by Lois Battle
“Midlife crisis,” she offered, with no sarcasm.
“Can a black man afford to have one of those?” He answered his own question. “I don’t think so. At least not if he’s turned himself into a role model—ideal family man, pillar of the community, educator. I may not be Colin Powell, but I know what it means to be ‘a credit to my race.’ I’d disappoint a whole lot of people, myself included, if I ducked out on my responsibilities.”
She nodded, her head moving on his shoulder. At one time she might have said more, but she was now at an age when she knew that a willing ear was often the best a friend could provide.
First one, then another set of headlights flashed in the rear window and they could hear voices. “I guess”—he quickly moved his arm from her shoulder—“the party’s breaking up.”
She straightened, suddenly conscious that they’d slumped into what might be mistaken for an embrace. “I hope so. I’m so tired, I’m punchy. Hannibal . . .”
“Hannibal,” he said in a sing-song schoolboy’s recitation, “crossed the Alps with forty thousand men and a pack of elephants. He defeated the Romans in one of the most famous battles in history, but when he couldn’t defend Carthage, he took poison and died, rather than be taken prisoner.”
“You’re not thinking of taking poison are you?”
He laughed. “I think I’ll try Tierra del Fuego first. But it’s a helluva namesake to live up to.” He turned to her. “Cam. Talking to you like this . . .”
“You don’t talk to anyone?”
“You know men only talk about stuff like this with women. And talking to someone I know from way back . . .”
“Someone who doesn’t live here anymore.”
“Sure. That, too. Makes me feel safe. This is probably the best Christmas present I’ll get.”
She opened her door. “Not counting the subscription to Sports Illustrated.”
“Yeah. Not counting that. I might be in Beaufort before Christmas. Would it be all right if I dropped by your mother’s?”
“I’d like that.” She started to get out, turned back, and pecked him on the cheek. “It was so good to talk with you. I hope I do see you again. At least call so we can exchange addresses.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He gave her a swift salute.
“Good night, Hannibal.”
She shivered and wrapped her arms around her chest as she made her way back to the house. Cars were starting up and a gaggle of guests loitered at the front door, prolonging their good-byes. One of the men, much the worse for drink, was weaving around the Christmas tree on the front lawn asking, “Isn’t this the prettiest tree you’ve ever seen, Eleanor? Why can’t we have a Christmas tree like this, Eleanor?” while the woman Cam supposed was Eleanor tried to steady him, reassuring him, “Our Christmas tree is pretty too, Fred. Come on home and I’ll show it to you.” Cam decided to go around the back way.
Lila stood, arms at her sides, staring into the pantry. Behind her, the catering crew was packing up and Josie was helping Cuba into her coat. “Hey, moron,” she heard one server whisper to another, “don’t pack that. It belongs to the client.” She knew she should be overseeing the operation or settling up with Cuba, better yet, she should be at the front door with Orrie, saying her so-glad-you-could-comes to departing guests, but she moved through the kitchen, paused at the door, then turned and walked quickly down the long hallway to her bedroom.
She hadn’t meant to slam the door but it shut with a wallop. She walked around the bed, retraced her steps, then lay down, pressing her hands to the middle of her chest. Why hadn’t she put her foot down? Why hadn’t she said she wasn’t going to change any of her holiday plans, that she didn’t even want Cam coming to her party? A bitter phlegm came into her mouth, as though a pill had dissolved in her throat and she couldn’t swallow it. Well, she’d expected trouble and she’d been right. She literally wanted to gag.
There was a tap on the door and Josie’s voice, “Lila, may I come in?” She didn’t bother to answer. When your mother asked if she could come in to your bedroom, could it be anything but rhetorical?
Josie left the door open so that a wedge of light shone in from the hallway, and came to sit at the foot of the bed, putting her hand on Lila’s instep, resisting the impulse to tell her that her shoes might soil the cream sateen comforter. “Lila? Is anything the matter?”
Lila shook her head.
“There are a few stragglers in the living room. I think maybe they’re waiting to tell you good night.” Lila said nothing. “I thought the party went well. People seemed to have had a good time,” Josie went on in a quiet voice. “And,” she added, though she secretly agreed with Cuba that the spread wasn’t worth the price, “the caterer did an excellent job, but there’re lots of leftovers. This time of year everyone’s already had too much of everything.”
“She did it again,” Lila said in a strangulated voice, “I knew she would and she did.”
“What . . . ?”
“Don’t pretend you don’t know, Mama. Don’t make me draw you a picture. She always disrupts everything. Always.”
“Lila, she couldn’t help it if the flight was late.”
“She makes her grand entrance just as I’m getting ready to serve. She’s barely civil to the other guests. She goes into her whisper-and-flirt act with Bedford Bethune, then she has a fight with Evie at the buffet table. Evie told me about it. Cam jumped down her throat just because she mentioned booze.”
“I know for a fact,” Josie said quietly, ashamed to admit that she’d been watching, “that Cam wasn’t drinking.”
“And then . . . and then”—Lila raised herself on her elbows—“she leaves the party and goes out and necks with H.A. Staples!”
“Lila! I don’t believe—”
“When it comes to Cam, Mama, you can see it with your own eyes and not believe it.”
“I know she left the party but—”
“Mama! Liz Heffernan told me. Liz and Sid went out to their car and they saw them. Liz left her shawl in the house and when she came back in to get it, she told me. They saw Cam and H.A. Staples making out in his car. Liz just made a joke of it—said, ‘I know they walk faster and talk faster in New York, but I didn’t know they moved quite that fast.’ Cam would choose him, wouldn’t she? First night back and she just had to shock everyone, just had to rub our noses in it.” She sat up, pulling her foot away from Josie’s hand, crossing her arms over her chest. “Everyone knows that H.A. and his wife are on the rocks. Cam doesn’t look so great to me, but then, I’m not a man. Men are purblind when it comes to some woman who’s putting it out there.”
“Lila! How can you talk that way about your sister?” A shadow fell across her, causing Josie to turn.
Orrie called from the doorway, “Hey, sweetheart, you in there?”
Josie said, “She just has a little headache and we were talking about the party.”
“Great party, honey. Sorry you don’t feel well. Can you come out long enough to say good-bye to the Pearsons?”
“Of course.” Lila got up, flicked on the light on her dressing table, took a Q-Tip and wiped away a smudge beneath her eye, ran a brush through her hair, and left the room.
Josie continued to sit on the bed. She could hardly believe what Lila had told her, but there must be some kernel of truth to it. A great sense of weariness came over her—the same bone-weariness she’d felt as a young mother living in the confines of a Quonset hut, all the kids down with colds at the same time, fetching and carrying and trying to referee the constant rivalry and bickering—“Mama, it’s not fair,” “She started it,” “It’s all her fault”—until she thought she’d lose her mind. Now they were middle-aged women, and they were still at it. And she had neither inclination nor energy to referee. She’d left that Quonset hut once, just taken off her apron, locked the front door, and left them to it. She’d walked down to the water. She’d wanted to keep on walking until the waves swallowed her up, but she’d sat on the pi
er instead, gazing out at the ocean until she’d noticed some men looking at her. A madwoman in house slippers, with her arms wrapped around her chest. And then she’d got up and walked back to the Quonset hut.
She got up now, straightened the comforter, turned off the light in Lila’s dressing table without looking at herself, and started to walk back to the kitchen, hoping against hope that Cam could be found and Dozier would be ready to take them home.
“Dozier, you’re too old to be driving this fast,” Edna said for the second time.
“Want to know my definition of old, sweetheart?” Dozier asked. “Old is fifteen years past whatever age I am.” But he eased up on the accelerator anyway.
Cam cracked the window and looked over at Josie. It was going to be a long drive home, and not just because Dozier was now limping along at forty miles an hour. She sensed something was amiss but didn’t know what. Josie’s explanation that Lila had a migraine couldn’t quite account for the chilliness of Lila’s good-bye, both to Cam and to Josie. Edna had noticed it too, and ever since they’d been in the car, she’d been trying to ferret out the reason. When Josie ignored her questions, Edna started talking about various guests as though they were produce on display at a roadside stand: Orrie’s assistant was well preserved, Marge Larson looked overripe, and Evie was positively blooming. “Didn’t you think Evie looked marvelous?” she asked no one in particular. “Well, I thought she looked marvelous,” she answered herself, then, “I thought she was going to come back to your place tonight so she could visit with Cam, Josie.”
“She was going to,” Josie said, “but those friends of Jasper’s, the Cremoris, were going on to another party and they invited her to come along.”
“I see,” Edna said.
“Actually, Jasper convinced her to go along with them.”
“Yes, I see,” Edna repeated slowly, implying that she saw a great deal more than anyone else did.
Dozier turned on the radio. The oldies station was wailing with “Take the A Train.” Edna switched it off, saying, “I think we’re all too tired to be listening to that.” Dozier nodded and began humming softly to himself. Edna turned toward the backseat to ask, “Where were Lila’s kids, Josie? I would’ve thought Susan and Ricky would be there.”
“I don’t think either of them are at an age where they want to be at their parents’ parties,” Josie said.
“Mmmm. Having their daddy in the spotlight is going to be hard on them. People are always looking for some dirt on a politician’s family. Did you see the family portrait in Orrie’s campaign literature, Cam?”
“No, I didn’t,” Cam mumbled, sounding as though she were half-asleep, and wishing she were.
Edna clucked sympathetically. “You could tell Ricky wasn’t too happy in that picture. I guess it’s hard on kids that age.”
Cam gave Josie a sidelong glance and patted her hand. They both knew that Edna’s expressions of concern about problems in their family would be followed by a comparison to the happy normalcy of her own, and she didn’t disappoint them. “Now my grandson, Chip,” Edna went on. “He’s Ricky’s age but he still likes to be in on the family doings. He told me that the big family reunion we had last summer was the most fun he’d had all year.”
“I wouldn’t doubt it,” Cam whispered in Josie’s ear and even in the darkness she could see her mother’s face, which was looking extremely tired, crinkle into a smile.
“How’s Chip doing?” Cam raised her voice to ask, knowing that topic would be good for at least five minutes of bragging. Similar questions about her other cousins kept Edna going all the way to the Broad River. As they crossed it, Cam looked out on the expanse of moonlit water and rolled down the window to smell the salty-sweet clean air. Maybe Bedford Bethune was right: maybe the best thing about this visit would be the country itself.
“And that,” Edna told her when they’d gone another few miles, “is the new Cross Creek shopping center. That must’ve just been virgin land last time you were here.” Cam noted the huge, sterile parking lot where pines had once grown, the strip-mall stores with the Wal-Mart anchor illuminated by ghostly lights, the security guard napping in his Chevy, lone protector of the stand of “Last Minute Sale” Christmas trees. “Maybe I can take your car and drive over here tomorrow, Mama,” she said, feigning interest. “I need to pick up a few things.” Like a pregnancy test kit.
“Almost home now,” Dozier assured them, softly humming “String of Pearls” as Edna pointed out the sprawl of characterless government buildings on what had been another wooded site. They caught a glimpse of water as they rounded onto Cartaret Street, passed the college and the new library, then turned into the almost deserted streets of The Point, an enclave of dignified and beautifully eccentric houses shadowed with live oaks. “Just pull into your drive, we’ll walk across to my place,” Josie told him.
“No nightcap?”
“Not tonight.” Josie noticed that her house was ablaze with lights. Her heart sank when she remembered that Mrs. Beasley was there. “I have a guest at the house, Cam’s been traveling all day, I want to get up early to go visit Peatsy, and I know y’all have lots of things to do tomorrow, so I think we should all just call it a night.”
“What was the matter with Lila?” Edna almost exploded as Josie reached for the door handle. “She sure seemed to have her nose out of joint when we left.”
“I told you,” Josie said calmly, “she had a migraine. This time of year everyone tries to do too much. Everyone’s stressed out.”
“Maybe she was annoyed because Cam left the party.” Like the indominable huntress she was, she’d been stalking her prey for over an hour and had to get in her last shot. “Where did you go, Cam?”
“Oh, a fellow I went to high school with was there. H.A. Staples. I don’t think any of you knew him. He never came to the house.”
“That black man who looks like Harry Belafonte?” Edna asked.
“Uh-huh,” Cam said, though Hannibal didn’t look anything like Harry Belafonte. “We were talking about old times. It was good talking to him.” She pushed open the door, then turned back in, “Uncle Dozier, would you please unlock the trunk? My bag and that sack of presents is in there.”
Dozier helped Edna, then Josie, out of the car. The sisters wandered down the driveway, having a desultory discussion about the next day’s plans, then walked through the gardens of their respective houses to their back doors. Cam stood as Dozier hefted her bag out of the trunk, looking from house to house. “I’m sure I don’t know what was the matter with Lila,” Cam said, stifling a yawn.
“Wouldn’t have to be anything special,” he said as they moved down the drive. “Relatives rile one another. You know what Linus said—‘Big sisters are the crabgrass in the lawn of life’ and . . .” He looked from one house to the other, “I know that to be true. Sure you don’t want me to help you in with these bags?”
She shook her head, then kissed him on the cheek. “See you tomorrow, Uncle Dozier. I am sure glad to see you.” He said, “Likewise, I’m sure, Miss Camilla,” then shambled away. She turned and walked into her mother’s garden. The banks of paperwhites looked phosphorescent in the moonlight and gave a sweet smell to the chilly air. Josie had left the back door open and as she mounted the stairs and stepped into the enclosed veranda she heard a woman’s voice, high-pitched and anxious, as though she were telling about an accident: “. . . and I thought it might be a prowler, so—”
“No, Mrs. Beasley,” Josie soothed. “You’ve met that neighbor cat before. She belongs to Mrs. Smiley, two doors down, remember?” Hearing the door close, Josie broke off and turned to Cam. “Cam, this is my guest, Mrs. Beasley.” She nodded toward the woman sitting at the kitchen table. “Mrs. Beasley, this is my eldest daughter, Camilla. She’s home from New York for the holidays.”
Mrs. Beasley stared at Cam as though she might have been given false information.
“Pleased to meet you,” Cam said, though she wasn’t. Mrs. Beasle
y had the squashed face, protruding eyes, and hostile look of a spoilt Pekinese. Her hair was set in tiny sponge rollers covered with a net cap that matched her baby blue dressing gown and fluffy slippers.
“Oh, there was a telephone call for you,” Mrs. Beasley told her.
“For me?” Cam was surprised. “I don’t know who . . .”
Josie sighed. “Mrs. Beasley, I told you I have an answering machine so you don’t need to bother yourself with the phone.”
“I thought it might be something important. It was—” She got up from the kitchen table, waddled over to the telephone, and checked the notepad on the wall. “A woman by the name of Reba. The number’s here. It’s in North Carolina.”
“You remember my talking about Reba, don’t you, Mama?” Cam reminded Josie. “She’s a good friend. Down visiting her partner’s folks in Durham.”
“She sounded upset,” Mrs. Beasley warned, handing her the slip of paper before turning back to Josie. “I ’bout jumped out of my skin when I heard that scratching at the back door. I’ve never been left alone in this house before.”
“Well, Mrs. Beasley, you know the neighborhood is safe. Would you like a cup of herb tea to take up to bed with you?”
“No. No. I’ll be all right now that I know there’s someone else in the house.”
“Good. Well, then,” Josie began, taking off her jacket and moving into the dining room to turn off the lights. Cam covered a yawn, waited for Mrs. Beasley to say her good nights, and checked her watch to see if it was too late to return Reba’s phone call.