Free Lark and Termite by Jayne Anne Phillips Page A

tears I shed over it, then to now. Barren, they called it in those days. Maybe so, but barren ground is strong, clear ground.
    I left the husband after four years. He’d met a nice woman his own age and I gave them my blessing. Bad things had happened to him, and I didn’t want to keep being one of them. He said I’d helped him through a difficult time and he paid a year’s rent on my new apartment. The Depression was over. I left with my clothes and got my old job back at the restaurant. A lot of places folded, but Lowman’s stayed open. War had started in Europe. The city seemed alive again, nervous and edgy; the restaurant was busy and hired more staff. Then Charlie showed up, with Lola outside in his car. She was out of control, he said. I was her sister. What were we going to do? He said it just like that—like we were family. And I knew we were.
    Gladdy would have been happy if Charlie had married a nice Catholic girl and moved her in with them to do whatever Gladdy said. Just to spite her, or maybe to spite himself, Charlie didn’t. His heart murmur kept him out of the service, at home with Gladdy and the business. We weren’t in touch, but Lola wrote to me every month, and I answered. When our father died, I sent flowers. Our mother got sick. Lola, the two years after she graduated high school, took care of her alone. I sent money to support them, but I wasn’t going back, not even for the funeral. A few days after, the house burned. People said Lola had thrown a lit match onto the newspapers by the stove, that the house burned so hot she must have poured kerosene from one room to another. She turned up at Charlie’s lunch counter with her suitcase while the sirens were still blaring. Nonie’s left her husband, she told Charlie, and she could take him to me. He asked about the fire and she said it was the only way to burn up the smell of the sickbed, all the beds. Charlie knew he’d better get her out of town while everyone was occupied. Back then, Gladdy actually worked in the restaurant. For once, Charlie told her he had to go. He put Lola in the car and drove, pulling over to sleep when he had to. Lowman’s was a city block, an Atlanta landmark in those days, easy to find, and the restaurant was a third of the first floor. There Charlie was, sitting at a table by the window, where he could see his car and Lola in it.
    I’d been a duty-bound insurance executive’s wife, answering expectations and reading Collier’s in bed afterward, but I was only twenty-four. Being in the same room as Charlie after so long was like opening a furnace door. I’ll never forget his face and his dark eyes as I walked over to him in my waitress uniform and red chiffon apron. We didn’t know it, but except for the apron and a few major interruptions, we were looking at the rest of our lives. He pulled me against him and held me and we looked into the street at Lola looking back at us, her face framed in the window of Charlie’s black car. She knew she’d accomplished something I never could: him standing there. You don’t need to worry, I told Charlie. She’s got what she wanted and she’s not going anywhere.
    My shift ended an hour later and I took them to my apartment. Lola fell asleep on the sofa before I could even get a meal cooked. Charlie and I locked the bedroom against her, but we needn’t have bothered. She slept for three days. Charlie drove me to my Low-man’s shifts and looked for a job, but it was Lola who found him work, as a bouncer at Onslow’s, a club that took her on as a cigarette girl and backup singer. She had sheet music in her suitcase, and a beaded dress like the ones she’d seen in magazines. The Irish mob was big business, and so were the Italians and their gin joints. Billy Onslow was snug with both, and he owned establishments in Atlanta and Louisville. He was a big deal then, a bruiser musician in a sharkskin coat, pulling strings. I later found he dealt in interstate liquor