The Color of Family

by Patricia Jones

  “And so how do you know so much?” Antonia asked in a tone that said the question was mostly rhetorical, but with eyes that said she needed to know. “Forgiveness is not that simple. You don’t just wake up one morning and say, ‘Okay, I forgive you.’ I don’t know when I’ll be able to forgive him.”

  Ellen looked at her mother studiously, thinking she saw the beginning of tears welling and about to fall, and she would not continue until she was certain that they wouldn’t, then she said, “Ma, the way I know forgiveness to work in situations like this is that forgiving Poppa won’t come from anything he can do. Forgiveness happens when you trust yourself enough to know that if he disappoints you again, it will not be the end of your world.” Then she looked down, unsure if she could, or even should trust her mother with the knowledge of the deepest pain she’d ever known. But then she lifted her head and said, more to the wall behind Antonia than into her eyes, “And I know this, Ma, because I had to find my way to forgiveness when Rick had an affair a few years ago.”

  Antonia was stunned to near silence. But in more than a few passing seconds still managed to ask, “Was she a white woman or a black woman?”

  Ellen only looked at her mother then blew out a long sigh and said, “It’s just not important, Ma. What I’m saying is that he cheated, just like Poppa. It hurts, it takes you outside of yourself, but it’s forgivable.”

  Antonia gazed at the baby and pressed her lips together until they formed to say something, but no words came forth. And so when the words were ready they sprung from her lips, asking, “So how did you find out? And what happened that made you forgive him?”

  “Well, I found out in the way most women never find out. Rick told me. He confessed,” she said plainly. “He wanted out of their relationship that he said had sucked him so far in that he didn’t see a way out.”

  “Why not?”

  Ellen narrowed her eyes that were trained squarely on her mother. With a confounded shake of her head she said, “I have to say that I’m not completely sure because it wasn’t really important to me to know why he didn’t see a way out. I think the reason I didn’t want to know was because his telling me was his way out. So I think that most likely the affair, just as nearly all of them do, backed him into one of those blackmail corners—either he leaves me or she tells me. Something like that.”

  “Which is so stupid,” Antonia continued, as if speaking for Ellen. “It’s stupid because if she had told you, then nobody wins, especially her.” Antonia sat stark still as if in deep contemplation. She got up and went to the rain-splattered window and looked out onto the street with its wet cars and wet people under soaked umbrellas. Slowly, she turned to face Ellen and asked in a sorrow-laden voice, “I guess what I want to know the most from you right now is why is it that I’m just now hearing about this? That had to have been the hardest thing to do—sit there and listen to your husband confess about an affair. You know this pain I’m going through, yet you didn’t tell me.”

  “I didn’t tell you, Ma, because I knew that at the end of the day, Rick and I would make it through, and you’d still be harboring the hatred I know you must feel for him now.” She thought about what she would say for several long and difficult seconds, because it could certainly make things worse. But she said, anyway, “I did confide in Aaron. He knows all about it and was incredibly supportive. I could tell that he secretly wanted me to ditch Rick and the marriage, but he never suggested such a thing. That’s all I’m saying to you, Ma. That boy of theirs is good and grown now, and your marriage to Poppa went happily through all those years. And so to find out something like this that happened so long ago hurts, yes, but after all these years is forgivable.”

  “So now, all is forgiven? Rick had an affair and you’ve put it behind you?”

  Ellen bucked out her eyes so that her mother would be sure to get it, and said, “So you want to know something, after three years, Ma, I’m still in the process of forgiving him because I’m still in the process of trusting myself enough to open my heart again, and open it wide despite the risk of being hurt again. I’m still in the process of that kind of trust, Ma. I think it takes time, but not as much time as it would take you, after all these years.”

  The baby began to make its waking-up sounds—a squeak here, then another one there. Ellen got to her feet in one move and picked up her baby boy. Feeding time, she thought. So gingerly, she got back to bed, opened her nightgown and began to nurse him. As her mother stood at the window watching the two with the kind of mother’s eyes that could weep uncontrollably at any second, Ellen said, “You know, Ma, I discovered something this morning when Rick and I were trying to come up with a name for the baby.”

  “What did you discover, honey?” Antonia asked softly and with a proud sweetness.

  “Well, I realized that since uncle Emeril died you have been so consumed with him that you had given me and Aaron the same initials as you and Emeril—A and E.”

  Antonia put her gaze on the street below, then turned to Ellen again, saying, “I don’t want to talk about Emeril or Clayton or any of it while I’m looking into the face of my first grandchild.”

  “All I’m saying, Ma, is that it’s more than a coincidence. It’s subliminal.”

  Antonia went back to the chair and sat with firmness. She leaned forward toward Ellen and said, “Okay, if you insist then just let me say this: Look at this baby right here, Ellen. If you weren’t holding him in your arms, cuddling him and loving him and staking your place as his mother, not a soul would know he’s got any black in him at all. Can’t you look at this baby of yours, Ellen, and see why things were the way they were for me regarding Clayton, and especially Agnes?”

  Ellen turned her attention from her mother in that moment that she knew had never been truer and watched her son suckle her breast. Clayton and her baby had no similarities, none whatsoever, her mind told her. Not a soul, she told herself, could look at her baby boy and think he was white. No one, because she knew that they would have to see him as she saw him—as her sweet child whose sweetness superceded any attachment of color. But as she stared at her baby, really saw him as he was lying in her arms, she had to admit, but only to herself in that moment, that her mother was right. And so with what served as a pathetic segue, she said to her mother, “I think I’ll have a naming ceremony for the baby so that the family that will nurture him can help name him. Now that’s a tradition, isn’t it?”

  CHAPTER

  18

  Aaron was at the computer in the newsroom writing his scripts when the news came that Ellen’s son had just passed from womb to world. Hopping up from his chair, Aaron bounded toward his office.

  “It’s your mother calling,” his assistant reported. “The baby weighed eight pounds, twelve ounces. The baby and your sister are doing just fine.”

  “Ah man, that’s great,” he said excitedly. “Thanks.” He went into his office and snatched up the phone before he’d even sat. “So what does it feel like to be a grandmother?” he asked his mother. He listened intently as he watched Maggie come in and sit. He could see her eagerness to know something, so to further his mother along the path of her every-single-detail story of the birth of the baby, he asked, “So, what did she name him? And please don’t tell me she named him Richard, Junior, because Richard is just not something you call a baby.”

  Maggie whispered, but mostly mouthed, “What’d she name him?”

  Then he replied into the phone, “I know all Richards have started out as babies. I’m just saying, it feels weird to look at a baby and call it a name that’s better suited for a man.” He paused as he listened to his mother explain something that wrinkled his forehead. Then what she said contorted his face and prompted him to say, “What do you mean she’s not naming him now? What kind of nonsense is that—a baby-naming ceremony? That’s just strange.” He listened some more, shaking his head with a certain exasperation as he did so, shrugging his shoulders, motioning to Maggie to suggest that nothing he
was hearing made sense. Then he said, “Well, okay, Ma. Tell Ellie I’ll be by after I leave here to see her and the baby with no name. Bye.”

  “So what’s this about a baby-naming ceremony?” Maggie asked.

  “Can you believe this? She’s actually going to do this thing.”

  “I’ve been to a baby-naming ceremony before, and it’s actually quite special. It makes you feel as if you’re part of a village.”

  “So what will we do, write names on scraps of paper and throw them into a hat for Ellie and Rick to choose?”

  “No, it’s not like that,” Maggie said with crooked, pouting lips that showed her exasperation. “You look at the baby, interact with the baby, then based on the sense you get of the baby’s personality and all, everybody gives a name, and then the parents decide.”

  Aaron took her in with eyes filled with doubt. “And you say that it was special? It sounds like the craziest thing I’ve ever heard in my life.”

  “Well, I suggest you refrain from telling Ellie that, because she’ll most likely ban you from coming,” Maggie said.

  Aaron scribbled something onto a pad as he said, “That would actually be fine by me, but I won’t say anything about how nuts this is because it’s special to Ellie. I’ll just show up and keep my mouth shut.” When he finished writing, he tore off the piece of paper, then called, “Sara, can you come here for a second, please.”

  “Don’t you mean Sari, Aaron?” Maggie whispered. “Your new assistant’s name is Sari.”

  “Aw man, that’s right. Why can’t I remember that?” he said, embarrassed.

  “I guess because it’s so close to Sara, your old assistant,” Maggie reasoned.

  “I suppose,” he said as he watched Sari approach. He smiled humbly, then said to her as she came into his office: “I’m sorry, Sari. I called you Sara.”

  “I understand,” Sari said in a way which said she most likely did not. “You need something?”

  “Yes, if you don’t mind, could you send my sister some flowers? I’ve written down what I’d like the card to say. And I’ve written my credit-card number here on the bottom,” he said as he handed her the slip of paper.

  “Okay, sure,” she said. As she turned to leave, she looked back and said, “Is there any particular arrangement you’d like? Any particular flower?”

  Aaron looked to Maggie for help, then said, “Oh, I don’t know. I guess roses.”

  “Roses are good,” Maggie said.

  “Roses,” he said more to himself than to Sari. And as he watched Sari leave, he leaned back in his chair, then looked at Maggie and said, “I should have said on the card ‘Congratulations on the birth of baby-no-name.’ A baby-naming ceremony,” he murmured with a shake of his head. Then he laughed, bringing Maggie right along with him. It was as if all at once, they both seemed to recognize that right there, in that space and time, was where they were always good with one another. Yet Aaron knew that there was no explaining how and why this was where it ended. And when their laughter faded naturally, Aaron took Maggie in with soft eyes, whose longing not even he understood.

  But it was Maggie who put words to their shared gaze of longing. “You know, this is nice, what we have right here. But there’s still a sadness because it feels like something has died.”

  “I don’t think it’s so much that something has died,” Aaron said, rubbing his temples to try and soothe the pain of the talk. The talk. He knew it would happen, sooner or later. “I think it’s just that life moves on, one day turns into a different day and months and years turn into different months and years, and so do we. I’m sure I’m not what you need, Maggie.”

  Maggie, who had been staring into her lap, lifted her head, jutted out her chin and fixed him sorely in her gaze—all done with what seemed to be some sort of pride—then said, “And I suppose I’m not what you need.”

  There were few things that he could be sure of when it came to Maggie, but one was that she was sure to pick apart every single word. He knew that if he had to respond to what she said—and he certainly had to—it would have to be exact. So he gathered a deep breath and let it out as he said, “Maggie, what it is, really, is that you are so much like my mother. And I’m dealing with some real stuff with her right now—stuff that goes back long before you and I met.”

  Maggie gazed, dumbfounded and with her mouth agape, at the ceiling as she replied, “I’m confused. I thought it was a good thing to be like a man’s mother.”

  Aaron leaned forward in his chair determinedly. He bore his eyes into her, hoping she would allow herself to fully understand what he was about to say by fixing her eyes onto his. So he softly said, “Maggie, look at me, please.” And only when she did, with tears welling, did he say, “You should always know that it’s a very complicated thing, because even in the best possible situations, it’s a blessing and a curse for a woman to be like a man’s mother.”

  “Well, that’s good to know, I suppose” was all she said before the tears fell.

  And when Aaron saw a familiar figure headed toward his office from the side of just one eye, he turned his face fully to see that it was just who he thought—his father. Never had Aaron been so glad for the distraction of someone, yet so trapped at the same time. The chore of trying to choose between bad and worse was bearing down on him with every step his father took toward him. He did the only thing that made sense in that moment that had him tightly ensnared as Maggie’s tears fell silently. He asked, “Dad, what are you doing here?”

  Junior stood in the doorway, holding his hat in his hand in a most downhearted way. He looked at Maggie sitting next to where he stood, as she wiped tears and greeted him with a smile that seemed strained. Junior tipped his hat like an old-fashioned gentleman and said, “How are you, Maggie?”

  “I’m fine, Dr. Jackson, just fine,” she said as she stood, pecked Junior’s cheek with a hurried kiss, and moved past him until she was out of the office.

  Junior turned to find a stone-faced Aaron with troubled eyes. Junior gave his son a smile that tightened his lips and showed a bit more teeth than usual. Most unnatural. Then he replied, “I thought we could go to lunch. My treat.”

  Aaron regarded him skeptically, then said, “Poppa, don’t you think lunch would be just a little bit awkward right now?”

  “Awkward how?”

  “Awkward, Poppa, in the sense that you come in here one day after I find out I have a brother in New Orleans and you expect me to just say, ‘Okay, let’s go have lunch where we can ignore the big gorilla sitting at the table with us.’ Do you have any idea how shocking all of this was to me and Ellen?”

  “That’s just the thing, son. I want to talk to you about Thyme. I have no intention whatsoever of acting as if yesterday didn’t happen.”

  Aaron tentatively rose and grabbed his jacket hanging on the back of the chair. As he got his overcoat from the back of the door and put it on, he turned to his father and asked, “So you really want to do this?”

  “I really want to do this,” Junior said firmly.

  Just as Aaron was about to follow his father’s lead out the door, he stopped. He stopped because he couldn’t imagine feeling comfortable enough out in public—where the public only knows Aaron Jackson—to have a conversation with free emotions. Whatever he and his father had to discuss—and he couldn’t begin to fathom what exactly that might be—would seem belittled and insignificant under the roof of a restaurant. So he said, as his father was nearly halfway across the newsroom, “Poppa, on second thought, why don’t we stay here and order something?”

  “Why?” his father asked, cocking his head sideways as he ambled back toward Aaron’s office.

  “Well, because I really never go out for lunch since I don’t even get to the studio until around lunchtime. I always bring something in with me or I order something from takeout. This is an awkward area, you know, because there’s no place near enough to go and sit down and eat.” He slid off his overcoat and hung it on the back of his door,
then took his father’s coat and hung it next to his. As he peeled off his suit jacket, he said, “We’d do better ordering takeout,” he said as he settled into his chair. But he would say no more until his eyes had left his father, to find the crammed and cluttered bookcase in the corner. It was a most insufferable thought for him to have to acquiesce, but he did so as he continued in a lifeless tone, “That way we can close the door and talk about this if we have to. Is Chinese okay? That’s what I normally order. Or would you rather have subs?”

  “Chinese will do just fine,” Junior answered in a tone that said it didn’t much matter to him. He listened to Aaron order the beef and snow peas and the chicken with broccoli. It was only when Aaron got off the phone that Junior gave his son a most expectant look—as if he were waiting for the answer to some sort of question.

  So Aaron leaned his chair back and stretched out his legs underneath the desk. He folded his arms across his chest, then told his father, “Poppa, you do know that this thing is not going to unfold so neatly with me saying ‘Oh, this is my brother. Welcome, brother.’”

  “I wouldn’t expect it to be that simple, Aaron. This is a deeply complicated situation, and frankly I’ve been stunned since the day Thyme was born that I’m actually in this position. That I played a part in setting it all in motion.”

  “I do believe that,” Aaron said as he sat up and pulled himself closer to his desk. But the question that stayed in his mind like a skipping record was quite a hefty one. “How do you see this whole thing playing out between your two sons?”

  Junior crossed one leg then uncrossed it and shifted to cross the other. As he shook his head and shrugged his shoulders, he said, “I guess I see you two getting along. You’re alike in some ways. He’s got your sense of humor.”

  “So you see it as being that banal, huh? Two brothers getting together to tell each other jokes. Well, what I see are two men, each hating the other for their station in life, except one will hate the other more and that would be him hating me more because I’ve always worn the crown of the coveted son. But then there’s still me, Poppa, the coveted son, who now knows that for all these years behind my back there has been this other son. And so I say, who cares that Thyme is not as special in terms of not being the well-born son; he’s just not supposed to be there. So given all of that, you still think that he and I are going to come into a room and pretend the animosities aren’t there and show each other scrapbooks of the years we’ve missed of each other’s life?” Aaron didn’t know if it even made any sense to go on, so he put his elbows on the desk and cupped one fist into the other hand, as if gearing up for a fight. He rested his chin on the fist-in-hand pedestal and said, “Well, you want to know something, Poppa, if Thyme is anything like me, like you said he is, I’m telling you right now that it’s not going to be that easy. It’s my guess that everybody’s most likely not going to just get along.”