The Summer We Got Free

by McKenzie, Mia

  “Aint you supposed to be painting horsies and kitties, anyhow? Aint you supposed to be nine?”

  She shrugged.

  “Y’all go outside. Now,” he said, and walked off into the kitchen.

  While they were getting on their coats and hats and mittens, Regina came downstairs, headed for the front door.

  “Mama, where you going?”

  “Just over to the Ellis’, to get my pie plate,” she said, putting on her coat. She had been baking pies all week, getting ready for their Christmas party, and the house had smelled like warm fruit and butter for days and days. They followed her outside and while they hurried down the street to build snow forts, Regina crossed the street to the Ellis house and was about to ring the bell when Chuck opened the door. He was on his way out, pulling on his coat. He smiled when he saw her and asked how she was doing.

  “Good, Chuck. And you?”

  “Can’t complain,” he said. “Well, I can, but I guess I won’t. I’m on my way over to the church, but you go on in. Lena’s upstairs.”

  Regina found Lena in one of the front bedrooms and the way she was moving around in there, with her head lowered and her shoulders slumped, made Regina stop a few feet from the open door and watch her. She was straightening up the room, picking up Chuck’s socks and tossing them into the hamper against the wall. She then placed a couple of pairs of his shoes neatly by the foot of the bed. The worn brown jacket Chuck always wore was thrown over a chair, and Lena picked it up, and held it against herself for a long moment, smoothing the wrinkles out of it with her palm, slowly, her mouth set in a thoughtful frown. Regina watched as she carried it over to the closet and hung it up there, then crossed back to the bed, where a striped necktie was draped over the headboard. She pulled it off, folding it carefully, bringing it up to her nose and inhaling the scent of it, her eyes closing a moment, before she finally placed it in a dresser drawer. Regina continued to stand there outside the door as Lena made the bed, tucking the yellow bedspread under and pausing to examine a loose thread that hung at the edge of the blanket. She ran it through her fingers a few times, slowly, deliberately, before finally wrapping it around her forefinger and yanking it off. She sat down at the end of the bed and stared at the thread, peered at it for a long moment, as if it were a living thing and she was waiting for it to do something interesting.

  “Lena?” Regina called, deciding it was past time to make herself known.

  Surprised, Lena turned and blinked at Regina.

  “Chuck told me to come on up. Sorry to barge in on you.”

  Lena pulled the thread off her finger and enclosed it tightly in her hand. “Oh, it’s alright, Regina,” she said, getting up and moving to the door. “Come on back downstairs and I’ll get that pie plate for you.”

  Regina reached out and touched Lena’s arm. “You alright, girl?”

  Lena smiled. “I’m fine. Why you asking?”

  “You looked a little sad just then.”

  “I was just thinking about my mother,” she said.

  “Oh,” said Regina. “I never met her, have I?”

  “Oh, no,” Lena said, shaking her head. “I was just thinking how she never married my father. And she used to always say that a woman was better off on her own, living her life on her own terms. Even if it made her life harder in some ways.”

  “Well, there’s probably some truth in that,” Regina said.

  “You know, I was thinking that, too,” Lena said. “But, you know what? She was dead before she was forty. That’s how hard her life was.”

  “I’m sorry,” Regina said, and could think of nothing else to say.

  “Oh, it’s alright,” Lena said.

  That was something Lena said often: that things were alright. They never really seemed to be, though, not entirely. With Lena, there was always something just a little bit off. Like the way she was never late for anything, was always right on time, but she always managed to forget something important, often showing up to bible study without her bible, or to an appointment at the veterinarian having left her cat behind at home. She was always very neatly groomed, her clothes flawlessly pressed, her shoes without a scuff. But there was always one strand of hair coming loose from the bun she wore, or a short run up the back of her stockings, or lipstick on her teeth.

  When they got down to the kitchen, Lena offered Regina lemonade, and Regina sat down while Lena got the pitcher from the refrigerator and poured each of them a glass. As usual, it wasn’t sweet enough, but Regina smiled and said, “Thank you. That’s good.”

  “Sweet enough?”

  “Oh yeah.”

  Regina offered her a cigarette, and they both smoked and sipped their lemonade, and a couple of minutes passed in silence. Then Lena said, “Our husbands sure do get along well.”

  Regina felt a rush of warmth around her ears and the lemonade tingled bitterly at the back of her throat. She nodded. “I guess they do. Chuck’s a nice man; everybody seem to get along with him.”

  Lena smiled, nodded. “Of course. George, too. Everybody like him. But that aint what I mean. It seem to be something particular between the two of them. Don’t you think?”

  “I don’t know. What you mean?”

  “What you think I mean, Regina?” she asked, and sipped her lemonade.

  “Well, they good friends. You mean that? Or something else?” Regina hoped she did not mean something else. She had spent months, years, trying not to think about something else, and she was not prepared—sitting here drinking this not-sweet-enough lemonade, in this kitchen that was spotless except for three drops of what looked like spaghetti sauce on the linoleum—for Lena, plain old Lena, who never had anything interesting to say, to suddenly start talking about George and Chuck and something else.

  “I just get a strange feeling sometimes,” Lena said. “When George is around. Like there aint no space for me in the room no more. Like I aint there. You ever get that feeling?”

  Regina did not answer.

  “I think the devil’s trying to get a hold of my husband. You know?”

  Regina shook her head. “No, I don’t know. I’m afraid you gone have to say what you mean, and say it plain, ‘cause I got pies to bake and children to look after, and I can’t sit here a whole lot longer playing guessing games.”

  Lena looked surprised at Regina’s tone, which was soft but slicing. She smiled. “I guess it’s what you said. They good friends, that’s all. Aint nothing wrong with that, is there?”

  Regina got up from the table. “Do you mind if I take my pie plate now?”

  Lena got up and retrieved the pie plate from a cupboard and handed it to Regina, who turned for the door.

  “Regina, I’m sorry,” Lena said. “I didn’t mean to make you mad.”

  Regina stopped and looked at her, and couldn’t help but feel for her. She understood the questions, the need to know. But she also felt that her life, everything she knew, depended on not asking, on not knowing. “My Ava asks a lot of questions,” Regina said. “She want to know everything. I always think she gone have a hard life if she keep that up. ‘Cause what if, once the questions get answered, it aint nothing left to hold on to?”

  Lena just stared at her.

  Regina turned to leave again, and again Lena called out to her. “Regina, what you think it would feel like to be free?”

  “What you mean, free?”

  “I mean, to be able to live your life just the way you want to, to be just who you are. To not have to do what anybody say you ought to do, not white folks, or the bible, maybe not even God. What you think that would be like?”

  Regina had no idea what Lena was talking about.

  A little while later, as she was crossing the street with the pie plate, and the taste of sour lemons in her mouth, she saw Ava, dancing in the snow, laughing, and she laughed herself, feeling warmer out in the sunshine, and waved to her daughter.

  Everyone came to the Delaneys’ Christmas party that next Saturday. Most people
brought cakes and pies and other desserts to share, and some brought libations. Maddy and her mother brought peach cobbler and beer. Chuck and Lena came with their two kids and brought one of Lena’s not-sweet-enough coconut cakes, plus a couple of bottles of George’s favorite cheap wine. “This so cheap, the vintage is next year,” George said, and they all exploded in laughter. Christmas records played. Some people danced and most people sang. The house smelled of spiced apples and nutmeg and peppermint.

  Ava spent the first half-hour of the party up in her room, finishing a drawing, ignoring her father’s repeated calls for her to come down. When she finally did come down, she went straight to the plates full of cookies that were set out on the dining room table. Geo came over to her, frowning, loosening his tie a little and looking like he wanted to rip it off. “Cheer up,” she said, “It’s just for a—”

  “Couple more hours? That’s easy for you to say. Dresses aint bad. But I don’t know what fool thought up ties. Who wants to feel like they’re—”

  “Being strangled?”

  He nodded, stuck his finger in the space between the tie knot and his neck and wiggled it, grimacing.

  Ava saw Miss Maddy’s daughter, Ellen, across the room and waved to her. Ellen bounced over and kissed Ava’s cheek. Ava frowned and wiped the wetness off. “What you do that for?”

  Ellen shrugged, then kissed Geo’s cheek. He grinned.

  “If you hoping that frog’s gone turn into a prince,” a familiar voice yelled, “you gone be disappointed.”

  They all turned and saw Sondra Liddy by the layer cake, sneering, while Lamar guffawed beside her. Ava rolled her eyes.

  “I can’t believe your parents invited the Caseys,” Ellen whispered. “I mean, the Liddys I can understand, but the Caseys? They’re so terrible.”

  They were terrible. Lamar especially. Not a week went by when he didn’t get in trouble for hitting somebody at school, or for stealing something.

  “Our Mama invites them every year,” Geo said. “She says it’s the Christian thing to do.”

  Ava nodded. “But she hid all our records and toys and stuff, and locked our Christmas presents in the closet. She’s Christian, but she aint stupid.”

  A couple of hours into the party, the punchbowl cracked and Regina asked George to go down to the basement to look for the extra one. He frowned at her, annoyed. Vic was right in the middle of a story about some drunks who’d gotten on his bus earlier in the evening, and George didn’t want to miss the funny part. Regina put her hands on her hips and narrowed her eyes at him and he decided it would be easier to just go ahead and get the damn punchbowl.

  He was still searching for it when Chuck came down the basement stairs. “I was wondering where you disappeared to,” Chuck said.

  “Enjoying the party?” George asked him.

  Chuck sat down on the bottom step and took a sip of his drink, looking pensive.

  “You alright?” George asked.

  Chuck shrugged. “I don’t know if I am.”

  George went and sat beside him on the step. He knew from years of friendship with Chuck that if he just waited, he’d talk.

  After a few seconds, Chuck said, “Things aint too good with me and Lena.”

  “Still?”

  “We been talking about splitting up.”

  “Every marriage got problems,” said George. “Y’all can work it out.”

  “Lena don’t know if she want to work it out.”

  George couldn’t believe it. He couldn’t imagine Lena wanting to leave Chuck. Surely, she didn’t think she could do better. Lena was the least engaging person he had ever known. She never talked about anything interesting, never even seemed to know what was going on. Anytime someone mentioned something that was happening in the news, like the lunch-counter sit-ins down south, which everyone seemed to have something to say about, Lena just smiled and nodded along, never saying what she thought, and George had decided she didn’t think anything at all. For the life of him, he could not understand how it was that Chuck could be married to her. Even when he tried his hardest, when he tried to see one thing about her that was special, one thing that might have caught Chuck’s eye, one little, tiny thing, he couldn’t. Once he had asked Chuck how he and Lena had met, thinking perhaps there was some great romantic story that connected them, but Chuck told him they’d met at church, after Sunday service a few weeks before Easter in 1944. A few weeks before Easter. Not even on Easter, for goodness sake. And after asking Chuck several times what in the world he saw in that woman, phrasing it in less insulting ways than that, such as, “what’s your favorite thing about Lena?” and “when did you know she was the one for you?” and getting answers like, “oh, she’s real fun to play cards with,” and “I don’t remember exactly, why you asking?” George had given up, deciding it was one of those things he just wasn’t meant to understand, like algebra.

  “You ever think about leaving?” Chuck asked him now.

  “No,” George said.

  Chuck looked a little surprised by his answer.

  “Well, not really,” George said. “Not seriously.”

  There were times when he thought about it. He certainly wasn’t happy in his marriage. But it didn’t really bother him much, because he had never been happy, not in all his life that he could remember, and he didn’t imagine that he ever would be. The idea of being without Regina and his children didn’t make him feel any happier, only strange and lost, and he couldn’t imagine what his life would be like without them, a thirty-five year-old man with no family. It wasn’t normal. It wouldn’t look right.

  “Well, I thought about it,” Chuck said. “A lot. And now Lena thinking about it.” He took a long drink off his whiskey, then looked at George. “You a good friend to me. Since my daddy died, you the only person I feel like I can count on.”

  George nodded, but could think of nothing to say.

  Chuck reached out and put his hand on George’s knee. George felt something surge up from within him, something urgent, and his heart began to beat fast, and so loudly he was sure it echoed in the quiet basement. Chuck stared into George’s face, not saying anything. George put his hand on the back of Chuck’s head and pulled him closer, and kissed his mouth. As soon as their lips met, Chuck pulled back, pushing George away with both hands, splashing whiskey from his glass onto George’s shirt, scrambling up off the step.

  Wiping his mouth, Chuck said, “Don’t do that.” His face and voice were full of disgust.

  George felt a rush of heat from his chest up his throat and into his face. He stood up, wringing his hands, not looking at Chuck but at the floor. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I didn’t mean to—”

  “I aint like that, George.”

  “Me, neither. I aint like that, I just thought—”

  “Thought what?”

  George just shook his head. He couldn’t imagine now what he had thought. Still not looking at Chuck, he turned and walked quickly up the steps, out of the basement, and back to the party.

  1976

  George lay naked on a couch with faded stripes and stared up at a bare light bulb that hung from the ceiling directly above. Beside him, pressed against him, another man, whose nickname was Butch, lay on his side, wearing only a white undershirt, naked from the waist down, the sound of his snoring the only sound in the room.

  It was near eleven at night and George had been there since ten. He had left home after dinner and met up with Butch at a bar they frequented over on Market Street. After a few beers and another few whiskeys, they had come back to Butch’s house, and come down into the basement, where Butch’s wife and children, who were sleeping upstairs, would not hear them. They had stripped each other naked and rolled around a little on the couch before Butch, having drank too much again, passed out. George had lain there, hoping he would wake up so they could do what they had come there to do. He didn’t like just lying there with another man, even Butch, who he had known for years and liked.

 
They had been friends when they were both deacons at Blessed Chapel Church of God. Butch, whose real name was William Brooks, still was one. They had not been lovers when they had known each other back then. It was years later, in 1959, on his first visit to the bar they now frequented, that George had seen Deacon Brooks there. George had moved through the crowd of twenty or thirty men. A few of them had smiled at him as he passed. When he got to the bar, the bartender, who was high-yellow and bearded, looked him over, a hint of amusement on his lips.

  "Where you come from?" he asked.

  "Georgia," George had said.

  The bartender laughed. "I mean what you doing in here? You know where you at?"

  "I know where I'm at," George said. "I'm on one side of a bar and you on the other. I guess that make you the bartender, don't it? So, you gone pour me a drink or just stand there grinning?"

  "Alright, man, I aint mean no harm. What you drinking?"

  "Whiskey. Whatever you got that's good."

  There were no empty barstools, so he stood there, with his head down, not wanting to look around, not wanting people to see him, wondering what the hell he was doing there, what the hell he was looking for in that place. He only knew about the bar because he had overheard two men whispering about it on the el one evening on his way home from work. A few nights later, he'd left the house after dinner, without any of his family either noticing or caring. The bar was only a few blocks away from his house, so he'd walked to it. In fact, he'd walked past it. Too nervous to go inside, he'd circled the block three times before finally pulling open the plain brown door

  and entering. It was a small room with red lampshades and worn carpet on the floor.

  The bartender had put his whiskey down on the bar, and George had drunk half of it in one gulp, closing his eyes for a moment at the sting in his throat. When he opened them again, Deacon Brooks was standing a few feet away from him, engaged in conversation with another man.

  George's first thought was to leave the bar immediately, go straight to Pastor Goode and expose Butch. But that might have meant exposing himself, too. So, he had decided just to leave, hurry out before he was spotted. But in his scramble to pay the bartender he’d dropped some change on the bar and the noise caught Deacon Brooks’ attention. He’d come right over to George, stood there looking at him, neither of them saying a word. George thought about punching him in the face, damning him for being part of that church that had rejected him after he had given so much. Standing there looking at Deacon Brooks, he saw Pastor Goode and the rest of the congregation, saw their betrayal, and he wanted to lash out.