Free Club Storyville by Riley Lashea Page A

Scott tried one last time to get me to tell him what was wrong with me. When my explanation sounded more like an excuse for my crying than the real reason, because that was what it was, only an excuse, Scott left worried, and I felt as bad about giving him more cause for concern as I felt about him going off to war.
    “You know, just because I’m on my way out of this world doesn’t mean I don’t get to have an opinion on it,” Nan was saying as I wandered into her bedroom, the place that felt most like a sanctuary. Though, it felt less like a sanctuary than once it had.
    After seeing Scott away again, Nan’s declaration was the last thing I wanted to hear, that she too would soon be leaving for a foreign place.
    “Nan, don’t say things like that,” I quietly pleaded, but it was Ariel who glanced to me first, Nan’s gaze following more slowly, as if she didn’t hear me or realize I was there until Ariel looked my way.
    Seeing the fires that burned behind Nan’s eyes, I could tell what she’d been talking about, because I had heard her go on so many times before.
    “Killing to stop killing doesn’t make good sense,” she would say. Though, having read the news in the papers, even Nan could think of nothing else to do about Hitler trying to take over the entire world. That was why Nan hated him so much, I thought, because he made her question her belief that there was always a better solution than sending more people to die.
    “Don’t think about the war,” Ariel would try to lead her away from stress. “Think about something nice.”
    “Like what?” Nan would huff in response.
    “Like puppies,” Ariel said one day. “Think about puppies.”
    “Puppies?” Nan returned. “Puppies! Why, they should send her in to do peace talks, don’t you think, Elizabeth? Ariel will tell them to think about puppies, and everyone will smile and laugh and have a bourbon.”
    Glancing my way, Ariel had winked at me then, and, even in the midst of everything, for a moment, the world was a place worth being in.
    That was before the garden, though, before I kissed Ariel, and Jackson came into our lives, and I stopped remembering how to find waters of happiness in an arid landscape.
    “How was Scott?” Nan’s room felt far heavier, impending death and disharmony bogging it down.
    “He was brave,” I answered, because that was what Scott was being. Every moment. When he smiled, it wasn’t because he was happy to put on a uniform and rush into battle. When he promised Daddy he would take good care of himself with a steady nod, it wasn’t because he was dedicated to what he was going to do. Every gesture was courage, because the state of the world had limited his options, and all Scott could do was stand tall in the face of them.
    “And how are you?” Nan asked.
    Though I did try, I couldn’t withhold the urge to either cry or to laugh, so I did both at once, tears filling my eyes as a demented chuckle broke over my lips.
    ‘How was I?’ Nan asked me. Barely keeping it together, that was how I was. Halfway to the institution.
    “Come, sit,” Nan ordered, and, with a last oddly humored exhalation, I did as she told me, sinking into the chair next to her bed where I always sat to visit, to try not to stare at Ariel, to watch Nan get closer to death each day.
    “I’ll leave you alone,” Ariel said, and I wasn’t sure that was what I wanted.
    “Now, tell me what you’re feeling,” Nan prodded, as she had when I was a little girl, and it was a cruel reminder of everything I was going to lose.
    Nan was the only person who ever asked me that, not what I was doing or what I was thinking or what I wanted to be, but how I felt. She asked it in much the same way I imagined a gypsy asked, ‘What would you like to know?’, as if trying to see into the very depths of one’s soul to get a reading on its condition.
    “I don’t want to worry you,” I shook my head.
    “I have no worries of my own left,” Nan