The Color of Family

by Patricia Jones

  Her jaws were set tightly until she reached Aaron and sat down next to him. Then as she slowly turned to face him, she said in a whisper, “No, Aaron, everything is not cool. Quite honestly, I’m worried about the third segment into the newscast. The one where we go live to that interview with Clayton Cannon. I just have a bad feeling about you doing the lead-in to that interview.”

  Aaron reared back his head, swollen with the arrogance of his pride and said, “Maggie, how can you say something like that to me? I’m a professional, and I’ve never behaved in any other way on the air. Off the air, that man is the bane of my life. On the air when I’m doing the intro to his interview, he is a piece of news.”

  She regarded him skeptically, then looked away to her news copy. And when she looked up, it wasn’t into his eyes. Still, she said, “I just don’t know, Aaron. I’m not so sure, for some reason. You’ve got a real tender spot when it comes to that man, and when it comes down to him or your professionalism, I don’t give your professionalism a fighting chance of surviving against Clayton Cannon.”

  “Thanks for the vote of confidence,” Aaron said tersely as he turned from her with a definite edginess in his comportment. As he studied his news copy, he could feel the heat of her stare deep into the side of his face, but he had not one other word for her. In his ear he heard the Channel Eleven theme music that he often heard in his mind, like a psychotic moment, at times outside of this place. Then the stage manager cued to Aaron in five, four, three…

  So he read the headlines of the lead stories. “A triple murder in Pikesville leaves the quiet community gripped in fear as police try to solve the crime that has left behind very few clues as to who the killer might be.” Then he paused for two seconds waiting for the video to change from Pikesville to the blazing row house in West Baltimore. “Two people are in critical condition after being overcome by smoke inhalation when fire breaks out in their West Baltimore home.” He paused again to make certain the video was caught up, but also to shore up his foundation as he said, “And with just hours to go before his sold-out concert, the first since moving back here to Baltimore, Clayton Cannon talks to Keith Pettiford live from the Meyerhoff.”

  Then it was Aaron and Maggie, sitting together, smiling only halfway in their greeting because you just can’t smile when you’re about to talk about a triple murder. And a house fire. And Clayton Cannon, which was no smiling matter, hovering right up there at the same level of misery for Aaron. So Aaron said, “Good evening, I’m Aaron Jackson.”

  “And I’m Maggie Poole. Tonight we’re going directly to Pikesville where we have Derek Dodson on the scene of a gruesome triple murder. Derek, what can you tell us?”

  So Aaron watched the monitor intently as he listened to the details of three lives taken in an Upper Park Heights home, only three blocks down and around a corner from his house. And he wondered about those people’s last moments. But there was one thing he knew without a doubt—even though the police now knew that there had to have been two killers, most likely men, Aaron knew they would not be looking for two black men. On Upper Park Heights, two black strangers would have to do a lot of huffing and puffing to blow down the door of any one of those homes where Jews lived quietly, guardedly in their wealth, he thought as he remembered his days of jogging past those impressive homes as the focus of nervous stares and barren smiles. But it was still such a shame, those murders.

  Then Maggie said, “You say the police found no sign of forced entry, yet there’s no indication that the victims knew their killers. Do they have any idea who they might be looking for?”

  And just as Aaron knew the truth to be, he listened as Derek said, “Now the police say neighbors reported seeing two neatly dressed white men in the neighborhood, walking aimlessly up and down the street an hour before the murders. While the police are not labeling them as suspects, they are looking for them for questioning.”

  There are some crimes, Aaron thought with a wry smile meant only for himself, particularly since he was off camera, that are simply sociological impossibilities.

  When Maggie finished with the triple murder, Aaron paid only narrow attention to the West Baltimore fire. But what did capture his thought was that one of the people overcome by smoke was blind, which made him think of Maggie’s opinion of the most awful way to die. He recalled how, ever since he’d known her, she’d told him that her worst fear was to go blind and burn up in a fire. So now she’s sitting right there talking about what would be the most horrible course she could possibly take to leave the planet. He let that thought go when he had to prepare for his cue. And when the camera was on him and he heard the break music in his ear, he said, “When we come back, we’re going downtown to the Meyerhoff where Keith Pettiford will talk with Clayton Cannon just hours before his first concert in Baltimore since he moved here.” And they were out.

  Aaron put his scripts down and looked over at Maggie, and only when she turned to him did he say, “So that was your worst fear, right? That blind lady in the fire.”

  Maggie gave him a self-conscious smile that pressed her lips together to turn them only slightly upward at the corners, then replied, “She didn’t burn up in the fire. She was blind, but she didn’t burn up.”

  “You mean she would have had to actually burn up in the fire for it to be identical to your fear?”

  “Yes. Breathing in smoke and burning flesh are two separate things, and burning flesh is a lot more horrifying, not to mention excruciating, than dying a smoky death.”

  “Oh yeah?” Aaron said with a sardonic laugh, before continuing, “Well, ask someone who’s nearly died from breathing in smoke.”

  Maggie laughed thinly, then asked, “Are you ready for the next segment?”

  “I don’t think I should have to answer that, Maggie,” Aaron said, only showing the uppermost layer of his irritation. She didn’t mean to, he knew, and it was just her style, but with her plain-speak, she had a way of going right to the center of him with only one word and setting off a firestorm, to which he could pay no heed at best and beat down at worst.

  “And we’re back in five, four, three…” the stage director said.

  Aaron prepared himself and looked straight into the camera, and when it was time, he said, “In less than three hours, Clayton Cannon will walk onto the stage at the Meyerhoff and play his first concert for the city as a resident. This has been a much anticipated concert for most of Baltimore, and now Keith Pettiford is with Clayton Cannon down at the Meyerhoff as he prepares for tonight. Keith, can you tell us a little about how he feels being back here to live and what it will feel like to take the stage tonight as a resident of the city?”

  Aaron listened with more interest than he could recall ever having in anything that went through their airwaves as news, but reflexively leaned forward to rest on his forearms, as if he needed to hear or see better, and shook his foot with equal reaction to his anticipation. There was no telling what he’d hear, and he had no idea why he’d even want to hear it. But this phantom that had invaded his imaginings for as long as he’d had memory was now right in front of him, so to speak; and whatever there was for Aaron to glean from a few minutes of talk through a television monitor, he’d take. He had to understand Clayton Cannon on some level, for this man had a power that Aaron was desperate to know. And that power had been able to steal enough of his mother’s heart away to make him long for the missing part of her in some way nearly every day of his life. Was it in Clayton’s smile, which Aaron had to admit, was seductive and warm? Or was it in his eyes and the way they stayed focused with every word he said to Keith, as if he were forging a deep and lasting connection? There had to be something that would make an otherwise sane woman—that he now knew his mother to be—want to lay claim to this piano-playing thief of hearts.

  But so far, all Clayton talked about was the excitement of Baltimore, the connectedness of Baltimoreans that made the city a small town, and an inexplicable pull he had felt to come back. And yes, he loved the
crabs, and the harbor, and the bay. Oh, and Fells Point! What a difference all these years gone by have made. So what else? He’s going to play Beethoven’s Sonata in F Minor, crudely, Aaron heard him say, referred to as the “Appassionata.” Crudely to music snobs who spoke intimately of arias and concertos and sonatas, Aaron supposed, since he’d never heard of it anyway; this Clayton said he’d play in memory of his audition at the Peabody Conservatory.

  And so Aaron kept his interest tuned as Clayton went on to explain how the second half of his concert would be Chopin’s Nocturnes since it was right in Baltimore, during his tender years at the conservatory, that he grew to fully understand the complexity of Chopin’s piano pieces as something other than cleverly placed backdrop meant to mingle dramatically with carnal lust in European films. And Aaron studied the man with narrowed eyes, as Clayton went on to say that it was in Baltimore that he learned the intimidating process of bringing more to Chopin than just a large and awe-inspiring technique that only played the notes. Only played the notes? Aaron wondered. What else would he do, and would anybody else know what was missing if all Clayton did was play the notes?

  But what dug viscerally into Aaron in a way he couldn’t fathom was Clayton saying that it was when he discovered how to play more than just Chopin’s notes that he fully embraced his power to bring the world together through his music. Bring the world together through his music. This haunted Aaron, and it was this understated passion, that Aaron couldn’t begin to imagine having for anything, that made him now regard Clayton with a fascination that came quite close to the awe with which he regarded the man when he was ten years old and first laid eyes on him.

  Then Clayton said something that Aaron knew he could only possibly understand if he had the slightest inkling of the world in which Clayton lived. Clayton claimed that there was something pulling him to play the Nocturnes only in minor keys for the concert. There was something soothing to a brooding soul about minor keys. And then what Aaron heard next was of particular curiosity to him. Clayton claimed that even though a lifetime of brooding had come to an end just a few hours before, he would still play his concert in minor keys as a tribute to his release.

  And this release, Aaron thought, what it could be he did not try to guess. All he knew for certain was that there was something about the man’s newfound peace that made Aaron’s stomach curl up inside his chest and sit there as if it did not belong someplace else entirely. He didn’t know how, but Aaron had readied himself for what would come when Clayton said,

  “There seems to be something fitting about this news coming today, the last day of Black History Month. But I just learned today that my father was not who I’d always known as my father. My father was a black man named Emeril Racine, and his twin sister, my Aunt Antonia Jackson, lives right here in Baltimore. And in some way, I believe this just may be the sort of psychic energy that brought me back here to Baltimore, almost against my will. And you know what else? My aunt’s son is Aaron Jackson, your anchorman. We’re cousins, Aaron and I.”

  And then Clayton did something Aaron simply could not abide when he waved into the camera and said, “Hey, cousin!”

  So Keith, seeming not to know what else to say, said to Aaron, “Aaron, did you know about this? Did you know he was your cousin?”

  In that moment, Aaron knew his life had been solidly divided into before and after—before the day he found out that his mother had been right all this time, and after he found out that he had been sitting for years in his wrongness. He stared without life, without motion into the camera and only said, “And so it’s just like that for him. Just that easy.” Then he stood without speaking another word, and almost without knowing what he did, walked from the set. He simply left, forcing Maggie to hold down the news on her own. He kept walking, and he didn’t even bother to look behind at whether she would simply go on or stare after him in utter shock. There was the appropriate silence in the studio, except for Keith’s controlled anxiety as he called, “Aaron. Aaron can you all hear me?” But nothing was said by Maggie or Josh, and Aaron’s shock needed the empathy for the scarce seconds it lasted. And in those seconds he didn’t care whether the air would be dead or filled with a station break. In that moment, he could be nothing but focused on the blow that had just knocked him from the seat to which he thought he would always be so firmly anchored.

  There was a chair that sat by the door, and it was into this chair that he calmly and reasonably placed his IFB and the microphone from his lapel just before he passed through the door. He went down the hall at a clip, but before he could get to the newsroom, Mark was walking toward him even faster. Aaron had somehow found a sober part of his mind that was able to steel him for the lambasting that was sure to come from Mark. So he slowed only to meet Mark, who looked mad enough to flatten anything in his path.

  “What the hell was that, Jackson? What are you doing walking out in the middle of my newscast? Are you out of your mind?”

  “I just might be, Mark,” Aaron said flatly as he stepped around Mark to continue on his path to a destination of which he wasn’t even certain.

  But Mark followed him, saying, “Jackson, you owe me some answers. But before you give them to me, you’d better get back in there during the next station break and do your job.”

  Aaron waited until he got to the door of the newsroom before he turned to Mark and said, “My job. And what would that job be today, Mark? Tap dancing like some white boy’s fool just because he’s so good to acknowledge that I’m his cousin to all of Baltimore who’s listening? Is that my job, Mark? Because if it is, I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to call in sick today.”

  “You get paid a hell of a lot of money to be what you call a fool.” Then Mark put his head down, as if with empathy. And, with his manner considerably softened, he said, “Look, Aaron, I don’t really understand what just happened in there, but I suppose I can safely guess that you didn’t know that Clayton Cannon was your cousin.”

  With a caustic laugh that gave even Aaron a chill, he replied, “Mark, not only did I not know, but it was the very last thing I wanted on this earth to be true.” And he walked through the newsroom with his eye squarely on his office. He felt the silence, the tentative stares of all those who could not possibly know what was appropriate to say. Nothing was appropriate to say, and he was glad they had somehow understood, without truly understanding, the tenderness of the matter.

  When he got to his office, Aaron went with haste to his chair and plopped himself angrily down into it. From where he sat, he could see Mark talking to Will Gittings, and could tell by the glee Will seemed to be trying his best to subdue that Mark was sending him in to fill the empty anchor’s chair. That pasty-faced punk, Aaron thought. He’s been dying to get in that chair since he first landed at Channel Eleven, Aaron said so loudly in his mind that he almost actually heard it. Let him go on, because who in hell cares, anyway? Surely Aaron didn’t, and surely not now.

  Aaron had been focused for minutes on the picture of his family atop his desk before he realized it was fixed in his gaze. When he finally took his eyes off of it to look up, coming toward his office trotting as fast as a fat man can hurry was Tim, and his face was in full pissed-off-general manager mode. Aaron knew what was coming, because Tim’s face was red with the same flame that was in his eyes. But Aaron decided to head him off before Tim could get fully into the office. “Okay, look Tim, I know I was wrong. But I just don’t want to hear it right now.”

  “Oh, but you’re going to hear it,” the man said with his voice filling every single space in Aaron’s office and most of the newsroom. “How do you have the balls to just get up out of that chair and walk off the set with the cameras rolling? I don’t give a damn about what’s going on with you and that man and how this all took you by surprise, you have a job to do and we don’t have room in here for you to be acting out your personal feelings through this kind of drama.”

  Aaron lowered his head with contrition, then said softly,
“You just don’t know.”

  “You’re right, I don’t know, and I don’t want to know. I just know that you did something that was absolutely inappropriate. The only way I would be able to understand what you did was if you saw your mother get shot live, and even then I would expect you to excuse yourself appropriately.”

  What if someone has just stolen my mother away? Aaron thought. It’s not as bad as shooting her, still she’ll be no less gone. Wouldn’t that be cause enough? Aaron put his focus back on the picture of his family and tried to imagine another face in it, because there was no doubt that his mother would want it that way. So they’d all have to go back over to Ellen’s and call in a photographer whose job it would be to fit not just one more, but four more people into the picture in front of the fireplace, because it would not be the whole family, he knew his mother would say, without Clayton’s wife and twin boys. Yet the day would be filled with nothing near the lightness of being it had been with the taking of this picture propped proudly on his desk. The way Ellen and Rick heard the photographer, who had not a trace of any kind of accent except a Baltimore one, say “bootiful” enough times to know that it wasn’t meant as a joke, yet they just could not stop giggling long enough to smile. Then there was the way his mother playfully scolded him each time he, in some sort of five-year-old regression, turned his two fingers into ears behind her head. She delighted in his silliness. And his father, who had started off the most sober of them all, began asking the photographer about airbrushing his image to make him look like a G.Q. model. Then Aaron thought of the new picture—and Agnes. No way would Agnes be allowed within a mile of Antonia’s newly cast family.

  Suddenly Aaron became aware of Tim’s eyes still pressed hard into him, so he slid himself away from his thoughts of a new family portrait and plainly said, “I’m really sorry, Tim,” as he listened to his phone ring, and ring, and ring.