The Simon Theater was decorated for Independence Day. Red, white, and blue metallic streamers hung from the wall sconces. Each table in the main room was adorned with a patriotic centerpiece that contained miniature American flags and small cut-out caricatures of the founding fathers. Audrey was also decked out. She saluted America in a vintage World War II WAC uniform. She had planned an evening of songs that coordinated with her outfit—“I’ll Be Seeing You,” “A-Tisket, A-Tasket,” “Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree.”
Once the stage lights hit her, though, she veered away from her script.
As the applause died down, she said, “I’m going back to southern Indiana Sunday morning.”
A few boos and shouts of “No!” came from the regulars. Audrey smiled and said, “You’re sweet. But don’t you worry; I’m not going there to stay. I’ll just be gone for a couple of days.” The booing transformed into whistles and more applause.
“Some of you might have been here when I talked about the little chore I promised to take care of down there. Well, the time has come. As usual, the great challenge is picking just the right outfit for the occasion. I’ve been calling old friends and soliciting advice, but I’m still trying to make up my mind.”
Audrey sang the Ella Fitzgerald standard “Undecided.”
Earlier that day, Terry had called his former home in Plainview for the first time in five years, hoping that whoever answered would be able to supply him with a phone number for his sister.
It had been James Henry’s idea for Terry to call Cherokee. Terry had been having doubts about whether to follow through on the promise that had been so easy to make in Bailey’s Laundry and Dry Cleaning. His fury had been raw then, propelled by years of pain. Later, when the tiny nest egg he’d brought with him from Plainview had been exhausted, he had swallowed that anger and resentment until it filled his empty belly. Even after Odette and James had hooked him up with free meals and a job at their friend Lydia’s South Side diner, he’d thought of his father every day and tasted his revenge with every bite of food he ate.
But now that Wayne Robinson was dead and retribution hung within reach, Terry was amazed to find himself wondering what to do. Long-buried memories had crept forward to complicate his feelings. Camping trips with Mom, Daddy, Cherokee, and Seville. Daddy teaching him to ride his bike. Playing in the cars at Daddy’s repair shop. Recollections of better days in the distant past competed for his attention with the ugliness that came later, threatening to reduce his ogre to a troll.
He’d called Odette for advice. She hadn’t been at home, so he’d spoken with James. As Terry had expected from speaking with James many times throughout his tough high school years, James had counseled that Terry should be the bigger man—or woman, depending on whether Terry or Audrey showed up in Plainview. “You’ve got to forgive. Forgive your father, and forgive your sister, too. That’s what your mother would want you to do.”
James had made it sound easy. He’d told Terry about the return of his own father and how therapeutic forgiving El Walker had been for him. Not having spoken to Odette about El and James’s relationship, Terry didn’t understand that there was a far more complex scenario playing out in the Henry home than James was letting on. It was with James’s urging toward forgiveness on his mind that Terry called Plainview.
To his surprise, when he dialed the number that had been his throughout his boyhood, Cherokee answered. “Hi, it’s Terry,” he said when he heard her voice. He listened to the sound of his sister breathing as a television commercial blared in the background. He asked, “How are you?”
When she still didn’t answer, he continued: “I heard about Daddy. I’m going to come to Plainview for the funeral and—”
“I can’t believe you have the nerve to call here,” Cherokee said. “Haven’t you caused enough trouble? All I’ve heard about since Daddy got sick has been that nasty thing you said you were going to do.” Her voice quavered, and Terry heard her sniffling. She said, “I hope you know you won’t get away with that filth. Seville’s coming, and he’s bringing friends with him to keep the peace. You’d better not try to come anywhere near Daddy’s funeral.”
Cherokee wailed about the humiliation Terry had brought to the family and the years of suffering she and Wayne Robinson had endured because of him. As she continued to toss accusations at him, Terry felt his hunger pangs of the past return. The anger he’d feasted on to soothe those pangs came back, too. When Cherokee paused in her recitation, he said, “So our brother, who I’m guessing is fresh from his latest prison stay, is going to stand guard at the cemetery to stop me from bringing shame on the family?”
Cherokee stopped crying. Terry heard another, cheerier television commercial through the phone. He inquired then about his sister’s husband. A year after Terry had left Plainview, Cherokee had married the handsome dry-cleaning heir for whom her younger brother had once danced in his homemade Dior. “How’s Andre doing, Mrs. Bailey?”
The phone had gone dead then.
To her Simon Theater audience, Audrey said, “There’s nothing quite like family. Just when you start to forget the past, they remind you where you came from.”
She played a jazzed-up version of a bugle call on the piano that would serve as a lead-in to “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy.” The bugle call turned into a series of arpeggios up and down the keyboard. Out of that rush of sound emerged the opening of a Brahms intermezzo.
“Before I go to Indiana, I’m going to go to a concert in Millennium Park. Have you seen those ads for the recital by Clarice Baker?” A few handclaps sounded from the audience. “Mrs. Baker was my piano teacher when I was a kid.”
Chopin. Louder and faster. Several patrons whistled and shouted, “Bravo!”
“That’s right. Your little Audrey studied the piano with a genuine virtuoso. I was going to be a great piano soloist, like Rubinstein. Well, maybe like Van Cliburn.” Then she lifted her hands to show the crowd the chunky, glittering rings on each of her fingers and raced through a chromatic run from the lowest key of the piano to the highest. “Okay, more like Liberace.
“After Mrs. Baker’s concert, I’m going to catch a ride to Plainview with my friend Odette. The question is, do I head for a thrift shop and find a dark men’s suit to wear? Or do I paint my fingernails fire-engine red and break out the imitation Chanel? I’ll tell you what, I never imagined when I was a youngster that so much of my life would boil down to that one quandary.”
Audrey sang the first few bars of that 1940s favorite “Sentimental Journey.” Then she modulated to a new key. She winked a heavily mascaraed eye at the crowd and belted out, “Walk Like a Man.”