Yes. And not because he’s freeing any slaves or even because he’s the first black et cetera. Because he wears that mask. He has that look all the time, a kind of noble dread. He’s a sacrificial king, the still center of the churning world. Call him whatever you want, but he’s older than old school. He’s the most primal president we’ve had in my lifetime. And the thing is, it’s all contrived. It’s constructed. And we’re okay with that. It’s artificial and sacred.
Do I feel, or is it just my hyperattentiveness, that there’s a palpable shift in the room, a feeling that someone’s just gone too far? Not that Martin’s wrong; that he’s too literally right, too eager to spell it out. There’s a kind of malicious energy in his voice: I know you too well. I know you better than you know yourselves. Lee purses his lips and nods. Marshall takes out his BlackBerry and absently spins the wheel with his thumb.
That’s some deep material you got there, Paul says. Kelly, you sure you ain’t writing a book on this guy? ’Cause I think fifteen thousand words isn’t going to cut it.
Martin avoids my look, dusts off his lap, and stands, collecting napkins and cups. Gentlemen, on that note, I have to run off and find my wife, he says. You should do the same. Don’t let them get lonely.
They’re not lonely. They just don’t want to listen to us.
So listen to them for a change.
What, Marshall says, they’re paying you now? Must be nice. He’s getting up, too, and now everyone does, stretching, loosening collars and belts. Got to get the kids to bed, he says. Soccer starts at eight tomorrow. No sleeping in these days.
Coffee in a paper cup and muffin crumbs in your lap. That’s Sunday brunch in my house.
Tell me about it.
And I leave them there, as I have to, before they notice and ask the inevitable question, do you have kids, Kelly? I wouldn’t do that to them. It’s kindness, I’m thinking, slipping away, toward the kitchen where the women’s high voices ring out. Not to make them apologize for their lives without meaning it. I never would have been able to apologize for mine.
• • •
Peter Joseph, it was explained to me, used to be on the board of the Urban League with Martin, and also had a fellowship with the Greater Baltimore Commission the same year as Robin; he’s a venture capitalist who made his money on the West Coast — an early investor in Yahoo! — and who now is developing a biotech startup in Harbor East. The party is for Renée Jackson, a City Council candidate with bigger plans. What plans? I asked, and Martin said, national plans. We added a House seat to Baltimore City in the last redistricting.
Isn’t that a bit of a stretch, from not even being elected to the City Council?
Watch her, he said. Watch and learn. We shook hands with her as we came in, all together, and then she disappeared into a crowd, every head angled toward her. Short, slim, very erect, in a navy Hillary-style pantsuit, her hair swept back and folded into a sort of a crest — my god, I said under my breath, she’s younger than I am, not even thirty, maybe.
She’s an Iraq vet, Robin told me, handing me a glass of white. There’s serious political traction there. Great family, too. Her dad’s a pastor; he was up on the dais when you came to church with us.
Yeah. Martin pointed him out.
And her mom’s some kind of an heiress from Atlanta. Real estate money. They’re a Spelman family, too. In fact, I interviewed her. Not that it made any difference. She has a law degree, too. Finished her service working in-house at the Pentagon. Seriously, she’s someone to know.
So why aren’t you in there, pressing the flesh?
Robin doesn’t need anyone’s favors, Martin said, in my other ear. I hadn’t noticed, but they were flanking me, providing security. She dispenses favors. The second-highest-ranking black woman in the whole Hopkins system. One of these days she’s going to cash in and work in administration.
What he means is, Robin said, in his rich fantasy life, I’m going to sit behind a desk, push paper, and pull down something in the high six figures. In reality, it’ll be a cold day in July.
As she was speaking she laid her hand on my forearm, a purely affectionate, nominal gesture, but in the flutter of a heartbeat I felt Martin’s eyes angling downward, noting, noticing, as he noticed everything. And the envelope surrounding us, the membrane of convivial warmth, broke in an instant.
There’s food, right? I asked. Sorry to be so abrupt, but I’m starving. Something about Sundays — I always feel as if I don’t eat enough the rest of the week.
Is there food? Are you kidding? Robin laughed at me, her teeth — not blindingly white, not iridescent, but perfectly proportioned, stainless, neatly arranged — on full display. I don’t know where you come from, she says, but among black people a party from five to eight means serious food. Didn’t you see the Melba’s catering truck? Noreen doesn’t mess around. She’s from South Carolina. Low-country food.
Shrimp and grits?
Like you’ve never had it before. Go eat. She waved at me. We’ll catch up with you later.
• • •
Just after I’ve dumped my plate in the garbage a little girl darts across my path, a blur of pigtails and blue satin, thigh height, poking a smartphone screen. She’s half, I can see that in a second, all Chinese features around the eyes and the mouth, but with an extra broadness in the nose and warm peach tones in her skin. Tall for her age, too. The one time we visited Wudeng with Meimei people came up to us on the street and said, so tall. So fair. So tall. Though Meimei was really particularly neither. And one old woman, a shopkeeper, said, American-born Chinese girls always have enormous breasts. Too much milk! Don’t give her milk. Give her tofu. We all laughed.
I stand there, still by the garbage can, transfixed for a moment. Her mother comes trailing after her, so obviously Chinese, so obviously transplanted — the same dress pants with chunky black heels, the same long ponytail — that I don’t have to wait to hear her piping voice speaking Mandarin and her mother answering back. They see me looking at them; how could they not? And the girl pulls her mother across the room and asks, holding out the phone, in her most polite four-year-old’s voice, excuse me, can you please take a picture of me with my mommy and daddy? I want to show my baby brother, he’s home with the babysitter.
We descend into the living room, with its faux-retro shag carpet, its leather couches and wall-sized TV, its woven baskets and Kara Walker silhouette and Basquiat poster, a room that announces optimism and arrival, a room that makes me wish I had money to give to someone. And I shake the father’s hand. Willard, friend of Peter’s, partner at Accenture. We take photo after photo. Isabella with Daddy, Isabella with Mommy. Mommy and Daddy holding Isabella up in the air like a cheerleader. Isabella Chang-Thomas, she tells me proudly. Finally she loses interest and runs off to join the others, still out on the lawn, and Willard moves off to grab more Lowenbraus, and I turn to the woman, Shen, and say, almost in a whisper, a conspiratorial sotto voce, wo nu’er jiao Meimei.
Conjugating verbs in Chinese is much looser than in English, and depends much more on context. In English you would have to say my daughter’s name was. Or my daughter’s name is. In Chinese the verb by itself seldom has so much power. To be technically correct I should have said, wo nu’er jiao Meimei le, the le indicating a finished action, or, even more unbearably, zhiqian wo you jiao Meimei de nu’er, danshi yinian qian ta sile. I had a daughter named Meimei, but she died two years ago. But you don’t introduce yourself to a stranger this way in any language. Much less the parent of a young child, whose body hasn’t yet acquired the solidity, the independent gravity, the fixed status of a separate human being; who is still for all intents and purposes an extension of your own body, an extra limb.