wants? I have no way to fight her except to make money! She has everyone on her side—the courts, the sheriff, everybody in this town, even the damn lawmakers—and if she gets her hands on Meg, she’ll send her to that … that damn program of hers, which might be no different from where she sent me.”

“Charlie, I agree Garnett is appalling , but I don’t see how she could just take Meg away from her new family. You can’t just go and kidnap Meg from her parents—”

“ I’m her family! I’m her parents! Me , not them! And Garnett doesn’t get to play God with Meg’s future or mine. This money is the only way out of here, for both of us.”

Very quietly, I said, “Well, it’s not going to happen like this.” I let go of the glass saltshaker and let it topple over, grains spilling on the table. My head ached; I needed to deal with … so much. I was already dreading the telegram I’d have to send to Frances. To Mrs. Tartt, who lived her life with the highest of hopes every day . “I trusted you, and you lied to me, Charlie. Why in God’s name would you think I’d go along with this in the first place?”

She crossed her arms over her chest. She’d already gone to jail and the nuthouse and had the scars to prove it. “Because there’s something odd about you.” She did not say this nicely. “You’re kind to people nobody else makes the effort to be kind to.” With that, she got up and went to her room, shutting the door hard.

“ Thanks , Charlie,” I said to the empty room. I couldn’t believe I’d been such a sucker. I went out on the back porch to try and calm down. The last of a blue dusk hung in the sky, and in the middle of the backyard lay the wooden dance floor Charlie and Flossy had tried to put together. The platform was tilted, higher on the left than the right. The black paint was peeling off and a few boards were so warped they’d been cast aside, leaving strips of empty spaces. Around it, the cow had left patties all over the yard. It looked nothing like Mrs. Tartt’s photographs.

What a damn shame that Meg would never know how much Charlie was willing to risk to get her back.