The Alchemy of Noise

by Lorraine Devon Wilke

  Maybe you aren’t a racist, maybe you are. I don’t know. We’ve never had our sensibilities tested on the topic, at least not in front of each other. But the fact that you went there, whatever the reasons, whatever the rationale, is something I think YOU really need to look at.

  I could rebut every single thing you threw in my face, but I don’t even want to give it the energy. But please be assured: my selfesteem is deeply intact and I feel honored—HONORED—that a man of Chris’s heart and soul loves me.

  I can’t predict the future, but I want to take a break from you right now. I’m not trying to be punitive, I just don’t want to talk about this with you at the moment. I don’t want to hear your perspective. What that means beyond that, I don’t know. I’m still reeling.

  If you get another meeting scheduled with the investors, let me know and we’ll sort that out then.

  For now, deal with your life, I’ll deal with mine, and we’ll see where we are later on down the line.

  S.

  FORTY

  FOR THE FIRST TIME IN HIS LIFE, CHRIS WAS KNEE-DEEP IN the process of renovating a living space and discovered both talent and enthusiasm for the activity. Sidonie’s townhouse had architecturally impressive bones—varied levels, exposed brick, high ceilings, and dramatically set windows—and given her own design abdication, Chris, once ensconced, had carte blanche to explore his inner Fixer Upper.

  Something about the assignment grounded him, made him feel like he was creating home. He’d rarely experienced that sensation as an adult; he’d always been more of a temporary resident, a roommate, someone who came and went but was never invested. Even in his last relationship he’d kept a suitcase under the bed. Sidonie’s invitation into this warm, appealing place, and his subsequent involvement and creativity, seemed to seal the deal: they were making a life here together. It felt profound to him.

  Sandra had slipped an envelope in the mailbox weeks earlier with little over half the cash demanded for the shattered TV. Discussion ensued about whether raising further ruckus was merited, but Chris convinced Sidonie it wasn’t worth the contact or the stress chemicals; he took care of purchasing a new one, along with a variety of wall hangings (largely photographic), two living room chairs, a vintage mid-century coffee table, and a rather dramatic bookcase. Whenever Sidonie returned home after he’d had a block of time to devote to the project, she’d gleefully applaud the color and character he was bringing to her previously spartan quarters. He appreciated the encouragement and continued.

  On this particular Thursday, with Sidonie off to a client meeting with Frank and nothing on his own schedule until noon, he was painting a bedroom wall, just one wall, a deep shade of burnt sienna, when his phone rang. He was prepared to ignore it until he saw his mother’s name. She didn’t typically call during the day, so he quickly wiped his hands and picked up.

  “Hey, Ma, everything okay?”

  “Not really, Christopher. You have now been in this relationship for long enough that it could hardly be considered new, and I have yet to meet this woman of yours. Don’t you think that’s a problem?”

  Chris suppressed a smile. “It’s just about timing and schedules, Ma. It has nothing to do with either of us not wanting to come down.”

  “Is that so? I believe I’m only fourteen miles south of Andersonville. Is that too far for you these days?”

  He grinned. “Of course not, I just—”

  “Have you met her mother?”

  “No, I haven’t.” He was relieved he could answer honestly, even if the attendant reasons were convoluted. “Between juggling Alchemy gigs and my responsibilities at The Church, I’ve hardly met anyone from her life outside of work. So consider yourself in good company.”

  “Humph. We need to remedy that. I want the two of you to come to dinner this weekend, and do not tell me you can’t find the time. You can find the time.”

  “I promise I will sit down with Sidonie tonight and see what she’s got coming up. The problem is we both work weekends—”

  “Didn’t you say you were closed on Monday? I’m perfectly capable of making dinner on a Monday.”

  “Okay, okay.” Chris laughed. “I surrender. Unless she’s got something going this Monday, we’ll be down. What time and what do you want us to bring?”

  “Six o’clock and just yourselves. I’ve been stockpiling for weeks.”

  As he went back to painting, he realized he hadn’t asked if Vanessa would be joining them. He couldn’t decide if knowing or not knowing was the better approach.

  FORTY-ONE

  SOME FRAMES WERE ORNATE, OTHER WERE SIMPLE AND plain. Black-and-white photos, color and sepia. One picture after the next capturing faces, smiles, celebrations—family. A lifetime of events and moments memorialized in these frames.

  Sidonie walked slowly down the hall, gazing at each photograph hung carefully in an eclectic, appealing pattern. She soaked in the images of Chris’s past. His father—tall, broad-shouldered, always with a smile. His brother—slender and studious, brows furrowed under dark horn-rimmed glasses. There was Chris—from cherubic, to gap-toothed, to gangly, to now. Vanessa was all fierce eyes and wiry limbs, her poses brimming with energy. And of course, Delores, the matriarch of the family: beautiful, buxom, meticulously dressed; delight in her family exuding from every picture.

  It was a mesmerizing collection, with its myriad glimpses into the life Chris had led, the beloved family that surrounded him, including the two no longer there. It felt sacred, this wall, and she viewed it with commensurate reverence.

  “Quite the crew, aren’t they?” Delores stood in the hallway gazing at one of the photos, misty-eyed. “I never get tired of looking at these. They’re a testament to all that is most dear to me.” She glanced at the portrait across from Sidonie. “Chris was a little doll, wasn’t he?”

  “He was. He still is. It’s so great the way you put this together, Delores, like a collage. It inspires me to do something similar at my . . . at our house.”

  “Thank you! I think it’s a nice way to display any collection of photographs, but when it’s family, it all becomes so precious. I try to add at least one new picture of Chris and Vanessa every year, but it gets harder as they get busier and we don’t gather as much. Plus, I’m running out of wall space!” She laughed.

  “Maybe we can take some pictures tonight. I’ll want to memorialize it, too. It’s a big night for me, finally meeting you.”

  “As for me. I knew you had to be someone special. Chris has always been picky about who he spends his time with. And it’s been so long since he’s had anyone in his life I started worrying he’d end up a confirmed old bachelor! Watching him glow every time he speaks about you has done my heart good. I’m a typical mother, Sidonie. I just want my boy to be happy.”

  “I hope he is,” she responded shyly. “I think he is.”

  Delores put her arm through hers. “I think he is too. And he’s putting dessert together for us to enjoy in the parlor, so why don’t we head down there now and find the best seat in front of the fireplace?”

  Sidonie loved that this old house had an actual parlor where dessert could be enjoyed, where the chill of autumn allowed for the coziness of a real fire. She was relieved that they’d been able to share an extraordinary meal of rib roast, mashed potatoes, and sautéed green beans without the feared tension of intra-family dissent— Vanessa called early in the evening to alert Delores that work would keep her later than expected.

  Now, seated as instructed in the chair closest to the fireplace, Sidonie felt . . . happy: sated with good food, warm spirits, and an overriding sense of well-being. She could hear Chris and his mother laughing in the kitchen, the whirr of an electric beater (there’d been promises of real whipped cream), all lilted by Billie Holiday’s singular voice floating softly from the stereo. Sidonie appreciated the fact that she’d be able to share these experiences as often as they could get down here. Chris and his mother were close, Hyde Park was an easy drive during
nonpeak hours, which meant enjoyment of this lustrous setting, and the ease and charm of Delores’s company, were sure to become a part of their relationship. The thought pleased her, particularly given her own familial deficit.

  Suddenly the front door clamored open and, in the rush of cool air that accompanied her entrance, Vanessa stumbled into the foyer. Literally stumbled.

  “Oh, fuck me! Goddammit . . .” she growled as keys were dropped, then retrieved and flung onto a table. There was rustling of coats and scarves, then the inevitable approach from around the corner to the parlor, where Sidonie, with dread descending, awaited the moment of contact.

  “Sidonie! There you are! I hoped I wouldn’t miss you.” Tidy in a navy business suit and white blouse, her hair pulled in a tight bun at the nape of her neck, Vanessa presented as the professional she was, but her speech was slurred, her eyes droopy and unfocused, and her movements decidedly wobbly. It was not hard to determine that she’d spent at least some of her previous hours in the company of alcohol. Perhaps even lots of alcohol. Oddly, her cheerful greeting to Sidonie seemed authentic.

  “Hello, Vanessa,” Sidonie responded, rising from her comfortable seat to extend a hand. “I’m so glad to finally meet you.”

  “Are you? My husband says I’m not cheerful enough to make anyone glad . . . or something like that.” Vanessa chortled, shaking the proffered hand. “No need for ceremony with me, we’re all family here.” She dropped to a nearby chair and leaned back, eyes closed, her entire being suffused with exhaustion. “I’m sorry I missed dinner. But my husband—well, actually, my soon-to-be-ex-husband—served me divorce papers today, at my job, on a really difficult day, so . . .” She faded.

  “I’m sorry. That’s got to be—”

  “He is an unmitigated, unequivocal—as many fucking ‘uns’ as you can possibly pull out of your ass—prick!”

  “Vanessa!” Delores and Chris, bearing trays of coffee and peach cobbler, walked smack into the assault of Vanessa’s vituperation. Delores displayed her disciplinarian side without hesitation. “That is completely unacceptable at any time. It is certainly unacceptable when we have a guest.”

  “Hey, Ness.” Chris put his tray down and walked over to his sister, leaning in to give her a hug. “Smells like you’ve enjoyed some spirits tonight, little sister. Hope you didn’t drive.”

  “Fuck you. I’m not an idiot, despite what some people think. I did have a drink or many,” she responded slyly, “that’s true, but there was no enjoying. Everything tasted like piss, but what the fuck, right?”

  “Child, you are going to break me!” Delores set a dessert plate down loudly enough to make a point. Vanessa rolled her eyes and turned to her brother.

  “But yes, Christopher,” Vanessa continued, “I was very responsible; I took a cab home, and since I don’t have to work until ten tomorrow, I’ve got plenty of time to mourn the death of my marriage before heading back out to save other, less fortunate people.”

  “Well . . . good.” Refusing to volley with her, Chris sat next to Sidonie, who, hoping to avert conversational Armageddon, was forkfuls into dessert.

  “Oh my God,” she exalted, her mouth full. “This might be the best thing I’ve ever eaten! Did you make it, Delores?”

  “I did. A favorite recipe.” She beamed. “Vanessa, would you like some cobbler?” There was terseness in the question.

  “No, Mother, unless you want to see me vomit it all over your beautiful parlor rug.”

  Delores could hold back no longer. “Then I suggest you get yourself to your room and begin your recovery process right quick. We are entertaining a guest and I do not appreciate the vulgarity and rudeness you’ve introduced into our evening.”

  Chris interrupted. “Actually, Ma, if you still want me to see if I can get your computer unfrozen, we should probably do that now. Sid and I have to get going pretty soon.” He queried Sidonie with an is that okay? look; she nodded, hesitantly.

  Delores rose. “All right, son.” With a shot back at Vanessa: “Do you think you can be civil for a few minutes?”

  Vanessa sighed like a teenager. “I will do my very best, Mother.”

  As they, perhaps unwisely, trundled off, Vanessa leaned back on the couch. “I’m sorry. I’m being a bitch.”

  “I know you’re going through a lot right now,” Sidonie said cautiously, aware that the portentous mood could explode without warning and bloody them both. For Chris’s sake, for Delores’s sake, she was determined to keep things in check.

  Vanessa sat back up and took a slow sip of coffee, her hands shaking in the effort. “I have no doubt Chris has told you how I feel about him dating a white woman.”

  And right into the fray.

  Sidonie felt the weight of inevitable conflict descend. Her thoughts went immediately to the repair upstairs, hoping it was a quick fix.

  “He mentioned it. I’m not quite sure how to respond, but I do know it makes me sad.”

  Vanessa looked up sharply. “Sad?”

  “Yes. Chris loves you, you’re his family. It’s important to him what you think.”

  “Chris doesn’t give a shit what I think.”

  “I know he admires you for the things you do, the things you fight for. He’s shared a lot of that with me too.”

  “Uh-huh. Anyway . . .” Vanessa leaned over her mother’s cobbler and started picking at it. “Do you have any thoughts about all that?” Her voice was baiting; Sidonie felt both trapped and curious.

  “You really want to get into this right now?”

  “Why not? We’re here, two grown women, sipping coffee and eating cobbler. The moment is now—let’s have the conversation.”

  “I think it might be wiser to wait until we’re both clear-headed and know each other a little better.”

  “Nah! I may be drunk, but I’m not unconscious,” Vanessa retorted, eyes flashing. “Look, Sidonie, it’s not personal. It’s not about judging you because you’re white. It has nothing to do with you at all. And you’re right—I don’t know you—certainly not well enough to know how good or not good you are for my brother. You could be perfect, but that’s not the point.”

  “Feels like exactly the point to me.”

  “It would, coming from your position of privilege.”

  Sidonie shook her head; she was being drawn in despite all efforts to stay out. “Ah . . . there it is. That word that presumes so much about me. That presumes I have what I have because it was granted to me somehow, and nothing could be further from the truth. Everything I have I got through my own hard work, and I resent being made to feel otherwise.”

  Vanessa’s face softened. “But I’m not saying that. I have no doubt you’ve worked really hard for what you have. That’s not what privilege means in this context. You should know that by now.”

  “Then explain the context.”

  “Okay . . .” Vanessa stood with a slight teeter. Glancing toward the staircase as if to assess how much time she had, she launched with the didacticism of a professor. “Privilege is walking into any situation armed with the confidence of your perceived majority, the blank slate of your whiteness and its status as the cultural norm. It’s your whiteness exempting you from suspicion, from limit, from microaggressions and implicit bias, from being followed around department stores, or getting profiled by the police or the court system. Privilege is what allows you to get a loan, or rent an apartment, expect proper medical care without any thought to your race. It’s about your race not being a reason for anything, whether shoving you into a category or impacting an outcome. Privilege is living without the color of your skin being the first thing people see, think, know, or judge about you.” She turned to Sidonie, almost apologetic. “Can you understand that?”

  While Vanessa was talking, Sidonie flashed on the encounters she’d already experienced with Chris and couldn’t avoid her own epiphanous view of exactly what Vanessa referenced. “I can.”

  Taken aback, Vanessa dropped to her chair. “Really?” s
he asked sincerely.

  “To the extent I can. Being with Chris, seeing certain responses and reactions he gets, things I never noticed or imagined before, yeah . . . it’s been enlightening. It’s made me pay more attention.”

  “Good. You need to be enlightened. Your whole race needs to be enlightened.”

  “I’m sure that’s true, but what does it have to do with me and Chris?”

  “It doesn’t directly. The problem is tangential. There’s a long, painful history to this . . . centuries of oppression mixed with the cultural aggrandizement of whiteness, that thing we couldn’t be. White women, white beauty, white value—it all got put on a pedestal while our people were brutalized as ugly and inhuman. Black men were hung for even looking at a white woman, yet some in my community actually try to look white, as white as they can. Can you believe that?”

  “No, it’s really—”

  “Our men and women suffered this history together, transcended this history together, but that idealization still leads some of my brothers to want what they couldn’t have. So instead of choosing black women to build our communities and create family, they want the freedom of personal choice—the freedom to be with white women. Which to many of us feels like repudiation.” Vanessa leaned back and closed her eyes as if the exercise of articulation had depleted her.

  Sidonie felt gutted. “So you see Chris’s involvement with me as a repudiation of his race? Our little personal relationship bears the burden of that much weight?”

  “In a personal sense, no. In a cultural sense, yes. I don’t think he chose you to betray his race, but I don’t think my brother gives a shit what his choices mean.”

  Sidonie could hear shuffling upstairs, chairs scraping, the movement of feet; her anxiety silently begged Chris to wrap it up and find his way back down. “Or maybe he sees true freedom as having the right to make any choice desired, without obligation to race. Isn’t that the purest, most basic form of freedom?”