by J. J. Murray
“Ah,” he says with a smile. “You mean…”
I squeeze his hand. “Yeah. That way.” I want this man to rub lotion all over my body until I come and shout “Hallelujah!” And then I want to rub myself all over him until he comes and shouts whatever Italians shout in church.
He puts his other hand over mine. “I do not live very far away.”
Now that I’ve pushed the moment to a crisis, I can’t think of what to say. “Well, uh, hmm.” I pull my hand out of his. “Let’s try a date first, you know, see how it goes.”
His face doesn’t change a bit. “Yes. Let us try a date. I know of a wonderful place to go tomorrow night.”
“Yeah? Where?”
“There is an art gallery that is having a show tomorrow night of the most amazing artwork. Mostly self-portraits, but they are works of genius.”
I blink. Johnny is cultural? “Um, who’s the artist?”
He looks down. “The artist is me. It is my very first show.”
He’s not only into art, he is art. An Italian artist is sitting in front of me asking me to his first show. “I would be
“Daddy, I need your help!” Destiny calls from the front door.
I go to the door and find her listening to her cell phone.
“The bags are out there,” she says, and she continues into the house.
I find two little plastic bags and a five-pound bag of potatoes in the trunk of the Honda and lug them into the house with only one hand. What help did she need?
I hear Destiny saying “Don’t worry” as I set the bags on the counter. I unload a can of green beans, four cube steaks, and a copy of Soap Opera Digest. Where are the drinks and the tea?
She clicks off her phone and smiles at me. “Thanks, Daddy.”
“No problem.” I toss her the Soap Opera Digest. I watch her sit at the table and flip a few pages. “Um, don’t you think you should start dinner now?”
Destiny grimaces. “Can’t you cook for us, Daddy? I’m not a very good cook.”
I look at my laptop. “I’m right in the middle of a scene, so…”
She looks at me with those huge puppy eyes of hers. “Please?”
I sigh. “Okay. I’ll, um, do something with this meat, and you do the rest, okay?”
She smiles. “Okay.”
It only takes her a minute to wash three potatoes, wrap them in foil, pierce them with a fork, and toss them into the oven. It takes her another minute to open the can of beans and plop them into a pan, slapping on the lid.
“All done,” she says brightly, and she returns to her magazine.
Something about this isn’t right, but I don’t complain. After all the meals I’ve missed around here, I should be doing the cooking. How many meals have I missed? At maybe two a day for a year times twenty…I’ve missed over 3,500 meals with my family! This is the least I can do.
I find a skillet, put a little olive oil in it, and let it warm while I mix flour, salt, and pepper in a bowl. Then I coat each cube steak with the mixture and set them aside. Ebony probably expected T-bones, but maybe her mama’s recipe for country-fried steak will appeal to her.
“Whatcha doin’?” Destiny asks.
“Making your grandma’s famous country-fried steak,” I say.
“Mmm,” she says, and she continues flipping pages.
“It’ll taste better with mashed potatoes,” I say.
Destiny looks up, smiling. “I love mashed potatoes.”
I smile back. “Can you make mashed potatoes?”
She shrugs. “Aren’t you supposed to cook the potatoes first?”
“Actually, they should be peeled and boiled, and we’ll need more than the three that are in there.”
“Oh. You want to know where I put the potatoes. They’re in the pantry.” She points to a door. “In there.”
“You’re a lot of help.”
“You’re welcome,” she says, and she continues reading.
Half an hour later, my laptop’s da Vinci screensaver waving at me from the kitchen table, my non-cooking daughter glued to a Soap Opera Digest, the mashed potatoes made, the cube steaks cooking in the olive oil, the beans ready to simmer with some added onions, I return to my laptop.
“Smells good,” Destiny says. She reaches out to me and flicks my hair. “Oops. I thought it was some flour. It’s just your gray hair.”
I look back at my last sentence:
He’s not only into art, he is art. An Italian artist is sitting in front of me asking me to his first show. “I would be
The cell phone rings. “Hello?” Destiny says. “Uh-huh. Okay.” She turns the phone off. “One of my admirers.”
“You have a date?”
“No.”
“I thought you had a boyfriend, you know, the guy you said was romantic as a brick.”
Destiny laughs. “I was referring to you, Daddy.” She squints. “Were you really hitting on me?”
“I am so sorry about that, Destiny. Really.”
She winks at me. “Don’t be. I was very flattered.” She lowers her voice. “But don’t tell Mama. She’d freak.”
Yes, she would.
“How long till dinner’s ready?”
“Another half an hour.”
“Cool.”
I look back at the screen, my fingers poised above the keyboard.
“Daddy?”
“Yes?”
“Are you and Mama going to get married?”
I drop my hands and let my fingers rest on the keys. “I hope so.”
“So do I.”
I raise my hands, my fingers ready to rip. “But it isn’t entirely up to me.”
“Yeah,” Destiny says. “So you two are just going to live together for a while?”
I rest my hands again. “Uh, your mama and I haven’t discussed that yet.” Though it sure is starting to look that way.
“Oh.”
I wait a few seconds for her next interruption. When it doesn’t come, I reread the last sentence:
He’s not only into art, he is art. An Italian artist is sitting in front of me asking me to his first show. “I would be
Now, would she be happy? Honored? My right index finger twitches on the letter H and presses down.
h
The cell phone rings again.
onored to
“Oh, hi!” Destiny says loudly. “Yes, I’m just sitting here talking to my daddy while he writes his next book. How have you been?”
I have to leave the kitchen. I stand and pick up my laptop.
“You don’t have to leave, Daddy.”
Oh, but I do. “I’ll just give you some privacy.” I leave the kitchen and head for the living room where Seven sprawls out on the couch. I sit as quietly as I can in a wingback chair a few feet from him, but the floor squeaks.
Seven’s awake. Shit. He tumbles off the couch and heads directly for me. I set the laptop on the mantel and catch him as he pushes me back into the chair.
Destiny runs in to see us wrestle. “Don’t move,” she says, as if I can get away from Seven. “I want to get a picture of this.”
Twenty minutes of an impromptu photo shoot later, I am covered in Seven’s drool.
“I can’t wait to get these developed,” Destiny says as she returns to the kitchen.
“And I can’t wait to continue my novel,” I whisper to Seven. “Isn’t there anywhere else you want to be?”
He sits right in front of me, his snout in my lap.
“I didn’t think so.”
Destiny returns. “Mama wants to know when I’m going to have dinner ready. What should I tell her?”
I sniff the air. “It should be ready in a few minutes.”
“She wants me to make her a plate and bring it up to her.”
“She does, does she?”
“She does.”
Maybe she’s on a roll. “I’ll bring it up to her.”
After fixing Ebony’s plate and loading it with gravy and pouring her a nic
e tall tumbler full of ice water, I walk upstairs and knock on the office door. I hear her chair squeak, and the door opens wide enough for me to hand in the plate and the tumbler.
She sniffs the air above the plate. “Mmm. Mama’s country-fried steak. Is it salty like I like it?”
“I made it just like she makes it.” I look around her to her computer screen. “How’s it going?”
She kisses me passionately with lots of tongue and a little grinding. “It’s going that good.”
Whew! “Um, that’s good.”
She grabs my ass. “Go on, go eat, then work on your novel. I’ll catch up eventually.”
“Can you tell Destiny not to—No. That’s all right.”
“Not to do what?”
I sigh. “Not to interrupt me while I work?”
Ebony laughs. “She’s your daughter, too, Peter. Tell her yourself.” She shuts the door. “And if you get writer’s block, you can come give me a back rub, and I might pay you,” she calls. Then she giggles.
I like writing with Ebony. There are so many fringe benefits.
Destiny and I eat our meal together in silence. I’ll bet she’s saving more conversation for when I’ll be trying to work.
“Um, Destiny, could I ask a favor?”
“Sure, Daddy.”
“Um, I have two novels to work on, and I’m sure your mama told you that she’s writing half of one—”
“I know. It’s so neat! My parents are about to be famous! I’ll bet The Today Show asks you two to appear. Matt Lauer is so hot.”
“Anyway, well, we, uh, won’t be anything or anywhere if we, I mean, if I don’t get some serious work done, so could you possibly, um, be a little more…quiet?”
“Are you telling me to shut up, Daddy? Because that’s all you have to say.”
“I don’t have the right to tell you that, Destiny. I just can’t—”
“Say no more,” she says, wiping her lips with a napkin. “I’ll just go out for a while and let you work.”
“Well, if you really want—Hey, you’re not supposed to drive.”
She jumps from the table and rushes to the front door. “Don’t tell Mama,” she whispers fiercely, and a door slam later she’s gone.
I hear the office door above me open and soon see manicured toes coming down the stairs. “Where’d she go?”
“Out.”
She slides a slender hand across my cheek. “Did you send her away from us, Peter?”
“No, she just up and left.”
She licks her lips. “Good. I can’t write anymore.” She pulls up her shirt and rubs on her stomach. “That was a very good meal. Do you, uh, feel like writing anymore tonight, Peter?”
I watch that hand circling lower and lower. “No.”
“Good.” She takes my hand. “All those thoughts I’m having up there are making me horny. I want to make my thoughts real.”
I jump from my seat. “So do I.”
She pulls me to the stairs, but before we can go up them, she’s all over me, and I’m all over her, Seven barking at the two people writhing on the steps.
Oh, yes, it’s good to be home.
17
Several days of interruptions, a cell phone ringing, Destiny asking questions, a dog drooling, countless back rubs, and little if any sleep because of our desire for each other, Ebony and I have made a slight dent in two novels. I’m not worried about meeting any of Henry’s deadlines, and Ebony doesn’t seem to mind either. We write a bit, flirt a bit, get busy a lot, and rest a lot.
Ah, the perfect writer’s life.
Every once in a while, we sit back in her massive bed and check our work to see if we’re making any sense at all.
And some of it actually makes wonderful sense.
I am amazed by what Ebony has written, almost as if I’m getting a glimpse of her personal diary:
I’m down in Ballyhack, Virginia, at Loretta’s little country house waiting for this baby to be born. Loretta is my daddy’s mama, and living with us is Aunt Wee Wee, my seventeen-year-old cousin Jackie, and great uncle Rex, who is old as dirt.
Once called Big Lick, and then Dundee, everyone calls this neighborhood “Ballyhack” now, and no one can tell me why, especially since on the map it’s Delaney Court. Yet everyone seems to have a story about how Ballyhack became Ballyhack.
“Way back when,” Loretta says, “there was a slave by the name of Squire Keeling, who was owned by Master Ivyland. Well, Squire Keeling up and buys his freedom from his master and gets all this land, from the old store all the way past the church. Wasn’t but one church there then, and it’s supposed to have been built on top of an old Indian burial ground. Anyways, Squire Keeling was livin’ large, and a whole bunch of other folks came in, like the Chandlers, the Hardys, and the MacGeorges. But don’t you know, that land got took away little by little from Squire Keeling cuz of back taxes, so they said, and eventually all we had was this one street and the land those churches are on.”
After such a long story, I expect Loretta to tell me why Ballyhack was named Ballyhack. When she doesn’t, I ask, “So why is it called Ballyhack?”
Loretta shrugs and says, “I have no idea.”
So I still don’t know why Ballyhack is called Ballyhack. Sheree, one of my cousins, thinks “Ballyhack” is just “Big Lick” mumbled really fast and country-like, but that makes no kind of sense. One day, I’ll solve this mystery.
Wherever Ballyhack came from, believe me, it is beyond country. Ballyhack is off Rutrough Road, but they don’t say “Rut-Rough.” Nah, they say “ROO-Trough.” You take a right off ROO-Trough onto Ivyland Road (it used to be Route 6 before the folks in Ballyhack got water lines), and you’re in Ballyhack. It’s just one dead-end street guarded by two hundred-year-old churches at the entrance: St. John AME and Bethlehem Baptist Church, two country churches within spitting distance of each other. St. John’s sanctuary slopes right down to the altar, so when you fall out, you fall far and roll. I’ll bet the Indians under the foundation are rolling, too! Bethlehem is all brick and more modern, but it seems like half the folks from each church go to the other church half the time. Loretta tells me there are Bethlehem members going to St. John every week (“Depending on who’s preachin’,” she says) who are still tithing at Bethlehem.
“Used to be Bethlehem had services the first and third Sundays,” Loretta explains, “and St. John’s had the second and fourth Sundays, till Reverend Woods come along and changed everything.”
Since I don’t understand why Ballyhack, all of maybe fourteen houses, needs two churches, I ask, “Why don’t they just combine the two churches?”
And all Loretta does is laugh and say, “Child, whatever for?”
My first trip into Ballyhack told me I wasn’t on Long Island anymore. We were just winding down this narrow country road at ten miles an hour, and folks started waving at us from their yards as we rolled by in Mama’s Pinto. They actually waved at Mama’s Pinto. Who waves at a Pinto?
“What are they waving for, Mama?” I asked.
“They’re your cousins,” Mama said. “Every last damn one of them.”
I smiled at a few men waving from in front of a pickup truck. “Do I have to wave back, Mama?”
Mama’s growl told me that I had to, and I’ve been waving ever since, and I’ve found out something: no one messes with my family in Ballyhack, Virginia, not the police nor anybody else…mainly because we’re so busy messing with each other.
I’ve been living with Loretta for almost a month now while Mama gets things straight up in Huntington. Aunt Wee Wee seems to like it down here, mainly because she can smoke without anyone telling her not to, she can wander around and not get too lost, and everyone can understand what she’s mumbling because they all mumble country like that. I want to laugh at them for the way they talk (tah-awk), but they’re too busy laughing at me!
Loretta tells me I’ll have a good delivery even though I barely have any hips. “You’ll do fine, girl.” The
n she tells me about cousin this or aunt that who squirted out a baby right here on Ivyland Road. That isn’t what I want to hear.
I am barely surviving this Virginia heat. It’s like the heat has weight to it, like it makes you feel heavier, like you can’t breathe even going up a simple flight of steps. I wish Loretta had air-conditioning, but at least I have a big box fan in my window blocking my view of the outhouse and two pit bulls with nasty attitudes in their pens outside.
On nights like this, I miss my daddy. I think about him more and more each day, and I don’t know why. I know he’s dead in Vietnam, but he’s there all alone. There’s something wrong about a tall brown-skinned man with shiny white teeth being all alone 12,000 miles away with no one to hold him.
Daddy’s brother Leon lives down the way from us, but he’s nothing like my daddy. Jackie says he’s too broke to get a car and too stupid to save up for a bike.
“Hell, he ain’t got a pot to piss in,” Jackie says. “He so poor he ain’t got eye water to cry with.”
But Jackie doesn’t know that sometimes Leon stops by and says, “Hey, baby girl, how ya doing? When’s your evil ass mama comin’ back?”
Leon always knows how to make me laugh. I usually just say, “I’m doing, fine, Uncle Leon, and Mama isn’t coming back until you’re nicer to her.”
Sometimes he’ll give me a dollar, saying, “Here’s a dollar, so go buy yourself something. And don’t spend it all in one place.”
I thank him for the dollar but shake my head as he walks away. A dollar won’t buy you anything around here; there isn’t a store for miles. But at least he’s thinking of me.
And he does have my daddy’s face.
Jackie says that Leon used to dress “real nice” back in the day. He used to wear name-brand clothes and shoes. He used to match his socks with his shirts and his shirts with his hats. But the last time Jackie and I saw him, he was wearing (or was it wearing him?) a white T-shirt with a hole in the collar, and the shirt had “IKE” in blue letters across the front. It had been worn so much that the “N” probably swam for its life in the washer.
“Hell,” Jackie says, “if I was the I, the K, and the E, I’d swim for it the next time my damn self.”