Mother touched my arm as if she recognized my torture. “Are you okay, dear?” she asked.
“Fine, Mother.” I looked into the rearview mirror. “Okay back there, Lorraine?”
“Yes.” Lorraine had not really wanted to come, but I needed her help in taking care of Mother and, frankly, I couldn’t see leaving her alone. “I could use a ladies’ room.”
We had been on the road for thirty minutes and had perhaps another twenty to go to Annapolis. “Do you think you can wait until we get to Annapolis?” I asked.
“I suppose if I have to.”
“Lorraine needs to stop,” Mother said.
I nodded and pulled off at the next exit which turned out not to be conveniently located for anything people in cars might want. I drove along the two lane highway until thirty minutes later we’d come to a gas station. I parked in front of the restroom doors and killed the engine. “Okay, Lorraine.” I got out and opened her door for her. A greasy-looking, lanky white teenager watched us through the window.
Lorraine went to the door, opened it, then came back, got into the car. “I can wait,” she said.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“I can’t go in there,” she said.
“There’s no place else.”
“Lorraine said she can’t use that one, Monksie,” Mother said.
“I’ll just wait until we get there,” Lorraine said.
An hour later we were in Annapolis and Lorraine was asleep in the back. Mother was asleep beside me. I drove through town to the beach. The guard at the gate actually recognized me. He was as old as my mother, but I couldn’t recall him. “Monk Ellison,” he said. “My, my. You don’t even remember me, do you? Maynard Boatwright.”
I did recall the name, but I remembered a big, heavily muscled exmarine with an iron jaw, instead of the sweet old man saying my my in front of me.
“I remember you,” I said. “How’s life treating you?”
“Finer than frog’s hair.” He looked over at my mother, then at Lorraine. I remembered that Lisa suspected he had a thing for Lorraine. “Is that?”
“Lorraine,” I said.
“Well, I’ll be.”
I turned to wake Lorraine, but Maynard stopped me.
“You must be a good driver,” Maynard said. “For everybody to fall asleep like that.”
“I guess so.”
“Well, I’ll see you later.” Then he waved to the sleeping Lorraine.
The naps must have had a restorative effect on the old ladies. Once at the house and awake, they set to the task of getting the place in order with single-mindedness. I was only a little tired from the short drive, but they wouldn’t let me close enough to help with the cleaning. I went out to the side of the house, turned on the water and threw the main breaker. I poked my head back in to reaffirm my uselessness and stepped out the back to the little dock on the tidal pond. I looked east out to the bay. The old aluminum canoe was still upturned on blocks and covered with a tarp the way it always was. Later, I would take it out and just float on the water with a cigar. The rim of the pond was crowded with houses, nothing like it had been when I was a kid. I could hear the noises of families, music, dogs, a distant car alarm. I walked between our house and the neighboring one and to the road, where I walked toward the bay beach.
I wondered how far I should take my Stagg Leigh performance. I might in fact become a Rhinehart, walking down the street and finding myself in store windows. I yam what I yam. I could throw on a fake beard and a wig and do the talk shows, play the game, walk the walk, shoot the jive. No, I couldn’t.
I would let Mr. Leigh continue his reclusive, just-out-of-the-big-house ways. He would talk to the editor a few more times, then disappear, like down a hole.
I walked along the beach, then turned to look back at the Douglass house. It had been owned first by the grandson of Frederick Douglass and had fallen into several hands since. When I was a child it was unoccupied and we would walk into it, climb the stairs and stare at the water from its tower. My father told me that James Weldon Johnson had written in that lookout. The thought of it scared me a little, but also made my mind race, searching for lines of poems of my own that would never come. Now the house was fresh looking and somewhat unfamiliar. The tower top was no longer screened in, but surrounded by glass. The house looked tight and air-conditioned. There was a Mercedes Benz station wagon parked by the front walk.
I walked back up the street. I stopped to look at the old Tilman house. A woman whom I had not seen was sitting on the porch and she asked if she could help me, in that way which really asked what the hell I was looking at.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I was just remembering a former owner.”
“Oh, really?” Meaning of course, yeah, right.
“No, really. His name was Professor Tilman. I never knew his first name. Maybe it was Professor.”
The woman laughed. She was tall, as tall as me, and she stepped off the porch and looked at the house with me. Her square face was framed by near blonde dreadlocks. “Professor Tilman was my uncle,” she said. “We called him Uncle Professor.”
She was funny. I smiled at her. “I didn’t mean to be rude, but I didn’t see you.”
“That’s okay.”
“How is the Professor?” I asked.
“He died three years ago.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I inherited the house. Some of the house. My brother and I own it, but he lives in Las Vegas and never comes east.” She said Las Vegas as if it were not to be believed.
“I’ve driven through there,” I said. “My name is Thelonious Ellison. Everybody calls me Monk.”
“Dr. Ellison’s family?” I nodded and she said, “My uncle mentioned your father often.”
“How about that.”
“Marilyn Tilman.” She shook my hand. “Are you down for the summer? What’s left of it?”
“Just a couple of weeks. I’m here with my mother and her housekeeper. Speaking of which, I’d better get back there. I know they’ll have a shopping list waiting for me. I’ll talk to you later, okay?” I took a couple steps away. “Would you like me to pick up anything for you?”
“Why don’t I ride with you?” she asked.
“It’s the two story with the green shutters.”
“I’ll be over in a couple,” she said.
“Good.” I watched her take the porch steps two at a time and enter the house.
Back at the house, I discovered that Mother and Lorraine had gotten on each other’s nerves. The outward manifestation of this nerve-pinching was an awkward silence. Mother told me she felt the need for a nap and Lorraine told me, aside, that Mother needed a nap. Lorraine had compiled the shopping list, at the end of which were a couple of things added by my mother’s shaking hand. This was no doubt the source of trouble between them, especially as one of the items had already been listed by Lorraine.
“She’s tired,” Lorraine said again, this time loud enough for Mother to hear.
“It’s no wonder,” Mother said softly, looking around as if for a place to lie down.
“Lorraine,” I said, “take Mother up and get her to bed, will you? I’ll be back in an hour or so. And I’ll pick up some food so no one cooks tonight.”
“Yes, Mr. Monk.”
Lorraine followed Mother up the stairs.
“I don’t need your help,” Mother snapped.