A Love Song for Ricki Wilde (58)
Today, Della’s doctor told her that most terminal patients started seeing the people they’d loved and lost when it was almost their time to go. It eased the transition. She knew she’d see Dr. Bennett soon. Sometimes, she wondered if Nana would appear to her. She supposed not. In life, Nana had been ice cold and had expressed nothing but relief when Della married and moved to Atlanta. No reason to think that she’d be a calming guide into the afterlife.
Della also doubted that her parents would show up in her dreams. Her father was a mystery: no name, no photograph, no nothing. She did have an idea of what her mother looked like, since Nana had a photograph of her. But she never knew her. When she thought of her mother, which was rarely, all she felt was a resentment that had hardened like a callus. A grudge. Besides, the doctor had said people that she loved would reveal themselves to her.
She wished that she had control over when she died. That she could schedule it on the calendar, the way women these days scheduled C-sections. Della was a planner. Living each day, never knowing if it would be her last? That felt torturous, inhumane. So she decided not to share her prognosis with anyone. She’d just add this to the list of secrets she kept close to her heart. There was no reason for Ricki to grieve her before she was gone. Or Su, or any of her friends. It was her business, and in six months, maybe a year, she would die.
Or maybe before then. Who could know?
She coughed hard into her elbow and then shut her eyes, allowing the brisk air to sweep across her skin. She had no regrets. From now until her final day, she’d breathe.
CHAPTER 15
YOU’RE THE BEE’S KNEES, BREEZE
February 27–29, 1928
Leap Day
Breeze Walker and Felice Fabienne had been dating for three months. And it was a scandal.
Ordinarily, he was smart about women. It was tough to imagine that only five years before, he’d had to rehearse what to say to them. But back then, when he was a new émigré to New York City, everything made him self-conscious: his lack of education, his almost unintelligible accent. Not knowing the latest lingo or the right car to drive. But he was a quick study.
All those nights partying in Harlem, he quietly observed how people talked to each other: women and men, men and men, women and women. He noticed that when straight fellas spoke to ladies, they seemed to be talking to a different species. Once a man was attracted to a woman, she became a conquest, a challenge, an idea. Most men didn’t seem to like women very much.
He’d grown up with mismatched parents whose only commonality (besides music) was liking each other. Hazel Walker was the funniest person in Fallon County. A quick-witted spark who loved to dance and play the ukulele, she was not the person to sit next to at services if you hoped to keep a straight face. But Big Ezra Walker? He was a serious, burdened man who loved his family and his harmonica but had no use for levity.
Despite their opposing personalities, Breeze saw how his dad treated his mom like an equal, a person. A treasure. He pulled out her chair. He held her when her monthlies hurt. He sat on the porch with her, chatting into the night. This was rare. His cousin Sonny’s dad would come in from the fields, frayed, speaking with his fists and faithful only to the bottle. Breeze supposed it was hard to be civil when your own humanity was in tatters. Accordingly, Sonny’s mom wasn’t safe in her own home, but she swallowed her discontent. No one liked an ornery woman.
Breeze learned a lot about women at the speakeasies, but his education started back at home. Which was why his girlfriend, Felice Fabienne, was a curiosity. Quietly, he wasn’t sure if he actually liked her. She wasn’t particularly kind or sweet. She had mercurial, unpredictable moods, and she was motivated by money, fame, fashion, and social status. God help whoever got in her way.
But Felice was a game he was addicted to playing. Pleasing her wasn’t easy, and when he earned an approving smile, he felt like a king. Her greedy, spontaneous sexuality was a rush. She was gentle with Sonny’s hand-me-down terrier, Groucho Barx. And Felice depended on Breeze to help her navigate her new adopted city, which satisfied his caretaker spirit in intoxicating ways. For better or worse, he was swept up in her hurricane. She raged into his life at a dark, empty time, right before Sonny permanently disappeared.
With Sonny most likely dead—a thought that tore his heart to ribbons—Breeze was desperate to forget his pain. Felice’s black hole of volatility did for him what drinking and drugging did for everyone else.
Lo Ellis, Eden Lounge’s choreographer and Breeze’s best friend, thought he’d lost his damned mind. She told him so at the engagement party for W. E. B. Du Bois’s daughter, Yolande, and her fiancé, the famous poet Countee Cullen.
Lo was scandalized that Breeze was bringing Felice to the April wedding. It was sure to be the event of the decade! Yes, two socialites were marrying, but even more deliciously, the best man was Harold Jackman, an aristocrat known internationally as “Harlem’s most handsome man.” Unfortunately for the bride, he was also the groom’s boyfriend.
“I feel bad for all three of them,” said Breeze, tossing back seltzers with Lo at the engagement party. “Poor Countee.”
“What’s he supposed to do, marry Harold?” Lo was chic in a feathered hair comb and a beaded frock skimming her knees. She felt the lovers’ pain. If she could’ve married her ex-girlfriend, Behold, she would’ve a thousand times over. “He’d be a pretty bride, though.”