Leaving Cecil Street

by Diane McKinney-Whetstone

  She pushed in through the vestibule door and into the living room. The living room smelled sweet, like her mother’s Sachet of Roses perfume. The Temptations’ In a Mellow Mood fizzed softly from the stereo console. They were singing “With These Hands” as Shay called through the house for her mother. “Mommy, Mommy, I need to talk to you,” she said. “Mommy, I have to ask you something important.”

  “Don’t Mommy me,” Louise said, coming out of the kitchen. Her face was tight and the bones in her slender neck were sticking out. “Don’t you dare Mommy me.”

  “What did I do?” Shay said, retreating inside at the anger shooting from her mother’s face, hiding all that was pretty about it.

  “You left the washer filled with your wet clothes, for starters,” Louise barked.

  “Oops, sorry—”

  “And you made eggs and didn’t even have the decency to soak the pan.”

  “I was gonna as soon as I got back—”

  “And you didn’t feed the cat.”

  “Oh yes I did, I did feed the cat. I fed the cat this afternoon right before I even went out.”

  “Well, why did he come to the front door crying, he never comes to the front. When I went out into the yard his bowl was completely empty.”

  “I fed the cat, Mom, don’t tell me that I didn’t feed the cat.”

  “When I filled the bowl, he went at that bowl like he hadn’t eaten in a week.”

  “I said I fed the damn cat.”

  “Who are you using profanity at?” Louise said, coming toward Shay.

  Shay wished for her father right now. He had a knack of walking into the middle of an argument between Shay and Louise and with a simple remark or two having them either laughing or instead of going at each other, pitting them both against him. Now the realization pounded her over the head. Her father wasn’t home yet. She looked around the living room, the unopened bottle of wine on her mother’s good silver tray with two empty wineglasses. Her mother in her silky green robe, her hair so black and freshly pressed twisted in a French roll. Her lipstick red and new. Three hours since she’d seen her father on Sixty-ninth Street. And he hated Sixty-ninth Street. Where the fuck was he? she wondered now. She was seeing again the way he’d smiled at Valadean, the way Valadean had smiled back, her teeth so big and pretty. She was angry with him for not being home yet. Angry with Louise for slamming the window on her need to talk. Angry with Neet for convincing her that her father should get the benefit of the doubt. What kind of judgment did Neet have anyhow, Neet didn’t have judgment enough to keep from getting pregnant. She was looking at her mother now. She wished her mother would stop glaring at her like that, she looked like a dog foaming at the mouth. No wonder her father could smile with such open ease at Valadean if this was the face Louise presented when he came home.

  “Gosh,” Shay said, fighting tears. “I came home really needing to talk to you and you coming at me like a fucking wild woman.”

  “If I have to tell you one more time about your language,” Louise threatened, moving in closer to Shay with her hand opened, ready to go for Shay’s mouth.

  “Leave me alone.” Now Shay was crying. “Just leave me alone and go get your teeth fixed.” She ran up the steps then. Stormed into her bedroom and slammed the door behind her.

  JOE AND VALADEAN ended up at a small club on the north side where Joe didn’t know anyone, and more important, where no one knew him. The club was perfect: so packed and so dark; a nice quartet doing its thing and he and Valadean had to sit so very close. An old cat was on vocals and his voice was so smooth that it melted the air in here. Joe was getting a fine buzz from the Bombay gin and tonic water and he was listening so intently as the old cat sang “Embrace Me.” More from instinct than deliberation his fingers went to the space at the back of Valadean’s neck. She leaned her neck forward to make it easy. Joe was thinking what he would tell Louise if he was spotted right now, that he’d just popped in there for a drink and hung around for the set, is what he’d tell her. Didn’t even realize who in the hell he was sitting next to as dark and crowded as it was in there, he’d insist, he’d just squeezed in right along with everyone else. And then he even started to think about what he would say to his wife if he just went ahead and hung out with Valadean tonight, not too late, just until ten or eleven.

  Nothing outrageous either, find another bar where they could sit at a table and face each other, look at her perfect smile and squeeze her fingertips, talk a little jive, tell her the effect she was having on him, and he was, after all, a married man. Follow her cue from there.

  He leaned in closer and whispered in her ear that she was such a lovely, lovely lady. “Just lovely,” he said. He didn’t even consider the rightness or wrongness of his actions as he slipped his hand under her hot pink loose cotton top and rode his fingers up and down her spine. The skin that he caressed ever so lightly was soft and tight, with a hint of an oily wetness to it, and he imagined that’s how she would feel all over. “Mnh, Valadean,” he whispered. “I hope you wouldn’t think I was jiving you if I said that in all of my eighteen years of marriage I have never met a woman who I’d risk it for. But damn, girl, you risky business, you know that.”

  She sipped her wine. They were sitting so close that he could smell the Bordeaux as she brought her glass down, a perfect lip print on its rim. The tenor sax was soloing now, the notes he blew out swirled around Joe, turning the texture of the melting air in here to cream. This was too large an enticement. A man shouldn’t be enticed to this degree. The music and the gin and the creamy air, the oily wetness of the skin on Valadean’s back and her lip print on the glass. Her lips moving now, calling him Jo-wo, growing his name until his name was about to burst. Much too much for a man to have on him, he thought as he decided on the Red Moon on Westminster Avenue. Clean and affordable rooms there. He leaned in and brushed Valadean’s beautiful lips with his own. Her lips were as soft as they looked, and parted easily for him too, just like he knew they would.

  JOE WALKED HOME by himself. He put Valadean in a cab after they left the Red Moon Hotel. He needed to walk off the effects of her, the essence of her womanhood that hung over him fat and heavy, like pea-soup fog. The scent of her Avon perfume and Afro Sheen hairspray had been powerful and he hoped he’d rid himself of it with the sliver of packaged soap in the shower stall. Though all the soap in the city couldn’t combine to wash away the memory of the air in the club, thick with whiskey and cigarette smoke and aging men’s desires. He felt guilty and sorry right now. Guilty that he’d strayed, sorry that he was a married man anyhow. And sad. Felt the intensity of sadness that he’d felt when he’d put the mouthpiece of his horn between his lips last night. All the breaths he’d wasted over the years talking shit about nothing. Breaths that should have been transformed through his horn, the nothingness of air made into beautiful music. The nothingness of his life given a fine purpose in the notes he blew. He wanted now to resurrect those dead breaths, call them back to life one at a time beginning with the last time he’d played. But that was too big a want, an unhaveable want. So he felt justified now in allowing himself a smaller want. Valadean. She was a minuscule want in comparison to having his breaths back. She was here and now and easy and soft. She was doable, with no history. A willing distraction that he didn’t even have to work for. Just take her to a cheap hotel and say distract me, baby, make me forget that I was once young, with dreams.

  By the time he got to Cecil Street he had justified his guilt all the way to the edges of his conscious mind. Filled in the spaces left by his retreating guilt with the knowledge that he wasn’t going to leave, no intention of breaking up his home, of hurting his wife and daughter. He forced himself to whistle as he stepped into the vestibule and fixed his face for the lie he would tell. Stopped at Tim’s for a cut and ended up in Pinochle Eddie’s basement caught in a marathon of a tournament. He wouldn’t have to worry about Louise checking up on him, that had never been her style. Louise had class, he thought as h
e pushed open the door into the living room.

  She was sitting on the couch, her hair pinned up the way he liked it, dressed in the emerald green silky robe he’d given her for her birthday. He tried not to notice the wine on the tray, the two glasses, the opened hi-fi. High fidelity, isn’t that what hi-fi stood for, he asked himself now even as he tried not to remember that she generally didn’t turn it on. Her perfume was heavy through the room and he knew how methodical she was, knew she had worked to create this romantic mood. She was looking straight at him with that hard, cold stare she could give so effectively. He wished her stare wasn’t so chilling. Wished she hadn’t looked at him like that the night he’d played his horn in ’54 when all of Cecil Street went wild because his playing had been so ferocious. He went to her now and kissed her cheek. Said, “Whew, sorry I’m late, baby. Got caught in a never-ending game in Eddie’s basement.”

  Louise didn’t challenge his explanation of the pinochle game. Knew for a fact that he’d been caught in games like that before. Plus, he appeared so calm as he stood over her. She looked straight into his calmness, at the bright light it generated that had the effect of high beams in her face, blinding her to the heavy bag he dragged into the house that contained the truth of his whereabouts. She got up from the couch and turned off the hi-fi and went upstairs. She shook herself from the robe and dressed her nakedness in cotton pajamas and got under the covers. By the time Joe came upstairs and got into bed, the bag he’d dragged into the house had expanded and took up the space between them. It was like a mountain in the bed between them.

  Chapter 6

  THAT MONDAY LOUISE had her first tooth pulled. A doctor at work referred her to his brother-in-law, a dentist who saw Louise that afternoon. She shook almost convulsively going into the office, she was so nervous, but determined to go through with it anyhow. Shay had been right the other night when she’d yelled at her to get her teeth fixed. Denying herself denied everyone who loved her, she’d realized then. Shay had come down a few minutes after her outburst, her cheeks puffy with air, and apologized. She’d stood in the middle of the floor and just said, “Sorry, Mommy,” over and over and Louise had opened her arms for Shay and patted her back and hoped that whatever else Shay was crying about was dissolving in her tears. Certainly more than sorrow about her outburst since Shay’s outbursts were as common as the hydrant on the corner being turned on without a permit. She’d patted Shay’s back and didn’t pry otherwise about what had Shay crying so hard. She reminded herself that by the time she was Shay’s age, seventeen, she’d already gone seven years without a loving mother to pat her back when she cried.

  She was bursting with pride now that she’d pushed herself finally through the trauma of walking into the dentist’s office. Did it on her strength though Nathina had offered her Valium. She had the tooth wrapped in gauze and she stood in the middle of the living room holding it up as if she was Wilma Rudolph bringing home the gold.

  Joe was at the kitchen table reading his Evening Bulletin. Shay was in her room. She had found it difficult to tolerate her father’s presence since Saturday evening when she’d seen him on the el platform with Valadean. She was listening to Billie Holiday sing “Willow Weep for Me.” Accepted even as she listened that this was an old person’s song. She should be popping her fingers to Sly or at least James Brown right now. But she was anxious and the song calmed her down. Tomorrow was the day for Neet’s abortion. She’d talked Sondra into persuading her mother, BB, into moving up Neet’s procedure. She was afraid that Neet would change her mind if she had to wait until Saturday. Now she was afraid generally. Afraid that something might go wrong; afraid about the aftermath, how Neet would be emotionally if she really, really wanted a baby now, the emptiness she’d most likely feel. Just plain afraid right now, so the song that was too old for her calmed her down. She switched the record player off at the sound of Louise’s voice and went downstairs.

  “Look at the size of that root,” Louise said, beaming as she held the tooth up to the afternoon sun pushing in through her window shears. She tried not to spit as she talked because the hole in her mouth was packed with cotton and her lips were swollen and in that uncomfortable place between numb and feeling.

  “How many total you got to lose?” Joe asked, thinking that he could already see her face starting to sag, especially the way she was standing in the light, the light magnified things so.

  “Well, he’s gonna pull a couple each time I go. But he just wanted to start with one today—”

  “How many total?” Joe asked again, trying not to look at the blood-encrusted thing she held up as if it were her firstborn.

  “Just sixteen,” she said matter-of-factly.

  “Just sixteen!” Both Shay and Joe said it at the same time. Shay told her that the tooth was disgusting could she please put it away and Joe asked her if she was sure she wanted to go through with it.

  “Sure? What do you mean, am I sure? Why wouldn’t I be sure?” She dabbed at the side of her mouth to catch the drainage. “What am I supposed to do, walk around with a bunch of rotten teeth in my head and watch you work a room grinning like a Cheshire cat with your perfect-ass smile?”

  Joe blew out a sigh and said, “Look, I hope you not doing this for me, Louise. Hell, I’ve had teeth pulled before and that shit ain’t no joke.”

  “Did it hurt, Mommy?” Shay asked, switching loyalties the way she usually did when they argued.

  “No, not really,” Louise said, cupping her hand under her mouth. “The worst part was the needle.”

  “Needle?”

  “Yeah, a needle to freeze my gum, you know, to numb it.”

  “Whew,” Joe said, blowing out another long breath of air. “No, that’s not the worst part, Shay. The worst part is when the effects of that needle wear off. Later on tonight her gums gonna be throbbing so bad where that hole is—”

  “Shut up.” Louise cut him off, shouting in spite of the semi-numbness and the feeling in the side of her mouth that a dam was about to break. “If you can’t give me some encouragement, just shut the hell up.”

  “I just think you need to be realistic about what you doing.”

  “Well, it sounded fine to you the other night when I mentioned it, why didn’t you say all of this when I first told you this is what I was going to do?”

  “But I didn’t know he had to pull sixteen teeth. Sixteen, damn. That’s half your mouth, Louise.” He shook his head back and forth. “Can’t they just fill ’em and, you know, cap ’em or whatever?”

  “That is a lot a teeth, Mommy.”

  “No, that’s a lot of years of neglecting myself. I didn’t grow up like you did, Shay, twice a year at the dentist without fail. My only sister had to scrape and scuffle after our mother died just to keep me in decent clothes, and to keep a roof over our heads, a dentist was a luxury when I grew up. Furthermore, they say having children is the worst thing for a woman’s teeth, leaches all the calcium right out of them.”

  “Cut the martyrdom crap, Louise.” Now Joe was shouting too. “Don’t do that, don’t try to make Shay feel responsible for the condition of your mouth. That calcium-leaching business is bullshit anyhow. I know women who had ten kids and still got perfect teeth.”

  “Well, of course you would.”

  “And furthermore, you grew up better than anybody I know.”

  “Look, all I’m saying is that I took a big step today to do this, and I was proud of myself because it’s something I’ve been afraid to do. And if you two can’t be at least a little sensitive, then just leave me the hell alone.”

  “Mommy, um, there’s, like, blood dripping out of your mouth,” Shay said.

  Louise ran into the kitchen and spit into the sink. She was crying in the sink because now her gum was starting to throb and she really didn’t know if she could go through all that it would take to have the teeth pulled, to adjust to dentures, to restore her smile to the way it used to be. She used to be able to take over a room with her smile.
And now not just her smile had lost its appeal but everything about her presence that had once seemed so vibrant and energetic, so young. It was once common for the male patients to joke around with her: Louise, I promise I’ll take my medicine if I can have a date with you when I’m out of here, they might say. Or even just the reaction to her from all types of men, the way they’d suddenly pull in their stomachs, or otherwise correct their posture when she approached, or bestow a level of attention on her, rush to offer a pen, or seat, or cigarette. Or the slackened jaw when some of them took her presence in, the glint in the eye from others, the “mnh” disguised in a cleared throat, all of which made her feel so desirable. There it was, she hated to admit it, such a trite, and superficial, notion. This was the sixties after all and women were finding their voices en masse and coming to the recognition that their species was also one of substance, that womanhood had to do with so much more than bearing children and pleasing a man. And here she was crying and spitting into her kitchen sink because she was no longer experiencing those cues that told her that she was pleasing to a man. Her sister, Maggie, had warned her that this would happen. She’d begged Louise not to rush into marrying Joe. Told Louise that she was such an odd kind of beauty and she should take advantage of it while she was young, meet a man this month who’d take her to Coney Island, next month to Hollywood, someone to buy her a fur for Christmas, another to buy her a sapphire for Valentine’s Day. There would be time to fall in love, to settle down in the by-and-by, but her look did something to a man so she should use it to her advantage while she was young, while she could. Because guaranteed, the attention would stop one day, so she should create memories that she could curl up with, and if she was also surrounded with palpable things accumulated during those times, well, the more the better. Louise would laugh at her sister and say, Maggie, you’ll turn me into a whore. Maggie’s response was always, You show me a woman, I’ll show you a whore. Joe was nice enough, Maggie would try to persuade Louise, but he was so ordinary. “You deserve extraordinary.” But she hadn’t been able to talk Louise out of marrying Joe.