After You've Gone Read online

  “No, I just mean I don’t want either of us to have to get a job that’s going to get in the way of playing music.”

  I was going to say more, explain what I meant better, when she jumped in. “I think you’d better listen to Mark. Someone is going to have to get serious, now.” She got up off my bed and left the room.

  Now over a year later, I had my son, and my husband. We were a family, we were pretty happy if kind of tired a lot of the time, and we were ready to start a new life in a new city, a new country. I was excited. She was acting like I was a bad child, again. But I couldn’t do anything about the way my mom felt, and I couldn’t let it get me down. We were looking forward to Seattle.

  Four

  Lita

  June 1935

  THE BELLEVILLE WAS NOT A HUGE hotel, but at twenty rooms, it was enough to keep us busy. The Kleins bought it in 1928, when Darlene was nine. Mrs. Klein had mostly run the place by herself, with some help in the busy season in the summer. But she’d died a couple of years before, and after that Gus and Darlene handled it themselves. In the summers, the busy season, Gus hired some part-time girls. When I started, Darlene had been after him for months to hire a chambermaid full-time so she could devote her attention to school. Well, that was her story, anyway. Put it this way, she had things on her mind other than the hotel.

  I didn’t mind it most of the time, but it wasn’t really what you would call interesting work. A few guests were more or less permanent tenants, but in the middle of the Depression Regina wasn’t exactly a hot tourist spot, so there often weren’t that many guests around. And although my official title was “chambermaid,” I ended up doing a lot of things at the Belleville. After a while I was helping in the kitchen, taking out the garbage, checking guests in and out; sometimes I’d lock up at night if Gus and Darlene were both busy.

  One day the phone at the front desk rang. Gus was out and Darlene was chatting with a boy out in the lobby. She turned to me. “Get that, would you?”

  “Belleville Hotel . . . She’s busy right now . . . Okay. Goodbye.”

  Later, after the boy left, she asked me who’d called.

  “I don’t know. He said he’d call back.”

  “You need some phone lessons! Next time, say ‘Who’s calling, please?’ And take a message.”

  I was too embarrassed to admit that in most of the places we’d lived we’d never had a telephone, and the few times we did, I’d rarely been the one to answer it.

  Sometimes the messes people left in the rooms were really revolting. And sometimes they’d leave the most incredible things behind. Gus tried to contact the owners before he turned the booty over to us girls, or sold it. I got a nice green silk georgette dress and a coat that way, as well as a few pairs of shoes. Since Darlene got first dibs though, most of the things I got were clothes she didn’t want or that were too big for her.

  Once, I found a portable phonograph and a wooden crate full of records that a guest left behind. My hands shook as I flipped through the 78s. I knew I was supposed to turn this stuff over to Gus, but I couldn’t this time. I stowed them on the bottom of my wheeled cart, under a pile of sheets, hauled them down to my room when I finished the floor I was working on, and slid them carefully under my bed, beside my guitar. When I was finished work, I went down and listened to them at whisper volume, afraid that Gus or Darlene would hear, would want to know where I got the stuff.

  But it never happened. The owner must have never tried to track them down, otherwise Gus would have asked about them. So I got to play along with Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday, Bix Beiderbecke, Cab Calloway, Bessie Smith, Louis Armstrong, and Django Reinhardt. It was raunchier stuff than the Bing Crosby, Conee Boswell and The Ink Spots they tended to stick to on CKCK, and it excited me. Django, being a guitarist, especially moved me, and when I discovered that he was a Gypsy, I felt a quiet connection. Later I read that he had two useless fingers on his left hand, his fretting hand, that had been paralyzed in a fire. And still he played like no one else ever had. After hearing him, I knew my playing would never be the same.

  Steve came by the hotel to see me sometimes. One night that June, he said he’d been down at Exhibition Stadium to talk to some of the men camped there. There’d been a great flood of unemployed men, more than a thousand, who’d marched all the way from Vancouver and were camped out at the Grounds. The On-to-Ottawa trek, the paper called it. They demanded that the government do something to help them, and though Prime Minister Bennett threatened to call in the army, they found a lot of support in Regina. People donated food and money. Steve had gone to see what all the fuss was about, and he told me he’d decided to join them. That got me curious — I wanted to see the sea of men for myself. He came back to get me after my shift was over and we walked to the Grounds.

  This side of Steve, the serious side, was something I hadn’t seen before. As far as I could tell, before this his main interest in life had been girls. He was with a different girl every time I saw him. And why not? He was tall, had wavy black hair. I was glad to see him interested in something else. I’d read about the unemployment in the paper and knew my brother was having a terrible time. Men like Steve were lucky if they could find casual labour now and again, and they’d beg door-to-door for work. But the size of the problem didn’t really hit me until I saw all those men, from boys my age to white-haired grandfathers, all needing work, all angry and tired and frustrated. Steve tried to convince me to join the march, too, but I just laughed at him. A girl, join the march? Besides, even though chambermaid work was far from glamorous, I didn’t think my life was so bad. As it turned out, the whole march ended only a few days later in a bloody riot that saw two men killed.

  I did, however, join a poker game outside the Stadium, near a roaring firepit.

  I’d only played poker once before, with Darlene, for pennies. Call it beginner’s luck, but I won that night at the Grounds, and my final opponent owed me big. I knew none of the men had money, and I knew they just played poker to pass the time. I really didn’t expect the man to pay up, but he went into his tent and brought out the guitar.

  Even as I told him no, I couldn’t possibly take it from him, I salivated over it, my fingers burned to reach out and possess it. I couldn’t take my eyes off it glinting in the flickering firelight. A National guitar, with a sleek polished steel body, pair of f-holes, beautiful patterned sound holes on the round resonator.

  “C’mon, Lita, take it,” Steve urged. “She plays, you know, and she’s good, too.”

  Nothing would do then but that I take it. My opponent insisted I’d won it fair and square, said he’d be insulted if I didn’t take it. Besides, he said, it was a pain in the ass to lug around and he sure as hell didn’t want to haul it all the way to Ottawa.

  I couldn’t hold out anymore. I took it from him, adjusted the tuning a bit, and played, just some of my own stuff I’d fooled around with a while. I’d only ever played my grandmother Mami’s little bashed-up guitar before, and playing the National for the first time was like a dream. The tone, the action, the feel of it in my hands. I hadn’t known it could be like that. I could have played all night, watching the orange sparks whirl up into the velvet blackness.

  But when I stopped after a while, I heard applause. Only then did I realize they’d hushed to listen to me. I’d been spellbound, someplace where I was alone with the National.

  I laid my new guitar gently into its case, and Steve said he’d walk me back to the hotel. But before we left, I thanked the man.

  “Are you sure you want to give it up?”

  “You take it and enjoy it. The way you play, girlie, I think it was meant to be.”

  Five

  Lita

  July 1935

  THE SYNCOPATION FIVE HAD A LITTLE over two weeks to practise before the wedding, and while I wasn’t completely comfortable by the last rehearsal, I felt pretty good about the way it went. Our two sets ran about forty-five minutes each, and many of the songs I already knew. T
he ones I didn’t were fairly easy to pick up.

  Still, I was more nervous than I expected to be on the way over to the hall. It was one thing to play in front of the rest of the band, but there were about a hundred people at this wedding. When we got up on the stage the lights were hot and bright. I didn’t know if I would last the whole show in front of all those people and under those hot lights. But once I realized that the audience was watching the bride and groom, and weren’t all that interested in the band, I was able to relax a bit.

  “You’re doing a good job, kid. I think this is going to work out fine,” Bill said when the first set was over.

  At the end of the night the band was paid fifty dollars, and Bill handed out ten dollars to each of us. I tucked my money in the little section in my guitar case for picks and strings. Ten dollars was more than I made at the hotel in a week. I’d almost forgotten about the money part of it.

  Next rehearsal we tried to get some new numbers going. As the greenhorn, and the youngest, and the girl, I didn’t feel I had much say in the matter. But if I’d felt a little more secure, I would have said something about the smarmy songs that certain people leaned towards. Bill, specifically. In fact, I happened to know I wasn’t the only one who objected to his choice of material.

  “Well, since old candy-ass isn’t here, why don’t we play some real jazz for a change?” asked Henry.

  George sighed. “You drummers. Always the instigators. Let’s just rehearse the stuff and get out of here. I got a date tonight.”

  “Aw, c’mon. You know what I mean. Bill’s my pal, but the stuff he likes, man. It’s so lame. Let’s play something hot while we have the chance. You with me, Otto?”

  Otto laughed. “The stuff we play isn’t so bad. Besides, the ladies love it, don’t they, Lita?”

  “I don’t love it so much,” I said.

  “I don’t mean you, I mean the ladies in the audience. They absolutely swoon when he does those crooner numbers, didn’t you notice at the wedding? Guess he’s the closest thing they’ll ever see to Rudy Vallée.”

  I hadn’t noticed anyone swooning. I had tried not to look at the audience too much. It made me nervous. I figured establishing a rapport with the audience was part of Bill’s job, while it was my job to play the guitar. But this news interested me. Bill, whom I had mostly perceived as big and gangly, was sexy? I made a mental note to observe the effect he had on the women in the audience at the next opportunity, just for amusement’s sake.

  He made it to the next practice, and we were still trying to decide on some new numbers. As always, Bill had loads of suggestions.

  “How about ‘What’ll I Do?’ I’ve got the chords figured out,” he volunteered. He ran through them once, and the rest of us followed along. It wasn’t too taxing, a cute little old Irving Berlin confection I’d heard on the radio before. A waltz, a real Bill kind of tune, when you got right down to it, with that minor seventh chord heartstring tug in there.

  We ran through it again, and he began to sing: “Do you remember the way that we met . . . ”

  I decided to watch him. Yes, I thought I saw what Otto meant, thought I could see what the ladies might see in Bill. He was tall, and well built. Slim, but with nicely defined muscles, thanks to his day job stocking shelves at a hardware store. He dressed well. Bill always dressed well, even at rehearsal; not too flashy, not too neat. Of course, with his build, he could wear pretty much anything. I felt bad about my first assessment of him — I could see now that it wasn’t very accurate. And he did have a nice voice; deep and rich, and he made it sound effortless. I’d never really watched him sing before, but it was interesting. For instance, I noticed that he had a certain way of establishing eye contact that held your gaze, and also that he had very clear grey eyes. I hadn’t noticed his eyes before.

  “What’ll I do with just a photograph to tell my troubles to?”

  Then the pick flew out of my fingers and instead of carrying on like I normally would, I got it into my head that I had to stop and look for it.

  “Well,” Bill said when we finished the number. “What do you think?”

  “It’s great,” I said. Nobody else said anything, but Bill smiled at me.

  Henry took off as soon as the practice was done. I started to walk over to catch the streetcar, but Bill took hold of my upper arm and stopped me.

  “Hey, Lita, you shouldn’t catch the streetcar out here by yourself at night. It’s almost 10:30.”

  I shrugged. “I can’t expect you to wait for the streetcar with me. Anyway, I do okay. I’m by myself most of the time. You don’t have to worry about me.”

  He let go. “No, I guess I don’t. Supposing I was to offer you a ride home?”

  I laughed. “In your ukulele case?”

  “No, in my new car. Come and have a look.”

  I was sure he was lying, but I went with him anyway. And there was a black Packard parked behind the Quonset. A little beat-up, maybe, but it looked like an okay car from what I could tell in the dark.

  “You’re kidding. This is yours? Where did you get it?”

  He ran his hand slowly across the hood like it was velvet. “My brother Ian got a new car. Well, a newer car. So he sold me this one. Pretty slick, eh?”

  I was impressed. Cars in general didn’t impress me, but the fact that Bill actually had saved up enough money to buy it did. I hadn’t thought he was that serious. I looked at the whitewalls, inspected the somewhat worn upholstery and the spacious trunk, tried to look like I knew something about cars.

  “It’s a swell car, Bill. But why didn’t you tell the fellas?”

  “I will later. But if I’d done that, they’d have all wanted me to drive them home. And I wanted you to be my first passenger.”

  How could I say no to that?

  We parked on the street in front of the hotel. “So this is the famous Belleville, eh?”

  “Yes.” What was the next thing to say? Well, thanks, Bill. Goodnight? I probably should have said that, probably should have got out of the car. But he switched off the ignition, turned toward me and smiled, a streetlight sidelighting him. I watched his gaze move across my face, watched him lean a little closer. Something made me turn away from him and look at the dashboard, something I didn’t really understand. I wanted him to kiss me, all right. But I’d only been aware of wanting that in the last few minutes, and wasn’t sure I was sure. I was also afraid.

  “Lita?” He’d backed off. Now he looked unsure, maybe even hurt. I didn’t want that. I took a deep breath, put my hands on his shoulders, pulled myself up and kissed him.

  When I sat back he blinked at me, amazed. Before he could say anything, I got out and took the National out of the back seat.

  “Goodnight, Bill. Thanks for the ride.”

  “Can I walk you to the door?”

  “No, it’s okay.” I started to walk to the hotel. “Sweet dreams.”

  “Yeah. You, too.”

  I hummed a little tune as I got into bed. Something new. Something mine.

  At the next practice, Bill seemed different. He barely noticed I was there. When he asked if I needed a ride home, I said I’d be okay on the streetcar.

  “That’s good, ‘cause I’m already late. See you around.”

  I hated to wonder what the hell he was late for and who with. I hated to feel confused, hated to run over and over and over in my mind whether I’d done something wrong last time, something to offend him or disgust him. I didn’t want to waste any time, any of my life thinking these stupid things, but I couldn’t help it. I stewed about him all the way home, and until I fell asleep, which turned out to be far later than usual.

  By the next practice, I’d decided that if he wanted to play games, that was fine, but I would have no part of it. No more would I watch him to see if he watched me, or any of that stupid stuff. I was there to do a job, by God, not to flirt with the other musicians. I did my job, and when we were done, I cleared out fast as I could and headed over to the streetcar
stop.

  In a couple of minutes Bill ran out. “Hey, Lita,” he panted when he reached me. “You played beautifully tonight. Outdid yourself.”

  The streetcar approached, and I picked up my guitar. “You ran out here to tell me that?”

  “Well, I wondered if you’d like to go for a drive with me.”

  “Where to?”

  “I dunno. Just out for a drive, maybe out around the park.”

  He smiled at me and I knew I’d say yes, so why didn’t I just hurry up and say it? But I didn’t know if I wanted to risk falling in love with him, wasn’t sure I liked the idea of having my feelings tangled up in someone else, someone I wasn’t sure I trusted. On the other hand, something strange and powerful was going on with my body: blood pounded in my ears, my mouth felt dry, my palms were damp. It had to do with the memory of kissing him the week before, and how he smelt. How his soft, warm lips and his slightly stubbly chin felt, how his nearly white lashes opened and closed quickly after I pulled away from him.

  “Sure, I guess so,” I said, and waved the streetcar on.

  “Let me carry your guitar.”

  “No, that’s okay. Thanks.”

  We drove around downtown for a while and then parked near Wascana Lake. The lake had started as a reservoir in the early 1900s and then had been deepened into a lake in 1931, as a make-work project. The legislature buildings overlooked it, and it was surrounded by a park. It was a Tuesday night, no one else was around. Dead quiet, if you didn’t count the crickets and the frogs.

  “Where were you off to in such a hurry the other night?” I asked.

  “On Sunday? I was going to a poker game at my brother’s. Why?”

  “I just wondered. You seemed to be in a big hurry, that’s all.”

  “Yeah, I guess so. I’m surprised you’d notice something like that. You’re so serious.”

  “Am I?” He took my left hand and ran his thumb over the thick calluses years of playing had left on my fingertips.