She was old and skinnier, dressed all in white. Her skirt and her shirt and shoes, even the shawl over her head, which she clutched with both hands at the chin, was white.
He couldn’t kiss her standing like that; couldn’t even shake her hand. So he stood there, briefcase hanging from his fist.
“What’s that?” she asked.
“Tape recorder an’ my lunch.”
“Tape recorder for what? A Walkman?”
“Naw.”
“What is it then?”
“Can I come in your house, Mavis?”
The question caught her up short. Maybe she thought that they could stand at the door and say what they had to say. After that he could go home to die and she could fade back into white.
There was music coming from an old phonograph behind her.
“That the same old Victrola, Mavy?”
“Yeah, sure is.”
“Where you find a stylus fo’ it nowadays?”
“I got six dozen of’em at a flea market down North Carolina ’bout fifteen years ago.” She frowned, angry that he got her talking. “You could come in for a little while, Atwater, but I got work to do.”
He perched on the edge of her antique white sofa while she sat up straight in a blond chair. As the minutes went by she got younger looking. Her face, at first hard, was now regal. He caught a whiff of perfume, Forest Rose. She was wearing that scent when they met over forty-five years before.
He told her about the cancer treatments, but not too much. He told her about his whole life since they’d parted — it didn’t take long.
“One day been just like t’other these last twenty years. Sometimes I even forget what year it is,” he said.
If anything Mavis’s life was even simpler. She’d left Texas after only a few months because being next to where her son had died was too painful to bear.
“I got a driver named George pick me up every Tuesday at eleven-fifteen. He take me up to Angela’s Curios and I let off all my flower arrangements and she pay me. She got seven shops here and on Long Island an’ dried roses always sells good. Then George take me up t’get my groceries an’ I pay’im fifteen dollars cash.”
“Where you get your flowers from?”
“Korean place. Usually their little boy, Kwan, bring ’em up. I give’im fi’ty cents for that.”
And that was it. Neither one had done a thing special in years. Except now Soupspoon was dying. Now he missed things that he had never even noticed before. But he didn’t talk about those things to Mavis — he didn’t have the heart.
Instead he said, “You know now I’m sick I figger I better do all the things I left till later.”
Mavis took a long white cigarette from a porcelain cigarette case on her glass table.
“An’ one’a them things,” Soupspoon went on, “is to put down what I remember about the blues.”
“Like a histr’y book?”
He nodded. “Only I put it down on tape. Stories and songs too. When I’m through I’ma send it to Mr. Early. You remember him?”
“Hm! Mo’ shit about Robert Johnson’s all it is.”
“Him too. He was part of it. Why not him?”
“Cain’t you even die by yo’self, Atwater?” she asked. Then she brought the back of her hand to her mouth. “I’m sorry, honey. I shouldn’ta said that. That was wrong.”
“You never really told me everything about that one time you met’im.” It was all Soupspoon wanted.
“You ain’t s’posed t’talk to yo’ huzbun ’bout some ole boyfriend you had. That’s wrong too.”
“But I ain’t yo’ husband no more, Mavis. We ain’t even friends. This is all I got left, baby.” He pointed at his briefcase. “I ain’t never made no records. I ain’t got no heir.”
“Well? What you want from me?” Mavis’s voice was both small and angry. “What can I do about that now?”
Soupspoon opened his briefcase and took out the recorder. He pressed two buttons and smiled.
“Just tell me about it, Mavy. Just tell it like it was.”
“You mean... just talk?”
“Uh-huh. That’s all I do. Usually I start tellin’ somebody like Kiki or Randy a story an’ then I just forgets that they there.”
Mavis didn’t know who Kiki and Randy were, but she was afraid of the recorder box. She scowled at the thing and balled her fists so tight that her knuckles popped.
Soupspoon moved down to the end of the couch, nearer her chair.
“Tell me ’bout the night you met RL,” he whispered and then he touched her thigh.
She jumped when he touched her, but she also looked away from the box.
“What you want me to say?”
“Just talk,” he said, and he touched her leg again. “Start with Rafael. He was your boyfriend back then, right?”
“Yeah,” she said. “Yeah, Rafael was my common-law huzbun.”
“But you never really married him,” Soupspoon primed her.
“Naw, uh-uh, Rafael wasn’t no good, he was just all I had is all.”
“He was a bad man?” Soupspoon asked.
“Naw. He wasn’t bad, he just wasn’t no good.” She paused for a moment and shivered. “The only good thing ever come’a Rafael was my son Cortland — and he’s dead all these years.”
Through the window Soupspoon could see the dark and overcast New York afternoon. Inside there were at least two dozen bright lights blasting silently against white walls, white rugs, and white furniture. Mavis took out another long white cigarette and lit it. Her head was held back in elegant fashion, reflecting on many hard years. But the only indication of her age now was the two deep furrows in her cheeks and the wrinkles about her eyes. She opened those eyes dramatically and Soupspoon knew that he had her.
“Yes. Rafael was a wild man, but I wasn’t too tame back then myself. I loved my baby somethin’ terrible an’ Rafe loved us — the way a hard-lovin’, hard-drinkin’ man loves. Sometimes he’d come in all mean and worked up. The way he’d talk was like a animal growlin’. Cort’d start whimperin’ and I’d get up and tell Rafe to get-ass away from us until he was civil.”
Mavis sat back and dragged deeply on the unfiltered Pall Mall. She exhaled the smoke into the air above Soupspoon’s head.
“He wasn’t afraid to hit me,” she said. “An’ he knew I wasn’t afraid t’hit him back. You know my fists is big like a man’s....” Mavis balled her left hand to prove the point. “I had some power too. And if we’d fight an’ get so worked up we had to make love, I’d tell’im that he had to carry me outside on the porch ’cause I didn’t want Cort to see that. Rafe’d pick me up and he’d be shakin’ he wanted it so bad.
“Rafe would love a woman hard. I could feel my back hittin’ the flo’, and later on I’d always be pullin’ splinters outta my rear.” Mavis exhaled and stubbed out the cigarette; she only smoked it halfway. “I used to think I liked a hard-lovin’ man. Like when you see a stallion or a bull bitin’ and fuckin’ wit’ that crazy look in they eyes.”
Mavis gave Soupspoon a look that reminded him of the first night they met.
“What about Robert Johnson?” he asked. “Did he meet Rafael?”
“Hell no! Rafe woulda et that po’ boy up. He was a big man an’ mean when it come to what was his.” Mavis lit up another cigarette. “When I met Bob, me and Rafe was livin’ with Number Seven, Rafe’s youngest brother, in a old ruined sawmill on the river. Number Seven and Rafe made moonshine up there and I picked flowers and did things for the white ladies in town. On weekend nights we’d get inta Number Seven’s Terraplane an’ drive down to town, that was Panther Burn. That is, we did used to go down there — until Terry’s juke joint burnt down.
“We were down there on the night of the fire. A crowd was already gathered by the time we come and the music was goin’ strong.