It was hard for Macon to say when she had first felt them losing it, losing what had kept them together. She was terrified of the idea that perhaps, in the end, it was the movement that had kept them together, that without that they had nothing. She could not remember the last time they had gone to a movie or out to dinner or talked about something that was totally inconsequential. They had spent their married life fighting various political battles and had lost the marriage in the process, it seemed.
She had no idea what Courtland’s favorite color was, or his favorite meal. They were so busy studying or organizing that they ate Chinese takeout, or microwaved something out of the freezer most nights. Courtland often left his offices at Legal Aid and went straight to a community meeting that might not end until eleven or twelve. The marriage had been a studied, consistent movement toward progress and freedom. But for whom? More and more Macon found herself just wanting to lie on a beach somewhere beside her husband, yet she was afraid to because she had no idea what she would or could say to him in a setting like that. The women at the shelters came in bruised, beaten, battered. They were beaten because they didn’t prepare a meal fast enough, or because they had not been obedient enough, or because their husbands had seen the seeds of betrayal in a friendly smile given to a stranger. These women had been battered because their existence, their femaleness, set husbands, boyfriends, on edge, inflamed them with doubt about who they were.
Leaving the shelter exhausted, drained by her shift, Macon drove home remembering that she and Courtland had not argued in months, or was it years? They had no time for the accumulation of discontents, the small brushfires of anger, to spread and consume them. She wanted to raise her voice sometimes in passionate release of some emotion held dear, to argue and then make up by making love, hating and loving all at once, all jumbled together in a solid, terrible mass that was sometimes love too.
Maybe it had started to fall apart when they found out, as she had long suspected, that she could not conceive. Courtland had started talking about children last year. Since Macon would be finished with her doctorate soon and Courtland had plans to set up his own practice, they agreed that now was the time to start a family. When they found out about her problem, she suggested adoption. But he did not want to adopt. He had looked at Macon and said, “I want my own child, not somebody else’s.” Macon took the words as a kind of declaration of war, for they now knew that he could not have his own child with her.
It had all come to a head during the drive home from the doctor’s office. Courtland was staring straight ahead, as though afraid even to look at her. The silence between them was the worst she had ever known. Earlier, as she walked beside him on the way to the car, Macon had already shifted to a solution to the problem, refusing to let the situation imprison or derail her. Fifteen minutes into the ride home, she suggested that they consider adoption. That’s when Courtland had looked at her then as they sat stopped before a red light, and said, “I want my own child not somebody else’s.” She sat biting her lip to keep the tears from falling. She would not let him see her cry, could not, no matter what. For years they had had long talks with their friends about how important it was to adopt the black children warehoused in foster care. They had talked about the need for the black community to take care of its own.
During the time they had tried to have a child, and approached lovemaking as an act of faith and renewal, Macon had often wondered what their child would look like, what kind of mother she would be. She joked with Courtland, as they lay in each other’s arms, about reading the Fourteenth and Fifteenth
Amendments to the Constitution to their child at bedtime. He had laughed at the stunning perfection of that idea. Macon was sure they were happy.
And then, when it wasn’t to be, she was utterly surprised at how much it had mattered to her to be a mother. While Courtland felt he could only be a father to his specific seed, Macon was eager to love any motherless child. Her husband had left her with no way out, no way to win.
BY THE TIME the plane arrived in New York, Macon was plagued by a distress that congealed in her stomach and pounded in her head. How would she comfort Pearl? What would she say?
She found Pearl drained but coherent and she told Macon everything, about Raj and the break with Lincoln. Macon sat on Pearl’s bed amid the rumpled sheets, the close, humid air of the room pressing around her, and stifled a sob as she listened to Pearl’s story. The rape horrified her, and she was not surprised when her efforts to convince Pearl to press charges, even now, months after the fact, failed.
“I’m terrified, Macon. I’ve never been on my own before, not since Lincoln and I met. I’ve never been on my own at all.”
“It’s easier then you think, being on your own,” Macon said bitterly, flash-forwarding to visions of herself alone. Lately, she had been haunted by her own fear of the future. “Lincoln wasn’t your Svengali, Pearl, he was your lover. You can go on and you will. Everything he taught you, everything you learned, you’ll use it now, because you have to.”
“But, Macon, I’m not sure I want to go on. With any of it. The acting, living, feeling. I live only when I’m onstage, Macon. It’s the only life I have.”
“It’s the only life you want, Pearl, and it wasn’t enough for Lincoln. There wasn’t enough room for him on that stage you’ve erected in your head.”
“Why should I go on, Macon, why?”
“You’ll go on, Pearl, with all of it. Because you’re just like me. No matter how much I think I want to die, sometimes, it’s moments like this that convince me the only thing I can do is live.
THEY MADE A list of all the people Pearl knew in the city and Pearl was amazed at the number of her contacts, in her work, people she could go to for money, for advice, for a job to tide her over.
That evening Macon took a bubble bath while Pearl sat on the toilet plaiting her hair. Slowly, Macon began to tell her about her inability to conceive, and about Courtland’s reaction.
“And, Pearl, you know, it hurts, it hurts so bad.” Her face was haggard, bewildered. She reached for the glass of white wine on the floor beside the tub.
“Because of Courtland?”
“No, because of me. Why was I working all this time to make the world a better place, if it wasn’t to make it safe for a child?”
“But, Macon, the world isn’t safe,” Pearl said emphatically.
“I know, it never will be, but hell, I’ve done my part. I’ve cleared a patch of ground where my child could stand in pride and dignity. I earned that for it.”
“Are you saying you feel incomplete?” Pearl asked.
“Don’t try that game on me,” Macon said angrily, draining the glass of wine and handing it to Pearl.
“I wanted a child,” she said defiantly, sinking lower in the tub, a wave of bubbles rising to her ears. “I wanted to teach, to write, to love my husband, save the world, be your friend and somebody’s mama too. Hell, Pearl, I don’t feel incomplete, but I do feel cheated.”
Macon raised her leg and watched the water, soap and bubbles, glistening and fresh, slide slowly down her leg. “I had more love in my heart, Pearl, than I knew,” she said, easing her leg back into the water. “And I feel it inside me now about to burst. My husband doesn’t want it. What’ll I do?”
“What’ll happen when you go back?” Pearl asked. “To you and Courtland?”
“I don’t know, Pearl. I only know I can’t continue to live stalemated, with my dreams on hold.”
Macon stayed five days and during that time, she took Pearl down to Macy’s and they bought new curtains, new sheets and pillows and new pictures for the walls. The night before her departure, Macon told Pearl, “Only one person lives here now and that person is you. But just because there’s only you here, doesn’t mean you’re alone. You’re only alone if you want to be. Will you remember that?”
“I will,” Pearl promised. “Macon, I will.”
——
PEARL SAT staring at her f
ace under the unforgiving glare of the harsh fluorescent bulbs rimming the dressing table mirror. Skillfully, meticulously, she applied makeup, as though headed for the stage, rather than a dinner with Lincoln Sturgis.
Only in the last year had she been able to look at herself in the mirror without flinching. Her thick, willful dreadlocks, tied back from her face by a green and gold swath of cloth, were home to gleaming, slender threads of gray that had arrived presumptuously, prematurely, when she stopped drinking. At first, she had tried pulling the gray hairs out, then she tried dying her hair, but in both cases, the gray grew back triumphant, sturdier than before. So Pearl had called a truce and found a kind of poetry in the combination of her gray hair and the still staunch youthfulness of her face.
It was an odd face, a face that would always tell on her. Tiny crow’s-feet pinched the skin around her eyes, whispering to anyone who looked closely, “I used to be a drunk.” At some point, the makeup had to come off, the sun had to come up, the lights had to be turned on; then you got stared at straight on, with no possibility of retreat. Yet her face still contained—no matter how fleetingly, the questing, startling innocence that nothing had been able to destroy.
Time had passed as though it were capital squandered in an overnight binge of gambling. The future arrived and became the past, Pearl now knew, whether you were ready for it or not. She looked at the array of eye shadows lined up before her in the makeup case and chose the color that matched the green and gold dress she was wearing. When Lincoln had called and told her he was coming to town on business and wanted to take her out to dinner, she had spent three days searching in her favorite boutiques for this dress.
Tonight she would be beautiful. She would hide every trace of anything ugly, terrible, all the things she convinced herself she couldn’t remember, in order to survive.
The rape had congealed, hard and unmovable in her memory. There were times when it festered, aching and sore, throwing a curtain between her and the rest of the world. Other times, most times, it lay ticking, synchronized and lethal, its poisonous qualities camouflaged by an inert exterior. She had done well in the years since the break with Lincoln, the horror with Raj, that’s what she told herself. There had been numerous national and local TV commercials. She had performed each summer for the past three years in Joseph Papp’s Shakespeare in the Park productions. And she had acted steadily on the stage in New York and on tour around the country. A one-woman show on the life of Ida B. Wells, which she had put together with Macon’s help and that of a writer she met through Simone, had taken Pearl to college campuses across the country during Black History Month. But best of all, she was beginning her second year as a defense attorney on a highly acclaimed TV courtroom drama.
Pearl played Jasmine Holloway, a dreadlock-wearing (because she had insisted on keeping hers and the director wanted her for the part badly enough to say yes), politically savvy lawyer. Pearl had fought with the scriptwriter all the first season for a lover for Jasmine. When shooting started next week, Jasmine Holloway would be the only black woman on prime-time TV who would have an almost nude sex scene with her lover. And if Pearl had anything to do with it, she would try to get more than one scene like that written into the script this year. There had been a time when she could hardly bear to go to the movies or watch television. The roles for black women had hardened into stock roles of prostitute, caretaker or confidante to a major white character. Pearl looked back over her career and could not remember once having played a love interest.
She had done well. The need to defy her designation as damaged goods had propelled Pearl to work with furious determination. Several years ago she had decided that if there was a role to be had she would get it. When there was no work, she would make some. She cultivated directors, casting agents, made peace with former enemies, prayed, whatever was required.
Her most transcendent, fulfilling moments still occurred on stage. She had to work if she was to do more than just survive. Macon had told her that it wasn’t as hard as it seemed to be alone. But it was. She continued to choose men, when she allowed them in her life, who would dominate or direct her. Her relationships were most often short, intense, unsatisfying affairs, ending in recriminations, fraught with scenes as full blown and traumatic as anything she played on the stage. She had become a master at approaching her life as a script she had been handed that still needed work. When emotions got messy, or out of control, there was either an intermission or a denouement. Soon the scene ended, the run was over.
All this was convenient, efficient, and left Pearl’s soul as thirsty and parched as a stretch of desert sand. There had been two abortions. And several months ago she had had her tubes tied. While Macon had tried to make the world safe for a child, Pearl knew the world never would be. Never. All she had to do was look at her own life to see that.
Yes, that color would do. It would do fine, she thought, as she applied the eye liner and then the lash builder. She was starring in a play when she fell off the edge, a drama in which she was a murder victim. She died six nights a week. That’s how she thought of the role. Slowly, she had been requiring more and more alcohol to sustain the numbness she needed to get through each day and to separate herself emotionally from the character she played.
Each night, she had to give raging, potent life to a young woman who became the victim of a gang assault. The play hit so close to home that there were days when Pearl felt she could not go on stage. Still she dredged up the backlog of her own pain to give one of her most powerful performances. In the third week of the run, with the house packed every night, she suddenly could not go on stage. She had been drinking heavily all day, feeling morose and brooding over the ways in which her character had begun to infest her own thoughts, echoing an end for herself that had haunted her imagination for as long as she could remember. At the very moment that she was to walk onto the stage, she could not move. She stood paralyzed, voices reigning in her head that told her if she stepped on the stage, she would die, this time for real. Her understudy went on and she resigned from the production and checked into Bellevue, showing signs of exhaustion. That’s when her doctor told her she had to stop drinking. Stop drinking or die, he’d said, as though the latter prospect was supposed to frighten her. He didn’t know how close she had come to choosing it.
She told no one, not Macon, not Mae Ann, that she was in Bellevue. She lay in the narrow bed, terrified, some days hoping she would never have to move again; other days, suicidal at the thought that she might not ever act again. During her hospitalization, her brother Junior was killed, shot in an alley in Jackson, Mississippi, in a fight over one hundred and fifty dollars’ worth of heroin. When she left Bellevue and returned home, the telegram informing her of his death was the first thing she saw when she entered the foyer. It had been shoved under her door more than two weeks before.
For a year Pearl attended Alcoholics Anonymous, listening to the stories of the people in the meetings, their tales of defeat and humiliation, sure that she was different, convinced that they were stupid or just plain unlucky. When she did stop drinking, she stopped not so much because she wanted to live, but because she wanted to continue to act. She auditioned for a role in a new play by a veteran, award-winning playwright.
The play was to be the major drama of the fall theater season and was to be nontraditionally cast, fully integrated. But after her audition the director pulled her aside and told her that he had heard about her drinking, her hospitalization. She was the one he wanted to hire, but he just couldn’t take a chance on her. That’s when she stopped. She hadn’t had a drink since.
FINALLY SATISFIED with what she saw in the mirror, Pearl stood and reached for the new dress. As she examined her figure, Pearl smoothed the dress around her hips and stomach. She was weak with anticipation and excitement. In the years since their breakup she and Lincoln had talked often, but she had always managed to be out of town or unavailable when he came to New York. Taking one last look in the mirror, Pe
arl smiled with genuine delight, certain that before the night was over she would be in Lincoln’s arms once again. If asked, she could not have said, however, what she expected to find there.
WORDS HARDLY mattered anymore. Once he had used language as exorcism and explanation. He had thought words were incorruptible, sacred. But that was before Hollywood taught him how cheap, and even sinister, language could be. He was a script doctor now, overhauling the unworkable, the unredeemable, pulling it all together, pumping the requisite humor, drama, violence, into stories too expensive to write off.
Lincoln didn’t know whether he was a hired gun or a hired hand. He had reached the mid-six figures and he still felt each paycheck was an act of theft. The endless story conferences, the team editing, the intrusion of brand-name actors and brand-name directors into the process, threatened every time to defeat him. Six figures for what? After the bastardization of his dialogue, the cannibalization of his ideas, what was left? Six figures for fourteen lines? He had written a script on the life of Paul Robeson that was locked in the safe deposit box in his bank in L.A. He hadn’t shown it to anybody. He didn’t know if he ever would.
He kept waiting, finally, to be happy. He was holding his breath, waiting to exhale and breathe in contentment. He had married and would soon be a father but he felt more trepidation than joy. He had spent years trying to get over Pearl; to conquer the feeling that it had all been a waste, she a hopeless case, he a fool.
And Do Remember Me Page 13