by Unknown
‘Where?’ said Bobby, rather than what, since ‘where’ remained his focus – especially where his mother was.
‘At home. It’s not Mom,’ he added quickly, but Bobby had not allowed himself to think it was.
His heart sank nonetheless, and he muttered, ‘Gladys,’ thinking his father thought the prospect of helping her roll out biscuits was a treat.
‘No,’ said his dad. ‘Not Gladys. You’ll see.’
When they got back to the apartment, his father whistled when he opened the door, and called out, ‘Hey ho, we’re here.’ He sounded better than he had for ages. Bobby went with him through the corridor to the kitchen, where Gladys was standing at the stove. Only it wasn’t Gladys: this woman was as black as Gladys, but much younger. She wasn’t fat at all, he thought to himself, though she had a large bosom beneath her grey sweater. Her skirt was short, and he could see her legs – Gladys had always hid hers in long white cotton shifts and the ubiquitous apron the size of a tent. This woman had youthful pretty features, and she looked directly at him before his father had said a word.
‘This is Bobby,’ his father said hopefully.
She nodded. Then she slapped her cheeks with both hands. ‘Why, ain’t you the cutest little boy I ever done seen,’ she exclaimed.
His grandmother had called him cute once, and his brother Mike had never let him forget it. But right now he didn’t care what Mike would think, and he smiled shyly at this woman. She smiled back and her white teeth gleamed, though looking up at her mouth Bobby could see the gold glitter of several fillings.
She turned to his father and said, ‘Maybe you need to find something in your study, Mr Danziger.’ For a moment, his father looked puzzled. Then he took the hint and left the room.
The woman smiled again at Bobby and said, ‘Come here, honey, and let me take a look at you.’
He took a small step towards the stove and she leaned down until her face was almost level with his. Suddenly he wanted to run to her, but he hesitated. When he tried to hug Gladys she usually shooed him away. ‘Child, don’t be bothering me,’ was her automatic response.
But this woman was holding her arms wide open in an unmistakable signal. He waited just the same. For he was old enough, perhaps experienced enough even in his young years, to sense that he simply could not bear being let down again.
Then she said, ‘Come here, baby,’ and the next thing he knew he was in her arms. They were warm and comforting, but he began to cry anyway. The tears he shed may have been for his mother – yes, almost certainly – but they were also for the despairing days he had been through since his mother had gone away. And tears from sheer relief at this embrace, the first sign that maybe life didn’t need to seem endless after all.
‘That’s all right,’ she was saying into his ear, and he felt his tears streaked along her cheek. ‘You just cry as much as you need to. I ain’t going nowhere. Vanetta and you are going to have us a good time together. Just you wait and see.’
III
THE COFFEE SHOP was a vast tiled room on the ground floor of the Marchese Building, an early brick-fronted skyscraper of twenty-odd floors that sat on Wacker Drive, a stone’s throw across the Chicago River from the pearl-veined stone of the Wrigley Building. This late in the afternoon the place was almost empty, and the waitress told him to take his pick of tables. He scanned the room for Duval, but saw only an elderly couple nursing cups of coffee, a family of tourists having Cokes, and an old black man with a beard reading in the far corner. Robert breathed a sigh of relief, glad to be there first.
He didn’t know what to expect, didn’t even have a good sense of what Duval looked like. The skinny awkward kid Robert had known must have filled out. Didn’t all convicts lift weights, grow muscle-bound? Presumably for protection – Robert knew prison life was violent, scarily so; even the most unrealistic television dramas showed a life of brute force and fear. He had to assume Duval would be toughened unrecognisably by years spent in the company of murderers, perpetrators of violent assaults, extreme degenerates. Then he remembered what Duval himself was supposed to have done.
He looked out the windows at the construction hole where the Sun Times building had stood – a modern aluminium shell, it had lasted only forty years, and he could almost feel the Marchese crow at the demise of its upstart neighbour.
‘Just coffee, please,’ he said to the waitress as she held out a menu. She filled his cup while he wondered what Duval might want to talk about. They hadn’t seen each other in over twenty years, had not been friends for over thirty. There had to be some agenda, something Duval wanted. He realised his curiosity had been overtaken by apprehension. He wanted to leave, but this seemed cowardly – besides, Duval would probably just call him again.
He looked around, noticing how the couple was sitting mute. Was this the silence of complete familiarity, or recognition that after so many years they had exhausted all possibilities for conversation? Probably both. Thank God he hadn’t reached that point with Anna. Whatever the ups and downs they had between them, there was always conversation – sometimes funny (she often made him laugh), sometimes heated, sometimes calm. But always talk.
Behind the elderly couple the black man was studying his book intently. He wore old-fashioned wire-framed reading glasses, and when he looked up the frames glinted in the light. His eyes caught Robert’s and he nodded shyly, then suddenly his face broke into a toothy smile. And Robert thought, Oh, my God, it’s him.
‘Duval?’ The man nodded. Robert stood up and moved over to the man’s table, where he put down his cup. They shook hands; Duval’s was dry, and roughly calloused. He had taken his glasses off and his dark brown eyes looked intently at Robert, in a slow assessment that made Robert uneasy, as if he were being compared to some long-stored image.
They both sat down, Robert with his back now to the river. Duval wore a dark suit, brown-and-silver tie, and a white shirt with an oversized collar that bobbed around his throat. His face was long and oval-shaped, and his wiry hair was cropped short. A thin line of beard ran along each side of his jaw until it widened like a protective cup around his chin. Duval sat upright, like a man of the cloth ill at ease in restaurants.
‘I could tell you didn’t recognise me. Bet you thought, That old black guy can’t be Duval.’
This was so true that Robert felt enveloped by awkwardness. ‘Maybe something like that,’ he conceded.
Duval smiled. ‘And here I was thinking, That old white guy can’t be Bobby.’
Robert laughed with relief. ‘It’s good to see you, Duval.’
Duval nodded but didn’t say anything.
‘You look well.’ He hesitated, feeling ill at ease again. ‘Nice suit,’ he added, and felt stupid for the remark.
Duval pinched the lapel with his long fingers. ‘Thirty years old and still going strong. Of course it didn’t get a lot of wear for twenty-four of them.’
There didn’t seem a suitable response, so Robert decided to stick to the present. ‘Where are you living?’
‘I’m staying with my cousin Jermaine. He’s got a spare room. Real nice.’ The voice was soft, a touch above middle range of pitch.
‘What happened to Vanetta’s house?’
‘She left it to my mama. Aurelia needed the money, so she sold it right away.’ He said this without emotion.
‘How is Aurelia?’
‘She passed away a year after Vanetta did.’ He was silent momentarily, then seemed to gather himself. ‘You know,’ he said, an almost imperceptible tremor to his voice, ‘I didn’t just want to see you to say hello. I also wanted to thank you.’
‘Thank me?’ Robert was nonplussed.
‘Yes,’ said Duval. ‘For all that you and your family did for Vanetta while I was away.’
Away? Duval said this as if he’d been gone on an extended business trip, seconded to some faraway city – Mexico City, say, or Rio – by his parent company.
‘I don’t know if we did anything all that specia
l, Duval.’ He’d sent Vanetta a present every year, usually a hundred-dollar bill folded in a Christmas card. His father would have wanted to do the right thing but no more – a Christmas card, a phone call once or twice a year to say hello. And Robert couldn’t believe his stepmother had indulged in any display of largesse. Not that tight old stick.
‘Well, Vanetta said you did. Not long before she died. She came regular to see me.’
‘I know.’ She’d faithfully made the long drive as often as the rules allowed. Once a month? Something like that.
‘Why else would she tell me to come see you when I was free again?’
She had? Suddenly, for all his discomfort, Robert was content to see Duval again. I’m paying a debt to Vanetta, he told himself; it seemed the least he could do for her.
The waitress appeared, holding a Pyrex jug half-full of coffee. ‘Fill you gents up?’ she said.
They both shook their heads. ‘You want something to eat, Duval?’ asked Robert out of politeness, then saw the man hesitate. ‘Go on. I had a big lunch or I’d join you. Have a hamburger – my treat. It’s good to see you again.’
‘Actually,’ said Duval, and he looked shyly at the waitress, ‘what I’d really like is a piece of pie.’
The waitress recited. ‘Blueberry, cherry, chocolate cream, or lemon meringue.’
‘Blueberry.’
‘A la mode?’
Duval looked puzzled.
‘You want ice cream on top?’ asked Robert, and Duval nodded.
The waitress went away and Duval smiled with a little embarrassment. ‘I forgot that expression. We never got it that way.’
‘You sure that’s all you want to eat?’
He nodded. ‘I got me a sweet tooth but it’s easily satisfied.’ He laughed, then put one hand to his mouth as if he was trying to stop a cough. He put his hand down on the table and spread it; he had lengthy fingers and carefully tended nails.
Robert asked, ‘What’s Jermaine up to these days?’
‘He’s still working for R.R. Donnelley’s. He wants to retire in a couple of years.’ This was said wistfully, but then it must seem peculiar to find someone retiring when you were effectively starting out.
Mention of Jermaine eased something in Duval, like a blocked drain inexplicably cleared, for he started talking, hesitantly at first, then without self-consciousness, describing the present state of Vanetta’s vast extended family. He told Robert about Daphne, who’d just had a bypass, then Marvin (‘he passed last year’) and Rodney, who’d totalled his van on I-94 two years before but had emerged miraculously unscathed.
‘You remember Shonelle, don’t you?’ Duval asked at one point, and Robert smiled with false knowingness.
For the truth was he didn’t remember any of these people. It had all been so long ago, and he had never known most of them to begin with – they were just names mentioned by Vanetta. As Duval talked about a new generation of grandchildren and great-grandchildren – Lemar and Dennis and Kaleen and Lynette – Robert merely nodded and kept his head down, staring at Duval’s clasped hands on the table in front of him.
Suddenly noticing his gaze, Duval held up his ring finger, where he wore a slim gold band. ‘This was left me by Vanetta. It used to be Alvin’s.’
Vanetta’s younger brother; that Robert did know. He’d died while Robert was at boarding school, almost breaking Vanetta’s heart – the worst thing that ever happened to her, she’d told Robert. But that was before Duval’s arrest.
Then Duval asked, ‘How about your family? Is your daddy still alive?’
‘Just my stepmother. Dad died three years ago.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘He was old, Duval, and in a lot of pain. The last few years were hard. I don’t think he wanted to go on.’
‘But Merrill’s all right?’
‘Yes,’ said Robert, amazed Duval remembered her name. ‘Lily looks after her.’
‘Where’s Mike?’
‘He’s up in Washington State, near Spokane. He was an army officer; retired last year. He’s fine, taking it easy.’ He deserved it; he’d fought in both Gulf Wars, real fighting too.
‘Vanetta said you got married and had yourself a family. Boys or girls?’
‘One girl.’
‘Really now. That’s what I call intelligent planning.’ He chuckled, but again his hand went to his mouth.
‘Well, actually, I’ve been divorced once – the first time didn’t work out. But I had a son – he’s grown now and lives in England.’
‘What’s he do for a living?’
‘He’s studying.’
Duval nodded earnestly. Robert thought of his boy, still technically an undergraduate, but just hanging in there by the skin of his backside if his tutor’s report was anything to go by.
‘I bet he’s doing good.’
‘I’m not sure he’d share your confidence. My boy’s a bit wild.’
‘Wild?’ Duval looked concerned for the first time. ‘You want to nip that in the bud.’
Robert shrugged. ‘He’s an adult now, Duval. Legally at least. He tends to listen to his mother more anyway. We didn’t have the friendliest divorce in the world, and he sided with his momma.’
Duval was sobered by this. Then his face brightened and he asked, ‘But you married again then?’
‘That’s right. She’s English, but she’s here too. And we got a little girl, Sophie.’ We got, and a moment before momma – he heard his voice slipping into the half-black patois he’d used as a boy with Vanetta. Stop it, he told himself. Duval might think he was making fun of him.
‘A little girl – ain’t that sweet?’ Duval seemed to muse happily on this. The waitress delivered his pie, and his eyes shifted to his plate. ‘Say,’ he said, as he lifted his fork, ‘I meant to tell you, I went out to Hyde Park after I was released, had a good look around. It has changed, hasn’t it? You see that new building behind your place on Blackstone?’
‘I haven’t, actually. I haven’t been out there since we moved back.’
Duval looked disappointed. ‘You haven’t been out there at all? You should, you know. Sarnat’s is gone.’
‘Yes,’ said Robert measuredly. It had been gone for twenty years, turned into a restaurant.
‘And the Christian Science church got turned into a mosque for the brothers of Islam.’
‘That was a while back.’ Way, way back, he wanted to say.
‘Well, it ain’t no mosque no more. Place was all closed up, and the back entrance had barbed wire and a padlock big as my head. You know what I was doing there, don’t you?’
Should he? ‘What was that, Duval?’
‘Oh, come on, you must know,’ he said. Then perhaps sensing he’d only be disappointed again, he went on. ‘I was going to see the Secret Garden. All these years I could imagine it, and then when I get there it was all locked up.’
Christ, thought Robert, he must have known it wasn’t real. Of course they’d just been kids, when you could believe almost anything, but by now Duval had to know it had just been a fantasy.
Duval said, ‘I was going to go through the alley by the apartment and have a look that way, but they got a big gate up there too. I didn’t know really how I could explain myself if they asked what I was doing there.’
I can see that, thought Robert. It was not that there was anything physically threatening about Duval: he remained a beanpole; there was no evidence of weightlifting, no bulk there. But there was something disconcerting about his deep gaze, and how he stifled any laugh. The way his conversation veered around topics, moreover, suggested that the internal verbal mechanism of social discourse was slipping in and out of gear, like a car jerkily driven by a learner.
Duval reached inside his jacket and drew out a thin billfold of faded leather. ‘I got something to show you,’ he said with a sly smile, and handed over a small snapshot – it was framed by a tiny margin that had gone brown with age.
Robert peered at it, then held the p
hoto up to the light. In the middle of the tiny square he could make out Vanetta, standing in a kitchen, facing the camera in a white skirt and a dark blouse. She had her arms around a boy on either side, and he could see that it was the young Duval, dressed in a white shirt and dark trousers, as if for church. He wouldn’t have been more than eight or nine, and his front teeth stuck out as he smiled for the camera.
On Vanetta’s other side the boy was white, shorter than Duval, with dark hair and dark eyes. Robert realised it was a picture of himself.
‘That’s us,’ he exclaimed. Why was he so surprised?
‘You remember when it was taken? It was Vanetta’s birthday. She had just moved to the house on Morgan.’
‘You got a good memory, Duval.’
‘I’ve had a lot of time for remembering,’ Duval said quietly. He reached out and took back the little snapshot. ‘I can’t be losing this now. It survived my whole time inside.’
You could get a copy made, Robert thought, but something held him back from saying so. Duval had kept this photo with him during all those years in prison, like a lucky charm. To think that Robert hadn’t had Duval in his head for years.
‘Are you working, Duval?’
‘Not yet. They trained me, but only as a TV repairman.’
‘Are you getting by?’
‘I’m trying my best, and Jermaine ain’t asking much rent. I get benefit. It’s okay,’ he said. His voice was increasingly familiar to Robert, but he realised there was no mystery to this – it was simply an older version of the voice he’d known almost forty years before. And he still spoke in the tone of passive acceptance which Robert now remembered. When they were boys Robert would say, ‘Want to play whiffle ball?’ Okay. Or, ‘Want to go to Sarnat’s?’ Okay.
‘Could you use a loan, Duval?’ He had been expecting to say this, he realised, and part of him wanted to give Duval money so he wouldn’t have to see him again. How much should he offer – a couple of hundred dollars? That wouldn’t last long. But more would be too much – and suggest some debt was being repaid.
