by Lisa Samson
“I heard a man speak today whose wife died at the edge of a soldier’s machete.”
“Ah yes. Much quicker way to go. She was lucky.”
His mind-set astounded me.
“Solo, will you finish work or take a post somewhere when you get your degree?”
“That’s up to God.”
“Well, I just wanted to talk.”
“I can do that too. Always here for you, my friend.”
Talk about getting something you don’t deserve. I wish Solo traveled with me everywhere.
Clarissa
The little girl cries out and clings to Reggie while the aunt, hair teased out like that Cruella De Vil lady on 101 Dalmations, leaps around, flashlight under her chin, yelling, “I am the devil! I am a demon! I am the devil!”
The aunt whirls out of the room, and the little girl lets go of the boy’s arm as he turns his back and cries. She knows he’s crying only because his shoulders shake a very little bit.
“You know your real mother and father didn’t want you, Clarissa,” Reggie says, sniffing and wiping his nose with the back of his hand. “They had other children they loved more. Six before you. They didn’t want you at all.”
Clarissa doesn’t believe him. She knows the lady who had her loves her. The lady who had her misses her.
Besides, as soon as she gets home, she’s going next door to Granddaddy Man. He’s already promised to watch Annie with her. The little girl knows he’ll make popcorn too.
Fairly
Uncle G toasts sesame seeds in the kitchen. A gorgeous aroma. When will air-freshening products become available in scents like this? Or baking bread? Or Sunday pot roast?
I don’t know who is coming for dinner tonight, but I have to admit, I actually enjoy sitting around the table with Uncle G’s friends. You never know who will join us for the meal, but Uncle G is a warm host, and smiles in various shapes and sizes accompany the food and the conversation. People seem to smile more in these parts in general, I’ve noticed.
I noticed something else when walking around with the real estate agent this afternoon: fewer angry drivers. Drivers respect pedestrians and always allow them to cross the street before making a turn. I never before realized how aggravating the lack of such politeness is, but now that I’ve experienced the opposite, I fear I’m ruined for life in a major city.
We’re heading back tomorrow to a one-bedroom apartment I found above a bistro so Uncle G can give his seal of approval. It’s the most charming little place. Loads of appeal, new appliances, and vast windows. Two flights of steps put a bit of a damper on the arrangement, but if Georgia’s in the same condition as the last time I saw her, she could use the exercise.
Howard Huckleberry, surprisingly subdued and cosmopolitan in dress (and yes, I admit I expected loud plaid pants), showed me a small, older house for sale on Jefferson Street. Not the best neighborhood, and surely a fixer-upper, but the woodwork, leaded windows, and stained glass screamed, “Buy me! I’ve got potential!” I doubt if Georgia’s interested in a fixer-upper, and while her father left her with an income substantial enough for one person, I doubt she’ll be able to afford the price as well as the cost of improvements.
I could do wonders with a place like that.
Braden just called me on my cell phone. My ex-Pilates instructor, Camille “Shoes du Jour” (I’ve never seen her in the same pair of trainers twice), is throwing a cocktail party tonight to raise money for her daughter’s cheerleading team. She became a suburbanite three years ago when her daughter started school. Now, I realize I’m not the most charitable person in the world, but a cheerleading team? I’ll throw some bills into the bucket at the red light for the man from the soup kitchen, but I draw the line at funding the neuroses of parents of overcommitted children.
If Camille cut back on prepared food from gourmet markets, she could finance the entire team herself.
“Are you going, Braden?”
“Of course not. Can you imagine, really?”
No. Even Braden has more sense than that.
Maybe it’s not so bad being here in Lexington.
Jonah, the refugee minister from the rally at the park, came to dinner tonight with his little girl. I can’t remember her name as it’s something very foreign and not easy to recall, let alone spell.
I mean, we hear about people living through horror all the time, but when you meet them face to face, it’s another matter entirely. What do I do with this information?
People like my parents, like Uncle Geoffrey, rely on their faith to guide them. And surely there are many others who don’t but still seem to find it in their hearts to make sacrifices for the common good.
But don’t I do enough already?
All right, Hort. I can see you shaking your head.
The minister shook my hand. “You have beautiful eyes, my dear. So brown and large.”
Did they remind him of his wife’s? I didn’t want to ask. I didn’t want to know. I didn’t want to think about what this man had survived. I didn’t want to think about what he’d seen and how he still found it in him to tell me my eyes were beautiful.
But I reached out and touched his arm. And it was warm and full of life and living and pain and even death. “I’m sorry she died,” I said.
“Death is death, Fairly. How it happens doesn’t make it any less final. Geoffrey tells me you lost your husband.”
“You have beautiful eyes too, Jonah.”
My brown eyes met his.
“What does Jonah do here in Lexington? Does he have a church here?” I dunked several bags of tea into a pot.
Uncle G pulled down a loaf of bread from atop the refrigerator. “Not yet. He owns a restaurant. Della-Faye’s, it’s called. Soul food. Home cooking.”
“Really?”
“Yes. Bought it from the original Della-Faye. She still cooks there most days. Little place on Sixth. You should try it sometime.”
“Oh dear. Me at a soul food restaurant? I’m just trying to locate some decent sushi.”
Georgia
I didn’t realize until I got older that he did it to give Mom a break. But before my dad began traveling the world, he would take me to Mass every Saturday night. We’d sit in the beauty of the sanctuary, sing more loudly than most people, and say the creed with conviction.
Afterward, we’d drive to McDonald’s for a hot apple pie or french fries, blowing on the deep-fried food and placing it in our mouths before we should have. We loved crispy food back in those days.
Sometimes we’d drive to the Little Professor Book Center, its sign sporting a small owl with round glasses and a mortarboard hat. He’d head off to the magazines, to the politics or history section; I’d sit cross-legged on the floor of children’s literature. And he’d buy me Laura Ingalls Wilder, the Bobbsey Twins, or John Bellairs.
All the next week, I’d hold my new book in my hand, rub my fingertips across the glossy cover, and breathe in my father.
Okay, so while sorting through the condo I found the cards and letters and opened one up, and honest to goodness, I don’t know how I missed the fact, all those years ago, that he was trying.
Dear Georgie,
I’m in Paris, France, right now. I went to Mass this evening and found a McDonald’s afterward and had fries for old time’s sake.
Any news yet from Sean?
Love, Dad
Maybe not opening the letters had something to do with it. Good grief. Notes from the dead. It’s way too late to do anything about it. I didn’t even know he’d returned to his faith.
Some people don’t open bills. They feel that rush of dread drive down into their stomachs, knowing money they don’t have in their accounts is due.
When love comes due and you have neither the strength nor the reserves, isn’t it just easier to leave it in its envelope? Besides, he’d leave me for weeks at a time. What’s a little slip of paper compared to years of that?
My little cat jumps up on my lap, and his green e
yes shine. I love him. It’s so easy to pet Miles, and kiss him atop his streamlined, feline head. Why can’t it be this easy with humans?
Fairly
Sean McCafferty showed up this morning, a few days early according to Uncle G. They found him a room at a boarding house farther down the street, and it’s quite possibly the creepiest place I’ve ever seen. Sister Pearl’s Boarding House and Rest Home appears to have at one time been a small elementary school, a motel, or an asylum for the criminally insane. The brick seems destined to crumble if you so much as cough.
Heavens, but you couldn’t have paid me to step into the place.
I was eighteen when Sean went off to the monastery. My parents encouraged him to go; he was talking inner-city ministry and a commitment to simplicity. They never saw their way back through the guilt when he didn’t return.
So here it is: Georgia was once a delightful person! She even played rock’n’roll when the mood struck. She pierced something new and let others grow over all the time. Colored her hair pink or orange, sometimes both.
She threw herself into her music, and then into Sean, with this intense verve because I think she realized, with her mom dead and her dad gone all the time, it was up to her to make life interesting.
One day I snuck into the club and heard her play when she didn’t realize I was there. The music took me to a place I’d never been. Gifts like that don’t come along every day. And as good a designer as I am, my skills can’t compare to the likes of Georgia’s. That’d be like comparing a Ryland home to Fallingwater.
When Sean left, she lost her inner fire, changed her hair back to its natural brown, and only worked at the church, never making it down to the Ten O’Clock.
Then her father died, and she lost her music altogether. My theory is that she started losing it years before, when Uncle G convinced her to go classical. Why she listened to him, I’ll never know.
Honestly, she plays sacred music with such depth and beauty. But when she used to play her jazz, well, I’ve already waxed on about its effect.
I shook Sean’s hand, remarked how good he still looked, and he said he was delighted to see me again after all these years.
“Yes. It has been a long time.” And I shook my head and walked back to my bedroom. Georgia and I may not be close, but I’m not going to let that guy think he can just walk right in and all’s well with me! Georgia had no mother and an absent father and was a young woman, and Sean still chose to go.
Uncle G and Sean went for a very long walk. I don’t know what my uncle said to him, but Georgia’s coming back tomorrow, and I have no idea what she’ll do!
I made us both a cup of tea. Just Uncle G and me. Sean went back to Sister Pearl and the old folks.
“So what really is going on, Uncle Geoffrey?”
“Something that should have happened a long time ago.”
“Do you think Georgia can forgive him?”
He raised his eyebrows and picked up a spoon. He stirred his tea and licked the spoon. “Funny thing, Fair. All these years I had the story wrong.”
I scraped out a chair and sat down.
He sat opposite me. Outside I heard some kids yelling as they kicked a soccer ball up Ohio Street.
“She kicked him out when he came back the first time.”
“He should never have left to begin with. ‘A man shall cleave unto his wife,’ my grandmother always said.”
“But punishing him for almost a decade? That’s a bit heavy-handed by anyone’s standards, don’t you think?”
“It’s not like he was hanging around her door all that time.” He smiled. “Looks like that’s about to change.”
Clarissa
The mother slams in through the door. No car in the driveway. No man at home! Again!
She marches over to the sofa, pokes the girl on the shoulder.
“Clarissa.”
The colorless eyes flicker up.
“How many shows have you watched since Daddy left?”
The girl thinks. Saved by the Bell, Full House, Saved by the Bell, Full House. “Four short ones and this long one.” Law & Order.
“Almost three hours, then.”
There’s a last time for everything.
Georgia
Jazz drives me crazy. Crazy like New Orleans on a day so hot the heat rises into your nostrils and steams your brain like a peach dumpling. You feel the humid heat waves as they spill onto the pavement from the lips of a saxophonist who loves his horn more than any woman he’s ever met because the horn never disappoints him. He may disappoint himself, his woman, his mother, and the holy church, but the horn stays true and pure and loving, shining into his heart with a brassy passion, licking his soul tenderly, lapping up his affection like crème de la crème.
And then he shares it with the world. Somehow, though his heart is sore—his mother left him when he was ten, his girlfriend cheated on him with the no-account drummer—he shares the love.
And the pain.
He shares the confusion, too, because sometimes pain and love hold each other’s hand, then sway like cats on a fencepost.
So when people say, “Jazz just sounds like a bunch of noise to me!” I want to show them a picture of my mother or the man on the street corner with nothing but a horn and his love.
Unfortunately, only the occasional city sends out radio broadcasts on the way down to Lexington, and then I hear mostly gospel music or hellfire preaching or the local Swap Shop show. John at 555-1111 is selling a table saw and a brand-new pair of sheep shears, oh, and a used shed if you’ll haul.
I stop for gas, choking on the prices, when an older van, bright yellow with wooden panels, pulls up.
The door slides open with a slam, and two older kids jump out, a boy in his late teens, judging by the growth of stubble and a certain ease that tells me the black cloud of school has cleared out of his sky. The girl is perhaps fourteen, her breasts still not full underneath, her face still rounded. A woman steps out. Her ponytail, probably once high on her crown, now rests by the nape of her neck, tendrils waving about in the breeze around her weary face. Dark circles hide the color of her eyes and any beauty she must have once possessed.
“Clarissa! Go get us a couple of Cokes. Reggie, don’t forget to make a pit stop.”
Reggie pushes his sister forward.
“Hey!” she cries. “Stop that.”
She’s tall and thin and gorgeous, dark haired, dark eyed. He’s athletic and blond, a good five years older than she is.
“Stupid.”
“Whatever.” She hurries into the store.
The woman looks at me and shakes her head. “We’ve been on the road for a couple of days now. I think everybody’s nerves are stretched to the breaking point.”
“I know how that can be.”
“You got kids too?”
“No. Just bad nerves.” I slide the nozzle back into its slot at the pump.
She twists open the van’s gas cap. “Where you headed?”
“Lexington.”
“Me too. We’re moving there.”
“I’m moving there myself.”
“Well, maybe we’ll see you around.” She turns her back on me.
And that is that.
I guess luck will have to be on our side.
Fairly
Here’s a list of pets I’ve owned: Scooby-Doo was a rat terrier; Bare, Naked, and Jaybird were three ferrets; Licorice was a black guinea pig; Liz and Richard were lovebirds; Nat, King, and Cole were gerbils; Goodness and Gracious were two black cats.
Only twenty years old when my parents died and Hort and I started seeing each other, I hid my relationship with him from the world and the school. We’d meet up in obscure places: fifty-year-old coffee shops, unsung Chinese restaurants, airport bars, New Jersey.
We dated for over a year and married after graduation when I was twenty-two. And when he died, I’m not sure what happened to me. It’s not that I’m not loved. Uncle Geoffrey adores me.
So, okay, in the realm of love in your life, one uncle seems a bit spare, doesn’t it?
Maybe I should take a lesson from Georgia. It would sure save me a lot of money to become a hermit instead of buying furniture and shoes! But in the long run I couldn’t afford the isolation. People, no matter how vapid, keep me going somehow. Hopefully I’ll soon be trading up for more-genuine models. Sort of like finding the real thing when all you’ve been sitting on is a reproduction.
Uncle G’s friends are the genuine articles, I’m finding. And it’s not as if they’re all rosy, either. Yesterday, Alex got angry at Blaine because he said something, well, a bit backward. He called some woman a “broad” in the story he was telling.
Well, it tickled me to no end, but Alex gave this speech, the rest of us sitting around, wide-eyed. Then she left.
I turned to Uncle Geoffrey. “Well, that’s that, I suppose.”
“Oh no. They do this sort of thing all the time. Somehow they manage to work it all out. They have to, really. We all do.”
And then he went on and on about Christian love and how we don’t have an option to not be in fellowship with a brother and sister in Christ, that we must be vulnerable, loving, and yak, yak, yakety-yak.
My crowd in the city may not be deep, hence vulnerability isn’t something we even consider. It’s all safer than it appears.
I flew in and out to an auction in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Some hermity woman collected Joe Colombo’s weird home units, those crazy living pods that enabled a family of twenty-five to live in something like ten square feet. Never mind most of them were just plain ugly, and some looked like a miniset from the campy old sci-fi movie Logan’s Run.
Joe designed some decent chairs, though, which I bid on and won. And I bought lamps. I have a soft spot for the Coupé wall lamp. In yellow, particularly.
He died young.
Georgia
As I draw nearer to Lexington, I think about the lady at the gas station and her children.
“You got kids?” she had asked.
“No.”
Sean always talked about having kids. Kids, kids, and more kids. He said all the corny things about the girls looking like me and the boys looking like him, but with mixing our races, I doubt any would have looked like me. And that was fine. Sean did the compromising on looks in our match, anyway. Man, could he turn heads.
