That response was good enough for his parents. The father shrugged and turned his full attention back to the boy. Raquel began to move behind her mother. “It was crowded. He was excited to see us,” said the mother. Her face looked so cold. She finally glanced at Raquel. “She looks okay.”
The answer to Belinda’s not-so-stupid question about why an educator like Sidarra never put her child in a private school had much to do with her anticipation of moments like these. It was true she had had opportunities to put Raquel in a more challenging place with more dedicated teachers and more stimulating materials. She knew what a wasteland so many public school classrooms were. But her efforts to move Raquel before were hindered by independent school admissions requirements, money, a lack of spots in lesser but closer Catholic schools, and other things she’d never say out loud. Like dealing with wealthy white parents and the sneers on their faces. From a distance, you can imagine a lot worse than what’s true. Up close all of a sudden, this was quite true.
“What’s your name, boy?” Sidarra snapped down at him. Her tone stunned the child, as if he’d never heard such a sound.
“Wait just a minute—” his mother started.
“I asked you what’s your name, kid? Now answer me!”
“Nicholas,” he whispered, clutching his mother’s leg.
“Nicholas,” Sidarra said sternly, “this is my daughter Raquel. If I hear that you ever lay a hand on Raquel again, I will be back to deal with you so quickly that your parents won’t have a chance to cover for your rudeness. Understand?”
Nicholas ducked out of sight behind his mother. His father jumped in. “Who the hell do you think you are to threaten my son?”
Sidarra looked fiercely into his eyes. “The same mother who will deal out some necessary parenting if he touches my daughter again. Now, don’t make me ask you your name. Come, sweetie, let’s go.”
She grabbed Raquel by the hand and led her past them to the door. They did not follow as quickly as Sidarra feared they might. She and a visibly embarrassed Raquel walked back down the path through the chilly evening air. Moments later, Sidarra could hear the parents’ raised voices as they argued with a school administrator.
“You shouldn’t have done that, Mommy,” Raquel said in a cowed voice.
“Why the hell not? That rude boy pushed you. You’re not to be pushed even if I’m not around.”
“But he’s rich, Mom. That’s Nick Mathews. He was the star of the pageant. And he’s really, really rich.”
Sidarra could not believe her ears. “So you think if a person’s rich, he can have his way, do whatever he wants to do, push whoever he wants to push, even you?”
Raquel was quiet. The expression on her face showed she was dealing with a lot of thought traffic coming from several different directions at once. “I don’t know. It depends.”
Sidarra stopped them and leaned down into Raquel’s face. “Take your finger out of your mouth, sugar. Listen to me. What you just said is ridiculous. There’s no such thing as ‘depends’ when somebody is touching your body, okay? Nobody gets to do that. I don’t care how rich they are. Rich doesn’t mean you can hurt other people. You don’t get to buy your way out of the rules. That’s crazy. You just don’t.”
Raquel seemed only half convinced. The school administrator walked up to them quickly after finishing with the boy’s family. Sidarra heard her shoes on the asphalt and looked up expecting to go another round.
“Hi,” said a short, chubby woman with a kind smile and a close-cropped nun’s hairdo. “I’m Miss Horn, the librarian. I don’t believe we’ve met before.” They shook hands pleasantly. “How are ya, Raquel?”
“Fine, Miss Horn,” Raquel mumbled with her finger back in her mouth.
“You sang beautifully today.” Miss Horn turned to Sidarra. “Her voice is so lovely, she sometimes carries the chorus. We’re so glad to have her here.” Sidarra was waiting for the other shoe to drop. “I just wanted to meet you in person and to apologize for Nick’s roughness. We think it’s unacceptable. Sometimes parents have a hard time hearing that, but I wanted to be sure to apologize to you on behalf of the school. Raquel shouldn’t be distracted from her fine performance, and we’re so glad you could make it up here this evening.”
Sidarra wondered exactly where she was. This could not be New York City anymore. “Well, thank you for saying that, Miss Horn. We were just discussing what happened back there…” Sidarra didn’t know what else to add. The woman kept looking up kindly at her.
After the awkward pause Miss Horn asked Sidarra, “So have you signed up Raquel for the ski trip to Vermont? It’s just a few weeks away.”
“Oh yeah, Mommy.” Raquel’s eyes brightened again. “Can I go?”
“May I go,” Miss Horn corrected. Sidarra had obviously heard nothing about a ski trip. “I wear several hats here at St. Augustine’s,” Miss Horn giggled. “I’m the librarian, the new diversity coordinator, and, this year, I’m responsible for planning the annual ski trip. It’s really great fun for the children and very well supervised.” She could see unmistakable doubt crossing Sidarra’s face. Miss Horn lowered her voice in case other parents could hear her. “In the past, St. Augustine’s didn’t offer such things. Now, it’s part of our efforts to provide the same kinds of experiences that parents pay independent schools to provide. But, to be candid, since we began the trips a few years ago, our students of color—and I’m afraid we’re losing more of them to tuition increases each year—well, they just don’t tend to come.”
“Hmm,” Sidarra sighed, pretending to think about it. “Is it covered by tuition?”
“Oh no. I’m afraid not. But it’s a terrific bargain at only eleven hundred dollars this year.”
“How ’bout it, Mommy? I’ve never been skiing before,” Raquel chirped.
“Well, I’ll need to think about it,” Sidarra lied, “but it’s not likely this year.”
“Oh, c’mon, Mommy!”
Sidarra looked down at Raquel’s creased eyebrows. “Oh, honey,” Sidarra said, “we’re gonna need to go home now and take care of what’s bothering your eyebrows.” She turned back to Miss Horn and smiled. “It was a pleasure meeting you. You all have done a real nice job with the pageant.”
Sidarra didn’t want to say a word until she and Raquel had safely navigated their way out of the twist of suburban-type roads and back onto the familiar Henry Hudson Parkway.
“Raquel, I want you to listen to me. Don’t ever crease up your face at me like that, not in front of other people, not anytime, understand?”
“I want to go on the ski trip,” she declared.
“Wait a minute. Are you listening to me?”
“No. Not unless you sign me up for the trip.” She crossed her arms over her chest.
“Uncross your arms!” she shouted. Raquel reluctantly complied. “Have you lost your mind talking to me that way? Is your hair red all of a sudden?”
Raquel thought about that one for a minute before answering. “Why not, Mom? Tell me why not. You bought a whole building, a car, lots of nice clothes—you buy everything. Why can’t I go skiing? It doesn’t make any sense. I wanna go. You said we were comfortable. Well, then how come we’re pretending to be poor just ’cause I want to try out skiing with my friends?”
Sidarra’s knuckles turned white on the steering wheel. She hit the power button on the window, waited for it to roll down, and spit outside. Then she waited for the glass to roll back up. “Now, you shut up, Raquel! You just shut your mouth until we get home.”
Unfortunately for Raquel, the worst thing about a jones caged too long inside can be the nastiness it might dish out without warning.
GRIFF AND BELINDA LIVED IN A RENOVATED BROWNSTONE on Mount Morris Park, one of the first parts of Harlem to see gentrification. The building had five stories. The top two floors were rented out to tenants, while Griff and Belinda kept the first three for themselves. The parlor floor was immaculate common ground, containing the kitchen,
dining room, a small study whose walls were stacked floor to ceiling with bookshelves, and a front room used almost exclusively for company. There was almost never company. In fact, the house suited the marriage well, which might have been one reason Belinda demanded they buy it. Having three floors allowed her de facto run of the third floor and its master bedroom suite. Griff mostly lived and slept on the ground floor.
With Belinda’s late hours as an investment banker, they used the parlor floor for little more than spats, quarrels, and arguments. They almost never ate dinner together or breakfast. A maid came in once a week, so they didn’t clean up together. Lately that had changed, as Belinda warmed to Griff’s willingness and ability to bring home some real money. One night in the living room they found themselves in the awkward position of talking breezily, even laughing, and then, feeling the rare rub of horniness, almost having sex on a leather couch they once purchased for that purpose. But tonight, three simmering issues made them return to fighting form on the parlor floor.
“Look, I didn’t go with you because I didn’t go, Belinda,” Griff said, already weary in his work slacks, socks, and unbuttoned shirt. “There’s nothing more to say. Why keep going around and around with it?”
She was quick to respond. “Because if you had, (a) you would have shown some interest in my work, (b) you could have met some smart people who are at least your intellectual equals for a change, and (c) you might see why I’m right about letting us set up a DRIP portfolio with that hundred and fifty thousand dollars you’ve been sitting on. Instead, what did you do? You fucking played pool with those fucking people, those same fucking people I endured on our Labor Day Sunday just to please you!”
“Baby, I was tired. I had already tested my mind the day of your office dinner. I won an acquittal on a three-day drug trial. I was tired. That’s not disrespect. Those people don’t give a shit about criminal lawyers anyway. The people you work with think people who defend poor people barely made it through law school and couldn’t get jobs in investment banks.”
“That’s not true?” She laughed. “I mean, other than you.”
“That’s not funny coming from the woman who tells me I don’t respect her work.” He tried to soften his gaze on her. Griff didn’t want to fight. It was late, past midnight, and she was standing there fully dressed in a black designer suit. Belinda still looked great at that hour. For some reason her makeup was done, but he thought it was time she take off her shoes and have a glass of wine or something. “If I didn’t respect your work and your criticisms, why am I now in a position to let a hundred and fifty G’s sit till I find the right thing? I’m just not interested in Smith Barney products.”
She threw out her hands. “But you would listen to Yakoooob?!”
“Yakoob and I have made a lot of money.”
“Yakoob is a fucking comedian with a GED, for Christ sakes, Griff! Get real, you idiot!”
Somehow, as usual, he kept his voice low. “What the fuck did you just call me?”
This enraged her. “A fucking idiot!” Belinda kicked a chair so hard her hair flew wild. “Want me to spell it? Would you prefer imbecile, moron?” She watched him steam. “That’s what a grown professional man is who ignores his wife’s investment bank advice so that he can invest the first real money he’s ever fucking had based on the pot-induced gee-wizardry of a high school dropout telling nigger jokes with a microphone!” Both hands hugged her hips and her mouth stayed open. “Go ahead and call me ‘bitch.’ It used to be your favorite word right about now, so you might as well use it.”
He was close. But calling her one would be so simple, so pathetically clichéd that it wouldn’t sound like anything more than weakness. Besides, until he had started making money, it was she who was calling him a bitch at least once a week. “Go fuck yourself,” he said.
“I put you to shame.”
“You should. You got more practice.”
“Fuck you!” She kicked her heels off into the air across the room and started marching toward the kitchen. Halfway there, she stopped and pointed a finger at him. “Stay where you are. I’m not done with you, Griff.”
Once Belinda left the room, Griff relaxed again on the couch, pulled the newspaper section he was reading back off the coffee table, and tried to read. He heard glasses and pots occasionally clanging around in the kitchen behind him. A few minutes later, Belinda was back, down to nothing but her lingerie, a delicate periwinkle combination he had never seen, with a silk thong and a mostly sheer bra. She returned with two champagne flutes and a bottle of Veuve Clicquot. She put them down, winked at him, and ran up the stairs. All as if the yelling before was just sport to her. She’d come home, picked a fight, got in a few more shots than she took, and was good to go. Which might have been more titillating when they were much younger, Griff thought as he admired her fleet body whip up the stairs. But he had never signed on to that; he just rather went along with that. It rarely aroused him. It wasn’t his style of sport. Belinda was that way all day long with people, putting them in the places they needed to be.
She returned in a silk robe the color of the shallow sea and a warm smile like nothing harsh had happened lately. She strode confidently over to where Griff was lying on the couch. She slowly lowered her bottom onto the cushion near his face so that he could see and smell the thonged pouch between her legs. Then she laughed and began to pour them champagne from the bottle. This was a kind of physical power she had. Belinda was extremely comfortable with her own body. She knew it was beautiful and she adorned it beautifully, down to the lingerie she wore. Lately, as the power balance in the relationship began to shift with Griff’s exploits outside the home, he noticed that she was using the occasional show of pulchritude to keep him interested, if not engaged. He suspected she was at it again.
“What’s, uh, what’s going on, B?” he asked.
She finished pouring. He was not yet aroused—Belinda made him too suspicious for that. But he caught a notion of her arm from underneath and wondered how something so striking could be aligned with someone so stank. She handed him a glass and sipped her own.
“I have the kind of news that will change our lives and our marriage forever. Guess where we’re going?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “They havin’ a dinner I can’t get out of down at your office?”
“No. Japan.”
“Japan?”
“Yup. Probably Tokyo. Maybe Osaka. I’ll know Friday for sure.”
“Wait a minute, B. I’m not, I mean—”
“What’s wrong with the Japanese?”
“Nothing’s wrong with the Japanese.” He straightened up and she motioned for him to drink up. He puzzled for a moment, took a sip, and set the glass down. “When and for how long?”
“Six whole months, maybe seven, if we’re lucky. This client is notoriously slow.”
Griff’s face twisted up like he’d tasted chopped liver. “Six months? Belinda, you gotta be kidding me. Why would you think I could just up and move to Japan for that long?”
Her face saddened. “Because you love me and you don’t want me to run off with a wealthy Japanese investor. And because it would be fun as hell. We’d have all kinds of new experiences. We could travel all over the region. See things together we’d never get to see.” She pretended to pout. “And because I have no choice, so you need to come with me, sweetheart.” She kissed him gently on the forehead. “You’re my geisha guy.” Then she tried to slide her hand onto his cock.
“Whoa, baby, wait up,” he said, scrambling to get up off the couch and face her. “I can’t do that. I have a job. I have very important work to do. People count on me. I have clients in jail awaiting trial. What do you think I do all day? How—” He was so incredulous he could barely finish a thought. “How do you think my office would respond to a request like that?”
She crossed her legs, ready to play it his way. “Honestly, Griff? I think they might fire you, ’cause they’re probably that stupid. But so wha
t? Listen to me, seriously. You’ve been fighting the good fight, struggling for the downtrodden felons and drug dealers, for, like fifteen years? How long can you keep doing that at sixty-two thousand dollars a year when kids right out of law school are making a hundred and twenty-five thousand before bonuses? Everybody you came up with is in private practice by now, representing white-collar criminals and making serious bank. That’s exactly what you should be doing. Right after you come back from a few months with me in Japan.” She was truly pleased with her presentation. “How you like that? Baby!” She grabbed him by both cheeks and kissed him wet on the mouth.
When she was through, Griff sat back and just looked at his wife. He saw her as he had never allowed himself to see her before. After fifteen years of marriage, no kids, strong prospects, he never knew how or if the end would come. If it was to be a moment, by then he’d made so many compromises and slept through so many dreams that he wouldn’t believe the moment if he saw it. The moment would probably come with death. Griff didn’t really see this as the moment. He just knew he wasn’t going to Japan. And even if Belinda would not go to sleep that night believing Griff’s resistance to following her across the earth, she at least needed to hear why not.
He cleared his throat and his mind. “Belinda, let me confess my greatest failing to you. Somehow I have managed to convince every motherfucking man, woman, and child I have come across in the last couple of decades that I am a man. Except you. You don’t know what I do, don’t understand it, don’t want to know. So tonight you come with all this like it’s done, like it’s all a matter of what you figured out on your own about me. And you, who’s supposed to be my partner, the one who really knows me, you mistake me for a punk. Maybe bitch is a better word—you were hot on that one for a minute. Well, darling. I’m really not your bitch. People don’t pretend to tell me how my life gets run.” Belinda’s eyes assumed a fierce defensive gaze, yet she said nothing. He kept waiting to be interrupted, but she wouldn’t. So he stood up and took a few steps toward the stairwell down to the ground floor. “So, baby, I’m sorry I can’t finish this good champagne with you. I appreciate the thought. But I kind of feel like I’ve said enough for one night, and it’s late. Now that you know a little something about who I really am, I’m gonna hit the pillow. There’s a young brother facing twenty-five to life in the morning and they got my name on him.”
The Importance of Being Dangerous Page 20