Waltzing In Ragtime (29 page)

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Authors: Eileen Charbonneau

BOOK: Waltzing In Ragtime
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“Patsy,” she whispered. “I want to go home. He says if we can just get this last contract, my father will not be ruined.”
“Ruined? Is that why you married him? Did he tell you a bold and vicious lie such as that?”
“He showed me the papers, Patsy, that night, after … after
Mr. Hart left. I was determined to marry no one, the night before the wedding. Swear not to tell!”
“Of course, miss, but —”
“It will be over soon. And we can go home. To America. We’ll get you and Selby away, far away from him and his threats.”
“Does he dare to be threatening —”
“Then I’ll figure my own way out, somehow, and things will be better. In America. Won’t they?”
 
 
It came back. Each night. But Matthew hid it, putting Possum to bed earlier, fighting it alone in the darkness. Then it would trick him, come later, just as his dreams began. He paced his room, or climbed up on the roof, or dove into the pounding surf.
But he couldn’t hide his hollow eyes, his thinning frame. He waited until Vita had taken Possum to the beach one afternoon, then approached his grandmother as she stirred the stockpot.
“Gran?” he called her softly. “I think there’s something wrong with me.”
“At last.” She sighed, directing him to sit up on the table with a wave of the wooden spoon. “Talk, Matthew.”
“Nightly. A feeling. That I can’t breathe.”
“Where?”
“It starts here, around my ribs.”
“Let’s have a look at you.” She signaled. He took off his shirt and felt her healing hands explore, thump at his chest.
“Then?”
“Then?” he echoed.
“What happens then, child?”
“Oh. Goes away. For three nights now I feel it traveling, both lower, deeper, at my gut, and higher like it … like it wants a hold of my heart.”
“How long does it last?”
“Quarter hour. Sometimes longer.”
He rested from the weight of telling her as she continued to look, thump, listen.
“Can’t find a source,” she pronounced, “not inside you.”
He climbed off the table, pulling on his shirt. “What now, Gran?”
“I best be on hand when it seizes you tonight.”
She stayed by him, reading
David Copperfield
aloud, the way she did for him when he first came to her, after the court martial. Her reading filled him with such peace he didn’t think anything would disturb it. But it came.
“Gran!”
“I’m here, Matthew.”
“Here —” He fanned his fingers out over his chest.
“Easy.”
“Can’t.”
“What do you need?”
“Out.”
“Go, then.”
“Where?”
“Where it takes you, darlin’ boy.”
There was a cry in her voice. Was it hurting her, too? Irrational thought. But what was rational about this malady? Matthew hurried past his mother’s room, sensed her lamp brightening.
He went down to the sea’s roar, heard the gasp, the soft dig of his grandmother’s footsteps as he fell to his knees in the sand. He saw his mother behind her. On your feet. Stand, he told himself, but when he tried, he fell face down.
His mother’s pained cry made him open his eyes, force back the black. His grandmother rolled him onto his side.
“Cut,” he said.
“What? Cut what, Matthew?”
“Don’t know. Tight, too tight. White.”
“Matthew!” He had a distant sense of his grandmother’s and his mother’s shaking hands ripping the taut, white material between their hands. “Look!” they both demanded as they tore. Release. He was released from the torment. He breathed long, full,
not yet believing he could. He lay on his back, watching the ink-black sky, the shredded remnants of their petticoats flying about the beach.
“Now I’ve made us all mad,” he whispered in disgust.
“It’s not you, Matthew,” his grandmother said.
“What?”
“You’re taking on another’s burden.”
He didn’t argue. It felt too good to breathe.
 
 
“Still in your dressing gown? I won’t have any more of this honeymooning now that you’re home!”
Olana turned and laughed out her excitement. “Sidney!”
“Run up and get some togs on, I’ve got the steps down to the most wonderful new dance!” He turned to her machine and began to unload the Edison cylinders from under his arm. She stared at his back, afraid to let him out of her sight. He turned and regarded her curiously.
“Well? Go on, go on.”
“It … was good of you to come, Sidney.”
“I don’t stand on ceremony. Been turned away three times by your new staff. ‘Mrs. Moore is unwell,’ he imitated their sour butler perfectly. “Where in hell is Patsy?”
“Still in Japan! Oh, Sidney there was the most dreadful mix-up as we were leaving. I’ve sent out numerous inquiries to get her and Selby back since. She must have had her baby by now and —”
“No wonder you’re unsettled! Why didn’t you ask my help?”
“Could you help?”
“Of course. Done.”
“Done? But —”
He put his finger to her lips. “The power of the press. Or rather my cousin who knows the American Ambassador. He’ll scout them out. Done. I’ll have them steaming home in a week, promise.”
“Sidney, you’re a treasure.”
“Well, that’s better!” He pressed her cold hands. “Unwell, indeed, why you’re a vision, ready to take her place with the H.R.H.’s professional beauties, not that you haven’t got more Yankee good sense to do that!”
She arched her brow. “What’s this? Anglomania? Is there a British noble family invading our city with eligible second sons and homely daughters?” she teased, then delighted in the way his cheeks colored. “Why, Sidney, there is, isn’t there! How exciting!”
“Exciting? It’s what we complained about all through Europe, remember? I can’t believe I’ve got myself caught up in —”
“But you are, quite! My darling Sidney — in love! Details, if you please,” she demanded.
“I can tell you, can’t I?” he asked, suddenly serious.
Olana touched his face. Sidney. Home. Could he help her form the path out of this nightmare? “Of course.” She affected a pout. “If you promise to always love me, too.”
“I will, Olana. We will, the both of us. Olana, I was a miserable friend to you after you announced your engagement, but — oh, be a sport now, you divining witch, and jump to. Come, come, you’re no Japanesey geisha girl now — proper attire, if you please! The steps to this new dance are a little tricky and I need the practice.”
“You’ll wait?”
“I’ll chain myself to your recording machine if any servant tries to bully me out, promise. Now, off.”
Olana flew about her dressing room, grabbing a simple blouse and jumper that was part of her old wardrobe, not her trousseau. Rather than call up a parlor maid that her husband had selected, she hastily tied back her hair in a green ribbon, and ran down to the small sitting room. Sidney was still there.
“Record time, you must have missed me!” He grinned.
“I did, I missed everyone, everything! I never felt so alone in my life!”
“Alone, on your wedding trip? There’s a story there!”
“Sidney, don’t tease me!”
“Well, why have you holed yourself up so? Even your mother remarked that you’re taking your matron’s role too seriously, only entertaining your husband’s business prospects, not accepting a single invitation since you’ve returned!”
“It’s all one business. I’m not their little girl anymore, am I? I’m in service to their fortune.”
“Now there’s a grim thought!” He laughed uneasily.
“I’m sorry Sidney! Don’t be angry with me!”
“Angry? My dear sport — Never mind, what a bore I’m being! Let’s dance.”
He put the needle on the cylinder and took up her hands. The music coming out of the machine reminded her of the dance hall and the cakewalk. She tried to remember the funny two-step dance Matthew taught her.
“That’s it! Don’t tell me they’re doing this in Japan! Or have you been sneaking out nights without me? Now swing out and back, and circle, isn’t it the liveliest damned thing?”
She breathed in the pressroom and cigar smell she’d once found so oppressive about Sidney and his obsession. She lost herself in the lively music. He swung her too fast and she slipped, falling against the sofa’s arm. Olana collapsed, pulling him down beside her as the cylinder finished.
“Sorry!” He laughed.
“Oh, it’s not you, darling! I’m a little off balance these days.” Olana realized that she’d fallen against his hat, and crushed its brim. She pulled it up, but her look of dismay turned to unbridled mirth at the sight of it.
“You could have just said it wasn’t to your taste,” he mocked offence, then joined her laughter until they both put their heads to the sofa back and stared up at the ceiling the way they had as children. He took up her hand. “Are you happy, sport?”
The lingering smile disappeared from her face. He squeezed her hand nervously. “There now, never mind. We have all afternoon. Want to hear another?”
“Very much. Sidney? You won’t forget me? If you marry into your damned English royalty?”
“Don’t be absurd! I’m going to be the eccentric uncle to your children, remember? It’s not I who have abandoned our plans to be the perfect society matron! And I’ll be gallant enough not to mention who is forgetting who for almost an entire, dreadfully boring season!” He went to the machine, chatting on, because he was afraid, she knew, of her eyes. She was afraid of them herself, and rarely looked in the mirror. “This one’s from St. Louis,” he changed the subject abruptly, “a ragtime piano player named Joplin named it after the place he played it — “The Maple Leaf.” But it was the rage of Paris first, can you beat that?”
They’d hardly begun when the music stopped.
“Now, what the devil —” Sidney turned, then thrust his hand toward her husband. “Moore! I’ve been bringing Olana up to date on the social scene. Welcome home!”
“Thank you.”
“I was wondering if I could borrow my correspondent back for her record of certain heroic actions that the captain of the
Mariposa
has already given to the
Times?
Shame on you both for not coming to me first! And her impressions of Japan, of course. They’ll be better than the accounts of Alice Roosevelt, I’d wager.”
“Olana is much too busy with her own obligations.”
“Oh? Are you, Olana? Even if I bring a new typewriter over next visit?”
Olana opened her mouth. She must say something, anything, but in the presence of her husband, her mind seemed to be freezing, as sure as her body was before the cave found her. Darius Moore took her hand, brought it to his lips as he regarded Sidney Lunt.
“Perhaps you’d like to see Mrs. Moore in her new element? Why not join us for dinner tonight?”
“I’d like that very much.”
“Eight o’clock.”
“Good, then.” Sidney took up his hat, and brushed it off with exaggerated indignity as Olana stifled a small smile behind shaking fingers adorned only by her gold wedding band.
“Your recordings,” Darius Moore reminded him as he reached the parlor doorway.
“Present for Olana.” Sidney pointed at her. “Practice, clumsy,” he commanded, before he left them.
Darius Moore turned back to her as she busied herself redesigning flowers in a vase. “You invited him here?”
“No. He dropped by.”
“Dropped by? Do you know what that signals?”
“Signals? Darius, Sidney and I are friends since childhood.”
“I see. His tastes are plebeian.” He broke a cylinder against the marble tabletop. She rushed to his side.
“Stop that! They’re mine!”
“And you, blushing, dancing bride, are mine.” He took up her hair and wound it around his fist. “A matron, not a schoolgirl. You will keep your hair pinned up.”
“But —”
He yanked her head back. “Only I get to take it down, yes?” Her eyes teared. “Yes?”
“Yes,” she whispered.
Olana stumbled, thrown both by the heat of the night and weight of her Worth gown. Her husband took her elbow and snapped her up with a jerk.
“What’s the matter with you?”
“I’m a little dizzy.”
“Hold on to me for now. But I’m placing you at that ancient Hunt’s arm all night, so don’t go leaning on him or you’ll both topple.”
She saw her reflection in the oversize gilt mirror, was frightened by that look in her own eyes. What was happening to her?
“Darius, I can’t.”
“Can’t?”
“Not tonight. Please.”
“Stop talking nonsense.”
“I’m not well.”
“You were well enough to dance like a bordello queen this afternoon with your childhood chum. Turn around.” He stepped back. “Let’s have a look.”
She hated those words. He used them whenever he inspected, before displaying her for his business associates to envy, glower, admire. He never looked at her face. Now he pulled down her
gown’s neckline too far, exposing the nipple of her right breast.
“Hmm,” he considered. “That ought to loosen the investment dollars of the old tightwad.” He pinched it hard as he set it back in place. Olana cried out softly and a yellow substance came forth.
“What in hell — secretions, my little heiress?” He spread his hand against her ribcage, tightening the hold of an already tight corset. “Does this mean you’re beginning to enjoy my tastes in marital bliss?” he whispered close against her ear.
“Go to hell,” she breathed before he pushed her to her knees. He yanked her head back, then gently cupped her neck in his hand.
“I’m glad you have a little fight left. I would lose interest in you entirely and when I lose interest in a woman … well, then, you’re not just any woman are you, Mrs. Moore? I must remember the charms of that long, ivory neck, and full, such full breasts that a man might loosen his purse strings for a glance, a touch. I need a few willing investors in my latest enterprise tonight, Mrs. Moore. Perhaps it’s time you began to take the next step in our partnership.”
He stood above her. She watched him harden, become angry at her, for being so. “Remove your gown,” he said in the flat voice he always used when he made that demand of her.
“No.”
He turned the inside lock on her bedroom door.
“No?”
“Please — no.”
“Please, no, that’s better,” he purred as he unfastened her gown. He broke a shining, polished fingernail in his haste.
“Damnation! Finish!” he commanded.
She did, stood the heavy gown against a chair, and turned to him. When she opened her mouth, he pushed her back on the bed. His breath reeked of expensive scotch whiskey. She felt the familiar pressure against her ribs.
“Open your eyes, little wife. You’ll not have your dreams this time, but me.”
She didn’t have the breath to say anything before he was inside
her, plunging hard and merciless, and then gone. Did he know that even with her eyes open, she was not seeing him? Suddenly, he yanked down her petticoats, examining the small bulge below her corset line.
“What’s this?”
“I —”
“Not a fondness for sweets, I think. Never mind. Rest, Mrs. Moore. I’ll make an appointment with Doctor Gaston. A very discreet fellow, who has wanted a little slice of you since your wild-man embarrassed him.”
Olana shuttered, remembering.
“I will not let him hurt you too badly. But you’re right, perhaps I’d better watch. To make sure he does a proper job. I need you, Mrs. Moore. I need you full, buxom, beautiful. Not a thick, misshapen matron. And I will not share the fruits of my labor with any brats you make for your father. You have work to do. My work.”
He kissed her earlobe gently and rose from the bed.
“I’ll help you this time. But you must learn how not to inconvenience me further. Then you will do as you’re told, with whom your told. But you will never take your hair down for any of them, do you hear? Your hair, and its streaks of red, virgin blood, is mine.”
Olana swallowed the bile that swelled up her throat.
“Are you ill, Mrs. Moore? We’ll end early tonight, after they’ve had a good look, perhaps a well-timed, accidental brush with your enticing breasts.”
 
 
The men all faded into formal, black and white duplications of each other, but pushing through them, her seven-month pregnancy on proud display, came Coretta Hunt, her arms ladened with flowers woven into a circle.
“I know these are not the exotic blossoms of the Pacific, but Sidney and I thought up a welcome home,” she spoke so loudly even the men took notice. She placed the necklace of flowers over
Olana’s head and it framed the low neckline of her gown with roses and baby’s breath. Olana gave Mrs. Hunt a grateful smile, and squeezed Sidney’s hand. The guests applauded. Sidney quieted them with a wave of his hand. “I have a toast,” he announced, “an old English toast for a wedding and now a welcome home:
Love, be true to her; Life, be dear to her;
Health, stay close by her; Joy, draw near to her;
Fortune, find what you can do for her,
Search your treasure-house through for her;
Follow her footsteps the wide world over,
And keep her husband always her lover!
She didn’t care what price she would have to pay later, Olana pulled Sidney to her side and kissed his cheek.
“That was lovely, thank you.”
“I let you down sport,” he choked out softly. “I’m sorry.”
She leaned on his arm. “You are my only friend left. Don’t forget Patsy, Selby, the baby. I don’t care about my parents anymore, about the business. But I’m obliged to that little family. Bring them home. Please, Sidney.”
“My God, Olana. What about you?”
Dinner was announced. They were separated, Sidney placed down toward the long table’s foot. He could only raise his glass to her from there, looking miserable, lost. But Coretta Hunt took her arm once dinner was done and the men lit their cigars to talk business.
“But —” Olana protested once Coretta steered them to the empty dressing rooms.
“I doubt even your husband provides spies in the company of women,” she said, loosening the ties of Olana’s gown.
“Mrs. —”
“We’re alone, my name is Coretta, and you’re going to faint if we can’t get you out of this!”
“But we’ll never get it tight enough again.”
“So?”
“He’ll know.”
“You’ve already been put on display.”
Olana looked in the woman’s eyes, then down at the ring of flowers gracing her neckline. “I felt so naked,” she said softly.
“I know.”
“You’re kind.”
“Oh, kindness be damned,” she said as she unlatched and unlaced. “We’re both women in a man’s world. The deals are being worked on now. They won’t see us again until we’re under wraps. And their heads will be swimming with numbers. Please, Olana. I know we didn’t get a very good start back at Christmas. But I can see you’re hurting. Sidney is anemic with worry. I’ll wager Matt is too.”
“Matt?” she whispered.
“Let me give your feet a rub, shall I?”
“But you’re the one —”
“Oh, I haven’t been sick a day, though this little rascal does some mean tumbling.”
Olana let the woman remove her shoes. Her massage brought back the smell of the sea outside her Aunt Winnie’s house.
“Your touch is as gentle as Matthew’s,” she breathed.
Coretta smiled. “Well, that’s a high compliment. Olana, please, talk to me.”
Olana’s eyes darted to the door, the windows, the room’s picture frames. She began to laugh, a strange new laughter, but addictive, as Coretta wound her own shawl around her shoulders and held her close. “What can I do for you?”
“Tell me a story,” she whispered, “About the Klondike. About Matthew.”
Coretta Hunt stroked her cheek. Olana had almost forgotten that simple gesture could lead to nothing else, could be done without piercing her elsewhere, somewhere no one could see. Coretta moved back to the opposite end of the couch. Olana felt the woman’s fingers kneading her feet again with sure, deft strokes.
“Well, back then Matthew Hart, he was an overgrown boy, about the same as he is now,” she launched them into the past she’d shared with Matthew. “He’d followed his partner McGee into town the first time they had a strike and had enough for our … entertainments. McGee went upstairs right off, but Matt stayed by the piano player, sipping his drink, listening, watching, in that quiet way of his. Some of the girls liked his eyes and tried to get him, because a few of the clients, well, they were unpredictable, and he seemed steady. He right enough had the hunger for our delights, you can tell by the eyes, so we knew he wasn’t after the piano player. Still, he shook his head, all bashful, getting more and more discomforted. I went over, asked him to dance. Well, he twirled me through a fandango that pretty much peeled the gold leaf off the picture frames! That’s how I met Matthew Hart.”
Olana smiled, leaned back, losing herself in the woman’s words and touch.
“We got interrupted by a cry from upstairs. Bad cry. We knew how to tell the difference between them and the … the good ones. Lottie, that was our … our mother, went flying up with Matt at her heels. He took care of the brute misbehaving himself in such short order that Lottie crowed, ‘Well, Fandango Man,’ you got a job any time you’re in town.’
“Well, I never saw a man’s eyes go from enraged to delighted in such a short span. And he took her up on it, whenever he and McGee were weary of each other or their diggings. He was the best of our strong men. The others got out of hand when they sensed our reliance on them. Sooner or later they wanted free drinks and time with the girls, that’s if they were the better ones. The worst tried to arm their way into the business. Lottie had to shoot two of them rascals cold dead.
“Matt was a different sort. He never laid but a tender hand with his remedies on any of us. He never even asked for a single thing beyond our company as conversation or dancing partners. He pretty much joined our family when McGee kicked off of the frostbite.”
“That’s when you were lovers?” Olana whispered.
“Child,” she said gently. “Matt and I were never lovers.”
“But that night, in my father’s house, he was kissing —”
“I was kissing him, Olana. There’s a difference. Listen. I wanted a child, and he knows all that women’s wisdom. He was helping me figure out the best time. See, after all the wild young men I’d had in the Klondike, I wanted to marry me one who was rich and not so demanding of me that way, you know? But I lost a child up there, and that was a hard thing, even though she was a mistake and I didn’t have a clue who her daddy was.
“Well, it was Matt got the bleeding stopped then, who let me cry into his shirt, so I made bold that night, years later, to tell him I wanted another one, to keep me company when Will goes. And he went busy with his calculating when the best time of the month would be. He knows that from studying with that grandma of his. Well, didn’t we find that very night I was ripe and ready. I laughed out my joy and asked if he would mind a kiss, sort of to prime the pump, you know? Well, he was obliging a soon-to-be-with-child old friend, Olana, and it broke my heart that you took it the wrong way.”
“It was only Lottie then?”
“Lottie was a formidable ‘only,’ child.”
“And he loved her?”
“Loved her so much he lied to find out how to love her.”
“Lied?”
“Told her he had a girl, waiting back east. Told her that he wanted to know how to please this girl, how to make her feel as good as Lottie made him feel. Well, that moved her more than I’d ever seen diamonds and gold mines move that woman, and she’d been offered both. But there was no girl, it was Lottie who Matt loved. He was smart enough to know that she’d been so used by life that she would not believe him. How he knew that, is still a mystery to me. Young as he was, he must have been used a bit by life himself, I reckon. He finally told her the truth when she got the gangrene. Did no good. She died saying she was happy to deliver his bride such a well-mannered lover. Olana, he wept bad as we did when we lost her.

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