Diary of a Blues Goddess (9 page)

"Brought you something." He walked in and put a flat, square package in my hand.

"Hmm… what could this be?" I joked, though it could only be a record. Tony haunts a used-CD and record store, always digging up rare finds. I pulled the album out of the bag. "A Mildred Bailey."

"I hope you don't have it." He said, his brogue a lilt that made every sentence, even those that weren't questions, end on a rising note.

"No… I don't. But then again, I think you know my record collection better than I do. Thanks, Tony." I jumped up and kissed him. He flushed, the pink almost translucent on his skin, and moved away.

"Put it on."

I went over to my old stereo, a Philco that had belonged to my Dad. I know CDs are scratch-free and sound… perfect, but I like listening to old albums. They take me back in time. Mildred came on singing, a true blues goddess. Tony came over closer to me.

"What a voice."

I nodded.

"You're just as good. One of these days, you're going to have to leave the band and go sing what you feel, Georgia."

I shrugged. "I know."

"We could go to Ireland."

I turned to face him. "What?"

"Go to Ireland. Play the blues… I miss Ireland. Dreary sort of place sometimes. But I'm homesick, Georgia. Miss the green grass. Really is emerald. Leprechauns, too."

"Sure. Four-leaf clovers. Pots of gold."

"You're talking now. And ale. Very good ale."

"You would go back there?" I had gotten used to Tony. He was, besides Red, the only person who understood the blues. We didn't have to speak just shut our eyes and listen.

"Someday."

"And what do you mean
we
?"

He stammered. "Nothing… Nothing. I didn't mean a thing. I guess I meant you could come and visit." He walked over to the far wall of my bedroom, standing and staring at the photos I had hung there, his back to me. His shoulders moved slightly to the music. If he had a few "pints" in him, he was an amazing dancer, raw and sexual. "Who's this bloke?"

"Who?" I came and stood behind him as he pointed. "Oh… that's my dad."

"Played the bass?"

"Yeah. That's him and his old quintet. He was good."

"And you never hear from him?"

"No."

"My father's dead."

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be. He was a bit of a bastard, really, love."

I waited for him to share more, but that was all he said. We both retreated into our own worlds and listened to Mildred, separate but together. Every Sunday was some variation of the same, separate but somehow one. I looked at Tony, his eyes completely blank now, not twinkling, far away. In Ireland maybe. An ocean away from me.

About ten to eight, the doorbell rang. Tony and I went downstairs, greeted Jack as he descended the stairs, too, and found Nan letting Gary and Annie in. Kissing Nan and me, Annie is positively adorable. If Gary is five foot four in shoes, she can't be but five foot tall. Next to Dominique and her high heels, she's an elf. Or, as Tony teases her, a leprechaun. It never ceases to amaze me that Annie has popped out three babies from that tiny belly and those narrow hips of hers. Gary and Annie hold hands constantly, and somehow, she makes balding, slightly potbellied Gary seem like a sex symbol. They prove the adage that there's someone for everyone. Around her, Gary doesn't pace, let alone break out in a cold sweat. He's funny and charming. Sundays are a date night for them. Her mother watches the kids, and Gary and Annie come to supper and then go out in the city for cocktails—alone. Gary says he falls in love with her all over again each Sunday night. She even likes ABBA, too, scary as that is.

Mike was the last of the Saints to arrive. He plays the drums, and he drinks way too much. He shows up for our gigs sober, or sober enough to play, but he's still trying to get over his wife, Delilah, who deserted him two years ago for a guy who flew in for a convention. She was a dealer on a gambling riverboat and left Mike cold without even trying to work things out. Understandably, Mike is bitter. He says Gary and Annie make him gag.

Red arrived shortly after Mike. He brought Nan a perfect yellow single rose he picked from a neighbor's garden he passed on the way over. It was just beginning to open its petals. Red kissed Nan's hand, and she just smiled and looked into his eyes. She's had a couple of boyfriends since Grandpa died when I was five, but Red was the first "gentleman caller," as she put it, who made her blush.

And finally, in walked Maggie, in her black boots, black miniskirt and tight black T-shirt. She smiled at Jack and winked at me. I blinked hard. Her hair was now even, and I swear it was a slightly different shade of red than earlier in the afternoon. She has hair schizophrenia.

After a round of cocktails—Nan makes these fabulous champagne cocktails with sugar cubes and bitters—in the living room, we all went into the dining room. Sitting down, Nan asked Red to say grace.

"May the music move us, and the spirit guide us. And thank you for this fine New Orleans meal. Amen."

Mike never said amen. He let it be known ages ago that he was an atheist and an existentialist. I just think because Delilah had gone to church every Sunday morning, he wasn't having any of it. But Annie crossed herself, and Dominique bowed her head piously. She has a rosary bead collection, thinking of them as some sort of talisman against bad luck.

We all dug in. Then the waterworks started.

Two bites into the jambalaya, my eyes were tearing and my nose was running. Nan knows how to make it right. If tears aren't running down your face, it ain't New Orleans jambalaya. More likely it's jambalaya from some chain restaurant where the cooks don't know how to sling the cayenne.

Gathered around the table, we laughed, we toasted New Orleans, we drank. We drank a lot more. We wiped at our tearing eyes and runny noses with our napkins. We emptied eleven bottles of champagne and wine.

And then, in the midst of all the chattering, Tony's brogue emerged, thicker than ever, and he began to sing, in a simple, poignant voice, a Celtic song about a sailor and a lost love who died on the sea. When he finished, we whistled and applauded.

Red spoke when the clapping died down, "That's like the Irish blues, isn't it? See, don't matter where you're from, as long as there's love, there'll be the blues. No use pretendin' otherwise. A beautiful song, Tony. Georgia, you should sing the one from last week." He snapped his fingers, trying to recall the title." 'Give Me Back My Dead Daughter's Child.'"

"What the hell kind of song title is that?" Dominique sputtered. "What's with you blues people? Tony's got a woman drowning with saltwater in her lungs and now a dead daughter's child? What's next? Suicide? Murder? War? Is this song going to make me cry?"

Red smiled. "If Georgia sings it right, it will."

Dominique stared at me. "What's wrong with 'We Are Family' by Sister Sledge? Something upbeat?"

"You wait there, Dominique, before you pass judgment. Go on, Georgia, sing it," Red urged.

The song was a very old one, maybe first sung at the birth of the blues. Jelly Roll Morton, one of the old kings of blues, loved it. It made him cry. I'd had some champagne. And Red had put me on the spot. So I began to sing the blues. I mean, the title says it all. Could there be anything happy in a song like that? People think country music is full of clichéd old sadness: "I Shot My Brothers Hunting Dog with a Rifle after a Quart of Jack Daniel's." But the blues were inventing grief in song long before any cowboy twanged a guitar. I started singing quietly at first but found my range and shut my eyes. I really didn't want to see everyone looking at me, even if they were my friends. I felt my cheeks flush, but I kept on singing this mournful song. And when I was done, no one said a word. Not exactly the response I was looking for.

I opened my eyes, and they were all staring at me. Then Dominique leaped to her feet and began screaming and hooting and clapping. Everyone else started clapping, and Maggie banged her silver spoon on the table and then began clinking her crystal champagne flute with her spoon. Jack and Red followed suit. I cringed. The glasses were nearly as old as Nan.

I stood and took a bow. "Thank you… Now it's someone else's turn to sing."

But they didn't stop. All except Tony, who hadn't clapped at all actually but had raised his glass in a silent toast to me.

"One more clinking glass, and I'll force you all to sit through my rendition of 'Dancing Queen.'"

"Ditch the fuckin' disco. We could be a damn good blues band," Tony said. "That was great. Bloody 'ell, that was fuckin' amazin'."

"We'd starve as a jazz band," Mike chimed in.

"Maybe," said Red, smiling, "but you all'd be makin' real music."

Gary stared at me from across the table. "Georgia… that was great, but you wouldn't leave the band, would you?"

Jack elbowed him, staring at me as if I'd never sung before. "With pipes like those and a song like that we
could
be a blues and jazz band."

Gary shook his head. "But we've worked so hard to get to the point where we can actually make a
living
doing what we're doing. A
living. You
know… that which pays the bills."

Annie bit her lip and bowed her head.

I raised my hands. "Hey… I need to earn a living just as much as the rest of you. It was a song. One song." Out of the corner of my eye I saw Red exchange a look with Nan. I hate when no matter what you do, you're not going to make everyone happy.

No one else was going to do any singing, and certainly no one wanted to hear "Dancing Queen" (except maybe Dominique and Gary), so we cleared the table and Dominique, Red and Nan did the dishes. Dominique insisted on wearing her apron. It's permanently in our linen closet, especially for her. It has ruffles, and it's pink. Nan, all five foot two inches of her, stood at the kitchen sink and washed. Red stood next to her, not much taller, and dried. And Dominique, towering at six foot two, put the dishes and glassware away. I was tempted to get my camera and snap a picture.

Everyone started to head home. Tony kissed me goodbye and whispered in my ear, his breath hot and sending a tingle down my spine, "You were fuckin' brilliant, Georgia." I stepped back and looked him in the eye. Coming from Tony, that was a high compliment.

Mike, who'd brought a bottle of Wild Turkey and drank most of it, stumbled out the door. Annie and Gary waved and headed out on their date. Red and Nan went up to her sitting room to play gin rummy. Maggie lingered, and she, Jack and I opened another bottle of champagne. I knew I'd pay for it with a hangover the next day, but I was hoping to get the two of them together. About halfway through the bottle, Jack yawned.

"I'm going up to bed."

Maggie looked at me in "do-something" panic.

"Can you walk Maggie home?" I hurriedly asked him. She lived about eight blocks away, renting a one-bedroom in an old house that had been divided up into apartments, but we never let her walk it alone at night. Usually she just crashed in an upstairs bedroom, but this seemed like a good ploy to get them alone.

He shrugged. "Sure." He helped her up from her chair, and she kissed me good-night.

"Have fun," I whispered. We'd tried every ruse we could think of in the last couple of years to throw those two together, but you never know.

I went upstairs and washed up in my bathroom, put on an old T-shirt and looked around my room. It used to be my great-aunt Irene's room when she visited. She was Nan's sister, a diva, and insisted on the best room in the house, with a view of the street below, and a fireplace. My room is spacious, unlike some of the other bedrooms, and we think it was probably the master bedroom when the house was first built. Dominique had moved to New York City for a little while, fine-tuning her act. After she moved back here a few years ago, she said my room was the size of her entire apartment there.

The room, filled with antiques and pictures of my mother, father, Nan and my ancestors on the fireplace mantel, made me feel connected to the past. I walked over to my father's record collection. I never called it "my" collection, maybe because that would mean I was sure he wasn't ever coming back to claim it. I pulled out an old LP and put it on the turntable of my stereo. I listened to a song called "Glad To Be Unhappy." Only the blues and jazz have song titles like that.

I sauntered or half danced over to the wall where I have family pictures, old black and whites, in frames. I stared at the picture of my father that had caught Tony's eye. My family was a mixture of black and white, some Spanish and Native American on my father's side, down through the years. We were a melting pot all on our own, and I was the result of all those lineages mixing together. My room, the house, was a place where it was safe to grieve, to feel joy, to be with the ghosts of the past and the extended family of the present. I longed for Casanova Jones as the song stirred emotions in my drunken heart. I finished playing the record and then turned off the stereo. The house was silent, but I almost always feel as if the house itself breathes, alive.

Quickly, I fell asleep… or passed out. That was a matter of definition. But I was awakened at three-thirty in the morning by the loudest slam I'd ever heard. So, apparently, were Nan, Dominique and Jack. We all converged in the upstairs hallway, groggy, clutching robes (Dominique and Nan) and pulling on T-shirts and sweatpants (Jack and I), but very clear that we'd all heard something.

Dominique grabbed my hand and whispered, "Remember when I mocked your
system
, Georgia?"

I nodded, undecided whether to be terrified or fascinated by our resident ghost.

"Well… I didn't mean to make fun of you."

"Yes, you did. But now you heard her yourself."

Jack whispered, "Nan? You heard it, too?"

"Stop whispering," she commanded. "We can't let her think we're afraid of her."

Jack, who, out of instinct, had been hunched over as if he expected a demon to come popping out of a closet or something, pulled himself up to his full height. "Of course we're not afraid," he said out loud.