by Unknown
Ladies? Robert was momentarily alarmed that Duval was referring to Anna and Sophie. Then he realised what Duval meant – it simply hadn’t occurred to Robert before that Duval would want to meet women. He found the idea uncomfortable.
‘How’s your week been?’ he asked.
‘Not too good. I thought I had me a date – someone I met, through Jermaine and his wife at their church. We was going to go to a movie.’ He paused and shook his head. ‘Then she found out where I’ve been.’
‘Maybe you should try another church,’ suggested Robert, trying to keep things light.
‘I am,’ said Duval with a small laugh. ‘I been once or twice to the Church of Saints. You remember that one?’
‘Where Vanetta used to take us?’
‘That’s right. Back when she lived on Prairie. It’s still rough round there, but the church is going strong. And none of them knows who I am.’ He sounded relieved. ‘Though people always wants to know what you do for a living, and where you living – it’s kind of hard to explain what I’m doing there when I live way south. People are nosy, you know.’
‘Yeah.’ Robert pointed at the thermos Duval held on his lap. ‘What you got there?’
‘I brought me some soup.’
‘You didn’t have to bring that. I’ll feed you, Duval. After all, I got to eat too.’
They drove in silence as they moved past Stony Island and onto the thin ascending ramp of the Skyway, climbing slowly at the southernmost tip of the city. He could see the Sky Bridge ahead of them, and found his reflexive tensing begin. He needed to make conversation to take his mind off the impending sharp ascent, the looming feeling of weightless height, the slight panic that worsened when there were no distractions. ‘Who was that on Jermaine’s porch?’
‘That’s Lemar. Jermaine’s boy.’
‘I’ve seen him before,’ he said softly, waiting to see what Duval thought of him.
‘Well, then you know he is one bitter young man.’
‘What’s he bitter about?’ Duval was the one with the right to be bitter.
‘You tell me. The world. The big wide world.’
‘Wide? Or white?’
Duval smiled at the word play. ‘Yeah, that too. He’s got it into his head that his hands are tied behind his back, all on account of his being black.’
‘What do you think, Duval?’
‘It ain’t no help, Bobby, it ain’t no help at all. But no point going on about it. Everybody says it’s better than it used to be.’ He sounded doubtful himself. ‘Jermaine doesn’t know how to handle him. He said Vanetta used to chew him out when he went on like that. “Boy, ain’t no good blamin’ everything on the white man. You got opportunities.”’
‘Vanetta never liked anyone to feel sorry for themselves.’
But Duval didn’t seem to hear him. ‘They wouldn’t let me go to her funeral.’
‘I know.’
‘How?’ He was suddenly suspicious.
‘I was at the funeral, Duval.’
‘I thought you was living in England then.’
‘I flew back for it.’
Duval nodded, but he was more concerned with his own grievance. ‘They said if it had been my mother or father, then they might have considered it. Grandmother, no. I told ’em I’d never had a father, and my mother wasn’t worth shit – Vanetta was my mother as far as I was concerned.’
Me too, thought Robert, but it wasn’t something he felt entitled to say. He suddenly realised they were past the apex of the Sky Bridge, and saw that Duval was taking in the view. He himself relaxed, contemplating the downward slope of the road, thinking also of the one time he had met Lemar.
X
HE’D FLOWN IN the day before the funeral, through an ice storm over Canada which tossed the 747 like a penny arcade’s bucking bronco. They landed in the dark; outside the terminal Robert waited half an hour for a taxi, staring dumbly at the frozen slush and the dirty snow banks – par for the course in February.
He stayed at the Middleton, a small hotel where his grandfather had lived when Robert’s grandmother had gone into a nursing home. Then more shabby than genteel, it had been recently renovated, and was also expensive, though the rooms were still little more than large closets. To cheer himself up, Robert gave himself dinner at the Cape Cod Room in the Drake Hotel, catty-corner from his grandparents’ old apartment, once Chicago’s fanciest restaurant in an era when pork chops were still king of Midwestern cuisine. Suddenly lonely, he thought of people he might call to say he was in town. There was no one.
He’d thought of going to a bar, but felt dissociated in the unrecognisable city of his youth, and knew he didn’t want to talk with anyone. So he’d gone back to his room and curled up with the local papers and a bottle of bourbon on the bed, waking in the middle of the night with all his clothes on, the television playing reruns of Sergeant Bilko, and the overhead light shining bleakly.
Hotel rooms in the middle of the night filled him with an emotional blankness; they were the scene of an essential solitude which hinted at despair’s move towards suicide. The false accoutrements of a home were luxuriously assembled around him – classy soap, bonnes bouches of shampoo, body lotion, conditioner; a mini bar, a luna matrimoniale-sized bed. None compensated for his sense of aloneness.
He thought of the dead woman he had come all this way to mourn, waiting for eventual exhaustion or, if his anxiety overrode fatigue, the rescuing arrival of the dawn. He was dreading the funeral, he suddenly realised, having deferred any serious contemplation of it as he had hurried to make the arrangements, bought his ticket, cancelled meetings, reassured Sophie he would be home soon. Though Anna had understood at once – to his surprise, perhaps, since his first wife had always mocked his accounts of his closeness to Vanetta.
‘Of course you should go,’ Anna had said at supper, taking in her stride his announced intention to fly four thousand miles the next day to the funeral of a woman she had never met. The immediacy of her acceptance had touched him; it was not based on any knowledge of the history or circumstances, but simply a statement of faith.
He recognised that the world he would enter the next day would be utterly alien – a service in a church far out on the South Side, where he would be the only white face. He was worried by what might lie in store. Then he drew comfort from his own recent reality – thinking of Anna, now about to leave for work in London after taking Sophie to school. He fell asleep at last, no longer anxious.
In the morning he pondered transport, since he didn’t want to rent a car. A cabbie might take him there but then be unwilling to wait around to bring him back. Vanetta’s neighbourhood wasn’t as bad as when she lived in the ghetto’s heart at 58th and Indiana, but a white man wandering around looking for a taxi might be a tempting target.
He ended up being driven by the limousine service from his father’s university on the South Side, after agreeing to pay time and a half for the driver to wait until the service had ended. His driver was a Palestinian who had arrived in Chicago only three years before. They left from the near North Side early, but though the church was just five blocks from Vanetta’s last house, they managed to get lost just the same.
The church looked like a large unadorned gym, with concrete steps leading to a quadruple series of double doors. Inside there was no one in the outer lobby, and he crept in quietly just as an organ signalled the start of the service. He walked two rows up the centre aisle and sat down in an empty pew, where he surveyed the congregation, ignoring the looks – most just curious, one or two hostile – coming his way.
There must have been two hundred people present, which astonished him until he remembered how large a role Vanetta had always played in the church – regular attendance on Sundays, helping out with the funding suppers, and of course singing in the choir. There was a group of older women, dressed to the nines in colourful pink and blue suits and wearing hats, who must have been Vanetta’s choir mates. Family members were presumably in the
front rows, and he thought he saw a heavier, older Jermaine sitting next to a tall, lanky teenage boy. For the first time in ages, Robert thought of Duval. There was no sign of him.
The minister came out from a door in the corner and everyone stood. He welcomed them almost exuberantly, as if they were there for a celebration. Perhaps we are, thought Robert, remembering the strong warm woman who had helped raise him.
They sang ‘Oh, Happy Days’, and then there was a reading by an old woman, immensely fat and wearing a broad-brimmed yellow hat. Then a young girl, probably no more than thirteen or fourteen years, shyly stood and sang an old spiritual.
The minister’s sermon was full of a passion that seemed curiously unspecific. ‘She came from the heartland of the Mississippi delta,’ he began, ‘a loving mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother.’
Suddenly someone in a pew shouted, ‘She was! Yes, she was!’
The minister was unfazed. ‘She was a friend to all, those in need, and those in need of love. A loyal member of the Church, and a dedicated follower of our Lord.’
‘Praise be the Lord!’ another voice burst out.
The minister continued, with a homiletic eulogy that mixed bible metaphors of a Promised Land with references to this Chicago church. He didn’t seem to have known Vanetta very well, and Robert wondered if he was a new appointment. There were occasional interjections from the audience, and gradually Robert realised they were disquieting only to him – everyone else seemed to expect them, nodding and murmuring with each new shout of ‘Praise the Lord’ or more ‘She was, she was’.
Finally the sermon concluded with a hymn, though without a hymn book Robert stood mute, feeling self-conscious, trying to think about Vanetta.
Refreshments had been set out on a table at the back of the room; they reminded Robert of the time Vanetta took him and Duval to her old church off Prairie Avenue. There was a long queue, so he stayed in the middle of the room, trying to pretend he was invisible. He made fleeting eye contact with some of the guests, but no one approached him. Then suddenly, standing in front of him was the tall teenager who’d been sitting next to Jermaine.
‘Why are you here, man?’ It was said aggressively.
‘To pay my respects to your great-grandmother,’ he said. The boy must have been Jermaine’s son. ‘Vanetta worked for my family,’ he added softly. ‘Your father will remember me.’
‘She worked for your family all right.’ This was said loudly, rhetorically. There was no immediate audience, but Robert sensed people were watching them, as if they were a couple taking centre stage at a dance. ‘She was your people’s “help”, wasn‘t she? A modern-day slave.’
Robert suppressed a sigh. He had thought people might be unfriendly, but he hadn’t considered a scene to be a possibility. ‘I don’t think Vanetta would have described it that way,’ he said, trying to sound calm, though he didn’t feel it.
The boy was warming to some theme. ‘How do you know what Vanetta would say?’
‘I don’t,’ said Robert quietly.
‘Then maybe you should show some respect.’
What? Robert’s fear of a confrontation was suddenly eclipsed by anger, and for a moment he thought he might lose his temper with this pipsqueak. Don’t, he told himself, for Vanetta’s sake keep your cool.
‘Maybe you should do the same,’ he said, trying to keep his voice down.
‘I didn’t exploit Vanetta.’
Oh, so that was it. Robert took a deep breath. ‘Look, she was an employee of my family, so I’ll stick to the economic history, okay? We’ll put aside any emotional displays – the fact I used to say “I love you, Vanetta,” when I was a little boy, and as a grown man too. I won’t even try to convince you that she meant it when she said “I love you too, Bobby,” since from your point of view she didn’t have a choice.
‘So, we paid the going rate and then some, as I recall, which meant in 1965 Vanetta grossed 60 dollars a week. Not too good, eh? We paid her social security tax and unemployment tax and withholding tax – and every other kind of tax. We didn’t pay her cash – she got a cheque each week like many grown-ups do. She had three weeks’ vacation a year, all paid, though one year when she went down to Mississippi to see her cousins after Alvin died – do you even know who Alvin was? – she got four. Not a lot perhaps, but more than some people get. We paid sick leave; ask your father what happened when Vanetta was in hospital for kidney stones. And when she couldn’t get a mortgage on the Morgan property, my father co-signed it, though when she didn’t need his guarantee any more Vanetta got his name removed.’
‘Man—’ the kid started to say, but Robert held up a warning hand, and continued.
‘Since like every story this one hasn’t got a happy ending, I admit that my stepmother put your great-grandmother out to seed. Sorry, but she ruled the roost; you know how it is. But Vanetta got three months’ wages in a lump sum due to the gratitude of the three spoiled white brats she helped raise. Was it slave labour? The hell if I know, but yes, possibly – she worked hard. Was it appreciated? Well, you tell me. All I can say is that I have flown four thousand miles to be here. Do you have any other questions?’
Suddenly a hefty, older black woman materialised by his side. She was wearing a flowery dress with padded shoulders. And Robert recognised her at once as she snapped, ‘Lemar, you talking nice to Mr Danziger?’
‘Sure I am, Aunt Trudy,’ said the kid.
‘It don’t look that way to me. Go find your daddy, boy, and ask him when he ’spects to take me home.’ The boy dawdled, glaring at Robert. Trudy hissed, ‘Go on. Do like I said.’ And he moved sulkily away.
‘Hello, Trudy,’ said Robert. ‘I wasn’t sure you would remember me.’
‘You don’t look that much different to me, Bobby,’ she said, peering at him through oval glasses looped around her neck with a thin nylon string. She wore an enormous suit of pink chiffon, with bright matching lipstick that highlighted her square thick lips. Older than Vanetta, she was less pretty, less tall, less buxom, and more black. He remembered her testiness, though never with him or the twins. Just with Vanetta – the baby sister, prettier and happier sibling. And with Duval.
He laughed now. ‘You still following the White Sox, Trudy?’
‘Well,’ she said, thinking about it, ‘I watch ’em on the TV but I don’t go to ball games no more. I hate that new stadium of theirs – that is one cold place, Bobby, and I get dizzy if I got to sit up high. It’s so steep, and the place ain’t got no character.’
‘How about the players, Trudy? Any of them you like?’
She shook her head. ‘They just kids to me. Too much money and not enough sense.’
‘You remember old Wilhound?’ he asked, and a smile broke across her face. Hoyt Wilhelm, a knuckleball relief pitcher of advanced age. Christ, thought Robert, Wilhelm was probably only my age when he came here as a relief pitcher, but he had seemed positively senescent back then.
‘That Wilhound,’ said Trudy with a half-laughing snort, shaking her head in disbelief.
‘They didn’t let Duval come, Trudy,’ he said, and it was not a question, for he had scanned the room again.
She seemed startled by the name. ‘What you know about Duval Morgan?’
‘We were friends when I was little, Trudy. Don’t you remember?’
She gave a harsh-sounding laugh. ‘Then you got the best of him. He turned out bad, that boy. Always told my sister that he would. I ain’t surprised he’s still locked up.’
‘He was a sweet-tempered kid, Trudy. When I knew him he wouldn’t have hurt a fly.’ He could not imagine what Duval would be like now. It had been twenty years since the trial.
She gazed at him, as if weighing his memory against hers, then decided it was not a contest that interested her. ‘Come on,’ she said, and he realised it was a command. ‘People here who wants to meet you.’
She took him around the room, introducing him to an enormous range of Vanetta’s family. He talked pol
itely and drank coffee out of a cup and saucer and even ate half a pecan roll. They introduced the preacher to him, who seemed respected and feared in equal parts by his congregation. He was very friendly to Robert, especially after discovering his profession, suggesting he might send Robert a tranche of his sermons. Robert didn’t have the heart to say that there might not be a large audience in the United Kingdom for such a collection.
Then he was alone again. Trudy had done her bit for him, then left with Jermaine and the still angry Lemar and a woman Robert took to be Jermaine’s wife. He was looking around the room, feeling isolated and lonely and, for the first time, bereft. He supposed he could get another cup of coffee and hope to find someone else to talk to, but what was the point? He had come here out of obligation to Vanetta; it didn’t matter whether he had come forty or four thousand miles; he had done his duty. Anything else now would only be justifying the time and distance taken to come.
He left. Back in the limo he thought fleetingly of his plan to return to the Loop and see the Impressionists in the Art Institute, just as he had so often done as a boy with his grandmother, then eat before catching the bus at the Palmer House for O’Hare and his flight home. But he had no desire now to stir any other memories of his childhood. He felt raw.
For the first time he felt his grief, and put his head in his hands as the driver, baffled by his new instructions to go to the airport, fought his way onto the Ryan. Robert shuddered once, twice, but felt too self-conscious for actual tears. He felt like he had been a neglectful son, separated from his surrogate mother by distance and a painful conversation during Duval’s trial. With Vanetta’s death he believed the Chicago chapter of his life was finally closed. After all, Duval had not even been allowed at the funeral.
XI
1
HE TRIED TO see the coach house through alien eyes, wondering what Duval made of this small estate, the maple-lined drive off the flat Indiana two-lane highway, and the big twin houses just visible in the distance at the beach-end of the property.