I shoulder my bag and leave. I cross behind the scene and try to catch Shaky’s eye. He doesn’t look at me. I keep going.
7
I hover over the change bowl in the kitchen. Marco has replenished it — dimes and nickels. I take a dollar seventy-five, enough for a slice or a sport bar. I go upstairs. On the desk are two cigars and a note.
Meet me at 57th and 5th, 8:00. Bring the cigars.
— Happy Birthday,
M.
p. s.
If you don’t mind, would you drive the car in? It’s
in the garage on Pacific. They’re expecting you.
Thanks,
p. p.s.
Claire called.
I’m ashamed for a moment because I’m excited, like a kid promised fast food. I get over it quickly. I shower, shampoo, shave, and leave the bathroom still wet, letting the water drops slowly evaporate in the air conditioning. I wouldn’t walk around nude in my own house, but I’m naked in Marco’s, naked and dripping water on the hardwood floor, on the wool throw rugs. I search through my bag, knowing I won’t find anything. My good clothes are in the basement.
I go downstairs and begin rummaging through our belongings. There are boxes full of crap — notebooks. I pick up an old one, begin to open it, and think better of it. There are photo albums that Claire has put together — the annals of our life together and apart sit contained in boxes. Thirty-two square feet of memory on pallets. There’s the warranty for my laptop, disks that are unlabeled. Claire, of course, packed everything according to some kind of organizational logic: computer disks with notebooks and gift pens; our library, sectioned by what appears to be race, then gender, then genre; my old stuff, when I used to buy expensive sketch books to write in; music books; record albums; CDs, which I decide I’ll bring upstairs. There are some loose photos, a recent one of Edith holding my girl. Edith looks pained. My girl’s about to cry, trying to get free from her grandmother, do anything to get to her mother, who’s taking the picture.
There’s a box of pillows and towels, at the center of which is a bundle of newspaper. I take it out and unwrap it. It’s the urn containing my mother’s ashes. It’s a simple design, U-shaped, black with a matte finish. I didn’t get to pick it. I thought I would’ve, but they’d handed it to me already done. And I would’ve spread them out immediately but I hadn’t known where. Boston wasn’t right, since it had seemed for her to be only a kind of purgatory, one she never made it out of. I thought about Virginia and then Oklahoma and then Dublin or Dingle. Then I thought that I could divide her among all three. I didn’t do anything. When I met Claire, she suggested that when I had a permanent home of my own, I could make a little flower bed of Lila’s favorite flower and put them there. I thought that sounded like a good idea, perhaps only because Claire had said it.
I hear someone inhale sharply. I turn to the stairs. It’s Laura, Marco’s wife. She’s staring, frozen by my nakedness. She manages to raise an arm to the stairs, a stop command, but James, her son, walks through it. They both look at me in the center of the cellar. I step behind the boxes.
“Hello, Laura. Hello, James.”
“Hello.” She takes him by the arm. They both look down. “I’m sorry.”
“Oh, no.” I shuffle behind the boxes. “Don’t be. It’s my fault.”
“I came down to look for something. I didn’t think anyone was here.”
“Just pretend that there isn’t.”
She laughs, a bit nervously, but better than she was before.
“I was just looking for some clothes.”
“Oh.” She finally looks up. He doesn’t. “It’s your birthday. Happy birthday.”
“Thank you. I’m sorry about this.”
“Oh, don’t worry. We don’t use this space for anything.” She pauses for a moment, perhaps wondering if we’re talking about the same thing. She points at the urn. “What’s that?”
I hold it away from me. “This is my mother.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Quite all right.”
“How long. .”
“Sixteen years.” She looks confused. “I need to spread them someplace else. How are you? How’s your summer been?”
“Great, thanks. It’s great to get out of the city. Claire and the kids must be happy.”
“Very.”
“Well, see you after Labor Day.”
I wait to hear the door close, and then I count to two hundred before I start searching again. I find a suit — my father-in-law’s, actually: three piece, wool but thin, dark blue with pinstripes. There’s a periwinkle shirt and a medium blue tie tucked into it — a ready-made outfit. I find my shoes but no dress socks. I listen for Laura in case I missed her coming back for something. I sprint up the stairs to the kiddie room with the clothes and Lila.
I set her down next to Thomas, who, although he still hasn’t eaten his food, looks more alert than this morning. I give him three more pellets. He ignores them. I think that beside him is a bad spot for her. I move her to the bookcase. I rarely saw her before she died. She was living alone, emaciated, bitter, and, unlike my father, completely lucid — her senses, at least. And unlike his medicinal six-pack, she was drinking hard stuff all the time. The last day I saw her alive had begun with wine at lunch and ended with her calling me a useless mongrel bastard while whipping an empty pint at my head — a microcosm for our legacy. Whatever the case, she is, after all, still my mother and deserves better than being a bookend in a stranger’s home.
I get dressed quickly and look at myself in the mirror. I hate to think it, but I look pretty good. The suit — the pattern, color, and cut — is conservative enough to keep me from looking like a pimp, my face and hands de-automatic enough to keep me from looking like a stiff. Why can’t I be successful? I look successful. I leave the mirror before I can change my mind. I collect the cigars, my CD fold, and leave.
It’s still hot. I consider taking off my jacket and throwing it over my shoulder, but it would seem a bit too jaunty so I leave it on. I pass all the shops. Kelly whistles from the doorway as I go by.
“You clean up good, Papi.” I wave back to her, jog across the street to the garage.
“Can I help you?” asks the attendant.
“Andolini, please.” He looks at me like a bird regarding something shiny and new.
“Right. Just a moment.” He picks up a walkie-talkie. “Send down eighty-nine.” He looks up at me, smiling. “Sorry. I’m new.” He looks at the clock. “You’re early.”
“I’ll be back.” I wander outside. Away from the oil and gas smells and away from the tinny echo of AM talk radio. I stand in the spot where I first saw Shake earlier. I wish he’d spoken to me. I wanted to hear his voice — anything familiar now — however strange it might be. It’s been years since we’ve all been together, years of him passing me, sometimes speaking, sometimes ignoring me. Gavin used to say that he and Shake were the manifestations of my split psyche, and when I wasn’t around, they couldn’t communicate with each other. I don’t know. Shake and me — the bused urban black boy and the newly suburbanized black boy — vying for the spoils of a wrecked kingdom.
The bookstore is full of people browsing. In the window is How the Hammer Did Fall by my mentor, the Reverend Dr. A. Jasper Pincus. Next to it, No More Auction Block: The Repossession of the African American Body and Mind by Karl Nometheus. Both books have spare covers: Pincus’s courier type superimposed over railroad tracks, Nometheus a dark face and a dollar bill blown up to near the point of abstraction. Two black cultural criticism books prominently displayed, and it’s not even February. I know what Pincus would say if I saw him now—“Your work should be in this window.”