Fingering The Family Jewels

by Greg Lilly

  Searing heat ignited a wash of hormones that buckled my body.

  My brain checked out, leaving my desire in control of my actions. Shirts with buttons flying, jeans and khakis kicked across the floor freed us for sensory overload. I couldn’t get my hands to all the places I wanted. I couldn’t press my body against his hard enough, wanting to melt into him, to become part of him, to ride his waves. No words were exchanged, only grunts and groans of pleasure.

  He pulled away from our twisting tangle to lead me to the bedroom, where we explored, moaned, kissed, laughed, wrestled, and spent ourselves. I drifted off against his warm chest, rising and falling in the rhythm of deep sleep.

  I WOKE WITHOUT Mark at my side, but stretching in a cat yawn, I replayed the night in my mind. Excitement rose again under the linen sheets, then it occurred to me that these were Kathleen’s sheets, her book left on the nightstand, her and Mark’s wedding picture on the wall. Tuck her, I don’t want to think.

  I found Mark in his shower and slipped in with him. The water streamed down his taut body. I took the soap and glided it over his chest.

  “You’ll make me late for work,” he warned.

  “Don’t go.” The soap rounded his waist and traveled up his back.

  “I have to go. People are depending on me.”

  I pushed him back under the showerhead to rinse off the lather; the water cascaded over his face.

  He sputtered, “Drowning me won’t help.”

  The steam rose as I turned up the hot water and leaned against the cool tile, pulling him to me.

  He was late for work.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  AS I PULLED into Ruby’s driveway, I saw the black Lincoln Town car warning that Edwina and Roscoe were visiting. Great, can’t I just bask in afterglow for a little while longer? I parked next to them and went inside. No one was in the den, but I saw Edwina’s pink wind suit through the window. She and Roscoe sat in the backyard talking as Ruby snipped at her rose bush. Good, let them sit outside. My bed called for me to come take a nap after a night of pure passion.

  Just as I kicked off my shoes and stretched out on the bed, their voices drifted in through the window screen.

  “You have to,” insisted Edwina.

  “But I hate those things,” Ruby’s voice whined.

  Roscoe cleared his throat as only old men can; it sounded like his lung was coming up. “Walterene wanted it. We discussed it with her; now that she’s gone, we have to have you. You have her shares.”

  Edwina overlapped him. “The board meeting is Monday at nine o’clock. We are going as a united front. We have to have someone to look out for our interests.”

  “The boys will do that.” Ruby sounded uninterested in their pleading arguments. “Mike and Mark will take care of the company.”

  ” Vernon will still control them,” Edwina implored. “He and Gladys will push us out. Tim’s our only chance.”

  Tim as an executive? I couldn’t imagine my overgrown frat-boy brother in a board meeting.

  I remembered going to Chapel Hill for a football game one weekend with Dad, when I was about six. At Tim’s frat house, the other guys kidded Tim that I was his son, not his brother. “He’s not my squirt,” Tim shot back. At the game, I begged Dad to let me sit with Tim and his fraternity brothers. They drank out of a flask the entire game, yelled at girls walking by, punched and hugged each other based on the team’s success or failure of a play. They smelled of sweat, Jack Daniels/ stale beer, and Polo cologne. He called his friends fuck-heads. On the way home, I decided to use that term with my dad; we pulled off the highway, and I learned that wasn’t a word to be uttered. But Tim still used fuck-head as a term of endearment. I could see Tim at the board meetings calling Vernon ‘s sons fuck-heads.

  “And Derek needs to go home.” Edwina’s comment forced my attention back to the yard conversation.

  “That’s not for you to say.” Anger tinged Ruby’s voice. “He’s staying for as long as he wants; in fact, I want him to move back here.”

  “What?” Edwina screeched.

  “I like having him around. He needs to be with his family, not out there in California with a bunch of strangers.”

  Roscoe spoke up. “He’s in the way of getting Vernon out of the company. Because of him, Vernon might not get elected. That leaves us where we are today. He needs to keep his mouth shut about all that California queer stuff.”

  “Right,” seconded Edwina. “That Observer article hurt Vernon ‘s campaign. Derek needs to get married, to a girl, or go away.”

  “Edwina, that’s the stupidest thing I ever heard come out of your mouth, and over the years,” Ruby got louder, “you have let loose some doozies.”

  “We aren’t against Derek,” she tried to soothe Ruby.

  “Or his kind,” Roscoe added.

  “But, the fact is, when Vernon goes to the Senate, we can get Tim added to the Board to take care of our interests. If that doesn’t happen, get ready to be booted out.”

  “Well,” Ruby’s voice was quick and short, “consider yourselves booted out of my house. Go. Get. Now.”

  I heard the gate slam shut with their retreat. Staring at the ceiling, I wondered if they were right. Could I keep Vernon from being elected?

  I rolled over the possibility in my mind like a silver ball shot in an old-fashioned pinball machine; it struck a button that repeated in a raspy voice: “Get out, faggot.” A flag popped up: Danger! Could the scratchy-voiced man, the man who tried to kill me at the Observer building, the man who hurt Ruby, be part of this Board takeover? But a place on the board of directors wasn’t worth murder; at least, I didn’t think it was.

  The storm door slammed shut as Ruby entered the house. I yelled from the bed, “Ruby.”

  “Oh, shit!” she shrieked, and her footsteps hurried back to the bedroom. “You scared the piss out of me. When did you get home?”

  “A few minutes ago.” I sat up on the bed. “I heard Edwina and Roscoe in the yard. What’s going on?”

  She leaned against the doorjamb, arms folded, lifting up her generous bosom. “Those two need a hobby. They want me to go to the Board meeting to get Tim positioned.”

  “Positioned?”

  “Yep, so when Vernon goes to Washington, Tim will be added to the Board.”

  “Why is that important?” I knew Edwina and Roscoe’s reasoning, but wasn’t sure Ruby subscribed to it.

  “The company has always been divided. Gladys and Vernon on one side, the rest of us on the other.” She sighed like she hated talking about the business. “Since Vernon ‘s boys have moved up in the company, their side always gets the votes on major decisions. Tim will help even the odds.”

  “You don’t think Tim will have a loyalty to our mother?”

  She smiled. “That’s the first time, in a long time, that I heard you call Gladys ‘mother.’ That’s nice to hear.”

  A little shaken by my slip-up, I corrected myself, “I meant Gladys.”

  A chuckle tumbled from Ruby’s smiling lips. “Tim never got a lot of support from your mother-”

  “Big surprise there,” I interrupted.

  “Lord,” she looked up at the ceiling, “let me get this out so we can stop talking about it.”

  “Sorry, go on. Tim wasn’t supported by Gladys…” I led her.

  “Our side knew we needed a young executive, and Tim was the most logical choice in the company.”

  “The only choice?” I asked, sounding bitchier than I meant.

  “Unless you want to start working there?” She grinned and turned to go back to the kitchen, but stopped. “You and Mark have a good time last night?”

  “The best,” I replied. I began to slip into the memory when the phone rang.

  Ruby padded down the hall to answer it. “Derek, it’s for you.”

  I joined her in the den, and she handed me the phone.

  “Yes?” I said into the receiver and sat down in the wingback chair.

  “Der
ek. It’s Daniel.” He added quickly, “Don’t hang up.”

  Ruby took her clippers and returned to the backyard.

  “What do you want?” I asked.

  “I want to explain.”

  “You’ve got one minute.” That was all I thought I could stomach.

  “When I first met you and found out you were part of the Harris family, I wanted to get Information-”

  “I know.” I interrupted, not wanting to hear this.

  “But,” Daniel continued, “as I got to know you-as you, not as part of this political family-my motives became personal. Complications sprang up as I struggled between getting a story and being attracted to you. I met with my editor, and told her I couldn’t write another article on you or Vernon. I was too personally involved.”

  “What did she say?” I couldn’t believe he gave up following the Senate campaign for me.

  “I’m assigned to the county commission and city council meetings.” He sighed, then added, “It’s not as boring as it sounds, really.”

  I had to laugh. “Sorry you got reassigned.”

  “It’s for the best. Besides, I want to help you.”

  “Help me? How?” I grabbed my cigarettes, tapped one out, and lit it.

  “The attack here in the morgue, at first I thought that was about my article and you getting in the way of Vernon ‘s campaign, but you must be onto something serious considering the harassing phone calls and the attack on your aunt Ruby.”

  “Yeah, maybe.” I still didn’t trust him, even if he wasn’t writing articles on Vernon ‘s campaign.

  “I’ve been researching the archives for information on your family from the late thirties through the fifties, you know, the time you had looked up that night in the morgue.” He waited for my reaction.

  I kept silent.

  “I found some information on Caleb Sampson.”

  “What?” I almost jumped out of my seat. “What did it say?”

  “So you were looking for that?” he asked.

  “Yes. Walterene wrote about it in her diary. What did you find?”

  “Caleb Sampson worked as a gardener for Ernest Harris. He was found hanged in a tree and the Klan was blamed. No official investigation took place, which I thought was odd for the employee of a prominent citizen.”

  I was disappointed; I knew that much. “Anything else?”

  “That’s not the kicker,” Daniel explained. “I researched backward and forward. That was the only instance of Klan activity within Charlotte for thirty years, before or after. Sure, there were reports in surrounding counties, but nothing within the city.”

  “Are you saying you think it was staged to look like the Klan?”

  “That’s more likely than what was reported in the paper.”

  Ernest and Vernon did it, and made it look like a Klan killing. I knew this wasn’t something I should say to Daniel. “That’s the mystery,” I said, “who did it?”

  “That’s why someone is trying to scare you away. I think you have an idea.”

  “Not really, Daniel. I just know he died. I wasn’t sure if it was suicide or murder. Now I know. Thanks.”

  “But, Derek-”

  I hung up the phone.

  THAT AFTERNOON, I dropped in on Mark. His assistant, Becky, told me he was in a meeting and would be back soon, so I wandered the streets of downtown Charlotte, enjoying the warmth of the sun and the endless parade of people scurrying from building to building. Mr. Sams’ death kept coming to mind; I tried to imagine that the Klan had done it, and that it wasn’t significant that no other activity preceded or followed it. There hadn’t been any investigation back then, and the police had known much more then than I knew now.

  I found a sidewalk cafe to sip a cappuccino and smoke a couple of cigarettes. From my table, I could see the Observer building to the south and the Harris Tower to the north; I sat between the two, thinking about the men in each, wondering what they were thinking at that very moment.

  Thoughts of Daniel choked my mind with guilt. A reporter can never be off the clock; he’s always thinking about a story and how to dig deeper; of course, that’s a drawback. Was his phone call meant to work another angle with me? Trust, respect, and openness was what I wanted, not deception. My family seemed to thrive on deception: plots to take control of the board, schemes to get elected to the Senate, lies to cover up a lynching… Cheating on your wife with your cousin.

  A secret held for more than eight years. How could Mark do it? Physical urges had to overcome him. No one knows, so maybe he never acted on those impulses. That’s impossible! The thought shook me. Out-of-town business trips would have allowed Mark the cover of anonymity to meet other men who didn’t recognize his name or associate it with the family. What a prison to be locked in, no one to talk to, no community, no support, no love, no life. But, what if that wasn’t true? I knew other closeted men whose secret lives forced them into an underground society where one betrayal could end a life built on lies-“discreet” was the personal-ad synonym for closeted. I imagined covert meetings in a dark sports bar where the code words “My wife is out of town” signaled the promise of a new brother into the fraternity of silence.

  I ground out my cigarette and headed back toward the Harris Tower, wondering how to unlock the prisoner trapped in the plush cell at the top. As I ambled up the street, a chill sensation of someone watching me crept up the back of my neck. Few retail shops lined the streets, so I stopped at a bank window as if I was absorbed in the posted interest rates. I watched the reflections of people passing behind me and especially of anyone who had stopped too. A dark-haired man in his thirties checked a map on a bus shelter about fifteen paces behind me; I waited to see if he moved on. He didn’t.

  The corner-crossing signal had just changed; I watched for the red flash to warn pedestrians not to leave the curb, then bolted across the intersection just before the traffic light turned green, and the man was cut off from following me. Looking back, I saw him cross to the other side of the street. Paranoia left me in a cold sweat; I pushed through the revolving doors of the Harris Tower lobby and checked for the man; he was across the street, staring at the doors I had just entered.

  As the elevator stopped on Mark’s floor, Becky greeted me, saying that Mark was out of his meeting and that she would let him know I was back. I waited for a few seconds until he opened his office door and invited me in.

  “Sorry,” he said, “but we’re still meeting about Allen Harding’s threats. Our attorneys want us to pay him off, but Dad says that implies we did something wrong.”

  I felt like I should say something about it, but that was company business and my business seemed more urgent and important. “I think someone tried to follow me.”

  “Where?” Mark asked, setting down a file folder on his desk.

  “On the street.”

  He smiled. “Could they just be walking in the same direction?”

  “Never mind.” I plopped down on the sofa.

  “If you really think someone is following you, I can send security out to check.”

  “No, don’t bother,” I was pissed that he would find it something to smile about. “So let’s hear about your problem with this Harding guy.”

  “Sorry,” he replied, “I didn’t mean to make you mad.”

  I got up, wrapped my arms around his waist, and kissed him. “That’s okay.”

  Pulling away, Mark took a seat behind his desk. “We need to talk about last night…”

  “And this morning.” I added.

  “Yes,” he smiled. “Derek, I’m married, and not in a position to have a relationship.”

  I waited to see where he wanted to take this. I wasn’t sure what I had expected to develop between us, but I wanted something more than what we had.

  “Like I’ve said before,” he continued, “I need to keep parts of my life separate’-”

  “Me separate from your respectable life.” I finished for him.

  “No, it’s
just, a wife is what’s expected of me, and I want to be up front with you, not lead you on.” He arranged some papers on his desk, not looking at me.

  “How important is keeping your secret?” I asked, wondering ii the scratchy-voiced man and attacks had less to do with Mr. Sams and more to do with Mark’s sexual cravings. The creeping possibility that he could be involved wrapped around my heart and pulled it into my throat.

  Mark froze, papers in hand. “You wouldn’t,” his voice grew stern, “you wouldn’t try to blackmail me.”

  My heart dropped. “Mark, I love you. No, I would never hurt you.” Could he say the same to me?

  He stood and placed both hands on my shoulders, holding me firm, staring into my eyes. “I love you too. I wish the world was different, where we didn’t have to hide.”

  “It is different,” I said. “The world you have to hide from is only in your mind.”

  “No, reality is I would lose everything.” He pulled me into an embrace and whispered in my ear, “I want it all.”

  The warmth of his arms, and the safety I felt there, melted away doubts about his involvement in trying to scare me away. “Your secret is safe with me.”

  We settled on the couch and made plans for after work; he had dinner arrangements with Vernon to discuss the upcoming board meeting, but after that we would have a repeat of the previous night. The backyard conversation of Ruby, Edwina, and Roscoe came to mind. “What do you think of Tim?” I asked.

  “Your brother?” He leaned back and sighed.

  “Yeah, is he moving up in the company?”

  Shaking his head from side to side, he said, “Tim is here as a favor to Aunt Gladys. He’s a good guy, but his potential is limited.”

  “Not ambitious enough?”

  “Well, yes, but also, he doesn’t have a knack for strategic thinking.” He chuckled a short staccato laugh. “In fact, Tim seems to take for granted that we owe him something for being part of the family. He just doesn’t want to work for it.”