Say Nice Things About Detroit

by Scott Lasser

  “Are you okay?” she asked her mother. Lately she asked this often. Carolyn felt the loss of Natalie deeply, as if some vital part of her were missing. She knew she would never be the same, but Natalie was her sister and not her child, and nothing she felt could compare to what her mother was going through.

  Shelly returned with the drinks, carried on a silver platter, a white wine for herself.

  “Please,” she said, pushing the album at them. “Take a look.”

  Shelly had, curiously, organized the photos backward, with the older Dirk first. Tina slowly turned the pages. There were a half-dozen pictures of Dirk with Natalie and Carolyn (few of which Carolyn remembered), several pages of Dirk as a boy with his surrogate family, one or two with a man who must have been the one who fathered him, and, at the end, a very young Dirk, perhaps six months old, held by his mother. Carolyn had never seen a photo of her mother from that time. Tina looked a lot like Natalie.

  “Wow, Mom,” Carolyn said. “Look at you!”

  Her mother was crying. She wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand. What it must have been like then—young and beautiful in a new country with a black baby.

  “They’re great, aren’t they?” Shelly said.

  “Where did you get that last one?” Tina asked.

  “Dirk had it. He kept it hidden in a book. It was very important to him.”

  “Oh God,” Tina said. “I didn’t know what to do.”

  “About what?” Carolyn asked.

  “About Dirk. How to raise him. It was a different time.”

  “You did marry a black man,” Shelly said.

  “I knew it was a little unusual, but I didn’t think it would be such a big deal here in Detroit. In America.”

  “But it was a big deal,” Shelly said.

  “Oh my, yes. It was as if I’d broken the law, which I had, really. It wasn’t allowed in Michigan then. So we got married in Ohio.”

  “That was a pretty good hint,” Shelly said.

  “Yes, but I ignored it. We were young, and in love.”

  Carolyn found that she’d finished her vodka. She would have liked another.

  “Joseph,” she said. She turned to Carolyn. “That was Dirk’s father’s name. We were strangers to each other. When it became clear we weren’t going to spend our lives together, I think we both felt it would be better if Dirk grew up in a Negro household. That’s what you called it back then. Even the words were different.”

  “Didn’t you miss him?” asked Shelly.

  “I visited,” Tina said. “I wrote him letters. You have to understand, I believed it was what was best for him. A black child growing up with whites? It just didn’t happen. But I took him on excursions. He loved the Henry Ford Museum, so I took him, probably once a month until he was a teenager. He loved it there, the old cars kept just so. When he got older and he was living with the Bookers, he really just wanted to be with his friends. It seemed easier for everyone to let things be.”

  Shelly seemed to know this story. Carolyn remembered when she first learned of Dirk. She was at the dinner table when her mother told her she had a brother. “I was married once before I knew your father. My first husband and I had a son, your half-brother. He’d like to meet you.”

  He’d like to meet you. It was a clever way to put it. A half hour later Dirk pulled up in one of those big black cars he drove. He got out, six-three, a big ’fro, long, long legs covered in jeans, a brown T-shirt covering half of his biceps. He was black. Carolyn’s breath caught. Natalie laughed. She was about fifteen then.

  “Your first husband was black, Mom?” Natalie asked right then. She immediately loved Dirk. Carolyn envied how open Natalie could be to everything; it was one more thing she missed about her sister. Carolyn was always more reserved. At first she had felt almost offended by the existence of Dirk. Secrets—important secrets—had been kept from her.

  Carolyn noticed that during Dirk’s first visit her mother stood back, almost out of the way, as if she were merely an observer of the events. Carolyn came to understand that her mother was embarrassed by her history but proud of Dirk. Natalie said that he’d been in line to run the Detroit office of the FBI, but that he’d retired instead. Their father, it turned out, had left him money.

  • • •

  THE SECOND DRINK never came. It wasn’t to be that kind of visit. They stood.

  “The Bookers weren’t at the funeral,” Tina said.

  “Sylvia and Tom are dead. Patrice has disappeared, and Everett, as I’m sure you know, died. His son, Marlon, is still around. He stays here every once in a blue moon.”

  That seemed to settle things. Soon they were out the door. For the first time in hours Carolyn thought of David, what he might be doing, and then of Marty. She wondered if her problem was simply that she’d had it too easy, what with parents who kept her and raised her in comfort, with white skin and blond hair. Dirk had had none of that, and yet looking at those pictures, she thought he looked happy enough. Of course, if a picture was worth a thousand words, it was also true that often none of those words were true.

  Her mother sat next to her, seatbelt across her overcoat, hands clasped over the photo album in her lap. They were on the expressway now, driving fast by the gray walls.

  “Do you regret it, Mom?”

  “Regret what, exactly?”

  “Leaving Dirk’s father. Giving up Dirk.”

  She exhaled.

  “I guess that’s a yes,” Carolyn said.

  “It’s years too late for that now,” Tina said.

  II

  DAVID WALKED BEHIND his parents, pulling his mother’s suitcase, his gait intentionally slow so as not to run them over. He wondered what genius had put wheels on suitcases, and why, say, Ford or GM hadn’t thought of it first.

  His mother leaned against his father and he against her, so that their shoulders touched, leaving a teepee of light between them. Finally they reached the front door and it slid open. In they walked. The home was bright and clean, but there was something ominous about the place—the shiny counters, the potted plants with leaves made of cloth. His mother wasn’t coming out.

  It smelled like a hospital. They followed a woman, Sally, to a door where Sally punched in a security code, as if the door led to an airport jetway. After walking two hallways they came to his mother’s room. It was small, but big enough for a bed, a desk, a dresser. David felt incredibly sad, and worse still because his mother so quietly accepted her fate. David lifted the suitcase onto the desk. The case was heavy, dense as a bookbag. With the added exertion, he had to gasp for air.

  “It’s okay,” his father whispered in his ear.

  Framed photos half filled the suitcase—the photos were suggested by the home—and David placed the frames on every available surface. He hung a few on the hooks left by the last inmate. The photos showed his mother as a younger woman. There were several of David, and a few of the whole family together. There were two of Cory, and David put them up without looking too closely.

  His father unpacked his mother’s clothes, a task David was happy to avoid. He didn’t want to handle his mother’s intimate things. Of course, there was no underwear. Diapers, his father had mentioned, were provided by the home, their cost added to the monthly fee.

  David stopped to look at his mother. She sat on the bed, said nothing, hardly moved. Part of him wanted her to scream out in rage. The other part hoped she didn’t really understand what was happening.

  “Maybe you want to wait at the car,” his father said to him. “After you say your goodbyes to your mother.”

  Thirty years, David thought. Thirty years till I end up here. I better start living. He sat next to his mother, hugged her, awkward at first, and then she draped her arm over his shoulder. He’d always had this idea of himself as a dutiful and helpful son, and now he felt the futility of it.

  “Bye, Mom,” he said. “See you soon.”

  “Fuck it,” she said.

  III

>   THE PHONE CALL rocked her from sleep. For a moment she didn’t know where she was and then she did: in bed, beside David. She knew from the ring it was Marty calling.

  “I’ve got to take this,” she said.

  “Sure,” he replied.

  She grabbed the phone and headed into his sparse bathroom. He had one towel. It was white, twisted over the rack. Men did things like that—went to the store and bought only one white towel.

  “Hey,” she said into the phone.

  “Did I wake you?” Marty asked.

  “Yeah.” Even this little bit of truth felt like a lie. And it was a lie. She told herself this, if for no other reason than to keep her bearings.

  “I guess it’s late there.”

  “I guess.”

  “Okay,” he said. “Look, I’ll be brief. I’m calling to ask you to come home.”

  “Is something wrong?”

  “I just got this big case, we’re about to enter negotiations, and Kevin, he’s a lot of work, and, well, I could use the help.”

  “Just give Elda some extra hours,” she said. It was the L.A. way. If you didn’t have time to spend with your family, you paid someone else to do it.

  “It’s just a lot of work, you know?”

  “I do,” she said. She had once convinced herself he was a good father, but really it all fell to Carolyn. Marty didn’t even bother to sign Kevin up for sports. He didn’t like to be inconvenienced.

  “I know it’s work,” she told him. “I do it all the time.”

  “Yeah, but Carolyn, my job, I make a lot more—”

  “This isn’t about whose job pays more. It’s about you looking after your son for a couple weeks while I help out my mother.”

  “Where are you? You sound like you’re in a tin can.”

  “The bathroom,” she said. She added, “I don’t want my mother to hear.”

  She heard him sigh. They both knew she would give in.

  “I’ll be there as soon as I can,” she said.

  IV

  IT WAS LIKE all the other law offices in all the other towns that David had visited: muted colors, stained wood, thick, sound-absorbing carpet. Nothing too bright or loud for the law. He wondered what ever had made him go into this business. He couldn’t remember, exactly. He’d always been a good student, able to write papers and take tests, at the top of his class. What worried him were his abilities in the real world. Perhaps he’d settled on law because it seemed the career that was most like school.

  “Are you sure you want to do this?” Peter Bergen asked. They were seated in his office. David glanced out the window, south, toward downtown.

  “Yes, I’m sure.”

  “I checked your references. Everybody loves you. And we could use an estate attorney. But you’re the first person we’ve talked to about a position, let alone the first person we’ve considered hiring, who’d have to move here to take the job. That just doesn’t happen. You’re going to have to convince me that you want to move back to Detroit. Most important, convince me that you’ll stay.”

  “It’s a crazy idea,” David said. “I was twelve years old the last time this city was on an upswing. It’s been going downhill for years, but I want to be back. For me, this is the only real place.”

  “Real place?” Bergen asked.

  “Yes,” David said. “Real. This is the place where I first knew my family, where I learned what the seasons are, where I first felt the cold, the true cold, the cold that makes your nose crinkle and your spit bounce. Also the heat, and the sucking sound that car tires make on asphalt in the summer heat that seems impossible in a place that can get so cold. I learned to ride a bike here, to throw a ball and to catch one. This is where I got my heart broken by every sports team, over and over. I had my first kiss here, fell in love for the first time, and now I’m back because I want to be back and I don’t give a damn about how the city has gone down the tubes or its poor prospects for the future. I’m connected here. It’s home.”

  He waited for Bergen’s response. He’d said more than he’d meant to say, but he was tired of everyone trashing Detroit.

  Bergen seemed lost in thought.

  “You know what I’m talking about,” David said. “You’ve never left.”

  Bergen smiled. “Hell,” he said. “The Tigers might even make the playoffs this year.”

  “I wouldn’t get your hopes up.”

  Bergen stood, and David with him. “I’ll get you an offer letter,” Bergen said.

  “I’ll be giving up partnership,” said David. “You’ll need to replace it.”

  “You expect to be hired as a partner?”

  “I expect a foot in the door, yes.”

  “That’s more than a foot in the door.”

  “I’m just saying that there’s a market for my labor. I ask that you pay the going rate.”

  • • •

  WITHIN A WEEK he’d met with the other three partners, negotiated a small partnership stake (though without his name on the door), and begun to look for a place to live. He visited a dozen houses that managed to make Denver homes look expensive, but buying seemed too big a step, so he called his landlord and offered to continue on a month-to-month basis. The man sounded as if he might shout out a cry of joy.

  There was also the delicate situation of extracting himself from his current firm. He called Tom Cutter and explained that he was simply sick about it but he had to withdraw from the firm and move back to Detroit, that filial duty and responsibility demanded it.

  “Ah, David,” Cutter said. “I’m really sorry. Detroit? What are you going to do for work?”

  “I’ll find something.”

  “You know anything about bankruptcy law?”

  “You’re saying I can’t make a living planning for death in Detroit?”

  Cutter wished him luck.

  • • •

  HE CALLED STACY. They had dated for almost a year, more off than on. He wasn’t sure how long it had been since he’d called her. Three weeks? Four?

  “I’d just stopped wondering if you were ever going to call again,” she said.

  “I’m not,” he told her. He used fewer than twenty words to give her the story.

  “Well, I hope you find what you’re looking for.”

  “Who says I’m looking for anything?”

  “Oh, please,” she said.

  • • •

  HE WAS DRIVING when Carolyn called. He wasn’t expecting it.

  “Where are you?” she wanted to know.

  “On my way home,” he said.

  “I’m at your apartment,” she said.

  He found her sitting in her rental car, a Mazda. It wasn’t long till they lay shoulder-to-shoulder on their backs, the air redolent with her smell. In the dim light he could see the steady rise and fall of her breasts, hear the faint rustle of her breathing.

  “I’m not staying.”

  “I know,” he said.

  “Okay, then.” She sighed. She rolled to him, took him in her hands. “Can we do something about this?” she asked.

  “Perhaps.”

  “Try harder.”

  He responded, though it took what seemed to him a long time, so that when it was over he didn’t want to move a muscle. She reached toward the nightstand for her phone.

  “You’re making a call?” he asked.

  “Setting the alarm.”

  An hour later, it woke him. She rose and dressed without saying a word. He wanted to ask her to stay but knew she wouldn’t. She seemed intent on leaving.

  “Goodbye, Carolyn,” he said.

  Through the dim light he saw her hesitate, and then perhaps she gave him a nod. When the door closed he felt his stomach clench. He thought about her as he tried to drift back to sleep.

  • • •

  HE WOKE TO the dawn. Muted light was making an end run around the blinds. He had a brief, fleeting memory of Cory, of a morning when the light in the bedroom had been just like this and Cory had come
in, seven or eight years old, and tapped an index finger on David’s forehead. “The day is wasting away,” he said, one of David’s lines.

  The bed smelled of Carolyn. He found his cell phone and called her, but the call went to voicemail. He rose and stripped the bed, stuffed the sheets in the little stacked washer/dryer unit. He hated housework. He hated that she was gone. He waited an hour and phoned her again, and again got voicemail. His stomach cramped and roiled on the instant coffee. It was early, but he called her mother’s house.

  “She’s left already, David,” Tina said. She had recognized him just from his voice.

  “For the airport?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  He was reminded of when Natalie left for college.

  “I was going to say goodbye.”

  “Interesting,” Tina said. She agreed to pass his message along. He saw that he was being silly, but he didn’t care.

  V

  THE TERMINAL WAS new, with high ceilings and wide hallways, unlike the old claustrophobic tunnels where the airlines other than Northwest conducted their business. In her youth, Carolyn remembered, Northwest had been called Northwest Orient, a name that conjured up the allure of travel, the idea that you could leave Detroit and go someplace completely foreign, even exotic. Of course, the world was smaller now; in her youth California would have been exotic rather than home. Part of her looked forward to getting back. She wanted to see Kevin; she didn’t want to think about herself. She was worn out with the consideration of her own problems.

  She passed two stores selling athletic apparel, one green and white for Michigan State, the other blue and gold for the University of Michigan. She stopped at the latter and bought Kevin a blue hooded sweatshirt, two T-shirts, and a Nerf football. Even at Detroit Metro the souvenirs weren’t from the city, except in the check-in hall, where there were new cars on display, just as there had always been.

  She slowed to look as she passed the concessions, but she couldn’t eat. It seemed a metaphor for everything that lay ahead. She had to act and she couldn’t act. She couldn’t stay with Marty and she couldn’t break up the family. Worst of all, she saw that she’d done it to herself, that she’d made the deal with Marty because she thought it was what she wanted. She’d been wrong.