“Good to see you.” He tightened his arms around her and kissed her ear, then jumped back as though he’d been singed when he realized his wife was watching. And Luella was watching: eyes wide, her mouth tight as a skinflint’s wallet.
“Luella was just asking me what could have brought me back to Farleigh. Then you walked up.” Blanche grinned at him. Leo harrumphed and er-ed and ah-ed but was finally saved by Thelvin’s arrival.
“Hey, everybody.” He handed Blanche and Melva their drinks and waited to be introduced.
“Leo’s an old, old friend,” Blanche said, then flipped her hand in Luella’s direction. “That’s Luella, his wife.”
Thelvin shook hands with both of them, spoke to Melva, then put his arm around Blanche’s waist. If he’d done this at another time, Blanche would have moved away. She didn’t hold with women on leashes, whether the leash was leather or a warm brown hand. But right now…She shifted her hips, snuggled a bit closer to Thelvin, and winked at Leo even while she was telling herself to behave.
“Well, you certainly didn’t waste no time,” Luella said to Blanche, but smiled at Thelvin with such happiness and relief he might have been her missing brother returned to the bosom of the family.
Melva was trying not to laugh. Leo looked as shocked as if Blanche had just unzipped his fly. Luella took Leo’s arm.
“Y’all stop by sometime,” she said, tugging at Leo, her voice finally pulling him out of his state of stun.
“Yeah, anytime, anytime. Y’all come on by. We’ll…”
Luella dragged him away before he could finish. Melva looked from Blanche to Thelvin and decided to ease away, too.
“Old, old friend,” Thelvin said. “That must take y’all back to high school.”
“Um-humm.” Blanche was deciding what if anything to tell Thelvin about Leo but was more interested in how much Thelvin wanted to know.
“Close friends, or just friends?” Thelvin was smiling but there was some tightness around his eyes she hadn’t seen before. It had been a while since she’d heard that Tell-me-the-truth/tell-me-what-I-want-to-hear whine men developed when they feared somebody else might be getting a piece of the pie.
“You mean now or in high school?” She gave him a wicked, keep-on-if-you-dare grin.
Thelvin looked at her for what seemed a long time. Blanche thought about his already well-developed ability to pick up on her vibe. Is that what he was doing now? Trying to feel her feelings? Could he tell that her jealousy alarm was beginning to flash? She’d installed it right next to her bullshit detector as soon as she’d understood the harm that jealousy could do. A woman she’d worked for up in Harlem had helped her understand that a lot of times jealousy was the first sign of a man’s feeling like he had the kind of ownership that allowed him to blow your brains out if he was in a bad mood or if he thought you were being a bad girl. And it ain’t nothing to play with, she reminded herself, thinking about the way she’d let Thelvin hug her just to tweak Leo’s last nerve.
Something shifted in Thelvin’s eyes. The tightness around them disappeared. He took Blanche’s hand and held it between both of his.
“You know what? Forget I asked that question.”
Good move, Blanche thought. Very good move.
“You wanna dance?” he asked.
And they did. First to a song fast enough to release them from the last of the tension of their previous conversation, and then to something that brought them belly to belly, wrapped in a tension of another, more delicious kind but not so powerful as to keep Blanche from wondering if Leo was watching. When the music stopped, Thelvin went to the bathroom and Blanche made a slow circuit of the party. She didn’t know why she was surprised so many people she’d grown up with were living in Farleigh—more than when she’d last lived here. She’d read that lots of blacks were giving up the phony integration in the big cities, North and South, for places where they could breathe and grow. But could she breathe here? Could she grow while living in the same town as David Palmer? Was Luella right about her being a city woman now? She wound her way back to Thelvin—without going near Leo, despite the tug.
Blanche and Thelvin were on the dance floor, repeating their slow drag to something by Teddy Pendergrass that should have been sold with a pack of condoms, when Leo tapped Blanche on the shoulder. “Just wanted to say good night.”
“Night.”
Thelvin pulled her closer and executed a turn that took Leo out of her sight. Boys will be boys, she laughed to herself.
On the walk home, Blanche wondered how to tell Thelvin that she didn’t trust herself to let him in her house because she wasn’t sure she was ready for sex with him yet. To say it was to imply that she knew he wanted her—which she did, but she didn’t want to sound boastful. And she wasn’t ready for any questions about why she wasn’t ready to have sex with him, since half her reasons couldn’t be put into words. She was operating on one of those wordless commands that boiled up from somewhere deep inside of her and were never wrong, even though she didn’t always heed them.
“Can I come in?” Thelvin asked when they reached her door.
“I don’t think so, Thelvin. It’s pretty late, and I don’t want to rush things. And if I let you in now…”
Thelvin grinned as though she’d actually invited him into her bed. “Well, thank you,” he said. “I consider that a real compliment.” He put his arm around her in a brotherly way, gave her a quick hug, and let her go. “I sure like being with you, woman,” he said, walking backward toward his car. Blanche watched him drive off and wondered if she’d made a mistake about being ready.
Later, in bed, she slipped her hand between her legs and relieved some of her craving—at least for the moment. It was probably a good thing he was going to be away for a week. Give her some time to cool down. She didn’t want to scare the man to death.
THIRTEEN
OUT TO LUNCH AND UNDER ORDERS
Afamiliar-looking young brown-skinned woman answered Mumsfield’s door and smiled like she knew something Blanche hadn’t told her.
“Yes, ma’am. He’s expecting you.”
“What’s your name, honey?” Blanche asked.
“Christine, Miz Blanche, Christine Potter.”
Of course, how could she have missed that Potter nose? This was Leo’s brother’s child. That accounted for the knowingness in the girl’s smile. Blanche wondered just what she’d heard about Blanche’s relationship with her Uncle Leo. She certainly wasn’t going to ask. The important thing about her relationship with Leo was that there wasn’t one any longer. Until the party, she hadn’t seen him for nearly two years. The last time they’d met, he’d paid her a surprise visit in Boston and they’d spent the day in bed. Leo had tried to keep something going after that, but Blanche wouldn’t have it. It wasn’t simply that he was married, but that he’d married that limp Luella when Blanche was prepared to be his long-term lover, if not his wife. All right, maybe not his live-in, but at least his part-time long-term.
Leo’s niece showed Blanche down the black-and-white marble-floored entry hall. Blanche was pleased to have totally forgotten what Mumsfield’s family’s house looked like. She didn’t want to use up precious brain cells storing the layout of ex-employers’ houses. But she was sure the feeling in the house was different from the crazy, stressed vibe in the place when she’d worked here.
“Blanche!” Mumsfield came down the hall and gave her one of his boa-constrictor hugs but not before she noticed his suspenders. Orange for eating? Blanche looked over Mumsfield’s shoulder at his fiancée. Karen Palmer reminded her of a pale bird: pigeon-breasted and thin-legged, with fluffy brown hair and an air of being ready to take off. She wore an odd expression; Blanche thought she saw surprise or confusion, and was that fear in Karen’s eyes? There was something familiar about her, too, especially her eyes. Of course, they were like her brother’s.
Mumsfield turned Blanche toward Karen and introduced them.
For all Blanche’s talk about no one being able to choose her family, she realized she didn’t want to shake Karen Palmer’s hand—invisible flecks of dried Palmer skin left behind on her fingers, falling into her food. Didn’t Archibald say Karen and David were close?
“How do you do?” Blanche kept her hands at her sides but tried to make her voice friendly.
Karen looked at her for a couple of beats, as though she expected Blanche to say something else, something Karen didn’t want to hear. She seemed relieved when Blanche remained silent. Blanche had no idea what that was all about, but once it passed, Karen perked right up.
“Why! Well, this is a…Mumsfield told me he wanted me to meet an old friend but I had no idea…”
“I did not tell her it was you, Blanche,” Mumsfield said.
No wonder she looked surprised.
“Yes, well, he has spoken of you, and it certainly is a—” Karen’s hands flew from her sides to her hair to her neck to a short bout of wrestling with each other—any- and everywhere but in a position to shake Blanche’s hand. Fine. They were in agreement on that, even if their reasons were different.
“Why, I’m so pleased to meet you,” Karen finally said.
Blanche thought she looked more like she had a toothache or needed a toilet than pleased.
Mumsfield ushered them into the room dominated by a large sofa in a blue, beige, and gold fleur-de-lis pattern. The walls were covered with portraits of men who, according to their dress, were long dead, and pictures of the countryside.
Mumsfield touched Blanche’s arm. “Would you like a drink before lunch, Blanche?”
“No, thanks, Mumsfield, honey.” Blanche squirmed to get comfortable in an overstuffed chair. Mumsfield and Karen sat on the sofa.
“I’m afraid I don’t have too much time,” Karen said.
From the look on his face, this was news to Mumsfield. “But Karen, I thought we—”
“Oh my, did I forget to tell you? Why, yes, I’ve got a meeting. About the bazaar?” She looked from Mumsfield to Blanche. “You know, the Farleigh Daughters of the Confederacy Bazaar?” She gave Blanche an especially toothy grin.
Since it wasn’t necessary for Karen to volunteer any of that information, Blanche figured this must be her way of announcing what she was. The Farleigh Daughters of the Confederacy Bazaar was a whites-only event that used to be held downtown—Main Street was blocked off and off limits to all but white folks for two days. In the late fifties, the NAACP filed a discrimination case and won. But the good Daughters were not to be outdone: they moved the bazaar to the spacious lawns of one of the members’ homes and made it a private whites-only event. Well, if that’s the way Karen wanted to play it:
Blanche grinned right back. “Oh yeah,” she said. “The Farleigh Daughters of the Confederacy—in my neighborhood they’re called the Klanettes. Of course, I’m sure you girls are better behaved.” Blanche gave Karen’s outfit a slow looking over. “And a little better dressed…I guess.”
Karen’s eyes got narrower, her cheeks and neck were mottled with red, and Blanche could swear she saw the woman’s head bobble in shock, like one of those hound dogs people put on the ledge inside the back windows of their cars.
Mumsfield looked from Blanche to Karen, a frown beginning to crease his forehead.
“Lunch is ready, Mr. Mumsfield,” Christine said from the doorway.
Blanche felt like a midget in the high-backed, hard dining-room chair. The three of them were huddled together at the end of a table long enough to seat thirty.
Karen seemed to have regained some composure by the time they were seated, and they talked of the weather while Leo’s niece served the salmon, new potatoes, and braised Brussels sprouts. Blanche was determined to turn the conversation toward topics that might give her a glimpse of Karen and Mumsfield’s relationship, since that was why she’d come.
“Will y’all be living here after you get married?” she asked, breaking the silence created by something she only now remembered about Mumsfield: his total concentration on his food.
He chewed and wiped his mouth before he spoke, looking all the time like someone suffering from pig-out interruptus, despite his good manners.
“We are going to live in the country house, Blanche. You remember.”
A flood of memories of what had happened to her in that house filled Blanche more fully than the meal.
Karen broke into Blanche’s thoughts: “Why, you were the maid at the summer house, isn’t that so?”
Blanche continued to chew her potatoes a bit longer than needed. Mumsfield reached over and took Karen’s hand. “Blanche worked there, but she was always my friend.”
“Yes, dear,” Karen said. She gave him a melty look. “I only meant…Well”—she looked over at Blanche—“why, it must feel quite different. I mean, being a guest instead of…”
Blanche wiped her mouth before she spoke. “Oh, quite different. For one thing, being the maid is dirtier work than being a guest, and people’s manners are usually better when you’re the guest.”
Karen looked at her watch. “Oh me! I’ll be late!” She patted her mouth with her snowy napkin. Mumsfield rose and pulled out her chair.
Blanche was irritated that her time had been taken up sparring with Karen instead of trying to sense whether Karen really cared for Mumsfield. But what did caring mean to a bigot like Karen? Karen didn’t have the kind of beauty or sexiness that usually went with the term gold digger or heartbreaker, but looking like a sweet old granny hadn’t stopped Margaret Thatcher from being vicious.
Blanche watched Karen as she rose to leave.
“Why, I’m so glad to have finally met Mumsfield’s, uh, friend,” Karen said, looking just over Blanche’s left shoulder and sounding as sincere as a TV commercial.
“Why, thank you, Karen, honey. I hope y’all will be very happy. And I can’t wait till you get settled in the country house so I can come on out and sit on that big ole front porch with my feet up and just enjoy your hospitality.”
Blanche wondered if anybody had ever broken his neck doing that head-bobble thing. Girl’s so pale she looks like she’s seen a ghost—or is one. Blanche pursed her lips to keep from laughing. There’d been a time when Karen’s Klanette attitude would have depressed her for days. That was before she was old enough to understand that both race and racism were invented by white people and didn’t have a thing to do with her. However, she did like to remind them of the cost of their stupidity when she got a chance.
“You take care now, Karen, honey,” she said. “I’ll be waiting for my invitation to the wedding.” Blanche called out as Karen was leaving the room: “I’m gonna make Mumsfield promise me a seat right up front. Right next to your mama.”
“Why!…” Karen looked from Blanche to Mumsfield and back. “Why, I’m sure I…we…”
Mumsfield put his arm around Karen’s shoulders and ushered her to the front door, murmuring to her as they walked away. Blanche doubled over in silent laughter.
Mumsfield’s face was full of distress when he came back. “I am sorry, Blanche. I did not know, Blanche. If I knew Karen was prejudiced, I would have talked to her. I will talk to her, Blanche,” Mumsfield said, demonstrating the understanding of people that had drawn them together years ago. She had a feeling it was the rare white person who could both see prejudice in those he cared about and speak on it.
“And what will you tell her, Mumsfield, honey?” she asked him.
Mumsfield frowned at her. “That it is silly not to like people because they are different from you,” he said with impatience, as though she well knew the answer and was testing him.
“Um-hmm,” Blanche said, but she thought that Mumsfield’s talking-to and about five years living as the only white person in a Georgia town might change Karen�
��s mind.
“I want you to like her, Blanche. Now you cannot.”
Blanche was relieved at not having to find a gentle way to tell Mumsfield that she thought his fiancée was a racist bitch. But beyond that, what could she say? She couldn’t tell him she thought Karen was fine for him, as though being a racist weren’t something that seeped through your whole life like the stench of sewer water rising in the basement.
“She will listen, Blanche. She will understand. I know she is a good person, Blanche, even if she…”
“Mumsfield, honey, I don’t think it’s possible to be a good person and be prejudiced against black people the way Karen is. I understand what you mean, but please don’t ever call her a good person in front of me, not as long as she’s the way she is.”
“She will change, Blanche, you will see.”
Sounds like fantasy city to me, Blanche thought.
“I got to be going, too, Mumsfield. We’re catering tonight, and I got plenty work to do.” She rose, smoothed down her skirt, and picked up her handbag. “Thanks for the lunch, honey. It was scrumptious. I’m just going to step into the kitchen and speak to Miz Claudia.” Blanche had heard from Miz Minnie that Miz Claudia ruled Mumsfield’s kitchen.
Blanche had no trouble finding her way there, but Miz Claudia was slumped over her newspaper at the kitchen table having a quick nap. Blanche waved to Leo’s niece and went back to join Mumsfield.
Mumsfield wouldn’t let Blanche leave without promising to come to dinner soon. “Just you and me,” he said. He leaned over and kissed her cheek. “I will help Karen to change her mind, Blanche. Then you will like her, I know you will.”
Blanche warned herself not to praise him. People ought not expect or get praise for doing the right thing any more than they got praise for breathing.
“Maybe so, honey, maybe so. But it ain’t nearly as simple as you make it sound.”
Mumsfield giggled. “Well, if she does not understand, you can sit on the porch of the country house until she does.”
Blanche Passes Go Page 13
