The Girls at the Kingfisher Club (16 page)

Four dollars a month, if they behaved.

“Of course, sir.”

He sat a little forward. “The men from good families are looking for wives with beauty, manners, virtue. Unlike your sisters, the gentlemen are in a position to choose. Do you understand?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then why have you been disobeying me?”

Jo blanched.

It was as if someone had socked her in the stomach; it took her a moment to breathe.

He had known, somehow. He had only needed to be sure. She'd been called down this morning because he wanted a good look at her red eyes and purple bags before he showed his cards.

At last she managed, “What?”

“You heard me,” their father said, a dark gleam in his eye. “I know you and your sisters go out when your foolish father is asleep. You think I can't ask two questions and determine the answer to a third? You think because you're in your stocking feet, no one hears you sneaking in at dawn, if he is awake and of a mind to?”

She hadn't—she couldn't have seen that he was awake, that he was listening—

Jo couldn't breathe. “Sir—”

He slammed the cane onto the desk with such force that Jo felt a breeze. When she looked at him, his face was as smooth and kind as she had ever seen it, as if he wasn't angry at all, as if someone else was wielding the cane.

It was terrifying.

(She pitied her mother.)

“I have tried to be kind—to take care of you, to protect your reputations, to give you your choice of husbands who would, in their turn, preserve the honor of the family name. But this willful display disgusts me, Josephine. What would possess you to disobey me?”

Jo sat closer to the edge of the chair, thought fast, and tried to sound obliging.

“You gave no order, sir, that we were never to go out. Only that we were not to disturb you.”

“Don't presume to answer me with jokes, Josephine!”

“Sir, I'm only trying—”

“I don't want any of your lying! You know my wishes, and I expect you to honor them!”

Wishes? He wanted to sell his daughters and wave his cane and talk about the sanctity of wishes?

Then they would.

She looked him flat in the eye.

Jo said, “Honor which, exactly? I know your wish to hide us because you were ashamed of having no son. I know you wished to keep us locked up until you could marry us off to strangers, so we could be chained to a childbed like Mother was for you.”

Her rage was building now, and the words came faster, louder. “And now I know you're even ashamed that your daughters have managed something on their own, and you wish they had died quietly upstairs and saved you the bother of caring for them. If there's some other wish I missed, then by all means explain!”

There was a moment's quiet, except for Jo's breathing. She was standing now; she didn't remember when she'd gotten up.

Their father's face went red, then white, with rage.

Jo was too petrified by her own outburst to move, and too sure of being right to apologize. She watched him as she would watch a tethered bear on a fraying rope.

Slowly, he stood up from behind the desk and withdrew his cane, and with his other hand he rested the tips of his fingers on the blotter, supporting the weight of his indignation.

“I had thought at one time,” he said, “to settle this with you rationally, and have a helpmeet. I wanted to marry the rest quietly, at first, after I discovered what loose and lawless girls you had become—before news could get out and ruin your prospects.”

Jo's limbs felt like coiled springs.

“But,” he said, “since marriage is so distasteful to you, I feel I have given you ample lenience until now, and I can address the matter as I should have done from the start. I've asked Dr. Whitman from the Three Willows Asylum to evaluate my daughters, who are suffering from hysterical alcoholism. I had been thinking of you, at first—if they have disobeyed, it is because of you—but if this same vile temper has spread to all of them, then it will have to be addressed. He's an old associate of mine, and very much in agreement, as it happens; he doesn't approve of the new fashion for loose behavior . . .”

An asylum. A mental hospital. There were stories about what happened behind those walls, stories that worried even the men who went out drinking at night.

Those who went in rarely went out again.

Horror filled Jo's mouth. Across the desk from her, their father was reaching for his newspaper, calmly; the discussion was over.

“He'll view me as a negligent father,” he said, as if making party conversation. “Well he should, but it's cheaper to keep a daughter in the hospital than to keep her in style, and at least I'll be spared anyone else knowing about the traitorous women who called themselves my children.”

Before he had finished speaking, Jo was bolting out of the study. She prayed they weren't angry enough to ignore her—she prayed they still trusted, that they would not disobey her now.

“Beat it!” she shouted from the foot of the steps, her voice raw. “Get out, get out!”

For one awful, endless second, everything froze.

She couldn't breathe, and she couldn't hear—everything was suspended in water. If her sisters had even heard her, they were too frightened to move, and then it would be too late, and the men from the asylum would come and run up the stairs and find them all just as they were, sitting on the edges of their beds, as still as a photograph.

Her heart was pounding—she could swear, she could swear ten hearts upstairs were pounding in time.

Then Doris shouted, “Damn it! Move!”

The world started up again.

There came an answering chaos of beds scraping and chairs crashing, of quick calls back and forth, of shoes being shoved on, of the first few bodies charging wildly down the back stairs, pausing at the back door as if wondering where to go.

Behind her, their father was approaching.

“He knows!” Jo screamed. “Nothing's safe!”

He grabbed hold of her wrist, and as he spun her he had his hand up to strike—he was holding his walking stick, the blow would be terrible.

But she hadn't spent eight years in dance halls for nothing, and she ducked under his grip and shook herself free in one sharp move as she skidded away from his reach.

There was a thundering from the upper floors as the rest of the girls made a break for it, and he froze for a moment, overwhelmed by the sound.

Then it was silent, and when Jo spoke it gave her words the gravity of a curse.

“They're gone,” she said, “and you'll never see them again.”

It took him a moment to understand what she meant, and even as it dawned on him he looked around as if there was a jailer handy who could trap them all inside until they could be given to men who would pay for the privilege.

But it was too late—the doctor, if he came, would never find them.

They knew how to disappear.

Jo hoped they would never stop running.

Their father fixed his gaze on her; his face was empty with rage, the mask of a hollowed patriarch.

“You've done this,” he said, too calmly. “You drove them away from me. You've been up there for years, planning to ruin me, and now it's come to nothing, and they'll go to the ground.”

Jo was ashamed to think how little planning she had really done for them, but she wasn't about to fall for a game like this—she knew what was true.

“You did this yourself, sir, and you know it.”

“We'll see,” he said.

He swung his cane.

She dodged for the front door and tried to pull it open; her hands were shaking so much the handle slipped out of her grasp halfway. The door was painfully slow—she'd never touched it before, and it weighed twice as much as she expected—and even as she wrenched it open, he struck a blow on her shoulder.

She cried out and swung blindly. Her fist connected, and he howled and staggered backward, just enough to give her a few seconds' time.

Jo didn't slow down—couldn't—her heart was pounding painfully and there was no stopping. She tore through the doorway and staggered halfway down the stairs before she ran into someone—someone gripped her shoulders, someone was twisting with her impact to bring her behind him.

“Hamilton, what's the meaning of this?”

It was van de Maar.

“She's gone hysterical!” their father said, voice shaking, the picture of a man incensed by the worst form of impudence. “She struck me!”

“He's trying to send us to an asylum,” Jo gasped out. “He struck me with the cane.” She yanked at the neck of her dress, pulling it to one side to show the red mark blooming on her skin.

(Van de Maar hesitated a moment before he glanced down—he was so used to not looking at her.)

“Asylum?” Van de Maar held her a little farther away from him. “What for?”

“They go out at night,” their father said, fighting for control of his voice. “You know what that does to a man's reputation, van de Maar, if he can't even keep hold of his own daughters?”

Van de Maar half-cleared his throat. “Hamilton, perhaps we could discuss this inside.”

“No,” said Jo, and carefully pulled her arm out of van de Maar's. “I won't go back in that house.”

“You see what I mean, van de Maar,” their father said. He was already calmer, resting on his cane, trying to pull his breathing together. “She won't listen to reason.”

Van de Maar seemed unconvinced, but he turned to Jo. “Josephine, perhaps we had best all go inside and discuss this civilly. I'm sure there's something that can be arranged.”

“No, sir,” she said, as steadily as she could. She took another step down. “I have no reason to go into the house. None of my family lives there any more.”

Every time she spoke, van de Maar looked less certain of things. As if against his will, he held out his arm and caught the cuff of her dress. “But your father said we had business to discuss, about the marriage.”

(Jo could feel his fingers as if they were a metal glove, she was so on edge, so ready to run.)

Jo smiled thinly. “I'm sure he did. You'll find when you talk to him that Lou has married, and I'm guessing that Father was going to suggest that if you liked them younger, he had other daughters who were amenable.”

Van de Maar had the grace to pull an expression.

She went on. “Or maybe he would say that I was willing, if the doctor wouldn't take me, and if you liked the look of me.”

Van de Maar looked up the stairs to the threshold, where their father was standing.

“Be fair, van de Maar,” said their father. “I would never suggest you liked the look of her.”

Van de Maar glanced at Jo, frowning.

After a moment, without agreeing with her, he let her sleeve go, pulled back his hand.

Jo summoned a smile that felt more frightening than anything so far.

“Thank you very much for stopping by, Mr. van de Maar.”

She took the stairs without looking behind her, and, afraid to hesitate, she turned south and kept walking. She kept an eye out for her sisters, but the street was quiet as the grave, and Jo knew that they had scattered as far and as fast as they could.

She wondered where they would go—Tom was gone from the Marquee, and the Kingfisher wasn't safe.

Had they managed to stay together? Would they split and make a run for it?

Would any of them try to get word to her? How could they, if she didn't know where to look?

Had any of them taken a penny?

(She could see her own breath; had she sent them to the streets without even enough to keep them from freezing?)

As she turned the corner, a white police truck drove idly past her, painted on its side with a sketch of a landscape and a trio of willow trees. As it passed her, it slowed.

Her heart jumped into her throat.

The driver winked at her.

Through her sour stomach, she smiled back, blew him a kiss like Lou would have.

After he had turned the corner, she cut across the avenue and walked faster in a new direction.

She walked east until the houses gave way to the shops on Lexington, on Third, that she remembered from her last solitary walk. When Second Avenue seemed too loud, she walked south until the shops gave way to grocers and tenements. She walked long after her feet went numb, aimlessly, letting the city wash over her.

(She was so lost that Union Square startled her when she came upon it, as if the buildings had collapsed just a moment before. She skirted the north edge and headed east.)

At last, she stood in a grassy park in the shadow of the bridge and looked out at the river, which she had never seen during the day.

It was deep blue, pockmarked with gulls and bits of paper. Farther out were a few little boats skidding past on the breeze, and the distant, low silhouette of Brooklyn across the water.

The air was sharp and cold, the late afternoon sun was bright, and Jo was all alone.

nineteen

What'll I Do

Jo sat on a bench for ten minutes, shivering, before the cop found her.

She had a moment of blank relief (police had a different meaning when she wasn't in a dance hall, as though maybe she was being looked after by someone). Then she realized that her father might well have put the word out on them—a pack of hysterical women who had gotten free and needed rounding up.

“Everything all right, miss?”

She gave him her practiced dance-hall smile. “Yes, Officer. Just had a dustup with my fella. Cooling off for a minute before I head home.”

He half-smiled. “In this weather that'll be no trouble. But you'd better get moving before the sun goes down—this is a bad neighborhood after dark.”

“Oh,” she said, “thank you.”

She stood, and looked wistfully out at the water, and smoothed her skirt, until the cop had finally turned and walked out of sight.

Then she walked the other way—slowly, not a care in the world—heading north, back uptown through the shops and the noise of Greenwich Village and the far-off skyscrapers she was getting a good look at for the first time in her life.

(The city was such a stranger in daylight.)

Washington Square Park was still a cram of people, and Jo didn't have the energy to check every face for recognition. After only a few blocks, she turned south and ducked down a side street where there were fewer prying eyes.

It was all the evasion she could manage. She was numbed by everything that had happened since the morning. Even when she thought of her sisters, the panic wasn't real; she worried for them the way you worried when you read in
Photoplay
that a screen siren and her paramour were parting.

And though she couldn't have imagined it as she ran out of her father's house, the list of her troubles was growing.

She hadn't eaten a thing all day, she had no money, night was coming, and she had nowhere to go. What charmed a cop at sunset wouldn't seem so sweet when they were making rounds in the park at three in the morning and she was frozen half to death.

Jo wondered if their father had put the word out for them with the cops as well, or if he was still ashamed enough of himself to keep things quiet until he'd heard from Three Willows about how many of her sisters they'd managed to round up.

Oh God, she thought. Please let them all have gotten out of the danger all right. Please let them be smart enough to avoid places where we might be known.

Even as she thought it, Jo looked up and saw that she was only a block away from the Kingfisher.

The worn-out brick and the chipped cement staircase looked more like home than anywhere Jo had ever seen, but she didn't dare go closer.

(She thought she'd been a careful person before this morning, but you learned something every minute, if you were smart.)

A block past the Kingfisher was a little café with some outdoor seats. Just past that, a pair of men dressed for long exposure stood on the corner, glancing too often down the street toward the Kingfisher's unmarked door.

It could mean a lot of things, none of them good.

Jo kept walking steadily, cut through one more block, then ducked down an alley to the next street.

Their father knew where they had gone, of course. He could afford the man who'd told him; he could afford to hire a man or two to keep an eye on their second home.

(She wished Jake's boss could come to an agreement with the cops like a decent businessman. She needed all the help she could get.)

So, scratch that. She looked down the street in both directions and wondered if there were any boardinghouses here that worked on credit.

She'd need money, and soon, with some forward-thinking employer who didn't mind a little disgrace in their shopgirls.

She'd need a roof and four walls, before dark.

She wondered if there was a restaurant where she could snatch a dinner roll off an empty table and make a run for it. Her hunger had spread to her limbs, and walking was getting a little tricky.

Earlier, she had passed a market, but pride had stopped her from stealing. She was paying for it now.

Jo passed a row of sweetly lit shops: Veronica's Gowns for Ladies, a shoe store, a tailor's storefront.

She froze in front of the tailor's window.

Myrtle had owned a shoe shop. Myrtle, who had a worthless husband.

Myrtle, who had been playing too close to home at the Kingfisher, who got picked up by the cops and bailed out by her husband's girl on the side.

If anyone would understand what it feels like to be in a pinch, Jo thought, she's it.

With the fever of the hungry and desperate, Jo canvassed the neighborhood, up one avenue and down the other, making a Jacob's ladder across the side streets. Time was working against her now, on top of everything else—the air smelled like frost, and soon the shops would be closing for the night, and Jo would lose her chance.

She was too panicked to go about her search some better way, too tired and wary to risk asking anyone else for help.

(Jo hoped desperately that the others hadn't all been forced to split up—that some still had each other.)

Ten minutes later, just as the light was beginning to move from orange to purple, Jo stormed past Finest Imports Shoe Boutique, a tiny shop next to a candy store.

Then she stopped.

The smell slipping under the door of the candy store was sickening on an empty stomach, but after a moment she forced herself to snap out of it and turn back to the windows of Finest Imports.

Lit up in the dusk, it looked almost as sweet as the candy shop, the front window lined with delicate tiers presenting one satin shoe each.

(For a moment she thought, If only Araminta could see these. She'd never looked quite right in the sturdy catalog clompers.)

At the very back of the shop there was a long wooden counter, and behind it stood a woman with a black bob and a velvet band; she was bent to her ledger now, but Jo had just glimpsed her face as she was passing.

It was Myrtle.

Jo brushed off her dress, ran her hands through her hair (already starting to tangle), ran her tongue over her teeth, and stepped inside.

The store was scented with lavender—Sophie's favorite, Jo thought, and had a pang of loss that stopped her in her tracks.

Myrtle glanced up.

There was no recognition on her face, which Jo thought was just as well, but there also wasn't the sneer she'd expected, walking into a fine store, with her shoes dirty and her hair a mess.

“Can I help you?” Myrtle asked. Her tone could have meant anything.

Without thinking, Jo said, “God, I hope so.”

Myrtle half-smiled.

Jo felt suddenly very young, even though Myrtle couldn't have been more than a few years older than she was; Myrtle looked like she was indulging a child.

(Maybe Myrtle thought that was fair, Jo thought. In a lot of ways that might be fair, but not about this; not tonight.)

“I need a job,” Jo said. “I remember you mentioned having a place here, a little while back. I wanted to see if there was anything that needed doing.”

Myrtle blinked as though she couldn't imagine how Jo would have come by this information.

“There are no openings at the moment, I'm afraid. I've just hired someone.”

Her husband's mistress, probably.

“Is there anyone you know who might need someone? I'm willing to work nights, or cleaning, or anything.”

“Sorry, hon.” Myrtle closed the ledger, flicked off the light on the desk. “Nothing doing.”

Jo's palms were clammy (hunger or panic), and her mind swam. It was impossible that this was all for nothing, a chance like this. There had to be something she could do, however small.

“Are you going to the Kingfisher?”

Myrtle looked over sharply, narrowed her eyes. “Beg pardon?”

Jo knew how she sounded. She didn't care.

“If you're going back to the Kingfisher, could you bring a note for Jake? I can't go myself. I'll pay you, as soon as I have money.”

There was a long silence as Myrtle froze, frowned, and looked Jo over in the dim light.

Finally she said, “What do you think you know about my going out?”

Now was no time to be coy.

“I know your husband has a doll who pays your bail money,” she said, “and that maybe you understand what it's like to be out of options.”

Myrtle's silhouette tilted its head. A moment later, Jo heard a click, and the lamp flickered back on. Myrtle was still frowning, but a smile was pulling just at the corner of her mouth.

(She looked like Doris, whenever Doris was trying hard not to be impressed.)

Myrtle looked her over—no purse, no coat, old shoes worn down almost to nothing.

“What sort of trouble are you in?” Myrtle asked.

“More than you think.”

“Shouldn't you be talking to a cop about all this?”

“They're one of my troubles,” Jo said.

Myrtle raised both eyebrows.

Then in a series of practiced movements, she turned off the lamp and plucked a cloche and coat off the rack behind her.

“I need to stop by the chemist,” she said. “It's a short walk, so I'd say you have two minutes to give me a good story before I start to get insulted that you hold on to drunk-tank gossip. Hold my hat for a moment, would you?”

• • •

Jo hadn't spent much time doing anything as domestic as this; she was a strategist, not a storyteller. She didn't know how to make things sound more exciting than they were, and her story lacked some of the tension and flourish it would have had if Ella had told it.

On the other hand, if there was one thing Jo knew how to do, it was deliver information with conviction.

The walk to the chemist's turned into a sandwich at a coffee shop, almost without Jo's noticing.

But she kept things as short and swift as she could, cutting out real names, pinning only what mattered most. By the time the bill came, Jo was going full sail.

“—and after I'd shouted for them to get going, my father hit me. I got free before the truck came. But now I don't know what my father told them, or what he's told the police, and I don't dare go anywhere we've gone that might be raided. That's why I'm asking for your help.”

They were back on the street now, and Myrtle paused in her tracks.

She hadn't said a word since they'd left her shop, except to motion for coffee and sandwiches. Now it took her a moment to manage any.

“What—about your sisters?”

“They all ran for it.” Jo crossed her arms despite herself. “There's no knowing for sure, I guess. I warned them nothing was safe, so even if they all made it, I don't think I'd see them around.”

“You think they all made it?”

Jo shrugged. “They know how to get out of a tight spot.”

“All except you?”

Point taken.

“Can't win them all,” Jo said. “Besides, being a jailbird has come in handy since then.” And, after a beat, “I hope.”

Myrtle blinked. Then a pack of cigarettes materialized in her hand, and she shook out one for each of them.

“The real problem, it sounds like,” Myrtle said after her first drag, “is that there's no way of knowing what your father is up to now.”

Or ever, Jo thought, recalling an office door that was almost closed but never quite.

“Assume the worst,” Jo said. “That's probably about right.”

Myrtle didn't argue it. “And you don't have any other friends here?”

I had one, she thought, but I sent him away.

“Jake,” Jo said. “He tends bar at the Kingfisher. He helped me once already, when I was desperate. I hope he'd be willing to help again.”

“He'd probably be willing to help you with plenty,” Myrtle said, with a glance up and down at Jo, “but you should go in and tell him yourself.”

“I can't risk it. My father's watching the place, and he won't hesitate to call the cops. If I get pulled in this time, I'll end up in the Willows or back at home.”

Myrtle made a face.

After a moment she shook her head. “You know, I always thought my father was cruel because he told me my shoe store would never make it in a city where they had a Macy's.”

Jo, softened by the cigarette smoke, only smiled.

Myrtle dropped the butt of hers, ground it decisively into the pavement with the toe of one shoe. Jo admired the deep-green velvet before she remembered that, of course, what else was Myrtle going to wear?

“I feel for you,” Myrtle said. “That's a tough story. But I'm not sure what I can do. It's not like I'm a police sergeant, if you get me, and the help you need is more than I can manage. I'm on my own now, and money's tight. I don't have room for charity cases, and I don't have the means to hire you.” She fastened and unfastened her purse twice. “I have a friend who might have a place for a shopgirl. I can ask her, maybe.”

She looked worried enough that Jo was beginning to believe her.

Myrtle pulled five dollars from her purse. “This should put you up for a night or two at a half-decent place and keep you from starving. I hope the worst will have blown over by then.”

The street around them seemed to slow down.

In a way, in some world far away where none of this mattered, it was a fair deal: Myrtle had been helped in a time of need by a half-sympathetic woman with a little money. This would clear the slate.

(It was impossible for Jo to tell her that she had needed the sympathetic ear more than she'd ever needed money, that the hardest thing about facing all of this was having to do it alone.)

The fear of losing Myrtle now because she took five dollars froze Jo cold, but still it took all Jo's pride to keep her hands at her sides. She didn't have a penny, and she knew what five dollars would get you.

“Getting a message to Jake wouldn't cost you a dime,” she said finally.