He pulled an envelope from his jacket and laid it on the counter.
I stared at the fat, wrinkly envelope. “Cokie, what is this?”
“Well, let’s see now. It’s money for the classes and money for the house you gotta live in.”
“What?”
“I was a fix short, so I passed the hat with the close group. Cornbread helped. Sweety and Sadie put in too. We know Sadie ain’t goin’ tell nobody.”
“Does Willie know?”
“No, and she don’t need to know. I made sure to stay clear of Frankie so he wouldn’t go sellin’ secrets to her. I love Willie, but she stuck on keepin’ you here in New Orleans.”
I reached for the envelope and lifted the back flap with my thumb. A wad of bills fanned open from the thick stack.
“This whole thing with your momma’s about to pop. She gone from bad to worse. Willie’s done right by keeping you out the skittle. Massachusetts is a good distance.”
I couldn’t accept the money. I looked at Cokie to tell him so. His eyes were dancing, just like they were on my birthday when he brought me the thermos and the map. He wanted this just as much, maybe more, than I did. And he believed in me. I looked at the envelope.
I screamed and ran out from behind the counter and threw my arms around him. “Thank you!” We jumped up and down together, hooting and hollering.
He spun away and started to snap his fingers, “Josie girl, you goin’ to Boston, so don’t you jive on me.”
FORTY-THREE
I hid the envelope in the floorboard and ran to Patrick’s. I couldn’t wait to tell him. We had discussed the issue of money, and he’d suggested selling some of Charlie’s things to help. Now he didn’t have to.
I knocked. There was no answer. I used my key and peeked in. “Patrick?” I said. Nothing.
“Up here,” he called.
I ran up the oak stairs, leaping them two at a time. He was in Charlie’s room, sitting on the floor against the bed. His face was puffy.
“It’s so hard,” he said. “I know I should clear all this out, but I just can’t do it.”
“It’s too soon,” I told him. “Why do you need to do it now?”
“I keep thinking the sooner I have a fresh start, the sooner I’ll feel better, but now everything I look at has a memory tied to it.”
I walked around the room, running my finger across Charlie’s dresser and past the framed photograph of Patrick’s grandmother. I picked up the heart-shaped Valentine box and hugged it to my chest. The window over the desk was open. The page fluttered in the typewriter.
BLV
“Patrick, did you see this? There’s another letter. When did he type that?”
“Yeah, I saw it. It must have been when Randolph was here. Take it if you want it. I have the manuscript.”
I pulled the paper from the typewriter and sat down next to him on the floor. “I have some news that may cheer you up.”
He perked a bit. “You got your acceptance?”
“No, but I got the money. Cokie had a huge streak throwing dice, and he gave it to me.”
“Jo, that’s great. I’m so happy for you.”
But he didn’t look happy. He looked completely miserable. Of course he did. He had just lost his father, and now I was talking about moving halfway across the country.
“I’m sad too. But don’t worry, I’ll be here to help you take care of Charlie’s things. I’ll come home on holidays, and you’ll of course visit me out there. We’ll tour Massachusetts hunting for books. It’ll be so much fun.” I put my hand on his leg. “I’m so happy with the way things have turned out with us. I can’t believe I’ve been so blind all these years.” I moved in to kiss him.
“Jo . . .” He stopped me and hung his head. His shoulders swayed. He was crying.
“What is it?” I asked.
Tears dropped from his eyes. “I’m so sorry, Jo. If I could, I would . . . choose you.”
The tips of my fingers went cold. Choose. Verb. To decide from a range of options. I looked at him. “There’s someone else?”
He was silent for a while, then nodded. “I feel so horrible. I’m awful.” Patrick’s crying deepened into heavy sobs. He cried so hard his entire body shook.
I sat motionless, my bruised pride battling my desire to comfort my best friend.
“I don’t know how it happened. It’s all such a mess. I’ve hurt so many people,” he sobbed. He looked at me. “James,” he whispered.
I searched his frantic eyes, and suddenly I understood.
I looked away from him. “Does James know how you feel?”
“I think so.”
My throat pulled closed, the words wrestling with the lump in my windpipe. “I met Kitty at the funeral,” I whispered. “I didn’t feel a spark between them. Maybe it’s okay.”
Patrick’s eyes met mine. “You’re not upset?”
I pulled in a breath. “I feel ridiculous that you felt like you had to pretend with me. But Kitty’s a gorgeous girl—I thought so when I met her. And she’s smart. How can I blame you for being in love with her? But you’ll have to be up front with James. Be honest. Once you do that, you’ll feel so much better.”
Patrick stared at me and then looked into his lap.
Embarrassed and a bit humiliated, that’s how I felt, and disappointed. Patrick and I made so much sense together. We were comfortable, and he had kissed me. I had constructed the entire scenario in my head of how our relationship would grow and progress. I felt stupid for ever thinking those things. Patrick’s heart belonged to someone else. Sure, Betty Lockwell was an annoying nuisance, but Kitty was a sophisticated young woman.
The conversation dissolved into awkward silence. I picked up Charlie’s heart-shaped box. The red plastic flowers on the top were deformed from months of affection. I pulled off the lid.
I stared down into the box. “Where did he get them?”
Patrick shrugged.
Inside were a pair of Siamese acorns, their beret caps touching, fused at the neck, growing into and out of each other.
We sat on the hardwood floor in silence, our heads resting against Charlie’s bed. The voices and claps from a children’s stickball game filtered in through the open window and floated in front of us on particles of sunlit dust.
I looked at the sheet of paper in my lap. “B-L-V,” I read aloud, trying to stir the uncomfortable silence. “Do you think it’s Believe?” I asked.
He turned slowly to me. “No, I know what it is.”
“You do?”
Patrick nodded. “It’s the title of the first chapter in the book he was working on. Be Love,” he said quietly.
I stared at the sheet of paper and the acorns. I put my arm around Patrick and kissed his head.
And he cried.
FORTY-FOUR
Patrick wanted someone else. I wanted him to be happy, but why couldn’t he be happy with me? I knew the answer. He couldn’t choose me. Patrick wanted a literary life of travel, learning, and social substance. I was a scrappy girl from the Quarter, trying to make good. No matter how I parted my hair, I couldn’t part from the crack I had crawled out of.
I wished I had a friend in the Quarter, someone like Charlotte. Someone I could share secrets with, collapse on her bedroom floor, and spill my guts about Patrick to. I saw so many girls walking arm in arm, laughing, an inexplicable closeness and comfort that they had a protector and confidante. They had someone they could count on.
A man leaned against a car outside the bookshop. He saw me approach and walked to meet me on the sidewalk. It was Detective Langley.
“Miss Moraine. I’m glad I waited. I was hoping I could ask you some additional questions.”
I looked up and down the street, checking to see who was around to report
to Frankie.
“We can step inside the shop if you like,” he said.
I unlocked the door, turned on the lights, and walked to the counter. I sucked in a breath to calm my nerves. “What can I help you with, Detective?”
He mopped his wet brow and took out a tattered notepad. “The day you came to the station, you said that Mr. Hearne bought two books.”
I nodded.
“Yeah, the books were found in his hotel room, and there was a receipt in one of them. His wife has told us that the check never cleared. She thought that was odd. The check is listed in the checkbook register that was found on him.”
My mind raced, trying to catch up with my heart. I pointed to the sign near the register. “We don’t take checks, Detective. Perhaps Mr. Hearne wrote the check before he saw the sign and then paid in cash?”
He pointed his pen to the sign. “That’s gotta be it. Thank you.”
“I’ll show you out.”
“One more thing.” He rubbed his head. “I’m sure you know that your mother is being questioned. She was seen with Hearne the night of his death. Do you know where your mother was on New Year’s Eve, Miss Moraine?”
I looked at Detective Langley. His story was obvious. Every Sunday he’d drive to his mother’s for dinner. His mother, probably named Ethel, had meaty ankles, weary gray curls, and wore a flowered housedress. A wiry black hair sprouted from the mole on her chin. She’d shuffle around a hot kitchen all day in preparation for her son’s weekly visit. She’d make something special, perhaps with frothy meringue, for dessert. He’d eat every bite. After his car pulled away, Ethel would wash the dishes, allow herself a slug of blackberry wine, and then fall asleep in the living room chair, still wearing her apron.
“Miss Moraine?” He interrupted my thoughts. “I asked if you know where your mother was on New Year’s Eve.”
“Have you met my mother, Detective?” I asked.
“Yes, I have.”
“Then I’m sure you won’t be surprised when I tell you that we have been estranged for quite some time. I’ve lived upstairs in this bookshop since I was twelve years old.” I stared at the detective. “I’ve never spent New Year’s Eve with my mother, and I have no idea where she was.”
He put his pen in his ear to scratch an itch or dislodge some wax. “Well, the chief wanted me to come talk to you. I told him he was going to a goat’s house for wool, but he’s got a checklist, you know.”
Coming to me was like going to a goat’s house?
“So, Miss Moraine, if you weren’t with your mother, where were you on New Year’s Eve?”
“I was right here, upstairs in my room.” I motioned toward the back stairs and regretted it the moment my hand moved.
Detective Langley looked toward the stairs at the back of the shop. What if he wanted to search my room? How would I explain thousands of dollars in Cokie’s gambling money in my floorboard? He would probably think it was the cash missing from Mr. Hearne. Droplets of perspiration popped at the back of my neck.
He leaned on the counter. “Did anyone see you here on New Year’s Eve?”
“Yes, Patrick Marlowe, the owner of the shop. He came by with a friend around midnight.”
“Did you all go out then?”
“No, Patrick will tell you I was quite indisposed, in my nightgown and hairpins.”
The detective chewed his lip in thought. I could practically see the dim lightbulb buzzing above his head. “What if I told you that someone saw you out on New Year’s Eve?” he said.
“I would say they were lying, hoping to pressure me into telling you something different. I have told you the facts, Detective. I was here, all night, on New Year’s Eve. You can speak to Patrick Marlowe and James from Doubleday Bookshop. They both saw me here.”
I almost felt bad for the guy. He’d never stay afloat in the Quarter with such transparent methods.
He thanked me for my time and left. I locked the door, turned out the lights, and watched him drive away. Then I ran across the street to call Willie.
I recounted all the details.
“He just left?” she asked.
“Yes, he just drove away.”
“They’re still digging. They don’t have anything,” she said.
“Willie, does Mother have an alibi?”
“Trust me, you don’t want what your mother has. Go back and lock your doors.” She hung up the phone.
I ran across the dark street. I fumbled with my keys, trying to find the right one in the low light. I heard a noise. My hair tore from my scalp as I was yanked and slammed up against the glass door. I felt something hard in my back.
“Hey, Crazy Josie. That was a bad, bad move. You really think it’s wise to go talkin’ to the police?” Cincinnati’s sour breath was hot in my ear.
“I wasn’t talking to the police.”
He shoved me into the door again. “I saw you. I stood and watched you talk to that copper.” His hand was on the back of my head, shoving the side of my face into the glass.
“I wasn’t talking to him. He just . . . asked me a question.”
He slapped his knife on the door next to my eye. “You,” he whispered, “are a liar.”
My body shuddered.
I saw a couple walking toward us down Royal and opened my mouth to scream. Cincinnati jerked me off the door, slung his arm around my neck, and forced me to walk with him.
“Don’t even think about screaming,” he said through his teeth.
I tried to follow his paces, my face practically wrenched in a headlock. His left hand held the blade of his knife at my waistline. I felt the sting of the tip against me. We walked a block up to Bourbon Street, and he pushed me into a small bar. I saw my mother sitting at a table in the back near a window, a litter of empty glasses in front of her.
He threw me into a chair and quickly pulled one up behind.
“Look what I found,” said Cincinnati.
“Hi, Jo.” Mother sounded sleepy. Her blue-shadowed lids bobbed like the last flaps of a dead bird.
“I told you that was the detective who drove by. And when I looked, guess who was chatting him up?” Cincinnati lit a cigarette and blew the smoke in my face.
Mother sat up, her tone shifting slightly. “Why were you talking to the detective, Jo?”
I slid my chair away from Cincinnati and closer to my mother. “The day Mr. Hearne died, he came to the shop. He bought two books. The police found the books and the receipt in his hotel room. The detective came to ask me about them.”
“Just now they came to ask you?” said Cincinnati. “Why didn’t they come earlier?”
“I don’t know,” I said, looking at my mother. I couldn’t stand to look at Cincinnati.
Mother reached for Cincinnati’s hand. “See, baby? That’s nothing. They just asked about books.”
“Shut up, Louise. She’s lyin’. The kid’s slick like me, not stupid like you.”
“I’m not stupid,” contested Mother. “You’re stupid.”
“You watch your mouth.”
Mother pouted. “Well, I’m no longer a suspect. They confirmed my alibi, and we’ll be goin’ back to Hollywood. This town’s just too small for us,” she told me.
“When are you leaving?” I asked.
“Tomorrow morning,” said Cincinnati. “Why, you wanna come with us, Crazy Josie?” He put his hand on my thigh. I threw it off.
“I don’t want to leave in the morning,” whined Mother. “I want to have dinner at Commander’s Palace tomorrow. I want all those Uptown women to see me and know I’m on my way back to Hollywood.”
“Shut your piehole. I told you, we have to get out of here. If you keep your mouth shut, I’ll take you to the Mocambo when we get back to Hollywood.”
Mo
ther smiled, accepting the compromise. “Cinci’s got in real good with some fellas in Los Angeles.” Her eyes wandered like an impatient child. “Where’s that pretty watch?”
“In my room. I don’t wear it often. It’s a bit fancy.”
“You should give it to me, then. I’d wear it all the time.”
“I had a nice watch comin’ to me once, but your momma lost it,” said Cincinnati.
“I didn’t lose it!” snapped Mother. “Evangeline must have stolen it. I told you that a million times.”
“Or maybe Crazy Josie found it, sold it, and bought herself a nice watch.” Cincinnati stared at me.
“Mine was a gift.” I looked at Mother. “For my eighteenth birthday.”
“Ooh, you’re legal now.” Cincinnati snickered.
A uniformed police officer appeared in the doorway, greeting a friend at a nearby table.
I stood up. “Have a safe trip to California, Mother.” I leaned over and kissed her cheek. “Please send me your address so I can write to you.” I walked as fast as I could without jogging. As soon as I was outside, I pulled my gun from under my skirt and ran.
The heat from Cincinnati’s hand hung on my thigh, and the evening air crept in through the knife slice in my blouse. I ran past the Sans Souci and thought of Forrest Hearne, sitting dead at the table.
Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.
FORTY-FIVE
His words were stuck in my head, running on a repeat loop. The kid’s slick like me, not stupid like you.
The fact that Cincinnati thought I resembled him in any way sickened me. It made me want to run and hide. When I was a child in Detroit and terrors chased me, I would run to my hiding spot, a crawl space under the front porch of the boardinghouse we lived in. I’d wedge my small body into the cool brown earth and lie there, escaping the ugliness that was inevitably going on above me. I’d plug my ears with my fingers and hum to block out the remnants of Mother’s toxic tongue or sharp backhand. It became a habit, humming, and a decade later, I was still doing it. Life had turned cold again, the safety of the cocoon under the porch was gone, and lying in the dirt had become a metaphor for my life.