Chapter Twenty-Six

Rhett didn’t give me a clue as to where we were going.

He headed down SR-96 toward Beaumont, the place I’d lived up until the age twelve. The place I lived with my parents. I didn’t recognize one thing about it anymore, yet just being close to it pulled on my heartstrings.

He drove through the city and then alongside I-10 until we came to the downtown area of Peterson. There were bright lights on along the street and people mulling around. As we slowed, I could hear music coming from bars on the street, it gave me the feel of being on Bourbon Street in New Orleans.

Before we turned off the main street, I caught a glimpse of a faded neon sign shaped like a saxophone that flickered over a wooden and glass door. It read: The Lady Frankie’s Juke Joint.

Rhett pulled the car through a narrow alley between two brick buildings. I drew my shoulders together, as if that would help, thinking that it wasn’t wide enough for us to make it through.

“Is this where we’re going?” I asked. “A juke joint?”

I always felt that Rhett tried to impress me with his musical knowledge and love of the blues and zydeco—he knew it reminded me of my dad. My father, Earle Wilder, a man that wouldn’t be caught without his Les Gibson Guitar, taught me a true and special appreciation of music.

And then there was the whole French thing. When Auntie first made mention of him the day I arrived back in Roble, she said he was French. He may have spoken it, but French he was not. He did seem to have a grasp of the language, although I’d never heard him attempt Louisiana Creole. That would have impressed me.

I hoped tonight wasn’t another attempt for him to compare those things I held dear in my life to his knowledge, however true, of the same. If that was what he wanted, I wouldn’t have needed my medical bag.

“Yep,” this is where we’re going,” he said. “A juke joint.” He turned the key in the ignition off. “You ready?”

“I guess,” I said. “Although I don’t know for what.”

“Hold on,” he said and pointed. “Let me get that door for you.” He didn’t even venture a response for my statement about why I was there.

I reached down and grabbed my bag while I waited for him to come around the car. When I went to step out of the car, he took my hand and held it a little longer than he needed to as we made our way back to a rusty steel door.

“What will your girl say about this?” I said and pulled my hand away.

“I don’t think she’ll mind.” He put his hand in the small of my back and guided me toward the door. “We have the same taste,” he said.

I pulled my head back. “Really?”

“Really,” he said. “That means she’s gonna love you.”

I couldn’t help but to blush, which was ridiculous. Why would I be happy about his girl liking me?

He took a key out of his pants pocket, a different ring than the ones his car keys were on and opened the door. He stood back and gestured for me to go in.

He led me down a back hallway. I could hear music and people talking from what must’ve been the bar area. The music wasn’t live, it sounded like it was coming from a jukebox. We passed the kitchen area then went down a small hallway to a set of stairs.

I followed Rhett up the steps to a door that he again had a key to fit. He pushed it open and stood waiting for me to enter. “After you,” he said.

I entered into a small living room. It was dark, quiet and the air smelled of medicine and incense. The music coming from somewhere in the back was low but familiar. It was the blues.

Rhett walked over to an old dark brown wooden buffet. He turned on a lamp that sat atop. There was a doily, the old lace kind, covering most of it. Beautiful gold and silver frames housed pictures that looked to be from the 1950s and 60s.

“Your girlfriend lives here?” I asked, wondering why everything seemed old.

“Not my girlfriend,” he said. “My girl.”

“Oh,” I said and nodded.

Maybe this wasn’t what I thought it was.

“Come on back this way,” he said. I left the buffet and the pictures and wended my way around a couch that had a folded quilt slung over the back and a recliner and television set that both had seen better days.

“Is that you, Rhett?” I heard a voice call out.

“It’s me,” he said, but stood at the door and waited for me before he went in.

“Hey, Frankie.” Rhett walked through the door and over to a woman sitting on the side of a bed. She was dressed in a nightgown and turquoise chenille bathrobe that had a raised floral design. Rhett bent down and kissed her. She smiled and held onto his face.

“Hi, baby,” she said. I could hear in her voice that she wasn’t doing well. It was low, scratchy and fragile. But there was a twinkle in her eye that reminded me of Rhett. It exuded warmth and laughter. She had to be in her late eighties or early nineties, her hair cut low, she was thin. She smiled at me. Rhett noticed and it made him smile, too.

“You brought your girl,” she said. She did seem happy about it, just like he had said.

Rhett turned and looked at me. I smiled at her.

“He told me you were his girl,” I said.

“Aww,” she waved a weak hand at him. “He just fancies himself debonair enough to have two girls. I’m too much for him to handle,” she said, and tried to laugh, instead she coughed into a closed fist.

“I told you I was going to bring her,” Rhett said. “I wanted you to meet her first,” he said.

“First?” I said, although I couldn’t keep my smile silent. “Before what?”

“Before I made you my girl,” he said, those eyes twinkling in the dim light, even from behind those wire rimmed glasses.

He’d flirted with me before, but these words seemed real. They left me at a loss for words, but I knew the rosy glow coming off my cheeks served as my answer.

“This is Romaine Wilder.” Rhett said, finally getting around to the actual introduction.

“Hi, Romaine,” she said and held a slight hand out for me to take. “It’s so good to meet you.”

“It’s nice to meet you too, Frankie.” I said her name with hesitation. It’s what he called her, but I didn’t know if that was how I should address her. I took the hand she offered and held onto it for a moment. It felt like a feather.

She patted the seat next to her, and I sat down. She held my hand in hers, patting it. “So, you’re the one that’s got my Rhett all smitten,” she said.

I chuckled. It was the second time in one day I’d heard that word.

“She is,” Rhett said, not shying away from admitting his feelings for me, even without having ever telling me about them. “But right now she’s gonna take a look at you,” Rhett said. “Maybe she can convince you that you need to go into a hospital.”

“Not unless she’s got some kind of magical powers,” she said. “I want to be right here at home.” She pointed through the walls. “Close to both my homes.”

“If it’s magic you want, he brought the wrong girl for that,” I said and smiled at her. “For that he would’ve needed to bring my Auntie Zanne.”

“She knows magic?” she said, amusement in her eyes.

“So she thinks,” I said.

“And everyone else in Roble thinks it too,” Rhett said and chuckled. He looked at me and then down. I followed his eyes and saw that he was looking at my bag that I’d sat at the foot of the bed when I came in.

“How about I take a look at you?” I said. I stood up and got the bag.

My medical bag was really something I just kept. I rarely used it, except for when I came to Roble. People there didn’t care that I was a medical examiner.

“What kind of doctor are you?” Frankie said, as if she’d read my mind.

“The kind that went to medical school?” Rhett said.

I took out my stethoscope and cupped it in my hands to get the metal warm to the touch.

I listened to her heart, had her take a deep breath once or twice so I could listen to her lungs. She sat still and let me play doctor, a smile on her face.

As I took her pulse, she asked, “Do you like music?”

“I do,” I said. “Same music as you.”

“You do?” she said, surprise in her voice. “How do you know what kind of music I like?”

“Isn’t that your name on the front of this place?”

She pursed her lips and nodded. “That’s me. Lady Frankie. Ironic, huh? Seeing that Frankie is a man’s name.”

“I like it,” I said.

“Me too,” she said.

“I have a man’s name,” I said.

She chuckled. “You do. And I like it.”

“Me too,” I said. “And, thank you.”

“I like the blues,” she said.

“And so do I.”

“Don’t hear many young people that like the blues,” she said.

“I’m not so young, Miss Frankie.”

“Just call me Frankie.”

“Okay,” I said and smiled.

“How do you know about the blues?” she asked.

“My father,” I said. “He loved the blues. He taught me to love it too.”

“Remember, I told you that,” Rhett chimed in. “I told you she played the fiddle for the Zydeco contest we had.”

“You did?” she asked and squinted her eyes. “Oh yeah,” she lifted her hand and pointed a limp finger at Rhett. “I do remember that. Zydeco girl!” She smacked my hand, seemingly happy about recalling the memory and associating it with someone.

I laughed, then looked up at Rhett. He was standing there an approving smile plastered on his face, apparently happy with the two of us together.

“Did your father play Zydeco?” Frankie asked.

“Oh no. My love from that came from my mother.”

“She’s from Louisiana?”

“Yep.” I nodded. “She was French Creole.”

“Oh!” She clapped her hands together. “I see you two do have so much in common. Rhett loves everything French. Don’t you?” Her eyes, the only spark it seemed left in her, gleamed at Rhett. “And he speaks it beautifully.”

“I do,” he said. “Thanks to you.”

“You earned it, I just made sure you got to go.” Frankie turned to me. “He earned a scholarship to go to study Institut d’Art et d’Archéologie at the Sorbonne University. Didn’t you?”

“Yes, I did,” he said.

“But even though he got that scholarship,” she said, “we soon figured out that living in Paris ain’t cheap.”

I looked at Rhett. He was smiling at Frankie, seemingly engrossed with how the memory made her feel, and not how it was he that had accomplished those things.

“I have pictures of him back then, you want to see them?” she asked.

“No, Frankie,” Rhett said. “She didn’t come here for you to bombard her with pictures of me.”

“I’d love to see them,” I said. And honestly, that was how I felt.

She pointed to an armoire. “Rhett,” she waggled her finger, “look in the bottom of my chifforobe and get my albums.”

“Frankie-” Rhett started.

“Don’t Frankie me,” she interrupted. “Just do like I tell you to do.” She looked at me, after ensuring that Rhett dutifully complied with her directive. “You ever been to France?”

“Me?” I shook my head. “No. Never made it there.”

“She speaks French,” Rhett said.

“You do?” Frankie asked, and a seemingly proud smile erupted on her face. “I know French Creole is a dialect, not the same though, right?”

“No, not the same. But I speak both,” I said, now it felt like I was the one bragging. “My mother taught me.”

“That’s so nice.” She smiled. “Have you met her parents yet, Rhett?”

“Both my parents are gone.” I didn’t let Rhett answer that question for me. “Died when I was twelve,” I said. “My Auntie Zanne raised me, she’s the closet thing I have to a parent and,” I looked over at Rhett, “she’s met him and thinks he’s the best thing going.”

“Oh, you poor baby.” She gave my hand a pat. “I’m sorry to hear that. At least they left you something wonderful to remember them by. Music and language. Both are powerful things. Music can soothe you when you facing a whole heap of trouble. I know.” She smiled at me. “And your Auntie is right, Rhett is the best thing going.”

Just as Rhett sat the photo albums on the bed next to her, my phone rang. I pulled it out of my purse and saw it was Auntie. “Speak of the devil,” I said.

“Babet?” Rhett asked.

“Yes,” I said. “No telling what she’s up to.” I turned to Frankie. “I have to take this.” I stood up and walked a couple of feet away from the bed.