Belle City

by Penny Mickelbury

  The refrigerator and the cabinets were fully stocked. So was the temperature controlled wine bar in a corner of the dining room that was, Sissy thought, at least one indication that the old man entertained, but the entire bottom shelf of the refrigerator was filled with Red Rock Cola, as was a shelf in the pantry. Sissy opened a bottle, toasted both the old people, then took a long pull from the bottle, choking and coughing as she knew she would. The stuff had a kick as powerful as whiskey. She knew that Ruthie had never consumed alcohol. Had Jonas? They were so much alike!

  Sissy opened a very respectable bottle of a California Cabernet, got a wine glass from the cabinet, and took wine and Red Rock Cola out to the solarium. She didn't sit in Jonas's chair but the adjacent one, the one that would have been for company, and as she sat, she wondered why she was sitting here drinking wine instead of heading back to Belle City and her mother's house. Staring out at the peaceful green view, she understood why Jonas Thatcher didn't bequeath this house to his grandson, and she understood equally as clearly why, as her grandmother's legatee, she could not permit the house's destruction. But what would she do with it?

  She got up and walked through the house again, in and out of rooms where her ancestors had lived and where they had been happy—happy because they had each other. Had Jonas been happy here? She touched things as she passed through—a chair, a chest, a drapery panel—and she thought yes, Jonas had been happy here, because she was comfortable. A bit egotistical, she told herself, but it was true: If the old man had been miserable and unhappy here, this place would have spoken of that. Then, with a start, Sissy realized one thing it did not speak of: Where was the evidence of Jonas's wife? Had she died long ago, leaving Jonas to stamp his own mark? Had she left him, and in so doing, left him to his own devices?

  She hurried back upstairs and to the room that was the office. She thought she'd seen photographs here…and yes, there they were, grouped on a shelf, two different families, related but separate: One from the distant past, another from the more recent past. There was a boy who could have been the Jonas she just met, with, she thought, his parents and sister, and there were several photos of old Jonas Thatcher as a young man with a woman who likely was his wife. Sissy scrutinized the photos, looking for a hint of a date, but all she could determine was that they were old.

  She returned to the solarium, saw the phone, called her mother and told her where she was and what she was doing. "It's a beautiful house, Mom, and so peaceful and relaxing." She'd expected resistance, or denial. She got neither. Instead Nellie asked what she'd said to Teddy to upset him so, and when she relayed that conversation, her mother's only response was that she was glad Sissy had decided to stay for a while. "I also might stay the night out here. I need to give some very serious thought about what to do with this house, Mom, but one thing I cannot do is allow it to be torn down."

  When she hung up, Sissy felt even more relaxed. She realized that she had expected resistance from her mother, and not getting it was a relief. She also had surprised herself with the idea of spending the night here, and with how comfortable that felt, and she said a silent prayer of gratitude that she'd made Teddy leave Grandma's house when she left, otherwise she'd have had to return to Belle City. No way she'd have left her baby brother there alone. And speaking of him, her mother not jumping to Teddy's defense was a first. Was she the last to see the truth of who Teddy really was? Or perhaps she merely was the last one to whom he had revealed his true self. Suddenly a memory surfaced: A fight between Teddy and her father. Teddy had dropped out of school and spent his days in bed, hung over, watching television and listening to music, and his nights hanging out, working on the next day's hangover. Dad had issued an ultimatum: Teddy would re-enroll in school, get a job, or he would get out. He had thirty days, at the end of which, still an unemployed drop-out, Dad evicted him.

  "Theodore. You can't be serious."

  "I've never been more serious, Nellie. Teddy, give me those car keys, and put down that suitcase."

  "That's my car, Dad. And my clothes."

  Why she could recall the scene so vividly and clearly Sissy didn't know, but what she now saw so clearly was that Teddy was so drunk or high he was barely conscious.

  "I bought and paid for the car and the clothes—and the suitcase, too, for that matter. You should be thankful that I don't make you strip and…"

  "Theodore! No! Don't, please!" Nellie grabbed her husband's arm with one hand and her son with the other. The son shoved her, and she'd have fallen if her husband hadn't caught her. It was the proverbial last straw. Theodore Nelson, still attired in the three-piece hand tailored suit he wore every day, picked up his youngest son as if he still were a child and not an almost-grown man of nineteen, and brought him in close, nose to nose.

  "If you ever raise your hand or your voice to my wife again, I will kill you," the father said to the son, and put him down. "Now, get out of my house."

  Teddy had gone to his grandparents' home that night and they, of course, had taken him in—and put him to work the following day on one of Grandpa's construction sites.

  The force of the memory left Sissy breathless. She put her feet on the ottoman and held the envelope Willie Cummings had given her just a couple of hours ago, and when her breathing returned to normal, she opened it: The deed to the house, a surveyor's report which, even though Sissy knew what it would show, nevertheless was startling, and a letter, in a bold hand, addressed to Mrs. Ruth Thatcher McGinnis. She opened it.

  March 1985

  My Dear Ruthie:

  If you're reading this then I am gone on to the Other Side, and it's about time. I pen this on my 80th birthday and know that you will reach this milestone in another two months. Did we ever imagine that we would live so long? Perhaps you did seeing as how long life spans were your heritage and how none of your relatives ever seemed ready to go. I, on the other hand, am more than ready, though I must confess I'm healthy as a horse. Still, I can't live forever and when I'm gone, these things must be set right. The first, of course, is to return to you the land my father stole from your family in 1922. I don't know if Mr. First ever told you all but I came to see him that same day—later that morning—and brought him the deed to your house and land that my father had claimed. Mr. First wouldn't take it. He said the land was mine now according to the law, since my father was dead. Did Mr. First tell you any of this? If not, then prepare for a shock: I killed my father that morning when I found out what he and the KKK had done, and if the land was mine, then I wanted to return it to the rightful owner. But I knew Mr. First was right (he always was!). BC was your place where you all were happy and CC is the place where I have had some happiness but also much sadness. I have one grandchild left, a man who carries my name: Jonas Farley Thatcher III. My family seems very small compared to yours, but I know that it is not good to compare ourselves to others, so I will cease and desist. The other thing to make right with you is this: Here is the deed to my cabin in the North Carolina mountains. The land it is on was—still is—owned by your brother Beau. You know that when Beau moved, when he left BC, it was to the Cherokee Reservation. No white man could own land up there but Beau could, him being both Black and Indian. Beau bought a lot of land up there, just like he did in BC, and he let me build my cabin on his land. I haven't been up there but twice since Beau died and don't expect to go again. No point now. Beaudry Thatcher was the best man I ever knew, along with First Freeman and your father, Big Silas Thatcher. If every man in the world was like them, well, what a world we'd have! One more thing I must tell you, Ruthie, a thing you may not want to know but which I think you should know: Beau killed the man Tom Jenks who was with Miss Nellie when she got killed that day. That's why Beau moved away from BC and up to the mountains. He never got over what they did to him on that chain gang and he didn't want to get caught for killing Tom Jenks even though nobody knew but me and I surely wasn't going to tell.

  So, Ruthie, that's what I have to tell you. And this: Having yo
u and your brothers be my friends has been the greatest joy of my life. I wish I could explain to my grandson how important you all are to me but while he is a very good man, and a very smart one, he does not like a lot of talk about kin and connections. So nobody who is related to me on the white side of the family knows how I feel about all of you on the Black side. When I was younger I used to wish that you all were white. I don't wish that anymore. I wish I could have been Black. And if wishes were horses, beggars would ride. God bless you, Ruthie, and your family.

  Sissy was weeping when she finished reading the letter from Jonas Farley Thatcher to her grandmother. Much of what he'd written she already knew. Grandma had talked about her lengthy friendship with Jonas Thatcher, specifically how pleased they were when, at some point in the 1970s, they could stop hiding it. Grandma said they'd had dinner together at a fancy restaurant downtown and nobody had given them a second glance. But reading Jonas's words, especially his admission to having killed his own father, had a more powerful impact than she could ever have imagined.

  She jumped up, restless now, and more than that—edgy—and she wasn't certain why. She grabbed her car keys and ran out the front door. Her gym bag was in the trunk of the car—grandma's car. She'd go for a run, clear her head, exhaust whatever willies were bedeviling her and making her feel off balance. But first: The last thing her mother had said as they ended their phone conversation was, "Don't forget to take the video." She wanted to see the house, but she didn't want to visit it. Because Ruthie McGinnis had sworn never to set foot in Carrie's Crossing again, her only daughter carried out that promise. But they all wanted to see the house that had been the family's home since the days of slavery; they needed some visual confirmation of its existence.

  Upstairs in what she assumed to be the guest bathroom, she changed into workout pants and a tee shirt, pulled her hair into a pony tail, put a cap on, laced up her shoes, and skipped down the stairs. She snapped on her waist pouch, grabbed keys, ID and the camcorder, and was out the door. She spent half an hour shooting the exterior of the house and the grounds from every angle, from a distance and up-close. She'd shoot the interior later, she thought, taking the camera inside and returning to the porch to do some quick stretches.

  She ran down the road the way she'd come to the house, ran through Jonas's construction site, ran through an older part of Carrie's Crossing that was close enough to the new part that she could hear constant din of the traffic—hear it but not see it; the foliage was too thick. She ran back toward Carrie's house and stopped when she got to the creek. Carrie's Creek. And she was weeping again. Had some part of her believed that the creek was an invention, some kind of make-believe? It seemed little more than a stream. The water was shallow but clear, and it moved quickly and steadily. She closed her eyes and inhaled deeply. Yes, there was the taste of vehicular emissions at the back of her throat, but it was overridden by the scent of grass, trees and dirt, and the tiny trickle and babble of the little stream overrode the muted traffic noise. She could almost imagine what it had been like when Grandma and great-uncles Si and Tobias and Beau had roamed the woods and played with Jonas Thatcher... that was it!

  That's what had put her on edge, had her feeling unbalanced and out of sorts: Jonas Thatcher writing that he wished he were Black. Had any white man anywhere ever said such a thing—and meant it? And how was one to take those words? That he had proven himself a friend in the face of the virulent racism of the time could not be disputed. So, given that he knew what life was like for Black people, why would he wish to have been born Black? She found the idea discomfiting, perhaps even a bit insulting. Who was this man to make light of the burden of having been born Colored in America at the turn of the Twentieth Century? Or…perhaps that's not at all what he was doing. Perhaps he was asking to be able to share the weight?

  Picking up the pace, she followed the construction road all the way to a paved road that she thought must be the one that ran behind Carrie's house. Houses faced the road on one side, trees on the other, but the bucolic nature of the setting was spoiled by the constant flow of traffic in both directions. Obviously the road was a shortcut for motorists few of whom, it seemed, were inclined to share the road with a jogger, there being no sidewalks.

  She was dripping sweat and at least an hour past hungry when she got back to Carrie's house. Despite the lack of central air conditioning, the house was relatively cool. She opened and drank down a bottle of water, then a bottle of Red Rock Cola, though it wasn't possible to guzzle the stuff like water. She burped and choked her way through it, enjoying every swallow. It was icy cold and every bit as thirst quenching as those expensive electrolyte replacement beverages she bought by the case back home in New York. And as she thought the words "home" and "New York," she realized that she had given absolutely no thought to her job and her life there, and even as she had the thought, she felt no panic or regret or sense of loss. Though she'd been born and raised in Belle City, had not left the place until law school at Harvard, and though she'd never been to Carrie's Crossing, what she'd felt here in this hot, humid Southern city over the past month felt very much like a homecoming to her.

  She opened another Red Rock and took it out to the porch where she sat on the steps and looked out at the world. As peaceful and beautiful as it was, she could not, she knew, ever live in a place like this. She needed a city around—and beneath—her, and therefore, she could never live permanently in her grandmother's house, either. But could she live again in Belle City? Was it enough of a city? And if she did decide to live in Belle City, what would she do with herself, with her time, her energy? It would not pain her to leave New York. That's something she'd been considering for a while, though with no clear plan in mind and no clear decision made. She just knew that her perpetual restlessness of mind and spirit meant that it was time to move on. She'd proven herself to herself and to everyone else. She had a sterling reputation, lots of money, and no desire to work fourteen-hour days any longer. But if not New York, where? London? Paris?

  She yawned and stretched, and her stomach growled. She was tired as well as hungry. She had, she realized, built up a load of tension around visiting her grandmother's birthplace for the first time and now, having released it, she was ready to relax. There was, she knew, plenty of food in the refrigerator and plenty of wine and Red Rock Cola. She'd seen a television, and, she realized with surprise, she'd seen a discretely placed satellite dish at the rear of the house while shooting the video. The library, she was certain, was worth exploring. So...should she shower first or cook and eat first? The thought of food caused her stomach to rumble again, answering the question.

  As she stood, she saw a car turn into the road leading to the house and she soon recognized Jonas Thatcher's silver Jaguar XK150 sedan gliding none too slowly toward her, and she took the time now to admire its classic lines as she hadn't earlier when she'd followed him here. She didn't wonder why he now was returning; she merely awaited his arrival. He exited the driver's door, still dressed as he'd been earlier, opened the back door, withdrew a box and a large bag, closed both doors with his hip and came around the car to the steps. She opened the front door for him and stood aside as he entered.

  "Did you have a good run?"

  "I did, thank you."

  He deposited the box and held up the bag. "Do you like Thai food?"

  Surprised, she nodded and smiled. "You offering dinner?"

  He nodded, but his smile wavered when he noticed the empty Red Rock Cola bottle in her hand. "There's a Chardonnay in there that'll compliment it much better than Red Rock, though. This is the best Thai food in town."

  She turned toward the house. "Then why don't you open the wine while I set the table?"

  Jonas quickly opened the wine then excused himself. He ran upstairs, and she could hear him moving about. By the time the table was set he was back wearing faded jeans, a New York Yankees tee shirt and running shoes.

  "Yankees?" Sissy said.

  "Don't tell m
e you're a Mets fan."

  "OK, I won't tell you," Sissy said, and neither of them had much to say for the next few moments as they ate. The silence was relaxed and comfortable. By the time both were ready for second helpings, they both were ready for conversation.

  "This is excellent food," Sissy said. "Thank you, though I don't know how you knew that I was nearing the starvation point or, wardrobe notwithstanding, how you knew I'd been for a run."

  "I saw you out on the road. And projection," Jonas said. "When I'm starving, I think everybody must be, and when I feed myself, I'm usually inclined to feed whoever is close at hand. Today, that happened to be you."

  "And suppose I didn't like Thai food? Then what?"

  "I'd have eaten it all, and you could have raided the fridge. There's lots of food in there."

  "I noticed," Sissy said. Then she had another thought. "You don't live here, do you?"

  He shook his head. "I live in Belle City, but I've got a room here—my childhood room, as a matter of fact. I spend the odd night or weekend here with Grandpa—" He caught himself speaking in the present tense, and she watched the emotions dance across his face. "I'm sorry…"

  "No need to apologize, Jonas. I understand. I've been doing the same thing. It really is difficult to speak or think of them in the past tense."

  "I had no idea it would be this way." He emptied his wine glass in three large gulps to force the lump in his throat back down. He wiped his eyes with his napkin and poured them both more wine.

  "You loved him very much, yet you don't seem to have known him very well. Why?"

  Jonas gave her a long, speculative look. "He wasn't an easy man to know. Or to like, my grandfather. He was stubborn, cantankerous, opinionated, and…he didn't like me very much. I was a disappointment to him."

  Sissy had observed a sufficient number of families during their bereavement to realize the effort required for this man to make such an admission. She also could tell from his tone of voice that he didn't really understand why his grandfather hadn't liked him, though, after having read the old man's letter to her grandmother, and having listened to almost ninety years worth of her reminiscences about him, Sissy thought she had some idea why. But she asked anyway, and he pointed to the box that he'd brought in with him, and nodded permission for her look. She got up from the table and slowly approached the box, not knowing what to expect, and opened the flaps.