“I know that you’re not my real father,” Francis said.
For a moment, Cyrus thought that he’d simply heard the dark words in his own head. That the running of the tap water and the humming of the refrigerator were playing tricks on him, but he turned and saw those same hazel eyes penetrating him with the truth, and Cyrus knew Francis had spoken the words aloud. He steadied himself against the counter and hid his own shaking hands in the blue-and-white plaid dishtowel. He sat down carefully, because now Cyrus was a body of flesh exposed, his heart open and raw. “When did she tell you?”
“You remember how, at the end, she started talking? Saying crazy stuff and telling those stories?”
“I do,” Cyrus said.
“It was then,” Francis said. “On the day you caught me drinking over at Ivy’s.”
“I remember that.”
“That night she told me. Told me I should know about my real father because he died of a heroin overdose. She said that, you know, liking to get high and drink and all, could be hereditary. Said I needed to be more careful or my messing around could bring me real problems one day.”
“Why have you not said something to me before?” Cyrus asked.
“She said I shouldn’t. Said it would hurt you and that you had been and would be the best father to me. Better than my dad would have been if he lived. She said, and I’ll never forget this, that any man can shoot cum out his dick, but not every man has the strength to be a father. Even less have what it takes to be a father to another man’s child. I’d never heard her talk like that, you know? Anyway. I guess she thought it was the right thing to do.” Francis paused and pressed his fingers into his temples and closed his eyes. “Still I wish she hadn’t told me.”
“Why’s that?” Cyrus struggled to say.
“I think she told me to warn me away from drinking and drugs, but for me it was more like she gave me an excuse. From then on, I could always tell myself that it was in my blood. Shit, I even told myself I was supposed to die that way. I don’t know if it would have happened anyway, me getting strung out and all, if she hadn’t told me, but I guess there’s no reason trying to figure that out now. I went ahead and followed right in my father’s footsteps.”
“I’m your father,” Cyrus said. The words came out filled with anger even though he hadn’t meant them to.
Francis looked up.
“I’m your father,” Cyrus said again, more softly. “You are my son.”
Francis sat back in his chair and said, “But let’s be honest. It’s different with Octavian than it is with me, and you know it. Thing is, when she told me, I wasn’t even that surprised. I always felt like you loved him better, and after she told me, at least I knew why.”
“Does Octavian know?” The words came out fast. Cyrus knew it was the wrong thing to say, but he’d said it anyway. He had to know.
Francis let his eyes rest on Cyrus again and said, “Nah, I never told him. If she had wanted him to know then she would have told him herself.”
“Francis,” Cyrus began.
Francis held up his hand to stop him from saying anything else. His open palm was just like Cordelia’s, the brown lines sharp, deep spirals. “It’s okay, Cyrus,” he said.
Cyrus swallowed the taste of humiliation on his tongue and folded his own hands in his lap. “Please don’t call me that.”
“It’s okay, Pop,” Francis said and stood up. He stretched his long arms as if he’d just put down something heavy. “And don’t worry,” he said. “I won’t tell Octavian.” He walked out of the kitchen and into his bedroom, closing the door carefully behind him.
Cyrus sat alone in the kitchen and remembered how he once felt it was his calling to raise Francis. Francis who was so prone to viciousness and impulsive tenderness. He’d wanted to raise him the way he had been raised by Jackson. But Cyrus soon realized that hours of reading were out of the question seeing that Francis could never sit for longer than two minutes. Their time was spent instead at Cardinals games and on fishing trips down the Merrimack River—where, miraculously, the child sat silently in the front of the boat with a preacher’s patience, waiting for a bite.
Cyrus remembered that when Cordelia got pregnant with Octavian, Cyrus was as ecstatic for Francis as he was for himself. They decided to take Francis to brunch at the Wash U Faculty Club to tell him the news. They had agreed that Cordelia should be the one to tell him, but as soon as their food was served, Cyrus blurted it out.
Francis held his fork over his plate, the maple syrup dripping slowly off the suspended bite of Belgian waffle, and said, “But why?”
Cyrus explained how the only thing he’d ever wanted was a brother or sister. Now Francis would never feel the loneliness he felt as a child.
“I’m not lonely,” four-year-old Francis said matter-of-factly. “I don’t need anyone.”
When they brought Octavian home, Francis gave his baby brother a glance and said, “His eyes sure are big,” and went back to reorganizing his matchbox cars. It became obvious to both parents that what Francis declared that day had been true. He didn’t need anyone.
Cyrus, on the other hand, had never needed anything the way he needed Octavian. Cyrus was consumed wholly by his infant son’s tight-gripping hands, his soft, downy ear lobes, the smell of his milk breath. And it wasn’t until Cordelia shook Cyrus and said, “Remember, you have two sons,” that Cyrus came out of it to find Francis taller, his chest and arms more like a young boy’s than a toddler’s. Cyrus took Francis by the back of the neck and pulled him into an embrace. He pressed his face into Francis’s gold curls and smelled the hair lotion Cordelia rubbed into his scalp. That day he made another vow. He vowed that he would do everything he could so that Francis would never know how much more he loved his own blood than the one he’d sworn to love.
Back in the kitchen, the refrigerator started in on its hum again. Apparently, Cyrus had spent years convincing himself that he had convinced Francis. He felt an odd sense of relief that it was over. Like he, too, had put down something heavy. But then he picked it back up. Those years were gone but, as far as Francis was concerned, Cyrus was simply a liar.
Cyrus walked to the closed bedroom door. He would apologize to the boy, tell him how hard he tried, tell him that he loved him. God knew he loved him. It may have been different with Octavian, and easier, yes. But there was no doubt that he loved Francis. He knocked on the door, but there was no answer. He knocked again, and his old friend fear reared its withered head and told him that Francis wouldn’t be there when he opened the door. That the window he’d snuck out of so many times would be open and he would be gone. But when Cyrus opened it, he saw Francis asleep, knees curled to his chin, hands folded under his cheek. Same way he’s always slept, thought Cyrus, remembering a much smaller body with the same furrowed brow, the same weighted breaths.
TRACK 10
For the
Love of You
(Part 1 & 2)
THE NIGHT BEFORE FRANCIS left for rehab, he came into the bedroom where Mina and Octavian lay on Octavian’s bed watching TV and closed the door behind him.
“Pop doesn’t let me…” Octavian began.
“I know, you can’t have girls over with the door closed,” Francis said. “But he’s not gonna worry about nothing happening if I’m in here too. Scoot over.” Francis climbed in next to Octavian and draped a long leg over them both. “Plus, The Wiz is on,” he said. He turned on the television and Nipsy Russell sang about what he would do if he could feel. The heavy, relaxed weight of the brothers beside Mina told her that nights like this used to happen more often, and that they were endangered now, their habitat nearly gone.
“Hey Frankie,” Octavian said, “remember how Mama cried when I brought home Thriller?”
“I forgot about that. Why’d she cry again?”
“Because of his nose. You know Mama loved big ole noses and Michael had gone and chopped his off.”
�
�That’s right. She wouldn’t even let you listen to the record.”
“Yeah, until she heard ‘Human Nature’ on the radio and then she wouldn’t turn it off,” Octavian said. “Nearly drove Pop crazy.”
“Shit, think of what she’d say if she saw him now.”
Mina felt the bed shake as Francis laughed his deep laugh, and next to her Octavian’s body softened.
Francis’s face peered over Octavian’s chest at Mina. “Hey Mina girl,” Francis said. “Why you so quiet over there?”
“I’m just listening to y’all,” Mina said.
“Tave told you how we share?”
“Don’t listen to him, Mina,” Octavian said.
“No for real, Mina. Me and Tave share, don’t we, Tave?” and he rubbed his leg up and down across both of them.
“Frankie,” Octavian said, “your ass will be sleeping with Pop in about thirty seconds you keep that shit up.”
“Damn, Tave, you sound serious.”
“I am, Francis. Stop fucking around.”
Francis turned to Mina again. “You hear this, Mina? He ain’t going to share you with me. He must really like you for real.” Francis reached across Octavian and patted Mina on the head like a little sister.
“That’s enough,” Octavian said, and lifted Francis’s hand off Mina’s head.
Francis sat up on his elbow. “Hey, Mina girl,” he said again.
“Yeah.”
“You know he really likes you, don’t you?”
“I think so,” she said.
“Y’all,” Octavian broke in, “I’m right here.”
“Listen, Mina, I know right now my brother just about can’t stand me.”
“Frankie,” Octavian said.
“Shut up, Tave, I’m talking. Like I was saying, he’s through with me and I understand. And even if he doesn’t think so, I love Octavian. To be honest, I don’t really love no one but Octavian. I never have. I’ve tried to love other people, but it’s too damn hard, you know what I’m saying? Especially after Mama died, I just couldn’t. But Tave? I’ve tried not to love him and there is no way. I mean, I love him in a way you can’t understand. Shit, I love him in a way I can’t understand. Okay?”
“Okay,” Mina said. Next to her, Octavian lay perfectly still.
“I’m saying this because you better not hurt him, you hear me?” Francis’s angled face, which hovered over Octavian’s chest, really was as beautiful as everyone said, but it was also so full of pain.
“I hear you,” she said.
“No, you don’t. He’s sensitive. He understands things, he feels shit. Feels it bad sometimes.”
This Mina knew. She nodded.
“What are you talking about?” Octavian said. “I’m hard.”
But Francis ignored him. “So, you better be for real, you hear? Don’t be up in here lying and carrying on and messing with his head the way how y’all women do.”
“I won’t, Francis,” she said.
“You promise me?”
“Frankie,” Octavian said.
“I promise,” Mina said.
“I’ll come back from the dead and get you if I have to.”
“Frankie,” Octavian said.
“Yeah?”
“You’re not going nowhere.”
“I know,” Francis said and lay back down. “But still.”
Once Francis was away at rehab, a quiet relief moved through the apartment. Cyrus sang songs under his breath and felt ease in the space between his eyes. He bought a copy of Madhur Jeffrey’s Indian Cooking and three paper bags full of spices that he lined up on the counter and carefully labeled. He went on a date with a visiting professor and had a good time, but he cried on the drive home from her house because the only woman he ever wanted he’d already had and she was already dead.
With Francis gone, Octavian’s panic attacks went underground again. He met a kid named Curtis at a pottery class who told him they could rent a whole floor of an empty downtown warehouse for $100 a month, and asked if Octavian wanted to share the rent. It was a filthy cement-floored room and its floor-to-ceiling windows rattled as they let in the wind, and the lead paint chipped from the walls, but they loved it. They called it the loft, and Octavian began to stretch canvases ten-feet long and seven-feet tall. He covered them with images of screaming black babies in the middle of dollar bills or used them to rebuild craps games with shadows and shoes. Mina was supposed to be working on her college applications, but instead she watched him paint and put on their favorite albums: Exile on Main Street, Sunday at the Village Vanguard, Ghetto Music: The Blueprint of Hip Hop, The Specials.
Octavian and Mina spent every day of Christmas break together. They smoked weed at the Botanical Gardens and admired themselves in the silver pools of the Japanese garden, where the plump lips of giant orange carp forced ripples on the surface. They spent the day sneaking into movies at the Esquire. They took late night drives to White Castle and ate burgers which slipped out of the cardboard containers as they drove home. More than that, they made love and made more love—to jazz, to old soul songs, to classic rock. They tasted the lyrics to Bunny Wailer songs on each other’s tongues and slow-danced to the Isley Brothers. They saw nothing but their own reflections in the other’s face and got on everyone else’s nerves.
One night after hanging out at Rahsaan’s, Octavian drank more than he should and asked Mina to drive him down to Eat-Rite before they went home. They’d been in the tiny box-shaped diner on the corner of Chouteau and S. 7th Street a hundred times in many combinations—as a whole group, sometimes Octavian, Clarissa, and Mina, sometimes Mina with Ivy and Octavian, but they had never gone in there just the two of them.
Inside, there were a few customers sitting around the worn counter top that circled the steaming kitchen—most of them in the same shape as Octavian or worse. Gray-haired Maggie, who was always tired, always cranky, didn’t even look up when they sat down. But a few seats down, a man stared at them.
Octavian noticed him right away and tried to get his eyes to focus on the menu that hung on the wall over the kitchen. He reminded himself that this was why he didn’t get drunk. It made him forget that going to the South Side alone with his white girlfriend at two a.m. was a bad idea. The man stood up and walked unsteadily toward them. His stomach was so big it pulled up on his American flag t-shirt and revealed a strip of chafed dry skin, and the rim of his dishwater gray briefs.
“Hey,” he said to Mina. “Girl.”
Mina looked away from the menu and at the man. Octavian could tell she was confused. “Are you talking to me?” she said.
“Yeah,” he said. “Are you okay?”
Mina looked at Octavian and back at the man. “I’m okay, are you okay?”
“Well, I’m a little concerned, to be honest,” he said. “Want to make sure this one over here isn’t bothering you or nothing.” While he talked, he pointed a meaty finger at Octavian.
Octavian bit the inside of his cheek, but before Mina could respond, Maggie leaned across the counter. “Leon,” she said. “Either sit down and eat your goddamn slinger before it gets cold or get the hell outta here.”
The man took a step back and looked Octavian up and down. “You sure you’re alright?” he said again to Mina.
“Leon,” Maggie said. “You got about five seconds to leave my customers alone.”
On New Year’s Day Mina lay on the futon on the floor of the loft, and looked out the window at the putty-colored winter sky.
Octavian stood on a ladder and laid thick coat upon coat of paint on the canvas and without turning around he said, “What?”
“You written your college essays yet?”
“Who said I’m going to college?”
Mina leaned up on her elbow and said, “You. And your dad.”
“I think I might live here in the loft for a year and paint instead,” Octavian said.
Mina sat up and wrapped the thi
n blanket they’d bought from the dollar store on Locust around her. She scooted to the edge of the futon and lit a cigarette. She took a long drag and scratched at the dry skin of her bare feet.
“C’mon, Tave, you know how it is. You said yourself that you didn’t want to be one of those people that never get out of St. Louis.”
“What’s wrong with St. Louis?” he asked and laughed.
“I’m serious,” Mina said. “What about art school? You said once you wanted to go to art school.” Mina walked over and put her face into the curve of his back. “I’m going to New York. There’s so many different kinds of schools in New York. What if we went to New York, together?”
Octavian didn’t say anything, but she could tell that he had heard her, that he was thinking about what she said.
“We’ll see,” he said.
TRACK 11
Caution
ST. LOUIS WINTER DIDN’T hang around for long. It pulled itself together and moved on around Valentine’s Day, leaving behind purple and white crocus heads that pushed through the dark squares of earth around the gingko saplings lining Octavian’s street.
It was on one of those early warm days in March that a pale-skinned white girl Mina had never seen before walked into Rahsaan’s, put a baby into Ivy’s arms and said, “This here’s yours.”
Ivy and Mina were stationed in the t-shirt and poster shop toward the back of the store, and Ivy looked at Mina before he looked at the girl.
“What the hell do you mean, mine, Tammy?”
Tammy had dyed blonde hair, acne scars on her face, and the beginnings of a sleeve of tattoos on her left arm. She reminded Mina of Ivy’s mom.
“Remember that night last summer?” she said.
“I remember it was one time,” Ivy said.
“I told you you were the first,” Tammy said. “You were also the only.”
“And you going to tell me you haven’t been with no one else?”
Tammy stared at Ivy with big, confused eyes and shook her head.
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