He left the shawl and the handbag behind.
Chapter 7
The one piece of advice that Beau Fox had passed on to his son was to never tell anyone everything at once. Beau parceled out his own history the way people rationed bits of bread during the Depression. It wasn’t until Dillard was ten that he heard the true story about his mother. He was fourteen before he learned that his father never really lived in Orlando before he came to Skyville. In fact, he’d been a bootlegger in Miami during Prohibition and was on the run from the law when he took off in his car and zig-zagged up the state, taking refuge in Orlando, which was nothing more than mangrove swamps and citrus groves. That’s where he’d acquired the antique musical instruments in leather cases in exchange for four bottles of rum. He’d always listened to music and knew a great deal about it, but it was the supple and rich-smelling leather cases that drew Beau to the instruments in the first place. He’d thought, Now that’s a way to make a living, so he had some cards made up and painted a sign on his car that said BEAU FOX’S GENUINE LEATHER AND MUSIC. He said the name was confusing enough to make people stop him and ask what was the leather and where was the music? It was when he got lonely at night in the cheap boardinghouses he stayed in on the road that he took a shine to the fiddle and taught himself how to play.
This was what Dillard knew of his father. He’d always figured if he’d stuck around Skyville long enough, he’d have learned even more. But the lesson stayed with him: No one needed to know everything at once.
When people asked him why he’d taken up playing the flute, he’d tell them that he was drawn to the sound of its unearthly whispers. The truth of it was more prosaic than that.
His Selmer flute had been a graduation gift from his eighth-grade music teacher, Mr. Alden. At the time, Mr. Alden seemed so much a grown-up, but in reality, he was probably only ten years older than Dillard. A hulk of a man, slightly unkempt, with an auburn beard and shoulders wide as a bench, Mr. Alden attracted Dillard’s stares all through class as he imagined what it would be like to run his fingers down Mr. Alden’s back. Dillard was certain everyone else had the same urge. How could they not? It was only later that he realized maybe they didn’t.
Three weeks before the annual winter recital, Mr. Alden asked Dillard to see him at the end of the day. When Dillard went to Mr. Alden’s classroom, the teacher told him, “Take a seat, anywhere.” Dillard sat at the desk closest to him; Mr. Alden pulled over the desk next to his until they were close enough for Dillard to smell the mothball musk of his sweater and see the hairs inside his ears. Mr. Alden mentioned the upcoming recital. “I have something special in mind for you. I want you to play a flute solo, Erik Satie’s ‘Gymnopédie Number One.’”
Dillard started. “I’m not good enough to play that!”
Mr. Alden shook his head. “You certainly are, and I’ll help you. We’ll meet every day after school, and you’ll learn that piece inside out.”
Dillard objected. “I’ve only been playing the flute for a year. Satie’s for a more advanced player than me.”
“You underestimate yourself, Mr. Fox. Trust me, you’ll be a star.”
Their heads were so close now that Dillard suddenly had the impulse to kiss Mr. Alden. “I don’t know about that,” he said.
“I do.” Mr. Alden laughed, as if he knew what was going through Dillard’s mind. “Don’t let’s tell anyone. Let this be our little secret until we get to watch them go hog wild at the recital.”
“Alright then. Satie,” said Dillard, his voice a bit jagged.
“Alright then, Satie,” said Mr. Alden, shaking Dillard’s hand.
For the next three weeks, Dillard came to Mr. Alden’s classroom at the end of every day as Mr. Alden helped him understand the complicated lyrical melody of “Gymnopédie No. 1.”
After that, Mr. Alden would occasionally invite Dillard to his house so they could listen to his record collection. His sparsely furnished clapboard house had heavy beige curtains on all the windows that turned everything inside the color of potatoes. He would pour them Coca-Cola and bring out snacks as they sat around listening to Schubert, Glenn Miller, Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald. Mr. Alden told Dillard about each artist and what influenced their music. He’d make Dillard distinguish between major and minor keys and listen for the bridges and chord changes. Sometimes they would improvise together on Mr. Alden’s piano. Dillard always thought of the potato-colored living room as the place where he became a musician, and of Mr. Alden as his first real crush.
Not that it meant anything, Dillard knew that. Students always had crushes on their teachers, especially those who took a special interest in them. Didn’t they?
Chapter 8
Try as she might, Emilia Mae hadn’t been able to hide her secret.
By the beginning of February, even the blousiest of smocks billowed in front of her as if she were hiding a kettledrum beneath it. She bicycled to the bakery every couple of days and would try to sneak in and retrieve the pies and cakes when her mother wasn’t there. The Neptune Inn became home; Xena and the Reverend Klepper, her surrogate family. She could feel the thing move in her. Her face had gone puffy, and her rear was so big, she had to sit sideways on most chairs. At night, she tossed and turned, unable to settle into a comfortable position. She was constipated. She farted all the time, had to go to the bathroom every twenty minutes, and had searing pains running down the backs of her legs. Her body had gone crazy; nothing about it was hers anymore. As far as she was concerned, the only thing she didn’t have was pus-filled boils up and down her legs. Not yet, anyway.
She was pregnant, no doubt about it. Even worse, counting back from the last time she and John from Albany had been together, this baby would be due in May or June. Motherhood was frightening to Emilia Mae. She’d learned little about how to love a child from her own mother. She worried that she would do to her own child what her mother had done to her: leave a void where love ought to be. No child deserves that, she thought. Emilia Mae figured she didn’t have time to waste. An abortion was what she needed, and she needed it quickly.
She remembered how Father Daley would go all frothy when he talked about abortion. “A grave evil,” he called it. “A sin against God.” Well, tough for Father Daley; she was no longer in his hands.
Nobody she knew had ever had an abortion. She didn’t know how they were done or where they were done. Certainly not in New Rochelle, which didn’t even have its own record store. She couldn’t run the risk of asking anyone in this gossipy town. She’d have to find someone to take her into Manhattan. She thought about talking to Xena but realized how painful that would be for her, given her own lost baby. The only person she felt safe enough to ask was Reverend Klepper. She couldn’t tell him about John, but maybe she could make him believe that she had the devil in her, just as her mother had believed. It would have worked with Father Daley; maybe it would work with him.
The following Sunday, she told Xena she’d meet her at the inn, then waited in the back pew of the church until Reverend Klepper had spoken with all his parishioners before she came up to him and shook his hand.