The Jazz Palace (26 page)

He was thinking that with his combo he'd branch out. Maybe they'd tour. Maybe at last he'd get out of town. Benny started out fast, banging all the rags he could think of and a few tunes he'd borrowed from Armstrong. He played “Struttin' with Some Barbecue” and “Wild Turkey Stomp.” He reached up and grabbed some numbers he'd written with Napoleon. Then improvised on his “State Street Shuffle” and for the laughs he dipped into “The Night Owl Blues.” Once their blood was churning, he switched moods. He struck the opening chords of his “Twilight Blue.” He riffed on the phrase, but he couldn't get very far. There was a tension in the piece that he still couldn't resolve. And just as the room got sleepy and started yawning, he pushed up tempo to “Satan's Mile.”

In the evenings when he didn't have a gig Benny headed to the Stroll. He needed to stay away from the North Side. He wandered into the Deluxe and the Apex Club. One night he stopped at the Red-Headed Girl, but he wasn't that into the beat that rose from the piano, the easy bang on the drums. Restless, he pushed on to the Lucky Lady, then poked his head in Charlie's Place. Nothing grabbed him the way he hoped it would. He ended his evening at the Rosario Sisters Club.

The elder of the Rosario Sisters, Evelyn, had taken Benny under her wing. She was touched by the piano-playing Jew with the big hands and the sad eyes, gray as fog. She had a soft spot for men whom she suspected of nursing a broken heart. Despite her sister's protests and the fact that no man was ever admitted back into the Rosario Club without spending fifty dollars the night before, Evelyn Rosario invited Benny in as long as he played. He played for them until Evelyn decided his tunes were too mournful for their clientele and the men were coming out of bedrooms, their eyes filled with longing and tears, just to listen to the music.

“If you want to keep coming around here,” she warned him, “you'd better jazz it up.”

Amid the grimier brothels of the city, the Rosario Sisters shone
with their mansion of many rooms and their white carriage drawn by four black horses that took them around the city. On Thursday evenings some of the finest poets in the Midwest read their poems there. Benny was dazzled when Evelyn let him try a different room and a different girl every night.

She led him into the Gold Room with its gold-rimmed fishbowls and gold spittoons, the miniature gold piano where he played the blues, the girls in gold lamé who sat on either side. She lured him into the Chinese room where he could set off firecrackers, and the Rose Room with its rose-shaped bed, festooned with rose petals and a bathtub filled with a blend of rosewater and gin. In the late evening Benny pounded with the huge door knocker and dined on fresh oysters, rare roast beef and champagne, aphrodisiacs intended to get his blood boiling. He ate and drank as much as he pleased and found himself enjoying the taste of real liquor more and more. He banged out tunes and played a few hands of poker, which he often won, then lost himself in the arms of a sad midwestern girl whom a gangster had loved and left behind.

Opal wasn't feeling well. She floated through the house, drifting off to sleep if she just sat down. Once seated, she could barely lift herself out of a chair. Ruby thought it was the warm weather, but Pearl looked at her pale skin that seemed even whiter than before and declared that Opal was anemic. Pearl bought slabs of liver that she sautéed with onions on the stove and that Opal refused to eat so their brothers did instead. She cooked steaks that Opal was too tired to chew.

Whatever chores Opal did were done in slow motion. She couldn't describe what was wrong. Except to say that she felt as if she was moving through a dream. In her slowness she'd put on weight. Once Pearl woke in the middle of the night and found Opal in the kitchen, scrambling eggs in a frying pan. For years she'd been an orphan waif, lithe as a Popsicle stick, but now a thickness sprouted around her waist. She was ripe for the picking, Moss said.

When her dresses didn't button, when her corset didn't pull as tightly as it should, she pouted. Lately she'd taken to sucking on her thumb. Still, no matter what she did by day Opal managed to muster the strength to head out in the evening. If it was a warm night or a cold rainy night, nothing deterred her. She became feral as the alley cats that cried in the night.

Everyone acted as if this was normal. Laundry still hung out on the
lines to dry. The saloon was opened at four every afternoon like clockwork and closed when the last drunk staggered home. At the breakfast table Pearl sipped her coffee, waiting for Opal to come and join them. Ruby had laid out plates of toast and butter and boiled eggs, but Pearl hadn't touched her food. She just sipped her coffee, black. When she heard the footsteps, she bristled. It was midmorning as Opal dragged herself out of bed. When Pearl asked her what was wrong, Opal just shrugged. She was tired, she told Pearl, down to her bones.

How could Opal tell her sister that she wanted to be free of the smells of dirty socks and sour breath of drunken men, the smell of boiling chicken and fatty soups? She could escape this world and she knew, just from looking at herself in the mirror, that no one would ever mistake her for a Jew. She'd make her way as a taxi dancer, a chorus girl. If she dabbed rosewater behind her ears, it was to rid her of the world of rank odors, one she couldn't abide. She couldn't sit around the table, eating brisket and potatoes while unmarried sisters and brothers slurped their soup and wondered about the next shipment of gin.
I want to be free
, Opal shouted to herself.
Free of you and this house. I'm going to go and you can't stop me
.

A storm was brewing—the kind of weather that comes down from the far north, making landfall on Chicago's shores. And as the winds blew from Canada and across the Great Lakes, ships were lost in the turbulent seas, beaches were devoured, debris sailed through the air, and small children and old men clung to lampposts in the gusts. Bundling up in a wool coat and shawl, Pearl headed to market. Things were needed at home. She checked the pantry and she saw that there was a shortage of bread and lettuce and beans. When she was gone and Ruby had left for her drawing class, Opal went into the bathroom.

She stood before the mirror, touching her yellow hair. Then she picked up a scissors and began to cut it off. She cut one clump, then another. She didn't care how it looked. She hacked away, making it shorter and shorter until she looked like a haystack. On the ground her hair lay like spun gold. When Pearl got home, soaked from the rain, she found Opal with her hair shorn like a sheep. “Oh, my God, what have you done?”

“What I've wanted to do,” Opal replied. And Pearl raised her hand and brought it down across Opal's face.

Opal shook her head. “I hate you.” She said it slowly and simply in such a way that Pearl knew it was true. Then Opal ran to the steps. She raced out the door, into the wind-swept streets, leaving her sister to pick up her fallen tresses. She rushed through an alleyway, the rain stinging her face, but no more than Pearl's slap had done. The storm pummeled her as she ran, dressed in only a dark skirt and a thin cotton blouse that clung to her breasts. She should have taken a coat or a shawl, but she didn't. She dashed along Lawrence to Ashland until she reached Benny's doorway and rang the bell. When he didn't answer, she huddled in the rain.

Opal had no idea when he'd return, but she'd wait. She could be as stubborn as anyone, and certainly as stubborn as Pearl. She shivered as the wind swept in from the stormy lake. She shivered against the door as the afternoon dragged on and the day grew colder. She was never going home again. She kept thinking she saw him, but it was always some other man. When Mr. Walenski passed, he looked at her, and Opal huddled even smaller, but Mr. Walenski didn't recognize the girl with chopped-off hair.

The skies darkened as hail, the size of golf balls, hit the pavement. Opal pressed her back against the door. Her teeth were chattering as she saw him coming. He looked away, pretending not to see her. “Benny,” Opal cried, “it's me.” Her yellow hair, cropped and matted, clung to her head, and her rosebud nipples shone through her blouse.

He had taken her for a homeless waif. He touched her face, her neck. “What have you done to yourself?”

She shied at his touch. “I've run away.”

He ran his fingers along her scalp. “You've cut off your hair.” Benny shook his head, taking her by the arm. “You're shivering,” he said. “Let's get you inside.” And he led her up the stairs.

In his musty room he helped her off with her wet things. She was soaked through her underclothes, and blue veins ran up her neck and arms. Even her breasts were eggshell blue. Benny gave her a blanket
to wrap around herself. He made her a cup of strong black tea and hung her clothes on the radiator to dry. “Now drink this,” he said. “What were you doing in the rain?”

“I'm not going back,” she told him. “I'm never going back there again.”

“Of course you are…”

“No, I hate Pearl and I'm not.”

“Opal, you have to. She's your sister. It's your family…” Benny hesitated, thinking for a moment about his own family. Hannah, miserable in her rooms, dreaming of a daughter she never had and a son lost in the snow. His father, despondent over baseball logos. Benny had his own thoughts about running away.

“I want you to come with me,” she said. “We can get married. I have money. Not a lot, but enough to go somewhere. I don't care what Pearl says. I want to live with you.” Opal kissed his hands, his lips. She told him that more than anything she wanted that. “We could go to New York. Or California. No one would know us there. I'll dance. You'll play music.” She laughed that crystalline laugh.

He put his hand on her wet brow and touched her bones that were thin as a bird's. “You're burning up,” he said.

Opal grabbed his hand. “Keep it there,” she said. “It feels good.” His hands were dry and warm. Her blue lips quivered as Benny swaddled her in the blanket. He didn't want to run off, and he wasn't sure he wanted to get married. Not now. Maybe never. And probably not to her. “Opal, you're a dreamer.”

“You're a dreamer, too. Why can't we?”

She ruffled his hair, then sighed, shaking her head. She lay back on the bed, wrapping her naked arms around him. He was such a silly boy. Such a poor, silly boy. She pulled him to her, drew him down, then kissed him. Even as he bit her throat, the soft skin on her arms, and rolled on top of her, he knew that no woman would ever have the part of him that she had.

“Maybe when you are older…” Even as he said this, his words had a hollow ring. He was lying to the girl, but he hoped by the time she grew up, she would forget about him. He would lay low. Keep
his distance. He had wanted her, it's true, but he didn't love her. He didn't love anything, really, beyond his music and himself. “But we aren't going to be together at all if you don't make up with Pearl.”

When her clothes were dry, Benny walked her home. He'd already made a decision that he hadn't told a soul. He was leaving Chicago. He was going to New York. Maybe Moe would come with him, and maybe he wouldn't, but either way he was going. He couldn't make anything happen here. He couldn't breathe. He blamed it on the city and on his own solitude. For it was solitude that shaped him. It was solitude that made him who he was.

The rain stopped, but there was still a chill in the air.

Benny left her at the door of the candy shop. “Aren't you coming in?” she pleaded.

“I don't want to get my head bitten off.” He kissed her on the nose. “Go inside. Be a good girl. And I'll see you tomorrow.”

But he had no intention of seeing her tomorrow. Or the next day. She was a crazy girl, and she had lopped off her golden hair. Benny knew trouble when he saw it, and he would stay away for now. He didn't want to run away with her, and he didn't want to have to marry her. Already the heat in his loins had cooled.

The rain had stopped and the wind died down. Benny thought he might head downtown, hit a few of the clubs. He strolled, taking in the air. Cars drove by. Somewhere in the city gunfire punctuated the night. He was a young man, twenty-seven years old, the same age as the century. And he wasn't about to settle down.

Everything seemed possible. He could still go to New York and start his life anew. That same year Charles Lindbergh had flown across the Atlantic and Gertrude Ederle swam the English Channel, humming “Let Me Call You Sweetheart” all the way. In Soldier Field Jack Dempsey lost the heavyweight championship to Gene Turney. The crowd was livid. A radio announcer had a heart attack. And Al Capone conducted “Rhapsody in Blue.”