Some Things I Never Thought I'd Do
Page 26
Blue came in by himself and took a seat on the side aisle near the back door. He grinned and inclined his head in my direction, but before I could go over and compliment him on his choice of seating just in case we had to make a quick getaway, the Glee Club took a collective deep breath and sang the program into life.
“'Guide my feet, while I run this race.'” They sang like angels.
Standing beside me in the tech booth at the back of the auditorium, Freeney leaned over and whispered in my ear as we turned our attention to the stage, “San Francisco, here we come!”
55
WHEN THE LIGHTS CAME UP AT the end of the video, people rose to their feet in a spontaneous standing ovation. I used the opportunity to slip back down front and take Precious's seat next to Beth as the senator walked up onto the stage.
“You okay?” I said, touching Beth's arm lightly, feeling suddenly protective.
“I just miss him so much, Gina. I just miss him so much!” she whispered as we sat back down. She slipped her arm through mine like we were schoolgirls, and I could feel her trembling.
Precious took her place at the podium and looked out at the crowd. “Son Davis was my friend,” she said. “And I can tell you one thing. He would have loved to see all of youheretoday to honorhis lifeand hiswork.”
The crowd applauded themselves, proud they had worn their Sunday best to honor one of their own.
“Because that's why we're here today, to honor my friend, our friend, Son Davis. The video we just watched told you some of the reasons why.” She paused and smiled again. “I'm going to tell you the rest.”
Beth looked at me with a small flicker of confusion. “What is she talking about?”
“Don't worry,” I whispered. “I wrote this for her.”
Beth squeezed my hand gratefully and turned back to Precious.
“Son Davis was a man with very high standards, especially for himself. He was raised that way by his mother, who devoted her life to making him a good man.”
The audience applauded warmly, and I could feel Beth relax even more. Precious's earlier remarks had recalled the first time she had seen Beth speak and how moved she was by a sudden realization of her own potential. That was the day, she had said proudly, that she decided to run for political office. She didn't know how she was going to do it, but Beth had made her see that she could do anything she put her mind to. Everyone expected her introduction to be more of the same kind of praise song. Everyone but me.
“But somewhere along the way, Son started thinking being a good man wasn't enough. He started thinking he had to be better than good. He had to be perfect.”
You could have heard a pin drop.
“Maybe he felt that he owed perfection to his mother, to repay her for her sacrifices. Maybe he felt that he owed perfection to those who believed in his mother because of his shining example as a perfect son. Maybe he thought he owed perfection to the students of his alma mater, who wanted to walk in his footsteps. We don't know. How can we ever know? But what we do know is that his feeling that he was less than perfect led him to begin to lead two lives: the one he showed the world, and the one he thought wasn't good enough to show us.”
There was some murmuring now. Beth pinched my arm, hard.
“What do you think you're doing?” she hissed.
I ignored her and kept my eye on Precious.
“But he was wrong. For one of the very few times in his life, he misjudged us. Because there was no reason for him to hide anything. We weren't looking for perfection. We were looking for the possibility of perfection, and that possibility is always most beautifully present in the faces of our children and then, if we are very lucky, in the faces of our grandchildren.”
She turned to Beth and, from the stage, addressed her directly. “Sister Davis, I think all of us were moved a few weeks ago during a television interview when you spoke of your sorrow over the fact that your beloved son did not live long enough to have children of his own.”
The audience gave a collective sigh of sympathy.
“But sometimes the Lord works in mysterious ways, and someone else saw that interview, too. Someone who had agreed to keep silent, to make Son's secret her own.”
Beth's grip on my hand was a vice.
“Someone who had been struggling with serious questions of honor and responsibility. Someone who wanted to respect the wishes of one who sacrificed everything but who also understands a mother's love and a woman's grief.”
I stole a sideways glance at Beth. She knew every eye in the place was on her, so she couldn't do anything but return Precious's gaze with an unblinking stare and wait for whatever was coming next.
“Andthatsomeoneisherewithustoday, but beforeI introduce her to you, I want to share another little video with you. This one isn't as well produced as the first one. Sometimes it's out of focus and a little fuzzy, but I think you'll be able to recognize our honoree today among the celebrants at a very special birthday party.”
Beth tried to jerk her arm from mine, but I held on for dear life. “Let me go!” she hissed, but I shook my head.
Then suddenly, behind Precious on the giant screen where Son's official face had been overseeing the proceedings, another face appeared. The face of a proudly smiling young father celebrating his laughing son's first birthday. The face of a loving partner with an affectionate arm encircling the waist ofthe woman he loved. The unguarded private face of a man whose misguided desire to please his mother had made him withhold from her the sweetest gift he could have given, her only grandchild.
Unable to free herself and flee, Beth had no choice but to sit still and watch the screen. And as she did, I watched her. At first, she was so angry at me, at Precious, at being exposed so publicly, that her face was like stone. Her jaw was tight, and her eyes were hard and cold. But now on the video, the assembled guests were singing to the birthday boy, and as they finished the song, his father grabbed him and tossed him high in the air, both of them laughing, so happy, so alive, that the idea that one of them was gone, that this child would never again see his reflection in his father's eyes, was so overwhelming that when Freeney froze the frame, the poignant image seemed to burn itself into all of our brains at the same time, and any idea that this little family could ever be anything less than perfect seemed not only absurd, but cruel.
In the stunned silence as the picture faded from the screen, I looked at Beth's face, and it was wet with tears. Precious stepped back to the podium.
“Sister Davis,” she said gently. “May I present your grandson, Theodore Davis Jr.?”
She nodded toward the back of the auditorium, and every head in the place turned to watch the lovely young woman and the little boy with his father's smile walk up the long middle aisle. Aretha had helped Madonna find a lovely pale green dress that fluttered around her as she walked. She looked like an angel, and if she was afraid, you couldn't see it on her face.
I kept my eyes on Beth, who was still clutching my hand. She looked at me, and the pain on her face was so profound I was afraid she wouldn't survive it.
“Why?” she whispered. “Why couldn't he tell me?”
It was the question that contained all the rage and confusion and anguish and guilt that had made her do things she never should have done. It was the question that she had to force herself to ask, not so she could answer it, but so she could accept the fact that there was no answer. Only a small boy who had lost his father and a mother who had lost her son.
“He's telling you now,” I said softly. “Maybe he's telling you now.”
She looked at me like she wanted to believe me, if she only could, and then the applause began. Slowly at first, a little tentative, and then louder and louder. As Madonna and Sonny Jr. made their way up the aisle, each row they passed stood up and cheered. They had come to honor a fallen soldier and had found themselves witnesses to the kind of revelation and reconciliation that are always at the heart of what we mean when we say family.
Madonna was just a few rows away from us now, and Beth turned to me in complete panic. “I … I don't know what to say. What can I say?”
“Don't worry,” I said. “Your remarks are already at the podium.”
She looked at me, and her smile was equal parts gratitude and relief. “And will it be my best self talking?”
I smiled back and realized I was crying, too. “Absolutely.”
She hugged me then and took a deep breath. “Good. Then you'll excuse me while I say hello to my grandson?”
Always theatrical, she stepped into the center aisle to face them and, as if on cue, Sonny Jr. released his mother's hand and ran as fast as his little fat legs could carry him into his grandmother's arms. As she scooped him up into a long overdue embrace, I could hear her whispering over and over, “Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!”
It wasn't until she took Madonna's hand and the three of them joined Precious on the stage while the crowd went wild that I realized it wasn't Beth's voice at all. It was mine.
56
BLUE WAS WAITING OUTSIDE the auditorium exactly where I'd asked him to meet me. His proud smile told me everything I needed to know, but I wanted to hear it anyway.
“So how'd we do?”
“I couldn't have done it better myself.”
I laughed. “High praise from an emperor.”
He laughed with me. “That was last time around. This time I'm just your humble servant.”
“Good. Then let's go!”
He hesitated. “Aren't you going to stay for Beth's speech?”
“You mean the one where she says she won't be running for governor because nothing is more important to her at this time than getting to know her grandson?”
He grinned. “Yeah, that's the one.”
I grinned back. “I don't have to hear it. I wrote it.”
“So where are we going?”
I looked up at him and saw the rest of my life looking back at me through his eyes. “D.C.”
He looked surprised. “Why D.C.?”
“Aren't you the guy who said that if you were patient and lucky, I'd learn to trust you and maybe even fall in love with you again so we could continue our journey together through time and space and many lifetimes like we were supposed to?”
“That's what I said all right,” he said, pleased I had quoted him so exactly.
I took his arm. “Well, then, I think it's time for you to meet my aunt.”
Some Things I Never Thought I'd Do is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2003 by Pearl Cleage
Excerpt from Baby Brother's Blues copyright © 2006 by Pearl Cleage
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by One World Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
ONE WORLD is a registered trademark and the One World colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.
Originally published in hardcover in the United States by One World Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., in 2003.
Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint lyrics:
Hal Leonard Corporation: Excerpt from “You Can't Hurry Love” words and music by Edward Holland, Lamont Dozier, and Brian Holland. © 1965, 1966 (Renewed 1993, 1994) JOBETE MUSIC CO., INC. All rights controlled and administered by EMI BLACKWOOD MUSIC INC. on behalf of STONE AGATE MUSIC (A Division of JOBETE MUSIC CO., INC.). All Rights Reserved. International Copyright Secured. Used by Permission. Excerpt from “Function at the Junction” words and music by Frederick Long and Edward Holland Jr. © 1966 (Renewed 1994) JOBETE MUSIC CO., INC. All rights controlled and administered by EMI BLACKWOOD MUSIC INC. on behalf of STONE AGATE MUSIC (A Division of JOBETE MUSIC CO., INC.). All Rights Reserved. International Copyright Secured. Used by Permission. Williamson Music: Excerpt from “My Favorite Things” by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II. Copyright © 1959 by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II. Copyright Renewed. WILLIAMSON MUSIC owner of publication and allied rights throughout the world. International Copyright Secured. All Rights Reserved.
eISBN: 978-0-307-54705-7
www.oneworldbooks.net
v3.0
Table of Contents
Cover
Other Books By This Author
Title Page
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Chapter - 1
Chapter - 2
Chapter - 3
Chapter - 4
Chapter - 5
Chapter - 6
Chapter - 7
Chapter - 8
Chapter - 9
Chapter - 10
Chapter - 11
Chapter - 12
Chapter - 13
Chapter - 14
Chapter - 15
Chapter - 16
Chapter - 17
Chapter - 18
Chapter - 19
Chapter - 20
Chapter - 21
Chapter - 22
Chapter - 23
Chapter - 24
Chapter - 25
Chapter - 26
Chapter - 27
Chapter - 28
Chapter - 29
Chapter - 30
Chapter - 31
Chapter - 32
Chapter - 33
Chapter - 34
Chapter - 35
Chapter - 36
Chapter - 37
Chapter - 38
Chapter - 39
Chapter - 40
Chapter - 41
Chapter - 42
Chapter - 43
Chapter - 44
Chapter - 45
Chapter - 46
Chapter - 47
Chapter - 48
Chapter - 49
Chapter - 50
Chapter - 51
Chapter - 52
Chapter - 53
Chapter - 54
Chapter - 55
Chapter - 56
Copyright