Just amazing how when you figure the world's never gonna change, it hurries on so fast. The longer Amma lived, the more change she’d seen coming, seen everything racing along faster and faster, doing good in the world, that was certain, but leaving folks behind, and losing things along the way.
From the van window, with her baby asleep in her lap, Noni watched the dark pines and the gray trees rush by in the night. The red-clay earth was the right color now and she was going home to Heaven's Hill. From behind her came the soft murmur of her mother's unending complaints to Uncle Tat, who encouraged her to sue all her hospitals.
Noni closed her eyes, thinking back to the last time she’d seen Kaye, nearly two years ago, the day she’d taken her mother out of the hospital.
That day her arms had felt so heavy holding the flowers from her mother's room. Kaye in his long white doctor's jacket was pacing up and down the hospital corridor in a fury at her for going to California with her mother. “You’re picking her. You’re fucking picking her over yourself!” And he’d whirled around on Noni. “You’re never going to really reach out for me. You’re never going to use that dime for anything real. So why don’t you just give it back? You’re a coward!”
Noni had torn the chain right off her own neck, breaking it, burning her skin like a sharp cut in her flesh.
“It's not that I’m choosing my mother over myself, it's that you think I’m choosing her over you!” she shouted. “You sound like Roland!”
“That's right! You are choosing her over me. Just like you chose Roland over me! I told you not to marry him!”
“You never said it was because you loved me! If I’m a coward, so are you, goddamn it. All I’m asking you to do is just wait. Let me try to help her get well first. I can’t just barge ahead with my own life now, not the way she is. Can’t you just wait?”
He shook his head at her. “No I can’t,” he said. “I’ve been waiting four hundred years.” And Kaye had turned his back on her.
Noni had run down the hall into the restroom, and when she came back out with Amma, Kaye was gone.
The stars in the sky looked down where he lay,
The little Lord Jesus asleep in the hay.
Singing as she worked, watching for the van, Amma sprinkled little marshmallows over the yams and placed them in the refrigerator for baking tomorrow. She thought she heard tires as she pulled the steaming pecan pie from the oven and slid onto the rack in its place a mincemeat pie.
She looked again out the window, but it was too soon. That airport would be bedlam. Kaye had told her how three days ago when he’d picked up Shani there, the place was “an agoraphobic's worst nightmare,” whatever that meant; sometimes he and Shani talked in a separate language they thought was funnier than anybody else did, since nobody else knew what they were talking about half the time.
She heard footsteps. Then the door flung open and she knew it was Kaye before she saw him; he always burst through doors like a jack-in-the-box. A second later he was in the middle of the kitchen, picking her up right off the floor, bouncing her. Kaye in those soft slacks and jackets of his, and no overcoat. Cashmere, Italian, he told her. And those shoes of his that looked like bedroom slippers. Kaye, sweet-smelling, with Deborah's pretty mouth and smart eyes and her little perfect ears. Deborah's Kaye, a doctor, thirty years old, that she would have been so proud of.
“You stop that! Put me down. What are you doing over here? You and Shani not supposed to be coming ’til tomorrow.”
“I know. And I’m supposed to bring the wine.”
“If you want wine you better bring it. I don’t care for that stuff. She settling in? You need anything?”
“We’re fine.” Kaye kissed his grandmother. “I’m here to tell you something, ’cause we’re going to announce it at the party, and since you’re too stuck-up to come—”
She smoothed down the old long sweater of Tat's she was wearing. “I’m too old. And it's too cold out there.”
“You just want everybody to come over here to you at Clayhome.”
“Well, that's true, too.”
Amma gestured for him to sit down. She already knew what he was going to say. She knew it the minute she heard the word, “announce.” And sure enough, he took a ring box from his pocket and opened it for her. A big diamond in a strange-looking modern ring flashed out. She shivered to think what he must have paid for it.
“My my,” she said. Then, “How you know Shani's going to tell you yes when you haven’t even given it to her, and you planning on ‘announcing’ it tonight?”
Taking back the box, Kaye kissed the top of her head. “Grandma, it's 1986. Who you think picked this ring out?”
“Who?”
He did his old exaggerated mockery with his eyebrows. “‘Who?’ Dr. Shanila Bouchard, that's who. Where's Grandpa Tat? I want to show him this. I want to hear him say, ‘If I’d had my legs and my chance I could of bought a diamond ring make this diamond ring look like some little old bug in a fly's eye.’”
“Don’t make fun of your grandpa. Tat's gone to the airport in his van. Gone to pick up Noni and her baby and her momma. They’re back from their trip tonight.”
She saw Kaye stiffen. “Tonight?”
“I already told you that.”
He pulled himself into that stillness of his. “Guess it didn’t register. How's her mom?”
“Judy's still in a wheelchair. I told you that, too.”
Kaye snorted. “Her and Tat both in wheelchairs, hunh? They drag racing around the airport or what?”
Ignoring his sarcasm, Amma busied herself checking her mincemeat pie in the oven. Finally she turned to him. “Noni know?”
Seeing the graduation photograph of himself and Noni lying on the kitchen table, Kaye picked it up and studied it. “Know what?”
Amma snorted. “Don’t fool with me. About you and Shani getting married.” He shook his head. “Don’t you think you oughta tell her?”
He shrugged, replaced the photo on the kitchen shelf with the other pictures. “Why should I? She didn’t ask my permission to get engaged to that asshole she married. She didn’t ask my permission to get pregnant when she already knew she was going to leave that asshole.”
“You watch your mouth in my home.” Amma raised her finger as she had when he was a child. “And we’re not talking about permission. We’re talking about treating your friend decent.”
Kaye elaborately shrugged. “Was I right about Roland Hurd or not?”
“I just hope you’re right about everything you think you’re right about, Kaye King. I don’t like waste. And you ask me, wasting love's the worst of all.”
After Kaye left, his grandmother stared out the window at the lamp she’d lit in the window of Heaven's Hill, waiting for Noni and her baby and her mother to come home and be cared for.
Oh the weather outside is frightful,
But the fire is so delightful…
Kaye's Christmas Eve party was a high hard hum of talk and laughter and seasonal songs like “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” ironically playing from speakers embedded in walls throughout the house.
Young well-dressed men and women, mostly medical people, were celebrating with Kaye both his birthday and his engagement to Dr. Shani Bouchard.
Kaye held a champagne flute high above his head. “So in conclusion—”
“You promise?” Loud laughter and applause from the circling guests.
“Thank you, thank you for keeping Shani from finding out in time she’d be crazy to marry me—”
“Hey, Shani, you’d be crazy to marry him!” More laughter.
Kaye gestured around the room with the glass. “Merry Christmas! Happy Hanukkah!”
“Happy Birthday!”
“Happy Engagement!”
Kaye's new house on Glade Lake was built on a ledge of land, with a high huge deck across its back overlooking the water. With only two bedrooms upstairs, it was not a large house, but as Kaye was telling a group of guests
at his party, he had plans to expand. For one thing, he was going to terrace and garden the now steep overgrown path down to the water's edge, then he was going to build a gazebo and a dock on the lake bank. He was going to add a whole separate wing for Amma and Tatlock Fairley, everything on a single floor, everything handicap-accessible, and move them in as soon as he could talk his grandmother into leaving Clayhome.
Cool jazz, red wines, hot mulled punch and sparkling water, a three-tiered cake with two toy doctors on top, their faces darkened with a magic marker, platters of sushi and tapas, everybody laughing, talking.
—I’ve got a classroom full of fourth-grade kids watching the TV set. The Challenger blows up in their faces with a teacher on it. You think these kids want to be teachers when they grow up? These kids are going to be the Ayn Rand generation, trust me.—
—Good looks, good taste, M.D.s, fast track, Afro-American.—
—Who, Kaye and Shani? Not Afro, African.
African American.—
—Whatever.—
—Get in the Market! Come on, it's the eighties. It's okay to make money.—
—Kaye, hey, doctors’ll always make money.—
Santa baby, leave a sable under the tree, for me…
Here on the first floor there was, in addition to Kaye's study, only one room. But it was an enormous open space with a cathedral ceiling and a double-sided free-standing fireplace and it served as living room, dining room, and kitchen all together. The Christmas tree stood in a corner, a tall palm strung with chili-pepper lights.
—You must be Shani. I’m Bunny Breckenridge. If you need a break from Southernese, come see me. I live in New York.—
—Oh, please, have you got a bagel on you?—
—I’ve got the Times in my car.—
—You’ve got a new best friend, too.—
Jingle bell, jingle bell, jingle bell rock…
No one noticed Noni walk into the house. It had been easy to find the place with the address Amma had given her. Seeing Amma, Judy had burst into tears and then so had the baby. Together, Amma and Noni had gotten Johnny to bed. Amma's niece Dionne Fairley had been hired to nurse Judy; she would sleep in the small bedroom next to Mrs. Tilden's suite. Amma told Noni that she would help Dionne get Judy settled.
She said Noni ought to go over to Kaye's party, even just for a few minutes, because all her old friends would be there. Then Amma had hugged Noni and told her that Kaye was getting engaged.
Noni thought she’d done well. It was wonderful news, she’d said; she’d said that Bunny had already told her that Kaye was seeing somebody and so she wasn’t surprised. She’d said she was very happy for him.
The house was only a few blocks from the old retired rector Dr. Fisher's home. Paper bags with lit candles in them lined the rails of the walkway and the deck. And there were cars parked all along the street. Although she had knocked, the music and talk were so loud that no one heard her; besides, the door was open and it looked as if everyone had just walked into the party on their own.
The first thing Noni thought as she stood inside the door was how open Kaye's new house was. There was one whole wall of glass, there were skylights in vaulted ceilings, space flowed over bare floors and spare contemporary furnishings. Even with so many guests clustered around tables of food and drink, there was a sense of great emptiness. It immediately struck Noni that everything was the opposite of Clayhome with its small doors and mullioned windows, its narrow, worn, winding stairs, all its small, low rooms with their wide-planked floors and bead-board wainscoting crowded with old tables and chairs and cabinets and couches.
The second thing Noni thought was how many friends Kaye had made here in North Carolina. Friends from the life he’d lived here. She saw people she knew from Gordon Junior and Moors High and Haver University, then more people she didn’t know that she thought must be from Haver Medical School, where he now taught, or from his private practice in Hillston. The guests were from different races—black, white, Asian, Indian—and most looked to be around Kaye's age and, in their dress, like him, what he had once called “hip.”
The third thing Noni noticed, as a group of the guests moved out of the center of the room, was the young woman who stood next to Kaye, her hand in his.
Long-boned and strong-featured, African-American, this woman wore a black silk caftan and a white and black silk scarf twisted in her hair. She raised Kaye's hand to her lips and kissed it, and as she did so, Noni saw the diamond ring on her left hand.
They know that Santa's on his way
He's loaded lots of toys and goodies
On his sleigh…
Noni was grateful that she was given a moment before anyone recognized her. For seeing this woman whom she’d never met, whose life was already joined to Kaye's, her heart hurt so sharply that she couldn’t have kept the pain from her face if Kaye had seen her then. She just needed a moment.
The young woman saw her before Kaye did. She looked across the room at Noni and frowned. And then she stepped forward and smiled at her.
And by then Noni was able to smile back and walk toward her across the room, so that when Kaye first saw Noni she was coming toward him and she was smiling at the woman she knew must be his fiancée.
“You’ve got to be Noni. I’m Shani Bouchard.” And the woman shook her hand kindly. “I’ve seen all these pictures of you.”
“Yes, I’m Noni.” She took Shani's hand in hers. Still holding it, she turned to Kaye. “You didn’t tell me, no one told me. You’re getting married. Congratulations.”
Shani shook Kaye's arm as he stood staring at Noni. “Your best friend, you didn’t tell her? I swear…” She turned back to Noni, shaking her head. “This man's a mess.”
“You’re back,” Kaye said flatly to Noni.
Noni fought to keep talking, keep smiling. “Bunny told me you were having this party and Aunt Ma gave me directions to where you lived. I hope you don’t mind.”
Shani took her hands again. “Of course not. You’ve been living in London, right?”
Noni could tell that the woman was trying as hard as Noni herself was to make things all right.
Kaye muttered, “Shanila's an epidemiologist. Coming here to Haver Hospital. Yes, we’re engaged.”
“Shanila King. That's a beautiful name “
“Oh, just Shani. And I’m keeping my own name.”
“Congratulations. Welcome to Moors.”
“Thank you,” Shani looked into a corner of the room. “Let me go help out Rana. She's stuck over there listening to Jim relive every tennis match he ever played.” Shani hurried away, leaving them (Noni thought) alone to talk.
Kaye and Noni stood there in the middle of the room. Finally she said, “It was great to get home and see Aunt Ma and Tat.”
“Where are you going next?”
“Nowhere. Home for good.”
He looked at her a while. “So, I heard you had a baby.”
“Yes. A little boy. Johnny.”
“Oh. That was your dad's real name, right?”
“…Right.”
“So. You and Roland working things out?”
“No, we’re divorced.”
“How ’bout your kid?”
“Johnny is just…mine.”
Noni touched her breastbone with her fingers to press back her feelings. Tears welled in her eyes but didn’t fall. “Kaye, you deserve all the happiness in the world.”
He studied her seriously, started to say something, but didn’t. Noni wiped her eyes with her hand. The bracelet he had given her with its gold charms, the piano, the telephone, slid up her wrist. She gathered herself, smiled, pointed over at the tiered cake on the table. “Your birthday isn’t until tomorrow.” Fighting hard, she folded her arms in an imitation of Kaye's old comic way. “It's my birthday. I’m older.”
After a moment, a small smile flickered across his face.
“Well, you could offer to show me your house,” she added. “How about a tour?�
�
And so he took her around the place, pointing out the unusual architecture. Everything blurred as she smiled and nodded.
As they came down the stairs, Bunny saw them and hurried over. “Noni, you did come! Excuse us—” She bumped at Kaye with her hip, and pulled Noni aside into the crowd. “I swear, I had no idea he was getting engaged tonight. I would have told you at the airport.”
“It's okay.” Noni felt flushed and heated. “Excuse me a second. It's jet lag. I want to get some air.”
“Are you all right?”
“Bunny, please, I’m fine.” City sidewalks, busy sidewalks, dressed in holiday style…
—Get over it? Kaye, they indicted Poindexter!—
—Bunny, time to exit the Garden. People forget. Kurt Waldheim is now president of Austria.—
I’ll-uh have-uh a bluuuuue Christmas without you.
I’ll-uh be so bluuuuue thinkin’ about you….
It was cold out on the deck, but the night was clear and brilliant. The air cooled her, made her shiver. Noni leaned over the rail to look at the stars; they shimmered in the black lake below as if someone in heaven were tossing them there like pennies in a well. Breathing deeply, she held open the collar of her white silk blouse. All at once she smelled cigarette smoke.
From the dark end of the long deck she heard someone singing to her.
Noelle, Noelle. Noelle, Noelle,
Born is the Queen of Heaven's Hill.
Parker Jones stepped out of the shadows, skinny and hunched in the chilly air. “Hey there, Disco Lady.”
“Parker! Oh, I’m sorry, Kareem.”
“Naw, it's Parker again. Allah and me split up. I’m riding with Jesus all the way to the finish line.” He pointed with his cigarette at his chest where a baggy T-shirt was in fact stenciled with the face of Christ.
“You’re not a Muslim anymore?”
“You go to Dollard Prison and get picked for a girlfriend by enough brothers calling themselves Mohammed, it can make a Christian of you, and that's a fact.”
The Last Noel Page 22
