Rowe swallowed his opinion of Kitt then since he could see that Leroy held her in some regard. It would be rude, he told himself, to explain to Leroy that he thought Kitt a potential albatross around Verdi’s neck. He just nodded and sipped his coffee and then stood and smiled and pulled out Hortense’s and Verdi’s seat when they returned to the table. But something about the way Leroy raised his eyebrows and seemed to study Rowe as he went into his subtle tirade against Johnson made Rowe squirm. Made him think that Leroy was trying to decide whether Rowe’s concern for his only child bordered on the inappropriate. So Rowe spent the dessert-and-coffee portion of the meal talking about Penda, chronicling the accomplishments of some of his other students who were also gems, analyzing the fallacies of the Black Power Movement, and Leroy seemed to loosen up toward him even as Rowe decided that he would retreat somewhat from getting involved in Verdi’s affairs, lest his purely altruistic motives be misconstrued.
Johnson was certainly glad he retreated. At times felt himself becoming obsessed with his dislike of the man. When he and Verdi would smoke marijuana through his oversized navy-blue bong pipe and go into their continuous floods of laughter at nothing and everything, just that they were young and high and in love, Johnson would turn his humor on Rowe, say something like, “He walks like he has a broomstick stuck up his ass, either that or like he’s trying not to shit on himself.” Or, “Why does he talk through his nose all nasal and shit like a white boy?” Or, “What’s up with the played-out, diamond-patterned sweater vests? What’s he got, stock in an argyle factory?”
It would disturb Johnson that Verdi would sometimes stop laughing, that a seriousness would edge across her face as if that seriousness was always present when it came to Rowe but just too bashful to reveal itself unless provoked by Johnson’s semivicious jabs at the man. And Verdi would say something like, “Johnson, that’s not nice, really. He’s a down brother, a very good brother. You just have to get to know him.”
Johnson would want to ask her then just how well did she know him anyhow? Did she know him more than as a professor, did she maybe know him as a man? He never did ask her such a thing though. Couldn’t unbridle such an insecurity for Verdi to see, that he felt threatened by the likes of Rowe, stalked by the image of how easily, naturally Verdi and Rowe entered each other’s presence.
Would use that insecurity though as an excuse, line it up with all the other excuses waiting patiently to be plucked to justify his using: he missed his brother who’d been killed; or the one in jail; or the one in San Diego; or his mother’s grief wasn’t thinning fast enough; or he’d failed a big exam; or Tower drank the last of the wine; or he was hassled by a racist cop; or Kitt and Posie weren’t at home; or Verdi didn’t laugh at his jokes about Rowe; or his stomach hurt; or the sun was in his eyes; or he woke up on an alternate day. Because now he had skidded to nodding on Bug’s couch as often as once a week. And though he’d cried like a baby and had gotten back into Kitt and Posie’s good graces after the day Posie slapped him, swore to them it had been only that once, that he was experimenting, that it would never ever happen again, and they agreed to keep silent about it to Verdi because they truly adored Johnson so, he was even jeopardizing their adoration. And he avoided them on his days when the pipe organ sang, and his mother, Tower and Cheryl, he avoided everybody except for Verdi. He just couldn’t be long away from Verdi.
Seven
Johnson got to Sage’s party first. Before Posie who had whisked Sage out of the house early and taken her to an Easter-egg hunt at church and then to Strawbridge’s to try to find an old-fashioned crinoline slip for Sage to wear under the dress she’d bought for her; before people on the block who didn’t want to be the first ones in so they were waiting until they saw some cars parked out front; even before Sage’s classmates who lived in all different parts of the city and had to suffer through the bump and grind of Easter Saturday traffic tie-ups wherever there was a mall. So Johnson was the first to ring the bell, the first to step into the scrubbed-clean ambience of Kitt’s enclosed porch, the first to smell cloves mixed with the sweet and salty aroma of baking ham, the first to hand Kitt a colorfully wrapped box for Sage, a tissue-wrapped bottle in a bag for Kitt, the first to grab her in a hug that was so generous in its unconditionality that he didn’t want to let go.
He did, though. They both let go as they stared at each other laughing excitedly, and then not knowing what to do with all the energy between them, all the years, they hugged again. Johnson kissed her cheek then. Told her how good she looked, tugged at her locks pushed back with a yellow-and-green-swirled headband. “Told you you were still political.” He laughed. “When a sister lets her hair lock she’s doing more than making a fashion statement.”
“Well what about you, Mr. Johnson? Let’s check you out. My, my, my, aren’t you the dapper one in your chenille sweater.” She took a pensive, analytical stance: hand on her chin, head tilted slightly, eyes squinted. “Let me see now, you still got the mustache, still got that little goatee, of course there’s much less hair, you didn’t get any taller, not much wider either, which is unusual for someone over fifty.”
“Fifty!” he blurted. “Watch yourself, Kitt, if you gonna make me over fifty, then that puts you up there too.”
“Okay, stay forty-one, Johnson. But I do have to give you the head-to-toe look-over. You pass, Johnson. Still our Johnson.”
“Well, speaking of passing tests, where’s Posie, and the birthday girl, where’s Sage?”
“Mama took her out to find her a slip. You know Mama and trying to dress people up, like the world’s gonna end if Sage doesn’t have the exact kind of slip under her dress.”
They just stood and looked at each other some more, smiled, and finally Kitt cleared her throat and pulled a bottle of sparkling cider from the bag handed her by Johnson. “Well, I’m just gonna crack this seal and pull out my best flutes and you and I shall toast to you being back in Philly, and back in our home.”
“That’s sweet of you, Kitt,” he said as he followed her into the dining room, and she held the bottle of sparkling cider up in front of her as if it were a trophy, he could see even from the back that she was grinning that ear-to-ear grin that she and her mother were famous for, and her cousin. He cleared his throat, didn’t want to think about her cousin right now.
The table was set with a yellow-and-green party cloth that matched the balloons bobbing along the ceiling and her headband and the blouse that she had on, opened as if it were a jacket, hiding the print of her hips. He’d always wondered why she always kept herself shielded under a long shirt, or wide jacket, or loose-fitting dress, built as she was. He’d asked her once. Drunk, and back in town after having been gone for two years and crying on Kitt’s shoulder because Verdi wouldn’t see him. And he had exasperated Kitt’s patience acting like a little puppy, which is what she’d told him, if he wasn’t lapping up that cheap wine like a thirsty puppy, and then shitting and pissing like some unhousebroken pet, maybe Verdi would at least meet him somewhere for coffee. And he was so intoxicated, so dented and bruised, that he grabbed Kitt around the collar of her shirt, told her that if she wasn’t always covering her ass up she’d have a steady man in her life. “Why you do that, Kitt? Why?” he’d asked with all the melodrama of one who’d gone a full liter of wine past the point when his vision and logic blurred. “You got a beautiful ass and you always hiding it like you ashamed of it or something. Stop doing it, Kitt. Please, please, stop hiding your beautiful ass.” He sobbed and shook and implored as if he were asking his mother not to die. Kitt pushed him away. Told him to leave her house right then and go somewhere and pray that he’d wake up the next morning with his memory erased. He did. At least he pretended that he’d forgotten. Called her the next morning and said that he had the taste for pancakes, why didn’t they get together at Broadway’s for breakfast. Met her hesitant tone with an apology for not stopping by there the night before. Said he must have passed out in his room because he’d come to a
round dawn dressed to go out but knew he hadn’t been anywhere. He had to pretend. No way would he have been to look at her again having treated her with such base disrespect.
She was handing him a flute filled with cider and they clinked glasses and sipped and smiled honest smiles.
“My God it’s so, so good to see you, Kitt,” he said as he drained his glass and she refilled it. “Makes it feel like I’m really visiting home seeing you.”
She asked then if he’d been back to the street where he’d grown up. Chancellor Street. And when he shook his head slowly, hunched his shoulders, and said that since his mother’s death, and the scattering of his homeboys from Yale to jail, there was no cause really for him to return.
She told him maybe it was for the best. If he was inclined to cry in his increasing years, he might cry if he rode through there now. “Block looks like a war zone,” she said.
“I see you not letting that happen on your block.”
“Oh hell no. Our block committee is strong, legal too, we can impose fines if someone’s hedges get out of control, or they go too many Saturdays without getting their asses out and sweeping in front of their doors, and don’t even let the exterior paint start chipping.”
“Kitt, I’m surprised at you. Didn’t you used to champion freedom from government intervention.”
“This isn’t the government, baby, this is communal, this is about a damned-near-perfect block determined to survive. Shit, if the government hadn’t hooked generation after generation on welfare, then cut them all off cold turkey without peripheral support like basic medical care, decent schools, an occasional cop to cruise through and at least pretend to be a deterrent to crime, you know, West Philly wouldn’t look nearly as bad as it does.”
“See you haven’t changed, still raising hell like you used to.” He laughed when he said it.
“And you have changed,” she said as she raised her glass in salute. “It’s all good too.” She wanted to tell him that she hoped Verdi could appreciate the changed him. But didn’t want to break it to him that she’d tricked Verdi there under the pretense of having ice cream and birthday cake in honor of Sage. Just a few of us, she’d told Verdi so that she wouldn’t get suspicious, just you and me and Sage and Mama, and Doreen and Nicole and Patrick from school she’d said, nonchalantly. And now she was getting fidgety over what she’d done. Suppose it backfired? Suppose Verdi did something utterly uncharacteristic like convince Rowe to come with her? Or suppose Verdi went so furious that she stormed out, that would damn near devastate Johnson. Now she felt sorry for Johnson standing there, grinning like a choirboy who hit the high note. She imagined how his face would look all contorted with hurt pride if Verdi did such a thing as storm out on him.
She took his empty glass and walked back into the kitchen. He followed her back and said, “Whoa,” when the yellow of the kitchen hit his eyes.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, it’s bright, I know,” she said, half laughing as she squeezed a drop of Joy dishwashing liquid into each glass and commenced washing them out. “Has that effect on everyone who steps in here for the first time. Specially my new customers, I got to hurry and get them into that back room where I do the massage therapy before they get tired of squinting and turn around and leave.”
“How’s that going?” he asked as he put his hand to the knob of her therapy room. “Can I peep in?”
“Sure thing, I’ll give you a guided tour.” She finished washing the glasses and laid them upside down on a dish towel to drain and Johnson opened the door to her therapy room and she walked in first.
“It’s small, really small,” she said as she clicked on the light.
“Not all that small,” he said as his eyes bounced around the room. “Nice color to these walls, really toned down after being in the kitchen.”
“Yeah, it’s like a mauve. Usually I’m not even a pink person, you know that’s more Mama, all lacy and feminine, but mauve has a lot of brown in it, and brown is stabilizing to the flightiness of pink and well, my customers seem to like it.”
“What’s not to like, looking at these walls, while your fingers hit all the tight spots?” he said, his eyes following Kitt’s fingers as she pointed around the room, first to the matching hurricane lamps on the sideboard against the wall that held folded towels and sheets.
“I usually have candles going,” she said instructively. “You know candles make a small room cozy and open it up at the same time, plus the way the flames dance makes for a dreamy effect, especially with what they do to shadows against the wall and all of that.”
“Mnh, vanilla,” Johnson said as he tilted his head and closed his eyes and took in the scent. And now Kitt was explaining how the different parts of the brain were affected by different aromas. “Vanilla is powerfully calming,” she said. And then she showed him her table, folded now, and explained how she’d leave a sheet at the foot of the table and walk out of the room while they changed. “I tell them that they can take off as much or as little as they like but that they should be covered up when I come back into the room. Some are incredibly shy, you’d be surprised,” she half laughed, “until I get going and then they’re tossing off the sheet pointing out the spots that need it most.”
“Oh, I can believe that,” Johnson said, and then went into an imitation in an exaggerated voice, “Oh Miss Kitt, I’m really tight right here, oh oh ah.”
Kitt laughed so hard she almost tripped over the specially designed chair, prompting Johnson to ask what the hell it was. “I know my girl don’t be doing no freaky stuff up in here.”
She laughed some more and then explained how the chair was configured so that they knelt into it if they were only getting a neck-and-back as opposed to stretching out on the table for a full-body. She got instructive again. Described the music she played while she worked. “I prefer jazz, but I’ll oblige their taste, so long as it’s not hard rock or something like that that would go against the grain of the mood.” Her words came in a rush and she flexed her fingers as if she were about to sink them into some needy back.
Johnson got serious too as he studied Kitt. How competent she appeared now as she pointed out the science behind this and the reasoning to that in the arrangement of her massage-therapy room. She was always smart, he thought, and focused, more focused than he’d ever been, more focused even than her cousin. He shrugged off thoughts of her cousin right now. “I’m proud of you, Kitt,” he said, his voice so clear, so absent its infamous joke-making chuckle that Kitt was momentarily startled. “You should have had the opportunities that a lot of us squandered, you know, you just should have.”
“Huh, where’d that come from?” she asked as she put the face rest back into the clamps of the folded massage table.
Johnson didn’t say anything, just stared at her with a look that was halfway between amazement and affection.
Kitt cleared her throat when she noticed Johnson’s eyes locked on her with such intensity. She felt suddenly cloaked in a shyness about being in this tight, vanilla-scented room with Johnson, and Johnson no longer tossing around one-liners to make her laugh. She cleared her throat again and then scratched the inside of her throat because it was really dry, really didn’t need clearing, needed some water instead, needed to douse the fire that was trying to edge up her throat. “I should make sure the party favors are in ample supply,” she said as she motioned toward the door.
“Good move,” Johnson said, laughing, his laugh forced this time. “’Cause if we stay in here much longer I’m just gonna have to come outta my shirt, Sister Kitt, you know, and you gonna have to demonstrate your technique and show as well as tell.” That was risky, he knew. Trying to make a joke out of something that he felt so intensely at this moment he couldn’t even look at her. He subverted the thought. Pressed it down with his thumb and didn’t even realize that he was pinching the skin on the heel of his palm until he was momentarily riveted by the pain.
They were back in the bright sun of the kitchen walls and V
erdi felt her extroversion reemerge. “Well, stay in town long enough and I might oblige,” she said as she reached behind him into her therapy room to click off the light, knowing with the honesty with which she knew most things that Johnson’s back was off-limits, she knew him too well. Much too well.
And since they were in the kitchen now, and their closeness had space to spread out and thin and blur against the yellow walls and become nonthreatening again, just an innocent affection between friends, Johnson was able to ask if there was a special man in her life.
“No.” She said it with finality, thinking now about Bruce, the new client with the wide back who Posie had been trying to persuade her to agree to date. She’d refused his advances again the night before when he called to make another appointment. She’d been denying to herself though how the man had nudged open that flap she kept securely covering that part of herself reserved for romance. Plus she didn’t like the idea that her mother was pushing her so, couldn’t stand seeing someone else’s hands stirring around in the brew, mixing ingredients before their time. Almost gasped when she thought this as she looked at Johnson’s face and realized with a searing illumination that her efforts to put Johnson and Verdi together might be mixing wrong too, putting together flavors that shouldn’t even be in the same pot.
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