After You've Gone Page 9

  Fellas, indeed, I thought. Nobody said much of anything. We ran through the number and I grimaced at the sound of Darlene’s voice. Maybe she didn’t really sound as awful as I thought she did, but how could I be objective? Her voice was thin, a little reedy. Someone charitable might have called it untrained, weak. She did stay on key, mostly. But the sound of her voice against Bill’s was like listening to nails on a blackboard for me. Because his voice could still make the hairs on the back of my neck stand up, make me wish that I was all alone with him, even in a crowded barroom, even when he crooned some smelly Rudy Vallée number. He knew it, too. You could say many things about Bill, but he was no fool, not when it came to women. We’d get home after a gig, and he’d start to croon “After You’ve Gone,” the old Tin Pan Alley standard, while he washed up, sang it while he lay in wait for me, and by the time I got into bed I was putty in his hands. That song always did it to me for some reason, and he knew it.

  And at home later that night he sang “After You’ve Gone” again all right, but to no avail. It wouldn’t have mattered what Bill sang right then — nothing would have worked on me. I had half a mind to go and sleep on the Winnipeg couch his mum gave us after she came over and discovered we owned almost no furniture. But then I decided there was no reason I should sleep on the couch when I was the innocent bystander. I slipped into bed, back to him, extra careful not to touch him, and turned off the light. Still singing quietly, he ran his hand up and down my side. I made no move, clenched my teeth.

  “Lita?” he finally asked.

  “Yes?”

  “Something wrong?”

  “Whatever would make you think something was wrong?” You big dope.

  “You don’t seem very interested. It can’t be that time again already, can it?”

  As if there could be no other reason. “No, it isn’t that time. I just don’t want to stand in for Darlene, that’s all.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Do you think I haven’t noticed?”

  “That’s your imagination.”

  “Is it? First, she’s our manager, now all of a sudden she sings a duet with you. I thought when we ran through it once, that that would be it, she’d have had her fun, and we’d get back to work. We ran through the goddamn song five times. Five times. And she can’t sing worth shit — ”

  “Aw, c’mon,” he interrupted. “Be nice.”

  “This is not an amateur hour, Bill. We are professionals. She can’t sing and you know it. So what is this all about? I’m afraid from where I see things, the answer looks pretty obvious.”

  “I know she can’t sing. But what am I gonna do? After all she’s done for us, we owe her something.”

  “She doesn’t do all this stuff for free, you know. She gets her ten percent. She gets paid because she does her job, that’s all. We let her sing with us and it’ll finish us off.”

  “Oh, come on now. One little song is going to finish us off, when we have three hours worth of other material?”

  “I don’t mean it’ll finish off the band.”

  “Lita. Is that what you’re afraid of?”

  “Seems like a pretty reasonable fear to me. The way you look into her eyes, laugh at her jokes. You talk to her all through our set breaks.”

  “Well, I’ve got to talk to somebody during our set breaks. All you do is sulk in a corner and play your guitar. You never put it down. And can I help it if I have to talk to her? I’ve always been the one who takes care of all those little details like bookings and money. So it’s only natural that I’d talk to her about stuff like that.” Bill was a master at turning the tables, I had to give him that.

  “You sure seem to have a gay old time doing it. I never saw you laugh and chatter away like that with any of the bar managers you dealt with before.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “Is it?”

  He rolled over. “Yes, it is. Just put Darlene out of your mind. There’s nothing to worry about.”

  His words and subsequent behaviour put me at ease for a time. He seemed to understand that whether my fears were unfounded or not, I saw Darlene as a threat, and he backed away from her accordingly. Then Darlene came up with the idea of the record.

  It was the next logical step for the Syncopation Five to take, she said. We could record a couple of our best songs, and give out copies to radio stations and sell them at gigs. It sounded like a great idea, until we got into the studio. We’d agreed to record a couple of show tunes, a certain person’s favourites: “Isn’t It Romantic?” by Rodgers and Hart, and Gershwin’s “So Am I.” I wouldn’t have picked them as our best songs. Had it been up to me, we would have recorded something a little more “hot,” as Henry would have put it. We did a good job with “I’ll Be Glad When You’re Dead, You Rascal, You,” for instance. But Bill finally convinced us that these two show tunes had the most appeal with audiences, so that settled it.

  We were all excited about the record. Otto wanted to mail them to all his relatives for Christmas, and George was sure he could sell copies at the garage where he worked days. We were about to begin “Isn’t It Romantic?” when Darlene joined Bill at the microphone, all smiles. Bill and I stood closest to the mike, so that it would pick up his voice and my solos — that was how recording sessions went in those days, one microphone that we all played around. Otto and his fiddle were in the middle, and George on bass and Henry on drums were the farthest away so they wouldn’t drown the rest of us out. I looked at Darlene, then at my husband. He tried to pretend he didn’t notice. I tried to think what to say, when Henry said it for me. Good old Henry.

  “Since when is this outfit the Syncopation Six?”

  Darlene laughed. “Why, Henry, don’t get all excited. Just a little back-up vocal, that’s all.”

  “If we’d wanted back-up vocals, we’d have hired a singer. And we would have rehearsed with her.”

  “Listen here, I’m doing you guys a favour. I won’t charge you for this.”

  “You won’t charge us? I’ll say. Nobody in their right mind would pay you to sing.”

  It went on back and forth between them for a few minutes. Then the recording technician reminded us that we were being charged by the hour for studio time. That brought things to a close. Good thing, too, because it was getting a little ugly.

  “We should have worked this all out before we got here. This is a waste of time,” Bill complained.

  The nerve. I couldn’t stay quiet any longer. “We did have it all worked out. All those times we rehearsed, there were five of us. No one said anything about this.”

  “Listen,” the technician suggested. “Why don’t you run through the numbers once with the backing vocals? We’ll cut a wax test, and if you don’t like it, we can leave them out on the final version. We should have time for that.”

  Finally, a reasonable idea. We did just that. We listened to the first song: it began with a twelve bar intro and then Bill started. When Darlene’s voice came in, I shot Henry a little glance and he made the Harpo Marx face again. I had to look at the floor. I couldn’t look at anyone else because I was afraid I’d start to laugh. Not only is love blind, it’s also tone-deaf.

  “I don’t think that’ll do,” Henry said decisively after it was finished.

  “Fine,” said Darlene. She marched out, pulled up a chair behind the technician and sulked as we rerecorded the numbers. What a relief, I thought.

  After that, The Syncopation Five spent a month on a tour of southern Saskatchewan that Darlene had lined up, played bars and dances. I found that very pleasant, a month away from our manager. As soon as we got back to town Bill took the Packard over to the studio to pick up the records. He had a big box full of them. It probably wouldn’t seem like much now, but then, 250 records was an impressive number. Of course, 78s were heavy; maybe that’s why they seemed so impressive. They were something to see, all right, with their royal blue labels and silver inscription: THE SYNCOPATION FIVE. That made it see
m like we’d arrived, like we were big time, now. Side A was “Isn’t It Romantic?” and Side B was “So Am I.” I was about to slip one onto the record player when Bill stopped me. He went out for some beer and I got on the phone to get the others over so we could all listen to it together for the first time.

  We cracked our beers and Bill dropped the needle onto the wax. As the twelve bar lead-in started we clinked our bottles in salute. But soon our faces fell. Darlene’s voice was like nails on a chalkboard to all of us this time.

  “Oh, God,” gasped Otto.

  “That idiot screwed up! How could this have happened?” Bill was furious. I was glad to see he wasn’t in on it, or at least didn’t appear to be. I didn’t believe for a second that that version of the song ended up on the record by accident. Nor was I alone.

  “You don’t really think this was a mistake, do you?” Henry demanded.

  Before Bill could answer, I jumped in. “Some mistake. She was up there in the booth with him when we left the studio, you all saw that. She obviously switched the masters on him, or sweet-talked him into doing it. Sweet-talked him, or something.”

  “Probably the something, if you ask me,” George said. “I wonder if there’s any way we can get them to cut us another batch?”

  Worse, the wrong recordings got on to both sides. Bill and Henry went down to the studio to see what they could do. And it wasn’t much. The technician apologized, but he swore that he was sure he’d picked up the right master. If Darlene had convinced him to switch them somehow, he wasn’t telling. The other masters, the right ones, were already gone and if we wanted to rerecord it, we’d have to book and pay for more studio time and pay for more records to be pressed. They might be able to cut us a bit of a deal because of the mistake, but they couldn’t just give it to us. The other option was to live with it.

  Which is what we had to do. There wasn’t enough money to do it all again, even at a cut rate. As it was, the first time had stretched our resources as far as they would go. Bill talked briefly about borrowing some money from his mum to do it. But he didn’t. Probably wouldn’t have been able to tell her the story. As for Darlene, she denied any part in the mix-up, though not even Bill believed her. We still sold the records at our shows and gave them away to the radio stations, but they didn’t sell the way we’d hoped.

  Strangely enough, though, the net effect of the whole thing for me was good. Bill was so angry with Darlene he threatened to fire her. She insisted she had nothing to do with it. We couldn’t prove it, so she kept her job, but she no longer came to every practice, and she didn’t sing anymore. That was a blessed relief. After a while I was even glad she mixed the masters up or convinced the technician to do it. I was glad because Bill couldn’t stand the sight of her after that, at least for a while. And, I reasoned, there would be plenty of opportunities to do more records later. This was not a big deal, the way I saw it. My eighteenth birthday came and went and I relaxed for the first time that year.

  Fourteen

  Lita

  November 1936

  FIRST REALLY COLD MORNING I WENT out and got some groceries. The week before I had spotted a headline on Good Housekeeping magazine (Win His Heart With This Easy Pot Roast) while waiting to pay for some cigarettes. I had suddenly got the idea that what my domestic skills lacked, and what our marriage really needed was some baking and some dusting. Desperate for advice, I took the magazine home and devoured it, amazed. I’d never read such a magazine before and this one seemed to have all the answers. Not only about what was wrong with my marriage; it contained the answer to everything that was wrong with me. My body, my personality, my clothes, my interests, my abilities. All these things left something to be desired, I was led to believe by the glossy pages, the eye-catching ads and the article (continued on page 62), written in such a friendly but no-nonsense fashion. All these things needed improvement, would you believe it?

  So I decided to change, decided that that freezing Monday morning would mark the start of a new chapter in our lives, that 1937 would be a landmark year. I woke before Bill. The sun peeked in through a hole in the blind, shone on his hair and made it glow dark gold. Much as I wanted to reach for him, I got up and got started. I had a mission. If I was about to make pot roast for dinner, cherry tarts for dessert, and have the place cleaned from top to bottom, I had to get started.

  When I returned from the store I could see Bill had had coffee, read the paper, and I thought he was out. So I put the groceries away. When I walked by the bedroom, I was surprised to see him packing his clothes into the open suitcase. He looked at me a minute, expressionless, before he spoke.

  “I’m moving out.”

  I hadn’t known how fast things could go. I knew our marriage was in trouble, sure. I was eighteen years old, maybe too young to be married. Still, it was the usual thing then for people that age to be married. I had no idea what to do, and nobody to turn to for help. I didn’t even get a chance to try Good Housekeeping’s advice, as it turned out.

  “Where to?”

  “I’m moving in with Darlene.”

  I didn’t know what to say. He’d always denied seeing Darlene, of course, but I knew. Everybody knew. More and more nights through the summer he’d come in late, later. Sometimes he wouldn’t come home until morning. I fought a sudden urge to walk out the door, to walk until I couldn’t walk anymore. What good being exhausted on the highway halfway to Moose Jaw would do, though, I couldn’t tell.

  “You fucking liar. I knew right from the start that she wanted to take you away from me. Why did you lie to me?”

  “If you’re going to get hysterical, how can I even explain?”

  “So explain.”

  “It’s not that I’m not in love with you. I am. I’ll always love you. Things just aren’t working out the way I thought they would.”

  He closed the suitcase, took it into the front porch and got his coat and hat off the rack. My mind raced: Now, now, Lita. Say it now. You’ve got to think of something right now. That was what ran through my mind instead of what I should actually say. His hand went to the doorknob and then I felt like I couldn’t get enough air, not enough to talk. I finally gasped, “We can find out what’s wrong. We can try. We have to.”

  I am sure I said it but wonder now if maybe I didn’t. Maybe I just thought I did, because he didn’t seem to hear me. The only thing that made me think he might have heard was a brief grimace that flickered over his face. “Goodbye, Lita,” he said, and then he was on the other side of the doorway. And I stood and watched him and still wondering what to say, didn’t really believe what I saw.

  Not only did Bill walk out on me, he also didn’t come to rehearsals. Otto sang some and so did George, but neither of them sang all that well. That first Saturday at the Hotel Saskatchewan, Jacob Stone innocently asked me where Bill was, probably thought he was sick or something.

  “He’s gone,” I said. I saw Henry wince in the background. It probably would have been more kind, or easier for me maybe, if Jacob had happened to ask one of the fellas. But he asked me.

  “Gone?”

  “Gone. He left me. And the band.”

  “Oh. I’m so sorry.”

  I shrugged. I had no idea what else to say, because almost anything else would have made tears sting my eyes. Worse than they already were.

  After the show that night, Jacob convinced me to stay and talk. The rest of the band left, Jacob sent the bartender home and tended bar himself, mixed me a series of gin and tonics. I told him everything. I did cry, but not for as long or as hard as I’d expected. Perhaps Jacob’s quiet manner put me at ease, but I felt a certain degree of detachment as I told him, as if all of this had happened to someone else.

  “So he’s gone for good?” he asked.

  “I’m not sure. You know, we were just on the verge of going on a road trip to Seattle. Darlene was in touch with someone who booked acts for a bunch of nightclubs down there, and we were talking about going for a month.”

&
nbsp; Jacob shook his head. “So Darlene’s gone too?”

  “Yes.”

  “Too bad. That would have been a very good opportunity.”

  “It would have been the biggest thing we ever did. I’m wondering if Darlene was putting pressure on him or something. I don’t know.”

  “Well, maybe he’ll change his mind. But in the meantime, what are the rest of you going to do?”

  “I don’t know. The others want to get a new singer. Well, Otto and George do. You heard them singing tonight. It doesn’t work. I think Henry’s about ready to fly. He’s got a cousin in Edmonton who wants to get a combo together. And me, I just don’t think I have the heart for it anymore.”

  “What do you mean? You’re fantastic. You get a new band together, your own band.”

  “Well, I know it’s no good to stay in Bill’s old band and play all the songs he used to sing. But I don’t think I could do it myself. I’m a musician, not a performer, you know what I mean? I could always hide behind him. Not hide behind him, exactly, but I liked how he’d deflect the attention away. But the last few nights, to be up there without him — I hated it. I have to give it a rest for a while.”

  “What will you do, then?”

  “Look for a job, I guess. The only other thing I have experience at is being a chambermaid.”

  “You don’t need to do that. How’d you like to be a bartender?”

  The next week, we cancelled all our dates. Jacob showed me the ropes behind the bar. It was not a bad job, the tips were decent. I also got to check out some of the other acts that played the Saskatchewan. Until then, I hadn’t realized how good we were. That part of it was a little depressing. I missed the band, missed the guys, missed playing. But the rest of it was okay. I didn’t mind the hours, since I was used to musicians’ hours. It also meant that I got to see a lot of Jacob.

  The street lights through the snowy night outside gave a soft glow to the things inside Jake’s bedroom. It smelled faintly of bay rum and shoe leather. His clothes for the next day, I noticed, were already neatly hung on his valet stand. I lay exhausted in his arms, under a thick down quilt.