8 minute read
LADY SINGS THE BLUES by Mike Ross
LADY SINGS THE BLUES by Mike Ross
“Good evening, GOOD EVENING, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN!!” A woman’s voice rises above the crowd. “Welcome, welcome! I’m Lilly and I’m so glad to see you all! Sit back, relax with a whiskey and cigarette and let me entertain you.” The voice is practiced, professional, the delivery precise and measured. She has done this hundreds of times. The glare of the lights dances off glass and polished wood. Every head is turned toward her as she commands attention.
“I’d like to start with a request from the audience. Would someone like something special?” I hear nothing, as if the crowd is too mesmerized to speak. “Yes… yes… of course I know it, sweety!” she smiles at someone near the front. “Band… that’s it… that’s the number.” After a few seconds, a dark, rich-as-coffee voice floats over us, surrounding the crowd. A few of them have bottles of whiskey, others, cartons of cigarettes, serious partiers. Lilly looks up at the lights, one hand high, her eyes closed and she starts a Billie Holiday jazz favorite, Stormy Weather. The cabaret song envelopes us and the crowd watches silently as she croons.
Don’t know why, there’s no sun up in the sky, Stormy Weather . . . .
The low, smoky voice resonates like mahogany. With her eyes closed, belting out this classic, Lilly is in a world of her own, cocooned, warm, a place she knows well.
No one stirs, no one raises a hand to order a drink. The voice dominates us, smoothly professional. Like musical magic, Lilly transports her audience, as she warbles her lament about her lost lover. We are lost in her, transfixed, in the moment. It’s easy to imagine we’re in a smoky cabaret in Berlin or New York and not here.
She sings the last baleful lines,
“Since my man and I ……ain’t together, keeps raining all of the time,” low and throaty, and finishes with head bowed.
“Thank you, thank you all. You’re a wonderful audience.” With both hands she throws the crowd a kiss. The place is silent. A few people set down packages and clap a bit, nervously, then a few more join in, until everyone is applauding in a crescending din. Someone yells for an encore.
A disturbance just out of eyesight gets my attention. Thumps and crashes follow the men as they push their way through the throng toward the lady, suitcases and bags tumbling, they bustle toward the performer, the reality of security guys breaking the spell. Lilly hears them, too, and shields her eyes against the blazing lights to see them.
Her face contorts from sublime to confused, frowning first, then changing to fear as she looks around at the displays of stacked cartons of cigarettes, the rows of liquor bottles and the perfume counters in the Duty Free Shop in Frankfurt Airport. She begins tugging at her left ear lobe like a life rope as the men approach. No longer in the cabaret of her mind, she’s thrust out of her warm, comfortable world and back into the reality of the airport. The fear is frozen in her eyes.
Someone near her offers her a hand and she steps down off the Canadian Club crate she’s using as a stage. A store employee retrieves the candy cone that was her microphone but her other hand still holds an imaginary cigarette. She tugs at the earlobe, making it red raw.
“What is your name please, madame?” a young man asks her in clipped German. She looks at him stupidly. I step forward to translate. The throng that had surrounded her has gone back to shopping, pushing tiny grocery store carts filled with anything but groceries.
“Lilly, the men are asking for your name? Are you Lilly?” I ask her.
She turns to me. “Oh no dear! Tell them my stage name is Lilly. My real name…” But she trails off. On her bag is a name tag. Mildred Hawkins. I read her name in disbelief. She is one of the passengers I’m waiting for at Frankfurt Airport; she’s scheduled to be on my next tour.
I tell the security men her name and that she’s with me, that I am the guide for her tour. They seem skeptical. I show them my credentials but they linger a moment. Throughout this, Lilly is fixated on a ten foot high display of Ritter Chocolate, having forgotten about the men.
“I’ll take care of her,” I tell them, but I haven’t a clue what I can do. They nod and move off after I assure them she will not sing again. Too bad, I think, this place could use a bit of livening up.
“Lilly… uh, Mildred, where is your husband, Lloyd?” I ask her. Lloyd had been the one to make their reservations with me. About three months ago we’d finalized the trip details and agreed to meet at the Frankfurt Airport. I’d not spoken to him since. Mildred looks like she hasn’t heard me so I repeat the question. She gazes around the arrivals hall.
“He must be in the men’s room. He must be,” she says. She notices the Duty Free Shop and the crate of Canadian Club and blinks. “Where am I?” In careful words, I tell her where she is.
She turns to me and smiles, “Hello. And who might you be?” I say again who I am and suggest we look for Lloyd. “Lloyd?” she says, as if she has never heard the name.
“Your husband,” I say.
“Lloyd? Where is Lloyd?” she asks. “Is he here? Oh, my, I want some of that chocolate!” Mildred points at the Ritter Sport display in the shop and takes a step toward it.
“Mildred,” I say as I take her elbow. “Please sit over here and I’ll try to find Lloyd.” She sits but cranes her neck to see the Ritter, no longer tugging on her ear. Keeping her within my sight, I call the emergency number I have for the Hawkins and the daughter in Waukegan, Illinois, picks up. I explain who and where I am and that I have Mrs. Hawkins next to me.
“Oh, OH! Thank god!” comes the relieved voice. “You have my mother!” she sniffles. “We’ve been so worried!” she gasps. “Her memory care residence called me yesterday when she didn’t come to breakfast and we’ve been sick with worry ever since!” She excuses herself to get a tissue.
“M’am, I’m looking for Mr. Hawkins here in the airport but…” I get no further when she interrupts.
“No, no,” she says. “My father, Lloyd, died about two months ago. When he got sick, he told me he’d have to cancel the trip. I guess he didn’t. My mother forgets everything. I don’t know how she remembered or how she got on the plane?” I tell her about Lilly’s rendition of Stormy Weather in the Duty Free Shop and the security guards.
“Oh dear,” she gasped. “Was she arrested?” No, I tell her, they left her in my care. “My mom used the name Lilly on stage,” she explains. “She was a headliner in jazz clubs in Chicago and cabarets in New Orleans. She loved that life, that world. She breaks into song all the time in her care home.”
I look over at Mildred. Now in her late 70s, she still had the voice that commanded an audience, if not a grasp of reality. “Can I speak to her please?” I hand the phone to Mildred who asks at least four times who “this” is. The first three times Mildred tells her she doesn’t have a daughter but something breaks through on the fourth try and I see her smile.
After some minutes of Mildred just listening she hands the phone back to me. The daughter tells me she will be on the next flight to Frankfurt. I explain how to find us in the city.
“I’m going to get some of that,” Mildred says as she points at the Ritter chocolate. On our way she stops and stares at the crate of Canadian Club. In one quick step, she’s on it again, hesitates, then raises her face into the brilliant track lights. She lifts her arms and breaks into another torch song. This time it’s Lady Sings the Blues. In one transformative instant, Mildred is Lilly again. She’s back in her own reality, where she’s young and happy, safe and warm.
To hell with security, I think, as a new crowd begins to form. Let her have this moment. Her voice soars across the hall, her face tilts into the rapture of the song. She’s in a New Orleans cabaret, belting out the lyrics, far, far away from here.
