Soon he’d begun to lie in bed beside the snoring Rosalie buttoned up to her chin, thinking lusty thoughts of Hattie. He looked at the space, wide and sharp as a bundling board, between him and his wife and watched the sheet rise between his legs and make a little tent. He would wait all day to see if Hattie would come into the store, but she sent Marcus most days and sometimes James.
Nights, he found himself walking home from the bar out of his way through the Quarters. It took him months of circling through the unpaved dusty streets to get up the courage to approach Hattie’s house.
The colored people had watched him, the old men and women sitting on their front porches dipping snuff. No white people ever walked here except sometimes Cowboy Lou, but, they said deep in their throats, he be’d crazy.
They watched Jake and slipped one another looks out of the corners of their eyes.
“Reckon he be working up his courage.”
“Reckon that ain’t all he be working up soon.”
For white men had been in the Quarters before, sliding by in their big long cars, furtive like cockroaches looking for a hiding place in the light. They stopped for just a second while the woman whom they were buying ran to an unlatched car door. Then zoom they were gone.
But not Mr. Jake, walking Mr. Jake. ’Course he was different. Couldn’t talk straight, what with that stuttering, and even when he got it out he had that New Yorky way of talking. Folks said he was a Jew. Most of the Quarters wasn’t sure what that meant, but there were those that knew said it was better than being a cracker. Said they’d heard tell the Jews up North were good folk. Treated a Negro like he was a man. So they watched Mr. Jake to see how he was going to play his hand.
He didn’t have to play anything, as it turned out.
When he finally got up the nerve and turned down Hattie’s block as if it were nothing, he had pulled almost even with the corner of her house when she spotted him from behind her screen door.
“Jake,” she called, in that warm low voice. Not Mr. Fine, Mr. Jake. No, none of that. “Jake, come on in,” she said.
He stepped up on her front porch. She opened the door, and he entered as if paying social calls were something he did every day.
“I want to thank you for all your kindness,” she said, then turned her face up to his and kissed him, right in the mouth.
He’d been so shocked, even though this was the stuff his dreams were made of, that he’d fallen back and hit his head against the wall.
“Ha!” she laughed in a laugh that made him wonder whether he’d ever heard anyone laugh before. “Ain’t that what you come for?”
“I…I…” he sputtered. But he didn’t even know what he was trying to say.
“That and a piece of my famous chocolate cake?” She pointed at the oilcloth-covered table, on which sat a prime example of that very thing, taller than Miss Virgie’s had ever been.
It had just gone on from there—for all these years—as if their love affair, because that’s what it was, were the most natural thing. It developed a life of its own. Somehow she always seemed to know when he was coming, would have herself and the sweets he loved ready as if he’d called ahead. In the old days, when the children still lived at home, they’d be safely tucked in or off at her mother’s or a neighbor’s house.
Jake and Hattie had never gone anywhere, not that they could have, even if Jake had been a single man. It would have been hard to hold hands in the picture show with Jake downstairs and Hattie upstairs in the colored balcony. The White Only signs that marked even the drinking fountains drew lines in the public world of West Cypress. They never saw each other outside the walls of Hattie’s house. Jake continued to slip her his little gifts. After the store closed for good, she said for him not to worry. She didn’t need them anyway. But Jake continued to bring her small things—cologne, embroidered handkerchiefs, a Whitman’s Sampler of chocolates with a little map on the inside of the box. She liked the jellies and the creams. He liked the caramels and the nuts.
“Honey, we be’s a perfect match,” she’d tease. But she was right.
Tonight he’d brought her a pair of pink nylon panties.
“Lord have mercy, Jake,” she laughed. “What if you die of a heart attack walking here and they find these in your pocket? What’s anybody going to think?”
He laughed, too. Emma would have had a quick answer for her. Emma was good at that. But he wasn’t. He didn’t have the words. He had only his feelings that lived inside.
She knew that. She patted his bald head and smoothed the few strands that wanted to pretend that they belonged on top.
But later, when he left, she lifted the panties from the arm of the easy chair where he’d left them and shook her head. They were panties for a young girl, not for the likes of an old woman like herself whose rear end was spreading into a barrel butt.
Jake knew what her fanny looked like. What could he have been thinking about?
But more and more she’d asked herself that question. He was getting unmindless, as folks said, distracted. He forgot things. And a couple of times recently she’d noticed that he kept peeking at her windows like someone was out there and he wanted her to draw the shades.
Not that she ever flaunted herself for the neighbors. They knew what was what, but there were limits to how far she wanted their noses to grow. So she’d always been careful. She’d always been discreet.
But this was something else. Jake was getting to be afraid of something. For him there was something out there in the darkness. He wouldn’t talk about it when she asked him, but, she shook her head, that was Jake.
12
Los Gatos, California
July 4, 1973
“I wish you had come up to Berkeley and let me do this,” said Maria. She was sitting in Emma’s kitchen, watching her chop onions into the coleslaw. “Much as I love your cooking, it’s my turn, you know.”
“I don’t keep track of turns, do you? I love having you-all, and Jesse wanted Clifton to come down and see the windows at Skytop. I do wish you’d stay over; it’ll be dangerous driving home tonight with all the drunks on the road. You know we have plenty of room.”
Maria shook her head and smiled thank you, no. After his years long ago in the Army, Clifton was never comfortable sleeping anywhere but in his own bed.
Emma dumped the onions into a big blue-and-white ceramic bowl and started chopping pickles and peppers.
Maria watched her. “When is Jesse ever going to finish this kitchen?”
“I don’t even want to talk about it.”
“But wasn’t that the first thing he was going to do when you moved in, two—”
“Three and a half years ago. Yes, it was. But you know he puts every living breathing minute into Skytop.”
The kitchen wasn’t awful, it was just inconvenient. The freezer was out on the back porch, and the stove was awkwardly placed. She and Jesse had talked about a six-burner professional range and new shelves. But he’d never gotten around to them.
All the beautiful cabinets Jesse used to build. “The shoemaker’s children,” she said.
“So how’s the Winchester House of the Mountains coming?” The now-dead Sarah Winchester, heir to the rifle fortune, had spent decades and millions building a house in San Jose with secret passageways and numberless rooms.
Emma rolled her eyes, “Please, don’t get me started. The hours I spend traipsing back and forth to the hardware store, lumber store, plumbing, paint, tile, socket, plug, wrench, hammer, screw store.” She paused, knife in hand. “You know, Rosalie owned some rental properties, and when it came to fixing them up my daddy used to bitch. I always thought he was just lazy, but I’m beginning to see his point. If you don’t love the process, it is the world’s biggest drag.”
“But it will all be worth it someday, don’t you think? When Skytop’s finished?”
Emma poured them each a glass of iced tea and joined Maria at the dining table.
“I never thought I’d
hear myself say this, but no, I don’t. Besides, we’ll never live that long. Jesse gets off on tangents, like those stained-glass windows in the great hall—they belong in a church! Four of them, each six feet wide and twelve feet tall. Do you know how long that’s going to take? And he didn’t even do stained glass before. He’s up there teaching himself to be a Renaissance man. Meanwhile, the porch is still falling down, the kitchen is a shambles, the bathrooms—just the everyday carpentry work always takes three times as long and costs twice as much as he plans. It’s like owning a boat—a hole in the water you pour money into. Sometimes I think about going up to Skytop and burning it to the ground.”
“You can’t convince him to stop, to sell it and get out? Go back to his art?”
“I’ve begged him, but he’s lost all perspective. It started as a little break, remember, a diversion? Right after that Montalvo retrospective. But for Jesse it was a dream too, and I guess I bought into it. We were going to create this hotel with a gallery and a restaurant. Jesse would do such a wonderful renovation, it would be a showplace—with the Tree touch. I think he had visions of Frank Lloyd Wright. I would be the chef. Then, after it opened, a manager would take over, and Jesse would go back to his art. I’m afraid by that time they’ll have forgotten who he was.”
“No. Jesse was on top.”
“What if he’s had his time in the sun?”
Maria stirred her tea. “Fame’s not that fickle.”
“He gets calls. His agent in New York thinks he’s gone nuts.”
“Is that what you think?”
“Sometimes, I swear to God, I believe he thinks if he tries hard enough, if he does every little thing about Skytop perfectly, he can go back and do his childhood over, his parents won’t divorce, he and his mother will be just like that.” Emma held two fingers twisted together close.
“Does he talk about that?”
“He talks around it, sometimes.”
Up at Skytop, Jesse and Clifton were leaning over a worktable stretched across two sawhorses.
“I never did glass,” Clifton said. He picked up the soldering torch. “Show me how this goes.”
Jesse smiled. “Going to let me teach you something, old man?”
“’Bout time, don’t you think?”
Jesse joined the pieces of carefully fitted glass, explained that this was the easy part. It was cutting the glass that was difficult. He had a pile of bright shards of discarded pieces and Band-Aids on his fingers to testify to that fact.
“It’s different from wood. Every color is a completely different experience. You never know how it’s going to act until you start working with it. And in the same sheet, the minerals can run different, making strong, resistant spots that you don’t know about until you start to make that cut.” He held a piece of amethyst glass up to the light, and it cast a pool of violet across his shirt.
“Ain’t it that way with most everything?” Clifton asked.
Jesse turned and looked at him. “I guess so.” Then he dropped the amethyst and picked up a piece of emerald which was to become part of a lily, turned it in his hands, inspecting it as if it contained a key to the universe. “Say, what do you mean by that?”
“Nothing. Just that most things aren’t what they seem, I mean you don’t know much about them till you handle them a while, get down in the dirt.”
“That’s for sure,” Jesse nodded.
Clifton approached the stairs that led to the gallery level, where Jesse had carved a magnificent newel post. The stairs themselves were still broken.
“Fine-looking piece of work,” Clifton said, running his hand over the flowering cherry wood forms that swirled around a woman naked to the waist.
Jesse turned away and walked the full length of the great hall, thinking of the little brunette who had modeled for it. She hadn’t been able to keep her hands off him—or vice versa. He stared for a long moment at the painting of the woman with Emma’s eyes he had done on the wall, what now seemed like eons ago. Ah, Emma. He hadn’t meant to be unfaithful to her—but then that was her fault.
Clifton came up behind him, put a hand on his shoulder. “When you getting back to it? Ain’t you fooled around here long enough?”
“What are you talking about? I haven’t been fooling around.” Jesse’s tone was suddenly sharp.
“Don’t shit a shitter.”
“Exactly what are we talking about?”
“I don’t know. You tell me—pussy or art?”
Jesse stared at him for a moment.
“Don’t stand there looking like a chicken deciding whether or not to cross the road. You think I don’t know you better than that? I’d hoped Emma would settle you down. I hear things, too, you know. I know you been philandering. Sounds to me like the symptom of a man who’s lost track of his priorities, all tangled up in this place that don’t mean a goddamned thing.”
“Careful, old man.”
“Careful, shit. Careful is what I was being when I stepped on the mine.” Clifton tapped loudly on his false leg. “I’d been going on, taking care of business, never would have happened.”
“Nothing to do with me,” Jesse grumbled.
“We’re not talking about careful, son. What we’re talking about is that it’s time you got back to paying attention to your marriage and your work.”
“Emma been talking to you?”
“Emma don’t have to talk to me. She probably don’t even know. To me looks like she’s still in love with you. Don’t quite have that down-in-the-mouth disappointed look—yet. But close, close. You keep messing around, boy, she soon will.”
They had stepped out on the front porch now, looking out across fir and redwoods. The Pacific was in the distance.
“I know you’re right—about Emma,” Jesse said. But what he didn’t say was how more and more, as Skytop grew, he felt Emma slipping from his grasp. Was there some correlation? Or was it just the passing of time?
At first she’d been right there. She was spirited, of course, that’s one of the things he’d loved about her. But then she drifted. When he’d take her arm to lead her through a door, something just as simple as that, she’d shrug him off.
“Is this some kind of fucking symbolic act?” he had asked. “You don’t want me to open doors for you? Go on ahead. Help yourself.”
“Don’t be silly, Jesse,” she had said. But she went right on doing what she wanted to do. And they just didn’t feel as close.
She was busy, he’d grant her that. Out in the world with her teaching, her students, catering clients were calling all the time for her. She was booked for special dinner parties, at seventy-five dollars a head, past the first of the year. And he was proud of that. But it felt like she was spreading herself awfully thin, like there wasn’t enough of her left.
“That’s because you’ve locked yourself up in Skytop,” she said. “You really need to get out. You never see a soul anymore. All that isolation will make you nuts.”
“I’ve always spent time alone. Artists do!”
Emma had given him a look. “I’m not your evening entertainment, Jesse, after your day up the hill.”
Why couldn’t she understand how important the lodge had become to him? It represented—well, he found it hard to talk about. A big canvas. A monumental work. When he was dead and gone people would come to see the Jesse Tree House. It would be the noblest thing he’d ever done. Couldn’t Emma see that? Couldn’t Clifton? Couldn’t they sense the enormity of his vision?
“Come on,” Clifton was saying. “We better get back and give those pretty ladies a hand.”
A while later, out in the screened-in lanai, Jesse tipped open the lid to the heavy rectangular smoker. “Never made a better investment in my life than this baby crematorium,” he said.
Everyone laughed, though all of them had heard the joke before.
“That’s what it looks like, doesn’t it?” Jesse said.
“Indeed it does, my man,” Clifton answered.
“Can I freshen your drink?” Jesse asked. “Anyone?” They all shook their heads. “No takers, huh? Well, the Fourth is young, and I say you’re all a bunch of pikers. I think we have an obligation to drink to our country’s birthday and keep these home fires burning till—well, at least until Rupert comes.”
“Did he call?” Maria asked.
* * *
Patriotism is a funny excuse for drinking, Emma thought. Especially for a man who referred to “your President” and “your Governor” as if Nixon and Reagan were her responsibility and he weren’t a citizen of the country or the state.
But then, in a way, he wasn’t, for Jesse had always seemed to occupy his own particular territory. She wondered sometimes what its geography looked like, for the longer she lived with Jesse, the less the felt she knew him.
There were those things that hadn’t changed. He was still a most handsome man. In fact, his looks seemed to improve with age—his carriage, his imposing presence, this larger-than-life black prince. When he entered a room, conversation stopped. And he had a wonderful way with words. The two of them were so clever, they thought, that once sitting at the table after dinner they’d made a tape of their conversation. It was still here somewhere, in the bottom of a bureau drawer. And there was drama about the man: his beautiful bass-baritone that even when he talked with her quietly in a restaurant caused heads to turn. In the realm of the practical, he could do those things she hated to do: fixing locks, plugged sinks, creaky doors. (How, she asked herself often, could a woman who wasn’t interested in hanging a picture let herself be talked into Skytop? What could she have been thinking about?)
And, of course, he enjoyed a certain fame, or he had when they’d met. Everyone in Bay Area art circles, and beyond, even in New York, knew Jesse’s name. That, perhaps, had changed. As had their bank account. More and more of the reserve that Jesse had saved when he was at his peak was pouring into Skytop. He needed to get back to work.
Not just for the money. He needed a wider audience. He hardly saw anyone outside of Clifton—and his old friend Rupert from time to time. So it fell to Emma to provide the applause.
Keeping Secrets Page 22