Whitegirl

by Kate Manning

  “You hit me,” I said. I knew he saw the bruise.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, hard and grim as Judgment Day.

  “No, I’m the one.”

  He began to help me up off the floor.

  “I’m sorry.” I kept saying it. “It was my fault. I deserved it. I never, I should have—please. I’m sorry.”

  “Here, get up,” he said, and pulled me.

  I stood there swaying.

  “What are we going to do?” I said after a while.

  “Do?”

  “About how angry you are with me.”

  He looked at me and brushed the hair out of my face. His eyes went to my bruise, and he touched it gently. He winced and swallowed and looked away.

  “Also, I love you,” I said, crying again.

  I was tottering a little, and fell against him so he was holding me up like he was wishing he didn’t have to, like he was a post that happened to be there, with his chin resting on the top of my head.

  “I don’t know what to do,” he said. “I don’t know.” Then he held me away from him and let go, the way you try to balance a lamp that is unsteady. He saw my bruise again, looked away quickly and sat me down on the couch.

  “I’ll tell you something,” he said, picking up his stuff.

  I waited.

  “All my life—” he stopped. He was having trouble. His eyes flicked over me and away and he couldn’t decide whether to say it but he did. He said: “Darryl told me just you wait, you know, sooner or later, every one of ’em has his day. He said, You’ll see. And I said for him to go fuck himself. Because I was not raised like that, to believe that. So I never listened to Darryl. Not about you. Darryl said, You’ll see. And I said, Yeah but not her. And then—”

  “Milo, I’m sorry I said it,” I said.

  But Milo knew my side already. Knew it all too well. Somewhere in there I realized that the time for explaining was over. It was going to be up to him to decide, up to him to take it or leave it, and right now he was leaving it. He was packed up, he said, and was going out to the beach for a couple of days. He needed some time to think. While he got his keys and his wallet organized, and even while I waited with him out by the elevator, he refused to meet my gaze. He said nothing. The door shutting and the lurch of machinery carrying him down to the street was all the goodbye he said to me.

  I had a bad night. I could not sleep. My cheek hurt, cut and swollen up over the bone, blue as plums with a lick of red in one eye from some broken thing in there. I tossed in the bed and the room spun. I got up and walked around. I made calls—to Claire and Diana—but hung up without speaking. The touchtone buttons played tunes. I hung up twice on Bobbie, and then the third time, I spoke.

  “Oh, God is everything okay?” she said, from Cambridge.

  “Sure!” I was managing not to cry.

  “It’s two in the morning,” she said. “Where are you? Where’s Milo? Charlotte?”

  “He’s very mad at me, Bobbie. See—” And then I lost it, tears starting. “I just have to—”

  “Oh, boy,” Bobbie said. “Slow down.” I could tell she knew I was drunk.

  “Maybe you should talk to him,” I said. My voice was very small. “Or me.”

  “But nobody’s hurt, right? Hallie is fine and you are fine and Milo?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Mostly.”

  “Okay. Where is he?”

  “Montauk?”

  “Can you give me any more information?”

  “The phone number but he doesn’t answer there yet,” I said, really struggling to tell her, to say the numbers. “Just—we had an argument, but can you talk to him?”

  “I can talk to him,” Bobbie said. “But maybe it’s you that should.”

  “I tried, I can’t, he—” I was losing it too much.

  “I’ll drive down there to New York,” she said. “You want me to come?”

  “It’s okay. Just—talk to Milo.”

  “Okay, okay, sure, but hang in there now,” she said, a familiar tenderness in her voice, coaching me like Milo did. “Charlotte? Hear me?”

  “Okay.” I hung up, comforted a little, and slept finally, having sounded the alarm. Bobbie would take care of it. She would find Milo and talk. And then we’d see. We’d know what to do.

  In the morning, Hallie came in early. The darling girl. So good. She didn’t try to wake me. Eventually I just noticed her next to me, humming and whispering to herself. She had two small dolls with her, making them talk, walking them around the covers.

  “You are named Onion and you are Syrup,” she said. “Hello, Syrup, yes, that is a nice hairdo. Where did you get that ugly dress?”

  She ate the cereal left in the box by the bedside. She fed some to Onion and Syrup. After a while she tried the eyelid trick on me. “Are you home?”—lifting a lid and peering under. “Mommy?”

  “Ow, honey,” I said. When I turned my face up to her she saw the bruise.

  “Poor thing, Mommy!” Hallie said. “Poor thing.” She reached tenderly to touch my cheek but I held her hand away. “Did you fall down?” she asked.

  “Yes,” I said. “But I’m okay.”

  “Good; then, get up,” she said brightly. “I’m a little hungry.”

  So I had to get up. It was around eleven and it was Saturday. Marcy would not be coming.

  “Daddy?” Hallie said, downstairs. “Where’s Dad?”

  “Maybe hiding,” I said.

  She looked in all the rooms.

  “Not here, Mom. Find him. You find him.”

  It was a good idea, I thought. Hallie and Onion and Syrup and I would get in the car and go down the Expressway past Quogue and Sag Harbor and the Hamptons, Bridge and West and South, all the way to Montauk where I’d find Milo. Hallie would be the bait, because who could resist her? I would put her out in the open, hide in the blind, and then when Milo came to scoop her up, I would leap out and tackle him with my net and tell him: It will be fine. It will all work out. Listen to me. Here’s what happened. I would bring him back in my teeth, limp but alive.

  I took some very strong painkillers. Codeine or Valium, or maybe both. I drank coffee. We got in the car and drove two hours straight.

  But Milo wasn’t there. There was no sign of him. No car in the driveway. The house was shuttered and locked, musty and dark inside.

  “Daddy?” Hallie called. She waited and looked at me, shaking her head. “Not here,” she said, forlorn.

  Milo always said, if you find yourself lost, stay put. People will come looking for you; search parties will set out. If you are roaming around they won’t be able to find you. Milo had taught me all kinds of things he knew about survival in the wild, about edible bark and berries. You should hollow out a cave in the snow for warmth, save your energy, send out distress signals at regular intervals. So Hallie and I would stay put for as long as we had to.

  Surely Milo was on his way. He’d be here any minute.

  Daddy, Hallie would say, when we heard his wheels on the gravel.

  Hey, I would say, and he would see me over the top of her head.

  Music would be swelling, violins, and we would embrace, murmuring all our regret and tender apology; and when we had explained ourselves in few words, we would smile at each other, smile down at our little girl, each of us taking one of her tiny, perfect hands, and walk down the beach, our backs to the camera, waves licking our bare feet, an American family with our pant legs rolled up like the pant legs of the Kennedys, walking until we were out of sight, leaving deep footprints behind us in the sand. Except Milo didn’t come.

  30.

  Darryl would know where Milo was. All Sunday afternoon I tried to reach him, leaving messages at his various numbers in New York and L.A. Hello Darryl it’s me Charlotte, would you please call me please when you get this? Tell Milo to call me. Finally, after Hallie was in bed and my drinking was solidly under way, I tried all the possible numbers for Milo and Darryl again, but no one answered. Then, around eleven t
hat night, the phone rang.

  “Pink!” said Darryl. “I got your message. What’s up?”

  “Where’s Milo?” My name is not Pink.

  “Milo Milo Milo,” he said. “He was just here.”

  “Which is where?”

  “New York City.” New York Citay. Like he was doing his Stevie Wonder imitation.

  “Where in New York?”

  “My hotel, of course. We had things to discuss.”

  “He said he was coming here.”

  “But he didn’t.”

  “He said he’d be here.”

  “But he’s not.”

  “You tell him I need to talk to him.”

  “But he does not need to talk to you,” Darryl said. “To twist a phrase of his, he don’t need it and he don’t want it.”

  “Darryl, you tell him,” I said through my teeth.

  “I can’t tell that guy anything. I do tell him but he doesn’t listen. Believe me, I tried. I tried to tell him about you.”

  “What about me?”

  “Just that you would pull something,” Darryl said. “Like you pulled with that project in Newark. Which—just so you know, since I know he’ll never tell you—has hurt our friend Milo. To the bone. There is serious talk. Serious. Are you listening? of a boycott in the community. Have you got your radio on? Are you tuned in at all? Cade Blockade.”

  “Which means what?”

  “Which means no more Cade soft drink ads. No more Rebel Fury toothpaste. No more Liquid Ore candies. No more gravy train. Sponsors are nervous. You know what I’m saying? Are you listening to me? You better quit that sniffling crying, Charlotte, because hey: You play, you pay, right? The snake will have whatever’s in the belly of the frog. So listen—”

  I was listening. The phone was attached to the wall with a wire. I was stuck listening to Darryl like a dog chained to a doghouse.

  “You cannot be a black film actor in these United States of America without the faith of the black audience,” Darryl said. “You cannot do it. If the people won’t come to the show, you got no show! Like if a tree falls and there’s no one to hear it, did it make a sound? You see what I’m getting at? Boycott equals Studio Untouchable. So the man Milo Robicheaux is hurt in the pocketbook. Right in the wallet. Where else he is hurt I do not know but I can guess, and he will find his medicine, rest assured.”

  “Please tell him to call me,” I said.

  “I don’t think he’s going to be calling you,” Darryl said, and the way he said it was gentle, almost, his voice velvet. “I don’t think so. I have talked to the man. Milo is over you, Pink. He is past you. Done.”

  My breathing was shaky in the silence then.

  “Calm down, calm down,” he said, listening to me.

  “You tell me! You tell me where—”

  “I am telling you! I am trying to tell you. Listen to me!” Darryl said. “For one time, you listen. Everyone has to go through their little ignorant phase, you know, before they get their education. He saw you. No, take that back. He saw hair and eyes. Looked just like the stuff in the magazine. Damn! It was the stuff in the magazine. You were. And snap! he had to try it, have it. So he had that ignorance but he’s over it. He is educated and you educated him by speaking your truth, yes you did. He’s a big boy now. He sees your true colors, such as they may be, and he knows which side his bread is buttered on.”

  “You put all that in his head!” I said. “You don’t know anything about me. About him, either.”

  “And you do? Oh, that’s good,” Darryl said, laughing. “Look, Pink, calm down, because you must admit: You know that was it for you, too. Right? You had your own little questions. Listen to me now: You had. To check. It out. Our boy was your, how shall I say, your chocolate fantasy, right? Just you on your black booty quest. Am I right?”

  “Don’t talk to me like that!” I said.

  Darryl was cracking himself up laughing now. “Barbie on a Black Booty Quest! Yessir.”

  “You can’t talk like that to me!”

  “Damn, Pink, that’s how I talk! And you know it, too.”

  “I’ll tell him what you said about him,” I said. “That you said that to me.”

  “He knows!” Darryl crowed. “Damn, Pink! That’s how I talk to him all day long! That’s our saying about you! You should hear him do it, too. Whoo! The chocolate fantasy! It’s a joke! Was a joke. But not now. Because when you come out and say: Ooooh, we should blow up the black people’s houses!” Darryl made his voice girlish and stupid and white. “’Cause, oooooooo, you know they’re all rapists and welfare cheats and drug dealers! Then it’s not a joke.”

  “I did not say that!”

  “You did.”

  “You put all that stuff in his head,” I shouted at him. “It’s your fault!”

  “Ohhhhhhohohho. My fault. Right. We have the words on tape. We saw you say them on TV. What’s next, Charlotte? You gonna cry rape! You’d cry rape faster’n I could say Atticus Finch, wouldn’t you? Cry murder! Like that Boston doctor who shot his wife and blamed it on a black man? Is that next?”

  “What’s next is you’re fired, Darryl. I’ll make him fire you.”

  “Ha.”

  “You’ll be fired,” I said. “Wait and see.”

  “Someone’s gonna go,” Darryl said, “but maybe not me.” He sucked air through the space between his front teeth, a sound like lazy steam rising in a radiator.

  “Fuck you.”

  “I don’t think so,” Darryl said. “Not me.”

  I hung up on him. So hard the phone broke, cracking the receiver and leaving a hollow bell sound lingering in the air while I sat with my heart walloping the cage of my chest.

  So, Milo was somewhere in New York and he was not calling me. Even though Milo had hit me; even though he had not shown up here or called me to say where he was, I had believed he would calm down and come back and we would patch it up. I’m telling you I still did. I was Lois Lane, clinging to the skyscraper ledge, knuckles raw, reaching for the outstretched hand. Maybe if that hand appeared, I thought, we could crawl in off the parapet and be happy, despite the cracked things that had happened, that we had said. I touched the bruise on my cheek and stood up with my hand to my face, and went up the stairs to bed, leaving all the lights on, carrying my face like that.

  The next day, Monday afternoon, we heard wheels on the gravel outside.

  “Daddy!” Hallie said, and started running.

  But it was not him. It was a car I did not recognize. A small blue one with a woman at the wheel.

  Bobbie.

  She climbed out of the car and shook the long drive off herself. She was smiling, holding her arms out wide. “Charlotte!” she said. “Hey, Hallie girl!”

  Hallie hid behind my legs. I picked her up and and ran over to Bobbie and let her fold us up in her arms. “Bobbie,” I said into her neck. “What have I done?”

  “Now wait,” she said, pulling back and inspecting me. “Hang on.” I saw her notice my bruised face, professional concern in her eyes.

  “A door,” I said. “I—”

  But she stopped me with a finger on her lips. Does she know? “Shhh,” she said. She opened the trunk of her car and Hallie squirmed to follow her, peeking in on tiptoe.

  “Presents!” Hallie said.

  Bobbie laughed. “Presents indeed! You’ll never guess what. Not that it’s quite visible,” she said cryptically. Then she pushed her jacket aside and swayed her back so I could see the swell of her belly. She was beaming and at least five months’ pregnant.

  “Bobbie!” I said. I was dumbfounded and so happy my eyes welled up. “Oh, it’s wonderful!”

  “I think so,” she said. “Marcus does.”

  “Oh, it’s such good news.”

  “Not according to everyone.”

  “According to me.”

  “Not Milo,” Bobbie said, and looked at me gently. “I talked to him, you know.” She touched my hand briefly, as if to say it would be okay.r />
  “Where is Milo?” I asked her, too quickly. “Do you know?”

  “Milo is skiing,” Bobbie said. “He’s gone skiing,” as if he had just gone to the cleaners to pick up some shirts. “Help me with this stuff.” She handed me a bag, and we went inside to sit at the big table looking out over the dunes. Hallie clamored for attention, and in between her demands, Bobbie told me that she had had a long talk with Milo. He had told her he was going to Wyoming to ski with Winks.

  “My brother,” Bobbie said, “thinks better when he’s going fast.”

  “Did he tell you what I did?”

  “Yes,” she said, and looked at me steadily. “What happened?”

  “Oh.” I winced, avoiding her. “Not yet. I’m not—What about you?”

  Bobbie leaned back in her chair with her hands on her belly. “Look at that,” she said proudly, showing off the hard ball of baby stretching out her spandex shirt. “Isn’t that beautiful?”

  It was. I told her so, glad for the distraction.

  “Due in August,” she said. “We’re thrilled, Marcus and I. Not Hattie and Milton. Yet. At least not about the unwed part of it. And Milo really isn’t. He’s mad at me for not telling him till now, for being irresponsible, not being married. Especially not being married. And, well—he’s mad at me.”

  “He’s mad at me, too,” I said.

  “I know,” she said, her eyes on the bruise again.

  “I bumped into a door,” I said again to see if she believed me. I couldn’t tell how much Bobbie really knew. Surely Milo would not tell his sister he hit me. Still, I imagined she was using her laser-beam eyeballs to see through my skin to the lies tangled in my entrails, the way she saw through nervous teenage girls who appeared every day in her office. “I just—” and started crying again.

  “Well, don’t, okay, honey?” She sighed. “Don’t do that. Say why. Say how it happened.”

  Which? I thought. Bumping into the door? Or what I said on TV? The part where I goaded Milo before he hit me? Or just the hitting? What does she know? I stood stalling and stammering while Bobbie continued her steady doctor’s office gaze, waiting.