“Something happened last night,” she said, and wondered what there was in her tone that brought all three of the children to silent attention.
“Some men tried to…it has to do with this job I’m working for Miz Inez. Something’s missing and they think Ray-Ray took it and gave it to me. He didn’t give it to me, but they don’t believe me. Last night, some men tried to…”
“What, Moms?! What?” Taifa was out of her chair. She threw an arm around Blanche. “Are you all right? Did they hurt you? What…”
“Hurt! Who said anything about hurt? You always jump to conclusions!” Malik shouted, but he sounded like he might cry.
Shaquita stared at Blanche with fear in her eyes.
“No. I’m okay, honey.” Blanche put her arm around Taifa’s waist and kept it there.
“And everything’s gonna be fine. Some people are going to be looking out for all of us for a while, until this is all over. Othello Flood with the Ex-Cons for Community Safety. He…”
“Aminata’s boyfriend,” Malik said.
Blanche nodded. “That’s right. Somebody from the Ex-Cons will be taking you to school in the morning and bringing you home.”
“Aw, Mom! No way! I can look out for myself, and I got things to do after school that…”
Blanche sighed. That guy thing again. She let Malik talk on about soccer practice, his class mediation committee meeting, and basketball practice with his Y team—all things she was supposed to believe were more important than his safety.
“I’m sorry, Malik. You’re going to have to come home with your ride. And stay home. Both of you. It’s only for a few days, I promise,” she said, and hoped it was true.
“But, Moms! They’re criminals!” Taifa shrieked.
“They committed crimes. Just like you were a baby with shitty diapers. They’ve changed, too,” Blanche said.
The doorbell saved her from further argument.
The sight of Othello called to mind a snug house and a full cupboard—things she associated with security. She also conjured up a big, firm bed lit only by a candle or two in a room filled with music—things she associated with good sex. Even last night, in the middle of her fear, she remembered that melting feeling in her crotch when he’d held her hand. She wondered how much her attraction to Othello had to do with her Aminata thing. Maybe it wasn’t just Malik’s relationship with her that rankled. And how horny was she that she’d think of sex at a time like this? But when did a person need to be held and stroked as much as when things were going to hell in a hurry?
She wasn’t the only one with an open nose: Taifa’s objections to being guarded by a convict seemed to dissolve at the sight of the muscular, almost pretty-faced young man assigned to drive her and Malik back and forth to school. Roger, Dennis, and Louis, the three men with Othello, were all polite, quiet, and formal. After they were introduced, they went back to their respective cars to wait for their charges. Blanche liked that, too.
Before she left the house, she decided to call Bea Richards one last time. She was almost tongue-tied when Bea answered the phone.
“Yes, this is Bea Richards. Who is this?”
Blanche untwisted her tongue enough to explain that she’d gotten Bea’s name from Cousin Charlotte. “She thought maybe you could give me some information that might help a friend of mine.”
“What kinda information?”
“About Maurice Samuelson.”
“What about him?” The curiosity in her tone was replaced with something that sounded more like suspicion.
“Well, my friend’s thinking about joining his Temple and…”
“Who you say give you my name?”
Blanche told her again.
“She shoulda told you I ain’t much for talking business on the telephone. Certain people round here might be trying to find out what I’m sayin’ and who I’m sayin’ it to.”
Blanche kept quiet. The woman sounded a little bit like a lady she’d known in Harlem who thought the FBI was trying to take nude pictures of her to sell to Playboy. On the other hand, she sounded a lot like Blanche was beginning to feel, as though her life and world were on the verge of being seriously invaded.
“Let’s meet somewhere,” Blanche said.
They made a date to meet in the Tropical Foods market off Dudley Square on Saturday.
“I’ll be wearing a red sweater,” Bea told her.
Blanche’s ride to work with Roger was something she could easily get used to—complete with a cup of tea to sip on the way. She thanked him and said she’d see him at seven-thirty.
The air inside the Brindle house felt moist and wild. Blanche moved slowly and quietly around the kitchen, careful to stay relaxed and in the center of herself, as though her calm and quiet could be a model for the house.
Carrie almost leapt into Blanche’s arms when the front doorbell rang. She burst back into the kitchen and pointed toward the front of the house. “It’s Mr. Marc.”
Blanche grabbed a pair of flower shears from the utility drawer. She went out to the front hall to the table between the breakfast room and the library, where she began grooming the fresh flower arrangement. All the while she eyed Marc Brindle. He looked like a person who’d given up sleep a long time ago. The heavy shadow of his beard was long past five o’ clock. His pants and jacket hung from his body in folds and creases. Even from this distance she saw the dirt on his shirt. He looked in her direction, but she wasn’t sure he saw her. She gave him a good-morning nod but didn’t speak. She was right behind him when he opened the breakfast room door, and she caught the door just before it clicked shut. Then she peered into the room with her left eye.
The forces Blanche had felt in the house gathered in the breakfast room. She could feel the electricity in the air and something else—something like a fast train coming that couldn’t be stopped.
Felicia rose from the table. Allister didn’t move. Felicia flung her arms wide. She had a look on her face that Blanche sometimes sensed on her own—that combination of relief and irritation when Taifa and Malik came home after being gone long enough for the worst possibilities to begin whispering in her ear.
Marc held out his arm to ward his mother off.
Felicia stopped halfway between him and the table, her arms still partially outstretched.
“Marc, darling. I’m so glad to see you!” Felicia took a slow step toward him. “I was so worried. I—”
“Don’t, Mother, please don’t!”
“But, darling, I just want to…”
Marc grasped his hair with both hands. “Why, Mother? Just tell me why him? Why?”
“I didn’t mean to, Marc. It was an accident. He—”
“An accident?! An accident?! How do you seduce someone by accident, Mother?”
Felicia looked confused for a few seconds. “Oh, I thought you…but you mean you think I…No, Marc. Darling, no! You can’t think I’d do such a thing! I didn’t know! I swear I…”
“He loved me! I know he loved me! Until you…”
Something crumbled in Felicia’s face. “No, no, it wasn’t like that. It wasn’t just me! He had other…He was just a…I swear I never knew about you. Never knew he even liked…”
“Liar! We were happy until you—”
“Marc! I would never have…never do anything to hurt you, darling, you know that. You must know that.”
Blanche had forgotten about Allister until he rose from his chair. “What the? Both of you? Both of you were fucking that trainer? Jesus Christ! If this gets out, I’ll…”
Marc and Felicia ignored him. Felicia took another step toward her son. “Marc, please, I’m telling you the truth.”
“Oh, God, Mother!” Marc reached for Felicia with one hand and cradled his face with the other.
Felicia rushed to him and threw her arms around him, murmuring motherese and hugging him hard.
Marc put his hands on Felicia’s upper arms and gently put her aside. He murmured something to her that Blanche cou
ldn’t hear. Felicia smiled even though there were tears in her eyes. Marc turned to Allister.
“Dear old Dad.” Marc made the title sound like the worst possible curse. “You and your fucking political career and your fucking family name! I might have had a norm—”
“Get a grip on yourself, boy! No son of mine…”
“Son of yours! Son of yours! When did I graduate to being your son? I thought I was her son. That’s what you always—”
“Don’t speak to me in that tone of voice, boy! I can’t stand hysteria in a man, especially a Brindle.”
“What do you like in a Brindle, Dad? Handcuffs? Leather underwear? Blonds with big tits and whips? What makes you better than me?”
Allister’s eyes bucked. “You! You have it!” He banged his fist on the table. The dishes rattled like chattering teeth. “Where is it? Where’s the tape?” He leaned across the table toward his son. “Your black fag boyfriend stole it for you, didn’t he? You told him about the safe, didn’t you? Didn’t you?”
“I told him where to find the combination, you filthy, lying hypocrite!” Marc screamed at him. “ ‘Don’t be such a sissy, boy! Get yourself in the missionary position with a fast tart and forget this homo business,’ ” he said, imitating his father’s clipped voice. “And all the time you’ve been…” Marc shook his head, as if he couldn’t go on.
“Where is it? Where’s the tape?” Allister sounded as though he were being strangled. “That rotten nigger stole it for you, didn’t he? After all this family did for him! He wrote me. Did you know that? Threatening to—”
Marc interrupted him. “Fuck you! What about me? Standing there listening to a drunken prostitute talk about how you liked your spanking was bad enough, but that tape! God, it made me vomit.”
Felicia looked from her son to her husband.
Marc’s shoulders were heaving. Blanche couldn’t see his face, so she didn’t know if he was gulping for air or crying. But she was all too sure of the gun Marc pulled from his jacket pocket. The house quivered when the gun appeared.
Felicia squeaked like a mouse under a cat’s paw. Allister looked at his son with widened eyes.
“It’s you I should have killed instead of Saxe,” Marc said to his father. The gun was dead steady in his hand.
Felicia’s body jerked. Her mouth worked, but no sounds came out.
Allister sat back down. “You don’t have the balls to kill a rabbit.” Allister spoke as though Marc hadn’t said anything about killing Saxe. He leaned back in his chair. “Remember the time Uncle Randolph and I took you hunting?” he went on. “You couldn’t even…”
Felicia turned on him. “Shut up, you fool! Didn’t you hear…?” She turned back to Marc. She held out her open right hand as if she expected him to lay his troubles in her palm.
“Listen to me, Marc, please.” Felicia sounded calm, but Blanche didn’t believe it. “Don’t do this. Don’t ruin your life for him. Allister’s not worth killing! And I know you didn’t kill Saxe. I killed him.”
Allister’s mouth fell open. Marc lurched forward. Allister recovered first.
“What are you saying?” he shouted at Felicia. “What are you talking about?”
Neither Felicia nor Marc seemed to hear him. Marc touched Felicia’s cheek with the back of his free hand.
“I almost wish you had killed him,” Marc said. The sadness in his voice filled the room and oozed out into the hall. “Then I wouldn’t know how it feels to…Then I could sleep, think, I wouldn’t have this…this…”
Allister looked from his son to his wife. Marc let his gun hand fall to his side. He was looking at Felicia.
“He was rubbing ice on the lump you’d raised on his head when I got there. He told me you’d hit him. He said everybody in my family was crazy. I asked why you had hit him. ‘A lover’s quarrel,’ he said. And laughed. He asked me if it turned me on, knowing he was screwing my mother.”
Felicia flinched and reached out to touch Marc’s sleeve.
Marc kept talking. “He said he didn’t give a damn about me, that he’d rather fuck a sheep than…I laughed. I knew he loved me. He told me! He showed me! I thought he was making it all up because he was angry about something else. He was so moody, and he didn’t always tell the truth. I figured he’d be all right if…
“I asked him why he kept seeing me if I was so…He said for fun and profit. He said in a way he was fucking the whole family because dear old Dad was going to be really fucked when he threatened to go to the papers with pictures of both of us with him. He said he’d make a bundle. I knew he was telling the truth that time. It was almost funny. He didn’t know about the tape, you see. That I told Ray-Ray where to find the combination. Saxe always said I was too spineless to really do anything against…So I wanted to show him…to make him proud of me. But when he said…I was glad I hadn’t told him. I laughed in his face. Nobody was going to care about his little photographs once I took the tape to the press.”
A momentary spasm twisted Allister’s face. He opened his mouth as if to speak but didn’t. Marc went on talking. “Then he told me to get out and to stay away from him. He started pushing me.” Marc’s voice went thin. “Just little shoves.” He jabbed his stiff-fingered hand into an imaginary chest. “He kept talking about me and you, both nympho pushovers who let him do anything he wanted. He kept laughing and talking and pushing me. I saw the trophy where he’d put it on the table…I picked it up. I just wanted to make him stop talking and pushing me and pushing me—”
“Oh God, oh God, oh God.” Felicia covered her mouth with a hand and crumpled to her knees as though the weight of Marc’s words were too heavy for her to bear. When she looked up, her face was skim-milk white.
“I went back,” she said. “I…I thought I’d done it. I thought—”
“You took his things!” Marc interrupted, looking down at her. “I should have realized it was you.” He jerked his head in Allister’s direction. “I thought maybe he’d sent some of his henchmen to make it look like a robbery, or got some police official who owed him a favor to fix it up.”
Blanche wished she could see Marc’s face, but it wasn’t really necessary. Sorrow and grief flowed between him and Felicia like a fast-moving river.
Allister leaned forward over their abandoned breakfast. “The tape,” he said. “Where…
No one else even looked at him. Felicia was still on her knees crying quietly. Marc moved closer to her. He reached down and gently put his hand on her head. She threw her arms around his legs and laid her forehead against them.
“Oh, Marc, I’m so sorry, so sorry,” she moaned. “We’ll get you out of this. We can—”
Allister stood up. “Marc, son, listen.” He spoke softly and slowly, as though Marc were a frightened child. “It’s not just me who’ll be hurt by the tape. Your mother, you. Just give me the tape, son. I know I’ve been—”
“You did this!” Marc shouted at Allister, and pointed the gun straight at him again.
Allister looked like he thought Marc might have less trouble shooting him than he’d had with that rabbit. “Now, son.” Allister raised his hands in a surrendering way.
“Don’t call me that, you bastard! Don’t call me that!”
“But you are my son, you…”
Marc looked down at Felicia, her face buried against his legs, her arms wrapped around them as though they could save her.
“I’m sorry, Mother,” Marc said, touching her head once again. “I can’t. I just can’t.”
Allister paled and shut his eyes, so Blanche was the only one actually looking at Marc Brindle when he turned his face from both parents and put the barrel of the gun in his mouth. She was the only one who actually saw his head explode, flinging chunks of dripping red flesh and bone on the walls and on Felicia’s bowed head, depositing freckles of blood and brains on the floor. All done before Blanche could wrench open the door and scream out the “No!” that was a deafening roar inside her head.
ELEVEN<
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DAY TEN—SATURDAY
Blanche woke with the smell of blood still fresh in her nose. Her mouth felt slimy and tasted like rancid butter. She licked her lips—hot and chapped, as though she had a fever. Her mind replayed the scene she’d been seeing all night. Would the sight of Marc Brindle’s exploding head ever fade? How long would she have crouched outside the breakfast room door if Carrie hadn’t come running out of the kitchen at the sound of the shot?
“OhJesusOhJesusOhJesusOhJesus!” was all Blanche could remember her saying. But Carrie must have called the police and ambulance. She remembered that Carrie had also helped her to a kitchen chair where she’d sat staring, trying not to be present, not to have seen. The house rang with Felicia’s screams.
Blanche was still sitting, staring at the floor, when the ambulance and police arrived. When the policeman asked Blanche where she’d been at the time of death, she told him she was about to make tea when they heard the shot. She pointed to the kettle sitting in the sink waiting for water as proof. When he asked what else she’d heard, she had the presence of mind to tell him the house was too well built to hear anything but the loudest noise from the front rooms when the kitchen door was closed. He’d turned to Carrie.
If he’d asked Carrie where Blanche had been during the shooting, Blanche was afraid Carrie might have told him rather than blemish her soul with a lie. Blanche had had a she’s-a-jealous-hearted-underling-trying-to-get-me-in-trouble story ready for the police in case Carrie did talk. But he asked only had she let Marc in, what time, and how did he seem—to which Carrie had said, “Like hisself.” Carrie, like any sensible poor person whose knowledge of the police came mostly from their storm-trooping through her neighborhood, had answered his questions and volunteered nothing. Blanche was damned grateful and planned to tell Carrie so, just as soon as she could get her nerves together enough to call her.
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