When Mr. Horowitz came home from work, he stood there in his driveway, hands on hips, staring at the swastika. Feeling somehow responsible, Nick went over and said he was sorry.
“You did this?” Mr. Horowitz said.
“No, my brother did.”
Nick told Mr. Horowitz not to worry—he and his father would cover it up with white paint. Easier said than done, but they’d tried.
Because this wasn’t George’s first offense, he’d spent three years in reform school, for which he blamed Nick. He then managed to disappear without a trace.
Gail turned to her husband. “What if he really is dying?”
“What if it wasn’t George who called?” Nick squeezed her hand. “He was a horrible bully when we were little. Hated having to share his room with me. Finally, he moved down to the basement so he could sneak out at night and go off with his delinquent friends.” Nick let go of her hand and stood up. “Let’s go. I need a drink.”
Seated across from each other at a round table in a small room with arched doorways, Gail and Nick had managed to dribble a little sangria on the white tablecloth by the time Hanna and Mel arrived. Looking positively regal in a square-necked yellow dress, Hanna chose the chair on Gail’s right.
After parking her purse under the table, next to Gail’s cast-off shoes, Hanna mouthed the words, What’s wrong?
Gail frowned, shook her head. Nothing.
“Gail. I’ve known you for almost fifty years.”
Nick filled first Hanna’s glass and then Mel’s with sangria and beckoned to the waiter for another pitcher. A different waiter brought menus.
“Looking forward to some good ol’ Spanish beef,” Mel said.
“My father’s in the hospital,” Gail whispered to Hanna. “They’re not sure what’s wrong.”
“Oh.” Hanna patted Gail’s arm. “I knew something was up.”
“Both USAir and Delta put me on hold.” This fact still rankled.
“You can make plane reservations online now.”
“I keep forgetting that.” Gail pictured messages accumulating on the answering machine at home. Calls from her mother and/or Charlotte. Maybe George. Or the man who’d claimed to be George.
A waiter arrived to take their orders. Hanna asked if she could have artichoke hearts first and then the seafood soup as an entrée, so Gail, who wasn’t at all hungry, ordered gazpacho, to be followed by a shrimp appetizer.
Nick ordered the paella for two, and Gail knew he would expect her to eat some of it. Mel went for the beef tournedos. No first courses, please—he’d stick to the sangria.
The time had come. Gail reached into her pocketbook. She and Hanna had never exchanged gifts as children, a practice they’d continued as adults. After half a century, though, it was time for a change.
“Happy birthday.” Gail set a small box, carefully wrapped in blue foil and tied with gold ribbon, in front of Hanna. Inside was a silver pendant. Would down-to-earth Hanna recognize the exaggerated Roman numeral II, the glyph for Gemini? Gail’s next-door neighbor, a Capricorn, consulted her horoscope every morning. But Hanna?
Even if she didn’t know what the glyph signified, Hanna might like the pendant itself. Or not.
“A present?” Hanna seemed pleased. Carefully, she removed the ribbon and paper and opened the square white box.
“Gemini!” Hanna said excitedly, showing Mel and Nick the silver glyph on its bed of white cotton.
“Beautiful,” Mel said.
“Thank you so much.” Hanna fastened the pendant around her neck. “You know who else is a Gemini? Nikki Giovanni. She’s a week or two older than I am.”
“The poet,” Gail said.
“And essayist. She had an article in Essence magazine recently, about Mae Jemison.” Hanna registered Gail’s blank look. “The first black female astronaut? How could you not know that?”
“I’m sorry,” Gail said. “I know now.”
“If I hadn’t moved to Philly, then Nikki and I would have known each other at Austin High in Knoxville.”
Was it the birthday present or the sangria? Hanna looked genuinely happy.
“It’s a perfect present,” Mel said.
Reliable Mel. Always there for Hanna, the calm in her storm.
An elderly man in a white suit was shown to a small table against the wall, behind Mel. Her hand on her heart, Hanna leaned toward Gail and whispered, “I know that man.”
“Who is he?” Gail whispered back.
“I sat next to him on the plane coming back from Haiti. I’d recognize that white linen suit anywhere.”
“Then go over and say hello. See if he remembers you.”
“He couldn’t possibly. He had his eyes closed the whole time.”
A storm had come and gone, leaving the city and its streets sparkling. The restaurant’s marble steps, under a red awning, gleamed like white porcelain.
Hanna sat down, unbuckled her clunky-heeled sandals, and tossed them onto the sidewalk. “Ooh!” she squealed. “Nothing better for blisters than cool, cool marble.”
Gail’s own feet, once again shod, had gone numb. “Friends don’t let friends drive drunk,” she said. “Come spend the night with us.”
“I’m fine, really. The coffee will kick in soon.”
“Friends don’t let friends drive barefoot, either,” Gail said. “The girls are away. We have plenty of room.”
“I’m not gonna drive barefoot. I’m gonna walk to the car barefoot. Where is our car, anyway?”
Mel shrugged. “What car?”
“Ours is in the next block.” Nick pointed down the hill. “You three wait right here.”
But halfway to the corner, Nick stumbled. He righted himself, then tripped again, falling headfirst into a lamppost.
Barefoot Hanna reached him first. Nick lay crumpled on his side, mouth open, eyes shut. There was blood on his forehead.
Gail knelt down and took his hand. “Honey, can you hear me?” She never called Nick “honey.”
“He can’t hear anything or anyone,” Hanna said. “Don’t you remember that night I was concussed?”
“Of course I remember.” Gail touched Nick’s bloody forehead. “But you finally heard Jeremiah.”
“Nick?” Gail almost yelled it. “Nick, darling?” She never called him “darling,” either.
As Hanna hurried off to ask the restaurant to call an ambulance, a skinny, gray-haired man came ambling up the hill. Gail couldn’t help staring. The man looked an awful lot like Nick.
Behind her, a male voice demanded to know what the trouble was. Using the lamppost for support, Gail pulled herself to her feet.
Hanna’s shoes were still on the sidewalk. A cop was asking to see Mel’s driver’s license.
“I’m going to take my wallet out of my pocket,” Mel said slowly.
After scrutinizing Mel’s license, the cop asked, “And what do you do in Reston, Virginia?”
Mel extracted another ID. “I’m a professor at Howard University.”
“And have you been drinking, Professor?”
“A little, sir. But my wife is driving.”
The gray-haired man stood pressed against a building, as if trying to make himself invisible. “George?” Gail called to him. “George Ranier? Is that you?”
Pointing at Nick, the man bared his teeth. Then he turned and ran. Down the hill he went, graceful as a gazelle.
After returning Mel’s ID cards, the cop started toward Gail. “You the professor’s wife?”
“My husband’s hurt.” Gail looked down at Nick, who, amazingly, was looking up at her.
“She’s my wife, Officer, sir,” Nick said. “I’m perfectly fine. Just took a tumble, that’s all.”
And here came a fire truck, red lights flashing, siren wailing. Was the restaurant on fire?
“Pull me up,” Nick demanded, extending a hand.
“Are you sure?” Gail said. “You’ve been out for a while.”
“And now I’m in. Hurry.�
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By holding on to Gail with one hand and the lamppost with the other, Nick was able to get to his feet before the firemen, all two of them, climbed down from their blinking vehicle. They conferred with the cop, who admitted he had no idea what was going on here. “It’s like a scene from a bad movie,” the cop said. “I wonder whose shoes those are.”
“They’re my wife’s,” Mel said. “She’s the one who called for an ambulance.”
“Someone here has a concussion,” the larger fireman said.
“My husband tripped,” Gail said.
“I’m perfectly fine,” Nick said. “But thanks for coming.”
“What’s your name?” the fireman asked.
Nick pulled out his wallet, handed the man a business card. “Nick Ranier. Are you interested in buying a house?”
“Not tonight, sir. Can you take a few steps toward me?”
Still holding Gail’s hand, Nick complied.
The fireman produced a flashlight. “I’m going to shine this in your eyes.”
“Go ahead, then.”
“Pupils look okay. False alarm number three. Another typical night in Charm City.”
“Still want an ambulance?” the other fireman asked Gail.
Gail shook her head, reasoning that the two men she loved most should not be whisked off to a hospital on the very same day.
“But what if he collapses after they’re gone?” the cop said.
“Then just call us back.” The two firemen said this in unison. They climbed aboard, and the fire truck rumbled off.
Gail walked Nick slowly up the hill. Hanna, looking dazed, was standing under the restaurant’s awning.
“These shoes belong to you?” the cop asked her.
“Yes, sir,” Hanna said.
“You live in Reston, too?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then I’ll be on my way.” The cop strode off down the hill.
“Your forehead’s bloody,” Gail said to Nick. “I thought those firemen would at least clean you up.” She searched her pocketbook for a tissue.
Nick touched the lump on his head, examined his fingers. “I’m fine. Please don’t touch.”
“Our house, everyone,” Gail said. “I’ll drive. We’ll find your car in the morning.”
“I remembered where our car is,” Hanna said. “I’m the soberest one here. I had some more coffee while I was inside.” She retrieved her shoes and put them on, then suggested Nick sit down on the steps. “For a few minutes, please. I need to talk to Gail.”
Not far from where the ghost of George had stood, Hanna told a ghost story of her own. After speaking to someone about calling an ambulance, she’d walked back to the room where they’d had dinner. The man in the white linen suit was still there, eating flan with a dessert spoon.
“Do you mind if I join you?” she asked him.
He didn’t, so she did.
“Have you ever been to Haiti?” she asked.
“I don’t believe I have,” he said, very politely.
“What a Haitian thing to say! Believing would make it real. I believe I sat next to you on a flight from Port-au-Prince to Miami on April second, nineteen sixty-eight.”
“I’ve been to Miami, yes,” the man said. “Are you a Gemini?”
Hanna touched her new necklace. “Today’s my birthday.”
“Then let me order you some flan. C’est très délicieux.”
“Non, merci,” Hanna said. “I’ll have some coffee, though.”
She asked him what he was doing in Baltimore.
“Why, I came to see you, ma chère. I’m a Leo.”
“He was such a charmer.” Hanna giggled. “I could’ve talked to him all night!”
“But was he the man on the plane?”
“Beats me.” Hanna gave Gail a hug. “Thanks for a truly wonderful evening. I don’t feel fifty. Do you?”
“I don’t even feel forty-nine.”
“Be sure to wake Nick up from time to time tonight.”
“I’ll try.” Gail grabbed Hanna’s arm for support, and they hobbled back up the hill in their uncomfortable shoes.
“And let me know how things go with your father,” Hanna said. “Email me. Dontcha just love email?”
On their way home, Gail asked Nick if he had any photos of George. He did not.
As kids, she asked, did he and his brother look at all alike? Nick couldn’t remember.
When she turned onto their street, Nick said he was worried George might have been casing their house while they were away, or, worst case, had broken in.
Gail humored him. “Shall I drive around the block, then?”
“Good idea,” Nick said.
After circling the block twice, she turned into their driveway. Nick got out first, then signaled that the coast was clear.
He took her arm protectively, and they started up the back steps. Once inside, he turned off the alarm and quickly locked the door behind them.
Gail had worries of her own. She walked through the kitchen to check the answering machine.
A red zero grinned up at her. There were no messages.
Her father was still alive.
Wide awake at three o’clock, Gail felt the chilling whisper of the dark blades of the ceiling fan: Everyone you love will die.
Her beloved father would soon turn eighty-three. She would make reservations online, tomorrow, for a trip to Knoxville. Tell him how very much she loved him. Her mother, too, of course, even though she was becoming increasingly difficult to talk to.
Nick, whom she loved in a different way, exuded, from a deep sleep, the heat of a smoldering log. Each time she managed to wake him up, he was grumpy as hell. Was sleep a way for him to escape the big brother he still feared?
The house seemed eerily quiet. Desolate. Tomorrow she would also try to reach Allison, who was waiting tables after her junior year of college, just as Gail had done. Was Allison going out with a version of Patrik up in Maine? What had happened to Patrik, anyway? By the time Gail graduated from college, the letters from him had stopped.
A phone call to Uganda was not so easy. Did Sandy have friends there? Her letters went on and on about giraffes but rarely mentioned the humans she encountered. Nor did she ever talk about coming home.
Was Sandy dating? Was he black? Did he write poems for her in Swahili?
How safe was Uganda? Safer than Haiti?
Were the sisters sending letters back and forth this summer? Keeping each other’s secrets?
Mel had a sister in Atlanta he hadn’t seen in years.
Nick had George, which was like having no brother at all.
Hanna had Jeremiah, whom she adored.
Gail had . . . Hanna, her sort-of-but-not-really sister.
Still, fifty years was its own sort of bond. Good times and bad, all braided together.
Fifty years and counting.
Jefferson Davis Highway
Virginia, 1996
THE FOUR OF THEM WERE having lunch at Jeff’s Diner in Stafford, Virginia, where they’d been given the booth at the front, which was two steps up from the other tables. Sophie felt like she was sitting on a stage.
And people were staring. Maybe not in a you-can’t-be-here kind of way—more like they couldn’t figure out why a white woman and her daughter would even want to have lunch with a black woman and her daughter. Sophie remembered what the first way had felt like. She didn’t like this one any better. Yes, the laws had changed. But lifelong opinions were something else.
Miss Bessie had ordered pork barbecue with hush puppies, after going on and on about Abby’s Bar-B-Q in Knoxville, forgetting that Hanna and Sophie never ate at Abby’s, wouldn’t have been allowed in the door. Now, Miss Bessie was studying the paper place mat through her bifocals. “Jefferson Davis was a racist all his life,” she said, without looking up.
“Shh, Mother,” Gail said. “Not so loud. I thought you didn’t teach the Civil War.”
“I didn’t, but I know a
few things about Jefferson Davis.”
Sophie hadn’t been able to stay in school long enough to learn about the Civil War, but, thanks to Hanna, who’d been planning this trip for weeks, she, too, knew a few things about Jefferson Davis. “It’s like Franklin Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower,” Hanna had told her. “Jefferson Davis was president of the Confederacy, and Robert E. Lee was his top general.”
On this chilly Saturday in November, they were on the Jefferson Davis Highway because it was where, twelve years earlier, PJ had bought gas at a Texaco station in Richmond. Hanna was hoping a visit to the gas station would give her the missing piece of the puzzle: What had made PJ decide to fly from Richmond to Miami?
And Hanna had asked Gail to come with her. Just Gail. The two white-haired widows, both of them living with their daughters now, would stay behind in Reston, so that Sophie could keep an eye on Miss Bessie. In Baltimore, Miss Bessie often got confused and thought she was in Hartford. She’d go out for a walk and then couldn’t find her way home. Gail never left her alone for very long, certainly not for a whole day.
Sophie had come up with a better idea. All four of them would go to Richmond. Easier to keep an eye on Miss Bessie if three of them were doing it.
Besides, she was just plain curious. Why, after all this time, had Hanna suddenly decided to visit that gas station? Was there some other reason for the trip? Sophie hadn’t wanted to ask. When you’re living rent-free in someone’s guest room, you don’t get too nosy, you don’t pry, even if you are that person’s mother.
Compared with Philadelphia, Reston felt like living in a magazine ad, everything so quiet and clean and not quite real. Sophie missed her friends. On her daily walks, she’d begun nodding to a few folks, but so far no one had stopped to talk or even to ask what her name was or where she lived.
She missed having Jeremiah and her grandsons close by.
Most of all, she missed Del. Some nights, he played the piano in her dreams.
Mr. Madison had gone quickly, dead from a heart attack. Del’s arthritis was what had killed him, even though it wasn’t the official cause of death.
Living on the water again reminded Sophie of her childhood, except that Lake Anne was tiny and the boats were small and made of fiberglass, so very different from the Chesapeake Bay skipjacks she’d grown up with. On warm days, while Hanna and Mel were off at work and couldn’t see her do it, she sometimes went for a swim.
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