The Girls at the Kingfisher Club (25 page)

It was a treacly travelogue of the first stage of their journey to Chicago that could have been written by anyone, except Lou.

(She had an image of Lou sitting at the writing desk in some lovely hotel room, taking laughing dictation from Tom, pacing slowly behind her and rattling off a letter that sounded like it came from a brochure.)

The second letter, after another long and effusive ode to pleasantries, eventually sounded a little more like Lou: quick sketches of the people she was meeting in the neighborhood, with just enough to tell Jo some of what she really needed.

Jo knew to read “meeting” as “working with” and could already pick out the alderman who would be giving Lou the most trouble, based on Lou's mention of his twice dropping by for tea.

As landlords go,
wrote Lou,
you could ask for nicer, but I'm determined to stay on good terms, and I've already been bringing my own touches to the place.

Jo couldn't imagine, unless it was bullet holes in the plaster.

At the end there was a little bit of sighing and missing them all, some general scolding of the girls, and a little singing of Tom's praises.

It stung, but still she read that section twice, looking for any evidence of love. She couldn't tell. Lou had a way of putting things that could mean whatever you most hoped or feared, just to draw you out.

He's very clever
, Lou wrote,
and shows every sign of being a loyal partner
.

The last letter, the one her father hadn't bothered to open, was the most honest. Lou had gambled, rightly, that by then their father wouldn't bother going through his daughters' mail.

And on the third page, this letter had a few sentences tucked into the middle of an extremely long paragraph about shopping for dresses that their father would never have been able to force himself through.

Chicago isn't the town for us—too many deliverymen, not enough dancing. You haven't written me. It's not like you. I don't know what to think, I can't sit still here from wondering what's going on. Tom and I are going to hit the road soon, I don't know where to, we keep changing our minds—if you get this, please, please hurry and let me know you're all right.

I am, I promise; Tom takes good care of me, for your sake.

Something Jo had noticed—no matter how tired you were, some things could still keep you up all night.

twenty-seven

The Song Is Ended

(but the Melody Lingers On)

Jo's gifts were a second Christmas.

Each girl exclaimed over the thing chosen for her—“Exactly what I would have taken, this stupid thing,” Rebecca said, carefully winding the music box—and didn't ask too many questions about Jo's visit there. (That was good; that had been half the point of bringing them back in the first place.)

The sisters were so impressed with the getaway that Doris insisted on mailing Ella's paste-gem earrings and Hattie and Mattie's matching peacock-feather headbands all the way out to their apartment in Hollywood.

“They deserve their trophies from that lion's den,” said Doris, and nobody argued.

It was as if the mention of it jogged their memories, because a moment later Rebecca asked, “How did he seem, when you spoke to him?”

“Ill,” Jo said. Just because the worst was over didn't mean the facts were less important.

“Did he ask about us?” Violet's eyes were the size of saucers.

“He did. He seemed happy that we're all well.”

Violet smiled, and Jo remembered that she was still young enough to hope that he would wake up one morning and become a father.

Rose took her tango-postcard souvenir to the bar, to show her new friend Martha. Jo was beginning to suspect that Martha held some appeal for Rose besides someone to talk to between sets.

She must have been getting more in the habit of letting things happen on their own, because Jo's only real worry about Martha was that Lily wouldn't like her, if it came to that.

For her part, Lily seemed supremely unconcerned by it. She slung her souvenir pearls around the neck of her shirt and slipped into the arms of a young man for a Charleston. (The way she dressed was still a scandal, but a little scandal was good for business.)

When they were alone, Doris turned to Jo. “How was seeing him, really? How is he?”

“Not good. He's very ill. It will be the last time I see him.” It was half regret and half relief to say it out loud.

Doris nodded, her brow furrowed. “I know I shouldn't be sorry, but I guess you can't help it when it's your own blood. I cried when I found out about Mother, too, and I only saw her four times in my life. I don't know what I would have done if I'd seen him.”

“You'd have tried to understand him,” Jo said, “and there's nothing doing.”

Doris seemed content, but Jo's skin was crawling, and when Sam came back she asked him for a dance just to be moving for a little while, just to feel the floor under her feet and know she was there.

• • •

A week later, Jake showed up at the Marquee.

It was early enough in the afternoon that the man at the door called her from the studio to meet him, and Jo came down barefaced and with her short hair still in tangles.

“I've been thinking of a change,” Jake said. “Is there any chance you're hiring?”

“You might have to go ten rounds with Henry,” Jo said, smiling, and folded her arms.

Jake shrugged. “If that's how it's done, I can adjust to new methods.”

She laughed and motioned for him to follow her. “I'll show you the cellar,” she said, “and when Henry comes, he'll find a place for you.”

“I promise not to fall in love with Araminta, if that helps my case.”

Jo cast a look over her shoulder. “Those who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones,” she said.

It was half a joke, but he looked at her a moment too long before he said, “You're right.”

She showed him the cellar. He whistled low as soon as she opened the door, and again when he saw some of the wines she held in reserve, and as he peered at labels they discussed salary, hours, and availability.

“I'm able to start this minute, actually,” said Jake.

That was a surprise. “What happened at the Kingfisher?”

“Change of management,” said Jake, in a tone that indicated it wasn't worth being safe from the police under whoever had bought out the Kingfisher.

So when Henry came in to set up, Jo introduced them, and had the satisfaction of seeing that Henry wasn't the type to pull rank, and Jake didn't seem inclined to make him.

When she came down a little later, with red lips and her hair properly pomaded, it gave her a startlingly pleasant feeling to see Jake behind the bar, stacking glasses and wiping off bottles.

She decided she must have been so pleased because she was trying to build something she could really live in at the Marquee, and every little bit helped.

If he smiled at her when he saw her, she didn't dwell on it. There was no future there.

Jake was just looking for someone to love, and another broken heart was the last thing she needed.

• • •

When the others appeared on the stairs that night, Jo's happiness seemed almost complete.

The place was packed, and Ames could hardly contain the energy on the bandstand. Parker had been and gone (which was just how she liked Parker), and Carson had stopped by for a drink and never left; he was eyeing the dancers now as if deciding whether or not to risk it.

After every song, the applause resounded. Success, Jo thought as she took the stairs to meet her sisters.

Doris was urging Sophie and Violet over to one side of the stairs, and Rebecca and Araminta were helping each other off with their winter coats and bickering about something, and Rose and Lily stood holding hands and silently daring anyone to think ill of them.

It had been nearly four months since their escape, and they had changed so much that it always took a moment of worrying that things were wrong before she remembered everything was fine, and then happiness rose and warmed the tips of her fingers.

I can live with this, Jo thought, if this is as good as it gets.

Sam smiled and kissed her cheek and headed for the bar to pick up the first round. The younger ones barely waved as they ran straight for their table to fasten their shoes and get to dancing.

(Most of them had adjusted well to their new situations—Sophie, who floated through life, seemed to have forgotten the house completely—but Rebecca and Araminta and Violet had fallen back into the habit of carrying their shoes in one hand until they were safe inside and ready to dance.

“It's to preserve the shoes,” Rebecca said when she caught Jo looking.

But Violet only said, “I don't feel right unless I carry them,” and there was nothing Jo could do about that but understand her.)

Doris always lingered a moment longer than the others, standing beside Jo and looking out at the room as if admiring Jo's work.

Jo was grateful above everything else that Doris had sent Sam one night to look for a serious woman with dark brown hair, just in case Jo was somewhere in the city and looking for them, too.

“I got a letter from Ella,” said Doris.

(Only Ella ever wrote; Hattie and Mattie were too busy doing what they had been made to do.)

The letters got thicker every week; Ella was finding work left and right.

The pack of them had already been to see her as the sweet young sister in
A Summer Affair
, and the camera loved her even more than her dancing partners had.

At home, Jo tore out magazine pages that mentioned what Olivia Bryant was filming or had a snap of her standing outside the Brown Derby in a satin dress, throwing the camera a look. It was silly to collect clippings, like something Violet would do in secret, but it didn't stop Jo from collecting stacks of
Photoplay
knee-deep.

“ ‘I'm up for a bigger part next,' ” Doris read. “ ‘Cross your fingers I get Jane Bennet!' ”

The twins were in even more places than Ella, because they danced so often and so well—they had been in
Cinescope
and
Flapper
, and
Featuring THE BRILLIANT BANNER SISTERS
could sometimes bee seen crawling in tiny letters on a movie poster at the cinema down the street.

Doris read, “ ‘The studio wants them to have some real roles soon, but only Mattie seems to want to—Hattie is happy to dance and have it over with.' ”

“Imagine my surprise,” said Jo, and Doris laughed.

Then Sam was coming back, and Doris was tucking the letter carefully into her evening bag and joining him for the Charleston.

(Jo had expected a change of habit in Doris, but no amount of romance had succeeded at getting her on the dance floor for anything slow.

“Lord no!” Doris said when Jo asked if she ever felt the need for a nice, sweet waltz with Sam. “I'm married, not dull.”)

Jo gave Henry one waltz with Araminta. It surprised her as much as it surprised him that Araminta was willing to dance with him (Araminta wasn't fond of men being too in love with her), but his blond head and her dark moved so smoothly and close around the floor that Jo wondered if Araminta was doing Jo a favor, or if Henry really had made the cut.

On the dance floor, Lily was dancing with Martha, as Rose looked on from the bar, grinning fit to burst.

When Jo gave Jake the chance to dance, he handed her a whiskey and said, “With you?”

“Best not,” she said. “You deliver bad news just so that I'll swoon.”

He laughed, but there was a flicker of something sadder behind his eyes. It shouldn't have struck her (you had to make people sad to move on sometimes, that much she knew by now), but it did, a small jolt of surprise right between her shoulders.

It was enough that when he asked, “Are you sure?” she somehow said, “Well, I wouldn't mind.”

It was a Baltimore, just right for them—not too romantic—and even though she and her sisters had been dancing for years by the time the Baltimore got popular, still it made Jo feel as if it was the first four of them sneaking out, the first time Jake had ever called her Princess.

“Lou was really ace at this,” she said when the song was over, before she could stop herself.

But he only smiled and said, “I remember.”

She squeezed his hand, just for a moment, before she let go.

Sometimes it was a relief to have old friends.

With so many of her sisters clustered at the table or scattering over the floor, with Jake beside Henry at the bar and Sam's laughing face bobbing along in the crowd as he danced with one of her sisters, Jo felt as if she had managed, at last, to find a home worth living in.

She had even been able to think of Ella and Hattie and Mattie without worrying how far away they were. They were happy, and they were themselves, and Jo was learning not to ask for anything more.

• • •

The next morning, Jo opened the paper and saw that Joseph Hamilton had passed away.

If this had been the old days, she would have marshaled her sisters into her room and issued the announcement. She would have listened to some of the others debating the merits of staying or going. She might, if she was feeling generous, have taken a vote.

By the end of it, she would at least have known what each of them wanted, and which sisters would be standing firm on one side of the question or the other.

But those days were gone, and she sat in her little studio and sighed, and only hoped that none of them would choose something that would make them unhappy later.

There was nothing else she could do for them now, except give them a place to dance.

• • •

Doris called the Marquee to invite Jo to a makeshift wake, and by the time Jo caught a cab to the Lewisohns', Rose and Lily and Rebecca and Araminta had already gathered.

There was lots of coffee, and lots of food, and a few tears (from Violet, sadder for what she had missed than for who was really gone), and Jo watched it all and was surprised how little need she felt to interfere.

She still wasn't a mothering type (it was Araminta and Sophie comforting Violet when she cried) but when Rose said, “Lily and I want to go to the funeral,” Jo felt the urge to lay down the law and forbid it. She let it fade before she spoke.

Jo only said, “Watch out for yourselves. We don't know who will be there and you might not want to get in front of any cameras.” Then she asked Sam if he would mind pouring her another cup of coffee.

It was an alien feeling to watch them making choices on their own, choices that might be wrong (were wrong—he didn't deserve one damn daughter wishing him a fond farewell), but she was trying hard to be a sister now, and not a General.

Some things you never stopped missing.

• • •

Rose and Lily had apparently been speaking for the others; the night of the funeral, Rebecca came out dancing alone.

Jo met her at the table, afraid to say anything one way or the other. Rebecca looked up, her jaw set tight.

“I remember him watching us on the stairs that night he called us down,” Rebecca said, all edges. “That was the first time I'd ever seen him. I'm not too sad to go dancing.”

Jo nodded. “I know what you mean.”

“You did us some good,” Rebecca said. “Even and all.”

For Rebecca, that was a rousing call to toast.

They sat for a moment in the quiet understanding of two soldiers, before a young man gathered his courage and asked Rebecca for the foxtrot.

• • •

Every night that week, more sisters appeared at the door, and by Saturday night even Doris must have finished what she thought was their father's fair share of mourning, and the Lewisohn-house contingent showed up early and restless, skittering onto the dance floor as if they'd been waiting for weeks.

Doris hung back and looked ready to explain if Jo pressed her, but Jo said only, “It's good to see you—what's your poison?” and Doris smiled gratefully and answered, “Champagne.”

Jake brought over the first tray of drinks himself, and kissed Sophie's hand, which made her blush—Jake was too handsome for her to be comfortable with. Jo would have to explain to him, if he asked Sophie to dance and she turned him down.