Sweet Mercy Read online

  I stood in the middle of my room and slowly turned around, taking it all in. It was much smaller than Mother and Daddy’s room, but that was all right. A single bed, a wardrobe, a mirrored dresser, a desk and a reading chair—what else did I need? My clothes were hanging in the wardrobe, my shoes were under the bed, my photo albums and scrapbooks were tucked away in a drawer, and my treasure box was on top of the dresser. Already, I felt the place was mine.

  Stepping to the dresser, I began untangling my long blond braid in front of the mirror. Unlike Cassandra, I had refused to cut my hair when the short bob came into fashion. I had no desire to be like my sister, who was eight years older than I and who had long ago made a pretty mess of her life.

  I was serious about this one shot at living while she went at it like a professional partier. I worked hard in school and tried to acquaint myself with the best of literature and art while Cassandra, awakened in adolescence to the intoxicating mix of crime and romance, devoured True Detective magazines. Though she was married now to a man who would no more break the law than Eliot Ness, once upon a time she had dreamed of being a moll, the girlfriend of an outlaw! She aspired to marry a man who robbed banks by day and came home to his lady at night to shower her in diamonds and dough, a man who dodged bullets and evaded arrest and was somehow invincible, a devilish Dick Tracy, a Bad-boy Buck Rogers.

  She was nothing but a typical St. Paulite, always glamorizing the bad guys and longing to hang around the fringes of their world. As I brushed my hair, I remembered the time Cassandra and her friend Susan had run off giggling to the Hotel St. Paul. George “Bugs” Moran had been spotted there, and they thought if they hung around the lobby long enough they’d catch a glimpse of him. And they did.

  They came back to our apartment and found me reading in the bedroom I unfortunately shared with Cassandra. Now my sister entered the room with her hands clenched in front of her heart. “Well, it was him,” she said.

  “Who?” I asked.

  “Bugs Moran, silly. We saw him walk right through the lobby and go out the front door of the Hotel St. Paul.”

  “So?”

  Susan leaned up against the doorframe, as though weak-kneed with longing. “Eve, you wouldn’t believe how good-looking he is in real life. Even more handsome than he looks in pictures.”

  “So?”

  “So don’t you want to see him?” Susan asked.

  “Why would I want to go look at one of the biggest gangsters in Chicago?”

  “Because,” Susan exclaimed, “he is one of the biggest gangsters in Chicago! And so much better looking than Al Capone.”

  “You guys are crazy.”

  “And you’re just no fun,” Cassandra snapped.

  “And if you’re not careful, you’ll end up a moll!” I yelled.

  “And if you’re not careful, you’ll end up an old maid!”

  “Better an old maid than a gangster’s girlfriend!”

  Even as a very young child, I viewed my older sister as silly and shallow, a party girl tailor-made for the twenties. The years were to prove me right. The flapper craze sucked her up a willing participant and spat her out a reluctant wife and mother when, at age twenty, after years of speakeasies, bad boys, and hip flasks, she found herself pregnant and alone. Perhaps worst of all, she wasn’t even sure who the father was. Mother and Daddy were horrified, though luckily several of Cassandra’s former beaus suddenly materialized on our doorstep proposing marriage. These hapless suitors knew they were getting a two-for-one deal, but each was nevertheless willing to make an honest woman out of her. I could never understand that, except that Cassandra was uncommonly beautiful and perhaps her beauty knocked all the sense out of otherwise sensible men.

  I leaned closer to the mirror and gazed judgmentally at what I considered my own plain face. My lips were too thin, my forehead too high. My nose was narrow and perhaps a bit too long, leaving it looking pinched and pretentious. I longed for cheekbones but they hadn’t yet appeared. The only good feature was my eyes. They were blue and bright, just like Mother’s. And Cassandra’s. But that was the only family resemblance I shared with my sister. As I studied myself in the mirror, I wondered briefly whether I would ever turn sensible men into fools, and decided it was unlikely.

  But the beautiful Cassandra had her choice of men, and she chose Warren Lemming, which all in all was a wise decision, since Warren’s father had made his fortune in the railroad and had barely felt the aftershocks of the recent stock market crash. Warren was set to inherit an enviable estate and in the meantime was doing quite well as a junior partner in his father’s business. On top of that he was genuinely nice, always even-tempered, and not bad looking either, if you didn’t mind a receding chin and an unfortunate mole or two. He gave Cassandra’s baby his name and immediately afterward gave Cassandra another baby. Effie and Grace were four and three now and lucky to have Warren as a father.

  While I think Cassandra loved Warren in her own way, she resented having to settle down into marriage and motherhood before she was ready. I didn’t feel sorry for her, though. In fact, her quiet misery filled me with no end of secret delight; I figured she’d got what she deserved. She had drunk and danced her way toward what she herself called drudgery. Like Daddy was known to say, she’d made her bed.

  I for one wasn’t going to be making any beds. I was going to make something of myself. Not just for me but, more importantly, for the two people in the room next to mine. I was going to do something important, something that made a difference. Mother and Daddy didn’t have anyone else to do good in the world and to make them proud. Certainly not Cassandra. And not the son who’d been stillborn between Cassandra and me. I was the only one they had and I wasn’t going to let them down.

  Laying down the brush and turning away from the dresser, I didn’t know what to do next. Sleep was out of the question; I was far too excited for that. I thought about reading or writing a letter to my best friend Ariel back in St. Paul, but I had too much pent-up energy for sitting. I needed to move, to walk somewhere, or I’d end up pacing the room.

  I tied my hair back with a ribbon and stepped out into the hall, quietly tiptoeing past Mother and Daddy’s room and descending the stairs to the front hall below. A man I didn’t know was behind the front desk; Uncle Cy must have still been talking oats and chickens with the members of the town council. The dining room was dark and empty, but the spacious sitting room was well lighted and cheery with the presence of guests. I walked through, smiling and nodding at a few people, but my feet, as though by their own will, carried me on through the sitting room and down the short narrow hallway that led to the ballroom.

  As wide as the lodge itself, the ballroom was a cavernous place, with a high ceiling and a glossy hardwood floor that even now shimmered faintly in the dim electric lighting. On the far side was a stage where surprisingly big-name bands came to play, bringing in the crowds from Cincinnati, Dayton, Columbus, and even Louisville and Lexington, Kentucky. The air seemed to reverberate with the music that had bounced off these walls for years, and as I stood there staring, I could sense the presence of carefree couples dancing the Charleston and the Lindy Hop, the waltz and the fox-trot.

  I had often gone to school dances with my friends, where we were asked to dance by boys we didn’t like. We accepted anyway and spent the time looking over their shoulders at the boys we longed to have ask us, but who never did. Nevertheless, I enjoyed dancing. I’d learned how to waltz along with everyone else as part of the physical education requirement in school. Once I was paired up with Scott Hampton, one of the handsome boys I contemplated from afar. I didn’t want the song to end. I wanted to go on feeling what it was to have my hand on his shoulder, his arm around my waist, our other hands meeting palm to palm as we slid around the freshly waxed gym floor. Scott Hampton had never spoken to me before, and he didn’t speak to me even then, but that was all right. While the song lasted I could pretend he had asked me out to the floor, that the look on his face had
been one of delight rather than agony when my name was called with his.

  A portable phonograph sat on the edge of the stage and, curious, I went to it. It was a big wooden box of a player, an RCA Victrola that looked brand-new, a far cry from the old gramophone back in our Edgecombe Court apartment that pumped out scratchy music through an ancient morning-glory horn. I looked at the record on the turntable. Viennese Waltzes. Perfect.

  I turned the knob and lowered the needle. I shut my eyes, raised my arms, and imagined myself in Scott Hampton’s embrace. I began to twirl, slowly at first, but then more rapidly, knowing the whole room was mine. Alone yet not alone, I moved with my imaginary lover in wide circles around the floor.

  Oh, Scott! Oh, darling! You dance divinely. . . .

  Oh! With a jolt, I found myself tumbling face-forward and landing with a thud on the floor. I’d backed into someone or something, but I couldn’t imagine what. Stunned, I shook my head and pulled in a deep breath. I let the air out in a quiet moan as I turned over and sat.

  An extended hand slipped into my field of vision. When I looked up, I fell back on one elbow and stifled a scream. Marlene had been telling the truth. The red-eyed devil was standing over me, looking for all the world as though he was ready to pounce.

  Chapter 4

  The attack I was bracing against didn’t come. Instead, the red-eyed devil withdrew his hand and straightened his back. “All right, then,” he said, a hint of annoyance in his voice, “you can just get yourself up.”

  My muscles relaxed, except for those between my eyes that pulled my brow into a frown. “I . . .”

  “You’re not hurt, are you?”

  “Um, no, I don’t think so. I—”

  He lifted his chin and started to move away. I knew what he was, but I’d never seen one before and I hadn’t expected to see one now. That’s what startled me. I pushed myself up from the floor.

  Abruptly, he swung around. “Just who are you anyway? And what are you doing here in the ballroom? It’s off-limits during the summer season, you know. You can do your dancing on the island like everyone else.”

  “Listen,” I said, “I’m sorry. I’m Eve Marryat. I just came in here because I couldn’t sleep and—”

  “Oh yeah,” he said. “I know the name.” He nodded slightly, the dim light in the room illuminating his pale skin, his stark white hair. Combed straight back without a part, his hair was a ghostly halo on top of his narrow face. Central to that face were the two crimson eyes, glowing like rubies on a bed of lambs’ wool. He wore a washed-out gray shirt that was several shades darker than his skin and a pair of weathered denim pants held up with black suspenders. It was hard to tell, but I guessed him to be a few years older than I was.

  When he didn’t go on, I said, “I’m Cyrus’s niece.”

  “Yeah.” He nodded again. “I know. He said you were coming.”

  “And you are . . . ?”

  “Jones.”

  “Jones?”

  “That’s right. Jones.”

  My frown returned. I was trying not to stare at those strange red eyes, but the sight of them unnerved me. I slowly became aware that my thumbs were rubbing my index fingers like worry stones. “What’s your first name?” I asked.

  “That is my first name. It was my mother’s maiden name.” He said this as he walked to the phonograph and lifted the needle from the record. The room was suddenly, jarringly quiet. He turned off the phonograph and put the lid down as though to tell me it was off-limits.

  But I wasn’t paying much attention. I was trying to connect the dots as I followed him to the stage. “Your mother?” I said. “Wait. You don’t mean Cora?”

  “Yeah, I do. So?”

  “You’re her son?”

  “That’s right. What about it?”

  “How come I never heard of you?”

  He lifted his shoulders, seemingly indifferent. “Beats me.”

  “You weren’t here for the wedding. You weren’t here when she married Uncle Cy.”

  “That’s right, I wasn’t. I was still in Chicago. I was staying with relatives because I had pneumonia.”

  “So when did you come down?”

  “About a month later, I guess. I don’t really remember. Why?”

  “No one ever mentioned you.”

  “So?”

  “Well, it’s a pretty big secret, isn’t it? I mean, you’ve been here five years and Uncle Cy never told us about you?”

  “It’s no secret, just because you don’t mention someone.”

  I found myself momentarily speechless. My fingers were becoming sore from the rubbing. I willed myself to stop but wasn’t sure what to do with my hands. “Well, I mean, you’re family, right? Isn’t Uncle Cy your stepfather?”

  He shrugged. “Sure. If you want to put it that way.”

  “Then that means we’re step-cousins. Right?”

  “I suppose we are,” he said, though he sounded reluctant to agree.

  “And you live here? At the lodge?”

  “Yeah.” He nodded toward Uncle Cy’s apartment behind the ballroom. “I live and work here. What do you expect?”

  “Well, I’m just wondering . . . what else don’t we know?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What else hasn’t Uncle Cy told us?”

  “Beats me. And if I knew, I wouldn’t tell you.”

  We locked eyes a moment, his growing narrow as I slowly moved my head from side to side. “Listen,” I said, “I’m sorry I was afraid at first. It’s just . . . well, I wasn’t expecting to run into anyone.”

  “Yeah? Especially not someone like me, huh?”

  “Well, I . . .”

  “You’ve probably never even seen someone like me before, have you?”

  I hesitated only a moment before answering truthfully. “No, I haven’t. Not that I haven’t heard of people like you. That is, I know there are people like you, even though I’ve never seen one or seen a picture or even thought very much about them. I . . .” I stopped. This wasn’t going well. My nervousness was tying my tongue up in knots. I took a deep breath. “Look,” I said, “why don’t we start over? It’s very nice to meet you, Jones.”

  His features stiffened into a sneer. He took one step back. “Yeah,” he said. “I bet.”

  He turned and walked away without saying another word.

  Chapter 5

  I crawled into bed that night a little less thrilled about our new home in Mercy, Ohio. Something nagged me about having a cousin these past five years that I knew nothing about. Was Uncle Cy ashamed of Jones because of his color—or should I say, his lack of color? My uncle didn’t seem to me that kind of person. But then again, beyond a few childhood memories, I really didn’t know Uncle Cy very well.

  I slept a fitful sleep and awoke the next morning to the sound of Mother tapping on the bedroom door. “Time to get up, Eve,” she called softly. “They’re starting to serve breakfast now.”

  Twenty minutes later, I found Mother and Daddy sipping coffee at one of the tables in the dining room. Daddy smiled at me. “Sleep well, darling?”

  “Not really.” I snapped open the linen napkin at my place and laid it across my lap.

  “What’s the matter? Too excited to sleep?”

  “No.” Leaning forward, I shook my head and lowered my voice. “I found out something you’re not going to believe.”

  Mother settled her coffee cup in the saucer and looked at me warily. “What is it, Eve?”

  In my best conspiratorial whisper, I informed them, “Uncle Cy has a stepson and he lives here at the lodge.” I topped off my announcement with a nod.

  Mother and Daddy glanced at each other. Daddy said, “Do you mean the boy Jones?”

  I leaned back in the chair, dumbfounded. This was not the reaction I had expected. “You know about him?”

  “Well,” Daddy said, “we don’t really know anything about him, but I remember hearing him mentioned at the wedding. He’s Cora’s son.”

/>   “That’s right. So how come no one ever told me?”

  Daddy’s brow went up as he shrugged. “I suppose we thought you knew.”

  “Well, I didn’t.”

  Mother poured herself more coffee from the pot on the table. “We’re sorry, honey. We weren’t trying to keep any secrets from you. It’s just that we haven’t been in touch with Daddy’s side of the family very much. Not like we should have been these past few years.”

  I looked from Mother to Daddy and back again. “Then why are we here?”

  Daddy frowned at that. He picked up his spoon and began stirring imaginary sugar in his coffee. “All I can tell you,” he said, “is what you already know. Your Uncle Cy was good enough to help out—temporarily—until things get better for us. Now the honest truth is, it seems like Cyrus, Luther, and I have been fighting about one thing or another since the day we were born. Maybe that’s just the way it is among brothers sometimes. I don’t know. But maybe too this is a chance for us to mend some fences. Heaven knows if that happens, our parents would die from the shock of it, if they hadn’t passed on already. But I’m at least willing to give it a try.”

  “But I just don’t understand it, Daddy,” I said, shaking my head. “You’re the best man I know. You’re good to everyone. How could you and Uncle Cy ever argue about anything?”

  “Well, darling,” Daddy said, putting down the spoon and patting my hand, “no one’s perfect. Not even your old man.”

  “Maybe not, Daddy, but you’re as close to perfect as anyone I know.”

  While Daddy and I shared a smile, Mother said, “So how did you happen to find out about Jones, Eve?”

  My smile slipped away as I turned to Mother. “Last night I decided to look around the lodge, and I just ran into him.” Quite literally, I thought, but I wasn’t about to admit to Mother and Daddy that I was dancing with an imaginary lover in the ballroom.