Club Storyville (17 page)

“We can’t talk to every Caster in town,” Ariel said, though I suspected she would if it came to that. “Hopefully, we’ll find something to give us some direction at the house.”

“You’re going back?” Buddy asked her.

“It looks that way,” she replied, and, taking just enough time to help Buddy clean up the mess we made, we were back on the streets while the sun still shined at an acceptable angle.

Following the same path we walked before, Ariel silent and observant by my side, I started thinking about what she had said the night before. If she was right, if everyone truly was going through life without a clue, it explained a lot, like why Nan and Mama and Daddy seemed to contradict each other at every turn. If they didn’t know, why wouldn’t they each just pick something and defend it with all their might? I knew from ample experience, there were few things more frightening than the realization you didn’t know enough.

When we made it back to the address that was supposed to be Desmond Caster’s, Ariel stepped back onto the porch, retrieving her note from the mailbox where it remained untouched, and I wondered if the house belonged to anyone anymore, or if it had simply been abandoned to time and decay.

“Where do we start?” I asked as she turned back to me.

“Your guess is as good as mine,” Ariel declared, but, with the houses looking so much the same, no answers came from any of them, and I didn’t even have a guess. Admitting my ignorance with a shrug, I smiled when Ariel laughed at our joint cluelessness, looking so incredibly stunning in the morning light, I felt the instant need to tell her she was beautiful and amazing and how I would never be able to feel for anyone the way I felt for her, despite the fact it could never be more than a feeling.

I didn’t know why I thought telling her would make a difference when I was sure all those thoughts I couldn’t help but think shone in my eyes every time I looked at her. She had to know, I thought, how I longed for what could never be with her.

Startled from my dazzlement at Ariel’s very existence by the sound of a door, I watched her head turn, before following her gaze across the street to see a colored woman a few houses down stepping out of her house. Paying no mind to us, or anything happening beyond the yellow picket fence that enclosed her well-tended front garden, the woman looked to be about Mama’s age. She even reminded me a little of Mama as she started tending to her plants, which were the only things in our world back in Richmond that I often thought Mama took any real joy in at all.

Tipping her head in the woman’s direction as I looked back to her, Ariel posed the silent question, and, without any clues, any place seemed as good a place to start as any other, so I turned toward the picket fence with as much confidence as I could muster, accepting the fact that, were she real, Miss Marple would never want me for a protégé.

Halfway to the yellow fence, Ariel caught up with me, and we could just see the colored woman dropping down before a brightly blooming gardenia bush over the tops of her other sprawling plants that reminded me so much of Nan’s garden. With the notable exception of the magnolia tree by the fence I knew Nan would eye with amicable envy. She always said a southern magnolia had no chance of surviving Richmond winters.

“Excuse me,” Ariel called out to the woman, and, appearing over the top of a curved hedge, the lady didn’t look at all surprised to be interrupted until she laid eyes on us. When she did, a trace of visible worry crinkled her forehead, as if we could have come for no good reason.

“Yes?” she returned.

“We’re looking for someone,” Ariel told her. “We were told he once lived in that house,” she gestured its way. “Do you know anything about the person who owns it?”

Taking a moment to regard the house, and to get her bearings maybe, the colored lady finally turned her gaze back to us.

“No, I’m sorry, I don’t,” she replied. “No one has lived in that place for several years. There used to be a young man, but I believe he was just renting.”

“The man we’re looking for, his name is Desmond Caster,” Ariel said, and, watching closely for it, I saw the name put no recognition on the woman’s face.

“I don’t know anyone by that name,” she confirmed my suspicions, and, as Ariel nodded in response, I wondered if she wasn’t expecting it to be that easy either.

“Thank you,” she said. “I’m sorry to have bothered you. Your gardenias are beautiful, by the way.”

When Ariel smiled, it was no surprise the woman couldn’t help but smile back. It wasn’t fake, or even forced. The smile came naturally to her lips, like she could tell Ariel was sincere in both her gratitude and her praise, and I realized I wanted to be like that with people, to make them feel at ease and secure, even in the most uncommon of circumstances.

“Thank you,” the colored woman returned, and I felt the thrill of Ariel’s touch as she brushed my arm to lead me away.

“Wait,” the woman said after we’d made it only a few steps, and when we turned back, her eyes moved back and forth between us, sizing Ariel and I up to see if we could be trusted. “If there’s anyone who would know a person who used to live in that house, it’s Mrs. Green. She’s lived on this street her whole life, and she’s older than Jesus.”

Hit by the shock of how Mama would think the statement utter blasphemy, it receded as Ariel’s throaty laugh brought another smile to the woman’s face, and I realized Ariel could turn anyone that quickly into a friend.

“Will you tell us where she lives?” she asked.

“I will, but I don’t know if you’ll want to...” the woman trailed off. Pulling her gloves off and smacking them against one hand, I thought she might have regretted telling us at all. “Let me walk you over,” she offered, toeing her gardening tools out of the way and dropping her gloves atop them, before coming through the picket fence’s swinging gate to stand on our side.

“I’m Ariel,” Ariel offered the woman her hand, and, hesitating for the briefest of moments, the colored woman took it.

“Joyce,” she said.

“This is Elizabeth,” Ariel introduced me, and I waved uncomfortably as Joyce nodded past Ariel’s shoulder.

“It’s nice to meet you,” she declared, but it didn’t sound as though she entirely meant it. “It’s this way,” she tilted her head, and Ariel and I followed her back down the block, past the vacant, haunted address that once belonged to Desmond Caster, until we reached a house that was slightly smaller, but as well-tended as Joyce’s, minus the ornate front yard.

“Mrs. Green?” Joyce announced herself at the end of the walkway. “I’m coming up.” Turning to us as we started to follow, she looked slightly embarrassed, or, perhaps, apologetic. “You should wait here,” she said, and even Ariel seemed concerned as Joyce moved up the front walk by herself.

Seconds after she tapped softly on the wood, the door of the small house cracked open and a woman who looked old - very old - nearly as old as Nan, but far worse for the wear, as if all used up by life, with dark gray hair, streaked black, appeared for a split instant before Joyce moved to block her from my view.

From our distance, I couldn’t hear the words being said, but after only a few had time to pass between them, Mrs. Green pushed Joyce forcefully aside, as if she had the strength of a much younger body, and her eyes landed on Ariel first, sending such a look of fury her way, I shifted in front of Ariel automatically to protect her from their violent rays.

“You bring the devils here?” There was no way not to hear that, shouted our way as it was. “To my house?”

“Mrs. Green,” Joyce tried to contain her, but Mrs. Green had no concern for Joyce once she laid eyes on us.

“What you want?” she came to the edge of the porch to shout, her eyes filled with such rage and pain, I swore they burned red. “What you come for now? You ain’t take enough from me? You got all I got to give.”

Taken aback and scared, I was certain Mrs. Green had it wrong, that she was confused, that she was forgetting like Nan and we were on the receiving end of an outburst meant for someone else. When I looked to Ariel, though, she seemed just as sure Mrs. Green had it right, that we were part of something, whether we wanted to be or not, and that the ways of the world had divided us, tossing us on a side without any choice in the matter.

“We just have a question,” Ariel stated, just loud enough to be heard.

“You got a question?” Mrs. Green returned, her low voice shaking. “I got questions too. I got so many questions. But go on, you ask your question. You first, right?”

Hearing her slow, heavy inhalation, I felt Ariel’s first tentative steps forward, taken in an effort, I assumed, to turn the back-and-forth shouting into a more private conversation.

“There was a man named Desmond Caster who once lived on this street,” she said, and at Mrs. Green’s reflexive nod, I felt the slightest flare of hope that the name was known to her. “Do you know him? It’s important we find him. We have something for him.”

“Oh, you have somethin’ for him, do you?” Mrs. Green questioned. “What’s Desmond got comin’ to him? He owe somebody for somethin’ he didn’t take? Need a beatin’ for somethin’ he didn’t do?”

“No, Ma’am,” Ariel replied quietly, her gaze lowering to the walkway, and Mrs. Green pulled her furious eyes from Ariel to look up the street.

“I knew Desmond,” she said, to my surprise. After that opening, I expected nothing more from her, and neither did Ariel, it seemed, as the response drew her head back up. “He used to run with my brother Anthony. I kept them sometimes, Desmond and his brother Darnell, when their parents were working. Once his songs made him real money, he moved on out of this neighborhood. Can’t say I blame him. It wasn’t so nice a place then as it is now.”

“He was a musician?” I couldn’t withhold the question that came instantly to my lips, and when those dark, pained eyes turned on me, I realized Mrs. Green didn’t want to be angry. She looked as if she wanted so much to feel anything else, she just didn’t know how.

“He played the guitar,” she said. “Played so good all the girls had a crush on him. He used to go around the country with it, but he always came back home. Twenty years ago, he got one of his songs done by some jazz man and did real good for his family. Was able to get his mama in a real nice place before she died. We didn’t see them much after that.”

“Do you know where they moved?” Ariel questioned.

“Somewhere east of Iberville,” Mrs. Green responded, but Ariel looked just as confused as me.

“It’s a new housing development,” Joyce explained. “It’s just west of here.”

“You don’t have the address?” Ariel appealed to Mrs. Green.

“I’m sure I have it here somewhere,” Mrs. Green responded, “but I ain’t goin’ go diggin’ for it.”

Understanding then that Mrs. Green telling us about Desmond didn’t mean she liked us standing on her front walk any more than she did before, I was amazed she had given us any help at all.

“Well, thank you,” Ariel sounded as if she too realized we had pushed our luck enough. “You’ve been very helpful.”

“Hold on a second,” Mrs. Green called Ariel to a stop as she started back to me. “I told you I had questions too.”

Though her feet had paused at once, Ariel was less anxious to turn back around, but she did so anyway, her shoulders setting as she met Mrs. Green’s eyes.

“Why is it,” Mrs. Green’s voice grew quieter, but thicker with accusation, “my boy, who was always a sweet, beautiful man, worked hard, loved hard, never hurt nobody, walk into a white neighborhood, and those white folk can’t just toss him out, they got to beat him within a inch of his life, so bad he can’t speak no mo’, or work no mo’, or even look at me no mo’, and you walk right up in this neighborhood as if it belong to you? Why them invisible lines apply only one way?”

Somewhere else, from someone else, it might have sounded like a threat. In the urban neighborhood, coming from Mrs. Green, it sounded like an honest question. As if she thought benefitting in some ways from the world meant we had some greater insight into the way it worked or the ability to change anything.

“I don’t know,” Ariel confessed we had no more power than she did, and maybe Mrs. Green didn’t expect us to have any answers after all, because she only nodded in response.

“Well, I’m real glad I could answer your question,” she said. “Don’t come back here again ‘til you can answer mine.”

Turning into the darkness beyond her front door, Mrs. Green closed us out, and we were left staring at the solid wood surface, a small step closer to finding Desmond Caster, but the ground rockier beneath our feet.

Chapter Eighteen

E
ast of Iberville was no place to begin a search. That could be anywhere from the next street to the Atlantic Ocean.

Thanking Joyce and saying goodbye on the sidewalk in front of Mrs. Green’s house, there was distinct feeling there would be no more help out of Desmond’s old neighborhood, and I knew that was why Ariel suggested we go back to Buddy’s to wait for lunch.

“Moving up east of Iberville?” Buddy was anxious to offer what assistance he could as we ate the split pea soup he kept back for us with bread he had thrown into the brick oven outside next to the roast he’d started for the night. “That’s gonna be the far side of Tremé. Faubourg St. John, maybe. That’s where I would go.”

“Any of these addresses?” Ariel asked, sliding the directory across the table to him.

“There are a few that might fit,” Buddy scanned the page. “I can tell you which ones.”

“That would be helpful,” Ariel returned, head dipping over her bowl for a bite.

“You ladies just going to go knocking on more doors?” he asked us.

“That’s all we can do,” Ariel said, and Buddy looked like he didn’t care much for her answer.

“Why don’t you let me make a few calls for you?” he suggested. “See if I can’t help you find a place to start.”

“You don’t have to do that,” Ariel told him.

“I would feel better,” Buddy admitted, and when Ariel looked up at him, it was with something that looked a lot like affection, and might have even made me jealous if I didn’t know there were many reasons Ariel could only like Buddy as a friend.