by Lewis Shiner
In high school, most of his generation’s role models were black, from Michael Jordan to Michael Jackson, from Prince to Eddie Murphy to Mr. T. White boys in North Dallas had aped black slang and gestures, copied black fashion, listened to black music, maybe had a black friend. Now he’d been granted the implied wish, with no magical bonus of cool or toughness or style.
And what of his own children, if he ever had any? How would he feel if he fathered a black child with a white woman? What would the neighbors say?
“How are you holding up?” Denise asked.
“Not sleeping as much as I’d like to. I have all this frantic energy and I don’t know what to do with it. I feel like climbing a ladder and shouting at people on the street, only I don’t know what I’d say. ‘Hey, look at me, I’m black and my mother’s dead’?”
He turned left on Fayetteville Street and they drove past the remains of the Victorian houses where John Merrick and Aaron Moore and C.C. Spaulding and the rest of the elite of Hayti had lived, now broken up into apartments or knocked down altogether; past the Lincoln Community Health Center, a squat, utilitarian clinic in front of a parking lot where Lincoln Hospital once stood, the hospital where Michael had been born; past the sleekly modern NCCU campus; past a block of beautiful turn-of-the-twentieth-century red brick bungalows; past Fayetteville Street Elementary to Beechwood Cemetery, where Merrick and Spaulding and Shepard and so many of the others had ended up.
Denise directed him to a narrow driveway leading through the high chain link fence and then west for a few hundred yards, to the far end of the cemetery.
Section D, like most of the other sections, was stark, flat, and treeless. The headstones, most the size of the Durham phone book, lay flat on the grass, many with attached vases and fresh flowers. Mercy’s grave was in a thickly populated patch, the graves laid end to end and side by side with barely room to walk between them. A handful of other people wandered around nearby, most of them old, all of them black.
A polished granite marker listed her name as MERCEDES RICHARDS with the dates 1941 - 1969. Michael knelt in the still-green grass and put both hands on the stone. Denise stood beside him, her fingers lightly touching his neck.
So this is it, he thought. The end of the search. Apparently he was not going to cry, nor was he going to find closure. What he did feel was a painful finality to the name carved in rock, and more powerfully, a kind of comfort.
“I know I’ve probably talked myself into this,” he said, “but something about this seems right. In exactly the way that everything about Ruth always seemed wrong.”
Denise nodded encouragement.
Until that moment he had never understood why people would want to put their bodies in a box in the ground to rot. Now he saw the value of having some part of them still there, essence seeping into earth that he could touch with his hands.
He felt no urgency to leave. Instead he let his thoughts drift, thinking of the way Harriman had described Mercy dancing, the way his father had felt so calm around her. These secondhand memories, already worn smooth by others, were all he had of her.
When he finally stood up, Denise hugged him loosely and said, “Better?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. Do you have to go back to work?”
“Not really.”
“Can we get something to eat? I’m starving.”
She directed him to Fortune Garden, a Thai restaurant near his hotel. The name seemed lucky, and in fact they arrived just as it was reopening for dinner. The inside was red vinyl booths and wood paneling, the food cheap and plentiful and good. When it was gone, Denise said, “So first Ruth was your mother, then she was no relation at all, and now she’s your aunt?”
“Yeah. I think my emotions are on strike. ‘Give us a call when you can get your story straight.’ ”
“Are you going to tell your father?”
“I don’t know yet. I think I’d better sleep on it.”
Denise looked down at her plate. “Speaking of which…” She seemed nervous. “Where were you planning to sleep?”
“Are you making an offer?” Now he was nervous too.
“It doesn’t have to be, you know…sex. You can just stay the night. Rachid is at a friend’s house, and…” She looked up at him. “I was just thinking…”
Michael took her hand. “Yes. I’d like that a lot.”
“I thought you might want to maybe stop by your room and get a change of clothes and a toothbrush. And condoms. If you happen to have any. Just in case.”
*
They started on the couch, talking. They were both so nervous and distracted that Denise finally said, “This is ridiculous. Come on.” She led him to the bedroom door and said, “Take it slow, okay? Really slow.”
It had been a long time for her, long enough to be painful for her when he first tried to enter. That in turn made Michael self-conscious and afraid of hurting her again. She let him know there was no hurry. Michael loved touching the clean, compact lines of her body, feeling the sweet silk of her skin against his lips. Eventually, with her hand on top of his, she helped him bring her to a climax, and after that he fit inside her perfectly and she took him to his.
“Now you’ll sleep,” she said, and he did, so heavily that it seemed only minutes later when he woke up to sunshine pushing hard at the blinds.
“Is that your phone?” Denise said. A buzzing noise came from the pile of clothes on the chair in the corner.
“Mmmmmm. It’ll stop.”
“It could be your father.”
Michael got heavily to his feet, put his glasses on, and fished up the phone. He was too late; the voice mail system had picked up. He looked back at Denise and saw her grinning at him. She was wearing a thin white T-shirt and white cotton underpants, the basic talking points of her anatomy barely disguised.
“You’re beautiful,” he said. More than anything he feared her regret. He didn’t see any in her eyes.
“Don’t you even think about kissing me until I’ve brushed my teeth,” she said, getting up.
“I’m thinking about a lot more than that.”
“I can see that. If I’m late to work, people will talk…”
“That doesn’t sound like ‘no.’ ” He followed her toward the bathroom.
The phone rang in his hand. Once he saw that the call came from the hospital, he’d missed his chance to ignore it. He switched it on, said “Hello,” and heard only silence. “Ruth?” he said. “Ruth, is that you?”
Finally she said, “He’s gone.”
Michael sat on the edge of the bed. “When?”
She didn’t seem to have heard him. “Where were you? Why didn’t you answer your phone?”
He tried again. “When did it happen?”
“I don’t know. Some time in the night. I was sleeping in the chair next to him, and I got up in the night and when I checked on him, his skin was cold…oh my God!” She began to cry.
“He died in the middle of the night?”
“I’ve been up since 4 a.m. taking care of this.”
“And you waited till now to call me?” Denise’s clock read 8:17.
“There’s been too much to do. I didn’t have time to stop and call you.”
Michael let it go. “Where is he now?”
“Still in the room, waiting for the funeral home to pick him up.”
He saw Denise in the doorway, toothbrush in mouth, register his expression. She ducked out again and he heard her rinsing her mouth.
“I’ll meet you there,” he said, and switched off the phone.
Denise came and sat beside him. “Bad?” she said.
Michael nodded. “He died in the night.”
She put an arm awkwardly around his shoulder. “I’m so sorry, Michael.”
“It’s not like it’s a surprise or anything. Except that it is. It’s a total shock.”
“You were just starting to get to know him.”
“Yeah,” he said. “I have to go. Can I…I mean, are
we…?”
“Yes,” she said. “Yes, we are, and you can. You’d better, in fact, whatever it is. Now put your clothes on and get out of here.”
*
They had drawn the curtains around his father’s bed. His primary care physician, Dr. Zeigler, had come off rounds to look at him herself.
“You folks can request an autopsy if you like,” she said. “I doubt we’d learn anything. In terms of cause of death, there’s no question about that.” She was in her forties, trim, businesslike, yet gentle.
“No,” Ruth said. The accusation Michael imagined he heard was probably his own guilty conscience.
“Can I see him?” Michael asked.
“Well, yes,” Zeigler said. “In my opinion, you might be better off remembering him the way he was.”
“No, I want to see,” Michael said.
“I can’t bear this,” Ruth said. “I’ll be outside.”
Zeigler drew the curtain. Michael saw what she meant; his father looked like a bad wax dummy of himself. His eyelashes looked like crude stitches across his eyes, and the skin around his mouth had puckered like rotten fruit. It was not credible that this side of meat had ever walked around under its own power, that intelligence had lit its eyes.
“Do you know what plans he’d made for his…disposition?” the doctor asked. Michael looked at her blankly, and she tried again. “Was there a funeral home?”
“Oh,” Michael said. “Ruth will know all that. Whatever she wants to do is fine.”
“He was an interesting man,” Zeigler said. “I never heard anyone speak so passionately about concrete.”
*
Michael spent the day with Ruth, wading through paperwork: death certificates, insurance, the funeral home, one obituary for the Dallas Morning News, another for the Durham Herald-Sun. She spoke in a monotone, ignored any food or drink he put in front of her, and lost all animation in her face when he wasn't asking her questions. She’d never been physically affectionate, and she rebuffed his attempts to get her to talk about what she felt. She too, he realized, must have believed in magic, believed this day could be held back indefinitely if she only loved enough.
He saw her through dinner and took her back to her hotel room, where she suddenly became a ball of nerves. “I can’t possibly sleep here alone,” she said. “You can stay the night, can’t you?”
Michael hesitated, torn between guilt and self-preservation. “No,” he said at last. “I’m sorry.”
If she’d softened, pleaded with him, he would not have been able to refuse a second time. Instead she said, “I’m still your mother, you know.”
He stared at her. I’m going to wake up in the middle of the night, he thought, with the exact words on my lips that I should be saying now. “I’ll see you tomorrow morning,” he said. He hugged her, and she accepted it stiffly, arms at her sides. “Try and get some sleep.”
He sat in the parking garage with his car windows down, letting the cool night air roll over him. Beyond his numbness and exhaustion he felt only the residue of the day’s work, the nagging of unfinished business. There would be no mourning yet.
He called Denise.
“How are you holding up?” she asked.
“Hanging in there. Can I see you?”
“Rachid’s home.”
“I don’t care, I want to meet him.” He could hear her mulling it over. “It’s got to happen sooner or later,” he said.
“I’ll ask him.” She muffled the ensuing exchange with her hand, then said, “Okay, come on. Have you eaten?”
“For some definition of the word. I had to take her to Applebee’s.”
“I’m sure there’s something here you can eat. You understand you have to behave, right?”
“I’ll do my best.”
Rachid turned out to be as tall as Michael, and thin in the way of hyperactive teenagers. Denise kept her distance as she introduced them. Rachid shook hands quickly, then his arms dropped to his sides like dead weight. “Hey,” he said nervously.
Comic conventions were ideal training for dealing with the terminally uncomfortable. “Hey,” Michael said. “You doing all right?”
“Yeah, yeah, good,” he mumbled. Despite bad skin and posture, he was quite handsome and clearly had his own sense of retro style, wearing his hair in a scraggly natural cut that stood out an inch from his head.
“So what comics do you read?”
“Batman,” he said. “X-Men.” It was comfortable ground, and he showed the first signs of relaxation. “You know the Black Panther?”
“Yeah, the Black Panther’s cool. Marvel’s got a Black Panther movie in development, did you know that?”
“No shit?” He glanced quickly at Denise. “I mean, no kidding?”
“I heard it was Wesley Snipes company. Nobody’s saying if Snipes is going to play T’Challa, but he probably will, since the Blade movies did well.”
“Blade was awesome.”
“Why don’t you guys sit down?” Denise said. “I’ll see if there’s anything to drink around here.”
Michael managed to keep Rachid talking for half an hour. He worked hard at it. Rachid was a likeable kid, a little too smart for his own good, a little alienated, a little lost in his inner universe, the way Michael had been at his age.
Finally Denise sent him off to do his homework. “And you,” she said to Michael, “go this way.”
“You’re sending me home?”
“No,” she said. She pushed him onto her front balcony, where she kissed him fiercely. “Okay, Mr. Smartass, you impressed me.”
“He’s a good kid.”
“You don’t have to tell me that. Just be very, very careful. I don’t want him to get too attached until we know where this is going.”
“What about you? Can I let you get attached?”
“That’s the battle I’m fighting right now.”
“Throw in the towel,” he said, and kissed her again. “Let me stay the night.”
“No,” she said, and he saw how she could control a boy twice her size. The limits were clear and strictly enforced. “Sorry. I warned you it would be complicated.”
“It’s okay,” he said. “I understand.”
She reached up and combed through his hair. “I could probably get away for a while tomorrow afternoon. I’ll call you, and we can meet at your hotel room for sex. It’ll be cheap and tacky and thrilling.”
“It’s a deal,” he said.
Back inside, they sat on opposite ends of the couch. They had entire lifetimes to catch up on. Michael talked about his father, how at times Michael’s very presence had seemed to make him angry or depressed, for reasons that were now obvious. Michael had tried to win his approval at sports, where he was a dismal failure, and schoolwork, where he was only marginally better. In the last three days he’d found himself rereading his childhood, now that he had the key, and all kinds of things were starting to make sense. Too late, of course, to undo the damage.
It was harder for Denise to open up. Michael gently pried loose a few facts. She’d been a good student, bright and eager to please. She’d never liked sports. She’d dreamed of being a dancer, but there was no money for classes. By high school she was barely five feet tall and filled out to the point that everyone told her to forget it.
“Ballet, modern, what?” Michael asked her.
“Anything,” she said. “I would see Broadway dance numbers on Ed Sullivan when I was little and try to memorize everything they were doing.”
“It’s not too late,” Michael said. “We could take some swing classes or something.”
“Swing dancing? Where did you get that idea? Is it because of your father?”
“Possibly. He made it sound like such a blast.”
“Michael, you’re not trying to relive your father’s life through me or anything weird like that, are you?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean…” She let out a sigh. “I mean, you come to Durham, you start
poking around in your father’s past, and you get involved with the first black woman you meet.”
“I’ve been in Durham, which is full of black women, for a month, and you’re the first person I’ve asked out. And I didn’t know about Mercy when I met you. Are you saying you don’t know why I would be attracted to you?” He lowered his voice. “After last night you can still ask that?”
“I don’t know. I’m confused. It’s all happening so fast.”
“Those are the words women say before they say things like, ‘We should back off a little.’ Are you running away from me?”
“It doesn’t help for you to lump me with the entire female species.”
“No,” he said. “You’re right. I’m sorry. You’re scaring me, is all.”
“I’m scared too. Obviously.” She stretched out her hand and Michael, after a second, took it. “Maybe this wasn’t a good idea,” she said. “It’s hard to be natural with Rachid only a few feet away.” She rubbed her thumb along his palm. “I want to touch you, too.”
It was not the time, Michael saw, to push. “It’s late,” he said. “Maybe I should go.”
When she nodded, he realized how much he’d hoped she would argue with him. She let go of his hand and stood up. Michael walked to the door, and she stepped outside with him. He put his arms around her, and she rested her cheek against his chest. “I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s been such a long time for me. I’m not used to all this.”
“Are we still on for tomorrow?”
“I’ll call you,” she said. It wasn’t a yes or a no. She kissed him softly, lingeringly. It could have been a promise or a farewell.
He walked down the steps, forcing himself not to look back. When he’d started the car and come to a stop at Campus Walk, he yelled, “Goddamn it!” and shook the steering wheel with both hands. “You think I’m used to this? How could anybody be used to this?”
Friday, October 29