by Kitt, Sandra
His response was typical. To the point and even-handed. Not too complimentary, but a bit remote. “Grown-up? I don’t know about that. Sophisticated? I think the jury’s still out. I want to know how you’re doing. When I called last week, you said you weren’t feeling well.”
He grimaced dismissively and shrugged. “I was just tired. Probably fighting a cold. Old age is beginning to beat my brains out. I’m okay now.”
“When are they going to make you a full professor? What are you going to be working on this summer?”
Lyle Oliver drained the rest of his coffee and sat back as he regarded his daughter across the table. He had a pleasant pecan-brown face, his features masculine but not strong. He wore glasses that made his eyes look slightly larger than normal, and very much like a stereotypical scholar, which he was.
But Dallas, waiting for her father to finish choosing his words, only saw someone that she’d spent most of her lifetime trying to understand. He was a man of little emotion and few words. He spoke quietly and with a sense of authority and wisdom. Dallas thought her father was probably brilliant. Yet she had never been able to go to him with any question or problem that he didn’t weigh academically, clinically, and fail to understand the importance that a simple but reassuring response would have meant to her.
She shook her head and reached out to rest her hand briefly on his arm. “You’re not going to get a score on your answer.”
He had the grace to look embarrassed. “I know,” he said, leaning forward again to brace his elbows on the table. “I should hear about my appointment before the semester is over. And I don’t know what I’m doing for the summer. I could teach, of course. We’ll probably do the Vineyard for a few weeks in July. Your mother and I talked about traveling.”
She drank from the juice and considered how to respond. The toast popped up, and Dallas pulled them out and began spreading apricot jam on the slices. “You and Eleanor say that every year. And each summer at the eleventh hour she finds some reason why the two of you can’t go.”
Lyle Oliver shifted in his chair and cleared his throat. “The store is a big responsibility. We don’t like being away from it for too long.”
Dallas was thoughtful for a moment, also carefully selecting her reply. “Or Dean.”
“Yeah, well … after what happened last year when he was pulled over and nearly arrested driving through Maryland, we want to be around if he needs us.”
“Dean is almost thirty years old. Getting arrested could have happened here, and you still couldn’t have done him any good. Anyway, doing seventy-two miles an hour in a fifty-five-mile speed zone is asking for trouble.”
Her father made a small shaking gesture with his head, but Dallas couldn’t tell if he was agreeing with her or not.
“What he needs to do is to control his tendency to act first and think later.”
“Have you heard from him lately?” her father asked.
Dallas shook her head and finished the glass of juice. She was aware that her father still had not answered her question. He had skillfully turned the conversation in another direction. “Not for a week or so. He came by to install a new accessory on my computer for me. I went to hear his latest gig with his band. It was good.”
“His mother thinks he’s wasting his time with the music.”
“What do you think?” Dallas asked.
“He’s got a lot of talent, but I’m not sure he can make a living at playing bass guitar.”
“Eleanor used to say the same thing to me about my wanting to be a writer.”
“Yeah, I remember. But you went ahead and proved her wrong.”
Dallas nodded sagely. “So, the moral of this story is …”
Her father raised his brows over the frame of his glasses. “Leave the boy alone. Easy for you to say. You don’t have kids. But one of these days …”
Dallas bit into her toast and stared at her father until finally the light went on and he stopped, his mouth poised open. She heard a guttural sound from his throat as he closed his eyes and shook his head in regret.
“Sorry. I didn’t mean that … well … you know what I mean. Anyway … being a parent is hard work.”
Dallas lowered her gaze and absently counted the little bits of bread crumbs and salt crystals on the wooden table. “So’s being a child.”
“Dallas, you know I didn’t mean …”
“Daddy … it’s okay,” she said flatly. “I had a miscarriage and I lost a baby. It’s not a curse. I was very sad at the time. I’m okay now.”
He sighed and reached out to briefly pat her shoulder. “You’re young yet. There’s plenty of time.”
Dallas looked squarely at her father and wondered if he was making the same connection she was. Probably not, she decided. Why shouldn’t he draw the conclusion that if he could start and have two families, so could she?
“You’ve never asked me about what happened. Aren’t you curious at all?”
Lyle Oliver pursed his lips and adjusted his glasses. He didn’t look her in the face.
“Sure, your mother and I are curious, but I figured it was none of our business.”
Dallas looked at him incredulously. “Did you decide that after it didn’t work out between Hayden and me? I remember Eleanor used to tell me how lucky I was to get such an accomplished, eligible man. A good black man. She certainly acted like she had a vested interest in my relationship with Hayden since she introduced us, and you encouraged it.”
“I thought you loved Hayden. You married him,” her father pointed out.
Dallas pushed her plate away. She was no longer interested in toast or a morning conversation with her father. She had loved Hayden. Maybe now, in hindsight, it was for the wrong reasons. At the time she’d felt relief. She was finally doing something her father and Eleanor approved of.
“I guess sometimes love is not enough. Or maybe it’s not even the point,” she said reflectively.
“Or maybe you expected too much of him. He’s a hard worker. Everyone likes him. He comes from a good, solid family.”
Dallas leaned toward her father, her voice earnest and firm. “I know that. But did it ever occur to you that maybe Hayden was expecting too much of me? We both failed. Not just me.”
Her father was shaking his head, as if she’d made a silly observation, or her reasoning was faulty. “Look, when people get married they’re supposed to compromise. He gives a little, you give a little, and you try to make it work.”
“So, you think I just gave up?”
“I don’t know what happened and I don’t want to know, Dallas.”
“You sound like whatever happened it was somehow my fault,” she said tightly, as if to show any emotion would shatter her.
“I didn’t say that. I don’t know what went on between you and Hayden. Everything seemed to be fine, and then suddenly you call and say you’re leaving him. You run off and disappear for almost a month. Okay, I admit it seemed a little childish to me and your mother.”
Dallas struggled between wanting her father to sympathize, and the need to protect herself. She thought of all the times she’d wanted to confide in him and all the reasons why she couldn’t.
“Compromise wouldn’t have made any difference between us. We just weren’t suited. We both expected too much … wanted different things.” Dallas looked earnestly at her father, and leaned closer to him. “What about you and my mother?” Dallas asked instead.
Dallas didn’t know why she was asking this question now. She’d tried to do so only a few times in her whole life and had never gotten a satisfactory answer.
In Lyle Oliver’s eyes she saw the familiar withdrawal, the shutdown and closing off that clearly erected a DO NOT DISTURB sign in front of the past … hers and his.
“Dallas, I’m not going to do this again. You know the story. You’ve heard it before. Why do you keep wanting me to say it over and over again?” her father said more with impatience than annoyance.
It was alw
ays the same reaction. That’s how she knew there was more to tell.
“Don’t you think I have a right to know? Can’t you understand that it’s a part of my life I know nothing about? What’s so terrible that you can’t tell me? Whatever it is I can deal with it. How did you and my mother meet? How did you fall in love? You got married and had me, but … why didn’t it work out? I know so little that sometimes …” She looked at him earnestly. “Sometimes I feel I might as well be adopted.”
Lyle Oliver frowned at his daughter. “You’re not adopted. People used to think so when you first came to me. It raised a lot of questions …”
“The same ones I have, probably.”
“Dallas, it’s all in the past. I’m for just letting it all stay there. It was a long time ago, and things were different …”
“Did you love each other?”
His expression didn’t change. He’d always been good at that, keeping himself at a distance.
“That’s personal. And it’s not relevant. There are things that you don’t need to know. It’s my past, too, and it’s difficult to talk about.
“You’ve been with me and Eleanor and Dean for more years than you spent with your mother.” He finally gathered his breakfast dishes into a stack and prepared to stand. “You’re part of this family.”
“And I should be grateful,” Dallas finished.
“No. I don’t need gratitude. But it should be enough.” He checked his watch and hastily folded his paper. He got up and carried his dishes to the sink, rinsing them quickly before loading them into the dishwasher. “I better get going or I’m going to hit traffic.”
He said no more but in passing, on his way out of the kitchen, he rested his hand briefly on her shoulder and squeezed gently. Dallas reached to cover his hand, but already it was sliding away and he was gone.
“What are your plans? Are you going home today?”
She repeated the questions in her head, wondering if she was reading too much in her father’s words. Dallas sighed and nodded. “I have to. I have some articles to finish.”
Lyle Oliver came back through the kitchen, shrugging into a brown leather jacket. He held a cap in one hand, his car keys jangling from his fingers, and his attaché in the other. When Dallas realized that her father was gazing at her, she glanced hopefully in his direction. His expression was thoughtful but somewhat pained.
“I thought you were happy with me. You’re my daughter …” Lyle Oliver said awkwardly.
It sounded as if he were trying to convince himself. “I know, Daddy, but … I wonder sometimes if you’re happy with me.”
“I’ve raised you. You had a good home, a good life. Eleanor is a good woman …”
Dallas shook her head wearily at him. “That’s not what I’m talking about.”
Lyle Oliver shook his head in mild exasperation. “Then I guess I just don’t understand.”
Dallas was sure that he did. But there was clearly no point in pursuing the issue, in badgering her father to say something, tell her things he obviously didn’t want to say.
He patted her shoulder again. “I have to go …”
He opened the door from the kitchen to the garage, and cold air rushed in at Dallas. She shivered and stood up, hugging herself. Dallas followed her father into the garage and watched his ritual for starting his day as an assistant professor of math at C.W. Post.
She recalled suddenly, when she was about seven, shortly after they’d moved into the house and were having trouble being accepted into the community, she hadn’t wanted to let Eleanor send her off to school, but she’d been afraid to stay home. So as her father had been leaving for his early morning classes, Dallas had hidden on the floor of the backseat of his car. A big Oldsmobile Cutlass. It had been easy for her to crouch down and not be seen. She’d waited until her father was on the Long Island Expressway before jumping up behind him and surprising him with “boo.”
Dallas frowned as she watched her father settle into the driver’s seat. He turned on the engine and let it run before turning on the heat to warm the car. He put on his cap and slammed the door. He nodded at her through the closed window and waved.
On that morning so long ago, he’d been very angry with her. Not because she’d startled him, although that had been obvious, but because he’d had to turn around and return her to the house. He had not thought her prank funny or endearing.
“Take care,” Dallas said loudly to her father as the second family car backed out of the driveway, turned onto the street, and rolled away into traffic.
Dallas returned to the kitchen and the silence that rather than granting her a sense of peaceful solitude only felt lonely. Every time she returned to the house, she felt somehow incomplete. That she had to keep returning and keep trying, and keep reliving the past in an attempt to make it right.
If she couldn’t get her father to admit that he might have loved her mother at one time, how could she ever know if he loved her?
Chapter Four
April 1st—
This is the second year I’ve been asked to write a column about April Fool’s Day for the paper. What can I say? Watch out. Don’t forget to duck. Count your change. Black folks have been doing these things all of their lives. I’m a bit troubled by being asked, against all the odds, to have faith, trust in God, be a true believer. I do … but cut the cards. My advice for a day like any other day? Watch your back. Keep your eyes straight ahead. Don’t take for granted anything you can’t see, taste, touch, hear, or smell. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice … shame on me.
SHE WASN’T SURPRISED WHEN the apartment intercom sounded at almost eleven in the evening. Still, the short buzz made Dallas’s nerves tighten. She didn’t break from the task of putting away dishes she’d finished washing and drying. The buzzer rang a second time and, more urgently, a third. She had it in mind to ignore it, but suspected that Burke would continue persistently until she relented and let him in. He knew, obviously, that eventually she would.
“Dammit,” Dallas muttered in annoyance.
She pressed the button next to the door to release the lock that would let Burke enter the building. The process was repeated when her doorbell rang. She wasn’t going to make it easy for him. Delaying was her revenge. But when Dallas opened the door, she stared at Burke with an indifference she didn’t feel.
“Man, I’m dead,” he said as an opening, aware of her mood.
Dallas turned away, returning to the kitchen. Burke closed the door and slowly followed her. His desultory movement annoyed her even more. Nothing so far indicated that Burke was apologetic. At least, not enough to satisfy her. Dallas gathered the handful of silverware from the drainboard and began putting them away, noisily, into a utensil drawer.
Burke cupped his hand around the column of her neck and gently massaged. His fingertips rubbed upward into her scalp sending a rush of warmth that began to soften her tension. But she leaned forward to break the contact. She turned around to glare at him, and found Burke regarding her with an expression that was like the one he was wearing when she’d first met him. Filled with cocky self-confidence, interest, and quick appraisal. He was not, in Dallas’s mind, exactly handsome, but he did have an undeniable physical magnetism, combined with a quick wit and assertive personality that made him hard to ignore. His background and street smarts were sometimes betrayed through the facade of urbane sophistication; when he got angry and didn’t get his way.
He had an elegant build, narrow in the hips with long legs and hands and feet. His skin was a warm sienna brown, and he wore a mustache. In a suit Burke carried himself like a CEO, and was always treated like one. Out of it there was something sort of unfinished about him. Oddly undistinguished.
Dallas lowered her gaze. There were other things to commend him. He knew how to get things done. He didn’t seem to be afraid or uncertain about anything. And he was a good lover. Dallas was sure of that because she’d had the other kind, thank you. Having Burke make love t
o her for the first time had been a revelation. He had introduced himself to her while she’d waited for security clearance as a member of the press into a concert and reception for a fifteen-year-old black singing sensation. Burke had targeted her, cleared the way through the process, and sat her with the record label VIPs.
But Burke had not exactly pursued her, she admitted. He built on her curiosity, contacting her just often enough for her not to forget him. Cooperating and offering contacts for her interviews and articles. Inviting her to concerts and press events. Popping up at her office for surprise lunches, or meeting her after work for drinks. Dallas had enjoyed the attention, but from the very beginning Burke had been in control. The timing of their relationship had been right for her. Dallas had been close to the finalization of her divorce.
By the time Burke even hinted at consummating their relationship, she was ready. She hadn’t been with a man in almost two years. Dallas recalled thinking at the time that she also felt like she’d been stalked and trapped by Burke. As if he had a specific purpose or agenda in mind for the two of them.
“Did you get my message?”
“Yes,” Dallas answered flatly.
He tried to put his arms around her waist. Dallas made an impatient tsk with her teeth and twisted away.
He chuckled. “You’re going to punish me, right?”
She turned and pointed to the door. “You can leave, if you want. You didn’t even have to bother coming.”
He shrugged, putting his hands into his pants pockets. “Tonight couldn’t be helped. I didn’t plan on standing you up. Look, you want me to say I’m sorry? Okay, I’m sorry,” Burke said grudgingly.
Dallas glanced at the wall clock over the refrigerator.
“You’re five hours late,” she said. “I canceled an interview because you said you wanted to have dinner early. I sat for two hours at a busy restaurant, not ordering and getting nasty looks because I told them you would be there. I was embarrassed when they finally asked for the table. And you get annoyed with me because I’m annoyed with you?”
