Blues Dancing

by Diane McKinney-Whetstone

  She had a heavy voice; he’d always disliked her voice especially when she was angry; it was so throaty and erratic, screeching without warning. Even when they were together he used to try to close his ear to the sound of it when she put it in full throttle like now; the sound was more biting than the words. Except that the word she’d just flung at him about being controlling did bite. Though he’d never believed himself to be any more controlling than the typical responsible man who loved a woman and wanted to keep her safe, he was aware of significant feelings of consternation that seeped through the tight reins he kept on his emotional well-being when his attempts at influencing Verdi failed; such attempts rarely failed; they had today. He thought about Verdi right now, upstairs getting dressed to go spend time with that cousin of hers, Kitt, at her child’s birthday party. He wanted to get back into the house now before Verdi left, knew that Verdi would leave through the back door if she looked out and saw Penda boiling over; he’d really only run outside to check the odometer on his car thinking that he would at least insist that Verdi take his car though she hated to drive. Checking the odometer was a habit with him if there was a chance Verdi might be out with his car, something he’d been doing since they first started seeing each other and Verdi was just coming out of the fog of addiction and he’d needed to monitor her every action if he was going to be able to save her, now he did it purely out of habit, just to confirm her honesty rather than catch her lying. He had just written today’s mileage on a sheet of tablet paper and folded it into his pants pocket and was headed back in when he met Penda head-on and then the rush of this current onslaught.

  “The property’s not being sold right now, Penda.” His voice was so measured and self-assured despite the fire in his chest. “And I’m not going to continue in this hysterical public display you’re making.” He almost called her a retro flower child, since he’d heard that she’d been spending time with some washed-out avant-garde jazz saxophonist, and according to one of his post-docs she was actually considering packing up and moving to Northern California in some kind of communal living arrangement. Rowe almost reminded her that this was the nineties, not the sixties. He held back though, bit the inside of his jaw he held back with such intensity. He’d only be miring himself in an even more heated argument and Verdi might leave in the meantime. “We can go over this in a more civilized and conducive venue,” he said instead. “Later, next week, please, Penda, please.”

  His prescriptive and modulated voice was lost on Penda’s back as she waved her suede-gloved hand at him as if she were shooing a fly and walked away threatening to force a sale legally. He went back into his house, closed the door with a relatively mild slam considering that he’d wanted to bang it shut.

  Verdi was already in their main room dressed for going out, her tan leather jacket already on, her purse over her shoulder. She wore green velvet leggings, a white turtleneck, the four-hundred-and-fifty-dollar Ralph Lauren boots he’d picked out for her at Nordstrom’s. She’d gotten her perm relaxer touched up that morning, her ends clipped; her hair was so straight and tapered, the sides meeting her cheekbones in points, a subtle feathering to the bangs. He loved how slim and sophisticated she looked, how desirable, how young. He hated that she wasn’t going out with him right now, maybe to some breezily elegant brunch spot.

  She smiled at him as she picked her keys up from the mantelpiece, slipped them into the generous pocket of her leather jacket. “I’ll be back later on in the evening,” she said as she looked at herself in the mirror over the mantel and dabbed her finger to her tongue and smoothed her eyebrows down. “Maybe seven or so. Plans for dinner?”

  “No. No plans. I’ll wait for you,” he said as he stood in the archway between the foyer and their main room with his hands in his pants pockets. His jaw was sore from where he’d just bit it and he rubbed it with his tongue.

  “No, don’t wait, babes, I’m sure Kitt will have a huge spread.”

  He grunted then. “Greasy nigger food,” he said through the soreness in his mouth, whispered it really.

  Verdi pretended not to hear as she leaned down to adjust her bootstrap, though the words went right to her chest, hurt her feelings that he would say such a thing, angered her.

  He was sorry he’d said it when he saw how her face tightened. Had promised himself he was going to try to accept her relationship with her cousin since it obviously wasn’t going away. “That wasn’t a nice thing to say.” He hit his hands playfully. “Bad boy, Rowe, why’d you insult that pretty lady?”

  “Probably because that’s how you feel.” She didn’t try to keep the ice from her voice.

  “Verdi, sweetheart, I never mean to use my, you know, not liking your cousin as a weapon against you. Honestly.”

  Verdi was unmoved. She just stood there staring at him, feeling as if she wanted to cry, but with a defiance.

  Rowe’s jaw was really throbbing now, and he couldn’t figure out Verdi’s look. This was a new look, not really anger, not really hurt, much more direct than was typical for her. “Why don’t you take my car,” he said casually; though he’d wanted to insist on it, he said it now just to redirect the course of the conversation.

  “Mnh, no thanks.” She loosened the threaded strips of leather to her pouch-styled purse and dug inside. “I need to run in town first to pick up Sage’s gift, and darn, I’m out of tokens too.”

  “Why don’t you just go to the King of Prussia Mall and pick her up something there. I could drive you if you don’t feel like driving yourself.” He shifted his back against the archway post. He could feel the ridges in the wood molding pressing against his back.

  “No way, Rowe!” She almost shouted, thinking how she was looking forward to the bus ride this Saturday afternoon, that the bus ride would be a relief, relief from what she wasn’t sure, this house? Him? She just knew that she’d been feeling constrained lately, corseted in an ambivalent way as if she were too flabby and wearing a girdle for support, neatness, but itching to peel the tight rubber away from her skin to just let it hang out for a while. “Do you realize the circus that mall will be on Easter Saturday! No thank you. Really. Plus I already have the gift picked out. A talking crayon set, they’re holding it for me at Imagioneering.”

  “Talking crayon set?” he asked. He took his hands from his pants pocket and folded his arms across his chest.

  “Mn-mnh. The most innovative thing,” she said as she felt a brightness at the thought of Sage slice through her agitation at Rowe. “You pick up a crayon and it says its color, spells its color, names common objects that are that color. Sage will just love it. I can’t wait to see her face when she opens it. You know the auditory emphasis I think is what’s going to do it for her finally, you know, get her to talk. And she has like this, I don’t know, this almost spiritual connection with colors, anyhow it’s just the most appropriate thing for her, I’m so excited.”

  Rowe could see her excitement, felt it as a wave of jealousy that her excitement was directed at something other than him. He went to her and pulled her to him, gave her a peck on the lips. “I’m sure she’ll appreciate it; she’s very fortunate to have you in her life. So am I.” He gave her a more substantial openmouthed kiss, then even started to rub himself against her.

  She squirmed and pulled back to look at him. Almost ready to ask him what his problem was. Why he would try to get them both all aroused when she was on her way out of the door. Her face did ask it.

  “Naughty me,” he said, and held his hands up in mock surrender. “You just look so refined, so beautiful, and I just hate the thought of you in those badlands after dark; please tell me you won’t stay long.”

  “Rowe, it’s West Philly, we could darn near throw a stone from here to there, so I wish that you wouldn’t call it the badlands.”

  “Well, it’s not like your cousin will have the sense to insist that you get started back home before dark.”

  “I’m not arguing with you about this,” she said as she jingled her k
eys in her pocket. She was sorry she’d told him the truth about where she was going, but this was Sage’s birthday party, she wasn’t about to sneak to the party of the child she loved as much as if she’d birthed her herself.

  “Don’t argue, Pet, just tell me you’ll be back before dark.”

  This was the second time in as many weeks that he’d called her Pet and she couldn’t figure out why he was reaching back in his memory for some twenty-year-old nickname that was almost insulting now that she was forty. Plus it reminded her too much of a time when her mistakes circled her like black-hooded she-devils laughing and pointing and closing in on her without mercy. She let it go for now, she was too preoccupied with imagining Sage’s delight when she picked up the talking crayons. “I mean I’ll try to get back before dark,” she said as she put her purse back over her shoulder. “But I can’t guarantee it. What’s it, almost two, the party starts at three-thirty, so I’ll stay till five-thirty, depending on the cab service it could be dark, could be light, I’m not going to box myself in like that Rowe, please don’t ask me to. I mean if you’re that worried, you could come with me.” She held her breath after she said it, Kitt would threaten to fight her if she brought Rowe over there for Sage’s birthday party of all events. And in their forty years, Kitt had never threatened to fight her.

  “I wouldn’t dignify that woman’s house with my presence,” he said. “That woman with her welfare mentality—”

  “Fine,” Verdi cut him off without even raising her voice. “I invited you and you declined. I’m certainly not going to listen to you berate my cousin. I’m going.” She turned quickly and left the room.

  She didn’t storm out, didn’t mutter out some sarcasm-tinged words, didn’t stop and stash and put her hands on her hips, roll her neck around, call him a motherfucker or at least an asshole. She just turned quickly, quietly, and left the room. Her footfalls were muffled on the carpeted stairway, and he wouldn’t have even known she’d stepped into the outside until he heard her turn the dead bolt to lock the door behind her. That bothered him most of all, that she could leave so quietly. What else might she do so quietly, not calling attention to herself, looking so sophisticated and young?

  The heater clicked on and the house hummed and sighed and he thought about how he would occupy himself this afternoon. Midterms to grade, journal drafts needing his peer review, a talk to prepare for the opening of a new traveling exhibit at the university museum. He went into the dining room and poured himself a dram of brandy. He dipped his finger in the glass and sucked the brown liquid from his finger and massaged the inside of his jaw that he’d bit when he restrained himself with Penda. The brandy burned his jaw but he just held his finger there sucking on his finger as if it were a red-and-white peppermint stick. Now he turned the glass up to his mouth and sipped the brandy. He held each sip in his mouth awhile before he swallowed, swished it around to dull the throbbing in his jaw. He thought about Verdi as he slowly consumed the now fine-tasting liquor, out there all alone, riding buses with indigents, talking and laughing with God knows who likely to show up at her cousin’s. She enjoyed it, he thought. Always had a side to her that resisted the idyllic lifestyle she’d been born into, too willing to wallow with those not her kind based on some notion of kinship, or because they were nice. Huh, she should have been born into a backwoods-shack existence like he’d been, then she’d redefine what nice meant, and family, he thought. He’d tell her how family could hold her back if she really wanted to know, how his family tried to keep him right there with them because he was another strong back to help with the sharecropping that barely kept enough food in their mouths for a good belch. Looked at him as if he’d deserted them when he ran away to join the armed forces so that he could go to college on the GI Bill. He’d always thought that Kitt had ways similar to his older sister, the one who spit in his face when he told her that he was getting as far away from their brand of poverty as he could before it got on his skin and stained him indelibly like it already had done to her. He could tell Verdi some truths about family all right. But he couldn’t tell Verdi, couldn’t share that part of his past with anyone, not even Penda knew how much he despised being from Tunica County in Mississippi, one of the poorest in the country, because he always joked and shifted into a barrage of the-town-where-I-was-born-is-so-small jokes whenever his birthplace came up. Put Verdi off when she’d ask when was he going to take her to meet his people, he’d disassociated himself years ago, a clean break that he had neither desire nor inclination to repair.

  He tilted his head back and drained the glass of brandy and thought about the last time he had visited that place where he was born—he refused to call it home—where black people picked cotton or worked in the catfish factories. It was for his mother’s funeral and he’d dreaded going because he and Verdi had just moved in together and she was still so weak and tenuous in her resolve to stop using. He went to his mother’s funeral though, more because it was the mature, civilized thing to do than to honor any familiar bonds. He was properly mocked and cursed out by his sisters and cousins and aunts and uncles and got a glimpse of what a hell his life would have been if he’d never broken out. He decided then that not only would he never return, he would never openly acknowledge that place as being a part of his history.

  He went into the kitchen and washed out his brandy glass, dried it, took it back into the dining room, and set it on the tray on the sideboard. He went into the bedroom ready to settle in the chaise and start working through his tasks. He would start with the museum talk, get the least favorite out of the way, then move on to the midterms if there was time before Verdi got back and they went out for dinner. He had to break the midterms up anyhow, could only do one or two at a time before he started to question his value as a purveyor of knowledge. She was usually apologetic when she admitted to visiting her cousin. Admitted. He’d gone on and thought the word. Knew one couldn’t admit unless one has also lied. What if Verdi was lying to him, what if this whole business about going to a birthday party was a cartload of bullshit? She’d certainly left out of there glowing to be spending the afternoon with a houseful of challenged kids. And since he’d opened the window on this train of thought, he was sure that convoluted massage scenario from the other night was a made-up tale. Suddenly he felt the need to get out too. Go for a ride himself. Maybe allow his car to drift toward Sansom Street. Kitt’s street. He’d put a couple of hours in on the work he needed to do, then he’d go get in his car, take in a change of scenery, get from under his own skin for a while.

  Rowe always sensed that Verdi’s association with Johnson would bring her down. Had tried to talk Penda into mentoring her. But Penda’s stance was that one had to show a willingness to be mentored, that she wasn’t of the mind of forcing herself on her students in a helping capacity. And Rowe decided that he would, in a sense, force his help on Verdi.

  Verdi was coming up on the end of her second year, was living in the high-rise dormitory apartments and this year she did have a roommate. Charity, at least that’s the name she’d given herself, a puffy-haired Woodstock-clichéd, peace-and-love-spewing flower child who smelled perpetually of frangipane and made clanking sounds when she walked because of all the beads and bangles she wore. She was true to her name though, lavishly charitable to Verdi, especially with her pipe that was always stuffed with good weed. She was also polite, respectful of Verdi’s space, offering to leave the tiny living room when Johnson came to stay over even though Verdi insisted not, since at least they had separate bedrooms though the walls were paper thin. And Verdi actually grew to appreciate Charity’s presence in the high-rise dorm with the pint-sized kitchen that Charity also kept well stocked with fruity wine. Plus Verdi also found Charity and her hippie friends entertaining when they’d crowd into the apartment and smoke and drink and drop acid and trip off of some situation comedy like I Love Lucy reruns.

  Though this one night, Verdi was particularly restless, a restlessness she felt all the way to her fee
t that were cold even under the wool sweatsocks she wore. Johnson was late yet again. She’d taken an extra-long shower and creamed her skin with a peach-scented lotion because peach was his favorite fruit, and poured herself into her tightest hip-huggers because she loved the hungry expression that came up on his face when he looked at her in those jeans, she’d put Vaseline to her lips so they’d be velvet when he finally got there to kiss her. And each time there was a knock on the door she was sure it was Johnson, wasn’t him though as she’d listen to Charity let in friend after friend of her own. And by the time she went out into the living room it was packed with Charity’s friends and she felt such a letdown that she called Kitt to see if she’d heard from Johnson, that Johnson said he was stopping by there to bring down some of Kitt’s prizewinning chicken and dumplings. Had he? she asked Kitt. And Kitt told her that Johnson had, that he’d left though, that he’d seemed not to be feeling well, that Posie noticed it too, that she wanted to talk to her about Johnson and his general state of well-being next time she came over, when was she coming over? Kitt asked, concern pushing from her mouth into Verdi’s ear, swimming around in Verdi’s ear even before her words registered. And Verdi’s restlessness ballooned into a stifling dread over the thought of something being wrong with her Johnson. She couldn’t even begin to ingest the seed of such a thing. Would tilt her equilibrium and have her spinning like a music-box ballerina gone out of control. She shook off the dread like she’d shaken it off when Moose told her a similar thing, shook it off with an agitation at the one expressing the concern. Said, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, Kitt, whatever, someone’s at the door, I got to go.” She hung the phone up then on Kitt, rationalized away the worry in Kitt’s words as just her cousin’s overly obsessive concern for people she held most dear.