The Color of Family

by Patricia Jones

  And so there she sat, her mind back outside with the rest of her in the cold on a bench, clutching her purse like a lifeline. Then she heard the voice of a woman descending the steps of the Science Center speaking, possibly, to her.

  “Ma’am, are you lost?” a black-coated woman said. She had a striking, fine-featured, yet no-nonsense and unsmiling face, which made Antonia wonder why she even cared.

  “I’m fine, thank you,” Antonia said, offering the woman a smile, thinking she’d get one in return, which she did. “You have a nice day, now.”

  “You do the same,” the woman said with a smile as she walked on her way. “And go on in out of the cold, now.”

  The woman walked off, leaving Antonia alone again, the cold exacerbating the fact. She watched the woman disappear down by the Rusty Scupper. Without being conscious of it, her fingers drummed nervously against her purse. And why would a pretty girl be eating alone? Antonia assumed, since the woman was walking alone, and went into the restaurant alone.

  Well, they grow women differently these days than they did when my mother was raising me, she thought, and she smiled. Especially when she thought about raising Ellen, who nearly brought her first grandchild into the world the night before. Either through the water or the air, Antonia thought with a shadowy smile as intangible as memory itself, Ellen got something into her as she was being raised up that made her just want to grab for everything—first being the smartest doctor Antonia had ever seen, except for maybe Junior, and then being pregnant at forty-one for the first time, for goodness’ sake. Then she let that thought dissolve into the harbor as she began to paw through her purse trying to scrounge up a mint, but mostly to quiet her pounding fingers, asking herself aloud, “Why are you so nervous? Just calm yourself. He can bring a crowd to its feet with his piano playing, but before he could do all that, he was your nephew, for crying out loud.”

  So Antonia checked her watch once more and saw that in her daydreams of the man Clayton must now be, she had let fifteen minutes pass by. She rose from the bench, and walked toward the crosswalk. A strong gust of wind kicked up while she waited for the light to take the long trek across Light Street. Once the light had changed, she stepped lively across the street and studied the towers of Harbor Court—up and down she looked, then side to side, and by the time she had reached the median smack in the middle of the street, she was certain that this place was where the old McCormick Spice Company once sat.

  She reached the front door where she stood, first looking one way, then the other until she finally had to concede to her made-up mind that it was possible that McCormick had not been in this spot at all, but perhaps just across the street on the other corner. And then she smiled, comforted by the memories of those smells that were so strong it seemed as if they still lingered in the leafless trees or perhaps in a stationary cloud somewhere up above. She went back to a summer day, not one in particular, but any summer day along the harbor with the perfume of cinnamon wafting through the air like an exotic seductress, making her long for something more to sate every sense. It didn’t much matter which spice they were preparing for market—cumin, turmeric, allspice—it all made her miss New Orleans, with its bouquet of the food unique only to the Crescent City. Food—that’s what it meant to her to miss New Orleans. And to miss Emeril and Creole spices.

  By the time she finally got herself into the lobby of the Harbor Court Towers, there she was, walking across the lobby at a clip.

  “Antonia, honey, there you are,” Agnes said.

  Antonia went to her as if she just might oblige Agnes’s want to embrace and said, “Where are they?” She had waited long enough, and she wanted to meet her nephew and his family. So she looked behind Agnes to the elevator through which she assumed Agnes had just come, then around the lobby, as if perhaps they had appeared during the few seconds her eyes were on Agnes.

  Agnes, with her eyes squinted, looked at Antonia, then behind her, following Antonia’s gaze. “Where are who, honey?”

  “Where are Clayton and his family? That’s why I’m here, isn’t it?” she said in a tone that would make it clear that there was no point to her staying if they weren’t going to be around.

  “Honey, I’m sorry, but Clayton’s in New York about to catch a plane to Milan,” she said, her twang bringing it out of her mouth sounding like M’Laan. Then she shrugged and said, “And Susan and the boys wouldn’t be here. Susan’s over at the house, and the boys are in school. I told you to come and meet me down here because I thought you might like it, and because it seems to me that our conversation wasn’t finished from the other day.”

  Antonia took a step back, and when she tightened her face she stared at Agnes as if through a tunnel and said, “Don’t give me that, Agnes. I’m not stupid, and I know you’re more conniving than that. You planned it this way because there’s no way you were going to have me down here while he was here. Isn’t that true?”

  “Antonia, that is simply not true.”

  “Don’t lie to me, Agnes. We’ve got too much history, and you know I know you.”

  Agnes pushed out an exasperated breath, as if it were meant to blow Antonia right out of there. Then she started toward a door on the other end of the lobby and turned to Antonia, saying, “Well, are you coming or not?”

  So Antonia followed her through the door and up an escalator and into a restaurant. And when they entered the dining room, the tables, every single one, sparkled like Christmas ornaments from the crystal that caught the low lights that shone through the prisms of even more crystal hung in the chandeliers. Antonia looked around the room and said, “My, this really is lovely. But you still haven’t answered my question, Agnes.”

  “All right, Antonia. You’re right,” Agnes snapped. “I did know that he wasn’t going to be here, but I really do believe that we’ve got much more to talk about so let’s just get to our table so that we can get on with it, okay?”

  A man dressed in a business-black suit approached them. He had the tightened stride of landed gentry, which he could have carried off had he not spoken to let his South Baltimore drawl slide out to reveal his true station. “Do you have a reservation?” he asked as the overpronounced r in reservation told his tale.

  “Agnes Cannon. Reservation for two,” Agnes said confidently.

  Actually, with more confidence than Antonia ever thought Agnes could have. It’s amazing, Antonia thought, what high living off of a famous son can do. But then she imagined, as she followed Agnes and the waiter to the table, that Agnes must feel constantly like a catfish in the ocean. Completely out of her element, and always looking from side to side to make certain she’s correct; knowing that she’s breathing air, yet feeling as if she’s suffocating with every futile breath she attempts to take.

  As she sat, Agnes smoothed her dress underneath her with the unnatural movements of a woman unaccustomed to such feminine protocol, then laid her napkin across her lap in an equally pretentious manner. Once the maitre d’ had gone away, Agnes said, “All right, Antonia, you’re right. I brought you here because I thought you were going to do something rash.”

  Antonia shifted where she sat and studied the young man busily filling the water glasses. When he finished, she said, “And?…”

  Antonia could feel in every part of herself that could sense and know that there was more to Agnes’s motivation. If she would just say it, just once in her misguided life tell the truth, at least Antonia could believe that staying there wouldn’t be in vain. And she stared determinedly at Agnes for her answer, and when it wasn’t instantaneously forthcoming, she said, “You tell me the rest of it right now, or so help me God, I’ll walk right out of here and the next time we talk it will be with Clayton. I was at the hospital with my daughter till one this morning because we thought she was in labor and I’m working on very little sleep. I’m tired and I’m short on patience and you’re about to test me in a way I don’t think you should.”

  “Okay, Antonia,” Agnes responded desper
ately. Then she diverted her eyes out the window and onto the gray harbor and continued softly, “And I wanted to bring you here because I hoped that if you were able to come here to the place where Clayton lives, then maybe that would be enough for you, and then maybe you’d leave Clayton alone. Now, can we please just have a nice lunch? The food here is simply the best.”

  Antonia wouldn’t move, as she looked around at all the old splendor in the room. She smiled thinly and said, “Now doesn’t that feel good, Agnes? That must have been the first honest thing you’ve said to me since I’ve known you. But just to set the record straight, if all I wanted to do was come to the place where Clayton lives and skulk around and eat lunch like some star-struck groupie, I could have done that by myself and a long time ago.”

  Agnes only smiled, then said, “I suppose you could.” Shifting the subject with the gentility of true southernness, she continued, “If you like prawn salad, they make quite a good one here. It’s on the prix fixe lunch menu.”

  “I like it well enough,” Antonia said, trying to remember when she’d last had prawn salad. Then she decided it didn’t matter, since such dishes hardly have a universal rule of preparation and so would most likely taste different than the last, whatever that tasted like. And it didn’t much matter anyway, since she wasn’t really there to eat. So, lacking for anything else to say to fill in the silence, she said, “The table looks lovely.”

  “Yes it does. This is a fine, fine restaurant,” Agnes replied with the wonderment that said the elegance of her son’s perquisites were still like a dream to her. “Clayton says it’s been written up in Baltimore magazine, and even Zagat, too. And you know, on the prix fixe menu, they have pralines-and-cream for dessert. I remember just how much you love your pralines.” Agnes picked up her water glass, and before sipping from it said, “So you say your daughter had false-alarm labor last night?”

  “That’s right. She was at my son’s house with her husband, and Junior was there too,” she said, then Antonia picked up her water glass. She sipped and lingered over the distraction of having forgotten to ask what the family were all doing at Aaron’s house together in the first place. True enough, she knew Junior was going to Aaron’s. But what was Ellen doing there? And if Ellen and Rick were there having a big old family get-together, why wasn’t she there too? Somebody had some secrets to tell about whisperings behind her back. Then, setting her water back in its place, she tucked her suspicion away and continued, “It turned out to be indigestion. She’d just eaten too much over at her brother’s house.”

  “Oh yeah, that’s common. I remember when Susan was pregnant with the boys. We made no less than three dashes to the hospital only to find out that it wasn’t really labor. By the time they really were ready to come, they came so fast the doctors didn’t even have time to get her out of her dress. That was some night, I’ll tell you.”

  “Sounds like it,” Antonia said, laughing without the burden of the last forty-five years bearing down on her. She held back, as she saw the waiter approaching. But before she let him ask, Antonia spoke up. “I think we’ll both have the prix fixe lunch.” Then, realizing she’d just spoken for Agnes, she looked at her with widened eyes of contrition and asked, “Is that what you want too?”

  “Yes, that’s fine. That’s just what I was going to order,” Agnes said, more to Antonia than to the waiter.

  And only when he left did Antonia continue. “So, anyway, I was just beside myself with happiness when Junior called me and said Ellen was in labor. I’ve had two children and I know what that’s like, but I suppose there’s nothing like the moment when your first grandchild comes into the world. I’m just so excited, Agnes.” And Antonia was positively giddy.

  “Oh, I know you are, honey. And you are so right about the moment your grandchildren are born. I will never forget one thing about the day Clayton was born. I still remember the room I was in over there at Oschner Hospital as if I was just in there yesterday. But you have no idea what kind of joy you’re in for. I know for me, all the mistakes I made in trying not to spoil Clayton I don’t have to worry about with my grandbabies,” she said with a hearty laugh. “Yeah, that’s right. I just let Clayton and Susan do all the saying no and I just say yes, yes, yes. And you’re gonna do the same, too, honey. Just you wait and see.”

  And what Agnes couldn’t see, maybe wouldn’t see, was that the light that had been lit, barely long enough for scarce joy to transcend their enmity, had been doused. Antonia’s anger rose in one solid wave of sadness at what she’d missed—Clayton’s birth. But for Agnes to flaunt, so brazenly, so blithely, that Clayton was born at Oschner—the hospital for whites—just brought all of that woman’s subterfuge back into the room to tap Antonia on the shoulder and remind her of the trickery that kept Clayton from being born over at Charity Hospital—the hospital for coloreds. She wondered what to say. Although her ire was burning at her core, it had yet to tell her mind to shift from the enchantment of babies and childbirth to the vulgarity of Agnes’s cruel-hearted machination of Clayton’s truth to nourish her own insatiable low-down selfishness. Antonia cast her eyes down into her lap and longed for the moments just passed when she had shared a second of likeness with Agnes, so she made the decision, right there, to let the brightness in her life outshine the darkness. “Yeah, well I know what you mean. Momma died before Ellen was born, so she never got to know the kind of joy I’m going to have when my baby has her baby. Last night was scary, though, because Ellen’s only just barely nine months pregnant. Of course nowadays they can do a lot for those kinds of preemies, but still, you just want them to stay protected in that womb so that they can be as strong as they can when they have to face this world.”

  “So she’s okay now?” Agnes asked with the sober face of concern.

  “Oh yes, she’s just fine. Her pride was a little hurt, though, because she was just as sure as anything that she was in premature labor,” Antonia said laughing with her memories of the night before. “‘This is what I do all day long, so I should know,’ she told them. ‘I bring babies into the world every day, even premature ones, and I should know when I’m in premature labor.’ That girl with her headstrong self was over there trying to tell everybody what to do. I guess it’s true that doctors really do make the worst patients. I remember when Junior had to have his appendix out about twenty years ago. Oh my God, Agnes, those doctors had to put a sign on his door telling people not to go in there because Junior was so crusty and ornery to everybody. It was like I had a third child. Anyway, she’s at home taking it easy today and for the rest of the week. In fact, I’m going past to see her when I leave from down here.”

  The waiter appeared carrying two prawn salads, which he placed gingerly in front of each of them. He offered the peppermill without saying a word, as if just showing it should make it clear what he was offering.

  “Yes, I’d like pepper,” Antonia said.

  Then Agnes nodded for the same as well. And when he peppered her salad sufficiently, she simply held her hand up in the universal sign to halt. When he left them to their food, she picked up the conversation. “Well, anyway, I know that must have been something with Junior, ’cause men are a mess like that. But it’s good that your daughter’s resting herself. It doesn’t matter how old you get, a girl needs her momma at a time like this. I always wished I’d had a little girl, but we just didn’t have any more children after Clayton,” she said, her voice growing weaker as the sentence went along so that by the end of it, Clayton was barely audible.

  But Antonia’s mind had breezed by the perfect opportunity to question Agnes as to why they never had more children, at least for now. Her thoughts were with Ellen, wondering just how much she really needed her mother. Ellen was always so complete, Antonia remembered. There didn’t seem to be anything in Ellen’s whole life, since she’d left diapers, that she couldn’t manage to do or get for herself. So Antonia chewed a prawn and, before it was barely swallowed, said, “Yeah, I suppose that’s so for most oth
er girls. But you don’t know my Ellen. She’s so self-sufficient. Doesn’t need a thing from anybody, it seems.” She grew quiet and pensive for the barest second, then let out a thin laugh. “By the time she was ten years old I knew that if she’d had a job, she would have had her own place.”

  “Oh, honey, it might seem that way to you, but believe me, she needs you,” Agnes said to Antonia, with sympathetic eyes that held Antonia tightly. “From the time they get out here they’re trying to conquer this world on their own. And I don’t mean high school or college either, honey. I mean from the time they take those babies from our wombs we are having to learn step-by-step and stage-by-stage how to let them go, because instinct makes them want whatever is meant for them in this world.”

  “Well, then that’s my Ellen, wanting everything that’s meant for her in the world.” She fell quiet long enough to finish her prawn salad, which was sparse to begin with, even though the prawns seemed as big as her hands. Antonia dabbed the corners of her mouth with a corner of her napkin, then smoothed it back across her lap. Looking over at Agnes who’d had one last prawn she seemed to be coveting as if she wanted to take it home with her, Antonia said, “Tell me something, Agnes. Why is it that you and Douglas never had more children?”

  Agnes looked sharply at Antonia, and only when she loosened her tightened lips did she say, “Now listen, Antonia. I know what you’re getting at, and you’re wrong. Douglas and I tried for a few years, but then we both decided that we were happy just to have our Clayton.”

  Antonia smiled with just a hint of irony. “Agnes, I simply asked a question that was nothing if not innocent. My question has absolutely no bearing on what I truly believe.”

  “And what you believe has no validity,” Agnes snapped. Then she cut her last prawn and ate half of it. She let loose a chest full of air, put her fork down and said, “Now listen, Antonia, I don’t know why all this has to happen between us. Why, just now we were getting on fine, and then just like that we’re at each other’s throats. I don’t want to be that way with you.” She skewered the last bit of prawn on her fork and put it in her mouth, chewing it slowly and deliberately as if it would be some sort of sin against the culinary artistry of the chef to swallow, but she did, then said, “The truth is, Antonia, I’ve always liked you. Not just because you’re Emeril’s sister, but because you’ve always had spunk. You were so sure of yourself with every step you took, and even though everybody else around thought you were crazy, calling you fou-fou Antonia and all, just because you went around with that yellow cat of yours in that basket, I defended you because you knew who you were. None of that fou-fou Antonia stuff ever made you doubt for one second who you were. Even when you were running around behind me and Emeril tryin’ to make our lives miserable, I defended you.”