“Timing?” I asked. I felt guilty a second ago, but now I was getting pissed off. “I met an incredible person, and it took me seventeen years to find her, Dad. The timing is fine. I wouldn’t wait a day longer. I thought you’d be happy for me.”
“It’s different now. You know why,” Dad said, tossing the potatoes into the pan with the steak. “Don’t play dumb. If you wanted a nice father-son chat we could have had one weeks ago. Walter, you know I’m not going to ask you to stop seeing this girl, but try, just try, to think of what you’re doing here, in terms of how it affects everyone and not just yourself.”
“You mean how it affects you,” I said. “And it doesn’t affect you at all. Who I date has nothing to do with your lawsuit or job or some burglar at my school. It’s not like I’m dating that kid’s sister or anything. No one’s going to care!”
“Oh no?” Dad asked. “Go check on your little Facebook picture, then. Welcome to the real world. It ain’t pretty.”
*
Dinner was quiet. When I got to my room afterward, I went right to Facebook. Naomi hadn’t changed a thing on her profile and nothing had changed on mine, but I had become Facebook famous. On the Police and Community in East Bridge page, there was a picture of me and Naomi. From the movie theater the other night, kissing. It was captioned OFFICER WILCOX’S SON, WALTER, DATING A BLACK GIRL. DAMAGE CONTROL?
The same thing Beardsley had suggested at lunch. Naomi was always so stressed about people looking at us. How would she take someone snapping pictures of us and posting them on the Internet? She might never want to see me again. Let alone her parents were going to see this on Facebook.
There were already twenty-four comments on the picture. I got through a handful of them before I had to stop. I was convinced there was nothing good for me online.
Colin McNeil: I’m all for diversity, not racist, but we lose what makes us beautiful when we mix. Just being honest.
Crystal Hale: It’s 2014, get over your outdated views.
Fred Mason: Gay is sick, color is fine.
Janet Perez: Gold digger? They’re teenagers, that kid has no gold to dig.
John Hart: Well, she’s in the news now.
Lauren Bailey: Sick of seeing strong black women lessen themselves. Really tired of it.
I tried calling Naomi right away, but it went to voice mail. A minute or two later she sent me an instant message.
11/24 7:58 NMillz: Hey
11/24 7:58 WalterW1014: Did you see it?
11/24 7:58 NMillz: Yeah … are you okay?
11/24 7:59 WalterW1014: I don’t know, are you okay?
11/24 7:59 NMillz: It’s messed up
11/24 7:59 NMillz: My parents are going to kill me.
11/24 7:59 WalterW1014: Who would do that? Whos taking pictures of us? Im freaking out.
11/24 8:00 WalterW1014: What if I’m being followed? What if my dad is? People on facebook have my address and everything.
11/24 8:00 WalterW1014: This is really sick. Do you think it’s lester or beardsley?
11/24 8:00 NMillz: It’s Jason
11/24 8:01 NMillz: Honestly I figured it out pretty much right away because that’s the kind of scuzzy thing he’d do, but I checked his phone when he was in the shower, that pic was on there.
11/24 8:01 NMillz: And a lot of pictures of girls’ butts at school but whatever
11/24 8:02 WalterW1014: Come on. I know he can be insecure but whats he even trying to do?
11/24 8:02 NMillz: And another thing, that photo was posted by the fb page, so either Jason runs it or he knows who does.
11/24 8:03 WalterW1014: So what do we do now?
11/24 8:03 NMillz: We fight.
Chapter Twelve
On Thanksgiving morning Dad and I headed to his parents’ house. We stopped for doughnuts so we at least had those to fill in the silence. Dad went over there some weekend nights to see his family, but I mostly was there on holidays.
Most of the city was known as East Bridge. Dad’s family lived in the easternmost section, what we called King’s Town. It was an especially white area, and more rural then anywhere else in East Bridge, with more yards, department stores, and strip malls.
My dad’s side of the family was blue-collar. Hard work for little money, sharper language, and a lot more tattoos. Gran and Pop’s house was the same little burnt-orange house they’d always lived in, up the hill from Foxon Avenue, home of defunct department stores from the early 2000s, tanning salons, and used-car dealerships. On a clear day they had a great view of the skyline across the city.
Dad and I were the last to get there around ten thirty. Smells of food and cigarette smoke filled the air. The decor had never changed, and the kitchen still looked like a seventies kitchen. My aunts and uncles were all there, and my cousins were there with their kids, who were busy running around and screaming. Gran Wilcox was hard of hearing, so she was the loudest, and we were met with a “Here they are!” when we stepped inside. She had a loud voice, but a frail body and dark poodle-like hair.
Pop Wilcox followed that up with “Eat something!” He was always telling me especially to eat something. He grabbed my arm and gave it a twist with his large hands to turn it red. It was his version of a hug. Pop had a sleeve of tattoos on his left arm, the centerpiece a large panther with yellow eyes. His own eyes were the trademark Wilcox light eyes, surrounded by harsh wrinkles. Dark tan from being outdoors so much. He had a motorcycle he used to ride until just a couple of years ago, when Gran had him sell it for extra money.
“You kids want some doughnuts?” Dad asked the kids in the room, putting the box on the already-full table. They said yes. “Don’t you ever say no?” he asked. They shook their heads.
Dad pulled my cousin’s kid, four-year-old Wendy, onto his lap, and she reached into the box to grab a doughnut.
“Powder?” he asked. “I put you on my lap and you pick a powdered doughnut? You spill any of that powder on me and you’re under arrest. Don’t give me that cute face.”
My dad’s brother, Uncle Joe, put me in a headlock. “Hey, kid,” he said. He let go of me and picked up the half-empty box of doughnuts and said, “Glad you’re keeping something off the streets!” to my dad. Joe was a tough guy, sleeves full of tattoos, too. A tangle of thorn-covered vines went down his right arm, a skull on the shoulder. His black hair was always slicked back. I thought he was the coolest growing up. I used to spend weekends at Gran’s house when I was a kid with my cousins Danny and Samantha, and Uncle Joe would take us out bowling or to the arcade. He was a cop just like my dad, but for this district.
He married a much younger girl, my aunt June. The story I always heard growing up was that my dad and Uncle Joe used to fight over her, even got into an actual fistfight, which my uncle won, and Dad relented. He ended up being the best man at their wedding still. The happy ending to the story was always how Dad met Mom just a few weeks after that fight.
“Hey, handsome,” Aunt June said, which she’d called me for a long time. She never changed, either, always the big hair and makeup. “The girls noticing you yet? You’re getting so big.” She gave me a “precious” smile.
“Some, I guess,” I said.
“Yeah? Some? One?” she pried. I really hadn’t planned on talking about Naomi here. “Anyone special?” she asked, with that sly smile people get when they want details.
“Uh, maybe,” I said, wondering how I could throw her off this track. “It’s new.”
“That’s the best part, the new,” Aunt June said. “I want to meet her! I want to see you with a little cutie, Walter. You’re depriving us! How come you don’t come around anymore? You used to be over here all the time. I miss it.”
“Just busy,” I said. “School, life stuff, new girl. I miss you, too.” I did miss Aunt June, I did miss the family, but those had been simpler times. Things were changing—things had changed. I was a teenager now, and my parents had split up. I know I had changed, too.
“Bring her over someti
me, will you?” Aunt June asked. “And don’t be a stranger.”
Aunt June patted me on the leg and went into the kitchen, and my cousin Samantha came into the living room. She had two kids now. The older boy, Jack, ran over to me and said “Watch this!” before clubbing his sister with a plastic sword. She started crying.
“Jack, give me that sword,” Sam said. He shook his head. “Now,” she said.
Sam sat down next to me on the couch in the living room, slouched into her seat, and relaxed her legs and the sword. She was only twenty-one, but I thought of her as a grownup. She caked on the makeup, too. Dark tan, blond hair, round face. Even when I was ten and she was fourteen, she was clearly the one with life experience. Sam had married at eighteen and already had one kid then. She and her husband, Dave, moved into a small house only a couple of streets away from Gran and Pop’s.
“Just wait till you have kids, Walter,” she said. “I’m gonna laugh so hard.”
“You’ve got a long wait,” I said. The idea of having a kid, let alone two within the next three years, was completely absurd. I felt closer to ten than I did to twenty. I’d only just now gotten a girlfriend for the first time in my life.
“It’ll happen. It happens to everyone,” she said. “Nobody plans on it, but we all end up with our litters.” It was true for this area, especially. Or even in the suburbs with Mom and Dad. It felt like someone in the family was always announcing a pregnancy or wedding plans.
It was nice, Thanksgiving. The smells, the noise, the laughter. I felt too old to sit around with the kids, though, too young to have fun with the adults. I didn’t know what to do with myself.
I wandered back into the kitchen and found some stuffed pepperoni bread to munch on. Dad was at the table talking to his parents about the case. The rooms had divided on their own with the kids all running around the living room now and the adults settled in the kitchen. With all the food in there, though, that wouldn’t last too long.
“You’ll be fine. You’re one of the boys,” Pop said. “I’ve never been a cop, but I know they take care of their own. Right, Joey?”
It was good to see Dad getting some support anyway.
“You want my advice?” Uncle Joe said, taking a cigarette out of the pack in his shirt pocket and lighting it. “Just keep quiet. You have a constitutional right to not talk. You’ve been there what, twenty years or something? It’s not like you killed anyone. Guess what? It’s a physical job sometimes. Just keep quiet and let it pass.”
“You’re missing the point, though,” Dad said. He was finishing his first beer. “I didn’t do anything wrong. This kid legitimately confessed. I don’t need to be covered or looked out for. I just need my team to do the right thing by me.”
“That’s what I’m talking about,” Uncle Joe said. “You’re still fighting it. You keep talking, and eventually you’re gonna say something they can use against you. And get the hell off that Internet, bro. If it wasn’t for that thing, this would all be forgotten already. Every two days it’s news all over again.”
“No worries there,” Dad said. “I’ve had my talking-to from the chief. Accounts deleted.”
“Twenty-four-hour news cycle,” Pop said. “Nobody’s got anything important to talk about anymore. Imagine if your Grandpa was alive still.” Pop coughed up a laugh. “He’d give you a reward for everyone you put behind bars.”
It was embarrassing to listen to. Dad should have told them to shut up with that stuff, but he was laughing with them. God forbid he brought up Naomi. I’d wait in the car or walk to a bus.
My grandparents’ generation thought those things, said them, and no one batted an eyelash at them. Our parents’ generation was supposed to at least have some guilt over it. I’d grown up hearing this stuff, and I’d bring my iPod to drown it out with some Eminem. I didn’t pay it too much attention back then, but it all took on a new context now. I couldn’t imagine bringing Naomi over. What would my great-grandfather say about her? About me and her? Would everyone laugh at that?
“Ain’t that the truth,” Gran said. “You don’t see ’em around here.”
“They didn’t let any blacks in back in the sixties,” Pop said. His mind seemed to wander. He looked a lot older since I’d seen him last. I’d thought of him as a big, intimidating figure, but he really wasn’t anymore. He was just barely bigger than me. “Used to keep them out. I don’t know if it was a law or an unspoken thing, but blacks knew you didn’t come here. That all changed in the seventies. Now you got a few, but mostly they don’t want to come here, still. Something in the air, I guess.”
“Nah. It’s changing,” Uncle Joe said. “It’s a slow process, but you see it happening, a little more each year.”
“It’s really strange,” Dad said, hunched over in his chair. He grabbed one of the Boston cream doughnuts but didn’t eat it. “Half of my team at work is black or Hispanic. My partner’s Hispanic. They know me. I just don’t get it.”
Samantha’s son Jack ran up to me and tugged on my pants leg. “Are you gay?” he shouted at me.
“Do you even know what that means?” I asked him.
“No,” he shouted, before punching me in the balls and running back to the living room.
*
Thanksgiving left me feeling outside of everything, outside of my own body. Disconnected from my family, from Dad, from my school, and from the world. I sat in my room, on my bed, listening to the phone ring, hypnotized by the intermittent tones.
“Hello?” a voice on the other line answered.
“Hi, Mom,” I said. I wasn’t sure exactly why I’d called her, why I hadn’t just called Naomi. I guess I wanted to save her from Melancholy Walter. So I reached out to Mom instead, since we were all about messy feelings and alienation. “Happy Thanksgiving,” I said.
“Hi, Walter, that’s a nice surprise,” she said. “Happy Thanksgiving to you, too. What did you do today? Did you go see Dad’s family?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Did you go to Seth’s family or somewhere else?” I didn’t really have any idea what my mom did for Thanksgiving, or Christmas or any holiday. Maybe they were the hosts; maybe they did nothing. I’d been out of the loop for a long time.
“We did,” Mom said. “Mel came with us, so that was nice. It gave me someone to talk to, anyway. It was a nice dinner.”
“You needed Mel for company?” I asked. “Do you not get along with Seth’s family or something?”
“I do, it’s fine, and they’re all very nice,” Mom said, and then paused. “It’s just a little weird. How do I even explain it? Let’s see. We were both grown adults with marriages behind us, so it’s not like bringing your high school prom date over.”
“He’s not sitting right there, is he?” I asked. “Don’t incriminate yourself or anything.”
“Oh no,” Mom said. “He’s downstairs painting. He paints these tiny little figures with a tiny brush. He has to use a magnifying glass to do it. It’s a hobby.”
Was Seth a nerd? This definitely called for some future investigating, but I had other things to figure out first. “So today was a little weird for me, too,” I said. “I wanted to ask you something. Did you get along with Dad’s family? It seemed like you did, right?”
“Sure I did,” Mom said. “Aunt June and I used to go shopping together every weekend, and we’d laugh so much. We’d go get our hair done after. We had a ball.”
“Oh,” I said. Not exactly what I was looking for. “I’m not sure I fit in there.”
“Well, you’re pretty different from them, huh?” Mom asked. She sounded like she was settling in somewhere, getting more comfortable. I normally didn’t like calling people, except for Naomi. I never knew what people were doing when I called, if they had time to talk or if I was being a bother. But this was going well. I hadn’t been sure I’d ever talk to my mom again for a while. And now it wasn’t even difficult. “You do take after me,” Mom said. “We’re sensitive types, masters of empathy. Not a lot of that on your da
d’s side.”
“You think so?” I asked. It sounded like the opposite of what I was feeling. I didn’t understand anyone and I hadn’t empathized at dinner. I lay down in bed, getting comfortable.
“Sure,” Mom said. “Remember when you stayed home from school and we saw the rabbit in the street? It got hit by that car and ran off into the woods. You were distraught all day over it. It’s a good thing. It just means you can relate to others. You could have it like I do. Or did. I’d take on everyone’s pain like it was my own. But that was different.”
“Is that why you’d get depressed?” I asked.
“Well,” Mom started, and paused. “Understanding someone’s pain and actually being in pain are different things,” Mom said. “And the lines got very blurry for me. Do you feel depressed?”
“No,” I said.
“Well, good, then!” Mom said, uplifted. “Ta-da! Fixed!”
Maybe that fixed something. I felt less alone, anyway. “Just wanted to say Happy Thanksgiving,” I said.
“Thank you, sweetie,” Mom said. “Happy Thanksgiving to you.”
*
I waited for Naomi on Friday morning outside the imaginatively named Café by the Park around nine. I sniffled. My cheeks felt like ice packs, but the sun was out and yesterday was a memory. I watched the traffic light turn green and red and back to green until Naomi arrived. And when she did, when I saw her walking fast with her winter hat on, I got up off the window ledge and nearly ran to her. I surprised myself by how much I missed her already. Only a month ago I barely knew her, and now she was a part of me, something I could feel when she was missing the way I’d know my arm was gone if I woke up in the morning without it. We gave each other a big hug that lasted somewhere in the vicinity of infinite time and space, and then we went into the café.
The café wasn’t full, but there were a few people there. A group of five was sitting near the window; there was another couple there. A few people were there reading or on their laptops.
I ordered while Naomi got our seats. As I brought our heated-up pastries over, Naomi was looking at her phone.
Bright Lights, Dark Nights Page 16
