by Chris Wiltz
“Had a hunch I might find you here,” he said. He talked tough too.
Bobby sat down on the front steps. “Yeah, another tenant vamoosed in the night. Bilked me out of two months’ rent.”
“Lousy break.” Lyle stretched one leg out to the steps and leaned on his knee. “How's the head?”
“It must be all right. I can still eat and go to the bathroom.”
Lyle nodded; no laughing matter this. “Mess inside?” In uniform he talked in truncated sentences. Muy macho.
“No worse than usual. I'm putting up a few roaches and other life forms till I can get over here and get the place ready for the Cosbys.”
Lyle's sense of humor had taken a fast car out of town. “Doing it yourself?”
“Got to, my man. No dinero, must trabajo. Comprendo?” Lyle's sunglasses showed no sign of enlightenment. “That means,” Bobby said, “I can't hire anyone. I'm broke.”
“I know what that means. That means you're going to be all by yourself in a goddamn war zone.” Lyle straightened up, reached behind him, and pulled a gun from his waistband. He presented it to Bobby.
Bobby pushed it away. “Jesus, Lyle, pull out a gun in a neighborhood like this and you're likely to start the war.”
“What do you mean? They already started it,” Lyle said. “You're lucky to be alive today; don't push it. Here.” He put the gun in Bobby's hand. “I'll start the paper work tomorrow.”
“But I don't want it. You're talking about my luck, I'll probably shoot myself in the foot. Or worse—I'll never have children.”
Lyle's answer to that was to tell Bobby he'd pick him up at six o'clock the following evening for target practice.
They both went to their cars, Bobby self-consciously holding the gun upside down by its barrel. Lyle started to drive off as Bobby reached over to put the gun in his glove compartment. Lyle slammed on his brakes and backed up level with Bobby's car. “And don't leave it in the car,” he said. “You'll just end up arming another nigger.”
14
An oxidized-red pickup truck with a bad muffler clattered to a stop in front of the brick walkway, and Dexter sprang from the driver's seat. Today he was wearing a pair of jeans with brass studs in a line down the side of each leg. Sometimes he wore black velour trousers, though his favorites were still the blue leather, but whatever pants he wore, tucked inside them was a fresh starched white shirt. In this way Dexter emulated Burgess, but with his own dandified, high-profile signature.
He rushed to the other side of the truck to help Delzora from the high seat. If he didn't hurry, the old woman would open the door herself and make motions as if she were going to try to climb out backwards, since her stubby bowed legs were too short to reach the street. But he always got to her before she actually started; she timed it so he would. She muttered under her breath as he helped her down. The way she talked under her breath like that so he couldn't hear her made Dexter nervous. The next minute she might be giving him the business about his clothes or about wasting time, or going on about honest jobs, talking as if he and Burgess didn't work at all. He watched her start up the walkway to the big house. Then he drove off with a sense of relief, a feeling that he'd gotten away unscathed.
Delzora's early morning routine varied a bit these days. She still went straight back to the utility room, where she took her wig off and set it on the shelf next to the laundry detergent. She changed into her white uniform, then put the wig back on, adjusting it in the small mirror above the toilet. There were too many people in the house now, too many visitors. It was one thing for Althea to see her nearly bald and what hair was left almost all white, but not these younger people who might think she was old as the hills, too old to do good work.
She barely got her tea on before the workers arrived. She wished they would hurry and get finished, they disturbed her quiet mornings when she read the newspaper, but just when she thought they were finally coming to the end, Thea found something else for them to do. What they did was create a lot of white dust for her to clean up. As far as she was concerned, the house was fine the way it was, just needed a little fixing up here and there, nothing like taking down all that beautiful gold wallpaper, those perfectly good velvet curtains, putting up shutters on the inside that looked as though they should go on the outside, painting the walls dull grays and bleak whites, barren colors. Delzora shook her head as she scrubbed out the kitchen sink. There was simply no accounting for people's taste.
Upstairs, Thea could hear the workers’ soft talk and low laughter in counterpoint to the rhythm and blues coming from their cheap, tinny-sounding radio. Distant, their words had a hushed, mumbo-jumboish quality. Once she was downstairs it was pure New Orleans jive. One of them, Jared, liked to sing. He let out a long soul-suffering wail followed by some jazzy vocal acrobatics followed by Zora yelling at him to hush up, he was going to wake the dead. It made Thea smile. She liked all their sounds, they made the house feel alive. It had been deathly quiet when she'd lived here with Aunt Althea.
She went down to the kitchen, where Zora was putting on a pot of red beans. The morning with its slight chill, the smell of cooking, the male voices—Thea was suddenly thrust into the middle of her dream that she lived here with her family, her mother at the stove cooking, her father singing Italian arias in another part of the house. She was overcome with a feeling of warmth, of safety, tinged with the slightest bit of melancholy. The feeling stayed with her as she and Zora started their project for the day, packing boxes of romance novels and bric-a-brac from the den.
Before long Bobby stopped by, procrastinating on his way to the apartment house. He walked in without ringing the bell, since once the workers arrived the front door was kept unlocked because of so much coming and going. Bobby followed his nose, heading straight for the pot of beans, calling out to Thea. Thea came into the kitchen, Bobby kissed her, then he lifted the pot top and began stirring. Bobby loved Zora's cooking, and after a short morning at the apartment house, he always came back to Thea's for lunch.
Delzora came into the kitchen just as Bobby put the spoon to his mouth. “You get away from my beans this instant, Bobby Buchanan, do you hear?”
Bobby paid no attention to her but went on tasting the beans for a second time. “Dee-licious, Zora. What time should I be back for lunch?”
“You be here ‘bout one o'clock, they be ready, but there ain't no sense tastin them now, they ain't been on long enough.” She took the spoon out of his hand and put the top on the pot with a bang.
“What a tyrant,” Bobby said.
“Damn nuisance,” Delzora countered.
The two of them sometimes went at each other like the worst enemies, but Thea knew that Zora had always been quite fond of Bobby. She didn't laugh or smile much normally, but she did around Bobby.
Much more than she did around her own son.
Burgess came in, stopping first to talk to the men, joking with them. They were glad to see him. From the kitchen, Thea could hear them telling him what they needed, what problems they'd encountered, what was finished or nearly finished. Already Delzora seemed separated, sullen as she turned her back to them to clean some figurines from the den, though moments before she had been laughing and telling Bobby he was going to break his neck as he described himself working in the apartment, teetering on a high ladder to reach the ceiling and hang a new light fixture, hanging on to a piece of plaster fruit on the medallion to keep from falling.
Once Burgess came into the kitchen, Delzora was silent. Thea watched her. She was angry with Burgess, that much was clear. Thea tried to imagine what Burgess could have done to make her so angry for so long, for she had been angry with him ever since Thea had come back to town. She spoke to him only when necessary. She didn't try to avoid his eyes; on the contrary, she met them defiantly. Yet once Thea invited Burgess to sit at the table with her and Bobby, Delzora placed a cup of tea in front of him, along with cut lemons and a bowl of sugar. He thanked her politely, and just as politely she said,
“You welcome,” and lapsed again into her detached silence. She was cleaning the figurines quite meticulously even though Thea was going to pack them and put them up in the attic.
Bobby returned to complaining about the apartment house. He told Burgess how he almost fell through the floor, about the toilet that did. “But nothing,” he said, “annoys me more than having a new paint job marred by machine-gun fire.”
“Damn annoyin,” Burgess agreed. “Where's your house?” Bobby told him and he said, “Where I come from, we call that a good neighborhood.”
Bobby said, “Well, it's true I haven't been mugged there yet,” and then with his characteristic flipness sprung the line he'd tried out on Lyle, about the Cosbys moving in as soon as he could get the place ready.
Thea's stomach went into a clench. Bobby's joke seemed out of place, even cruel. But Burgess slapped the tabletop and let go with his great baritone laugh.
Bobby was pleased. “A man with a sense of humor,” he said and asked Burgess where he came from. When Burgess told him the Convent, Bobby said, “Well, hell, man, the Convent's looking better these days than that old rat-infested neighborhood where my house is.”
Burgess looked behind him at Delzora. She didn't live very far from Bobby's apartment house. “You hear that, Mama?” But Delzora didn't answer him and didn't turn around to look at him either. So Burgess said to Bobby, “How ‘bout I come over and look at your apartment house. I give you a good price on the work, save you a lot of trouble.”
Bobby shook his head. “You come on over any time,” he told Burgess. “I'd enjoy the company. But the only good price you could give me right now is free. And I'm the only person I know who works free.” He got up and put his hand on Thea's neck, under her hair, as he passed behind her. “I'm off, Tee, but I'll be back. One o'clock, right, Zora?”
“That's right,” Zora said, but later, when Burgess was leaving, she didn't tell him to come back for the beans. Maybe she didn't feel it was her place to do so, so Thea made the invitation herself.
But Burgess didn't come back for lunch. Instead, Lyle stopped by just before noon. He rang the bell, then opened the door, waiting on the threshold until Delzora came. Thea heard him ask for her and followed Zora into the foyer. She knew that Zora didn't like Lyle. When he was in the same room with her, her body posture changed. She became bent, meek, shrinking into invisibility. She wouldn't meet his eyes, wouldn't speak to him if he didn't speak first, which he didn't always, and then she only mumbled in answer.
Lyle was on his way to a business lunch. He'd been dropping in daily in the week since the attack on Bobby, sometimes on his lunch break, wearing his banker's suit, sometimes after hours, in his police uniform, checking on Thea and her house. He eyed the workmen warily. He wanted Thea to have a burglar-alarm system installed. He still wanted her to think about getting a gun. He wanted her to keep her doors locked at all times, monitor the coming and going of these untrustworthy black men. Every time he came over and found she had not heeded his advice, the lines of seriousness on his face were carved deeper by disapproval. Yet he doggedly and patiently repeated himself, telling her again today in his by-the-book monotone that she should have an alarm system put in as soon as possible.
“But with all this work going on . . .” she began her excuse for not complying.
“All the more reason,” Lyle said.
They stood in the hall near the front door. Zora had returned to the kitchen, but the workers were only a room away, in the second parlor, which was going to become a library. Thea did not want them to hear Lyle, who had not bothered to lower his voice. She took him out to the front porch.
“But Lyle, I know these people. Burgess is Delzora's son. These men work for him; he trusts them. I,” she put one hand on her chest for emphasis, “trust them.”
With his stony policeman's eyes he said, “Drop a twenty under your hall table. See how long it stays there.”
Thea did not like Lyle's shoot-now-ask-questions-later attitude toward black people, yet she saw that in his self-appointed role of protector he allowed no room for error because of misplaced sympathy, compassion, or trust. He took no chances. The part of her that was afraid, that came close to panic when she thought Bobby could have been killed out in front of her house, appreciated Lyle's vigilance, as did her neighbors, people she felt a growing sense of community toward, but Zora, Burgess, the workers, these were people she knew and liked.
His sincerity aside, Lyle still made Thea uncomfortable when he was around, especially if Bobby wasn't there, and it was always with relief that she watched him retreat down the brick walkway. Even if she were willing to agree that someone had to be the watchdog, she did not want the watchdog mentality thrust upon her. Even when she was willing to concede that she might like the security of a burglar alarm, his doggedness called up her resistance. She did not understand her ambivalence. It made her uncomfortable too.
She went inside and closed the front door behind her, still not bothering to lock it, perversely not wanting to. She started back to the kitchen, passing the hall table, her purse and keys on top of it, as Lyle, always the detective, the watcher, had no doubt noticed.
She hesitated, then abruptly turned. She picked up her purse, put her keys in it, and brought it with her to the kitchen. Indeed, her actions were perverse and she knew it, for if Lyle had said anything to her about keeping her purse on the hall table, she wouldn't have moved it.
15
Five o'clock, everyone gone, the house to herself, what to do. Thea was tired of making decisions about furnishings, about things that were now hers but belonged to her chiefly because they were part of her childhood memories. How was one supposed to decide which memories to keep, which to use, which to store, which to sell or give away? She could not view these things with any objectivity, could not decide which of them fitted in with the way she wanted the house to look. Part of the problem was that she had no clear-cut vision of exactly how she did want the house to look. As long as it had Aunt Althea's possessions in it, it was Aunt Althea's vision.
So the third floor had become a large attic, a place to store anything she had the least doubt about keeping, a cluttered space with covered furniture and sealed boxes and locked trunks.
A perfect hideout for a ghost.
Thea wandered the nearly empty front rooms of the house in search of a vision. The rooms seemed enormous now without their little groupings of furniture, isolating rather than intimate, their thick curtains suffocating and claustrophobic, their copiously patterned wallpapers repeating designs like fences.
The light walls and open spaces should have offered possibilities, but no vision was forthcoming. Instead the walls seemed stark, the spaces desolate. Her feet struck hollowly on the wood floors. The sound of emptiness was beginning to grate on her.
She stopped in the living room, where she'd temporarily left the red brocade sofa, a matching chair, and the coffee table with the beaded border off to the side of the room, no longer a group but at odd angles to one another, as if at odds and hastily left to their bad humor. They told of abandoned old lady.
She went to the gray-veined marble mantel. Above it hung a huge mirror framed in rosewood, the old glass beveled to follow the curves in the wood. It was a beautiful piece, the only thing in the room she'd been certain she wanted to keep, rehung on freshly painted walls. Across from it, in the next parlor, was another mirror. The two mirrors reflected each other, mirrors inside mirrors, nothing but emptiness between them to break the infinite see-through images, as if the house itself were made of glass.
Thea stood in front of the rosewood mirror in the empty space and half expected her reflection to be transparent, emptiness inside emptiness, left blank at the end of each day. The nights, unless Bobby came over, and even sometimes when he did, made her restless, as if the day had promised something and then eased out, taking its promises with it.
The last time she'd spent the day anticipating the night was a year ago, well o
ver a year ago, when Michael had started coming to see her again before their divorce had been final. She would be at work, perhaps taking an inventory of vitamins or stocking the shelves with the latest health-food craze, and suddenly there would be that funny prickling sensation at the back of her tongue, and the roller-coaster wave of expectation at the pit of her stomach, traveling down deep, making her legs weak.
She had thought they would get back together. But the divorce proceedings had continued, Michael saying to her, Let's see what will happen; and slowly, too slowly, she began to realize he was only coming for some measure of comfort, perhaps, but that he no longer wanted to be married to her. The divorce had gone on to completion.
And so the excitement was lost, the anticipation was gone. And yet. . . and yet she had continued to sleep with him.
What was it she'd always said about Bobby, the reason she still wouldn't sleep with him? That he was too easy. Just as she'd been, though she knew so well that the rush of excitement Michael had produced in her this second time around was caused as much by his elusiveness, his refusal to be pinned down, the challenge he presented, as by the sex itself.
If she wanted to, she could call up that feeling now, that rush, but the memory of it produced a dull ache, a well of loneliness that dropped away into deep disappointment. She saw that disappointment reflected back at her in the mirror and she closed her eyes against it, against the disappointment of having been abandoned, and against the disappointment in herself too.
The doorbell rang and startled her. Through the leaded glass on the front door she could see a black man, young, a student perhaps, in his wire-rimmed glasses, faded jeans, and T-shirt, hip-looking with a battered porkpie hat on his head despite the lingering heat from the afternoon.