by Unknown
He and Sophie had a pizza at the Medici, once a sad coffee house with bohemian pretensions located further down the street. Now it was lively and full of affluent students. Sophie was quiet, unusual for her since she was young enough to find restaurants exciting. He asked about her day camp, and she said it was okay. He asked if she liked Mrs Peterson, the cleaner who looked after Sophie when Anna worked a full day, and again, she said she was okay. Would she like it if they went to the dunes house the following weekend? Okay. As he waved to the waiter for the bill, he wondered what was on her mind.
Sophie finished her Sprite with a final gurgle, then took the straw out of her mouth. ‘Who’s Philip?’ she asked, and wouldn’t look Robert in the eye.
‘Philip? I know a couple of them. Maybe Mummy’s boss? Why?’
‘Just wondered.’ The waiter brought the bill and Robert pretended to study it as he watched Sophie out of the corner of her eye. She had her eyes fixed on her empty glass and was swinging her legs under the table. He waited until she said, ‘I heard Mom talking on the phone.’
‘To someone named Philip?’ he asked, taking his wallet out of his jacket.
‘Yes. I heard her say, “Oh, hello Philip.”’ Sophie did a very good imitation of her mother’s English tones.
‘Yeah, well, he’s her boss. He’s allowed to phone.’
Sophie paid no attention. ‘And then I heard Mom say, “I’m flattered.”’
Flattered? Why flattered? He didn’t want to hear any more, but he knew Sophie needed to tell him. I mustn’t react, he thought, though he felt anxiety and dread, as if a hoodlum had joined them at the table. ‘He was probably praising Mom for her work. She’s very good at her job.’
‘Mom said, “I’m flattered but you know my situ-ation.” Then she saw me and she said, “I’ve got to go,” and she hung up real fast.’
‘Well,’ he said slowly, as images he didn’t want to have raced through his head, ‘I think Philip would like Mom to spend more time at the office than she does.’
Sophie looked unconvinced. ‘He called her on a Saturday.’
Why did she have to be so quick? ‘I wouldn’t worry about it, you know,’ he said, and gave her a reassuring tap on the forearm. He didn’t think he could sit there calmly any longer, so he left money on the little plastic tray – far too much money, the waitress would think he was crazy or in love with her. He stood up and said, ‘Come on.’
He was intent now on distracting Sophie, worried that on their walk back to the car she would want to ask more questions about ‘Philip’, or worse, provide more revelations. He tried to tell himself he was being stupid. Could Anna really be interested in this man? Would she contemplate an affair – as in new city, new job, so new lover too? He didn’t want to think so, though it was clear her boss was keen on Anna. Why not? he thought, briefly cruising a wave of self-pity, I’m just an old has-been with a cloud over my head.
Relief came with anger. He thought, If that prick calls her again on a Saturday I hope I get to answer the phone. He laughed as he remembered his brother Mike’s reaction when a fellow officer had made a pass at Mike’s wife: ‘I hit him so hard he didn’t get up.’ A simple enough solution, and Mike had spent enough hours teaching him how to fight. But if he did do something stupid, what satisfaction it would give Latanya Darling. ‘See,’ she’d say jubilantly, ‘I told you so.’
At the corner the news-stand had been replaced by a coin-operated machine full of copies of the New York Times. He pointed down Kenwood Avenue and its big houses and tall, shady trees towards his old school. ‘This is the way I walked home from school.’
‘You walked home by yourself?’
‘Not when I was little. Vanetta used to wait for me right here. Sometimes Duval would be with her.’
‘Who’s Duval? Mom mentioned him on the phone, too.’
‘To Philip?’ he asked in alarm.
‘No. I don’t know who she was talking to. Maybe you.’
He shook his head.
Sophie said, ‘Can I see where you lived back then?’
‘There’s not much to see. And it’s a bit of a walk.’
‘It can’t be that far if you walked home when you were little.’
‘You should be a lawyer, too,’ he said, starting down 57th Street.
Sophie seemed happier now, taking his hand again for a bit, then skipping with excitement, as they got closer to his old apartment block. They came to it from behind, where he tried the back gate, but it was locked. Frustrated he gave it a rattling shake, then heard footsteps on the other side. The gate swung suddenly open.
‘Can I help you?’ The voice was aggressive and belonged to a young woman, crisp-faced with short straight brown hair, wearing jeans and a man’s shirt. She seemed keyed up.
‘I’m so sorry. I grew up here. I was just going to show my daughter.’ He waved vaguely towards the yard on the other side of the gate.
She shook her head uncomprehendingly. ‘Did someone famous live here once? I mean, like Barack Obama?’
Robert laughed. ‘Don’t think so. There was a senator named Paul Douglas – he had his mailing address here, but I never saw him.’
She was looking at Sophie. ‘You might as well come in,’ she said. They walked along the paving stones until he was in the back yard again, trying to understand what had changed. Something had.
The black iron fire escape that ran like snakes and ladders up the back of the building had been painted a dark green that did nothing to diminish its skeletal starkness. The charcoal-coloured brick needed repointing, and in the yard itself the lawn was high and unmarked as virgin pasture – no kids must play here these days. Along its edge, a shallow flower bed ran the length of the adjacent wall of the old Christian Science church, studded with grisly marigolds.
The woman hovered behind them, as he pointed out to Sophie the windows of the bedroom he and Mike shared. There was something sad about the place. He had expected the site of so many memories to turn out to be smaller, though not so drab, almost grim. Yet that wasn’t the difference he sensed.
‘There’s been this other guy around,’ said the woman. ‘I don’t think he lived here though.’ Behind the sharpness to her voice, Robert detected unease, even fear.
‘What did he look like?’
‘Tall. About your age.’ She hesitated. ‘He was African-American. If I see him again, I’m going to call the police.’
‘Don’t do that. I’m pretty sure I know who it is. He used to play here when he was a kid. With me,’ he added, hoping this would reassure the woman. She looked doubtful. ‘Honest, he’s harmless.’ He turned towards her, ready to do more persuading.
She said, ‘He keeps going on about some tree that used to be here. It doesn’t make any sense.’
And then Robert understood what had really changed. He looked at the back corner of the yard, near the high wall; here the grass hadn’t taken. ‘When did they cut it down?’
The woman looked at Robert, clearly wondering if he were crazy, too. ‘Cut what down?’ she demanded.
VI
HE WISHED IT would stop raining. Spring seemed to be coming at last, yet now he couldn’t go outside. The winter had been long and lethal, a succession of snowstorms and freezing cold. After the first big drop of snow in January, he and Duval had rushed outside and made an enormous snowman, with stones for eyes and a carrot for his nose. It was speckled with grime in two days, and the snow on the ground soon turned crusty and hard, losing all its moisture – no matter how hard you tried to make snowballs, they collapsed into dusty powder. The severe cold made it impossible to stay outside for long – when he and Duval came in, their fingers could barely unsnap the buckles on their rubber boots.
During the previous spring, he’d groaned each afternoon when he saw Duval standing across from Steinways, waiting with Vanetta. He remembered his promise to Vanetta, but he didn’t like it. Yet even on the days when Duval was there, Vanetta had the knack of making Bobby feel special. She st
ill called him ‘my baby’, and though he was growing fast, she’d hug him and squeeze his shoulders, until he’d laugh and back away. ‘You too big for a hug?’ she’d say mock-wistfully, and he’d shake his head, then lay it on her breast just like he did when he was little.
Slowly he got used to Duval, and he understood that something else was going on that explained Duval’s presence. He had overheard his father talking to Vanetta, when they must have thought he couldn’t hear. ‘I’m glad it’s working out okay – it’s good for them both to have someone their own age to play with. I just hope your girl can make a go of it.’
‘She’s clean right now, Mr Danziger. She has been for eight months now.’
‘Glad to hear it,’ his father said, and then they talked about the vacuum cleaner and whether they needed a new one right now.
But in the autumn something had changed.
‘Baby,’ said Vanetta to Duval one afternoon, ‘you’re coming home with me tonight.’
‘Yes, Vanetta,’ is all he said, without asking any questions.
Later, back in the bedroom as they were setting up soldiers, Bobby asked, ‘Why are you going to Vanetta’s? Is your mom sick?’
‘I don’t know what she is,’ said Duval.
‘Why not? She’s your mom.’
‘Sometimes she is and sometimes she’s not. With her it ain’t a regular thing.’
Right now watching the April drizzle, Bobby yearned to be outside. Life in the apartment was cramped. It had eight rooms, but there were only two he was always allowed in – the bedroom in the back he shared with Mike, and the kitchen, where Vanetta was ensconced from four o’clock until she left for the night with Duval.
Duval was friendly, cheerful and he didn’t seem to have a temper – which Bobby knew was not the case with himself. Most important, he seemed happy to do whatever Bobby wanted – ‘Okay,’ he’d say to almost any suggestion. That was the problem – sometimes Bobby didn’t really want to do anything but curl up with a book. But Duval didn’t like to read – ‘I gets too much of that in school,’ he said. If Bobby lay on his bed with a book, Duval would watch the old black-and-white TV, then after a while Vanetta would come back and switch it off. ‘You watched enough now,’ she’d say to her grandson. Which would leave Duval with absolutely nothing to do. If he went up to the kitchen Vanetta would send him back – ‘to play’. And Bobby would sigh then, put his book down and try to think of something they could do.
There were only so many games they could play. Board games grew boring, and make-believe wore thin. They’d take a blanket and fold it up, then one of them would tuck three dozen plastic soldiers in its fold, defending a mountain pass, like the Germans fighting in Italy in the history book Bobby had read. The resulting game could easily take until it was time for Duval to go home with Vanetta. But if you played it every day, it got dull.
Though now at least there was music.
Theirs was not a musical family. There was a piano in the living room which Lily played dutifully in preparation for her weekly lesson; no one else touched it. His father had the radio on when he made breakfast – WMAQ, where show tunes and crooners from what seemed to Bobby a Neolithic era alternated with the traffic reports and weather forecast. And Vanetta listened to the radio too – WVON, the Voice of the Negro – as she ironed in the kitchen, humming to the songs. Once when her heroine Aretha Franklin got played, she burst into song herself, singing along to ‘Do Right Woman’, then laughing when she saw Bobby staring at her in amazement.
Then Mike got a new record player for Christmas. He had been a Beach Boys fan, once attending a concert at McCormick Place; for the first time their father let him take the car. Lately, he had been buying harder-sounding stuff, the Rolling Stones in particular; he played ‘Sympathy for the Devil’ over and over, until Bobby begged him to stop.
But Duval inspected Mike’s collection of LPs with disbelief. ‘Where are the 45s?’ he asked.
‘Mike doesn’t buy those. He says they’re a waste of money.’
‘Yeah, but where’s the real stuff, man?’ He had started lately to call Bobby ‘man’, which to Bobby seemed grown-up and cool.
‘What real stuff?’
‘You know, the Temptations, Marvin Gaye, the Four Tops. I don’t see none of that here.’
And the next time he came to play he brought a dozen 45s in his school bag, a green book bag Bobby had been glad to give him now that his father had bought him a satchel case. He put a record on and the room filled with a slow deep beat. Duval turned up the sound. Fortunately only Vanetta was home.
It was ‘What Becomes of the Broken Hearted’, familiar-sounding from the radio. But the actual record sounded different, almost as if the singer was in the room with them. It was beautiful.
He saw that Duval was singing along, and then to his astonishment he realised that the pure voice he’d been marvelling at was Duval’s. His friend was simply amazing: he had a rich melodic voice that didn’t seem to belong to his little boy’s body. When the scratchy needle dug into the vinyl grooves, the slightly buck-toothed geeky guy was transformed, as he shed all his inhibitions and lost himself in the music.
When the record ended Duval smiled shyly. ‘That’s Jimmy Ruffin. Good, ain’t it?’
He had to say something. ‘You can really sing, Duval. You’re great.’
Duval shook his head modestly. ‘You should hear my cousin Jermaine. Now that is singing.’
One Wednesday when they met across from Steinways as usual, they didn’t head for the apartment but instead got in Vanetta’s car. ‘Are we going to your place?’ asked Bobby as they drove west out of the neighbourhood, through Washington Park and along Garfield Avenue.
‘Nope,’ said Vanetta. ‘It’s a surprise.’ And for a moment Bobby fantasised that he and Duval were being kidnapped, taken by Vanetta away . . . to where? Mississippi, of course, and he wondered what it would really be like, since he was of an age now to know intuitively that dreams did not always correspond to fact. Maybe the farm wouldn’t have all that Vanetta said it did, yet he was sure there would be the small pond where Vanetta said they’d swum as kids, and the watermelon patch and a peach tree, too. And even though he knew deep down that a grandmother couldn’t really be kidnapping her grandson, he continued to fantasise that they were on the way to Mississippi until Vanetta pulled up sharply in front of a vast old building of brown stone with a sharp pitched roof and a wooden bell tower that needed painting.
‘This is our church,’ Vanetta explained as they got out of the car and went inside. She led them into an enormous room which looked like a dilapidated assembly hall in a school. Rows of chairs sat in lines on the hardwood floor instead of pews, and although the windows were tall and thin, none of them held stained glass. There was an altar of sorts, tucked at the back of a large, projecting stage, where people were now congregating. A few were as young as Duval, but most were teenagers or young adults, with a handful of older people. Gradually they assembled into two outward-facing semicircles, one male and one female, and the lone figure of the choir leader stood facing them, his back to the audience.
‘Go on, boy,’ Vanetta said to Duval now. ‘Get on up there. We late enough as it is.’
When the rehearsal began Bobby and Vanetta sat down on two of the chairs. The singing began with several old Negro spirituals, including a solo by a pretty girl with bad teeth who hit the highest note spot on. Vanetta leaned over and whispered, ‘She sang with Mahalia Jackson last year downtown.’
‘Oh,’ he said, trying to sound impressed, though he didn’t know who Mahalia Jackson was. After the spirituals came hymns, of the staider sort he’d heard before on the rare occasions he went to church – usually Rockefeller Chapel at the university, when his father roped them all in for service on Christmas Eve and Easter morning. The rhythms seemed looser here, the range of the voices greater. When a skinny boy stepped forward to sing a solo, Vanetta nudged Bobby. ‘That’s Jermaine, Duval’s cousin. Listen to him now
.’
And he had a sweet alto voice that projected well. Bobby wondered if Duval would have a solo, too, and was disappointed when he remained in the chorus. It wasn’t fair, thought Bobby, since he knew how well his friend could sing. Didn’t people understand? It didn’t seem right. He told Vanetta they should let Duval sing, and she squeezed his shoulder. ‘He’s good, but lots of them can sing real good too. You just prejudiced on account he’s your friend.’
The choir stopped then for a while, as the choir leader talked them through their performance. Vanetta got up and led them to a back corner of the room where two trestle tables had been set up, with paper tablecloths. Six or seven older ladies were putting platters and bowls of food out, and there were paper plates and plastic cutlery. An enormous tin coffee receptacle sat at one end, four stacks of foam cups next to it.
The women all greeted Vanetta warmly – ‘Hey, V!’ and ‘How’s it going, baby?’. Feeling shy, he tried to hide behind her.
‘Come on out here, Bobby, and show yo’ face.’ Vanetta sounded different here, her voice more thickly Southern, and black. He let her take his arm and lead him out. ‘This here’s Bobby,’ she declared. ‘Ain’t my baby cute?’
‘Your baby?’ one of the woman said, snorting. ‘I ain’t seen any white boys in your family before. There some secrets you been keeping from me, sister?’
Someone else snickered, and Vanetta turned towards her. Her teeth were clenched, and her soft jaw jutted angrily. For a moment, Bobby thought she was going to lose her temper, just as she had on 63rd Street, but she managed to control herself, and her features grew more composed. ‘Ain’t no secrets, Wanda, as you well know. Let’s be nice now, we’re in church.’