by Tony Lindsay
I rested my head against the headrest and looked up through my sunroof. The afternoon sky was clear and blue. Thank God the humidity had dropped and given us a break from the heavy sweating, but it remained hot. I was anxious to get out of my suit, because light wool is wool all the same.
“Did you know you and Martin drive the same kind of car?”
“He drives a Caddy?”
“Yeah, the same model as this one, identical color and everything. Don’t you find it interesting that both our partners match? Look at it, I was a partner with Martin at the firm and he drives a black DTS. You are a partner with Carol and she drives a gold C class. You have to admit there may be something cosmic to it. Perhaps we should hook the two of them up?”
“No, I want no parts of Martin in my life.”
“Well don’t rule it out. Carol is going to need someone once she finds out you’re going to need her less in your life.”
“Carol and I aren’t . . .”
“David, please, a woman senses what a man doesn’t. You may not be cognizant of it, but Carol has got plans for you. Please believe.” She reached over and held my hand. “I need to explain something to you. Well not explain, but tell you something. It’s related to my outburst last night and earlier today.”
I imagined it was the “it” that was riding her down. “Wouldn’t you rather talk inside the house?”
“Yes, of course. I would like to get something out of my car before we go in.”
Hers was the only Benz on the block. Looking up and down, I had to admit our block looked good for being in the hood. There were small neat lawns, chain link fences, hedges and no abandoned or raggedy houses on the block. A group of kids were rolling out a basketball hoop and that would be the center of all they did that day. Despite the heat, they played ball all day long.
They set the hoop in front of the only dope house. There was a time we had three, but with concerned neighbors and a cop moving onto the block, two left. The Reeds, the owners of the one that remained, had lived on the block as long as my family.
As a child I remember my grandmother’s referring to the house as the policy house. When I was teenager, that was where I brought my first dime bag of weed, and as a man, that was where I dragged my crack-addicted brother Robert from more times than I cared to remember.
The Reeds and I are the only homeowners who don’t complain about the kids setting up the basketball hoop in front of our houses. I don’t complain because I like to watch them hoop. The Reeds, the kids tell me, don’t complain about anything, as long as it doesn’t stop the traffic from coming and going out their back door.
Daphne went to the trunk of her car and pulled out a large legal hanging file filled with newspapers. I reached to help her, but she backed away. “I got it, David.”
When we walked into the house I halfway expected to smell a blunt burning, hear Nelly blasting in the background and see a group of teens chilling on my couch. Much to my comfort, none of that happened. Stanley was stretched out on the couch, asleep. He did, however, have the big screen on the Playboy channel. Yin and Yang sat watching intently; they looked over their shoulder to us, then back to the screen.
The mahogany box that held my grandmother’s silverware was on the coffee table, open, along with the silver polish and rags. The pieces gleamed from the box. Daphne signaled for us to leave Stanley sleeping. We eased by him into the kitchen.
She placed the papers at her feet as she sat at the table. “On second thought, I am not entirely ready to share this information with you.”
“No problem, baby.” And it really wasn’t. My mind was spinning with my own problems. I wanted the relief of a cold shower and the freedom of my Nike shorts.
“But I am positive it will be helpful with us in dealing with Randolph if things go that far. After we speak with Martin, I’ll know better how to handle it. If you don’t mind, I would like to use your phone to try and get us a court date this week.”
“Please feel free.”
Trying not to wake up Stanley, I quietly called the dogs to the back door and let them out in the yard. Standing on the back porch at the screen I watched them wrestle in the grass while different thoughts crossed my mind.
How important was my last name?
Was it a male ego thing?
Was I denying Chester a chance at a better life?
If it was a rich black man wanting to adopt him would I protest as much?
Price is a family name and a tag from slavery. For most African Americans a family name is both, but it’s a family name all the same. My family name, thereby my family history. I could go back only to my granddaddy, who didn’t know his daddy and didn’t care that he didn’t know him. All he ever told me about his mama was that she taught him to count money. There is not a whole lot of history attached to my family name, but what’s there belongs to us. The Prices.
As a boy I was proud to be a Price. It used to make me feel good to hear one of Daddy’s buddies say, “There go one of them Price boys, tell ya daddy I said hey.” It was pretty much the same at church. I wasn’t David and my brothers weren’t Robert or Charles. We were all, “them Price boys” or “one of those Price boys.” At the barbershop they called my granddaddy, my father, me and my brothers Price. We were all Price.
As a child I understood that people knew my family and I felt good about that. My father wasn’t my mama’s “baby’s daddy,” he was my father, and I had his name.
My daddy and my granddaddy set standards for us to follow: “A Price does this, a Price does that.” I was raised as a Price. My father was part of me and I he. There was comfort in knowing that I was a Price, and my son should have that same security.
Financially, I could provide for my son better than I was provided for. True, I might not be wealthy by Peal’s standard, but I could take care of mine. If it was male ego, so be it. It was only right that I should give my son what was given to me. My son would have the strength and confidence of a family name.
It was the Marvin Gaye ringtone of Daphne’s phone, which pulled me from my thoughts.
“It’s Randolph’s cell number on my screen. Should I answer?” she asked loudly from the kitchen.
“Yeah, see what he wants.” I walked from the back door into the kitchen and sat in the chair next to her.
“Yes, Randolph, how can I help you?” Her tone was guarded, almost fearful. Her leg nervously tapped against the file of newspapers at her feet.
“Yes, I understand we have a history together . . . I disagree. I don’t see my leaving as disloyal. I am doing what is best for me . . . What? . . . Randolph I would never, that would hurt us both . . . you shouldn’t view my moving on as a threat to you . . . David had nothing to do with my decision . . . that’s not your business . . . if you consider me a threat, there is nothing I can do about it . . . no, I don’t consider you a threat . . . what? Yes, I am sure we will both meet there and the only bitch I know is your mother!” She flipped the phone closed.
“I should have known it wasn’t going to happen that easy. He’s afraid. As long as I was with him, under his watch, he was cool. Sinners are bound by secrets, and now that I am away from him, he is afraid I will break our bond.”
“Are you afraid of him?”
“Not the way he fears me. He’s afraid I will ruin him, and I fear what he will do to stop that from happening.”
“I won’t let him hurt you.”
“D, I’m not going to give him a reason to hurt me. I got the court date set for Friday morning. If all goes well, Regina will come to her senses and this will all be over.”
At that moment Stanley entered the kitchen, “Hey, Ma what’s going on? I just got a two-way from Martin, saying he’s going to give you my last check and that we are finished doing business. What’s up with that?”
“I’m going into practice on my own.”
“Are you going to do crash cases?”
“No!” Her jaws set and her teeth clenched.
“Baby,” she massaged her own temples bringing some release to her tight face, “I’m ending your thang, okay? I’m taking you out of the crash case business.”
“Ma, I ain’t got enough to get my ride.”
“No, but together I’m sure we have enough to get you a nice little car, that will get you back and forth from school.”
“Ma! I was getting a whip, not a nice little car.”
“We are through talking now, Stan. Leave Mr. Price and me alone for a second.”
“Ma!”
“Go on up front boy! We’ll talk later.”
He slumped out of the kitchen.
Trying my hand at a little levity I say, “The boy said he wants a whip, girl. Not a nice car.”
“Yeah, well, his and my wants are going to be on hold awhile. But talking to him made me think about a person who might be the answer to our problems—that is if things go south with Randolph.”
“Who?”
“The person he hurt most with our shared sin; his ex-wife Eleanor.”
I wanted to ask her what the sin was, but life had taught me that patience is indeed a virtue. “I know his first wife, Eleanor Jackson. Her family is from Englewood. Nice folks. I went to her parents’ wedding; they had lived together over twenty years and then got married. Man that was a big event; they hired two bands and a DJ, reserved half the park and had enough food to feed the whole south side of town. Eleanor and I talked a great deal at the wedding. I like her. Does she know the secret?”
“No, if she did, Randolph would be ruined. She wouldn’t hesitate to nail his behind to the wall. Please believe. I need to call her anyway and tell her I made the move away from Randolph. She’ll be happy.”
“You and her are friends?”
“Yeah, she’s my girl. I met her when I was going to Roosevelt University. She was a serious student, always telling me I couldn’t afford to play like the white kids. She would say, “We are young black females, a rarity at this level; playtime is over.” She preached harder than my parents, but I didn’t hear her. We got cool regardless of my poor study habits and partying. She went straight through and got a paralegal certificate; me, I dropped out of the paralegal program, but I went back a couple of years later for my bachelor’s.
“After she graduated, she started a data-entry service, and once I started with Randolph, I got him to send her some business. They eventually started dating, and one thing led to another, and they got married.”
Daphne cut off her two-way pager and put it in her purse. She stood, yawned and stretched toward the ceiling, slid out of her suit coat and hung it on the back of the chair, then sat back at the table with me.
She wore a camisole with no bra. I didn’t want to be distracted. A brother had to muster up enough self-restraint to ask a hard question.
“If she’s your girl, why haven’t you shared the information with her?”
She looked down at her manicured nails. Her eyes came back to me, then to the wall behind me and finally back to me.
“Because I’m as guilty as Randolph, that’s why. The information would cause her to hate me too.”
Marvin Gaye sounded off again and Daphne flipped her phone open. It was Martin confirming our meeting. We had over an hour before we were to meet him at Jackie’s.
After she’d confirmed and hung up, I asked, “So what’s the deal with you and Martin?”
“Attorney Martin MacNard, my man, excuse me, my ex-man. Didn’t you think he was all that and a bag of chips?”
“No.”
She patted my knee. “Well, he thinks he is. The man loves himself.”
“Sounds like he loves you.”
“Please, he’s a foot freak. He has a foot fetish. He loves my feet.” She reached down and slipped her high heels off.
“The man will do anything I tell him as long as I allow him to rub, kiss and pamper my feet. In the beginning it was kind of erotic, until I found out his toe sucking wasn’t foreplay. He achieves a climax from sucking my toes.”
“No!”
“It’s the truth. Over the years we’ve been together I can count the times we had actual sexual intercourse. He’s not one for copulation. He’d rub on himself and suck my toes till satisfied.” She placed her feet in my lap. They were pretty.
“Was he unable to get erect?”
“No not at all, he got good and hard at the drop of a hat, or should I say, the drop of a shoe. Whenever I slid my shoes off a lump would start going in his trousers. Do you mind rubbing my feet a little, these aren’t my walking shoes?”
I’m good at foot massages, but I use them for foreplay and since the bedroom wasn’t on the schedule that afternoon, all I did was rub her feet.
“How long were you with him?”
“Well, I met him while bird-dogging for Randolph. He was an impressive young African American attorney with ambition. To me he was all that and a bag of chips. He convinced Randolph to pay for my last year at Roosevelt and all of my law school. What’s that, five years? He’s been leaving me with wet toes for five years.”
“Why did you stay with him?”
“He did for me, and Randolph thought it was a good idea. There was a time when Randolph’s words were gold to me. Whatever he suggested, this girl did. It was Randolph who put me onto the first real money that came my way.
“I was driving Daddy’s raggedy Ford Tempo when a beer truck ran me into a storefront. I wasn’t injured, but the fire department did have to cut me out of the car. An ambulance took me to the hospital. While they were rolling me in, Randolph popped up on the side of the gurney and asked me if I had a lawyer. I said no. He told me I was wrong and that he was my lawyer.
“The next thing I knew, I was in another ambulance going to a hospital out in the western suburbs. Three weeks later when I got out of the hospital, Randolph paid me fifteen thousand dollars. When the beer company settled, I got a new Volvo and another ten thousand.
“I gave my daddy two grand and moved out. I started bird-dogging, that’s recruiting people to be in staged accidents, in case you didn’t know what bird-dogging was, for Randolph full time.
“He had full-time dispatchers who monitored police, fire, and ambulance calls for legitimate accident-victim clients. Randolph put a two-way radio in my car and bought me some business suits. Then he taught me what to say to people who had just been pulled from a wreck and were on their way to a hospital. He taught me how to console and offer wealth all in one sentence. Randolph plugged me in. I was taking care of my son, my folks and me.
“Every eighteen months or so I would be in an accident and get a big check. I started buying property with the big checks. The first house I bought was my daddy’s. He had two mortgages on a house he got with a VA loan. He wept tears of joy when I put the deed on his dresser.
“When Martin came into my life, I thought I was financially secure, my property was taking care of me; he showed me different. He taught me money management. And he showed me how educated wealthy people lived. I became as wealthy as an educated professional, but I wasn’t educated and in the company of the educated, so I felt inferior.
“When Martin and I started dating, he took me to events I ignored in the past: galas, political functions, charitable events and society weddings. Our pictures were popping up in newspapers and local magazines. I was traveling in the same circles as Regina and her mother. That’s how Regina’s and my friendship got started. We continued to run into each other.
“After one of the mayor’s parties I mentioned to Martin that I felt undereducated among his crowd. He agreed that I was and to show that he lived in the ‘solution and not the problem,’ he promised to get all my tuition paid, undergraduate and graduate if I so desired.
“My mother didn’t raise a fool, D. I went back to school and got my law degree. Was it worth five years of wet toes? Yes, in the long run it was.”
“Why did you dump him?”
&
nbsp; “Baby, please, why didn’t I dump him sooner is the question. The graduate education changed my outlook on life. I try not to settle, D. It leaves one unsatisfied. This morning you gave me satisfaction in areas of my life that have been pruned by settling. My law degree caused me to think larger, to grow. I’ve grown past settling.
“I refuse to be with a man who doesn’t care about my son. I am not settling for a man who doesn’t respect me, nor am I settling for a man who would rather lick my toes than my clit. Life is too good for settling. Five years of wet toes is enough. I am now a practicing attorney and more than capable of finding a man who knows how to satisfy me.” She winked at me.
“Oh yeah, sounds like you saying I knocked the brother out of the box?”
“Maybe.” Her feet dropped from my lap. She pressed her full lips against my neck, sucked on my flesh, then repeated, “Maybe.”
I checked my Rolex to see if there was enough time to go under her camisole; there wasn’t. The meeting with Martin was less than twenty minutes away.
Jackie’s had been one of my favorite places to meet and eat for years. They cook like my family. The crispy salmon croquettes we ordered, along with the pan-fried cornbread, okra and peas, and even the hand-squeezed lemonade; all would have easily been at home on my mother’s table.
The folks who patronize Jackie’s restaurant come to eat; there is not a lot eavesdropping when the food is good. I’d allowed Stanley to drive us over to the restaurant. He enjoyed chauffeuring us, and was in a pretty good mood behind it. He’d said he’d driven a Caddy just like mine before. Martin’s I guessed.
Sitting in a booth waiting for our food, Stanley turned to his mother and said, “Ma, I’m sorry for lying to you about the money. I was scared. I only tried to take your money because I knew I had money coming from Martin. If you would have given it to me, I would have paid you back. Fo’ real, Ma. And as soon as Martin gives me the check, I’m going to call dude and this is all going to be over with.” He directed his words to me and asked, “Mr. Price, would you go with me to pay dude?”
“That’s what your mother hired me for, son.” I thought about the check Daphne wrote for a week’s worth of protection and smiled. Carol owed her a refund.