Love and Death in Brooklyn

by Glenville Lovell

  For some time I’d been planning to install a CD player in the Volvo. Still hadn’t found time to do it, or have it done. The great thing about driving Anais’s SUV was being able to play CDs. In the Volvo I had to settle for cassettes. I stuffed Bob Marley’s Catch Afire into the deck and turned up the volume. As the music swelled I started to bob my head to the thumping bass. The Volvo slid silently through the dark streets of Brooklyn.

  THIRTY

  m y father’s flight arrived late. The one-hour delay gave me time to catch up on phone calls. I thanked Toni Monday for letting River use his safe house, one of three I knew about. I’m sure he had several more. This one I knew he would never use again. He informed me that he was leaving his boyfriend but had nothing on J’Noel Bitelow’s whereabouts and he assured me that the Russians hadn’t hired Malcolm Nails-Diggs to whack Ronan. My brother had called earlier in the day and I returned his call. He wanted to borrow money. Throughout our conversation I heard lots of giggles and laughter in the background, no doubt his exuberant girlfriend. I was almost reluctant to admit that she seemed to make him happy. But I still planned to keep a close eye on her.

  Ten after one my father came strolling through the sliding doors of the American Airlines arrivals hall at JFK. He hadn’t even bothered to dress for the weather, wearing only a short-sleeve tropical print shirt and sand-colored slacks with sneakers, looking like a tourist returning home who wanted to make sure everyone knew that he’d just left the tropics. The flesh on his sun-scrubbed face had lost its taut healthy look; the skin sagged and his eyes were sunken. He’d lost some weight; his hair was now scalp-shaven. He carried a small camera bag over his shoulder, and dragged a twenty-inch suitcase on wheels behind him like a beleaguered puppy.

  When he saw me he flicked his eyes up and they were sad. He walked slowly toward me as if he was walking on sore ankles, with the slouch of a man carrying a camel’s hump.

  The reality of seeing him in New York jolted me. We hugged for a long time. I was thoroughly unprepared for this emotional kick to my system and my throat welled up. It was as if I was seeing him for the first time in twenty years. There was no explanation for my being so overwhelmed. I banked the rush of tears and emotion in the back of my throat as we measured each other for a time, like two prizefighters before the bell. He smiled, showing for the first time that familiar glint in his eyes, opening a crevice of memories in my brain.

  “How’re you, Dad?”

  “Not as good as you, I’m sure. You look like you’ve been hitting the gym hard.”

  “Mostly running.”

  “My ass! You in the gym, boy. Your body as hard as a brick.”

  I laughed.

  He dragged deep on New York’s lung-clogging air. “This shit still smells the same.”

  I picked up his bag. “Welcome home.”

  WE PASSED OVER the Queens border into Brooklyn absorbing the spectacle of New York at night. Any New Yorker would tell you that when the lights went up on New York City it whirled and danced with the energy of a Broadway show. My father hadn’t seen this in a while but it couldn’t have been any less impressive. Thousands of lights sprinkled about the tall project apartments as backdrop to the myriad of crazy transactions taking place in dark alleys, on train platforms, in fast-moving cars, on buses slogging through downtown streets: the coke dealer negotiating a better price for smack; the prostitute holding to her asking price; the baby’s father in the project negotiating to get pussy in exchange for the child support that was already six months in arrears; over dinner and a hundred-dollar bottle of wine, the banker sealing a deal uptown with the gift of a vacation in the Azores.

  My father knew this New York.

  What he didn’t know was the brown-facing of the outer boroughs. The transformation of Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx (Staten Island was still ostensibly white) into Third-World America with immigrants who spoke in tongues that most Americans didn’t know existed. What he didn’t know were the tensions rising from the fear this created: the mosques burned, the abuse of undocumented Mexican immigrants (men beaten on Long Island or women forced to perform sex acts to keep their subsistence jobs), the Korean immigrant robbed in his greengrocery and told to go back where he came from, the Pakistani immigrants swept from their homes in Midwood in pre-dawn raids by the FBI and deported without due process. But then again, my father might call me ignorant. He might mention COINTELPRO. He might say those things were happening before he left, before I was born, but they were happening to black people. The more things change the more they remain the same. He might say again: This shit still smells the same.

  The broad stretch of Atlantic Avenue lay before us. Overhead, the rumble of a train on an elevated track. My father rolled down his window and stuck his head outside.

  “Damn! I forgot how noisy this city was,” he exclaimed. But it was clear he wasn’t complaining.

  “I love the sound of New York,” I said.

  “I missed New York.” He was silent for a while then he said, “How’s your mother?”

  “She’s fine.”

  Silence wedged between us again, this time with a pocket full of change for the meter. I felt his eyes on me as I weaved through Flatbush. Then, just like that, an anger grew inside me that almost choked me. I did not know where it came from. My father must’ve seen my face mold to the new emotion.

  “What’s wrong?” he said.

  I didn’t answer. What could I say? Was I angry at him? If so, why? I had no explanation for the feeling that had just ambushed me. I breathed deeply trying to let the emotion dissolve. Slowly it left me. In its place came a memory of something my sister, Melanie, had said during one of our many fights.

  MELANIE HATED my father. She made that clear to me on more occasions than I care to remember. Heavily influenced by her own father’s views, Melanie couldn’t forgive Mom for marrying a black man who just happened to be my father. The more I grew into my father’s image, the more she directed her fury at me. I’d never said it to her, but I’d often wondered if she hated him because he was black. Melanie, equipped with a 175 IQ, didn’t have to be led to that conclusion, however.

  We were having one of our weekly verbal dart-throwing bouts about a year after Mom had gone back to the university to get her master’s. My dad had been gone about two years. Melanie had come into the house from a ballet class. I was looking through a box of my father’s things, looking at photographs and some sketches he’d done. Melanie made a comment that Mom should throw all my father’s things out of the house.

  “They’re my things now,” I shot back.

  “Your things?” she taunted. “I bet you turn out just like him.”

  “What’s that suppose to mean?”

  “That you’ll be a bum.”

  “Better a bum than crazy.”

  “Better crazy than missing. I know where my father is. Where’s yours?”

  “Leave me alone, Melanie.”

  “Face it, he’s a bum. He abandoned you like a sick dog.”

  “Leave me alone or else . . .”

  “Or else what? You’d hit me? Go ahead. It’s what your father would do.”

  “My father never hit you.”

  “My dad would’ve killed him if he did. But don’t pretend you never seen him do it to Mom.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “You saw him.”

  “You’re such a liar.”

  “Pretend all you want, Carmen. You know you saw it too.”

  I GLANCED at my father; he was deep in thought. Despite Melanie’s claim I never recalled an incident where I saw him hit my mom. I remembered the arguments. I remembered the tears. And I remembered the night he left. It was in September, not long after Labor Day. My parents had had one of their arguments. I remembered that there was mention of another woman, one of Mom’s friends, and then Dad left. I thought nothing of his leaving at the time. It’d happened many times before, the fights, the screaming, the doors slamming. I was sure I would wak
e up the next day and he would be there having his plate of eggs and bacon and sausage, talking to Jason about baseball scores.

  But he wasn’t at the breakfast table the next morning or the one after that. I didn’t see him again until fifteen years later.

  Why did the memory of that conversation with Melanie surface now? There was never any doubt in my mind that the physical violence Melanie accused my father of never took place, that she had made it up to get me angry. And I’d never wavered from that belief.

  I’d kept the secret of my dad’s whereabouts from my mother for the past seven years. When I told her that he was returning to New York for Ronan’s funeral she showed no emotion. Then she confessed that she’d known where he was for some time. The secret came out in my body language, she said. She knew after I came back from Miami that I’d made contact. And I realized then that my loyalties had been woefully misplaced. There was no reason for me to have been that loyal to my father, the incident in Miami not withstanding. When I considered the agony my mother had suffered over the years raising three dysfunctional children, I wondered if she would’ve made the same decision to marry my father if she had to do it over.

  “Are you going to see her?”

  “If she wants to see me.” His voice drooped with doubt.

  “She wants to,” I said coolly.

  “What does she expect, though? She knew I wasn’t coming back.”

  “Then why didn’t she file for divorce?”

  “Heavens knows, son. I sure as hell don’t. Look, Carmen, the truth is, the marriage was over whether I left New York or not.”

  “Can I ask you a question?”

  “Shoot.”

  “Did you ever hit her?”

  “What?” He was silent for a while. “Did she tell you that?”

  “No. She didn’t tell me that.”

  “So why’re you asking?”

  “I’m just asking.”

  “You’re just asking?”

  “Yeah, I’m just asking.”

  “For no reason you’re just asking?”

  “Okay, Pop. Forget it. Forget I asked.”

  “Is that the way you greet me on my return to New York? You ask me if I ever hit your mother? That’s just great.”

  “Don’t let’s fool ourselves, Pop, okay.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “You know what I mean. I was the one who came looking for you, don’t forget that.”

  “How can I forget that?”

  “Okay. That’s the way it is.”

  “There’s no point in staying mad at me.”

  “I’m not mad at you. I just want you to be clear about our relationship.”

  “I love you. You’re my son. That’s our relationship. I can’t change the past. Neither can you.”

  I didn’t know what to say to my father so I stayed silent. I didn’t want him to think that I was unhappy to see him. Far from it. I wanted him to be here. From the time he’d intimated that he was coming I’d looked forward to his presence, for despite our reconciliation after the long lapse I’ve still never felt whole with him, the chasm his leaving left has never been bridged. Even when I saw him in Barbados last year he was still my estranged father to me. I felt myself wanting more, wanting him to say something to dull the pain of all those years, at the same time I chided myself for being such a sissy. I’d gone through the Marines, was shot at and almost killed in the NYPD, what did it matter that my father didn’t feel the need to comfort me for those years we missed together. After all, I was a man, thirty-seven years old, with a wife and an eight-year-old daughter. Why would I still need validation from a man who disappeared from my life without even saying good-bye? At the same time why couldn’t I forget about it and just move on?

  “I never hit your mother,” he said.

  “Forget I asked, okay?” I said.

  “Well, you did, and you got my answer.”

  THIRTY-ONE

  t he memorial service for Ronan took place at the historic Emmanuel Baptist Church in Brooklyn, ironically just a few blocks from where he was gunned down. I was hoping to get there early with my father, who wanted to see Noah before things got started. We got held up in traffic; by the time we arrived the parking lot was full and throngs edged the sidewalk and the stairs leading to the church. A large portion of the block had been cordoned off, reserved by police for vehicles bringing the mayor and his entourage, and we had to park several blocks away.

  Emmanuel Baptist, an intimidating structure outlaid in ornate Romanesque style with a soaring tower, was listed in the Register of Historic Places of New York, and I gathered that many tourists came to Brooklyn to see it. As I entered the spacious courtyard I saw why. It was a soaring monument to creativity and workmanship with rusticated stonework and heavy cornices that I read somewhere had been imported from Italy. I saw a number of familiar public faces among the large crowd milling about. Ronan had been a popular figure in the small but growing world of black entrepreneurs and liberal intellectuals, and even among black conservatives, though his reputation might’ve taken a hit with this group because of his demand for slave reparations.

  On the outskirts of the wave entering the church I felt a light hand on my shoulder and turned around. It was Milo. Now in his sixties, Milo typified that West Indian philosophy that clothes and manners made the man. Today, attired in a crisp black suit with matching black shirt and tie, Milo was indeed the black knight.

  “Hey, Johnny,” I greeted him sportingly.

  “Johnny?”

  “Johnny Cash. All you need is a guitar and a cigar.”

  “If we weren’t in church, Blades, I’d tell you something.” He laughed and embraced me. “You just jealous. You Americans don’t know nothing ’bout clothes. I keep telling you though, man. If you ask me nice, I’d give you some wisdom.”

  “Wisdom? I was in the Marines, remember. I know what it’s like to wear a uniform.”

  “Man, you have no taste, that’s your problem.”

  My father, standing a few feet away in a gray pinstripe, laughed. “You tell him, Trini.”

  In our corner of the courtyard an army of squirrels that had cordoned off a small area for their conference scattered in separate directions. The wind was picking up. Dust danced in a whorl around us.

  “Oh, Milo, this is my father, Madison.”

  Milo’s eyes lit up. “Your father? Well, I never thought I’d get this chance.”

  The two of them shook hands.

  “Nice to meet you, Milo,” my father said. “And I think you got style.”

  “Thank you. And the pleasure is mine, Madison.” Milo turned to me. “Where’s Anais?”

  “She couldn’t make it,” I said.

  “It’s a shame, isn’t it?”

  “Why is that a shame?”

  “No, I mean about Peltier. I only met him like twice. Once when he was campaigning. And that time he came to the store to talk to you. But he could inspire people. And he was smart, too. I hear the police got the killer.”

  “That’s what they say,” I muttered

  “You didn’t mention this to me,” my father said.

  “I’m sorry, we never got a chance to talk about it last night. The police found the gun. The only problem is the owner is dead.”

  “You sound like you ain’t buying it,” my father said with a nod of his head.

  There was a wave of activity at the entrance of the courtyard and I looked to see what was going on. The mayor and his entourage had arrived. Noah, in a dark blue double-breasted suit and black turtleneck, walked next to the mayor. When they reached us Noah stopped; the mayor and his bodyguards continued up the steps into the church. Noah and my father embraced like brothers. It was some time before they untangled from each other.

  “Good to see you, Madison,” Noah said.

  My father nodded, seemingly too choked up to speak. Noah shook my hand.

  “How’re you keeping?” I said.

  He made a
face and tried to look brave. “I’m doing all right, man. How ’bout yourself?”

  “I’m good,” I replied. “How’s Donna?”

  He shrugged, his face flat and reserved. “You know how it is, man. Still trying to keep her back straight.”

  With words having little power to express what was in our hearts the three of us cross-stared awkwardly like little boys trying to make up after a fight.

  “I gotta go be with Donna,” Noah said. “Madison, we’ll talk later.”

  Most of the people, who had apparently been waiting around in the courtyard for the mayor to arrive, began to filter inside. The pews were about three-quarters full when Noah, my father, Milo, and I entered the expansive church together.

  The next hour was one that I would not soon forget. Noah had arranged the most elaborate tribute to his son imaginable. Using his sophisticated skills as a dramatist to produce a funny but intimate look at their relationship, Noah had written and gotten the help of some of the actors from the writing workshop to dramatize a series of vignettes showing the passage of their relationship from Ronan’s early years to adulthood, including the punch that broke Ronan’s jaw. My father was in tears by the end of it.

  But Noah was just getting started.

  The tumult of African drums began offstage and then the dancers swept into view followed by singers and musicians. Noah had somehow persuaded or paid the National Song and Dance Company of Mozambique to perform In Mozambique, the Sun Has Risen. For what seemed like forever after the performance the crowded church was silent. Everyone was crying.

  NEGUS HAD been moved from the hospital in New Jersey to New York University Medical Center on the east side of Manhattan, and that’s where I went after the service. His private room looking out onto 34th Street was at the end of a long bright hallway insipidly decorated with pictures of bright flowers and snow-capped mountains. I imagine some slick executive from an HMO must’ve done a study to prove that patients recovered faster when surrounded by genteel art and sold the idea to his chairman as a cost-cutting maneuver, earning himself a promotion and a hefty bonus for his discovery.