Chicago, Illinois, 1922
Inside the vestibule of the Dil Pickle Club, Ruth let her eyes adjust to the smoke and the dark. John pushed back his cap until the ear flaps were even with his eyes as he strained to read. “ ‘Elevate Your Mind to a Lower Level of Thinking.’ That does it.” He took her arm.
She shook him off. “Let me go. I’d like to see.”
He spread his hands as if stuck up by a bank robber. “All right. All right. Have it your way. Your sister’s going to kill me anyhow.”
“Admit it, you want to see this place, too.”
He scowled at her. “Just be quick about it, would you?”
Puffed with this small victory, she waded into the main room, a hot, smoky cave seething with hundreds of club-goers. Couples milled around brightly painted tables and chairs. Knots of men argued at a counter being wiped by a waiter. Jazz oozed from the band of Negro musicians playing in the corner. There were more Negroes in the crowd, more than Ruth had ever seen in her life, dressed like movie stars, and workers in coveralls, and women in sleeveless frocks. There were rich people, plenty of rich people, with their Hollywood suits and beaded gowns, and professor-types in tweed. Had she died and gone to heaven?
Her admiring gaze trailed up one woman’s slinky gold lamé dress, then slowed on the woman’s jutting Adam’s apple, before halting altogether on the stubble peppering the woman’s jaw. Once Ruth had absorbed that truth, she scanned the room again, wondering which boys were girls, and which girls were boys, and then wondering, in a sobering flash, if it actually really mattered.
Chuckling at the sensations that this colorful new universe rat-a-tat-tatted at her from all directions, she wormed her way to the counter, where a man was ordering a drink. His order placed, he waited, his brow pointed at the shellacked wood as if his head were top-heavy with brains. There was something familiar about the twin white haystacks heaped to either side of the pink line of his part, and about his long and horsey upper lip.
Behind the counter, the server poured something from a fountain tap, then handed the owner of the haystacks the glass. “What’re you working on now, Mr. Sandburg?”
Ruth winged John with her elbow. Carl Sandburg! she mouthed. The poet!
Mr. Sandburg raised a bristly brow. “Lincoln’s early years.”
“Poems about Lincoln?”
“No. A biography this time. Well, maybe a few poems on the side. I can’t help myself.”
“I know what you mean. Poetry will have its way.” The counterman wiped his hands on his apron then came down to Ruth. “What’ll you have, sweetheart?”
“Whatever he’s having.”
“That would be soda pop. Thank you, Prohibition. Say, are you old enough to be in here?”
John bellied up next to her. “Whatever she ordered, it’s for me, okay? We don’t want any trouble.”
Mr. Sandburg sipped his drink. “You her dad?”
The counterman slid a drink at John. “Here you go.”
Starry-headed, Ruth pushed away from the counter as John dredged some coins from his pants pocket. A man in a pinstripe suit slid a flask from inside his lapel and tipped it over the drink. When he saw Ruth watching, he winked. “On the house.”
She wandered over to the band, where John caught up with her.
“Do you realize who that was?” Ruth shouted in his ear.
“What?”
“At the counter—do you know who that was?”
He turned back around and looked as he took a sip. Carl Sandburg raised his glass.
“This is so exciting!” She tipped John’s glass her way.
He held it away from her. “No, ma’am.”
“Why? What is it?”
He smacked his lips. “Some kind of strange hooch.”
The horns blared.
“Is it good? I think that man meant it for me but I’ll share.”
“What? I can’t hear you!”
She plunged two fingers into the drink, then formed a damp flapper curl in the middle of her forehead. She took the newspaper clipping of the flapper from her purse and held it up next to her face. “Did I get it right?”
John snatched the clipping from her then stuffed it into his pocket. “Why aren’t you happy just being who you are?”
She couldn’t hear him over the galloping music. “What?”
“WHY DO YOU LIKE TO CAUSE TROUBLE?”
She yelled back, “BECAUSE THAT’S WHAT I’M SUPPOSED TO DO.”
Next to her a couple bounced forward, kicked, and bounced back to the music. The Charleston!
“Dance with me!”
“No.” He took another drink. “Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why do you believe that you’re supposed to cause trouble?”
Ruth stored away the dancers’ moves for practice at home. “To make June look good!”
He shook his head. “June’s going to look good no matter what you do.”
“Thanks a lot.” She turned away.
He grabbed her. His serious expression surprised her. “It’s the truth. She’s going to shine no matter how you act, so why make yourself look bad? What are you getting out of it?”
She wilted. “Do I really look bad?”
He hesitated. “Oh, kid.”
In that moment, she saw that he understood her. Her. Not her latest creation, Bad Ruth. Ruth Who Yelled Before She Got Yelled At. But the real her—Hurt, Desperate, Sad Ruth. Lonely Ruth.
She grabbed his face and kissed him.
He pulled back, blushing so hard that his skin nearly lit the dimness. “What are you doing? Are you crazy?”
“Yes! I love you!”
“Oh, kid, you do not love me. You don’t even know me.” He took a drink, then when he saw her still watching him, took another.
Her chest ached with earnestness. “I know that you’re good. I know that you’re decent and kind.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do know!” She swallowed. “I do know that you are a wonderful human being.”
He stared at her through the throb of the clarinets. “You’re seventeen.”
“Almost eighteen. I graduate this spring. That doesn’t mean I don’t know things.”
“Don’t, Ruth.”
She grabbed his face and kissed him again.
“Stop that! I’m serious.”
She did it again.
He was red-faced and flustered. “Look, you flatter me. But really—don’t.”
“Why not?”
He stared at her. “Because I like it too much.”
She waited for him to say more. When he didn’t, she kissed him again.
He was glaring this time as he pulled away from her. “Now you’re starting to make me mad.”
“You like me.”
He reared back, stumbling a little. She wouldn’t let him go.
“I can’t, Ruth.”
She peered into his eyes. “Don’t you understand? I see you, and you see me, I mean really, truly see me. I may not be experienced but I know enough to realize that doesn’t happen much.” She reached up and touched his face. “You know it’s true.”
He shut his eyes. When he opened them and spoke, his words were fuzzy around the edges. “I love your sister. Don’t you get that?”
She raised on her tiptoes and, carefully, touched her lips to his.
“This is all I ‘get.’ ”
She kissed him, softly at first, then, feeling his mouth yielding, harder. She felt his forearms against her back, his hands pressing her shoulder blades through her coat. She leaned into the solidity of his body as music, commotion, blared around them.
She was melting into him, the charge from his flesh dizzying her, when she heard a sharp “Ruth!”
She opened her eyes. It was moments before her mind could assemble the pieces. Past pink-faced Carl Sandburg with his twin white haystacks of hair, past the dungareed laborer talking up the flapper in a gold lamé dress, past the beautiful Negroes, past the girls who were boys and the boys who were girls, past the hat-check girl reading The Age of Innocence, running toward the door was her sister, June.