Pierce found his seeming openness engaging, all the more for the lightness with which he treated the difficulties that had compelled him to leave. “Are you going back?” Damon asked.
“We are,” Marissa said.
Her answer seemed more for Bobby than Pierce. Watching Pierce, Bobby appeared to read his thoughts. “For a time,” he said, “I worried that to go to this strange place would impose on Marissa hardships no man could ask. Especially one who hopes—no, expects—to be consumed with the cause of his people.” Bobby gave Marissa a glancing smile. “Not to mention that my father is both a Christian and a polygamist. Though I pledge her my utter fidelity, I fear that Marissa finds my background novel.”
“Not that novel,” Marissa interposed in a tone both mild and sardonic, and Pierce remembered the father of her short story.
Bobby smiled at her. “In this matter, as in others, I’m my own man.”
Dinner arrived—the dishes heavy on curry and spices. “If one can’t replicate Luandian food,” Bobby explained, “at least one can evoke its zest.”
He began to consume his portion, wielding chopsticks with rapacious deftness, driven by an appetite surprising given his slightness. “Bobby’s eating for his people,” Marissa explained with the air of a color commentator. “He burns off calories just sitting around.”
Hungry, Pierce occupied himself with dinner. Only when Bobby’s plate was clear did Pierce ask him, “About returning, do you worry for your safety?”
“Is it dangerous, you mean? Possibly. But it is my lifeblood—where I come from, what I care for, what I write about. What would I become in America but a random black man with an advanced degree, an ornament for some faculty, trained to teach young would-be writers who, when they fail, will themselves become teachers.” Bobby scowled at the table. “What would I feel then, when I read some truncated report in the New York Times about the misery of my people? What would I be to my friends but a stranger who sends them gifts and money? What kind of shadow life would I substitute for a life of meaning, even if that life is all too brief?”
The last phrase, though casually stated, struck Pierce so forcibly that he wondered at its impact on Marissa. “And you?” Pierce asked her.
“I’m an American by birth,” she answered calmly. “But when I watch our politicians on TV, or listen to talk radio, Americans seem so insulated from reality that they’re narcotized.
“And yet I know that my mother’s cases as a social worker are worse than ever, the neighborhood she works in more hopeless than before. There’s another generation of black men in jail, and Americans have no interest in or will to change what they conveniently believe is all the black man’s fault. In Luandia, perhaps I can make a difference.”
Bobby did not comment. But Pierce read a message into his silence: that life in Luandia would be harder than she knew. Perhaps, he intuited, Bobby wanted her too much to say this. Reflecting on the short story that Bobby had not read, he wondered whether—however fond of each other they were—their relationship relied on such strategic silences, and whether she was drawn to Bobby less from passion than the need to heal the wounds of identity and family. But all he chose to say was “I admire you both.”
It was true. Still, at that moment he guessed he and Bobby would never become close. In the days before the next writing class, when he found himself thinking of Marissa, he identified the reason why, and sensed that Bobby Okari already knew it.
5
PIERCE STARED AT THE MOON ABOVE THE OCEAN, CASTING PALLID light on the windblown line of cypress trees that marked land’s end. He checked his watch again. It was eleven-fifteen, and in two hours the eclipse would darken the village of Goro. The BBC had no more news of Bobby Okari. Pierce’s only antidote to worry was memory.
“I’ve always been lucky,” he had told her. Now he wished that, like his father, he believed that luck could be passed from one person to another.
THEY HAD BEEN lingering over dinner at Rivoli, an elegant Italian place near campus. By tacit consent, their postclass dinners had become a ritual, facilitated by Bobby’s immersion in teaching, writing, speaking, and planting the seeds of a movement in Luandia through incessant late-night phone calls. Their conversations, largely concerned with the craft of fiction—theirs, and others’—rarely became personal, and only once or twice did Pierce wonder if Bobby knew of them. But tonight Marissa seemed curious about his life.
“It’s true,” Pierce told her. “My dad insists that I was born lucky.”
The smile this elicited was quizzical. “Born white, you mean?”
“Even better,” Pierce responded amiably. “Born on St. Patrick’s Day, and blessed by a future president. Or so my father thought.”
HIS FATHER WAS a storyteller. Sean Pierce had told this story so often that Damon could recite it.
“On March 17, 1968,” Sean would declaim in his immigrant’s brogue, “at St. Margaret’s Hospital in our neighborhood of Dorchester, I learned that my seventh and last child was, after six blessed daughters, a son. Tears in my eyes, I answered, ‘You’ve made my heart sing, Dr. Lowell.’”
In those days, Sean would continue, there was little for a new father to do but celebrate with other men. So after kissing the exhausted Patrice on her forehead and noting with pride the miraculous infant’s shock of black hair, Sean departed on a tide of elation. Reaching the street as the metallic clock of a bank chimed twelve times, signaling noon, Sean briskly walked one and a half miles to the precise midpoint of the St. Patrick’s Day parade. Amid the revelers at the corner of D Street, some flushed with the excitements of whiskey, Sean awaited the Hibernian marchers—the intricate floats evoking Ireland on flatbed trucks; the familiar faces of the local politicos who always led the way.
But he could tell this day was different. The cheers were louder and, up the street, the crowds pressed closer than normal. And then Sean saw the two Irish princes at the head of the parade who, though he had never met them, were woven into the fabric of his psyche. With each confident stride Edward and Robert Kennedy, senators both, came nearer, drawing cries of surprise and delight from the onlookers—in many of their homes a picture of their martyred brother Jack hung beside that of the pope. And just yesterday, in the caucus room of the Senate, Robert Kennedy had declared that he, too, would reach out for the presidency.
One on each half of the two-lane street, the brothers paused to shake hands as they passed, Robert on the side nearest Sean. Propelled by this confluence of wonders—the birth of his son and now Robert Kennedy walking toward him—Sean felt himself drawn into the street. “Go get him, Bobby,” he heard someone call. “Lyndon can’t hold a candle to you.”
Laughing, Robert Kennedy looked about for his well-wisher and spotted Damon’s father coming toward him. For an instant Kennedy froze, before seeing the rapt expression in Sean Pierce’s eyes. Then they were face to face. In the one moment they would share on earth, Sean blurted, “My first son was born four hours ago. Both of us wish you well.”
Looking up at the taller man, Bobby Kennedy grinned. “What’s your boy’s name?”
“Damon. Damon Pierce.”
“A fine Irish name. He’ll thank you for it.” Bobby glanced toward the crowd for another hand to shake. Then, on impulse, he turned back to Sean. “What’s your parish?”
“St. Gregory’s, in Dorchester.”
“My grandfather’s parish.” Kennedy’s voice softened. “Let’s each say a prayer that the luck of the Irish blesses your new son. And I’d be grateful if your prayer included a bit of luck for me.”
“I will,” Sean promised. Then the future president was gone and, instead of seeking out a bar, Sean went to St. Gregory’s to keep his promise to Robert Kennedy.
“AND THEN HE was dead,” Marissa said to Damon. “My mother cried, she tells me.”
Damon nodded. “As did my father.”
“But he still thought you were lucky?”
Pierce smiled a little. “It became part
of the myth. For a time he pondered whether his prayer dwelt too much on me, and had failed Robert Kennedy. But he was quite sure that Kennedy had kept his end of the bargain.
“In the end, he concluded that I had gotten all the luck two men’s prayers could give me—and the luck meant for Bobby Kennedy, as well. Everything that’s happened since persuades him that he’s right. For him, my success in life is less an achievement than a gift.”
Marissa tilted her head. “Not an expectation?”
Pierce sipped from his glass of rich Brunello di Montalcino, the last of the bottle they shared. “You have to understand my world, Marissa. Did your parents go to college?”
“That and more. My father has a PhD in English, my mom a master’s in social work. I’ve got no room to be a wonder.”
Pierce briefly scanned the dwindling crowd, so clearly of the rarefied environment spawned by the Berkeley campus, so far from the pubs of Dorchester. “Neither of my parents got past grade school. Their world was a bounded one, their greatest fear that us kids would be tainted by malign influences.” A memory made Damon smile wryly. “So they were mortified when my sister Meg applied for a scholarship to Barnard.”
Marissa looked amused. “An all-girls school? What could possibly go wrong?”
“It was in New York, may the saints preserve us. So my parents enlisted the help of the mother superior. As Meg tells it, Sister Agnes warned her in sepulchral tones that a priest in New York reported that any girl who went to Barnard lost her faith and her virginity within six months.” Pierce grinned. “For a rapturous moment my sister was galvanized by visions of sexual deliverance. But, for our parents, that was that. They dispatched her to Boston College, where she met the man she married before they settled down close to home. Life was like that.”
Marissa finished her wine. “But not yours?”
“I was the youngest, and a boy. Still, until I was eighteen all my friends had names like Milligan and McNamara, and the biggest event in our lives before then was when Pope John Paul said Mass for a hundred thousand of us on Boston Common. Now all but a handful are firemen or cops or in their father’s construction business and, with variations in piety, still Catholic.”
“Aren’t you?”
“Only when I visit my parents. Like Meg, all that sexual repression got to me, but with a healthier result—a quiet but very persistent rebellion.”
Marissa touched a curled finger to her lips, her narrowing eyes signaling a speculative amusement. “So now you’re cured?”
“Mostly. Though whenever there’s a news flash about some sexual deviant being caught, my first reflex is that he’s Catholic.”
She laughed, displaying even white teeth whose only imperfection, the slightest gap in front, Pierce found charming. “I know about guilt,” she said, “if not repression. My father’s side is Jewish.”
“Lucky for you. In my observation, Jewish kids grow up believing that aspiration is not only good but imperative—you must be educated, you can succeed, you will outstrip your parents—”
“Who,” Marissa interrupted, “will never believe you’ve achieved enough.”
For the moment, Pierce suppressed his curiosity. “Maybe. But the voice my friends and I too often heard said, ‘Don’t aim too high or stray too far when the greatest aspiration is the afterlife.’ And so I, like my sister, went to Boston College. Then I graduated summa cum laude and really did rebel.”
“You decided to become Jack Kerouac?”
Pierce shook his head. “In the end, I was too steeped in practicality. But, to my parents’ horror, I decided on Harvard Law School, that coven of atheists. Instead of going to B.C. law school on the scholarship they offered.”
“How did you manage?”
“Luck, of course. The financial aid office at Harvard didn’t have enough to pay my way. So they directed me to a book with the daunting title Restricted Scholarships. Nothing doing: the restrictions were things like ‘Latvian-Americans,’ or ‘graduates of Yale.’” Pierce smiled. “Then, on the second-to-last page, I found the ‘William Stoughton Bequest.’
“The bequest dated back to 1750. Stoughton was, as I recall, a colonial governor of Massachusetts. His only stipulation was that the recipient of his largesse had to come from Dorchester . . .”
“Like it was written for you.”
Pierce laughed. “Stoughton was a total WASP—judging from the oil painting I saw later, the last thing he’d imagined was empowering the Irish hordes. But in 1750 there were no Irish living in Dorchester. So William Stoughton became my benefactor. Even my father saw the humor in it. And, of course, the luck.”
Marissa gave him a keen look. “Do you still feel lucky?”
“Yes,” he answered seriously. “I take nothing for granted—least of all, despite its faults, this country. If my father hadn’t come to America, God knows who I’d be.”
Marissa frowned, then shrugged dismissively. “It probably makes a difference if your ancestors came as volunteers. My father’s did. My mother’s didn’t.”
Something in her tone suggested that the subject was closed—perhaps because its complexities, as suggested by her short story, involved far more than race. Pierce decided to leave it there. Only later did he perceive that this caution was a form of caring, and that he did not wish to lose a woman he did not even have.
6
CHIEF FEMI OKARI AWAITED BOBBY AND MARISSA IN THE MAIN room of his home. By village standards, it was sumptuous, with rugs covering the floor and another hanging on the wall behind him, depicting the chief in ceremonial robes. He sat in his ornate carved chair, holding his cane of office, and his robes and gold-beaded headdress reflected those in the portrait. His face was somber, his voice low. “A word,” he told Bobby. “Before darkness comes.”
Bobby hesitated before nodding. The curt gesture spoke to Marissa of the deep conflict between them, their years of estrangement, and the ingrained deference of the young for the old, a son for his father. “I have heard from Eric Aboh,” the chief said. “Leave your plans for another day.”
“So you are part of this,” Bobby burst out with an anger so raw that Marissa flinched. “You conspire with Eric and the others to betray me.”
“Betray you?” his father asked in a tone of incredulity. “We are frightened, as would be any man of reason. Tell me, do you think Okimbo’s offer of ‘protection’ made Aboh feel safe? Eric understands well enough what that could mean, and so do you.” His voice lowered again. “I am still chief of this village. If I ask my people to disperse, they will.”
Bobby managed a dismissive smile. “Will they, now? It is thirty years since you became chief, scarcely longer than the time you have taken PGL money and allowed ‘your’ people to scavenge for themselves in the cesspool you have left them. Especially our youth.” When his father stiffened with outrage, Bobby continued, “Take Marissa’s favorite. By next year Omo may be a prostitute in Waro; in five years she may be dead of AIDS. But you will still be ‘chief of this village.’
“Do ‘your’ people know of your fine house in Port George, the young women you keep there with the money PGL gives you to ‘compensate’ them for this ruin of their land? If they do, it is not because I’ve told them. I am, despite all, a dutiful son.”
His father scrutinized him with weary eyes. “So this is still about your mother.”
Watching, Marissa wished she could turn away. Bobby’s gaze expressed only pity and contempt. “How much weight you give, Father, to the most paltry of your sins.”
Femi Okari gazed at his only son as his face sagged with regret. Then he stood, abandoning all ceremony to place a hand on Bobby’s shoulder as he looked into his face. “I have made mistakes. They are painful. I do not wish for you to make a mistake more painful than losing a son, at a cost to many more people than one old man. Please, heed me.”
Bobby met his eyes. Then, his face closing, he slowly shook his head. “Too late, Father. For us both.”
Without wait
ing for his father’s answer, Bobby left. Glancing over her shoulder, Marissa saw Femi Okari shake his head.
At the center of Goro, the villagers had gathered, their mood shadowed by fear of Karama and by the passage of the moon, its edge now appearing to touch the sun. As Bobby moved toward them, his cell phone rang.
He answered swiftly, eyes fixed on Marissa as he listened. Briefly, they shut. Before hanging up, Bobby said quietly, “Be safe.”
Once more his gaze met Marissa’s. “That was Atiku,” he said. “In Ebu, the demonstration has collapsed. In most villages people are afraid to leave their houses. There are whispers that our youth lynched those workers on my orders.”
“Is that possible?” Marissa asked. “Not on your orders, but despite them?”
Bobby stared at the ground with hooded eyes. “So many of our youth are filled with hatred. It’s as though violence is in the water we cannot drink and the air that singes our lungs.” He came to her, placing his hands on her shoulders. “We are truly alone, Marissa. Those rumors about me are part of it.”
Looking into his face, Marissa searched for a way to ask him to disperse the crowd. “Think of what you’ve already done. You’ve given the Asari identity and purpose.”
Bobby smiled faintly. “And now I should stop?”
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