Ruby grinned and smacked her gum. “Bet your red rosy ass I am.”
Mrs. Tartt did not even blink, but Charlie stepped in. “Get some rest, girls, for tonight,”
she said.
After they’d filed back inside, Mrs. Tartt said, “Well. What time do we open tonight?”
“At five,” Charlie said. “Since it’ll probably get a little noisy, we thought you and
Frances might like to go see a picture show in town.”
“But I’d really like to watch the dancing,” Mrs. Tartt said. I drilled my eyes on Frances.
“I want to see a picture show,” Frances blurted out. “I want to spend some time together.”
“We did just spend three weeks together, dear,” Mrs. Tartt said with a weak smile. “We
even stayed in the same room.”
Miraculously, Charlie pulled a strip of red tickets out of her skirt pocket. “The girls
chipped in and bought tickets to the double feature tonight, as a welcome home present.”
“Oh. Well . . . I’d hate to hurt their feelings,” Mrs. Tartt said. “I reckon we’ll go on to
town then and we can watch the dancing when we get home.”
Chapter 43
There 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 go find Charlie. She was coming out of the parlor into the main hall. “Charlie,
can you open the kitchen door for me?”
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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 blue 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 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 in
your letter?” His mouth was so close to my mouth 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
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to Footely and look after 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—“what do you know, 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 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. 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. I better hold on tight. 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
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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.
“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.” Esmeralda had her white rabbit’s foot
in her hand, and silently recited a prayer. “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 about what was happening years ago,” 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 at the bank?”
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.
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The telephone on the floor of the hall rang. Ruby backtracked, snatched it up, and barked,
“C Club, whadaya want?” 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 . . . what exactly did
you—”
“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.”
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“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 just 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 walked 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 just 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
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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
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, looking nervous,
perhaps, 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 was now handing 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
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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 out at me. I expected a scowl, but she looked put out, like why
hadn’t we bought her ring too? God, my sister.
Mrs. Tartt gazed at her hand, then out at the girls dancing. 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 his hand away. He moved his
hand back to her waist. After another insufferable minute, 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.”
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“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.
At the top of the 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 moaned.
“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.”
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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 like 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 does but mostly because just 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.”
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“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 somebody worse.”
“What do you mean?”
Virginia look 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 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 showed the man out.
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Then Charlie came 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. Well my vote was for the first—and I was
about to scold Trixie for sneaking a man upstairs— when Dixie, the dumb one, came to the top
of the steps, 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. “That’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 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.” She was in shock, I could
see this.
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“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 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. No more, 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 now
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.
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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 this 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 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.
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