Original Love

by J. J. Murray

  Ebony points at the woods across the street. Our woods. “Come on.” Then she gets out of the car.

  “What’s going on?” Destiny asks.

  I unbuckle my seat belt and get out, waving a car around us. “You’ll have to drive on to your grandma’s house without us. Your mama and I are going on a trip down memory lane.”

  Destiny groans as she gets out. “You too are just too romantic for your own good.”

  “I know.” I kiss her soft cheek. “See you.”

  “I’m just glad the bowling alley is a grocery store now,” she says as she buckles up.

  “You know about the bowling alley?”

  “Yes. You two would have me out there with you, I’m sure, wearing those nasty shoes worn by who knows who.”

  “It’s ‘whom.’”

  “Whatever.”

  Though it’s cold and getting colder, Ebony’s hand is warm, so warm I almost don’t notice that we’re walking through our woods in a suit and a dress, a brand new engagement ring on her finger. The leaves crunch under our feet, the sun drops rays here and there, and the wind sighs all around us.

  “It doesn’t seem nearly as big as it used to be,” I say.

  “Oh, it’s still big,” she says. “Just use your imagination.”

  “It was so easy to get lost in here once.”

  “Yeah.”

  We pass the old dance studio, its picture window reflecting only us today. Ebony does a little pirouette and curtsy, while I stand there doing a very bad impersonation of John Travolta. We pass the Cave, and neither of us says a word, Ebony rolling her eyes. All those misses have been filled in with cement forever. We look off to the left and see the Captain’s deck, still standing, still sturdy as any boat ever built.

  “I still go there in my dreams,” Ebony says. “I’m up under that deck with my first and only boyfriend, and we’re sharing secrets the world will never know.” She stops me before the final rise to Preston Street to rest her head on my chest. “I’ve been thinking a lot about our book, Peter. Maybe we could skip some of those secret moments, you know, leave them out, save something for just us to remember.”

  “You mean the part about me, um, missing?”

  “Especially that, though it was kind of sweet.” She winks. “I was good at making you miss, huh?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And I don’t want anyone to look at me like I was some teenaged hoochie.”

  “You weren’t.”

  “Oh, the way you wrote it kind of makes it seem that way.”

  “You weren’t a hoochie. I did put in the part about your, um, rules.”

  She looks at our hands. “Yeah. A lot of good those rules did.”

  Oh, yeah. We had us a child with those rules in force.

  “And maybe you could skip that day with your dad. I don’t want the world to think your dad was some monster.”

  Hold on here. “But he was a monster.” He was Godzilla with a shave.

  “Maybe then he was, but later he was…” She sighs. “Later he was you, Peter. Underneath all that hatefulness, your daddy was you. He was so full of tenderness for Destiny, for me, even for Mama.” She coughs. “Okay, maybe not as much for Mama as me and Destiny, but he was at least civil to her.” She bites her lip. “He was, well, handsome in his own way, too, and I’m starting to see signs of him in you.” She traces my jaw line with a finger. “You have his chin, his eyes, and if you’d get a haircut and a shave, you’d have the spitting image of his face.” She kisses my chin. “You’re a handsome man, Peter Underhill, just like your daddy was, and maybe we should soften him a bit in our book.”

  There wasn’t a soft spot on the Captain’s entire scaly body. “I don’t know…”

  “Well, at least think about it, okay?”

  “I will.” I look toward the slope.

  “I mean, you didn’t get to see him with Destiny.”

  Don’t I know it.

  “He showed us all a completely different side.”

  Men have been known to mellow in their old age, to spend their declining years making up for past regrets. “So I’ve heard.”

  “So I’m telling you.” She grips my lapels and gives a little shake. “Your daddy wasn’t a saint, I know that, but he was a wonderful grandfather, and I’m glad Destiny got to know him.”

  “I’m glad, too,” I say, and I begin pulling her toward the slope.

  “No, you’re not.”

  She’s right, of course, but I want this conversation to end. “Your Mama’s waiting.”

  “She can wait.”

  I let out a long breath and stare up into the trees, bulbous gray clouds shuffling above them. It’s true what that old saying tells us: the dead—not the living—make the longest demands on us. “Look, Ebony, everything I wrote happened as I remember it happening. It’s the truth, and the feelings I have for the man are the truth, too. I can’t change those feelings because you or anyone else says that my daddy was a changed man in the last few years of his life.”

  “So serious,” she says, and she squeezes my hand.

  “I can’t help it, right? It’s my serious daddy in me, right?”

  She pulls me to her. “It isn’t your daddy at all, Peter. It’s you and you alone, and you’ve got issues, and until you get past those feelings—”

  “Look, I’m not going to canonize the guy, if that’s what you want.”

  “No. I don’t expect that.”

  “Well, what do you expect?”

  Her face hardens. “I expect you to respect your own daddy. At least you had one for most of your life.” She drops my hand and starts up the slope. “Well, come on.”

  Damn. Captain, why did you have to ruin my engagement like that? No. Wait. The Captain isn’t ruining anything. I’ve just gotten engaged before God, but I can’t seem to lay my burden down before God. I’m ruining my own engagement.

  “You coming?” she asks from the top of the slope, her arms crossed.

  I look to my left at the Captain’s deck, at the darkness underneath, at the steps leading to the path to the screen door of the kitchen. In my mind, I still hear the screen door slamming, still see him storming down the path, still feel those fists on my face, still taste the blood, still smell my own fear.

  “I’ll, uh, meet you around the other side,” I say. “Near where we used to shoot hoops with Mickey.” Please understand, Ebony.

  Her face softens. “Okay. Don’t be too long. It’s cold.”

  And getting colder.

  I watch her cross the Captain’s old lawn before winding up a narrow path most likely created by water running down the hill behind the house. Branches tear at my pants all the way to the deck, but I don’t really feel them because I’m thirteen again and I’m with my girl and we’re escaping the world and it’s so quiet and she’s so beautiful and I’m so scared of that beauty and what my hands want to do and—

  I freeze and close my eyes.

  I don’t hear the screen door slamming.

  I’m trying to hear it, that screeching sound as it opens, that metallic bang as it closes, but I only hear the sighs of the wind. I don’t see the Captain storming down the path. Instead, I see pot after pot of the Captain’s geraniums, all red, all thriving, all lined up on the edge of the deck, his hands turning over the dirt. I don’t feel any fists, just the wind cooling my tears. I don’t taste any blood either. It’s…shepherd’s pie? Why, of all things, is it shepherd’s pie? The Captain’s favorite meal. And instead of smelling fear, I smell roasted meat, potatoes, corn, and tomatoes, the potatoes crispy, the meat heavily seasoned with salt and pepper.

  I open my eyes. I’m under the Captain’s deck, and it’s not as enchanted as it once was. I feel a sense of loss from that, but I’ve found something else here, too: I’ve found a regular old dad with all the faults of regular old dads the world over. I had a regular dad and didn’t know it. I tap the wood, and it echoes slightly, and from somewhere deep in the woods, I hear a faint creak, l
ike the creak in the Argo that vanished the other night. I know it’s just a tree bending in the wind, but…

  Maybe these woods weren’t mine and Ebony’s at all. They were really the Captain’s woods, and we just had the chance to get lost in them once upon a time.

  I scramble up the bank, take the steps two at a time, fly down the path, and stop short when I see white plastic pots stacked near the back porch. They could be the Captain’s old pots. They’re still around, too?

  I race through Mrs. Hite’s hedges to Ebony. It looks as if she’s playing an imaginary game of basketball in the place where Mickey Mather’s basketball goal used to be. I slow to a walk and watch as she dribbles, head fakes right, goes left, and does her patented up-and-under move, her left hand high in the air. Though there’s no backboard there, I still look up. I’m sure it went in.

  “You still have some serious moves,” I say.

  “I’m still unstoppable,” she says, and she passes me the imaginary ball. “You okay?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Did you see him?”

  I feel a lump in my throat. “Yeah, I think I did.”

  “Good. I go back there to talk to him sometime, too. Mrs. Service—that’s the lady who lives there now—she doesn’t seem to mind. Now pass me the ball, I’m open.”

  I throw a bounce pass with our imaginary ball, and she dribbles once and pulls up for a fade-away jump shot. “Swish,” I say.

  “Nothin’ but the bottom of the net.”

  Standing a few minutes later on Candace’s porch, I start to feel nervous. “Where’s your car?”

  Ebony shrugs. “There’s never any telling where your daughter is at any given moment, even when she’s right there in front of you. She’ll show up.” She rings the bell. “Don’t know why I always ring the bell to my own mama’s house. You remember she had this thing about always knocking before entering any room.”

  I had forgotten this. I’ll have to add it to my book. “But as I recall, your mama didn’t have to knock at all.”

  Ebony turns and smiles. “Yeah. She caught us a few times, huh? Maybe we can confront her about that today.”

  “Not today.”

  “Chicken.”

  She has that right.

  The door opens, and Gladys welcomes us inside. Ebony flashes the ring in front of her face and puts a finger to Gladys’s lips. Gladys hugs her, then me, then shuts the door behind us. Ebony takes my hand, and we walk into the living room where Candace sits, her hands folded together as if in prayer.

  “Show me the ring,” she says before we’re fully in the room.

  Ebony’s shoulders slump. “Who told you?”

  Candace puts an imaginary phone to her ear. “Candace, this is Carolyn Johnson from church. How you doin’? We hope to see you out to church real soon. Well, I just wanted you to know that your daughter and some white man…”

  “But I wanted to surprise you, Mama.”

  “Then don’t become engaged during the altar call in front of a church that loves to gossip. Now show me the ring.” Ebony spreads out her fingers, and Candace nods her head. “Not bad, Pete. Kinda stylish. Destiny did a nice job.”

  “What?” Ebony shouts.

  “Uh, yeah, well, you see—” I start to say.

  Ebony waves a hand in my face. “I’ll deal with that later. Does Aunt Wee Wee know? I can at least surprise her.”

  “Who you think I told first?” She rolls toward me. “You gonna ask me if it’s all right for you to marry my daughter?”

  I shake my head.

  “Good. I’ve taught you something. Never let anyone stand—or sit—in the way of your happiness.”

  I nod.

  “You gonna say anything, Pete, anything at all?”

  I’ve been waiting to say this for the longest time. “Hi, Mom.”

  Nothing happens at first. I hear Candace catch her breath while she nods. “Yep, I knew you’d say something like that.” She starts to tear up. “Why you gotta say stuff like that, huh? I’m through crying for you two, and here I am about to—” She looks down at my pants and shoes. “Boy, what you trackin’ into my nice clean house? Just look at all that dirt Gladys is gonna have to clean up later. You ain’t no son of mine, bringing all that mud up into my house. ‘Hi, Mom,’ he says, like that’s gonna make everything okay.” She smiles and swats a tear from her cheek. “Well, Pete, I want you to know that it does make everything okay.”

  I hug her with all my might. “You had me going there for a—”

  “But,” she interrupts, “you’re gonna have to clean up that mess right now.”

  I look behind me. I have tracked in quite a bit of that moist dirt from under the deck. “I will.”

  “And don’t you be callin’ me ‘Mom,’ boy. That is so white. Call me ‘Mama’ or nothin’ at all, you hear?”

  “I hear. Mama.”

  The door crashes open, and a breathless Destiny stumbles in, adding more mud to Candace’s carpet.

  “Oh, Lord!” Candace cries. “Why you gotta be so much like your daddy, child?”

  Destiny stops in her tracks. “I ran out of gas.”

  “But that don’t explain why you gotta bring all the dirt in Huntington into my house, does it?” Candace sighs and looks up at Ebony. “Girl, what we gonna do with these two?”

  Ebony blinks out a set of tears. “Love ’em, Mama. We’re gonna love ’em.”

  20

  God, it’s nice to be with the one I love again. I can waltz through Bethel every Sunday, smiling, unafraid to tell everyone we’ve set a date for an April wedding. I can even flirt with Ebony unashamedly right in front of Candace after the service in the very room where I was so afraid to flirt before. I lavish kisses, what the Danish call “messengers of love,” on Ebony in full view of the Queen, and I can even say romantic thoughts out loud. “These weeks have flown by on butterfly wings,” I announce to the ladies playing spades.

  Candace and Estelle usually tell me to shut up whenever I say these things, but not Aunt Wee Wee—unless I forget her smokes.

  And rather than putting a damper on our sex life, the public proposal at the church leads to some holy (and not so holy) lovemaking. Ebony sends Destiny out often, for only a few items on the grocery list at a time, while Ebony and I get lost in each other. I’m surprised that I can keep up, as old as I am, but Ebony has us taking morning walks along the beach and through the woods to get back into what she calls “sexual shape.”

  I can’t explain it, but somehow time stops in Ebony’s bedroom, night seeming to go on forever. With Edie, I could count to a hundred and be through, but with Ebony I lose count. I still try reading the phone book in my mind to control my orgasms, but I never get past “AAA Auto.”

  “Sorry,” I say often.

  “Don’t be. You’re flattering me. I’m glad I still have some sex appeal left.”

  And then we spoon and talk until the spooning leads to more reading of the phone book in my mind. We mainly talk about Destiny—her favorite colors, her moods, and her tangential conversations. We also discuss my old baseball days, our changed bodies, and old friends.

  “Whatever happened to Eddie Tucci?”

  Ebony laughs. “The kid who smelled like garlic?”

  “Yeah. Even his punches smelled like garlic. He once hit me in the arm, and it smelled like garlic all day.”

  She sniffs my shoulder. “You smell like me now. Anyway, Eddie got arrested a couple years after graduation. Remember that Chevelle of his?”

  “Yeah.” Who could ever forget that bomb with a cracked windshield, dangling muffler, fuzzy dice, and flaky black paint? It was more a mid-sized hearse than a car. It even had a bumper sticker that read “Protected by the Mafia: Keepa Ya Hands Off.”

  “Well, Eddie was never too bright, and he got it into his thick head to steal a bike.”

  “But he had a car.”

  “And that’s where the police found the bike. In the trunk.”

  “How much time di
d he serve?”

  Ebony shrugs. “Long enough for the rest of them to finally move out. Remember when they tried to sell their house?”

  I had forgotten. Mr. Tucci had nailed a blank sign way up in the old oak tree in front of his house. Then he had carefully carried a full bucket of red paint and a paintbrush up the ladder. “Why didn’t he paint that sign on the ground and let it dry first?”

  “Who knows? You can still see the paint on the tree.”

  “Guess Eddie didn’t fall far from the tree.”

  I get an elbow to the ribs for that one. “What about Eric Hite?”

  “Jail.”

  “Little Eric?”

  “He went out to Lake Ronkonkoma or some such place and tried to rob a liquor store with a popgun. The owner had a shotgun, and, well, our little Eric still has some buckshot in his butt. He’ll never be able to go through a metal detector.”

  The liquor store owner must have had incredible aim. Eric was always so small. “What about Mark Brand?”

  “Mark? I have no idea, and neither does anyone else. After graduation, he just disappeared. I’ve been looking for him on milk cartons or those missing persons posters ever since.”

  That’s so sad. Mark’s family never seemed to care much for him anyway, and one Christmas all they gave him was a carton of Marlboros. I only went into Mark’s house once, but that was enough. In Mark’s room, a naked, hairy man in midair flipped off the world from a poster covering a head-shaped hole in the wall. “I made that one,” Mark told me. “Course, my pop helped me a little.”

  “So,” Ebony says, turning to me and stroking my beard, “that only leaves Mickey Mather from your old gang.”

  “It wasn’t a gang.”

  “Oh, I don’t know. The way you all rode around on those bikes with the baseball cards in the spokes—very spooky. I’ve never understood that.”

  And neither do I. If we had just saved half of those cards, we’d all have a nest egg. Those cards probably would be worth hundreds, if not thousands, by now. “We weren’t a gang.”

  “Willie made you all a gang.”

  There’s some truth to this, so I don’t deny it.

  “He got you all into all sorts of trouble.”