The Color of Family

by Patricia Jones

  And Aaron answered, “I’m trying to figure out why you have that look on your face.”

  “I’m not the one with the look on my face,” Antonia said, not in a whisper, but still not in her full voice. “You’re the one who’s looking at me as if I’ve just done something wrong.”

  “I was looking at you because of the way you were looking,” Aaron said defensively.

  “Oh my goodness,” Maggie said, turning to Aaron. “This is ridiculous. What’s wrong with you? Your mother’s here watching the show, watching what we do for the first time and you’re picking on her over the look on her face. Maybe she was thinking about something.”

  Aaron looked at Maggie, then at his mother, then lowered his head and said, so deeply beneath his breath it was as if he’d swallowed the words, “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

  “What?” Maggie asked.

  “Nothing.” And Aaron went on studying his copy.

  So Maggie looked over at Antonia and said, “Are you enjoying the show, Mrs. Jackson?”

  “Oh, it’s just fine. So exciting. But what happened to the men who’re supposed to be running these cameras?”

  But there was no time for her to learn of the cameramen’s fate. The floor director was bringing them back, and this time it was Aaron’s chance to tell Baltimore the newest news. And Antonia watched as her son did his best to beat back the disquiet that she was certain only she could see through the affected evenness. It was in his eyes, which wanted to do something else, look someplace else but had to stay trained. It was then, only then, that Antonia asked herself: Am I really vexing him so? She watched him from home every evening, and sitting there now only feet away from him, she couldn’t recall Aaron ever being this agitated. But within the context of the news colliding with his personal life, it all made painful sense to her. Still, the unnerving sound of Aaron stumbling through the news about a man that his mind, lacking hard evidence, could not accept as his cousin crept up her backbone like a thief headed for the place where it would steal her repose.

  “…and Baltimore’s newest resident, barely in the city for three weeks, is off to do his first consent—excuse me, concert, not here in Baltimore, the town that loves to claim him, but in his true hometown of New Orleans tomorrow night where he’s expected to, uh,” and Aaron stopped after the blunder, as if uncertain of what he should say next, as if it weren’t all written out for him. Then he looked squarely into the camera and continued, “…where he is expected to, uh, play to a sold-out house for both nights of the engagement. He’s explect—I’m sorry, expected to add some jazz standards to the end of his program of Brahms, Chopin, and Bartok. We’ll go now to Clint Hargrove who’s live downtown with the president of the Meyerhoff Hall with more on Mr. Cannon’s concert to be played there next month.”

  By now, Antonia was sitting on the edge of the chair, ready to get out of that studio once the getting was good. She looked into the lap of her skirt, where she found the truth—she shouldn’t have been there, shouldn’t have even come. And when she looked up to catch Aaron in the eye, she wanted to disappear, because she knew his angst. What kind of mother would cause a son so much vexation? She had to get out of there, and there was nothing that could stir up a tempest in her heart more than being stuck like a fly in molasses in a place she needed to leave. So when Maggie was through with what she had to say, and the place could relax for the next two minutes or so while they were out for another commercial, Antonia gathered her bag to her side and stood.

  But before she could tell Aaron what she was about to do, he said, “Ma, I think it would be best if you waited up in the newsroom for me. Is that okay? I mean, you can see all the stuff that goes on up there that helps us put the show together.” Then he looked as if he were holding his breath in anticipation for some sort of explosion. And he bore guilt in his eyes.

  “Yeah, that’s just fine,” Antonia said, stepping across the wires and cables to make her hasty exit. She wasn’t exactly sure what she was feeling, but it came somewhere close to shame. Whatever it was, it kept her from looking at her son when she said, “That’s exactly what I was thinking. In fact, I just may go on home.”

  “No, Ma, don’t go home. I’d like you to wait for me until the show is over. Just go on up to the newsroom. You can go back to the room where we were sitting, or you can go to my office. It’ll be in the opposite corner from where you’ll be once you enter the newsroom. Don’t leave, though.” And he sounded as if he meant it from his depths.

  That’s when she turned to see him and said, “Okay, if you really don’t want me to leave, I won’t. I’ll just wait for you,” and she faded from the studio.

  When she reached the newsroom she stopped to get her bearings, then spotted Aaron’s office, exactly where he said it would be. If she could have walked in a straight path, it was across the newsroom in the corner diagonal from where she stood. So she started off through a narrow opening between cubicles and found herself in a larger space and just to her right was a stool that sat in front of what looked to her to be a smaller version of those robot cameras in the studio. She jumped a step back, at first, thinking she was on camera until common sense prevailed and she realized that there’d be no cause to have that camera filming the empty space of the stool. Then she turned to see the wall the camera faced, then looked back to stare at that camera with pride because she, all on her own, figured out that this was where Aaron and sometimes Maggie sat when they had to give the highlights of the news before Oprah was over. And that wall, she thought with a faint, sideways smile, as she looked again to the wall in the back of the newsroom, is what’s behind them. Her attention was snatched away from the wall when she heard someone addressing her.

  “Don’t worry, Mrs. Jackson,” Mark said. “That camera’s not on.”

  “Oh yes, I figured as much.” She went over to where Mark stood in front of a large glass-enclosed room. “Why is it that not one camera around here is being run by anybody? I mean, when did cameras start thinking for themselves?”

  Mark gestured with his head toward the camera and stool and said, “That stationary camera over there is called our flash cam, and because it’s stationary we don’t need a man behind it to run it. It’s actually operated, you know, turned on and off, by the people up in the control room. But I suppose what you’re talking about are the cameras in the studio. Well, they’re called robotic cameras. And actually, they are operated by someone. Do you recall seeing a fellow sitting by the door when you first went into the studio?”

  “Yes, I do remember him. I thought he was just there to keep people from coming in there. Like a guard, you know.”

  “Well, I suppose he does that too,” Mark said with a questionable laugh. “But if you had looked at the desk where he was sitting, you would have noticed that he has three joysticks with which he operates all three cameras. One man doing the work of three.”

  “Robotic cameras, you say?” she said with a wide grin. “That’s exactly what they reminded me of—robots.” Then her smile evaporated when she continued, “So, what happened to the other two cameramen?” Antonia asked. She couldn’t even answer for herself why she had fixated so on those out-of-work cameramen.

  Mark stared blankly at her for a second or two, then said, “I’m not quite sure what you mean, Mrs. Jackson.”

  “The men who used to work the cameras by hand. What happened to them? Did they find other work?”

  “Well, I guess so. I don’t really know. The robotic cameras were being used when I joined the station, but if those guys were friends of yours or something, I can find out.”

  “Oh no,” Antonia said in a panic. “I mean, I didn’t know them. It’s just that for some reason I wondered about them since computers seem to be taking over a lot of people’s jobs these days.”

  “Yes ma’am, I understand,” Mark said awkwardly, but with the politeness due to an albeit nonsensical senior woman. Then he switched the subject from the robot cameras. “So what are you do
ing in here and not in the studio?”

  “Oh, well I decided to come out here and wait for Aaron in his office. It’s not as exciting in there as I thought after all.”

  “I see. Well, why don’t I take you in to see the real brains of the operation around here.” And he turned to head into the glass-enclosed room. He checked over his shoulder as if to make certain she was following, and once inside the room said, “This room is the heart of the news operation, and that guy over there is the one that makes it all beat. This is Bill Watts. He’s our assignment editor. He’s the one who gets the calls when there’s news and he’s the one who decides which reporter gets which story. Bill, this is Mrs. Jackson, Aaron’s mom.”

  “It’s a pleasure, Mrs. Jackson,” the man growled with a throat full of gravel, which was somewhat disconcerting since he was rail thin with spindly hairless arms that swung awkwardly when he moved, and his face was gaunt. All of him came together in a way that would make someone expect a pip-squeak of a voice, not the voice of a man who sounded as if he’d just swallowed broken glass. He cleared his throat, but it didn’t much matter as he went on to say, “You can have a seat over here, if you’d like. Things can get pretty crazy at any given moment, but right now things are calm, so I can tell you a little bit about what I do in here.”

  Bill said, “Now what happens is that when calls come in about a story, I have to decide whether or not it’s newsworthy and whether to send someone out to cover it. Most of the time it’s news, but sometimes it’s not.”

  “How can you tell which is which?” Antonia asked as she leaned farther back in her chair away from Bill.

  “Most of the time I can tell just by asking a few key questions to the person calling. Sometimes, though, I’m not sure, so I send someone out anyway, and if there’s nothing there, the reporter will call back here and say that there’s really no story. That doesn’t happen too often, though.”

  “Uh-huh,” was all Antonia said before she began staring off into her thoughts, trying to pick and choose and piece together the words for the question burning a trail through her mind. And only when it was formed completely, succinctly, did she say, “What happens if a story directly involves a reporter or an anchor?”

  Bill looked at her with narrowed eyes and asked, “A reporter covering the story, or just another reporter at the station?”

  “Either one.”

  “Well, a reporter directly involved in the story would not be sent to cover it, I would guess. I mean, it’s never happened. It’s never happened, at least since I’ve been here, that any story we’ve covered directly involved a reporter or anchor at the station.” Then he studied her for several intense seconds before asking, “Mrs. Jackson, just out of curiosity, what makes you ask that question?”

  Antonia looked past him at nothing particularly fascinating, except she saw the true answer to that question that was dancing and prancing and taunting her off in the distance of her musing. But she could also imagine the look of complete and utter astonishment it would spawn from Bill. So she let her eyes slide back to his face and said, “It’s just something I’ve often wondered about.” Then she clutched her purse to her and stood, pushing the chair toward Bill. “I’ve got to get going, now. Would you just tell my son that I had to get on home. I’ll see him later.” And with that she was on her way, and torn. She was quite torn.

  Aaron stepped onto his mother’s front porch and brushed away the flakes of a newly fallen powdery snow that had collected against the black wool of his coat. The light of day was long gone, and the only brightness that shone on him was the dim glow of the porch lantern. He took out his key and stopped just before opening the storm door to identify the muffled sounds from beyond the windows. There was thumping, and sliding, and then a moan and sigh. So he then moaned and sighed, already wearied by only the thought of the task that lay ahead of him once inside.

  Pushing open the door and stepping into the darkened hallway, Aaron slid his key from the lock and shut the door, then stood in the shadows of the faint light of the living room, dreading the command he knew was imminent. He slid into the room through the opening of one of the French doors as he peeled off his coat. “Hi, Ma. What’re you doing?”

  She looked at him with eyes that were not surprised at all to see him and said, “I’m doing interpretive dance,” she said good-naturedly, with a mock high-brow accent as she leaned forward onto the back of the chair she was pushing and stuck one playful leg out behind her. “What do you think I’m doing? I’m moving this furniture back the way your father wants it. He’ll be home on Sunday, so I thought I’d get a jump on it. I’ve got a lot to do, so come on over here and help me.”

  Aaron undid his tie and slid it off. He dropped it onto his coat, which he’d strewn across the sofa. He went to where his mother struggled with the awkwardness of the table lamp and took it from her. His face strained, revealing doubt, he then chuckled and said, “Geez, we’ve shuffled this furniture around the room so much, that I honestly forgot where this thing goes.”

  “Oh, stop it,” Antonia said with a self-conscious smile. “We don’t move this stuff around that often.”

  “Every other month counts as a lot to me, Ma.”

  “All right, all right. Just put it over there in between those two chairs. Then we’ll move the sofa back into place. That’s going to be the toughest,” she said with a round fist on one hip and a troubled face. Then, it seemed, out of nowhere and completely without context, she said, “Are you and Maggie having sexual problems?”

  Aaron set the table lamp in place and straightened the chair that had been pushed astray in the move. Scarcely able to believe what he’d just heard, he couldn’t think of anything more fitting to do than simply follow through with the only thing in the room that made perfectly good sense to him at that exact moment. There was nothing in his history with his mother that would have prepared him with words to respond to such an unprecedented question. And while he’d become accustomed, through the years, to his mother’s non sequiturs, there was no telling how even she could have taken the leap from clandestine furniture moving to his sex life without stopping to breathe. Unless, he suddenly thought, she was trying to avoid what he believed she knew he was ultimately there to discuss, and he couldn’t imagine a better way to evade the discomfort of his question than suggesting he discuss with his mother his sexual performance with Maggie.

  He looked over at the sofa where his mother had stooped to get her grip on it for the haul back to its home just in front of the windows that faced the front porch. And he would have joined her, would have gotten to the other end of the sofa and hoisted it up, doing what he knew his mother thought he was there to do, except he could not find a way to move. So he shifted his weight to his other leg, just to make certain he could, then shoved his hands into his pockets in the manliest way before finding the calm to say, “Ma, I don’t know what made you ask me such a question, and believe me, the last thing I want is for you to tell me, but rest assured that I’m not going to answer that even if there were a problem, which there isn’t, but I still would not talk about something like that with you.”

  “Well, that’s fine. It’s just that Maggie was talking to that fellow Josh, and she didn’t know I was there. She said something about New Year’s Eve being like bad sex the way you wait and wait for something to happen only to have nothing terribly special happen. I thought she was talking about you, that’s all.”

  Aaron nervously scratched his neck and looked up at the ceiling, where he pondered just what advice his mother might have given him in a universe where he would take her into his confidence over such a thing. Then he decided that the mere thought of that kind of talk with her crossed too far over the line of reason, so he said, “Yeah, well that’s just Maggie talking her talk. Maggie might say anything. She’s a lot like you in that way.” Then Aaron turned and sat in one of the chairs beside the table lamp, knowing he had to say what he’d come there to say. “Ma, can you come over here
and sit for a minute? There’s something I want to talk to you about.”

  Antonia let go of the bottom edge of the sofa and stood straight up to look at her son. She smiled distantly at him, then went slowly to the chair on the other side of the table lamp and sat on the edge. Turning to face Aaron, she said, “I know what you’re gonna say.”

  “No, Ma, I don’t think you do.” Aaron moved to the edge of his chair and leaned closer to his mother. He drew in a slow, deep breath then blew it out, wondering the whole time how a man confronts his mother about her lifelong obsession that had always stood between them, without the boy in him quaking with fear. So he just let it out. “Ma, today I experienced a feeling that I never thought I would have, and that was a fear of you. I was absolutely terrified of what you would do, and I can’t live like that. Coming to my job like that with the tape of Agnes Cannon, Ma, was just going too far with this whole thing and it has to stop.”

  “I know, darling, I know. And believe me, I knew it for sure after I got there. That’s why I didn’t stay around, because I was really ashamed. I could see that you were afraid that I might say something or do something to disturb the show and have my say about Agnes and Clayton and the whole mess, but please tell me that you know in your heart that I would never do something like that to hurt you.”

  Aaron shifted and slouched back against the chair. He stared out the window at the falling snowflakes that were illumined by the lamplights lining the walkway as they carelessly made their descent. And there was something in their falling that took him deep inside himself to look for the spot where he might find that kind of faith in his mother; the faith that she would not place that piano-playing interloper of her heart over him in all that she did and all that she thought. He searched, but to no avail, because for the whole of Aaron’s life, Clayton had always come first. Aaron realized in that moment what he had always known was true—throughout his life, Clayton Cannon had been like the older brother who had been touched by the divine golden light that would let him do no wrong. The older brother who lettered in every sport and brought home straight As, and always said please and thank you, and yes ma’am and yes sir, and never ever sassed, and always got the girl, and then grew up to become a bright star of the world of classical music; except Clayton Cannon was worse than any older brother could have ever been because he wasn’t Aaron’s brother. Moreover, he wasn’t even real, not in any practical sense. He wasn’t a physical presence for Aaron, at least not in any significant way that should matter other than the fact that he was worshiped by the woman who should have been worshiping her only son. And that’s exactly why Clayton mattered because in the world that Aaron’s mind had created around the thought of Clayton Cannon, it was Clayton’s physical absence that made him more of a threat than if he had actually challenged Aaron for the love of Antonia with brawn and free will.