The Calamity Club by Kathryn Stockett - 45

T here was the usual scurry and ruckus before we opened, with Mr. Binny warming up on piano and horns blaring through the air, stopping, then blaring again. Mrs. Tartt and Frances had already left for the picture show. While I chopped ice in the kitchen sink, I could hear the girls upstairs getting ready, but when I tried to get out the back kitchen door it was already locked for the night, so I had to go find Charlie. She was coming out of the parlor into the main hall. “Charlie, can you unlock the kitchen door for me?”

Charlie frowned at something behind me. I looked back and saw Dixie opening the front door for somebody—she was supposed to ask before answering that dang door. Then I froze.

Oh my. He’s here. Now. Charlie must’ve realized who he was because she said, “We open in twenty-five minutes.”

Jack took long, wide strides toward me. He was not smiling. He was wearing the gray suit coat that was tight in the upper arms. I’d never been afraid of Jack, despite his size, but seeing him come at me like that, I braced myself. Inches away, he said, “What is going on, Birdie?”

Dixie trotted upstairs, and I heard Ruby bray a laugh.

“Can you please go wait for me out front and I’ll meet you—”

“No. Sit down. Here.” He turned me by the shoulders to the main stairs and pulled me down to sit next to him on the bottom step. “Tell me.” He sounded a little desperate. “Why would you write that letter?” His mouth was so close to mine I could’ve kissed it.

“Because it’s the truth. I can’t give you what you want.”

“Why would you say we’re not right for each other?”

“Because I can’t have children, Jack.”

A crease deepened between his eyes. “Well, Birdie, I can’t have them without you. So I’d rather be with you and not have children than not be with you and not have children.”

“But you could meet somebody who could give you children.”

“But I don’t want somebody else, I want you. I’ve never met anybody even remotely like you.” Arguable if this was a good thing or not.

“I just don’t see how it can work …” We could hear Mr. Binny tinkling the keys outside. The girls would be coming down any second, and I thought better to end this now with me as the woman like no other, not the woman like no other who was running a brothel. “I have to go back to Footely and take care of my mama and her mama. Somebody’s got to look after things.” I wasn’t sure if Jack could understand that. He’d left his wife and son for months at a time, sent to work for banks in Toledo, Little Rock, Oxford. “You’ll be in Jackson and then who knows where they’ll send you after that.”

He took my hand and pressed it to his left cheek and held it there. “One of the reasons I love you is that you’d never leave somebody behind like I did.” My heart ached at the words love you . It seemed too good to be true. I shook my head because this simply could not work.

“Listen to me.” He took my hand off his cheek but held on to it. “My son’s decided to attend Ole Miss next fall. He wants to play football, and I intend to stay close to him. This time next year, I’ll be living here in Oxford full time. Allison’s retiring so I put my name in the hat, and”—he shrugged—“they gave me the job to run Henry Tartt’s bank. I’ll be in Jackson till then but coming back and forth a lot.” He bit his lip and searched my face. “Didn’t you tell me your purpose in life was to drive your sister crazy?”

I nodded. It was true. Except for the small detail that my sister never wanted to see me again.

“I would think to do that to the best of your ability, you’d need to come visit her here often. We can make this work, Birdie. And the best part is, we’ve got a year to figure out how.” I saw a flash of worry cross his face. “If you need more time than that, I don’t mind waiting. Unless this really isn’t what you want.”

“ I want it ,” I said. “Of course I want it.” It stunned me how fast I’d said that. I leaned up and kissed him hard on the lips, not embarrassed at all by my own desperation. I had found the one man in the state of Mississippi who’d be willing to put up with me and I better hold on tight. “I guess we can try it.” As we sat on the bottom stair, three, four, five prostitutes were coming down, fully maked up and armored for the night. Jack glanced at them and stood up. I stood up too. Flossy, in the lead, was doing stretching exercises for her jaw; behind her, Trixie, Dixie, and Esmeralda descended in a single file, and as she passed, Ruby looked at Jack and said, “When I’m good, I’m very, very good, but when I’m bad, I’m better,” in a Mae West drawl. Jack looked puzzled as hell.

“Listen, I spoke to Eleanor at the bank today,” I said, trying to turn his attention away from them.

“I heard,” he said. At the end of the hall, Charlie opened the back door, and the music swooned louder. “I guess renting out rooms was a better idea than—are y’all having a party tonight?”

“The boarders give dance lessons in the backyard—but why would the bank dismiss the rest of Mrs. Tartt’s mortgage like that? After they put her through so much?”

He squeezed my hand. I had his attention again. “Mr. Allison should’ve spoken to Mrs. Tartt years ago about what was happening with her money,” he said.

That wasn’t an answer. “So … the loan really is satisfied? There’s no catch?”

“No catch. The bank dismissed what was left of the debt, except for one dollar,” he said in a clipped tone. “The bank doesn’t need to assume the upkeep of a big house like this that could take years to sell.”

“Did you make that decision?”

He thought about this. “It is … in my best interest that your sister lives in Oxford so you’ll come visit her. To do that, she needs a house to live in.” I wanted to wrap my arms around this kind man and tell him I didn’t need to torment Frances as a reason to come to Oxford, I’d come just to see him.

The telephone on the floor of the hall rang. Ruby backtracked, snatched it up, and barked, “C Club, whadaya want?” I knew what C Club stood for and it was not the Charlie Club. Whatever the man said he wanted made Ruby slam the telephone down.

I watched Jack watch this. His brow furrowed as Ruby hitched her titties up higher.

“You didn’t tell me you got a telephone,” he said.

“We try to keep the line open for the dance club.” We watched Ruby walk out the back door, rear end swishing. On her way out, she scratched it, with intent.

“You found these ladies yourself?” he asked.

“I—sort of. We had to take what we could get.”

The telephone rang again, twice, but then stopped. I’d swear I could hear things adding up in his head. “When you said you wanted to start your own business …”

“A bookkeeping business. That’s what I want to start, keeping books for other businesses to save them money.”

At the end of the hall, Esmeralda was casting her spell with her white rabbit foot. She stuck it on the window ledge and went outside. Flossy, the last to go, reached inside her dress and pulled out a tissue, blew her nose, and stuck it back inside the lining. After she walked outside, we could hear Charlie calling out the rules, the girls calling back, “He’s a dead john.” Jack’s forehead crunched up in, what—shock? Disgust? “You are the most bewildering woman I have—” Here it comes. He’s going to ask me if it’s a— “You really did all this to help Mrs. Tartt and your sister?”

“I did it … for a lot of other people too.” He stared at me, as if waiting for more. “We’re only open through homecoming, then it’s over. We’re shut down for good.”

“The busiest weekend of the year,” he said and whispered, “ Smart. ”

Did he know or didn’t he? I honestly could not tell. But still, I asked, “Does this … change anything? About what you … think of us?”

He took my hand again in his. He looked like he didn’t quite recognize me. And that he was teetering on the razor-thin edge of asking, What … have you done …

He shook his head and smiled. “I sure hope I can live up to somebody as brave as you are. Because I suspect I’m gonna have to put up with it for the rest of my life.”

I led him out to the front porch, and he said, “I’ll see you Sunday?” I nodded. He kissed me and walked to his car, gazing back at the house one more time, looking puzzled, then he blew me a kiss and drove away.

The sun was still sizzling well above the horizon when I took my seat at the telephone table. We were in a true Indian summer. Behind me, the girls were waving O H Douglas funeral fans at their faces. It felt like Mississippi’s last effort to spit roast us and eat us before fall, but a cool tingle kept washing over me. Jack. I couldn’t believe it. I was so grateful. This man I love actually wants to put up with me.

The customers showed up on time and most left smiling on this Thursday evening. When the sun finally went down at seven, there was a collective sigh over the yard. A cool breeze blew in, sending the ornaments swaying, and when Mr. Binny played “The Saint Louis Blues,” the cow mooed in her pen and made the oboe player miss a note from laughing. In fact, everybody laughed. About half the customers were grown men tonight. They did not look sheepish or ashamed as some others had. Their grins were confident, lazy, as if, by damn, they’d earned this for themselves. I wondered what their wives earned for their hard work. I reckoned a peaceful night without their cheating husbands.

By ten fifteen, I was sitting up very straight at my table, studying every car that pulled up out front. The plan was, at ten thirty, all the girls were to come back outside to the dance floor, even if it meant cutting an appointment short. We expected Mrs. Tartt and Frances to be home as soon as ten forty-five or as late as eleven. At ten twenty-nine, as planned, all the girls came out—except for Flossy. She was upstairs with a college boy who’d shown up alone without an appointment. Flossy’d figured he be “quick.”

At ten forty-five I saw a taxi coming. He honked twice as we’d instructed Frances to do. I waved to Charlie, who whispered something to Mr. Binny, and “Stormy Weather” eased into “Night and Day,” a song that would probably raise my hair for the rest of my life. Charlie went inside to go unlock the front door. A few minutes later she, Frances, and Mrs. Tartt walked out on the back porch.

Standing up now at my telephone table, on full alert, I watched Mrs. Tartt take it all in. The hem of her cotton dress was wrinkled from sitting through two picture shows. She set a glass on the porch rail, a healthy pour of bourbon on ice that Charlie’d given her. Her shoulders sagged, already tired again from yesterday’s trip as she watched Esmeralda foxtrotting in long, lithe sweeps, her legs stepping forward, then back. Frances stood beside her, ill, probably terrified that Ruby would decide she wasn’t doing a good enough job.

Dear God, it would be a miracle if we got through this without Mrs. Tartt putting it together.

Charlie handed a small box to Mrs. Tartt. I watched her open it, and even from here, I could see her mouth make a perfect little o. She slipped the ring on her finger, easily now since she’d dropped so much weight. This morning I’d gone to Fauster’s and bought back Mrs. Tartt’s wedding ring for twenty-one dollars. She hugged Charlie tight and then she showed Frances, who looked at it, then over at me. She scowled, looking put out, like why hadn’t we bought her ring too? God, my sister.

Mrs. Tartt gazed out at the girls dancing, a small smile on her face. The white-headed fella Esmeralda was with stumbled drunkenly, but she caught his arm before he fell. Trixie’s partner was leering at her, then from my side, I saw him clamp his hand down on her rear end—tell me Mrs. Tartt didn’t see that . Trixie said something to him that jolted him, and he moved his hand away. After another insufferable minute of this, I bared my teeth at my sister: Get Mrs. Tartt upstairs, give her two heart pills, and put her to bed. Frances didn’t seem to get the message.

Out front, another taxicab pulled up and what looked like two college boys got out. I stood up and Charlie met me halfway on the porch stairs. I told her, “Deal with those boys. I’m getting them upstairs.”

“Mrs. Tartt,” I said going to her, “let’s get you up to bed.” Blue eyes shiny with exhaustion, she nodded gratefully.

Before going inside, she took one last look at the yard. “It feels like the old days out here,” she said, then looked up at her house like it was a person she loved deeply and knew she might lose. How badly I wanted to tell her she wouldn’t.

I led her past Henry’s head, which somebody’d thankfully turned around, hiding the menu on the back. Frances followed, struck dumb, behind us. On the main stairs, Mrs. Tartt said, “Thank you, Birdie, for my ring. When I peeked in the window of Fauster’s shop tonight and didn’t see it, I was afraid he’d already melted it down.”

“You’re welcome.” I didn’t want to be thanked for anything else. All I felt was guilt and fear and sweat trickling down my back.

“I saw all my beautiful furniture in there though. It was awful,” Mrs. Tartt said, taking each stair slowly. “Like a graveyard full of dead friends.”

On the second floor, Mrs. Tartt stopped to rest and looked down at Flossy’s closed door like she had yesterday. Halfway up the steep attic stairs, she stopped again and looked back at us.

“Woof, I must be tired. I’d swear I just heard Rory.”

“I didn’t hear anything,” Frances said.

After forty-four stairs from the first floor to the attic landing, Mrs. Tartt was breathing hard. “It’s mighty warm up here this evening, isn’t it.” It wasn’t warm, it was downright hot, even with the electric fans blowing.

Frances moved past us into Mrs. Tartt’s room. “You want two pills again tonight?” she asked, cracking open the bottle by the bed. “How ’bout two?” She was starting to sound complicit in all this. Now that she was getting paid, I supposed she was.

“One is just fine,” Mrs. Tartt said and swallowed it with the glass of water I’d set by her bed. When she went into the little lavatory, Frances whimpered.

“Franny, I know this is hard on you,” I said. She turned away and wouldn’t look at me. “Please just remember, we’re doing this to save your home. But also your mama’s and her mama’s in Footely. Please remember that.” I kept myself out of it, hoping that would help.

Nothing. I got a hot lump in my throat. It felt better when I didn’t feel anything.

When I went back outside, I told Charlie, “I’m staying in the house to keep watch for now. I’ll man the door inside, you watch the table, give it another fifteen minutes before you let anybody inside.”

When I went in the kitchen, Flossy was in there with Virginia. “Where have you been, Flossy? She’s home, she’s upstairs—”

“I’m sorry,” Flossy said. “Kid’s so nervous it’s like eating a spaghetti supper.” Her knees were burning red. She was picking at the cork in a bottle of bourbon that’d been pushed in too hard.

I took the bottle and yanked the cork out with my teeth, poured some in a glass for the boy upstairs, and told her, “Keep him up there at least another ten minutes.”

“You look like you could use one of these,” Virginia said when Flossy went back upstairs. She poured a shot and handed it to me. I drank it without even thinking and coughed up a lung.

“Deep breaths,” Virginia said, patting my back. The music outside finally changed from a never-ending “Night and Day” to “Temptation.” Seconds later, I heard a soft knock on the side door at the bottom of the service stairs and a twin say Frances’s name. Virginia went to answer it for me and then came back into the kitchen.

“Thank God there are only two more nights after this,” I whispered. “You must be glad it’s almost over.”

“I’m going to miss working here with all of y’all,” she said. “It’s Mississippi I can’t wait to get away from. I think the only person more excited to leave this state is Esmeralda.”

“I know she misses her girlfriend,” I said. It didn’t even feel strange to say that anymore.

She nodded. “That and she’s afraid somebody here’ll recognize her,” Virginia said.

Esmeralda’d told me her family lived only about thirty miles from here. “I sure wouldn’t want my mother to know I was doing this, and I’m just running the front.”

“Oh, they know she does this for a living. She’s afraid they’ll find out she’s here. Show up and make a scene and give her away to the customers or worse the law.”

“What do you mean?”

Virginia looked at me like one of us was confused. “That’s why she hates the car so much. She’s afraid it’ll give her away, like it did at Priscilla’s.”

I was lost—was the car stolen? But before I could ask, I heard rapid footsteps, and suddenly Frances rushed in in her nightgown. “She wants an aspirin tablet!”

“It’s alright, I’ll get some,” Virginia said and went down to the cellar.

“Franny, you go back up and I’ll bring it to you,” I said. Frances was barely out of the kitchen when I heard a door shut hard over my head.

Girls, be quiet! Virginia came back upstairs and handed me a tin of pressed pills. But then I heard something, or maybe I sensed it, and I went out and into the main hall—

A bright shock seized my body because there was Mrs. Tartt. In her blue nightgown … floating down the wide stairs, her face white as a winter moon.

Trixie appeared at the top of the stairs with a sheet wrapped around her. “Ma’am?” she called down to her. “Was that you just come in the bedroom?”

Without turning around, Mrs. Tartt said, “I beg—I beg your pardon. I thought I heard my son in his room.”

Frances rushed into the hall, with Virginia behind her. We all stared up at Mrs. Tartt. And then a man came stomping past Trixie, from the direction of Rory’s room, saying, “I want a refund! This ain’t no way to treat a customer!” Still buttoning his shirt as he thundered down the stairs, past Mrs. Tartt. She was gripping the rail now, looking unsteady and a little unsure this wasn’t just a dream. Virginia took the man’s arm and shoved him out.

Charlie came rushing in and when she saw Mrs. Tartt she looked slapped; she was too stunned to even speak. Meanwhile my mind tore through the choices—either we pretended Trixie had snuck upstairs to do some fadoodling, perhaps with a man she liked, or we accepted that what Mrs. Tartt saw would add up to the truth. My vote was for the first —and I was about to scold Trixie for sneaking a man upstairs—when Dixie, the dumb one, came out, barefooted, her dress on lopsided. She stood at the top of the stairs next to her sister.

“Did he leave?” Dixie asked Trixie. “I thought he booked a hour with us.”

Well, shit.

“Viktoria, please … please sit down,” Charlie said. I’d never heard Charlie call her that before, but Viktoria did not sit down. Oh God, I could only imagine what she’d seen. She started blinking, her mouth puckering into a little red sour cherry.

“Viktoria,” Charlie came closer to the stairs. “Please, before you say—before you do anything … I have—there’s some very good news.” Charlie reached into her pocket and pulled out a large roll of cash. “Seven hundred fifteen dollars,” Charlie said. “It’s yours. Your share of the business.”

The rapid Morse code blinking continued. It took Mrs. Tartt a good ten seconds to look like she understood what Charlie’d said. Then the blinking stopped.

“Is that … money from …” She glanced stiffly to the side like she was afraid to turn around and see the twins again.

“The dance club,” Charlie said firmly.

Mrs. Tartt stood straighter. It happened slowly. “That … that’d be enough to save my house ,” Mrs. Tartt said. “That’d be … more than enough to save it.”

“It wouldn’t leave you much to live on, though. After you paid the mortgage,” Charlie said.

“No,” Mrs. Tartt said matter-of-factly. “But it’s … a lot.”

“But there could be more .”

Charlie set the money on the second stair, just below where Mrs. Tartt was standing and stepped back from it. Behind me, I heard Frances draw in a breath. As the bills furled open, Mrs. Tartt grimaced slightly. It was very impolite to discuss money like this, downright garish to show it off. Then again, this entire situation was very, very impolite.

“Two more nights. We only need to stay open two more nights,” Charlie said. She sounded scared, but she stood very upright. “The busiest weekend of the year. And then we close and that’s it. We’re done.” Charlie cut her hand through the air to show she meant it.

Mrs. Tartt said nothing. She did not look tired anymore. She looked firmly grounded and, strangely, several years younger.

“I can’t promise how much more we’ll make, but I do think it would be … significant. To you, to Birdie, and the girls. They work very hard—”

“O-oh.” The word had a shudder in it. “I’m sure they do.”

“And it would be very significant to me too,” Charlie begged. Her posture, her bones looked like they were cracking on her, she was clutching her wrist. “I’m not greedy, Mrs. Tartt. All I want is to get my daughter Meg back and make sure I have enough money to take care of her. And never have to do something like this again.” I saw tears well up in Charlie’s eyes, but she blinked them back.

Mrs. Tartt’s grip on the rail loosened. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly as if Charlie had just laid a heavy suitcase in her arms. I could practically hear Frances’s jaw drop at what she’d heard. My daughter Meg. Now she knew.

“Charlie, what you’re asking me—” Mrs. Tartt said and looked at me. “And Birdie .” Her voice was leaden with disappointment. “I don’t know if I can allow something like this to continue in my home.”

This was too much to ask of the poor woman who’d been nothing but kind to us. I wanted no more lies, no more deception. “Your mortgage note—it’s been forgiven,” I said. “The bank dismissed what’s left of it. I only found out myself this morning.”

Charlie turned to me, surely thinking, Why would you tell her this now? But her face broke into a genuine smile, the likes of which I had never seen on her before. “Is that true?” she said. “She can keep all her money?”

“It’s done. It’s been forgiven,” I said. “Except for a dollar. I wanted to give you the satisfaction of paying that, unless you want me to do it for you.”

Mrs. Tartt set her hand on her neck; her face turned red. Oh my God, was she about to have a heart attack? “I could keep it, all of it?” She glanced, eyes only, down at the money on the stair. “And what you make this weekend would only … add to that?”

Charlie nodded. “Evidently so.”

“With all that, I could probably keep my house for years , long as I could afford my property taxes. And when Rory comes home, I’d still be here … and I could pay Pic and Polly …”

Charlie did not move or blink; she just waited for Mrs. Tartt’s answer. I knew she was praying, beseeching Mother Mary.

“Well, I …” Mrs. Tartt touched the back of her hair, so nicely styled. “Henry always said, you have to take risks to make real money.” She gazed down at the ring on her left hand. “He’d say it’d only be wise to keep the place open a little longer.” She seemed to be speaking to Henry when she said this. She glanced down at the money, then at me and Charlie as if to say, I’ll let you deal with that and began the slow climb back up to the attic. “I reckon we better get up to bed then, Frances. You must be tired. Charlie, don’t let the dance club go too late now.”