Looking for Lily

by Africa Fine

  Then Franklin’s visits to the sanitarium stopped, and Gillian was left to wonder why. After three months had passed, she was home when her mother’s things were delivered to their house in boxes. That was when Gillian realized that her mother had died. Her father never said a word. It would be years before Gillian discovered, on her own, that her mother hanged herself with the belt of her bathrobe.

  When Gillian was eighteen, she went to Howard University to study nursing. She’d been in the choir all through high school, and she had been told that her soprano was professional quality. But when she had tried to discuss music as a major with Franklin, he had smiled and shook his head.

  “You can’t make a living being a singer, Gillian. Be a nurse. People always need nurses.”

  And so it was decided, because however much she resented Franklin’s new allegiance to Brenda, she still loved him more than anything and wanted to please him. So she commuted from Baltimore to Howard several days a week in the 1949 Ford sedan Franklin bought for her. While she was in classes during her first year of college, Brenda was cared for by Eloise, a neighborhood woman who seemed to Gillian more interested in Franklin than in Brenda. She did seem to understand that, for Franklin, she would always come second to Brenda. Gillian was not surprised when Franklin announced he would marry Eloise the summer after her freshman year. She was also not surprised that her father seemed to tell her as an afterthought. Gillian knew that she, and Marianne, had been replaced.

  * * *

  “Jeremiah was a dog.”

  He was not just a garden-variety dog, but the worst, a man who preyed on girls who didn’t know better than to be charmed by his good looks and mysterious demeanor. Where the other women on campus saw a noble veteran coming to school to better himself, Gillian saw an opportunist who wrote papers for people for money. He was anything but noble, as far as she was concerned.

  She knew all about him for months before they first met. Gillian wasn’t the kind of woman who had lots of girlfriends. She didn’t spend time giggling over boys and men, worrying about her hair and makeup. But there were many young women who called her a friend, who sought out her opinion on classes, their dates, their clothes. After her father remarried, she lived on campus and learned to enjoy living among girls her own age. Gillian freely gave her opinions on fashion, academics (which she knew a lot about), and men (which she knew nothing about), and she enjoyed their company well enough. But she had no intention of letting them in any closer than was necessary to keep college from being a devastating, lonely experience.

  Jeremiah Jackson was one of the most frequent topics of conversation among these girls. They called him a war hero, declared him the best-looking man on campus, and competed for his attention. They ignored the fact that he dated and defiled one woman after the other, without regard for what was socially appropriate, or even what was simply right.

  Gillian saw right through Jeremiah, knew him for what he was. And he was the most exciting man she had ever seen. This made it all the more imperative that she keep her distance. And she did so, until the day that Jon Johnson tried to shoot him in the back.

  As it turned out, Jeremiah had not actually been shot, because Jon Johnson did not know how to use a gun. Jeremiah had panicked, then passed out as the bullet whizzed by him. When he realized what he had done, Jon collapsed in a heap on the quad, crying. Gillian happened to be walking nearby, heard the shot and ran over to help Jeremiah. She rode in the ambulance with him to the hospital, stroking his hair and smiling when the EMT told her that he had fainted but was otherwise fine. They would take him in just to be safe, but he would suffer no long-lasting physical effects.

  She was relieved, much more so than she imagined possible. While she waited for him to wake up, she thought back to the day he had sat next to her on the bench, trying to see what she was reading. She’d felt almost light-headed being near him, the power of her attraction to him so strong that she didn’t feel like herself. No man had ever made her feel that way. She was smart in her classes, but naïve in life. She didn’t know the difference between love and lust, didn’t realize that the warming she felt in her body was about sex, and not much more. She didn’t know, and when Jeremiah wanted to make love to her hours after he left the hospital, she said yes. When he asked her if she loved him that same night, she said yes. And when he asked her to marry him the day after they graduated from Howard University, just weeks after he was shot at, she said yes.

  The beginning of Gillian and Jeremiah’s life together was a whirlwind of change. Gillian’s father didn’t come to her graduation, telling her by telephone that the baby was sick. Gillian wanted to scream at him that his wife could take care of Brenda, that graduating from Howard was an honor, that she, Gillian, was his daughter, too. She wanted to tell him how proud she was to be at the top of her nursing class, how proud she would be if he would stand in the crowd and applaud her accomplishment. More than anything, Gillian wanted him to know all these things without her having to say a word. So she married Jeremiah at the courthouse and informed her father of her new name in a postcard sent from the road.

  Soon after graduation, the newlyweds moved back to Cleveland, Jeremiah’s hometown. They took their time finding jobs, living on his savings while they spent their days walking around the then-thriving downtown, fantasizing about their dream house and returning to the room they’d rented to make love on lazy summer afternoons. Gillian felt as if they were the only two people in the world. She believed there was nothing more important to Jeremiah than her happiness. He brought her breakfast in bed. He massaged her feet after their morning walks. He adored her. For the first time in her life, she was a queen.

  In gratitude, she made herself up every morning and made sure that Jeremiah never saw her looking anything but perfect. She wore heels and skirts, always the lady Jeremiah was proud to introduce to his city. She never questioned where Jeremiah went on some nights, how he got the money to buy the first liquor store, why he seemed to have so many secrets. Gillian had her own secrets, which she never considered sharing with her husband, so she could not begrudge him his.

  Within that first year, they bought a house, the same tall, narrow house where Gillian would live for the next fifty years. Gillian occupied herself with decorating, and when she got bored, she found a job as a nurse. Falling asleep at night, on the nights when Jeremiah slept next to her, Gillian believed she was happy.

  She remembered the exact moment when she knew the marriage wouldn’t last. It was 1958, and they’d been married two years. Jeremiah was just opening his third liquor store, and he wanted Gillian to stop working as a nurse to start a family.

  “Let’s have a baby,” he said over dinner one night, his voice casual and expectant.

  Gillian felt revulsion, and wondered what reaction she was supposed to have. She looked around her bright-yellow kitchen at the utensils in their clay containers and the copper pots hanging from the wrought iron rack she had special-ordered from Marshall Fields. She thought of the neat bedrooms, most of them set up for guests who never came, for family that never visited. She thought of the spacious dining room with its table for eight, twelve with the leaves. She thought of these things, and despite the space they called home, she knew there was no room for a baby.

  She was certain that she didn’t want to have children, because her research on her mother’s manic depression seemed to indicate that the disease was hereditary. Gillian believed she was fine, but she wasn’t sure she wouldn’t pass on her own mother’s craziness to an unsuspecting child. She had no intention of taking the chance.

  She pushed her plate away and decided it was time to tell Jeremiah one of her secrets. She told him the story of Marianne’s illness, the hospital, her suicide. She could not look at him while she spoke, feeling naked as she recited the facts of her mother’s weakness. While she talked, she pictured her mother as she was before the manic depression got the best of her, and the hollow nausea of grief was almost too much to bear.
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  Fighting back tears, because Gillian never cried, she shook her head and looked up. Jeremiah was finishing the last of his dinner, which meant that he had been eating the entire time she spoke. Anger began to fill the pit in Gillian’s stomach.

  “I grew up without any parents at all, and look how I turned out.” He said this with a smile that Gillian deemed condescending in its kindness. For the first time since she thought he had been shot, Gillian remembered why she had stayed away from Jeremiah for most of their college years.

  “Yes, look how you turned out.” Her voice dripped with sarcasm, which he chose to ignore. He picked food form his teeth with a toothpick. She watched him with growing malice.

  Look indeed, Gillian thought to herself. Jeremiah was already reverting to his old ways, flirting with women, even in front of his wife, and doing God-knows-what with them when she wasn’t around. After smelling strange perfume on his clothing for the umpteenth time, it had occurred to Gillian that Jeremiah might have never stopped seeing other women, however much he claimed to love his wife. She thought she could live with his affairs. What she couldn’t live with was the idea that he believed she didn’t know. And now he wanted her to get pregnant.

  If he had been in any way understanding about her reluctance, if he had acknowledged how painful it must have been, growing up with a mother like Marianne, she would have agreed to go along with his plans. But he broke the silence.

  “You’re lucky you had a mother at all.”

  He didn’t bother to take the toothpick from his mouth when he spoke. At that moment, Gillian knew it was over between her and Jeremiah.

  It took another year filled with fights and make-up sex before the official end arrived. In June of 1959, Gillian began feeling sick and cranky. She’d taken up smoking since she married Jeremiah, having discovered another vice besides her husband, but even the smell of her beloved cigarettes sickened her. When she went to the doctor, he told her to expect an addition to the family by February.

  Gillian did not know what to do. She’d heard of a doctor who took care of problems like these for women like Gillian, women who didn’t want a baby. Or she could give Jeremiah what he wanted, a child. A son. After weeks of consideration, she wasn’t sure whether she wanted the baby, but she was surer than ever that she did not want Jeremiah. One night in June, before Jeremiah suspected anything was amiss, Gillian pretended to have just found a love note in a woman’s handwriting in the pocket of one of Jeremiah’s sport jackets. In fact, it was one of many notes she collected from his laundry. She saved them all, not knowing why until that night, but this one number was interesting in that that woman had signed her full name, and she shared a last name with a prominent city councilman. A prominent white city councilman.

  Gillian yelled at Jeremiah, called him a cheating dog, and ordered him out of the house. Before he left, she mentioned the councilman’s name and told Jeremiah that unless he wanted that powerful man to find out what Jeremiah was up to with his wife, he should send Gillian enough money each month to keep her comfortable. She left the amount up to him, knowing that Jeremiah would send more than enough cash because he loved his business, and himself.

  She never spoke to Jeremiah again.

  She decided to keep the baby.

  Chapter 24

  “You’re not my type”

  I was riveted, but Aunt Gillian’s voice trailed off. She was tired and wanted to go to bed. It was already dusk, and we had been sitting outside for hours, me listening while she told me more about her and our family than I’d ever known. I helped her inside and got her settled. I went into the kitchen and poured a glass of wine. Then I called the phone number Marvin had given me. He didn’t answer, and I was relieved.

  “Marvin, it’s Tina. I’m afraid I need to cancel dinner tonight. Something came up, a family thing. Aunt Gillian is fine, but, well, this is something I need to take care of.”

  The doorbell rang. I looked down at myself, then at my watch. Marvin was early, and I was a mess in torn jeans and a sweatshirt. I considered pretending I wasn’t home, but then I figured I’d let Marvin see me and scare him off.

  He smiled wide when I opened the door, then handed me a bunch of calla lilies.

  “You look great. A little underdressed for what I had in mind, but still lovely.”

  I sighed and ushered him into the living room. I sat across from him.

  “I can’t go.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “Oh, come on. Why not?”

  I thought about Aunt Gillian’s story, about all that I’d learned, all the questions I still had. I had no intention of explaining it all to Marvin.

  “I’ve got some things I have to deal with.” I knew it was vague, but it was the best I could come up with on the spot.

  Marvin pasted a hangdog look on his face, one that I was certain was only semisincere. “If you don’t want to date me, just let me know. I’m a big boy. I can take it.”

  The look worked, even though I didn’t think Marvin would be devastated if we didn’t go out. He seemed like a man who was used to getting his way, especially with women, and I suspected that he would fight long and hard to get me to go out with him, not because he liked me that much, but because a rejection would mean a blow to his ego.

  But then I second-guessed myself. Maybe he really did like me. And it was rude of me to cancel a date just as he arrived at my door.

  “It’s not that. I just…hell, let’s just go. The other thing can wait—it has this long.”

  “What thing?” He looked confused.

  My family history. My entire life, and what felt like my future as well. How could you explain that to a virtual stranger?

  “Never mind.” I stood up and handed the flowers to Marvin. “Go put these in water while I change. There are vases in the cabinet next to the sink.”

  Sampson’s was a small Italian restaurant a few blocks away from the ocean on Palm Beach. The door was unmarked, and the uninitiated could spend hours trying to find it. But Sampson’s didn’t thrive on walk-in business; it was a cozy place that catered to a small group of regulars who loved simple pastas and fresh seafood without all the bustle of the city’s trendier eateries.

  The décor was elegant and straightforward. The owners had shunned the traditional reds for a palette of dark blues and grays, lending a sophisticated feel to the room. The tables were set with heavy linens and real silver. Candles in crystal chandeliers were the only source of light.

  Marvin was a gentleman, opening doors for me and complimenting me on the simple black sheath I’d worn. It was demure enough so he wouldn’t make any assumptions about dessert, but it showed off my new figure. Throughout dinner, I alternated between liking Marvin and loathing him. I liked that he ordered veal on my suggestion, that he listened to my opinion. I loathed the fact that he related every conversational thread back to his practice. Marvin could be funny and charming, laughing at my stories about teaching and staring into my eyes while I talked, making me feel as if I were the only other person in the room. But I caught him smoothing down his tie and adjusting his shirt while we ate, which meant that he was as vain as his appearance would suggest.

  Marvin was the kind of guy I had avoided in high school. They were handsome and cruel, never wavering in their sense of entitlement. I guess that was the type of confidence that came with growing up good-looking. I knew from being on the other side that people treated you differently when you were fat or ugly. The beautiful people got a pass that let them skate past many of life’s roadblocks, while those same obstacles seemed as if they were put in place to stop the rest of us from finding happiness.

  Actually, Marvin not only reminded me of the popular boys in high school, he also reminded me of Francisco Alexander, the bad poet and cheating boyfriend from Georgetown. Marvin had the same mild arrogance. I prayed he didn’t write poetry.

  Between bites, we played more of the get-to-know-you game. After our plates were taken away, we sat back in our seats. Marvin loo
ked at me, his smile secretive.

  “What are you grinning about?”

  “Was I grinning?”

  “Definitely.”

  “I was just thinking that you’re a lot more interesting than I thought you’d be.”

  “Why do your compliments always sound like insults?”

  He shrugged. “I call it like I see it.”

  No, I thought. Jack does that. You just say whatever you want because you can get away with it, and because you think you’re funny.

  We looked at each other for a moment.

  “You know, you’re sexy when you’re mad,” he said, leaning close enough so I could smell his expensive cologne.

  I smiled. “That’s better, I suppose, but still a kind of backhanded compliment.”

  He asked if I wanted dessert, but I declined.

  “I really need to get home to my aunt.” I didn’t. Elaine was there. But I did want to go home.

  Soon we were sitting in front of my house in Marvin’s Jaguar. I gathered my purse.

  “Tonight was nice.” I meant it. In a way, it had been nice to be with someone who didn’t know my history, who was different and separate from my life.

  He laughed. “You sound surprised. I’ll have you know that most women enjoy my company immensely.”

  I couldn’t tell whether he was joking. “You’re not my type.”

  He leaned back in his seat. “No? What’s your type? More literary? Certainly not someone who does boob jobs.”

  I nodded. “And you’re too pretty.”

  “Is that supposed to be a compliment?” he said, his expression sly.

  I held up a finger. “You’re also arrogant.”

  Marvin shrugged. “Guilty as charged.” He paused. “So. Can I come in? Or, we could go to my place. I don’t live far.”

  His smile was so hopeful that I couldn’t help but laugh. “You’re arrogant and presumptuous.”