Goodbye Without Leaving by Laurie Colwin Read Free Book Online Page B

Reverend Willhall in his preaching days. The porter was known only as Moby, a small, dense black man of about fifty, who carried cartons, hauled equipment and drove the foundation’s battered van. He lived in the basement and used the enormous, ornamental bathroom to wash in. Formerly he had lived on the street, and was now paid just enough to keep him in tobacco and off drink.
    Then there was Desdemona, the Reverend Willhall’s daughter. She was fiery and beautiful. Looking at her solemn father and her placid mother, it was hard to tell where she had come from. She wore her glossy hair in a crown of braids on top of her head. Her clothes were suitable for the daughter of a clergyman, except that she liked skirts with slits to show off her legs. She wore gold earrings and her perfect nails were painted with a shade I recognized from my tour days as Frosted African Pumpkin. Desdemona did not speak much, at least not at the foundation. She sat in her office and worked the telephone, and she traveled frequently to raise money.
    Mrs. Willhall believed that it was her duty to see that the foundation staff was properly fed. Each morning she started a large pot of vegetable soup on the stove in the huge old kitchen. At lunchtime we sat at a tin-top table eating vegetable soup, cornbread and applesauce. The Reverend Willhall did not believe in conversation with food. We gathered at the table and waited while steaming bowls of soup were placed before us. The Reverend extended his long skinny arms out over the table and intoned; “O Lord, for the food which we are about to eat, we thank you! We thank you! We thank you!”
    It often seemed to me unfair that he did not thank his wife, but there you are. We ate in silence, which was just as well, since it was at mealtimes that I felt most alien—the lone white face. Would I ever find some fellow humans to be at peace with?
    Upstairs I sat at my console and stared out the window. Dark autumn rain fell steadily. I switched on a record and positioned the needle. That powerful clear voice of Bessie Smith almost knocked me backward. As I listened I realized how very dirty those old dirty songs were, like “I’m Wild About That Thing” and “You’ve Got to Give Me Some.” It turned out they were written under a pseudonym by a nephew of the Madagascar royal family—the world of music was full of such anomalies. Sunshine suddenly flooded me. I was an anomaly, too. It was all okay.
    â€œâ€˜ You can see my bankbook ,’” I sang along. “‘ But don’t you feel my purse .’” I happily sipped my coffee. There was no one to hear me, so I was free to sing as loud as I liked: “‘ I’ve got what it takes but it breaks my heart to give it away .’” It seemed to me to be my personal anthem.

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    It didn’t take me long to love my job at the Race Music Foundation. It was rather like being on tour except more restful, and the food was better. I was sincerely interested in women singers of the twenties and thirties. In two weeks I had settled in. I did my work, which required familiarity and devotion—I had plenty of those—and did not call for any special skills, of which I had none.
    Considering the nature of the music we were working with—dirty blues, songs about money, praises of God and what-all—the mood at the foundation was solemn. No matter what the weather, the building itself gave off a kind of serious, gray aura I found very consoling. The Reverend Willhall was supernaturally grave. He was especially disturbed when popular groups—by which he meant white acts—remade some classic blues number and turned it into a hit. He would then pick up the phone and put in a sorrowful telephone call to the foundation’s lawyer and set him on the case to see if any money could be liberated for the songwriter, or the heirs if the songwriter was dead, as was often the