by Maxine Clair
Later that night after calling Cora, who was glad she no longer had to deal with that sort of thing, and Donetta, who said she should have just had him suspended, period, October would have calmed down enough to tell the story in a more plausible way, but at that moment on the telephone, all she could say was that she had forgotten him.
In the scheme of things, teachers were allowed mistakes, but not the kind that seemed to find their way into October’s file at the Board of Education. There was a grievance procedure for parents to follow, and Alonzo’s parents followed it to the letter. At the point when she received the written grievance against her, the bank had not yet decided whether to give her a mortgage loan. If a little bird told anyone at the bank anything about the situation with the board, she stood to lose a chance at a mortgage.
Alonzo’s parents wanted her fired or at least suspended, or wanted at least to have her pay docked and have her put on probation. And so here she was again, asking all the people who had said she would be a good risk for a mortgage to say she would be a good risk in the classroom if the board would just allow her to stay. Docked pay and probation were punishment enough for an excellent, dedicated teacher who had made a mistake in judgment. Please don’t mention the Walter Jean mistake. Or the long-ago trouble in Wyandotte County.
By the Christmas break, her fate had been decided. If she could keep her nose clean, probation would end in three years. Just when she could use money most her pay would be docked, for half a year. Maybe if the money hadn’t been taken away, or if she had gotten the house by December, she would have wagged it in Vergie’s face. She just had to see David, see his face without all the fussing and fighting. As it was, she couldn’t possibly demand any slack from Vergie. Not this Christmas. And so she didn’t call or write. And she didn’t go.
Something was holding her back, and it felt like she just didn’t have the guts. What was she afraid of? Nothing. She sent a box addressed to David. A savings bond, a horn for his bicycle, and a dozen mincemeat cookies.
Winter wore itself out, melted away. What was spring if it wasn’t a promise? The sun lingers, wakes up the earth; the earth softens, invites plow and seed; seeds and buds sprout every shade of green; green cracks through rock and splits the air until a riot of pastel, pushing for full color, promises that every growing thing will be perfect. What was spring but a promise?
At school October walked on eggs, and strangely, the feeling kept her interested enough to ward off fear that the mortgage might not come through.
By the end of April, when Leon Haskins came to town for his interview at the college, she still hadn’t heard from the bank. Kenneth and Donetta invited her to come to the dinner at Pucci’s and then to the performance part—a set featuring the homeboy-made-good playing his horn with local musicians at the Reno Club. She would have to get over her embarrassment, the wondering who knew about her probation. Donetta and Cora urged her to let it go.
Missouri State’s president and board would be there, looking to pick Leon apart. Kenneth and his group stacked the deck by inviting as many friends and fans as they could find. For October, the before-the-show dinner at Pucci’s on the Plaza, where the chandeliers were as big around as the tables, was reason enough to say yes.
She went with Cora and Ed and met the others standing in the lobby of the restaurant waiting for the reason they were there. Leon came with Missouri State administrators and their wives. She hadn’t seen him for four years. He looked like a man in need of a good night’s sleep—red eyes, almost-frown, and a nervous thumb that rubbed for stubble on his cheek. Nice suit, crisp shirt, no tie. He looked at her, but nothing seemed to register. The president had his ear, and as they approached, Leon seemed so determined to impress the man that they all had to stand there a minute too long.
He was saying something about teaching college students. Fingerings, tempo, harmonics. The president was uh-huh nodding, steering his wife by the arm, trying to follow the waiter.
Leon didn’t seem to notice. “I’ve got recordings of the greats before they were great and recordings from when they broke through,” he said. “You can listen to all the records you want, but if you don’t find your own thing, you’ll end up being just a bad recording of somebody else. Youngsters need to know that.”
Trying not to ignore Leon altogether, but wanting to get to the table with his wife, the president told him, “We can talk about this some more later.”
“Sure,” Leon said.
Leon seemed to be trying hard. October took it as a sign that he wasn’t their man. She sat down beside Cora—six pieces of silverware, three crystal glasses, assorted plates and cups and saucers at each place setting, and fifteen place settings on a white-linened banquet table. Lavish.
Once the waiters began pouring water, she whispered, “How is it going?”
“Good,” Cora said, “I think they like him. Ed’s having a fit—I’ll tell you about it later.”
“What?”
“Later.”
Family rumblings. Later Cora would tell her that Leon’s possible homecoming might do wonders for Ed. Nobody ever wanted to see anybody fall on his face, but Leon had always been the one with perfect pitch and all. Ed used to play the trumpet, but each family gets only one genius. Ed had had to move on from music to something that would keep two nickels in his pocket while Leon became Mr. Big. Maybe Leon was coming down a peg or two.
Kenneth made a little speech to welcome everybody and told them to order anything they wanted from the menu. Most of the waiters were black, and they knew how to take care of their people.
Special cocktails first. Told them to stick to the shrimp and not bother with the escargots, and the filet mignon was better than the prime rib.
Small talk and good food. They talked about which restaurants had opened their doors, which ones still hung out the signs. Somebody asked Leon, Why now? Why would he interrupt his steady rise to teach at Mo State? October’s ears stretched.
Leon shifted in his chair and crossed his legs. “It’s all about Bird,” he said. “I learned a lot from him. I didn’t know him like I know my brother, but I saw enough to make me think about what might have happened if Bird could’ve stood still long enough to catch up with himself. Every now and then you have to stop and check yourself. That’s a part of it. The rest? I’d like to try to go back to basics and the woodshed. You can’t keep doing the same thing and call it jazz.”
“Yeah, yeah, I hear you,” Kenneth said.
Leon wasn’t through. “The biggest thing, though,” he said, “I’d like to try to reach back and get a few of the youngsters. Bring them along, you know—pull their coat. That’s at the heart of jazz. One showing another one. You dig?” Jive talking a little, but Official went right on smiling and nodding, Umm-hmm, all right. Somebody asked Leon something about something Thelonious Monk had written. And Leon went into another long story about the first time that he had seen Monk.
From what October could tell, Leon had them in his hand. Wasn’t he the real thing, the genuine article, and wasn’t that enough?
At another lull, somebody asked Leon how he had gotten started playing the saxophone. October thought she had heard that story before.
Leon looked at Ed before he answered. Ed kept his head in his plate.
“It’s a long story,” Leon said.
“Who’s in a hurry?” More mileage for Kenneth.
“As a matter of fact,” Leon said, “it started at the Reno Club.” He looked again at Ed. “My brother took me to hear Bean play. I was a kid with a clarinet.”
“Coleman ‘Bean’ Hawkins,” Kenneth told everybody.
Leon continued. “We went and I never will forget, Bean played ‘Body and Soul.’ And man, when he brought out that boss sound he had and I saw what real saxophone was all about? Man, I had to have me some.”
He put down his fork
. “I didn’t know what he was doing, but whatever it was, I wanted to do it too. It was a week later I got myself a saxophone.”
“A year,” Ed said. “And Momma got it.”
They all laughed.
Leon sat back in his chair and rocked a little, remembering. “That’s the God’s truth,” he said. “Momma bought it, got it down at the pawnshop. Pete’s. Man, I thought it was Christmas.”
Dessert time. The waiters told them that none of the pies were any good but the Belgian chocolate cake passed for decent. And Leon went on answering questions. How well did he know Dizzy? What did he think of Sonny Rollins? Is Sonny Stitt the new Charlie Parker? Cool jazz, and West Coast jazz, and for-real jazz. More about the jazz world in two hours than October had heard in her life.
After dinner at Pucci’s, they all went to the Reno Club for Leon’s performance. At the Reno Club, October and Cora sandwiched Ed and let him interpret. He explained “pure” versus any other kind of jazz, how they had to improvise on the spot. No rehearsals. Hear the tune announced, a standard, then just launch into their own ideas, let them just flow, make it up as they go.
“Watch,” Ed said.
“‘Honeysuckle Rose,’” Leon yelled out to the musicians behind him on the bandstand. October knew the song, hummed it as they played it through.
But then each one of them took a solo, improvising, while Ed explained “ride cymbals” and why “comping” was better than “stride piano.”
And then, just when the music seemed to be settling down again, a spill of notes ripped the air, and Leon walked up to the front of the bandstand, sax in mouth, eyes closed. And blew that way, just a barrage of improbable combinations for a good ten minutes, October and everyone else in the club were either mesmerized to dumb, or yelling, “Blow man! Tear it up, Lonny!”
Leon was their man. And October felt happy for Leon. Her part had been small, but who knew—it might not have happened without her.
LIFE IS A WATER WHEEL. It turns. The trick is to hold your nose when you’re under and not get dizzy when you’re up. The day that October got the yes letter from the bank, she copied that James Baldwin quote onto a sheet of parchment paper in broad-tipped ink pen, to be framed and put on one of the many walls she would have in her new house.
chapter 21
In the old neighborhood of two-story bungalows that sloped down the long-hill part of Walrond Street, dusk sharpened the geometry of A-shaped rooftops against the sky. Full of humidity, the evening air would hold the smell of roses all night. And first thing in the morning, October would smell the doughnuts that Joe Shelley’s son floated on sizzling oil and doused with sugar. Two blocks down, at the corner of Thirty-first she could see the bakery, watch the traffic light change from red to green, and watch the silent cars trickle by.
This was her screened-in porch. Her house. All hers. Her neighbors with the trellis of roses—the Baldwins next door. They had brought over cold cuts the day she moved in.
Leon had said seven-thirty, and now it was going on eight. She wondered if, instead of the porch, she ought to wait in the house. For the two weeks that he had been at Cora’s, October had stopped by a few times to say hello and to hold Cora’s hand.
“It might be good for Ed,” Cora had said, “but I know one thing—I’ll be glad when he gets his own place. That horn drives me crazy first thing in the morning. Every day a new box full of his stuff comes from New York.”
October had wondered aloud to Leon about the change. “After New York, it must feel strange to be out here,” she had said.
“Like a fish out of water,” Leon had told her. “I’ll get used to it, though. It’s not like I never lived here.”
Cora had chimed in that she guessed he would just have to be a little cramped for a while. And Leon had jumped. “Don’t get me wrong, um-umm. This is a sweet deal for me. And right on time.”
A few days later he had phoned to tell October that he’d like to take her out for at least a drink. When she hesitated, he explained that he just wanted to say thanks.
“I was serious when I said this job was right on time,” he told her.
“You’re Lonny Haskins—you deserved the job,” she told him.
“Kenneth Wallace said they would have moved on down the list if you hadn’t given them my number.”
“I got the union address from Cora. That was all.”
“Well, I still owe you. The last time I tried to buy you dinner—a hundred years ago—all we could find was ribs. This time we ought to integrate Fred Harvey’s Steak House. Say when.”
“Okay, Friday, Saturday, but I don’t think I want to get thrown out of Fred Harvey’s.”
“Friday.”
School was out, and she had already started her little part-time in Macy’s alterations. What she wanted most was to catch her breath and play with her house.
The very first thing she had done—even before the movers had set up her bed—was to hang the framed drawing of David’s “cage” on the wall of the other little bedroom. From that point on, it would be the place in her house that he would know as his, whether he lived there for the summer or for the rest of his life or never.
Yet even as she fixed up his room, something kept at her, as if she were pushing against a tide that someday would wash her away. What was she afraid of?
Next, she had put her sewing machines—the new fold-down automatic and the old iron Singer—in the unfinished basement and put her old bureau down there, for all her patterns and fabric swatches and pins and zippers and tapes and buttons. Nice. Stood her dressed dress form in one corner. Someday she would ask Ed about turning the basement into a real sewing room. Meanwhile, it would be plenty room to sew.
She had bought a secondhand mahogany dining room set with six chairs and found an antique cocktail cart for Aunt Maude’s antique pink pitcher and juice glasses. She hung curtains, bought a new sofa, and polished up all her old things. Wallpaper would come later.
Once she reached the point where the house began to look like somebody lived there, it was time. And it was the first of June, still time enough for something good to happen toward the end of the summer. Time to write to Vergie.
She wanted the letter to pull no punches and still say what she wanted to say in a way Vergie could hear. She needed to see David on her own terms now. They hadn’t talked in almost a year, and she thought that by now it was a thing of who would hold out the longest. Vergie won hands down. After all, she had David. October had sent the package at Christmas. Vergie hadn’t sent a card, hadn’t called. That in itself was a sign. Vergie hadn’t said she couldn’t see David, but she had said that David could never come alone to see her, and that just wouldn’t do. Why should she keep lying down and rolling over?
Some mornings she got up early just to walk around her house. She’d stand in the middle of David’s room, with its skinny little bed, and make believe he was in the kitchen fixing himself a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich. She found a little bar of soap in the shape of a car for the sink in the bathroom; comic books got stacked on the closet shelf. A jar of marbles found a corner. Something had to give.
During that first week in June, one evening after Macy’s had sweated the salt out of her, October sat on her front porch and wrote the letter.
Dear Vergie,
This letter will come as a surprise, I’m sure. I’m sorry that you and I haven’t been able to work out our problems, but David is growing up now, and I feel that I shouldn’t just sit and wait to see what will happen. We shouldn’t sit and wait.
I’m not proud of the past. If I could have done better, I would have. I know that I gave David up, but, Vergie, he still feels like mine to me. Every time I see him, that’s how it feels. I know I’m scaring you, but please try to hear what I’m saying. I don’t want to take him away from you. I can’t erase the years. But I lo
ve him, too. I want to be closer to him. I do think he has a right to know who brought him into the world. I bought a house, a big house. I want to see him here, in my house, and you can’t always have the last say.
Please, Vergie, think about bringing David here in August to stay for a while, and yes, the house is big enough for you and Gene to stay, too, if that’s the way it has to be this time. But when you come, please think about you and me sitting down with David and telling him the truth.
If I don’t hear back, I’ll just plan to come to Ohio again around the middle of August, and we can at least talk then.
Think about it, Vergie.
Love, October
First of July, waiting on the porch for Leon to pick her up, she was still waiting for an answer from Vergie.
Before she could put car and man together, she saw the dark green sports car roaring up the street and thought it was awfully loud. When it stopped in front of her house, she assumed it was somebody coming to see the neighbors.
It was Leon. She watched him getting out of the car, looking as tired as he had two weeks before, but neat and clean still.
“Ready?” he asked.
“In a minute.” She went in to get her purse.
“Can we both fit into that?” she asked, laughing. She had long legs. Her dress was definitely going to get crushed.
“It’s bigger than it looks, but we can put the top down.”
“No, thanks,” she said, laughing. “My hair flies all over my head without the wind.”
They got in. An Austin Healy, he told her. He did sixty before they got to Thirty-seventh Street, and she had to yell above the engine noise.
“It must get hot in here!”
“Not too,” he yelled back. “When I was driving across town this morning before nine, and the radio said ninety degrees, I thought about a nice Buick with air-conditioning. But I can’t give her up.” He patted the dash.
They went to the Brooklyn Café—not the greatest restaurant she had ever been in but it was nice enough.
