“What can I get you to drink?” she said. Was he going to break up with her? He’d been preoccupied since the beach.
“Whiskey,” he said.
“You’re kidding,” she said. Tacker only drank an occasional beer.
“Not really,” he said.
“I don’t know,” she said, rummaging around in the liquor cabinet. She didn’t drink hard liquor and had hardly glanced at the cabinet since she had come home from college.
“Looky here,” she said in pretend cheer. “Calvert Reserve.” She fumbled with the shot glasses. Any moment she would weep. “You’re feeling down,” she said.
“Oh, not really. A lot on my mind.”
She was next to him now, her knees close to his leg, but he didn’t reach for her.
“Maybe I’ll have one too,” she said.
“Why not?” he said.
“Something’s wrong,” she said. “Tell me.” Don’t tell me.
“It’s just the week catching up with me,” he said. “What’s this about going to Greenville?”
For her sake, she thought, he managed a smile.
“Yeah. My roommate is getting married. I have to go try on a dress for her wedding.”
Tacker gulped the whiskey.
“Is that how you drink it?” Kate said.
“Pretty much,” he said. “I’ll get your car filled up and check the oil.”
Thank goodness. “It’s only four hours,” she said.
“That’s a long drive. You should break it up. At least stop at a filling station and get a Coke.”
She drank the whiskey as he had; two gulps, not stopping in the middle to breathe. Her body filled with warmth, everything bright and hazy at the same time. “I think I can hear my heartbeat.”
“Kate, baby. You’re going to Greenville tomorrow. No more whiskey for you.”
* * *
• • •
KATE WAS THE only bridesmaid, and the dress Janet wanted her to wear was avocado green with an orange sash. They were standing in Belk department store downtown.
“We could save some money,” Kate said, telling it slant, as Emily Dickinson would say, because the dress was awful. “I could make a dress.”
“No, honey,” Janet said. “I want to buy you a dress.”
There wasn’t anything Kate could do but be fitted.
Kate had always imagined Janet marrying in a white eyelet dress in a garden. Instead, she chose a long-sleeved design with a V-neck and an oversize collar, a voluminous skirt, and a swag—like a curtain—across her backside. The veil would trail her by twelve feet.
That afternoon there was a shower to endure and tea and petit fours and cucumber sandwiches. Kate couldn’t believe this was Janet, submitting to the rituals of china and crystal and silver. A sixteen-place setting of silver. The Janet Kate knew at Agnes Scott liked beer, not tea. Janet had threatened to get a tattoo. Janet read the Beat poets. She went into hysterics when Buddy Holly died. She went to New York City once and saw A Raisin in the Sun, a play written by a Negro woman about housing and segregation. She came back to Atlanta and made Kate walk with her around Decatur so she could see for herself exactly where the neighborhoods divided. “Georgia will never change,” she had said, stomping her foot. “Maybe there’s hope for North Carolina.”
Now here Janet was being an old-fashioned girl marrying a man who might be designing bombs. It was easy for Kate to feel smug. But at night in the guest bedroom, her hands pressed between her legs, she wondered if she was jealous. Sunday morning before she left, she took some pictures of Janet in her wedding dress. A playful picture of Janet leaning out her second-story window, holding her veil, one leg over the windowsill, as if she would leap. And a few sexy ones, not the kind a local photographer would take for the paper.
Sunday it rained as Kate drove back to Winston. Though she had given Tacker Janet’s home number before she left—“just in case”—he had not called. He didn’t call the night she was back. Finally she called him Monday after a supper of cottage cheese and canned peaches and potato chips. He seemed distracted and she felt herself in the tenth grade again, hoping he would smile at her when they passed in the hall.
“Valentine’s here,” he said. “Gaines asked me to keep her until nine tonight.”
Kate had just come from a world of riotous wedding gowns and orange sashes and tea sandwiches, a world that would not in the least interest Tacker and which she could not bring up because it would seem like a hint.
“When will I see you?” she said.
“We might have to wait for the weekend.”
They were only blocks apart. Anger flared in her, but it died easily when he said, “I dream about you.”
* * *
• • •
KATE WOKE EARLY and couldn’t go back to sleep. She sat in the window seat and waited for the sun to rise, reading this completely wild story titled “You Can’t Be Any Poorer Than Dead” from an old literary journal she had nearly tossed out. It was by some writer in Georgia named Flannery O’Connor whom she had never heard of even though she’d gone to college there. The story was so frighteningly odd that Kate imagined the writer to be some brilliant dwarf-man who lived in a tumbledown house out in the piney woods and survived on moonshine and cured pork. She looked up to see first light breaking through the trees. On her way to the kitchen to brew tea—for she meant to come back and finish the story—she went to the front door to retrieve the morning paper. Her father always fetched the paper just as the sun rose and then brewed coffee and sat at the kitchen table to read it, and by the time Kate and Brian came downstairs for breakfast, he had finished and was folding it up so he could talk with them before he left for work.
When Kate opened the door she found a large package wrapped in butcher paper and tied with string. She picked it up and brought it in, carrying it to the kitchen, where she cut the cord with her mother’s kitchen scissors and pressed back the paper. It was a stack of Life magazines, twenty at least. A note written on the back of a blank invoice was lightly taped to the first magazine.
Dear Kate,
These are for you—
Love,
Tacker
She leafed through the stack. Every cover featured a photograph by Margaret Bourke-White, who snapped pictures of ballerinas and the great migration in India and survivors of the Holocaust—and Winston Churchill, and Marilyn Monroe, and even Joseph Stalin.
Coming out of “You Can’t Be Any Poorer Than Dead,” the gift was roses. She could smell the greening. Kate was still at the table, looking at Life, when the sun started coming in the back windows, which meant it was almost noon. She had eaten two apples with her tea and a handful of roasted nuts and now she was starving. What she wanted was a hamburger and a strawberry shake. She threw on a skirt and sweater, pulled her hair back, and applied lipstick. Summit Street Pharmacy was a short walk. She was out the door in ten minutes.
She passed Miss Mary’s house, where she had taken piano lessons for years on end. The house still looked good, all the hedges pruned and a pot of annuals on the porch steps. Kate was reminiscing about how Miss Mary would place her hands atop hers and push the keys as Kate learned the C scale, so she did not notice until she was right at the pharmacy that a group of five Negro boys holding placards were walking in a circle on the sidewalk. She tried to duck in, but someone called. She turned to see Gaines from Tacker’s store.
“Oh, hello,” she said, hoping to sound casual, the sun hot on her back. She was so hungry she thought she might faint, and there was no place out here to sit.
“How are you this lovely afternoon?” Gaines said.
“I’m just fine, thank you. Yes. And how are you?”
“Me? I’m okay. Thanks for asking.” He took his hat off and fanned his face. The four other men kept circling. Kate could see that their signs had to do with the sit-ins. Ma
rgaret Bourke-White would have her camera and take pictures and in such a way negotiate this difficult situation just as she had negotiated situations far more daunting.
“You’re not working today?” she said to Gaines. It was all she could think of. She might be seeing spots. Was she really going to faint?
“Just down here to support my brothers for an hour during my lunch break.”
“I see,” she said, feeling dangerously light-headed.
“You okay?” he said.
“I think I may need a drink.”
“Let me help you inside,” he said, holding the door and taking her elbow.
She nearly stumbled into the dark interior.
“Easy does it,” Gaines said. “Just come on this way.”
She let him lead. Dinette tables and chairs came into view like a rest stop in heaven. Gaines pulled a chair out for her. “Now all you have to do is order,” he said.
“Thank you. Thank you so much,” she said, smiling weakly.
Gaines tipped his hat and headed back outside.
“I hope that man wasn’t bothering you,” the grill cook said.
“Oh my goodness no,” Kate said. “He works for a friend of mine.” She knew that sentence would convey all the meanings necessary to keep anyone from being alarmed. She ate all of her hamburger and dill pickle and drank two Coca-Colas, and when she left the four picketers were still there but not Gaines, and she was too mortified to talk with the others.
As a young girl in that swimming pool with Brian, she had seen the black children and known they were hot, but she imagined there must be a creek somewhere they could jump in or a landing at a river. There were separate water fountains, but there were water fountains for Negroes, and separate entrances at the doctor’s office where they could go in and wait to see the doctor just as she could. But no lunch counters where they could sit.
She developed her pictures of Janet. Awfully, she saw that in every one there were sweat stains on the fabric, at her armpits. Kate knew with a sudden clarity that Janet was being forced to marry. She must be pregnant. It was too horrible.
* * *
• • •
THAT EVENING, TACKER showed up around nine. “Sorry. Gaines was late picking up Valentine.”
“I found your gift,” she said. “Thank you. It’s perfect.” She kissed him and took his hand and led him into the library.
He paused before sitting and she thought he was going to say something about himself and Tom and the offer to work for him. But instead he brought up Gaines. “He told me he ran into you today, or, as he put it, you nearly ran into him. He said you looked—I’m not sure what he said—overextended.”
“It seemed awfully warm today. I think I waited too long to eat. He was very kind. Sit down.”
“Good,” Tacker said and sat beside her.
She hadn’t meant to say anything because she wasn’t sure yet how she felt, but it just came out. “I think I get the point.”
“What point?”
“About lunch counters. I would have passed out on the sidewalk today if I couldn’t go in and get a cold drink and sit down. I was actually afraid.” I’m also afraid for Janet and why is all of this turmoil converging at once?
“Are you okay? Why didn’t you call me?”
“Did you hear what I said? I think I see the point. It hit me first when the boy asked for a book.” She pressed a hand against his shoulder.
“I did hear you. I was beginning to think I had asked too much of you. . . .” His eyes looked dark and full. He hesitated and Kate felt it was one hesitation too many.
“Have you got another girlfriend?” It was a ludicrous thing to say. Janet’s situation was making her nervous. Tacker had just given her the nicest gift she’d ever received.
“You know I don’t. Listen to me.” He reached for her hand.
“You’ve seemed distant,” she interrupted, not wanting to listen because she was afraid of what he might say.
“I’m proud of you, except that I have no right to be proud of you. You came to your own conclusions. You’re getting so advanced I may be the one left behind.”
He paused and she said nothing, still fearful. He talked as if he had reached some peak and was looking out a far distance.
“I’m trying to work things out with my dad and Tom’s offer,” he said.
So his thought wasn’t quite so lofty. But still she was on edge. “I feel like you’re keeping something from me.”
“Let me work it out.”
“Okay, then,” she said and teared up, and he kissed her eyes and then her mouth and held her for a long time.
Chapter Twenty-nine
MAY 25. NEWS came over the local station early Tuesday as Tacker was scrambling his eggs: late yesterday, city officials announced that all lunch counters in the city of Winston-Salem shall be integrated. The manager of Woolworth’s at Fourth and Liberty threatened to resign at the announcement. The mayor expressed admiration for all sides. Winston-Salem, he said, has peacefully resolved a major point of conflict among its citizens and moved forward into the coming decade a stronger community. So far no disturbance has been reported, though a number of block parties have been reported in Negro neighborhoods.
Tacker pumped his arm up and down. “Score!” he cried, his voice still morning croaky. Da Vinci skittered against the cabinet. Tacker could see the plate the waitress had thrown into the trash after Gaines had eaten from it. Not anymore. He wasn’t watching the oven and his toast burned, the smell almost sweet. From the back porch, he launched torn bits into the yard for birds. Sunlight fell through the trees. If only the pool could be integrated. A car headed down Jarvis. Tacker started to laugh, the doomed laugh of a lost battle just before dawn. His head seemed full of bees.
Two loud knocks sounded on his front door. It was Gaines. He smiled like the sun of a thousand days. “We did it,” he said.
“I just heard. Come in. It’s fantastic. Unbelievable.” The foursquare seemed to rock sideways like a boat foundering on a glacier.
Gaines was six inches off the floor. Standing on the porch was Valentine, wearing a pale summer dress and sandals. She had lost a lower tooth. Gaines started into the house but Valentine appeared rooted in place. Gaines went back and picked her up, her long legs dangling down. She started crying.
“What’s wrong, baby?” he said.
“I don’t want to go to the Woolworth’s,” she said. “Someone might break my arm.”
“Where’d you hear that?” Tacker said.
“A boy on a bicycle said it.”
“No one’s going to hurt you,” Tacker said.
“You promise?”
“I promise.”
* * *
• • •
WEDNESDAY NIGHT AND Tacker had not figured out what he would say to Tom when he called to take the job.
I’ve worked things out and I’m ready to take your offer. Only I can’t accept the one assignment you have that precisely fits what I told you I wanted.
I’m ready to take your offer. I don’t feel I’m ready for the bathhouse. How about another split-level?
I’m ready to take your offer. Let me tell you a story about swimming in paradise.
If he wasn’t careful, he was going to blow it with Kate too. “What about it, da Vinci?”
The cat lifted his head when he heard his name and trundled his front paws. Tacker scratched him around the ears. “In the old days, you were just drawn and quartered and then it was over. Now you get to torture yourself with infinite doubt.” Even if Kate saw the point about lunch counters, he didn’t believe she would approve a second screwup of his career.
He’d had a letter from Samuel telling him about Chukwu, who had written from London, where he had caused a ruckus about being relegated to a less prestigious campus dorm because I am an Afric
an, he had written. He’d demanded a room in a newer block near the center of campus. What Tacker needed was a little of Chukwu’s attitude. Actually, no. What he needed was to sleep and get up early and take a run.
Up before daylight, he took West End to Reynolda, crossed Northwest, and started uphill. It was a grueling climb, but he kept going. About the time he got to Robinhood Road, he felt the stirrings of an idea. He kept going until he could curl around on Buena Vista, and by the time he was sprinting down Reynolda back to the foursquare, the thought began to materialize. As he bolted up his front stairs, he understood it might work.
He’d get himself hired, and then, without Tom’s asking for it, he’d do an initial drawing of the bathhouse. And make it pure African. Of course he’d be shooting himself in the foot because he’d get reduced to renderings of carports, additions, and filling stations for a few months. But Tom wouldn’t fire him because they knew the same people and were alums of the same college. The bathhouse project would pass and he’d be clear of it.
In the bathroom, he threw cold water on his face. No time like the present. He rustled around in the music room until he found—under a stack of records—the sketch he had begun in a trance, the sketch inspired by Alan Vaughan-Richards. Loops, circles overlapping at the edges. It still looked like segments of a short, fat caterpillar with a big head. Then there was that rectangle he had sketched, wondering if it might be a veranda, only it was cantilevered in his imagination, and then he had thought lagoon, which had sent him searching through his brain until it had dawned on him on the back porch in the dark of night that it was Vaughan-Richards’s house. Tacker turned the page upside down to see if it looked more promising that way. He started with a clean sheet of paper, drawing first the main circular room, the lobby swimmers would enter before going left to the men’s dressing room or right to the ladies’ or straight ahead to enter the pool area. Tom’s Carnegie Mellon associates, Hammond and Smith, would hate it.
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