Blanche hadn’t noticed before what a nice voice the boy had, deep and soft and somehow trustworthy. “Hey Durant. I’m good. You?” She waved him to a seat on the porch. “You might as well sit down. Tina and the kids are still getting ready. How about some iced tea?” She brought the pitcher of iced tea and some glasses out to the porch.
Durant cleared his throat. Crossed and uncrossed his legs. “I’ve been meaning to thank you for asking Tina to stay with you. She’d have left otherwise. And as long as she’s here…”
“They say you can’t have your cake and eat it, too.” Blanche hadn’t planned to say that and half hoped he wouldn’t understand what she meant, since it betrayed a level of thinking about his business that was really none of her business.
“Sometimes you can. Sometimes you get lucky. It’s already happened once.” Blanche gave him good marks for the sharp determination in his voice.
Blanche nodded. “True, it’s possible, but not easy.”
Durant set his glass on the table. “It’s not a problem if you know your priorities. For me, it’s more like trying to have my bread and my cake at the same time. I need one to live, the other…”
“To live? That’s pretty drastic.”
“Yes, it is.” Durant looked directly into her eyes. Everything about him was serious. “I’ve never known anyone anywhere near as wonderful as Tina. She’s like fire and laughter. She’s so deep, so alive. She’s a necessity, like water. I can’t even think about not having her in my life.” He laughed. “Listen to me!” He was clearly embarrassed.
“Yes, I am listening to you.” She remembered her concern about what Tina saw in Durant and was reminded of Miz Belle and Mr. Henry who’d lived down the block from her mother when Blanche was growing up. He was a little bit of a man, short, slight, soft-spoken. Every time Blanche saw a picture of the Statue of Liberty, she thought of Miz Belle. That’s the kind of giant woman she was. She had a big everything—voice, laugh, heart, sense of humor, appetite. Young Blanche had often wondered what Miz Belle, who could have had any man in town, saw in puny, meek Mr. Henry. One day she’d seen Mr. Henry look at Miz Belle in a way that Blanche had never forgotten—as though Miz Belle were the sun and he a small, pale flower that could only bloom in her presence. Now she watched Durant’s face as the children came tumbling out of the house followed by Tina. Yes, there it was. That look. She turned to Tina who smiled as though she knew a secret and wondered if being the sun was as good as being a real woman, but what the hell did she know? When they left she ate a can of tuna and sat on the porch. She watched the sun sink and the evening turn to indigo until it was time to meet Stu.
EIGHT
Stu was waiting on the stone wall that separated the lawn from the rocky beach. His skin glowed like old gold against the pure white of his shirt and slacks. His eyes gleamed a deeper blue than she’d remembered.
“I like your sandals.” It was the only thing she trusted herself to say. He had nice feet, too.
Stu held up a bottle of Moët & Chandon and two champagne flutes. “It’s such a great night. How about the beach? You game?”
They walked in silence under the near-to-full moon. It was just cool enough for the sweater Blanche had thrown around her shoulders. Bright, bright stars dotted the sky. The beach sparkled as though it had recently rained diamond dust. They settled themselves on one of the boulders Blanche had sat among her first day at Amber Cove. She pushed the sound of Carol and Hank’s voices from her mind and the sadness that accompanied them. They were not her burden to bear. She held the glasses while Stu poured. Before she joined him in his toast to good friends and good times, she poured a few drops of champagne onto the sand.
“For the Ancestors,” she responded to Stu’s puzzled look.
“You believe in ancestor worship?”
“More and more.” Blanche’s voice was warm with enthusiasm. “It’s taken me a long time to figure out what I needed. I should have known it would be something old and African.”
Stu’s pale eyes seemed to darken. “What if your ancestors were awful people?”
“I thought about that. I decided that only the positive parts survive death.”
Stu chuckled. “You decided?”
“Didn’t somebody decide what stories to put in the Bible? Didn’t somebody decide that Mary was a virgin?”
Stu cocked his head. “I hadn’t thought of it that way.” He held out his glass and let a part of his wine dribble to the ground, then held the glass out toward her. “To the Ancestors and their descendants.”
Their clinked glasses sounded like crystal chimes.
“So, have you been here all along?”
“I only came back last year. I did a couple stretches in the Army. Went to pharmacy school, ran a garage with a buddy from Philly, hung out down in Mexico for a while. A wild, fun-filled life.”
Blanche was surprised. She thought men in his class started for the top of something at age two and didn’t stop until they got there or dropped dead trying.
Stu gave her that soft, dessert-eyeing look she remembered from the dance. “Tonight, I’m very, very glad I came back. Especially glad.” He raise his glass to her before he drank from it.
It was the opening Blanche wanted. “I moved back to my hometown a couple years ago,” she told him. “But it didn’t work out. For one thing, I couldn’t find enough work there.” She turned and stared directly into his eyes.
“What kind of work do you do?”
“Domestic work. Clean, cook, sew, wait table. I’ve been doing some catering, too.”
Stu laughed. “No, seriously. What do you do?”
Blanche didn’t join in the laughter or even smile. “I told you what I do.”
Stu looked into his glass, out to sea, into his glass again. He shifted about on his rock as though sand crabs had gotten into his drawers. Blanche didn’t think she’d ever seen a black person go quite so pale. It was noticeable even in the dark. Didn’t they call that blanching? She picked up the champagne. “Here.” She poured some wine in his glass. “You look like you could use some more of this.” A catch, just like she’d told Ardell. Were his lips always that thin? Or was shock pinching them? Stu suddenly stopped fidgeting. Blanche could see the awful possibility dawning in his eyes and nearly laughed at the horror that spread across his face.
“You don’t…you don’t work for Chrissy and Dave, or anyone, do you?” he asked.
She’d known what the question would be while it was still filtering down from his brain to his lips. She was tempted to say, yes, just to see if he’d go even paler.
“I don’t work for any of these folks here, if that’s what you mean. Although you work for them, don’t you?”
Stu looked both relieved and puzzled.
“You mean it never occurred to you that you’re a service worker? Not as invisible as my line of work, maybe. More like a shadow behind your counter.” She got up and brushed off the back of her slacks. “Thanks for the drink.” She began walking toward the Crowley cottage.
She could feel Stu behind her, but not close. His presence made her back rigid. She built a mental wall between them and began whispering to the sea about what a fool he was, and how glad she was to have expected a catch, regardless of Ardell. He called to her as she was climbing the porch stairs. She didn’t pause or turn around. She tiptoed past Tina asleep on the sofabed and closed the bedroom door behind her. Her body felt very heavy; her head throbbed and her shoulders were tighter than a well-made drum. Why did she once again feel like the only kid in her fifth-grade class who only got valentines with something mean on them? I’m too old for this shit, she told herself. Too smart, the sea responded. Maybe that, too, she thought.
Even though her body throbbed with weariness, sleep was not waiting in her room. She twisted and turned for an hour or so before she got up. She dressed and left the cottage by the
back door and walked toward the beach. There was no one about, although she could see puddles of light around some of the cabins. She sank down heavily onto one of the chaises near the Big House. She looked up and asked the stars and herself why she had agreed to see him, danced with him in a way that said she was interested, when all along she’d felt something off about him? Back in the pre–AIDS days, they’d have popped into the bed and got rid of that heat building between them. They might have left the motel, never to see each other again without the subject of what she did for a living ever coming up. But she’d never really been big on quickies. And is that what she wanted? To hide what she did so some dickbrain would want her? She felt tears gathering. She told herself she didn’t want him, either. That was true, right now. But would it have been true if he hadn’t not wanted her first? That’s what she didn’t know, that’s what hurt. “Oh, hell!” she hissed. This on top of Taifa’s attitude toward her color was one more put down than she felt she ought to have to handle. Suddenly there was Leo shimmering in her mind like one of the stars overhead. The memory of his tenderness, of the pride in his voice when he’d introduced her to people as “my lady,” even though it had irritated her at the time, was a stark contrast to how Stu had made her feel.
She held out her arms to the sea: “I sure could use some help here,” she murmured.
A ribbon of moonlight lay across the water. The waves were hushed. Tears rolled down her cheeks and she let them flow. She replayed the evening with Stu from its hopeful beginnings to its hateful end. She sobbed a little, willing herself not to hold back, to feel the ache under her heart, the special kind of loneliness that came with being told you’re not good enough by one of your own kind. She reminded herself that before long, the memory of this night would be just that, a memory. But she hadn’t gotten to that point yet. Which was why, for a millisecond, when she felt someone coming and looked over her shoulder to see a man walking across the lawn, she’d let herself believe that Stu had come back to say she was right to think him a fool. She was still feeling the rush of relief and self-righteousness when she realized it wasn’t him.
She wiped her eyes and watched the man approach. He hadn’t noticed her yet. He walked slowly, with his head down and pulled into his neck. His shoulders were hunched as though against a frigid wind. He was a big man who’d probably once been imposing, now he was stooped; his footsteps were hesitant, as if he wasn’t sure his legs could bear his weight. He stopped abruptly when he saw Blanche. Instead of veering off, as she’d expected, he moved closer. She stood to meet him, knowing intuitively who he was.
“I’m Blanche White,” she held out her hand. His felt papery, as though she could squeeze it into a small ball without any effort at all. “My deepest condolences.”
Al J. peered at her. She explained that they hadn’t met and who she was.
“Oh yes,” he said, as though her words made some sense to him, which she doubted. “I just came to say good-bye to this place. I always liked Amber Cove. But I won’t be back. Not now.” He turned his head away from Blanche and wiped at his eyes. “I just wish I could have given her some of the happiness she gave me.”
“I’m sure you did,” Blanche murmured.
Al J. shook his head in disagreement. “No. I didn’t I couldn’t. She was too angry to be happy, I guess. She had a number of traumatic experiences, even though she was always well off. She really wanted people to like her, respect her, but she never seemed to fit in, somehow, never seemed to learn how to be liked, so she…”
Regardless, Blanche, thought. Faith had known better than she’d behaved.
Al J. went off in another direction. “Damn! She was good looking in the early days! She had a rosy glow, like a ripe peach. And a smile to break your heart. It wasn’t until she got older, after the babies didn’t come, and she started…She was never sweet. Not, you know, easy. But good to me, good to me.”
Al J. went on for at least twenty minutes, recounting the time Faith made him a birthday cake from scratch, even though she was on crutches; the time he’d been depressed about being in bed for weeks with a bad back and she’d made her face up like a clown and danced and sang to cheer him up. The time she had his office redecorated as a surprise.
All the anecdotes were about how well Faith had treated him, which was wonderful, except there was no evidence Faith had ever done a nice thing for anyone other than Al J., Malik, and Casey. Blanche wondered if Faith had a best friend. Who were the women who would step in and see to the feeding of the funeral goers on her burial day? “Well, if there’s anything I can do…”
“There’s nothing anyone can do, now. Nothing.” He held onto Blanche’s hand.
“I had another family, you know. Another wife. She died young. Left me with two girls to raise. They were about to go to high school when I met Faith.”
Blanche thought about Deirdre’s comment about Faith not liking girls.
“Raising kids is tough.” Blanche paused. Al J. said nothing. “But they’ll be a great comfort to you, now.” She squeezed his hand.
“They hate her. Both of them. After all she did. Sending them to boarding school, college, and Europe. They still can’t see behind her occasional outbursts to the good, loving woman who made my life so, so…” Al J.’s shoulders began to shudder. He hid his face behind his other large, manicured hand.
“I wish I could explain how it feels, how the world can suddenly be different, everything so far away, and cold.”
Blanche immediately knew how she could help. She pulled her hand away from his and wrapped her arms as tightly around him as she could. Al J. hugged her to him so hard she thought she’d explode. His tears were hot on her shoulder. His sobs were deep and silent and almost made her glad she had never loved enough to generate this kind of pain. She remembered hugging Tina yesterday and wondered if hugging was one of the things Madame Rosa had sent her here to do.
“Al J.? Is that you?” A thin voice called out from the terrace stairs.
Al J. started. He jumped back from Blanche and quickly swiped at his eyes. “My sister. She brought me here to pick up a few things. Arthur will take care of the rest.” He took her hand again and squeezed it gently. “Thank you.” He looked at her a long time, as though wanting to remember her face. Blanche watched as he and his sister walked away. They didn’t touch. She thought of the many times people she’d worked for had come to her in search of comfort. She’d generally withheld it. She didn’t include solace in the parts of herself that she sold to employers. Even so, she felt sorry that they needed it. No one should have to go to the hired help for a hug. Until now, she’d associated this lack of a loved one to provide sympathy with rich white families who avoided showing affection for fear it would be seen as weakness. Now here was this black man needing from a stranger what he obviously couldn’t get from his own sister. So, like Curdled Passion, this business wasn’t just about being white. Maybe part of what happened when you had more than most people was that you fooled yourself into thinking you were independent. Until your wife died.
She stumbled off to bed to sleep a deep and heavy sleep.
NINE
The morning sunlight lay in slivers on the bedroom floor, cut to ribbons by the bamboo blind. Birds twittered to the accompaniment of the ocean, but Blanche had none of her usual eagerness to rise and meet the new day. Stu’s face popped into her mind as if from a jack-in-the-box buried in her brain. Son of a…No. She wasn’t going to blame some woman for having birthed him when she had no proof that’s how he came to be in the world. A sewer was more likely. She threw back the covers. She could hear the radio from the kitchen and the girls singing along with it. She called out a good morning on her way to the bathroom. The phone rang while she was brushing her teeth. Tina called to her.
“Is it Mattie?” Blanche wanted to know.
“No. It’s a man. I’ll ask who it is.”
Blanche didn’t h
esitate. “No. Just tell him I can’t come to the phone.” She went back to her teeth. Wants to apologize, doing the polite thing, she thought. She’d be just as happy not to hear it. He wouldn’t be making the effort if she wasn’t connected to people he knew. He was no more sorry than a monkey with a stolen bunch of bananas. She’d seen his face. He’d been glad that he’d found out about her unacceptable work before they were seen together too often. Yes, she’d seen that on his face. She rinsed her mouth. She looked at the clock radio. Too bad. Ardell had already left for work.
Tina was reading on the porch when Blanche came out of the bathroom. The boys had gone to their fort and the girls were nowhere to be seen. Blanche made herself a cup of tea and got out her postcards. She never knew what to say, but she always promised she would send them, and so she did. “Having a fine time. Love, Blanche.” “It’s really beautiful here. Love, Blanche” “The ocean is wonderful! Love, Blanche.” Her mother always complained about the skimpiness of Blanche’s cards. She decided to give her a call.
“How’s my grandbabies?”
“They’re fine, Mama. We’re all fine.”
“Them folks got a nice place? Weather all right? What’s the place like? Food good?” Mama asked in her usual run-on fashion that didn’t allow space for answers.
“The cottage is real nice. It’s very pretty up here. A little cool for our taste. But the ocean is as blue as I’ve ever seen it and the air’s clear as crystal. Food’s kinda on the white side, but well prepared. Fancy.” It was her turn to ask a question. “You been doin’ those exercises Ardell gave you for your arthritis?” And why do we mostly talk to each other in questions and answers, she asked herself. After she hung up and made herself another cup of tea, the phone rang again. She let Tina answer it. This time it was Mattie, calling to say she was ready. The phone rang again as she opened the screen door to leave. She didn’t wait to see who it was.
Blanche Among the Talented Tenth (Blanche White series Book 2) Page 15
