“Sorry,” he spluttered, but she shook her head. “Was I really that bad?” she asked, and he rolled his eyes. “Terrible,” he said. “You were incorrigible. You were Malcolm fucking X.”
She hooted with laughter, then rose in a swift motion and walked across the living room. She picked up a photo frame and walked toward him, wiping the glass on her blouse as she did. She handed it to Anton. “This is Mike,” she said. “This is my husband.”
The picture that had formed in Anton’s head ever since Carine had announced she was married was that of Denzel Washington, and so he felt a jolt of surprise when he saw the man in the picture. Mike was white. He was a good-looking guy, he’d give her that. Thick dark hair, a strong jaw, and warm gray eyes peering from behind rimless glasses, a thoughtful look on his face. Without the military fatigues, Mike could’ve passed for a humanities professor. Anton forced a smile onto his face. “So this is Mr. Right, huh?”
Carine took the picture frame out of Anton’s hands. “It is,” she said, and it was as if there were a blush in her voice.
“How long will he be away?”
She made a face. “Who knows? He’s on his fourth tour.”
Anton rubbed his face, feeling a creeping sympathy. “Thought we were supposed to be out of that mess years ago,” he muttered.
She shrugged. “Sometimes I wonder if it will ever end.” She fell silent and he felt compelled to say, “It must be really tough. With the kids and all?”
“He was home for a week about a month ago. That was good. And my parents live twenty minutes away. That’s a huge help.”
“Your parents,” he said. “How are they?” He frowned, remembering something. “Your dad still goes on those overseas trips?”
“Not really. He’s getting old.” Her face brightened. “That’s how I met Mike, you know. He was volunteering at the clinic in Haiti when we were last there. He’s a physician’s assistant.”
“Really? That’s cool,” he said, not knowing what to say but thinking, If you’d married me, you would’ve been the wife of a governor. Instead, here you are, in a suburban home, the mother of two children, the wife of a man who is ten thousand miles away. It was amazing how the currents of destiny had taken them to such different places.
As if she’d read his mind, Carine said, “But enough about me. What about you? You’re not married, right?”
He laughed, but it rang hollow to his ears. “Me? God, no.” He said it as if she’d asked an absurd question.
“But you have someone?” Carine’s voice was gentle but persistent. “A sweetheart? I think I read that in the article?”
“I do.” And then, seeing that she wanted to know more, “Her name’s Katherine. She’s a human rights lawyer. We’ve been going steady now for—Gosh, it’s been over two years.”
“But no wedding bells on the horizon?”
Why was Carine suddenly sounding like his mother? What was it with happily married people that they felt the answer to all of life’s problems was marriage? Did she even know that he was about to become the youngest governor of his state? Wasn’t that accomplishment enough? “Well,” he said, “it’s hard to run a political campaign and plan a wedding at the same time.”
“Oh, but that’s great,” Carine said, misunderstanding him. “Congratulations.”
“Congrats? Jeez, Carine. You’re as bad as my mom.” His grin took the sting out of his words. “I—we—Katherine and I don’t have a date planned, for chrissake. I haven’t even asked her yet.” All the while thinking, Does she even care that sitting in her living room is the man who could be governor?
Carine smiled warmly. “Your mom,” she said. “How is she?” There was not a trace of wariness in her voice, as if she had no recollection of her last disastrous meeting with Delores.
“She’s good. She’s great.”
“And your dad?”
He felt a heaviness in his heart at the thought of David, their earlier conversation coming back to him with vivid ferocity. “He’s okay. A little frail. He’s never been the same since he had his heart attack . . .” He trailed off.
There was a short silence, as if they were both thinking about David and his mortality, and then Anton heard himself saying, “Actually, I’ve had a very strange day today. You’ll never guess why I’m in town.”
“Wasn’t it for a fund-raiser or something?”
He pulled on his right ear. “I wish. No, actually, I came to see . . . her. My birth mom. She lives around here. Out in the country. Just outside of Ronan. Do you know where that is?” He didn’t wait for her response. “It’s kind of funny, really. That both of you—that the two of you, my mom and my former . . . you . . . live less than two hours from each other.” He stopped abruptly and stared at the floor, suddenly teary, the events of the day catching up with him.
“You met her?” Carine said sharply. “Today? Oh, wow. Anton. That’s huge. But why now?”
He forced his eyes upward to meet her gaze. “She wrote to me. There was an article about me, and she saw it. So she wrote to me. Turns out it was just to say hello, like.” He gulped and forced himself to go on, feeling like he was confessing something. “But I didn’t know. I thought that maybe—perhaps, you know, since I was running for governor—I thought that she—”
“You thought she was blackmailing you or something,” Carine interrupted. Her voice was flat.
He nodded. “Yes. Yes, I did. And so I slipped out of town this morning. And met with her.” He heard the tremor in his voice and couldn’t quite account for it. God, he was tired, really tired.
“Oh, Anton.” Carine rose from her chair and came to sit down next to him on the couch. She took his trembling hand in hers. “Oh, baby. What a mess. I could’ve told you she wasn’t after anything.”
His hand felt cold, dead, in hers. “How could you know?”
She turned to face him, and for the first time since he’d gotten here, the look in her eyes reminded him of the old Carine. Not the fiery old Carine who mouthed off whenever he was being hopelessly conventional, but the Carine who sometimes looked . . . disappointed in him. “I just know,” she said at last. “How could she hurt you? How could a poor black woman living in rural Georgia go up against . . . someone like you?”
He flinched, hearing what Carine was too polite to say: To Juanita Vesper, Anton Coleman may as well be a powerful white man. Ordinarily, this wouldn’t have necessarily registered as an insult, but today, his feelings bruised by David’s deceit, he resented the association. “Well,” he said. “Paula Jones was a nobody, too. But she almost destroyed a president.”
Carine’s eyes were watchful, her voice gentle. “Yes. But Paula Jones wasn’t Bill Clinton’s mother. A mom would never deliberately hurt her child, Anton.”
He sat still, blinking back the tears that burned in his eyes. “You’re right. Turns out I misread the situation.”
Carine squeezed his hand. “So it went okay? The visit? I can’t even imagine what that would feel like—for either one of you. How many years had it been?”
How many years? Too many. “I was nine when I last saw her,” he said. “So it’s been a long time.”
“And how was the reunion?”
He looked back at her, his brain processing her question, unsure how to answer. Had it gone okay? It had, in fact. He had liked Juanita, and none of his fears about her had been realized. But he had learned something about David that had shaken him to his roots, that had made his whole life with the Colemans seem as if it had been built on someone else’s back. Carine was looking at him, expecting his answer, when his phone rang. The ring sounded loud in the silent room, and as if on cue, he heard a tiny voice call from the upstairs bedroom, “Mom?” He mouthed an apology to Carine as he silenced the phone and saw that it was Katherine and that it was past eleven-thirty. “I have to take this,” he whispered, getting onto his feet. “Hi, baby,” he said.
“Anton? Where the hell are you?” Katherine’s voice sounded close, as
if she were in the room with him.
“A good evening to you, too,” he said, stalling for time, trying to gauge the wisdom of answering Katherine’s inelegant question truthfully. He glanced over at Carine, saw that she was leaving the room, and was relieved.
“It’s not funny, Anton. We were getting worried,” Katherine said. “Brad said he hadn’t heard from you since morning. He’s apoplectic. So are you on your way home or not?”
He sighed. Facing all of them—and yes, to his great surprise and sadness, he associated Katherine with them—was the last thing he wanted to do. He knew this as surely as he had ever known anything. “I’m gonna spend the night here, okay, baby?” he said. “I’m exhausted. It’s been a very long day.”
“Where are you?” she asked again.
“I pulled off the road,” he lied. “And I’m gonna check in to a motel in a few minutes.”
Katherine exhaled. “Okay. That’s probably a good idea. You’ve got to be dead-tired.” She cleared her throat. “So, how’d it go? With your mom?”
He shut his eyes. “It’s a long story, honey. I’ll tell you when I’m home. But it went pretty okay.”
“Oh, good. I’m so relieved. So what time are you coming home tomorrow?”
He hesitated, unsure of what to say. Because the truth was, he wasn’t ready to say goodbye to Carine yet. He’d check in to a nearby motel tonight, and then—if she wasn’t tied up tomorrow—he wanted to come back to this pretty house for breakfast. To meet her kids. To tell her about his birth mom. He didn’t know when he’d ever see Carine again, and now that he knew she was happily married, he felt safe being alone with her, didn’t feel like he was cheating on Katherine. He would have to explain everything to Katherine when he returned home, of course, and he knew he was digging a trap for himself by lying to her now, but he couldn’t do any better tonight. Not when he was too tired to think straight. Not when Carine could walk back into the room at any minute. Not when there was a pretty good chance that Katherine would freak out at the truth.
“Well,” he began, but there was a voice at the other end and he heard Katherine say, “Here, you talk to him,” and then he heard Brad’s voice, hot and urgent in his ear, “You dickhead. Where did you disappear?”
Despite himself, Anton began to laugh. “I’ve been gone one freakin’ day,” he said. “You guys are acting like I’ve gone AWOL or something.”
He expected Bradley to come back at him with a soft curse, but there was nothing. “Hello?” Anton said cautiously. “Brad?”
“Listen,” Brad said, “you get some rest tonight. I’ll try and fend off your mother and the press for a few more hours until you get your ass back into town tomorrow. But if you still want me to run your goddamn campaign, you better start picking up the phone when I call. Or you can find yourself a new manager. Now go to bed, asshole. And for your sake, I hope you have the sense to pay for your room with cash.”
“You should’ve listened to me when I told you to spread the word we were leaving town for the weekend,” Anton teased and then waited for Brad to cuss him out. But there was no response. Anton stared at his phone in disbelief. They had both hung up on him? He was a grown man in his thirties and he hadn’t earned the right to take off for one day without them tracking him like a dog on a leash? He had never heard Brad so bent out of shape, not even when Anton had kept flubbing his lines during the practice session for the first debate against Johnny Newman. He felt a sudden dread at the realization that his life would only get more constrained if he became governor. Hell, if even Brad and Katherine couldn’t appreciate why he sometimes needed to disappear, what hope was there for the media and the public to be more forgiving? He felt a heaviness clamp down on him. I don’t want this, he thought, I can’t live like this. But the thought was so treacherous, so much a negation of everybody’s efforts on his behalf, that he dismissed it as abruptly as he had allowed it to seep into his mind. You’re tired, he said to himself. Just go find a motel and everything will seem clearer in the morning. Hell, you can be home by tomorrow afternoon if you catch that plane in the morning.
He went out into the hallway and saw that Carine was sitting by herself in the kitchen. She looked up when he walked in. “Everything okay?” she said.
He nodded. “Yup.” He rocked on his heels, the reason why he’d really stopped by here tonight dawning on him. “Listen. I know it’s late. But—something happened today. I mean, something else. Something I found out. I . . . I just need to process it with a friend. If you’re too tired, I’ll under—”
“Anton.” Carine gave an exasperated hiss. “Stop talking in riddles and come sit down. What is it?”
He told her. All of it. Including his conversation with David in which the older man had refused to apologize. Anton could see the tears glinting in her eyes when he got done, but she sat there, not moving, staring silently at him. “It’s unbelievable,” she whispered at long last. “It’s not possible.” She shook her head as if to untangle the knot of images forming there. “So what’re you going to do?”
He shrugged, meeting her eyes, resenting the pity he saw there, but forcing himself to not look away. “Nothing. What can I do? There’s nothing to do. He’s my father. It’s not like I can disown him. You know? I mean, I’m still in shock, but I know that he meant well.” He stifled a yawn. “Tonight I’ll check in to a motel. Get some sleep. And tomorrow I’ll get up early and take the plane home. Or meet you for breakfast and then go home.”
“That’s it? You’ll just put it behind you? You can do that?”
Now he heard the anger in Carine’s voice, and it made him half wish he hadn’t confided in her. “I’ll go see her,” he mumbled. “After the election.”
“Ah, the election. The friggin’ all-important election.” Before he could reply and tell her how many people had worked their hearts out for him to win, she swung her legs around and hopped off the stool. “And don’t be an ass about going to a motel,” she said. “I just made up the guest bedroom. While you were on the phone.”
He stared after her dumbly, his resentment at her dig tempered by his gratitude at her matter-of-fact friendship and hospitality. He knew spending the night here would complicate things with Katherine—and he realized he didn’t care. He really didn’t want to be alone in a motel tonight, not after the kind of day he’d had. The thought of spending a little more time with Carine cheered him. Already the sharp lust that he had felt for her when he’d shown up was easing into a deep affection, blunted by the fact of her marriage and her obvious love for her husband. And it was this knowledge that made him feel right about replying with a simple “You did? Bless you.”
She eyed his duffel bag. “You bring any PJs with you? Or I could loan you Mike’s.”
He shrugged. “Nah. I didn’t think I was gonna spend the night in Georgia. But I’ll manage. Don’t worry.”
She looked like she was about to argue, but all she said was “Okay. This way.” She led him to a small but beautiful room with an attached half-bath and sliding doors that opened into the backyard. “The boys get up early,” she warned. “So unless you want two wild seven-year-olds jumping on your bed in the morning, you best shut your door.” She pushed him toward the bathroom. “Go get ready for bed. I’ll come in and check on you in a few.”
He brushed his teeth with the new toothbrush she’d put out for him, washed his face, untucked his shirt, and slipped into bed. He fought sleep as he waited for her to return, inexplicably feeling a childlike anticipation at the thought. Just as his eyelids were closing, she came back in and sat at the foot of his bed. “What do you want for breakfast tomorrow? We have eggs, cereal—”
He shook his head ruefully, cutting her off. “I’m rethinking it. It’s best if I leave early. My campaign manager thinks I’ve gone rogue. I’ll just grab a coffee on the way.”
Even in the dark, he felt her stiffen with disappointment. “Okay,” she said briskly. “Whatever.”
He reached over and too
k her hand and squeezed it. “I wish I could stay longer. I feel like we hardly got to talk about you. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. I lead the world’s most boring life.” She sighed. “I love my life. But sometimes . . . being alone with the kids . . . it’s always nice to see old friends.”
They sat in the dark holding hands, and Anton felt a warmth start in his chest and make its way down into his belly and then, slowly, into that dangerous place. And Carine must have sensed it, because she pulled her hand away from his and got up. She bent over and kissed him on the forehead. “Good night, sweet boy,” she whispered. “What a terrible day you’ve had. Get some rest.”
Anton drifted off to sleep with a smile on his lips. Sweet boy. Only Carine could pull that off. She had called him sweet boy as if he were one of her kids. Or as if she were Juanita Vesper. They were lovely, these Georgia women. Warm, tender, as if they had been shaped by the loamy, rich southern soil that had nurtured them. He wanted to nestle in to them, cover himself with their richness, their blackness. And then the blackness was over him and he fell asleep, Georgia on his mind.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
He opened his eyes the next morning and found himself looking into the dark brown eyes of a solemn boy sitting next to him on the bed. “Well, hello,” he said, but the boy didn’t respond and kept looking into his face as if trying to memorize it. In that short time, with the sun pouring into the small room and the boy’s upturned face still as the moon, Anton felt transported into a different dimension of time and space. This boy could’ve been his son, he thought, if he hadn’t broken up with Carine. This sweet, serious face could’ve belonged to his child, and there could’ve been countless Saturday mornings of waking up to such exquisite sweetness. If this had been his routine on weekends, he could’ve kissed the boy without asking permission, could’ve cupped that light brown face with his large hand and felt the pride and pleasure in the simple gesture. He shut his eyes for a moment to imagine this, but what he saw, improbably, was Juanita’s face, beaming with pride as she looked upon her grandchildren. He hurriedly opened them again, smiled at the face next to his, and said, “What’s your name?”
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