by Janet Walker
***
The main and lower levels of Gracewood Mansion hummed with jovial talk and laughter. Instrumental jazz renditions of Christmas favorites floated over the house’s sound system, and on television sets in the den, sunroom, and basement, an NFL game and other programs ensued. The catered Christmas Eve dinner, sumptuous and plentiful, burned agreeably in the bellies of the forty or so Gracewood guests, who now sipped eggnog, champagne, colas and punch, and sampled creamy and flaky dessert offerings. In the manner of individuals in a social setting, the guests had drifted into cliques of comfort.
In the warmly furnished den, the majority of the adults congregated. Elizabeth Nelson, Darrel’s mother, a rotund chocolate woman with happy face and gray-streaked hair set in a bun, sat in an overstuffed armchair, dark clasped hands resting on her full belly as she chuckled at the antics and comments of the young people around her, especially the men—Darrel, his brother-in-law Greg, State Supreme Court Judge Elwyn Curtis, Darrel’s teammate Throne, and Darrel’s band mate Bob—who divided their attention between conversing with the wives, watching football, and heartily debating politics and sports. Keyboardist for the Jaznel quartet, Bob smiled often and engaged in banter and intelligent debate with anyone willing to include him in their nets of conversation. Throne Rogers was the Majestics’ six-foot-eight power forward with a languid, fatherly spirit. Judge Curtis, who except for his girth resembled an aging W.E.B. DuBois, sat with arms clasped across his chest, above his ample belly, and occasionally wagged a finger in comment as he conversed with the men and viewed, with the intensity of the avid, the football game. Greg Aaron, a stoutly built factory worker, made passionate contributions to the debates and was glad to have opportunity to spurn his reticent wife, Liz, Darrel’s twenty-seven-year-old sister who sat on the room’s central sofa and idly watched the game. Reserved and condescending, Liz assumed herself and her three-year-old daughter Mia the sophisticated bright-skinned exceptions to her loud, dark, bucolic family. Throne’s wife Angela sat beside Liz and Mia on the sofa and occasionally shared a comment with Liz that had nothing to do with the game they were being forced to watch.
On a loveseat against the wall sat Johnnie Mae, at thirty-five the oldest of the Nelson children. Hefty and strong, loud and bossy, she with a good heart felt it her duty to help Mrs. Gentry supervise the caterers. She also continually threatened into obedience her three children—Lil Mike, 9, Eddie, 7, and Quinton, 3. Johnnie Mae’s husband Mike, a tall strapping country boy, humble and shy, with a mouthful of crooked brown teeth, sat next to her with long legs stretched before him and powerful arms crossed. Mike watched the action in the den with an air of quiet resignation—his way of coping with being the only Brogans-wearing, hog-slaughtering member of an extroverted country clan whose members could now afford to park Jaguars and Benzes next to his pig pens when they came to visit Johnnie Mae.
Downstairs in Darrel’s den, his band mates, Risco and Jake, along with teammate Gary and Darrel’s brother Dave, kept their attention split between a game of poker, televised ball games, and the contents of the wet bar. Risco the drummer, with a pencil moustache and red beret, which he wore everywhere, arrived at Gracewood with eyes already pink from marijuana because he knew the mistress of Gracewood would allow no smoking of grass at the party. Jake the bass player spoke little and nodded to the rhythm of the stereo’s jazz. Gary Hill was the Majestics’ shooting guard with boyish dimpled looks and a reputation as a ladies’ man. Leona and Sierra, Risco and Jake’s twin-sister girlfriends who wore pantsuits with halter tops even though it was winter, played spades at a small game table and resented Grace Nelson for not allowing cigarette smoking in her house. Thirty-four-year-old David Nelson made frequent trips to the bar. On his head glistened a curly perm, and the top three buttons of his silk shirt were undone, exposing the coiled hairs on his chest. Since, during the course of the day, the contents of a six pack had slipped down his gullet, Dave now spit when he spoke, telling stories about sexual escapades and what it was like to grow up with his now-famous younger brother. (And since he was sodden and thought he was being discreet, at several points during the day he went upstairs to ogle the toned body of his brother’s wife.)
In the spacious sun/recreation room on the main level, where the young people gathered behind soundproof closed French doors, a man sat before an elaborate turntable console with sizable speakers, spinning records and playing cassette tapes that featured R&B Christmas favorites and hip-hop dance selections. Cayla Nelson, Darrel’s shy youngest sister, and her boyfriend Tony sat close to each other on a patio love seat. A plump, elfin college student who wore glasses and resembled the actress Butterfly McQueen, Cayla possessed a whiney voice that wafted occasionally into the air of the room and became lost in the shrapnel of conversation. Tony, a skinny teenager who wore baggy jeans and an oversized knit cap, was obsessed with getting the chance, at some point after dinner, to play basketball on the estate’s indoor court against his idol, Jazz Nelson. The eleven Grace Girls and their guests sat around two long tables, placed end-to-end, that had earlier served as the party’s dining altar. The girls’ companions were, for the most part, boyfriends, but Wanda Carver brought one of her brothers, LaKisha Thomas and Kathy Prentiss came with their mothers, Evelyn Dent arrived with her older sister, and Vanessa Willis brought a cousin. The girls’ male companions swapped gossip and jokes in raucous adolescent fashion, but the girls tried to restrain themselves, mindful that their behavior was a reflection of their coach. The glass walls of the rec room provided inhabitants with a view of the pool and patio on the terrace level below. In the cold descending darkness of the December evening, the water of the heated and illuminated pool emitted fingers of steam and glowed luminescent and blue. During the day, the few adult smokers among the guests huddled on the terrace to accommodate their habit, flicking ashes into a shiny brass ashtray that rested on the patio in a glazed ceramic stand. When day turned to dusk, the teens inside the sunroom, if they stood at the glass walls and looked toward the ground, could observe an occasional tiny glowing orange eye, the burning tip of a cigarette butt, hovering in the air.
Grace occasionally swept through the rooms to monitor the comfort of her guests. Each time she did so, she caused restrained excitement—she was among them! But the restraint soon turned into relaxed laughter and assurances that, yes, they were having a good time—a great time—and everything was fine and the food was excellent, the Swedish meatballs being the best they had ever tasted, and yes, they would try the eggnog and no, there were no hidden glasses of champagne in the sunroom with the young people and could she please tell Darrel his big brother said to come down and have a word with the bartender because he was tripping about serving the guests as much as they wanted. When she wasn’t among them, Grace sat in the elegant piano parlor with Dr. Curtis and the mothers of LaKisha and Kathy. Throne’s wife Angela spent the first part of the visit with the ladies in the parlor but finally drifted into the den to be near her majestic husband. Gradually, Mrs. Thomas and Mrs. Prentiss, too, drifted away, leaving only Grace, Dr. Curtis, and the elegant white Steinway. Though removed from the setting of the physician’s office, the two women assumed the roles of confessing patient and listening doctor. They sat on the Victorian love chair against a wall in the room—the doctor with a glass of rosé; Grace, with a cup of hot cider—and were happy to finally be alone together.
“Well, now,” said Dr. Curtis in her soothing Caribbean enunciation, “I am impressed by you. Fifty people! At the same time! And nobody’s carrying you out on a stretcher!”
Grace chuckled.
“What happened?” the doctor inquired.
“I took your advice. Now, I’ll admit I had some reservations—and, really, with the girls it was a last-minute decision that I wouldn’t have made normally, but”—she smiled—“I’m glad I did. It feels good.”
“See? People aren’t so bad.”
“You don’t know the half of it,” Grace boasted playfully. “One of m
y girls has been here several times. Four weekends, in fact.”
“No!” said the doctor with dramatic disbelief.
“Yes. And spent the night.”
The doctor marveled. “Well, aren’t you one to jump off the deep end at the first lesson!”
“You told me to open up!”
“Yes! But I didn’t tell you to open up a hotel!”
They laughed.
“And I’ve been telling you to do that for years, but you never listened before. What was so special about this one?”
“First of all, she’s an incredible athlete. By the time she graduates, I think she’ll be the best I’ve ever coached. Secondly, she’s not had an easy life. Grew up in Ariel Place Projects with a mother who drank and abused drugs and did horrible things to her whenever she felt like it. Had the poor child so terrified she not only wouldn’t speak about the abuse to anyone, she wouldn’t speak much at all.”
“Oh, my. And Ariel Place. How did you get her?”
“She came to live with her aunt in MacDonald Park. Thank God.” Grace hesitated thoughtfully. “But even with all of that, I’m still surprised I let her in—and so generously. You know I’ve never befriended any of the students.”
“I know. That’s been your law.”
“And I didn’t intend to break it with her. I only planned to talk to her enough to find out what made her tick on court—she’s so effortlessly amazing. But the next thing I know, she’s with me in the Family Lounge and sleeping in one of my beds! I even took her shopping. At Saks and Neiman’s, of all places.”
“Oh, my! See?” the doctor said, waving a scolding finger. “That’s the way it is with people like you. Restraint, restraint, all your life! Like a dam, building up water pressure. But the moment you give in a little—blam! It all comes bursting out. Everything you’ve held back.”
Grace smiled guiltily. “You’re not telling me anything I don’t know. I’m admitting I went overboard with her.”
“Well,” the doctor conceded, “it’s only natural to imitate what’s been done to us. Tip was your mother-angel. Maybe some part of you needs to be someone else’s.”
Grace considered the explanation and liked it. “I hadn’t thought of that.”
“Well, if you’d get the help I suggest, you wouldn’t have to go and steal somebody else’s child to save. You could have your own.” The doctor chuckled.
From the next room came a threatening yell of reproof from Johnnie Mae.
“Boy!”
Grace and Dr. Curtis, who had a view of the den from their place on the loveseat, turned and looked at the commotion in the other room. One of Johnnie Mae’s sons had spilled a glass of punch on the den’s carpet. Grace froze in alarm—her precious berber!—and as she and the doctor watched, the child received a solid whack on the head from his mother. Grace closed her eyes in dismay, then looked at the doctor helplessly.
Dr. Curtis chuckled. “The liabilities of entertaining,” she reminded.
Both women looked back at the den. Darrel had risen with soothing assurances. “Never mind, Johnnie, it’s just a spill, can come right up,” he was saying.
Grace looked at the doctor. “He would say that,” she commented with mock annoyance.
Mrs. Gentry, informed of the crisis, rushed into view, cloth in hand, to treat the stain. Grace smiled. She had felt appreciation all day for Mrs. Gentry, partly because the older woman seemed the only person who truly understood how precious everything was in the house.
“So,” said the doctor, observing Grace’s expression as she watched the maid, “that arrangement is working out well?”
Grace sighed in admission. “Yes.”
“And Darrel was right.”
“Yes. I was wrong,” Grace admitted with feigned reluctance before continuing seriously. “She comes in twice a week, does a thorough job, and absolutely is an excellent cook. In fact, if there were going to be fewer guests, I would have asked her to prepare the meal.”
“So. In a relatively short span of time, you’ve gone from being a virtual anthrophobic to a woman who lets another launder her lingerie. That’s pretty revolutionary!”
They laughed.
“And how are things between you and Darrel?” Dr. Curtis asked meaningfully.
Grace sobered, bowed her head, sighed heavily. “This time next year,” she said softly, “I don’t think we’ll be here.”
The doctor looked pained. “Oh, Grace.”
“He’s tired. And so am I.”
“Tired?” criticized the doctor. “You just started! That’s the problem with you young people. You want everything microwave! A good marriage takes time! And hard work!”
Grace received the reprimand with humble silence.
The doctor softened and asked, “Have you talked to him? About everything?”
Grace’s silence became guilt.
“Well, it’s no wonder you’re in trouble,” the doctor reproved.
After a sigh, Grace confessed. “We haven’t had sex in two months. But this time it’s not just because I haven’t wanted to. He doesn’t ask anymore. Well,” she corrected, “he asks but it’s…as if he could take it or leave it. He’s never been that way before.”
“You think he’s seeing someone else?”
“Probably.”
“And how does that make you feel?”
“Horrible,” Grace admitted frankly.
“Then fix it.”
“That would be his obligation, wouldn’t it?”
“It’s both of you,” the doctor insisted. “Grace,” the doctor pleaded, “I would hate to see you and Darrel’s life together come to an end. There’s so much beauty in you as a team!”
Grace lowered her head. “I know.”
The doctor tilted her head to look closely at Grace’s lowered face. She spoke gently. “Do you love him, Grace?”
Grace lifted her head to gaze toward the den, where Darrel’s excited voice joined the chorus of men reacting to the football game. “Yes,” she answered. “I do.” She glanced at the doctor and then gazed again at her lap, this time sadly. “I just don’t love being married to him.”
The women looked at each other and their eyes filled. And then they heard Elwyn Curtis, from the den, cry out disappointedly, “Oh! Man!”
Grace smiled and Dr. Curtis rolled her eyes with feigned annoyance.
“I think we should get in there,” Grace suggested. “The judge sounds angry.”
“He gets so upset when that team loses,” the doctor said, cutting her eyes in the direction of the den. “I tell him he should be used to it by now!” Both women laughed again and stood.
“We’re not finished talking,” the doctor said, a warning that they would resume the conversation at another time. Grace nodded in compliance. As she and Dr. Curtis walked into the den, the young men erupted in cheers—their team had scored a touchdown—while the judge roared in disapproval. Dr. Curtis went over to her husband, removed his cap—a brimmed lid featuring his team’s logo and incongruent with his dress slacks and blazer—and kissed his bald head. “They’re losing, Ella!” he declared as if in surprise. “Losing!” he repeated.
“Yes, and you’re losing your hair because of it. Calm down before you pop a blood vessel,” she scolded.
Elizabeth Nelson and the other women chuckled, and the judge looked at the women and pointed at his wife. “You see how she talks to me? She is why I am bald! Not football!” he declared.
A special two-part ringtone jangled in the kitchen. Darrel and Grace looked at each other. The intercom, which meant someone was at Gracewood’s front gate. Her expression asked, Who else have you invited? His expression responded, I’m as surprised as you are. Darrel rose and headed for the swinging door that connected the den to the kitchen. Before he could reach it, the door pushed open and Mrs. Gentry looked in at Darrel and Grace, a bewildered expression on her face. “Can one of you come and…?” She did not finish the sentence. “There’s someone at the gate w
ho says she’s Charmaine Miller,” the maid explained, a lilt of surprise—and suppressed excitement—in her voice as she pronounced the visitor’s name.
For an instant, it seemed to Grace, the world was silent.
“Charmaine Miller?” repeated someone on the sofa.
And then Darrel’s voice. “Baby?”
Grace looked at him.
“You expecting her?”
Grace shook her head in denial.
Mrs. Gentry waited in the doorway.
“Let me make sure it’s her,” Darrel said, moving toward the maid, “and if it is,” he said as the two moved into the kitchen, “by all means, let her in!”
And then they were gone. Grace looked around the room. Slowly, sounds were coming back, steadily increasing in strength, and she was puzzled by a steady pounding until she realized it was coming from her chest.
“Ooo, Sis-in-law, I didn’t know you knew her!” declared Johnnie Mae with excitement.
Grace stared at Darrel’s chunky sister and nodded and smiled absently.
“Who that is?” asked Mike.
“Boy, I know you didn’t ask that,” scolded Johnnie Mae. “Even you oughtta know who Charmaine Miller is!”
“I dunno who that is,” Mike confessed.
Johnnie Mae sighed and rolled her eyes. “She a preacher! Wit’ her own TV show! She done even been on Oprah.”
“Now, I know who that is,” said Mike, looking at the others in the room with a chuckle.
“That’s right,” explained Liz calmly from the sofa. “They even call her the Oprah of Christian broadcasting.”
“She’s got a whole different vibe than Oprah, though,” argued Angela.
“Oh, yes,” agreed Liz, who did not want to look uninformed beside the big-city NBA wife.
“First of all, she’s beautiful,” explained Angela. “Not that Oprah isn’t attractive, but Charmaine Miller is gorgeous!”
“Yep,” agreed Johnnie Mae. “Don’t look like no preacher.”
“No, she look mo’ like a model,” agreed Elizabeth Nelson.
“That’s because she used to be one,” said Angela.
“That’s right,” agreed Liz. “A real model—not one of these wannabes. But she could have been a movie star, the way she looks.”
“I always said she look like a stewardess,” commented Cayla, who had joined the group.
“And dresses her behind off,” commented Angela.
“Yes!” agreed Liz vigorously. “And no one’s used to that, in a preacher.”
“Ain’t no women preachers on TV, noway, ’cept her,” commented Johnnie Mae.
“Well, no, I’ve seen a few,” disagreed Angela, “but nobody like Pastor Miller—not at all. First of all, she’s the only African American woman. And she’s not only pretty but she’s classy and energetic and not afraid to tell it like it is. And her message is not fire and brimstone. She wants Christians to enjoy life. That’s the way it ought to be.”
“She’s not doing anything Fred Price hasn’t done for years,” commented Judge Curtis.
“You are wrong, honey,” disagreed Dr. Curtis. “I love Frederick, but he is boring up against that child. She’s fun to watch!”
The other women agreed.
“Well, I see I’m not gonna win this argument,” conceded the judge, “but I tell you what,” he said, rubbing his belly—a habit, “if that’s her out there, and if she’ll take an old fat heathen like me, I’m divorcing you tomorrow, Dr. Curtis!”
“I’ll put in the request for you,” retorted the doctor.
The room laughed.
The judge got up from his chair and came toward his wife, arms outstretched, assuring, in an affected Jamaican accent, “Ooooh, honey, I was just flappin’ my lips. You know you’re the best thing ever happened to me!” He planted a kiss on her face.
“Oh, I believe that,” agreed the doctor.
More laughter, but Grace, who sat beside Dr. Curtis, could only manage a distracted flinch of a smile. Charmaine was here. How? Why? The noise in the den swirled around Grace, invading, overwhelming, inundating her senses. Nervously, she touched the skin beneath her nostrils to blot moisture that had formed there, and pounding filled her ears. The other women chattered and Elizabeth Nelson chuckled and Johnnie Mae’s youngest son bawled and the notes of a singing saxophone pierced the air and the TV cheered and emitted whistle blasts and the men guffawed—and then Darrel strode back into the den and said, “Yeah, that’s her.”
The room erupted with excitement, but a sudden bout of deafness again fell over Grace’s ears.
Why is she here? To see you, Grace?
Wow. Charmaine Miller!
Darrel Nelson looked gravely at his wife, who had not gotten up from her chair. Instead, he noticed the stunned expression on her face and understood she did not share the excitement his announcement had generated in their guests. “Grace? She says she’s here to see you,” he said, carefully watching her reaction. She looked at him, but it seemed to Darrel that her gaze went through him even as she smiled politely and nodded her assent. “I already opened the gate,” he confessed and again watched his wife’s reaction. The distracted gaze turned into a stare that focused on him with accusatory sharpness before it swept the room—conscious of the others who were present—and softened into an artificial smile of approval. “That’s fine,” she said, nodding, and then rose from her chair and walked with him to the adjacent music room.
Johnnie Mae led a trail of excited women into the piano parlor, all of them rushing over to the fourteen-foot-tall bay window and peeking out at the front of the estate. Grace and Darrel continued to the foyer, where she stopped at the foot of the stairs and glared at him.
“What’s wrong?” he demanded in a lowered voice so that their guests couldn’t hear. “You didn’t want her in?”
“No.”
“Then you should have answered the damn intercom yourself. She’s in now,” he said.
Grace looked at him with bitter disappointment, then stepped onto the staircase and began ascending.
Darrel looked at her in disbelief. “I hope you plan on coming back down,” he remarked, a note of panic in his voice.
Grace glanced back at him. “Maybe,” she said and kept ascending.
