Gumbo

by E. Lynn Harris

  Jackie leaned onto the back of a patio chair. “I saw y'all on TV the other day.”

  “Who?”

  “You and your wife and your little boy.”

  “He's not little anymore.”

  “I know that. Tell your wife that's the Manning I need to be having an affair with.”

  I had to laugh at that.

  “I was watching this show about celebrities before they were celebrities and they showed an old TV show where you and your wife and your little boy were singing Christmas carols with some white lady.”

  I nodded. “Marlo Thomas,” I said. “She had a Christmas special years ago. That was James' first public appearance.”

  “Y'all looked so happy,” Jackie said. “Like a perfect little family.”

  “Yes,” I said. “We did. We were.”

  “Which is why you need to go and tell that lady in there that she's beautiful. She wants somebody to tell her. Unless you waiting for one of those rappers to tell her.” She pushed herself up from the chair and brushed off the back of her tiny apple-green dress. “That's all I got to say about that. Now I'm going back to the party. You coming?”

  “I'm coming.”

  Toward the end of the evening, with twenty or so drunken dancers gripping each other in the center of the dance floor, Reuben Mays, James' agent, raised his gin into the air and began to recite Shakespeare, Lady Macbeth at Dunsinore, in garishly drunken tones. I picked up my own drink and looked around for Gail, who wasn't entwined with a partner on the floor. James, snuggled up to his latest flame, an Asian man he'd met in college, said he hadn't seen her. Mays was still warbling as I went down the three steps towards the kitchen. The last of the catering staff was struggling out with two huge bowls. Agatha stood, holding the back door for them, a stern territorial grimace tickling the edges of her lips.

  “Good riddance,” she said, slamming the door.

  “I'm looking for Gail,” I told her. Agatha seemed to ignore me. “Did you hear me, Agatha?”

  “Upstairs.”

  I passed three people leaving as I fumbled my way up the stairs toward the bedrooms. In ours, on the bed, on the Mexican print James had given us last year, was Gail, in the arms of a tall, famous balladeer she represented. I watched them watch me before I turned and left the room.

  I found Jackie downstairs in the foyer, draping herself in a big green poncho. Her sly eyes questioned me before she said a word.

  “You tell her?”

  “I told her,” I said.

  “See, man? That's all a woman wants to hear sometime. Just wanna know her man thinks she's the best-looking chick at the party.” She pushed me playfully with her shoulder. “You seen the world. You know that. Now that you told her? You take your behind right on up those stairs and you show her she's the most beautiful woman at the party.”

  “Take a bow, Jackie.”

  “I know, I know. I'm leaving.”

  After everyone was gone, Gail said we didn't match anymore. “You're old and you're tired and you're bored, Dennis. You know what? I'm glad you caught me. You let yourself get kicked off the show because you refuse to change,” she said. She pressed her lips together; fastened her gaze on some point directly above my head. “When we got married, I was still Little Miss Harlem, carrying around those silly blue ribbons from fashion shows, and tap-dancing behind you on the Ed Sullivan Show. You were doing your thing—”

  “We were partners—”

  “—now I'm doing mine and you just don't seem to be following. We don't match, Dennis. I'm going up and you're going down and I just can't accept that. I can't. I suggested you do a guest shot on James' soap. You turned that down. They wanted you—James wanted you—and you turned it down. I don't know what you want to do, Dennis. Sleep all day?” I didn't argue with her. Her speech sounded so rehearsed, I wanted to hear the climax and denouement.

  “I guess,” she said, as if on cue, “you're happy with your little barber who calls you nicknames.”

  “Jackie only cuts my hair. You know that Gail. We go to basketball games.”

  “I'm sure.”

  “Don't make your guilt into my guilt.” I didn't know what else to say to her. So I said, “I love you Gail.”

  “It's not there anymore, Dennis. We just don't match.”

  How completely blissful it is to love a person who doesn't love you anymore. The drink flows; the possible onset of depression lifts you into a netherworld of fantastically ugly, bourbon-soaked reveries of revenge, and the lonesomeness created by betrayal seems to be a dangerous, inviting playground. Such thoughts occupy me as I search for a parking space along Ninth Street, passing young people and old who I believe to be happily entrenched in twosomes, untouched by the blemish of hidden romantic deeds done on the beds they shared with their partners. And, I say, as my son opens the door to his apartment, “How completely blissful it is to love a person who doesn't love you anymore.”

  I haven't been here since I started hanging out with Jackie. I haven't been here since James tried to warn me that his mother wanted to leave me.

  “Mom's not here yet,” he says, stepping aside, his head cocked to one side as I head over to the bar. “What did you say when I opened the door?”

  “Never mind.”

  “Whatever. Nice haircut, Dad.” There's something in his voice, if not his words, something sly and mean and haughty. But I can't be completely mad at his condescension, and for a moment I wonder if that's something Gail and I taught him. His eyes are blurry and I can smell vodka on his breath, though I'm not completely sure it's not my breath bouncing back off of him and ricocheting back to me.

  We don't say much to each other as we wait for his mother to arrive. I look out the window, watching couples pass by. Soon I see Gail getting out of a sleek black Lincoln Town Car. My dream was incorrect. She hasn't taken the train, she's beaten the lack of chivalry, courtesy of one of the record companies that keep her in business.

  James goes to the door when the bell rings. “Hey, Mom. Dad's already here.”

  “I'm starving,” she says. “Where should we cat?” I can smell alcohol on Gail as well. It seems we all need to get drunk to spend any time together, just the three of us with no revelers to share in, to experience, the raging success of the Manning Family.

  We go to the Front Row, a trendy little Italian boite on Sixth Avenue. James chats with an actress friend two tables away. Gail goes to the ladies room to fix her face. I sit at the table and smile back at the stares we get. When James and Gail join me at the table, we share a bottle of wine and small talk, like it's finger food to be picked over before the main dish arrives. All the while we are watched by patrons at other tables. One woman exclaims, “That's him, Jim,” and runs over to our table, flinging a napkin down. “I love you, Radcliffe. You are my favorite. I swear.” James signs his name on the napkin. “I swear,” the woman yells to others as her husband escorts her out, “that boy is my absolute favorite.”

  We tell him as the waiter puts the clam sauce on the table between Gail and James. “I'm leaving your father,” Gail says in careful, modulated tones, as if she's saying “I'm taking on a new client.” But not for another man, she tells James. “Things are just different now.” An astounding performance, this is. My son's performance is on par with his mother's. He stares at me as if he's seeing me for the first time, as if I'm someone he's only seen on TV who's come to life before him, just as people in the restaurant stare at him.

  Gail says to James, “Your father has a crush on his barber.”

  And there it is. Her trump. I lost my job and now I'm cheating with my barber. I've given up my fame card and I'm dating a barber more than half my age.

  “How old is he?” James asks.

  At first I think James is asking about me.

  I say, “Don't be absurd, Gail. She's James' age.”

  “My age?” James starts to laugh, loudly. He sets his wine glass on the table as he controls himself.

  “And she has
a nickname for him,” Gail says, laughing now as well.

  “A nickname?” James asks.

  “She calls me Nissy,” I tell him.

  “Nissy?” he asks, as if he doesn't understand, as if spitting it out will lay the word on the table for us to decipher, like one of those extra-large family puzzles we used to do together on vacation.

  “Short for Dennis,” I say, smiling.

  “Nissy?” James says it again. I notice that the sound of his laughter has grown louder as people at other tables turn to see what the celebrity is laughing at. “Oh, Dad.” His words sound as if they're on display, as if this is some variety show and he's projecting to the balcony. I get it now. We're on stage. “Nissy? You let her call you Nissy?”

  “I do,” I tell him. “And she loves to dance.” And suddenly I'm laughing as well, partner to my own abuse. Taking one for the family.

  “You let Mom divorce you and you let your barber call you Nissy? Oh, Dad. Oh. Dad . . .”

  Gail shakes with laughter, her hand on her stomach, the barrette bouncing as she moves forward and back. “Nissy,” she repeats. “And she just loves to dance.”

  Soon, we're all at it, hitting the table for dramatic emphasis, inviting onlookers to share in our fun. “Nissy.” I'm shouting now. “She calls me fucking Nissy.”

  “Oh, Dad . . .”

  James looks wonderful in his denim shirt. His mother's almond-shaped eyes and my checkbones and chin combine to give his face a regal, dancing quality. But at that moment, the planes of his handsome face contorted in laughter, he has become a fine and heartbreaking mirror in which I can see all the gray hair that I no longer camouflage with black dye. I see the paunch and the wrinkles that lost me my job. I see the glassy eyes of a drinker whose wife considers him as good as dead. I see me, and realize that this dinner is a success because I feel overwhelmingly happy at the sight of all those flaws I haven't patched up. I feel like dancing.

  And in my laughter, through the tears that I know are there, I try to imagine Dennis, a grown boy called Nissy, and Jackie, the unnamed costar in this family drama, dancing down Exceptional Boulevard. But here I am now in the middle of The Front Row, lifting my young almond-eyed son and pulling my youthful wife onto the table, breathing in the scenty hint of illacs, dancing a group solo to the strains of arch violins in the restaurant pavilion, then falling, to the floor, like a heavy brocade curtain, yes, indeed, falling.

  Love

  BY BERTICE BERRY

  The sweet sounds of Maxwell played softly. I walked in the room and wanted to cry. I was tired, both physically and spiritually. Success is draining. Most folks looking at it from the outside can only see what they call glamour.

  I made my way over to the CD player and pushed the volume button to the max. I don't drink, so I needed more Maxwell. The soulful sounds dulled the pain, at least for the moment.

  I imagined myself in the younger man's audience, and noticed that even in my imagination, I was the oldest person in the room. For years my biological clock had been ticking, but because of my success and the use of new technology, it had been digital, so I couldn't hear it. But now, it was flashing midnight.

  I watched the imaginary “other women” in my fantasy as they strolled about in anticipation that Maxwell would notice them. “Desperation is the world's worst perfume,” I thought to myself. Maxwell entered the audience, and walked over to me. “Just a while longer baby,” he sang for me alone. He moved in close enough to cause the other imaginary folks to disappear, and just as his wild mane of hair brushed across my eyelashes, the telephone rang.

  “Peace,” I said, not meaning it.

  “Hey baby. What's that loud noise I hear? Are you having a party or something?” My mother's voice was as familiar to me as my own. I could read her like a book. I could tell that things were not good, because of the effort she was putting forth at sounding happy. “Hey Mom what's wrong?”

  “What makes you think something's wrong? Maybe I'm just calling to say hi, or that I love you. Did you ever think of that?”, she demanded.

  “You're right, Mom,” I offered. I knew better, but I dared not show it. My mother had a way of making me feel guilty for the things that happened to her as a child. She was even better with events after my birth.

  To make matters worse, or better, depending on which side she stood on at that moment, my mother and I had what some might call a psychic bond. I could tell when things were going wrong with her, and she with me. The only difference was in how we received the message. For me it was just a feelling. Something like a shadow would cover my mood whenever my mother experienced pain or sadness. My mother received her intuitions in a much more dramatic fashion; the big toe on her left foot would throb. I don't know if she ever had these feelings for my other six brothers and sisters, and I never bothered to ask. I was too afraid she would share the graphic details of all the places on her body that ached or throbbed when one of her children was in need.

  “Well, I might as well tell you, cause I know you, you'll find out sooner or later. Can't keep anything from you. I never have been able to from the time you could talk, and probably before that as far as I know. God only knows what you were thinking before you could talk. Cause you know you were born with a veil, a head full of hair and a couple of teeth . . .” My mother talked on and I allowed it. As she chattered away, I reduced the volume of my now dissipated imaginary boyfriend.

  “What happened to the music?” My mother asked. “That was starting to sound good. Sort of like a young Al Green. Lord, me and your Aunt T, bless her soul, used to love some Al Green.” My mind flashed back to the two of them at Aunt T's dinning room table. They would get as drunk as the proverbial skunk, and Al Green's voice would croon as loud as my music had earlier.

  “Sing it to me Al, yes, yes, yes, yes. God knows that man knows how to make me feel.” Aunt T and mom would listen to the same song over and over. “Love and Happiness” was their song.

  “Make you wanna do right, make you wanna do wrong. God knows you know all bout that, girl,” Aunt T would say. My cousin and I would laugh, not understanding the pain that sat around that table.

  After years of my own struggles and loneliness I had learned a few things. “You there?” I heard my mother ask. “Lord chile, I hate these new phones. Don't ever work right. I told you I should have kept my phone with the rotary. Those were some good phones. But no, you want to bring me into the future. What for? Wasn't nothing wrong with my phone. I had that phone for bout twenty-five years. This new thing aint even a year old, and it already don't work. You there? hello?” “I'm here Mommy,” I told her. “I was just listening.”

  “No you wasn't,” she informed me. “You were daydreaming again, weren't you? Lord chile, you got some kind of imagination. I used to get all kinds of calls from your teachers. ‘She won't pay attention, she has an over active imagination.' If it wasn't one thing, it was something else.”

  I'd heard all of this before, but if I said that, my mother would hang up.

  But not before telling me that I was sassing her, and that I thought I was too important to talk to my mother. And after all she had done for me and the other ungratefuls, as she often referred to us.

  “Mom, I was daydreaming,” I relinquished. “I just thinking about you and Aunt T. You two sure did love Al Green. You used to play the same songs over and over again.” My mother laughed the way she always did right before she corrected me about something I thought I was sure of.

  “We didn't love Al Green. True, we liked his voice, but it wasn't the man we played over and over again, it was what he was talking about. That man was a little too far on the funny side for me. But he could sing. Yes he could. I don't know what he's up to now. Every other day, he done found God, like God was lost or something. Anyway, I'm glad you think of Aunt T from time to time. That means you need some love in your life. Your Aunt T was the most loving woman God ever made, not counting me of course.” She laughed her, now-you-know-I'm-lying laug
h. “Aunt T could smile at vinegar and turn it into syrup. Never said a mean thing about nobody. If you cut her that woman would bleed love.”

  My mother got quiet and I knew that she was crying silently. Aunt T had done just that. Her husband of thirty years had been cheating on her from the moment they first married. One day when Aunt T got up the nerve to ask him about it, he turned crazy, as my mother called it. Uncle Charlie went into the kitchen, right past that dining room table where she and my mother had listened to AL Green, got the largest butcher knife he could find and stabbed her twenty-two times. Throughout her attack, Aunt T told Uncle Charlie that she still loved him, and there wasn't nothing that he could do about it. I try not to think of Aunt T.

  “You keep on thinking about her,” my mother said, confirming the connection between us. “She sure did love you, too. Besides,” my mother said, sniffing, “When you think of her, you keeping her alive. She comes to you cause you need love. And before you try to get all intelligent on me, you need to go on and admit that I'm telling you the truth.”

  She was telling the truth, but I had no intention of admitting it.

  By now, though, you know I didn't need to.

  My mother dropped the subject just as easily as she had picked it up.

  “Well,” she said after what was for her a lengthy pause, “I should probably be asking you what's wrong. But that's not why I called. When you want to talk, you call me on your dime.”

  Her last comment was as absurd as most of the things that seemed to flow from her mouth. I had been paying most of my mother's bills for most of my adult life. My dime was her dime. But it never really needed to be said. I paid her bills along with my own, as if they were bills I had made. My mother was even more conscientious of my money than I was. If ever there were a need for more than the usual bills and the monthly amount that was deposited into her account, she would call. She never asked for money; she would simply talk in her, I-need-money-but-I'm-not-going-to-say-so tone.

  “Life can be cruel. You know I don't like to bother you. God knows you got enough on your hands. Even without children, I know you got a lot on you.” Whenever she did this, I wanted to use the line she had used on my siblings and me years before: “Signifying is worse than stealing, Mommy.” I could hear myself say, but I never did. If I had, she would not be trying to have a conversation with me today. It was fine for me to think mad thoughts, but better not to say them.