Sing for Me Read online

  They asked me how I knew,

  My true love was true

  “Know this one?”

  My eyes fly open. It’s Rob, holding two glasses filled with ice and water.

  “I think I may have heard it before.” My attempt at nonchalance comes out forced.

  Rob winks and hands me a glass. I am thirsty, I realize. Not only has all this smoke gotten in my eyes, it’s coated my throat, too. I take a long drink, then sputter and spit as the liquid sears the roof of my mouth, my tongue, the back of my throat, the pit of my stomach.

  “Whoa! Take it easy on that gimlet. They go heavy on the vodka here, light on the lime.”

  Rob’s laughing. Now his laughter splits in two, and through the blur of my watery eyes, I see who’s standing beside him.

  Zane Nygaard, the Great White Hope of the Danish Baptist Church. Zane, the fellow every fellow wants to be. The fellow every gal wants to date, including me when I let myself think that way, which is rarely. Zane, with his strong Viking features, his wavy, white-blond hair, his ice-blue eyes, his perfect physique—except for his bum left leg. Afflicted with polio as a child, Zane’s got a slight limp, but somehow he makes that limp seem jaunty, an asset to his style.

  And now here Zane is, not a fantasy at all but as real as Rob, as real as the man (whose name I wish I knew) at the piano. Zane’s father, Dr. Erik Nygaard, is my dad’s current boss, the man who “saved” us by giving us a roof over our heads when we were practically out on the streets. But salvation doesn’t come free, not from Dr. Nygaard, at least. We keep that roof over our heads in exchange for nearly every hour of Dad’s days and nights. (Dad and Mother tried to find less taxing work. But people with more schooling and better skills were snapping up the jobs they might have gotten when times were easier.) An apartment superintendent’s job is never done, especially when he’s managing the ten large buildings owned by Dr. Nygaard and his wife, the formidable socialite Mrs. Pernille Nygaard.

  The job of the girl who cleans those buildings is never done, either. And never mind how I look tonight. That girl is me.

  I muster a smile for the son of my boss.

  “Well, if it isn’t Rose Sorensen,” Zane says, taking a long, slow sip from the amber-colored liquid in his glass as he evaluates my dress and the makeup on my face.

  It isn’t, I consider saying. This is some other girl. You’ve never seen her before, and I haven’t, either.

  But then, because Zane and his parents hold my family’s lives in their hands, I decide it’s better to match him at his own confident game.

  I lift my chin in the air. “Indeed it is. I am. She’s me.”

  Here’s what I realize as I watch Rob and Zane exchange barbs, drain their glasses, and go for seconds, while I get thirstier as the ice melts in my gimlet, but still I don’t drink it.

  We’re all where we shouldn’t be tonight, Zane, Rob, and I. Rob’s not drinking water. Zane’s not drinking ginger ale. I’m not . . . myself. We’ve all broken rules. We’ve all got something on one another. We’ll keep one another’s secrets, because we have no other choice.

  Clearly, Rob and Zane have run into each other at Calliope’s before. They share stories about other nights, drinks, bands, and orchestras. But this quartet, they agree, is the best, even without a singer. Forget what most other people are listening to. Forget boogie-woogie. Forget swing. Tonight’s kind of jazz, played by small ensembles like the Chess Men, is IT with a capital I, capital T. It’s solid. It’s swell. Better than solid and swell, it’s against the rules in most clubs. Even here, the Chess Men are allowed to play only when other bands cancel (like tonight, and even with tonight’s cancellation, they’re waiting until it’s almost after hours to play). Or they play after hours when the all-white or all-black bands are done playing. Or they’ll play off-nights between sets of all-white or all-black bands.

  “Why?” I ask.

  Rob gives me an isn’t-it-obvious look over the rim of his glass. “They’re mixed, Rose.”

  I shift on my stool, suddenly uncomfortable. I’m tired of talk. I’m just plain tired. I want to close my eyes and listen to the music. The Chess Men are almost finished warming up; I can tell from the way they’re watching the crowd. Now the man who knows my name gets up from the piano and moves toward the center of the stage. Standing there in the footlights, he gives a sharp whistle. The crowd quiets. Rob and Zane yammer on. People stare in our direction. In a moment the man who knows my name will be staring.

  I elbow Zane, give Rob a swift kick with the blunt toe of my Mary Jane. They grimace when they see other people are looking. But now everyone turns toward the stage again, and Rob, Zane, and I do, too.

  In the bright glow of the footlights, the man rocks back and forth on his heels, as if in time to a song nobody else can hear. His hands are clasped before him. His head is bowed. For the life of me, it looks like he’s praying. Then he lifts his eyes and says, loud and clear, “Thank you.”

  “Thank you!” a woman shouts back from the crowd.

  He gives a professional nod. “You’re most welcome. I speak for the Chess Men when I say how glad we are to be able to play for you tonight. All things being equal, we’ll do three sets, with a short break in between each.”

  He put special emphasis on the word equal. Now he looks pointedly at a table of dark-suited white men, sitting just a few feet away from Rob, Zane, and me.

  “As some of you know,” he continues, “all things are not always equal.” His gaze sweeps the room again. “A few weeks ago, our vocalist left us for another band. Opportunity came knocking. We understand. That happens sometimes. But now we’re in a bit of a fix. We need to find another singer, pronto.” He levels another stare at that table of men. “The powers that be hath ordained it.”

  “You’re just not pretty enough,” one of the men says loudly.

  He gives another nod. “I’ll be the first to agree.”

  “You are more than pretty enough!” a woman calls from a back corner. There’s laughter, until he raises his hands and quiets the room again.

  “The bottom line, my friends, is that we’ve been told we need to find a vocalist by next week or we’ll be looking for another club. As you all know, that club may be hard to find. So we’re holding auditions this Tuesday night. We’ve put an ad in tomorrow’s paper, and we’ll spread the word. But if you’d be so kind as to point any ladies with fine voices in our direction, we’d be much obliged.”

  “You want my opinion, the only reason they’re being forced to find a singer is because they’re a mixed band,” Rob whispers to me. “A woman buffers the tension, you know what I mean? If they were all white or all black, they wouldn’t need to worry so much about offending.”

  “And the fellow who owns this club and his bigwig backers would be more confident they’d have a full house,” Zane adds. “Some folks here don’t really care about the music. Just like the fellow said, they just want to feast their eyes on some sweet young thing.”

  “Thing?” I give Zane a look and then turn toward the stage again.

  He is back at the piano, raising his hands to the keys.

  “If the Chess Men find the right gal, there’ll be no stopping them,” Zane says through a mouthful of ice. “It won’t matter what color their skin is. They’ll be playing every venue in town.”

  A low minor chord sounds as he presses down on the keys.

  “I’ve got it!” Rob slams his glass down on the table, startling me and a few other people close at hand. “This Tuesday, Laerke. We’re coming back! I’ll see you up on that stage, mark my words. You’ll be doing what you were born to do, and you’ll be making money doing it. What more could anyone ask? This is your chance!”

  “This is not my chance.” I mutter this, leaning close to Rob so he can hear. “Not a chance in heaven.”

  Another minor chord, closer to middle C.

  “Who cares about heaven? I’m talking about right here and now.”

  “That’s blasphemy
, Rob.” So why am I fighting back a smile? “Now, once and for all, be quiet. Please.”

  The chords shift tentatively upward. Zane leans close to Rob and says something that makes Rob laugh. I stand up, scoot my stool to the other side of them, sit down again. Now I can really listen. I can really see. I can ignore Zane, and Rob, too.

  The drummer’s brush whispers across the snare. The bassist plucks an answer. The clarinetist weaves it all together. The Chess Men are playing “Cheek to Cheek,” another of the songs always pouring out of other people’s open windows. The man at the piano leans deep into the keys. “Heaven, I’m in heaven.” I breathe the words, catch my breath. You’ll be doing what you were born to do, and you’ll be making money doing it. Would that be so bad? Yes, as I’ve been told all my life, it would—if it meant doing this, singing these songs, the ones I listen to on the sly, though I know I shouldn’t. The ones I can’t get out of my head. The ones I know by heart.

  But suddenly it’s like I’m hearing this song for the first time. Beat by beat, note by note, the Chess Men are transforming Fred Astaire’s suave single into a rapid-fire number. People are dancing. Really dancing. I can’t keep up with what’s happening before me—the whirling and twirling these people are doing, like dervishes. The band plays at a feverish pitch. The man’s hands blur on the piano keys. The man’s hands . . .

  My hands are shaking. I turn to Rob. “We really should go home.” I stand to make my point.

  “Not yet.”

  I catch a glimpse of Zane out on the dance floor, glowing in the smoky, hot light, twirling a beautiful girl like she’s less weighty than a yo-yo at the end of a string.

  “Guess I’ll take a cab.” My voice sounds shrill.

  “With what money?” Rob drains his drink. “Enjoy. We’ll be leaving soon enough.”

  I take a deep breath and sit back on my stool. The Chess Men are slowing the song down finally, winding it down, down, down. Dancing cheek to cheek . . . People are doing just that as he shapes minor chords to end the number.

  “Incredible,” Rob says with a sigh.

  The notes of another familiar song change the mood of the room. I know this song, too, God forgive me. It’s “You’re the Top,” light and lively, just the way it sounds on the radio. Only better.

  “Wanna dance?” Rob asks. “It’s calmer now.”

  I shake my head until a lock of my hair tumbles down and grazes my shoulder.

  Rob shrugs. “Me neither. Not really. Wouldn’t want to get my new suit all sweaty. But when I’m a lawyer I’ll dance the night away. Why not? I’ll have plenty of suits to choose from the next day. Just you wait, Rose. Wait and see. You’ll be dancing, too.”

  Maybe Rob goes for another drink. I don’t know. Perched on my stool, I lose sense of everything but the music. The only time I keep track of is the beats from measure to measure. Now it’s four-four. Now I could waltz—one, two, three, one, two, three—if I was the kind of person who waltzed. Now, with all the crazy syncopation, I don’t know what time it is. I don’t care. I sing along in my mind, and since I don’t know the words to this song, I make up my own.

  “Oh, Laerke.” Out of nowhere, Rob is leaning close to me. “I don’t care what you’ve been told all your life. I don’t care what you think. You have a gift from God. And this music—it’s a gift from God, too.”

  “I didn’t—” My hand flies to my mouth.

  Rob laughs. “Yep, you sang. Loud and clear.”

  I cast a quick look around. “Did anyone else hear?”

  Rob shakes his head. “Too noisy. Anyway, nobody here cares about the things our family cares about. If people dance crazy, if a girl sings like a house on fire, it doesn’t matter. That’s why I love it here. That’s why I never want to leave.” Sighing, Rob flashes his watch, and I see the time as clear as can be. Nearly two in the morning. “I guess we have to leave soon, though.”

  I know how Rob sounds when he’s beyond sad. I heard it in his voice last summer, when he called me on the phone to tell me that a steel beam had split his dad’s head in two, falling from the wavering frame of one of those new skyscrapers in the Loop. Poor Uncle Lars. He didn’t know anything about construction. He was just desperate for a job since his printing company folded. At the funeral, Rob didn’t cry. He shook with rage because even in the casket you could see the raw blisters left on Uncle Lars’s hands from hard labor, and the permanent stains on his fingertips from printer’s ink. “All that work. What good was it?” Rob asked. He really wanted me to tell him, but I couldn’t think of what to say. He kept his family afloat. I could have said that, and it would have been true, but it wouldn’t have lessened the loss. I hear traces of that loss in Rob’s voice now. Rob is grieved that the night has to end. His every grief taps into that big one.

  In less than four hours, I’ll be up with Sophy and it will be Saturday as usual. I should be worried about being able to do the work I’ll have to do, the work I was born to do (forget what Rob says). But right now, I’m only concerned for my cousin.

  I put my hands to Rob’s full cheeks and plant a kiss on his forehead. I’d kiss all our sadness away if I could. Instead, I say what Rob wants to hear.

  “Thank you for tonight.”

  As we leave Calliope’s, I don’t let myself look back at the man playing the piano, the man I’d recognize anywhere, the man I’ll never see again.

  THREE

  So this is what they mean by the morning after.

  Not that I drank more than an accidental gulp of that gimlet. But I can barely keep my head up, for the weight of it. I didn’t get a few hours of sleep. I got none. By the time I’d shed my magical dress in the backseat of Rob’s car, and changed back into my everyday wear (leaving the dress, purse, and makeup in Rob’s safekeeping), snuck through the alley and up the fire escape, climbed through the bedroom window, and settled down by my sleeping sister, I was wide awake. I couldn’t even keep my eyes closed. Now it’s seven in the morning, and I’m so weary my bones ache.

  “Tuesday,” Rob said as I got out of his car. “You’ll audition, and then we’ll stay and hear the Chess Men play. You just have to sneak out. I’ll be waiting right here to take you.”

  “No,” I said.

  But I want yes. Not yes to any old audition. (Never mind the money I could earn. Never mind it.) Just the ability to listen to the Chess Men’s music again. I want yes to that.

  Instead, I’ve got this. The morning after and Sophy in the bath, the water already cold, and me sitting beside the tub, bathing my sister, keeping her safe like I should.

  Sophy sighs, happy to be here, happy to be with me, happy to be, and my heart aches, remembering who she is, who I am, who we are together. I take a deep breath, my inhalation mirroring her inhalation, as if we’re one being, as sometimes I believe we are. I force a smile, because a smile makes everything feel better, I’ve been told. Never mind music or what I want. I’m holding Sophy the way I do, the way I have to. I’m keeping her safe like I should, like I should have last night, when I was nowhere near.

  “Sing.”

  Sophy’s voice startles me, which startles her. She twists in my arms. I hold her tight to help her settle down. Mostly this works. It works now. She settles down. The water ripples around her. If I weren’t tired to the bone, this moment might be peaceful.

  “Sing,” she says again, not quite clearly, never quite clearly, but I understand her. I understand my sister better than I understand anyone, better than I understand myself. Better, yes. Sophy often seems like the better part of me.

  “Sing.”

  Sometimes she seems like the better part of me, the girl I should aspire to be—like someone in a Bible story, a child whom Jesus didn’t choose to heal, for there must have been those children in the crowds, reaching for the hem of His garment, never quite touching. Mustn’t there? Why Sophy? I want to ask, and sometimes I do. Why not me? The better to teach us on this earth. (That’s how Mother sees it; Dad has no answers.) The better to
show us the way. Which Sophy does most of the time. Mostly she’s that kind of girl.

  “Rose! Sing!”

  But sometimes, like right now, Sophy is just a typical kid, wanting her way.

  “Patience,” I mutter to her, to myself.

  Impatient, Sophy chops the water with her hands until her breasts bob on the scummy surface. At fourteen, she has bigger breasts than me at twenty-one. She could be mistaken for a calendar girl (God forgive me). If her shoulders didn’t curve in so. If her spine didn’t twist. If she didn’t have cerebral palsy. If she wasn’t an invalid from birth.

  God forgive me.

  “Sing!”

  Once in a blue moon, Sophy’s able to say more than one word at a time; once in the bluest moon of all, she stutters out a sentence. But usually not when she’s whining.

  Blue moon

  You saw me standing . . .

  The man who knows my name. Last night he saw me just like that.

  “We’re not going anywhere,” I say to my sister. “We’ve got plenty of time for a song.”

  Sophy jerks her narrow, lathered head, insisting. “Now!”

  “I’ll sing, for the love of heaven. Just give me a minute, before soap gets in your eyes.”

  “Sin!” Sophy catches her breath and tries again. “Rose! Sing!”

  Sophy thrashes. She could drown herself, she’s that strong, flinging herself about, all because she said the wrong word—the very wrong one. Sin. And because in this moment, as in nearly every moment of her life, her desires are frustrated, her wishes out of her reach.

  “It’s all right.” I blink water from my eyes, hold my sister tighter yet. I’m drenched. I might as well have gotten into the tub with her. Not her fault, not her fault. “It’ll be all right, sweetheart.”